In the village of Gelsenkirchen, after Adler won the championship, the old Hoffmanns officially appeared and began to discuss marriage matters with the Hamler Cavaliers.
When Knight Hamler learned that the champion was from the Hoffman family, he was very happy, but also a little disappointed. Because, the Hamler knight hopes that the winner is Marin, the second child of the Hoffman family. Because Marin is a hereditary baron lord, and Adler is just an apprentice knight. However, after seeing the real Marin, the Hamler knight also knew that if the thin Marin was really allowed to participate in the competition, he didn't know if he could pass the first round of the competition...
As for Miss Hamler, she doesn't have so many snobbish thoughts. Although she is a daughter, Miss Hamle is more advocating force. Therefore, the obviously stronger Adler is more in line with Miss Hamler's appetite. No, after the ceremony, Miss Hamler took the initiative to go to chat with Adler. Originally, old Hoffman planned to beat Adler hard because of Adler's embarrassment on stage. But because Miss Hamler came over, Adler was spared a fat beating.
Both families are knight families, and they don't like to procrastinate when doing things. And both Adler and Liv are coming of age. So, the two families simply agreed—in order not to affect the spring plowing, they simply held the wedding on March 1st...
And now it is January 16th, with less than one and a half months left. Therefore, the preparations for the wedding are still in a hurry. And because nothing major happened during this period, Marin simply stayed at home and helped prepare for the wedding.
Originally, a trainee knight did not need much ostentation to get married. He invited several knight friends and relatives to hold a ceremony in the church in the local town, and then returned to the manor for a banquet, and then summoned the serfs in the manor and the coal mines. It's okay for the workers to come and eat and drink together.
However, as a Chinese soul, saving face has become a habit of Marin. And it just so happened that after his second son was promoted to baron, the old Hoffman, who always loved face, felt that he couldn't make do with it...
So, the father and son decided to give Adler a big deal. Even the priest in the small church in the town, Marin felt that the grade was too low.
For this reason, Marin paid 100 gold coins, went to the nearby big city Dortmund, and hired an assistant bishop to preside over the wedding. Having a powerful assistant bishop preside over the wedding of an apprentice knight will definitely make the Hoffman family very proud.
In addition to the preparations for the wedding, Marin was also pleasantly surprised to find that Gelsenkirchen is also a huge coal mine...
Not only that, but the coal mine in Gelsenkirchen is a type of coal that Marin will need in the future—bituminous coal...
Anthracite from Hoffman Estates is a high-quality coal that is only suitable for use as fuel. The use of bituminous coal is much more important. Because bituminous coal is the most important raw material for coke in the iron and steel industry!
At present, European iron smelting mainly uses charcoal as a reducing agent. However, Europe has a high degree of development, and most of the forests have been cut down. Moreover, refining wood into charcoal requires a lot of fuel and labor costs, and wood itself is more expensive than coal. Therefore, the price of charcoal is high. And coke, although it also needs coking, but the cost is much lower than charcoal.
Marin will definitely be engaged in the steel industry in the future, and in that case, coke is essential. Therefore, the source of bituminous coal is very important.
Although Marin could not specifically measure the quality of the bituminous coal in Gelsenkirchen, but judging from the appearance of the bituminous coal, it seems that the quality is very good. At least, there are very few impurities inside, pure black and pure black. When burning, unlike the anthracite of the Hoffmann estate, which is smokeless, the bituminous coal of Gelsenkirchen has more smoke. Moreover, the coal here has a high caking property and is a bituminous coal that is very suitable for coking.
Because the coal mines in Gelsenkirchen are the coking coal needed by the steel industry, Marin stopped in Gelsenkirchen with great interest to investigate the development and utilization of local coal mines. At the same time, it also began to observe the local transportation conditions.
In this era, the "Rhine-Herne Canal" connecting Gelsenkirchen and the Rhine had not yet been dug. Therefore, it is more troublesome to transport the bituminous coal from Gelsenkirchen.
However, Gelsenkirchen is not far from the Ruhr River in the south, only ten or twenty kilometers away. Therefore, the transportation cost here may be much lower than that of Hoffman Estate, but it is not bad. As long as the coal is transported to the Ruhr River for loading, it will be OK.
After Marin's investigation, there is a stone-paved road from Gelsenkirchen to the Ruhr River in the south, but it is only a little over 10 kilometers long, and it cannot reach the Ruhr River. The stone road is about seven or eight kilometers away from the Ruhr River. As long as Marin pays to repair this road, it will be very convenient for a coal-loading carriage to travel between Gelsenkirchen and the Ruhr River. Moreover, the knights of the several knight leaders along the way were either on good terms with the Hoffman family or friends of the Hamler family, so they were not worried about being obstructed.
What makes Marin happy is that in this era, bituminous coal is considered low-quality coal by the world because it emits a lot of black smoke when it is burned. Therefore, although Gelsenkirchen has rich coal mines, the Hamler family does not have much interest in developing coal mines. And in the market, the price of bituminous coal is much lower than that of cleaner anthracite. If the price of anthracite is 4 shillings per chartron, bituminous coal can only be sold for 3 shillings per chartron...
Knight Hamler was actually very happy about the "inferior" coal that Marin saw on his own territory. Although the territory of the Hamler Knights in Gelsenkirchen is larger than the original Hoffman Manor, there is not much arable land, only less than 300 Ugrams.
Although there are coal mines with huge reserves, they are "low-quality coal" that emits a lot of smoke. In this day and age, the sales of anthracite coal are very poor, let alone "low-quality coal" such as bituminous coal. If there were merchants willing to ask for bituminous coal, the Hamler family would have organized manual coal mining... Therefore, the Hamler family very much hoped to get Marin's coal order.
However, Marin has not yet developed the steel industry. What's more - Marin currently has no source of iron ore. Therefore, it is useless for him to buy bituminous coal.
Therefore, Marin had to be perfunctory and promised that as long as the road from Gelsenkirchen to the Ruhr River and the pier by the Ruhr River were repaired, he would be willing to give Gelsenkirchen a stable order. However, Marin estimated that when the road was repaired and the pier was built, this year would have to pass anyway. At that time, according to the situation, determine whether to place an order and how big the order is...
…
And when Marin stayed in Gelsenkirchen to inspect the coal mines, Adler, in the name of "protecting his younger brother", shamelessly stayed at the Hamler Manor and took the opportunity to talk to Miss Hamler Dating.
Fortunately, people in this era are more conservative, and Adler is not a pervert. Therefore, the lovers did not do anything offensive, nothing like that in the wild.
But according to Sauer's observation report, what made Marin collapse was that the behavior of this strange unmarried couple was also very strange...
When other people date, they always talk about ideals and some elegant things about literature. But this fierce and unmarried couple likes to compete in martial arts...
Of course, the confrontation between the two of them is not the kind of fight that sparks everywhere, but a contest similar to the routines of "sword of affection" and "sword of eyebrows and eyes".
Adler clearly surpasses Miss Hamler in martial arts by a lot, but he just likes to get entangled with Miss Hamler like a child. When he hit the strong point, Adler knocked out the wooden sword in Liv Hamler's hand, and then hugged her...
But, there is no more after that...
As for why? That's because Adler didn't receive premarital education, so he didn't know what to do...
Once again, Marin peeped through the binoculars, and after Adler hugged Liv Hamler, he just looked at Liv Hamler's face stupidly, and didn't do anything else... just So staring at...
Marin almost fell down laughing, but he didn't intend to remind Adler. Because, it won't be long before the official wedding, and there is no rush. Moreover, the canon of this era stipulates that such behavior before marriage is prohibited. If he instigates Adler to spread the word accidentally, it may embarrass the whole family.
The old Hoffmans were urgently preparing for the wedding at the Hoffman Manor. Although Marin didn't go back to help by himself, he sent someone to inform Kohler and Schwartz to go back to the manor to help with the preparations. Even Kohler brought back a batch of gold coins to subsidize the wedding expenses.
Marin is not a stingy person, and Adler attaches great importance to getting married. So, he asked Kohler to bring home a large sum of money for a rainy day. At the same time, Schwartz also brought a team of about 50 people back to maintain order and use it to build momentum. These 50 people are all newly hired mercenaries who are skilled in riding. Although it is not a knight or an apprentice knight, it is just right to use it as a light cavalry.
Because Marin's Spanish phalanx lacked mobility and needed light cavalry as an important supplement. For example, these light cavalry can be used for reconnaissance, they can be used to protect the rear, and they can also be used to hunt down retreating enemies...
Of course, that's for later. Now, the biggest role of this team of cavalry is to give the wedding momentum and create an atmosphere...