King of Mercenaries

Chapter 18: It used to be a coal mine

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Back at Hoffman Manor, after Marin settled the 5 kittens, he began to resettle the 4 fishermen. These fishermen have been fishing by the sea for generations.

However, these families were unlucky. Their fishing boat capsized at sea (a fishing boat jointly bought by four families). You know, fishing boats are the most important property of fishermen. When the fishing boat is gone, it means the sky of this family has collapsed. Boats are expensive, for ordinary fishermen. Without a fishing boat, the whole family has no hope. Although they were able to escape by relying on their proficiency in water, the hunger at home was unavoidable.

Seeing that bankruptcy was imminent, it happened that Marin came to recruit fishermen. The desperate four families simply followed Marin away...

Marin helped them build a house by the river and settled down four families. But here comes the problem - they don't have fishing boats...

The four families did bring fishing nets, but, without a boat, is there any use for it

Originally, according to the wishes of the four families, they wanted to ask Marin to help them buy a Hanseatic speedboat that they were proficient in driving—a kind of single-masted dhow. However, Marin considered that the inner river is different from the outer sea. The wind is strong at sea, and ships can be driven by sails. However, in the inland river, there will often be no wind or light wind. At that time, the sailing boat will be dumbfounded.

Large "inland seas" like the Mediterranean Sea often suffer from windless conditions. Therefore, both Venetians and Genoese are popular in using galleys. When there is wind, it is driven by sails, and when there is no wind, the sailors paddle together...

Although the Ruhr River is not small, it is not big either. It would be a waste to bring in Italian galleys for fishing. After much deliberation, Marin decided to use the oriental riverboat—the scull boat.

Scull boats are generally small, with a maximum displacement of more than ten tons. However, there is a great advantage of rowing a boat-it saves effort.

There is an old saying - "one oar and three oars", which means that one oar is swayed, which is equivalent to three oars. The scull is an invention of the Orientals, and it is also a very scientific thing. His advanced feature is that the scull board is placed at the rear, similar to the ship propeller of later generations. The oars are left and right, so it is more laborious to row.

Marin recruited several shipbuilding craftsmen from a nearby town, and spent several days working together to build a small wooden boat with a displacement of about five or six tons and a scull board. Not only that, Marin also asked the craftsmen to build a black awning on the boat to facilitate shelter from the rain, somewhat similar to the awning boats in Zhejiang.

To be honest, although Marin knew what the captain of the scull was like, he had never swayed the scull himself. So, when he started to demonstrate to people, the boat was wobbly and sometimes turned around. Fortunately, the Frisian fishermen he recruited were more talented than him. After a few days, Marin, the demonstrator, didn't know how to row the oar, but the Frisian fisherman did, which made Marin very ashamed.

Then, a few Frisian fishermen began to steer the scull boat on the Ruhr River and cast their nets for fishing. It seems that in this era, few people catch fish in inland rivers. Therefore, several fishermen have gained a lot. Every time you fish, you can catch hundreds of pounds of various inland fish.

As the lords who protected the four families, the Hoffman family got half of them, and they were the first choice. But what left Marin speechless was that the old Hoffman and the others (except Mrs. Mary) seemed to be eating fish for the first time. Both the old Hoffman and Adler were stuck by the fishbone and cried out in pain. Fortunately, the three children were not stuck.

After the bones of the two mermaids were figured out, Mrs. Mary ordered decisively—children are only allowed to eat the meat without small thorns on the belly of the fish. The rest will be settled by Mrs. Mary, who grew up by the sea. As a Frisian, Mrs. Mary grew up eating fish, so naturally she would not be stabbed. From then on, the Hoffman family ate fish, and Mrs. Mary wrapped the thorny meat on the back of the fish. As for the meat and fish roe on the belly of the fish, they are divided by others.

Marin also showed off his oriental culinary skills that he said he learned from "The Great Sage Einstein". He cooked a lot of delicious meals with a Chinese-style iron pot customized from a blacksmith's shop. For example, fish, although there is no balsamic vinegar, but there is apple cider vinegar in Europe, so Marin made a sweet and sour fish, which is delicious. Before the sweet and sour fish was out of the pot, the saliva of the younger brothers and sisters flowed into a long river...

But Marin also has a depressing place - it is difficult to find ginger in Europe, but there are spring onions and garlic. It's just that the taste is not so authentic.

What shocked Marin was that in this era, ginger was regarded as a precious spice imported from the East, which was expensive. Although not as precious as extremely expensive spices such as cloves and nutmeg, it is still expensive. According to the old Hoffman, in northern Germany, a pound of ginger is generally worth 8 shillings (96 pfennigs), and in some places with inconvenient transportation, you can exchange it for a sheep...

A sheep has dozens of pounds of meat, calculated at 2 pfennies per pound of mutton (wholesale purchase price), it is also worth tens of pfennies, about a hundred pfennies, it is so expensive! In fact, counting the value of wool and sheepskin, a sheep is estimated to be worth about 160 pfennigs, which is almost 1 mark.

(Note: Before the rise of Ottoman Turkey, land trade with the East was still very smooth. Therefore, spices were not particularly expensive at that time. But after the rise of Ottoman Turkey, they began to block land trade routes, making European spice prices crazy. For example, in the early Middle Ages, the price of ginger was only 2 shillings per pound. But because of the obstruction of the Turks, the price of spices began to skyrocket. When Turkey wiped out the Egyptian Mamluk Dynasty, the land trade routes were basically cut off. It can only be obtained by the Portuguese sea route. By the time of Elizabeth I, the price of ginger generally rose to the point where a pound of ginger was exchanged for a sheep.)

Not to mention the crop of ginger, after the entire Hoffman family ate the oriental dishes made by Marin, they all ate their mouths full of oil, and they didn't care about their image.

Mrs. Mary seemed to realize the value of this kind of oriental cooking, and she learned oriental cooking with Marin herself, and planned to open a restaurant in the city.

But Marin strongly disagrees:

"Mom, I know that using this magical oriental cooking technique to open a restaurant will definitely make money. But, have you thought about it? If there is such a delicious meal, those big nobles will let go of this secret technique? They will definitely find a way It's a trick to take away this kind of oriental cooking. At that time, this may not be the luck of the Hoffman family, but a huge disaster. After all, the Hoffman family is only the lowest noble in the empire... "

As soon as Marin said, the smart Mrs. Mary reacted. She was born in a noble family, so she naturally knows the dirty things of the nobles. What my son said was right, his family was just the lowest low-level nobles, and they couldn't bear the pressure from above at all. The Hoffman family is powerless to resist just because the Baron Bochum over their heads makes them hand over their secret cooking recipes...

In the end, Mrs. Mary decided that this cooking skill should be mastered by herself, and it was limited to cooking for her family...

On this day, Marin, who was full of food and drink, decided to go to the back of his territory to have a look...

Strange to say, in the 1,000-acre fiefdom of the Hoffman family, except for the 200 acres of land by the Ruhr River, the other 800 acres of hilly areas not only cannot grow crops, trees cannot grow, and weeds grow poorly.

So, Marin decided to go to the back mountain to study and see why the hills and hills of the back mountain are so barren...

Although Marin is not a geologist, as a history student, he is not bad at geography. Not to mention that soil problems can be studied, but some simple common sense is still known.

Under the leadership of Marin, Kahn and several strong young men followed Marin to the back mountain area to excavate the soil for Marin to take samples for investigation.

After investigation, Marin found that the land in the hilly area behind the mountain seemed to be somewhat salinized. Therefore, the land here is very barren and the growth of plants is very poor.

This made Marin a little excited. He wondered if there was a salt mine underground here...

This suspicion is not without reason. In later generations, Bochum was a famous mining city with abundant underground mineral reserves. Maybe, there is a salt mine buried under the Hoffman Manor.

You know, in the Middle Ages, the price of salt was very expensive. How expensive is it? In the Middle Ages, Britain, as an island country, had a relatively cheap salt price of 4 shillings (approximately 48 pfennigs) a quart (12.7 kilograms) (equivalent to 1.7 pfennigs/pence a pound). In continental Europe, except for the salt price in the coastal areas of the Mediterranean Sea, which is similar to that in the UK, the salt price in other regions is much more expensive than that in the UK.

In Germany, the price of salt in the northern coastal areas is about 2.5 pfennigs per pound. And inland areas, places like Bochum that are only a few hundred miles from the sea, are about 3 pfennigs a pound. Further south inland, the price of salt can be as high as 5 pfennigs a pound.

If a salt mine can be found under Hoffman Manor, it is basically the same as a silver mine. The vain salt can be exchanged for vain silver, and there is no need to worry about sales. The Duke of Luneburg, relying on the salt mines of Luneburg, became a famous tycoon duke in the German region.

With the enthusiasm to find the salt mine, Marin directed Kahn and the others to use a Chinese shovel to start digging in the back mountain...

After digging many places, finally, in a small hilly valley in the back mountain, several meters deep underground, Kahn dug out a shovel of black things...

"This is... coal..." Marin opened his mouth wide in surprise...

There was no expected salt mine, but coal was discovered...

Marin thought about it, but felt normal. Where is Bochum? Ruhr area. The Hoffman estate is on the banks of the Ruhr River. In the Ruhr area, coal mines are everywhere, and it is very normal to dig out coal from the hills behind the Hoffmann estate.

However, in the Middle Ages, coal was not as valuable as salt, and it was not very popular...

why? It's normal, everyone has to eat salt. As for coal, people don't necessarily need to use it. Coal can be used as fuel, as can firewood. For those areas far away from coal mines, it is better to pick some firewood as fuel instead of spending a lot of time to transport coal from distant places.

Unless, in the city, both firewood and coal have to be brought in from outside. Moreover, the transportation in this city should be convenient, and the transportation to the coal mine should be convenient.

This is the Middle Ages, not the era of steam engines, which consumed staggering coal. Plus there are coal mines everywhere in the Ruhr area. Therefore, coal mines are not that valuable.

But, then again, the back mountain of the Hoffman family was originally a deserted place. Now, at any rate, there are coal mines, so this land will not be wasted.

When the whole family learned that there was a coal mine in the back mountain, they were very happy. Right now, although coal is not very valuable, it can be sold for money. Moreover, the Hoffman estate is on the Ruhr River. At that time, as long as a wharf is built on the Ruhr River, the coal can be shipped out for sale. The Ruhr River leads to the Rhine River, and many cities can be reached, and the transportation is very convenient.

However, coal prices are really not high right now. A piece of Chaltron coal (288 gallons, weighing about 1.5 to 1.7 tons) retails for only 3 shillings (36 pfennigs) in the Ruhr area. Even if it is sold in the big cities along the Rhine, it is only about 5 shillings. Salt, on the other hand, fetched at least 4 shillings a quarter (12.7 kg). Therefore, coal and salt are incomparable.

But in any case, Hoffman Manor is convenient for water transportation, and it is still profitable to dig out coal and sell it to various cities. Old Hoffman invited a professional miner to make an assessment. After evaluation, the hilly area behind the Hoffman Manor is full of coal underground. Moreover, they are all first-class coal. It is estimated that digging out several million chartrons is not a problem. The coal that is estimated to be dug is not more than 100 meters deep. As for those below 100 meters, it is still difficult to excavate them with the technology of the Middle Ages. Among other things, the drainage of deep wells alone is a big problem. The British invented the steam engine in the 18th century in order to pump water from deep wells. The Watt steam engine was actually perfected on the basis of the coal mine pumping steam engine, and it was not the first invention at all.

Because of the discovery of coal mines, the old Hoffmans and Marin began to urgently discuss how to mine coal and transport and sell it.

First of all, the Hoffman family must go outside to recruit a group of serfs to work as miners. Now there are too many serfs who cannot be accommodated by the manor. The main reason is that serf families had many children, and the manor needed only a limited number of serfs. Therefore, every year, some manors drive away some redundant serfs. These serfs were forced to work as coolies in the city or in the mines, just like Hoffman Manor, there were seven or eight young men who went to the city to work as coolies. Marin knew that digging coal underground was dangerous. The coal mine of the Hoffman family is obviously an underground coal mine. Although it is not buried deep, it is also underground, not open-air. And going down the mine is dangerous. Coal mines often explode and collapse. Therefore, Marin was unwilling to use the serfs in this manor as coal miners. Therefore, recruiting people outside is the best choice.

Then, there is the issue of transportation. After the mine was excavated, tracks had to be laid, and the mine carts were pulled along the tracks to the Ruhr River. This distance is also about two kilometers away. After pulling to the Ruhr River, the Hoffman family will build a pier for the merchant ships that come to pull coal to berth.

The Hoffman family does not have merchant ships themselves, so they can only contact those middlemen and ask them to come to the pier to pull coal. Of course, in this case, the Hoffman family can get up to 2 shillings for every Chartron coal. But even so, the income of the Hoffman family can be greatly increased. After all, the income is not high purely farming.