King of Mercenaries

Chapter 65: Firewood stove

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Four kilometers to the west of Te Horenche, there is a narrow sandy beach over a low hill. The sand on the beach is very fine. If it is placed in modern times, it is definitely a good place for a beautiful woman in a swimsuit to bask in the sun.

Of course, this is the Middle Ages, and everyone wears robes. Not to mention beauties, men don't dare to lie on the beach in that way. Otherwise, the priest of the church will definitely go to "save" you, a snake-sick person, and maybe tie you to the stake to play "human flesh barbecue"...

Not far to the east of this beach is a small freshwater lake called Hollen Lake, which can supply the fresh water needed for life.

Building a boiling salt center is not an easy task. First of all, to choose a suitable venue, it must be by the sea. The seawater must be salty enough and clean without any pollution.

Second, sufficient manpower must be recruited. Generally speaking, a large salt pan requires at least two or three laborers to take care of it. One person is responsible for lighting the fire, and the other looks after the pot. The other person is responsible for fuel handling. After the salt is boiled, the salt in the pot should be taken out and installed.

And a cooking salt center must not use only one pot, so a large row of cooking salt pots must be set up. Therefore, a lot of manpower is needed.

Not only that, the transportation of fuel and salt also requires a lot of manpower. For example, the salt cooking center established by Marin on the beach near Lake Hollen first needs to build enough salt cooking stoves. Secondly, it is necessary to build houses for the salt cookers to facilitate their living. Finally, a flat road had to be built from the port of Te Horenche to the boiling salt base to facilitate the transportation of coal briquettes.

Although, the distance from Te Horenche to Boiled Salt Center is only about 4 kilometers. However, the western half of this road has to pass through a hilly area, so the construction is a little more difficult.

In addition, Marin had to send people to big cities to order a large number of large iron pots and bricks for building stoves and houses. As for the housing, Marin thought about it and decided to use the adobe house. Adobe houses are cheap to build and comfortable. In addition, the construction speed is also fast. But to build a stove for boiling salt, Marin still plans to use a lot of bricks and lime.

Because he intends to use energy-saving soil stoves (also known as firewood-saving stoves), and the high chimney of energy-saving earth stoves must be built with bricks...

In the previous life, Marin's hometown was in the countryside, and energy-saving earthen stoves were promoted in the village for a period of time.

The so-called energy-saving clay stove is actually very simple, that is, the furnace wall around the hearth is built very thick, so that when the fuel in the hearth burns, the energy will not leak to the surroundings.

You know, ordinary earthen stoves are surrounded by one or two layers of bricks, which is not thick enough. When burning inside, the temperature of the furnace wall is also high, and the energy is diffused through the furnace wall, and the effect is similar to that of a kang.

However, if the furnace wall is greatly thickened, the heat of the flame in the furnace will not be easily dissipated through the furnace wall. In this way, the energy utilization rate of the energy-saving stove is greatly improved.

Moreover, the chimney of the energy-saving earth stove should be high. Because the high chimney is easy to produce a siphon effect, which sucks away the flue gas in the furnace, and also automatically sucks in air from the air inlet to help combustion.

According to the technicians who promoted firewood-saving stoves in previous lives, firewood-saving stoves save one-third to one-half of the fuel and one-fourth to one-third of the cooking time compared with old-fashioned earthen stoves .

Therefore, firewood-saving stoves are very powerful. Marin used this technology to cook salt, which can be regarded as strict cost control, and it is a model of capital management...

In order to build this salt cooking center, Marin decided to recruit labor force aggressively. Because there is a serious shortage of labor on the island, and they have to engage in their own occupations. Therefore, if Marin wanted manpower, he had to go to land to find it.

At the end of the 15th century, after more than 100 years of recovery in Europe, the population lost due to the Black Death in the 14th century recovered a lot.

Originally, there was a labor shortage in many manors. But a hundred years later, after several generations of reproduction, many manor laborers began to have a surplus.

For example, the number of acres of a certain manor is fixed, and the number of serfs recruited by the serf owner is also just right. However, a serf family may not necessarily have only one boy.

Therefore, if there were no other industries that required a large amount of labor, the serf owners would not be very happy to support those redundant men. Therefore, many serf sons could not even inherit their father's serf status.

These people either go to other newly opened farms and become serfs. Or, go to work as a coolie in the city. Even so, there are still many who are having a hard time finding work. As a result, many people became beggars and refugees. Those with courage and strength, some became mercenaries, some became robbers...

The reason why German mercenaries were able to develop was not only the martial arts tradition of the Germanic nation, but also the factors that the surplus serf children could not find work.

Now, Marin is going to those manors with too many people, recruiting a group of honest and willing serfs to cook salt for him. Of course, they have to help Marin build the building of the salt cooking center first, as well as the road to Te Horenche...

For this reason, Marin made another trip to the German region. He did not recruit in the Netherlands. Because people in the Netherlands have a very different accent from other parts of Germany.

Marin speaks German, Latin and Frisian, but not Dutch. Therefore, Marin felt very strenuous to communicate with the Dutch, and had to bring a translator.

Apparently, both Dutch and Frisian are West Germanic languages that cannot communicate with most German dialects. This is also one of the important reasons why the Netherlands and the Greater Germany are separated from Germany. For example, in the Westphalian region where the Marin family is located, although the accent is different, they can still communicate with Saxons and Austrians if they speak slowly. But in the face of the Dutch, the Germans in the German-speaking area are a little bit blind...

For the sake of convenience, Marin went directly to his hometown in the Ruhr area to recruit the excess labor from those manors...

With the help of the old Hoffman, Marin quickly recruited 500 serfs, and followed him to cook salt on Texel...

"Marin, is your method of boiling salt reliable?" Mrs. Mary asked worriedly.

"Of course it's reliable, the British make a lot of money from this!" After he quietly told Mrs. Mary about the profit from cooking salt, Mrs. Mary also opened her mouth in surprise.

"But, since cooking salt is so profitable, why don't others do it?"

"Mom, not every family can successfully purchase a large amount of coal. The Netherlands lacks wood and firewood. They have to import firewood from other places. It is not as convenient as we use ships to pull coal. Moreover, the whole of Western Europe, too. The Ruhr River area in Britain and Germany is rich in coal. The British have already started to use coal to cook salt to make a fortune, but the coal in the Ruhr area has not yet been developed. And I am the first German to make a fortune by cooking salt with coal!"

What Marin said is correct, although it is very profitable to use coal to boil salt. However, there are very few coal-producing regions in Europe. In Western Europe, it seems that the Ruhr area and the northern part of England produce a lot of coal. If other places want to learn this trick, they must have coal. Moreover, because of underdeveloped technology (mainly suppressed by the Holy See), many people do not know that the calorific value of coal is much higher than that of firewood.

"Marin, my child, you are so smart! But, you have to think about a problem!"

"what is the problem?"

"Marketing problem! Boy, you can cook a lot of salt, but you have to find a way to sell it in order to get rich!"

"So mom, do you have any suggestions?"

"Cooperate with the merchants of the Hanseatic League. Those Hanseatic merchants have many privileges in the empire. If you cooperate with them, you can ship in large quantities. Otherwise, it will be difficult to sell your salt. Moreover, you You must not be an enemy of those Hanse merchants. Be an enemy of them, they will block your salt sales!" Madam Mary is very knowledgeable, and he knows that Hanse merchants walk sideways in the empire. He was afraid that Marin would be young and aggressive, and would conflict with the Hanseatic merchants.

Speaking of which, Mrs. Mary's grandmother's family was also a businessman. At the beginning, her grandmother's family had offended the Hanseatic merchants, but they were suppressed and ended up sadly, almost going bankrupt. If it weren't for the help of the Bullock family back then, Mrs. Mary's grandfather would have gone bankrupt and committed suicide. It was precisely because of this that Madam Mary's grandfather took in Madam Mary's father and married his daughter to him at the risk of great danger when the Bullock family perished. Therefore, Mrs. Mary does not want Marin to go the same way. You know, the Hanseatic League is very powerful. They control the trade privileges of many cities in the Holy Roman Empire, pay less taxes than others, and have more convenience than others.

Although countries such as Britain and Denmark began to compete with the Hanseatic League, the Hanseatic League will not decline in the short term. The real decline of the Hanseatic League will have to wait for the rise of Dutch merchants. But the Netherlands hasn't really developed yet, and Antwerp hasn't developed yet. Therefore, these days, the Hanseatic League is still very good. At least, in the German area, they are invincible.

"I understand, Mom, I will be careful about this!" Marin said solemnly.

After that, Marin found the Wiggins Chamber of Commerce in Cologne again, hired their ships, and transported the 500 serfs to Texel...