Prime Minister Bizen

Chapter 188 Willow Dark Flower Bright Another Village

To be honest, although Europe was experiencing the Renaissance in the 16th century, there were really no good commodities to trade with the East. Iron cannons and European-style plate armor were the most popular under-the-box goods.

As long as there are commodities worth selling, European merchants will not have to develop hard trade and go to America to cultivate plantations.

At this time, the most profitable triangular trade is being monopolized by Spain and Portugal, and there are very few Spaniards like Opez who come to Japan to do business.

This is why many businessmen from other countries choose to try their luck in Asia. The goods in the warehouse of Captain Francesco are mainly European-style matchlock guns and European-style plate armor.

That's why after hearing that Xiujia was going to buy a horse, the people in the town brought Xiujia here.

It’s just that the information obtained by the captain is obviously a little behind. If it was 10 years ago, the matchlock gun might have been sold at a high price, but now that the Kuniyu gun is more suitable for the Japanese, the European-style matchlock gun without the price advantage is not at all attractive. , which is why his ship stayed here for so long.

After finally seeing the interested lord come to his door, he of course tried his best to sell his products.

He obviously regards the Xiu family as an ordinary lord. Lords in this era are limited by their strength, and they can buy up to 100 iron cannons at a time. He also takes it for granted that the Xiu family does not have the strength for him to show hand.

To be honest, the price was not beautiful, and Xiujia even lost the desire to continue the conversation with him, and turned around to leave.

After seeing Hideka's attitude, he seemed a little relieved and quoted a price of 70 kanwen. This price is not much different from the price of the Tanegashima gun given by Nawu, but it is still not attractive.

"Let's take a look at your plate armor." Xiujia rejected the price proposal and brought the topic to the plate armor he put in the cabin.

Due to being at the bottom of the cabin for a long time, the European-style plate armor is a bit severely damp. The price of a complete set of Florentine plate armor is only 100 taels of gold, which is equivalent to 400 kanmon of copper coins in Japan.

This price is indeed somewhat attractive to Xiujia, but most of the Japanese are short in stature, and horses can't move heavy armored knights, so this kind of full-body armor is not the goal of Xiujia.

Hideka came here this time because he was introduced by Sohisa Imai, who said that the captain had a whole set of Nanban breastplates.

Firstly, the European Nanban carcass is not suitable for the Japanese samurai;
Secondly, the Nanban carcass has been localized in Japan, and the price has been greatly reduced;

Thirdly, most of the Japanese samurai who were able to buy the Nanban armor at that time were lords with certain influence and financial resources, and were willing to accept new things. This made their user base not very large, and the amount that could be sold every year was only so small.

For the above three reasons, in the face of the captain's hundreds of pieces of armor, even Imai Zonghisa lost the desire to eat them, and only daimyos like the Hideya who would pay for their retainers and have sufficient equipment were able to buy them in bulk.

The Xiu family ignored the two ornately decorated Florentine Sardinian plate armors, but picked up the plate armor breastplates piled up on the ground.

If you are not mistaken, this is the earliest cavalry breastplate equipped for ordinary cavalry in Europe. Its biggest feature is that it still has the shadow of full-body armor.

These breastplates are still connected by rivets and bolts on one side like the Sardinian armor, instead of two completely independent plate armors at the front and rear, which are connected by belts and other connectors like the breastplate soldiers of later generations.

In addition, there are iron shawls attached to the breastplates on top of these breastplates. To be honest, this kind of plate armor is not the plate armor that Xiujia expected. It is not only cumbersome to wear but also expensive to make. It's not as good as the transformed Nanman carcass.

Xiujia was not very satisfied with the shape of the plate armor, which was very different from the plate armor of the cuirassiers in his memory.

More importantly, due to the perennial pressure on the bottom of the ship and the corrosion of sea water, the surface of many plate armors has been severely corroded. In the eyes of many people, these are scraps of copper and iron. No wonder no one buys so many Nanban breastplates here.

The captain opened a single set of breastplate with 100 pieces. According to him, he has more than 300 sets of plate armor here. It can be cheaper if you buy them in bulk.

But to be honest, the price/performance ratio of his plate armor here is really not very high, and the Xiu family has already retreated.

Now that the iron cannon and the breastplate were not bought, the Xiu family was about to leave to find the next one, but the captain stopped him and gave him the fracture price, and he even spoke Japanese in such a hurry.

"2 guan, 2 guan and 350 sets of breastplates are packed and taken away, but the payment must be paid in gold."

When the translator told the quotation, Xiujia was really taken aback. After converting it into a single set of breastplate, it was less than 60 pieces. This price is definitely a big sale at a loss.

If the exchange rate in Europe is definitely not enough to pay the cost of the plate armor, it is no wonder why the captain asked to settle the bill with gold, because the gold exchange rate in Japan is relatively low, and the same copper coin can be exchanged for three times the gold.

"Gold 4250 taels to buy all your breastplates here." After thinking for a while, Xiujia finalized the deal, which is about 17000 copper coins.

Although this set of plate armor is not very satisfactory, there is still room for improvement. The Xiu family plans to buy it back, remove the excess shoulder armor, and divide the anchor side-entry plate armor into two sets, and use them as two sets of Yuxiduo's Nanman body. The front half of the breastplate.

On the battlefield, a brave warrior is always worthy of respect. On the contrary, if a soldier gives up his back to the enemy, he also loses the need to be protected.

In the early days of the rise of breastplates, Switzerland, which lacked resources, equipped its mercenary troops with half-body armor. Important soldiers always faced the enemy. The defensive effects of half-body armor and full-body armor were approximately the same.

Hideka's idea is even more prominent. These plate armors are re-sheeted, and all of them are turned into the front half of the body. The sides and back are still made of Japanese unique pieces of small Zhaza armor and sewn with prestige ropes, creating a Nanban armor that suits Japan's national conditions. .

After talking about the plate armor, Francesco didn't seem to want to let Xiujia go home, so he stopped Xiujia and said, "I still have a batch of cavalry knives, do you need them?"

After finishing speaking, he went down to the cabin and took out a box. There were at least 1 cavalry knives lying in it, all of which were European-style knives.

This kind of cavalry sword is specially made for the convenience of cavalry to charge in groups. It is shorter and thinner than Japanese swords, but it lacks adaptability to the Japanese battlefield.

You must know that in Japan, due to the limitations of samurai's physical fitness and horse quality, cavalry were never used to charge in groups. The most concentrated use was when the enemy army was defeated and chased.

Xiujia looked at the cavalry knife in the box, shook his head and refused, and Francesco's face immediately became bitter.

When the business came to this point, Xiujia suddenly found that there were only Francesco and the drunk interpreter on board, but he didn't see a single crew member. Xiujia asked curiously, "Where's your crew, captain?"

"Crew?" When asked about the crew, Francesco said with evasive eyes, "I gave them a holiday and let them go ashore to enjoy life."

It was only at this time that Xiujia took a closer look at the captain, and he had to say that his clothes were very dirty and ragged, which was obviously different from other brightly dressed European captains.

Perhaps seeing the distrust in Xiujia's eyes, Francesco sighed and sat on the box containing the cavalry knife, took out a bong and lit it, and said decadently.

"I bought the wrong goods. I thought they would be very popular in Ming Dynasty and Japan. In fact, my father made a lot of money by selling iron cannons, but now this time I spent all my money and came here, but no one came here. Buy."

"I hired the best sailors and traveled across the ocean for more than a year to get here. I wanted to make a lot of money, but no one came to take over after half a year at the port, and I gradually couldn't support it."

"Many crew members have gone to other fleets to serve as crew members for the ships returning to Europa. Now only me and Francis are left. He is my brother-in-law. I promised his sister that I will take him Bring it back safely."

The above words were translated by Francis. When translating the relationship between the two, I introduced them from my own perspective.

After saying this, Francesco shook his pipe and said to Xiujia, "I can tell from your clothes that you must be an extraordinary lord.

If possible, I would like to resell all the goods in my cabin to you at a low price. I don’t think I am suitable for ocean trade. I am going to take the money back to Italy and become my landlord. "

From the moment he boarded the ship, Xiujia felt a little unusual. Compared with other Nanban merchant ships in the port, this ship looked a bit dilapidated. Xiujia thought it was because of the ocean voyage.

When it was discovered that there was no crew member in the ship, and the captain and the interpreter had to personally carry the cargo, the Xiu family finally knew what was wrong.

Generally speaking, the crew of European merchants in Sakaimachi would not disembark easily, unless the merchant encountered extremely difficult economic conditions.

According to the ship docking rules in Sakaimachi made by the joint businessmen headed by Imai Zonghisa, a 500 shi ship needs to pay 500 kunk for docking for one day.

This European carrick sailing ship is at least 8000 shi. The cost of calling at the port should be around 8 guan, and the cost of berthing for half a year is 1300 shi.

In addition, the crew's remuneration and daily expenses need to be paid, which is indeed a considerable burden for Francesco, who has no goods that cannot be sold.

At that time, ocean-going voyages were all about earning money, and the salaries of the crew were very high. At the same time, the chances of getting sick and dying at sea were not low. It was almost impossible for an ocean-going merchant ship not to die before reaching the destination.

There will indeed be examples of European captains directly hiring Japanese locals as crew members and returning to Europe with them. Of course, after Francesco can’t afford the crew’s salary, it’s also possible for the crew to leave him and go to other ships to return to Europe. understand.

After listening to what happened to Francesco, Xiujia was indeed very sympathetic, but Xiujia was powerless to deal with what happened to him, but he had a little interest in his proposal, so Xiujia asked him: "Including your ship? ship?"

Hearing this, Francesco raised his little head and looked at his brother-in-law and Xiujia suspiciously, as if he wanted to confirm what Xiujia had just said.

Xiujia repeated his request to buy a ship here, and explained, "You don't have a crew now, even if you hire a crew, you will be penniless after returning to Europe, why don't you sell me the cargo and the ship, you guys Return to Europe by ship with the gold."

After listening to Xiujia's proposal, the two brothers even cheered up Francis, who was just half drunk and messed up the translation, and pulled Francesco aside to discuss in Italian.

After the two communicated for a while, the younger brother Francis reported the figure to the Xiu family, "5 taels of gold, including the boat and the goods, will be sold to you."

Maybe it was because they were afraid that Xiujia would be shocked by the quotation and thought they were making random quotations, Francis hurriedly explained

"We have 400 matchlock guns and 100 flintlock guns, all of which are the most advanced models in France. They are not comparable to the counterfeit products of your friends. These alone are worth more than 1 taels of gold."

"Although this ship is a bit old, it is also a former second-class warship. It is a famous ship from Genoa Shipyard in Italy. It is 50 meters long, has 4 decks, and weighs 680 tons."

"There are 18 shooting ports on both sides of the ship. The largest gun caliber is an 18-pound gun. The two main guns on the front and back of the ship are 24-pound guns. These guns alone are not less than 3 taels of gold. The ship only counts you 1 Wanliang is really very affordable.”

"We also have 5 barrels of good Sicilian wine and 3 barrels of rum, which are valuable commodities in Europe, and everything else is for you."

Good guy, Xiujia finally understands why they stay in Sakaicho for half a year and can’t get out the goods. The goods in this ship are not prepared for Asians at all. It’s fine if they are sold to Arabs, but they just ran away. It has been a waste of time to go to Japan for sales for so long.

Come on, the Japanese are not your target customers at all!

Even Xiujia felt that even if they traded in other countries in the Mediterranean, they might earn more than they did in Japan.

But I have to say that Francis is more suitable for sales than Francesco. Under his mouth, Xiujia really has a little bit of heart, but the price is indeed a bit high, and it is difficult for Xiujia to rush to some. .

Seeing that Xiujia was still hesitating, Francis continued to increase without Francesco's discussion, "I knew you were an excellent customer the first time I saw you. Seeing that you want this boat so sincerely, we are willing to Another price reduction of 5000 taels of gold."

Hearing that Francis lowered the price again, Xiujia was really curious about the man in front of him, so he simply sat on a box and said to him, "3 taels, I'll send it to Gangshan to pay you now .”

"There is no bargain like you, sir." Francis was a little sad when he heard the quotation from Xiujia. In his opinion, if the big customer in front of him couldn't eat their goods, they might really want to die.

The matter has come to this point, the two brothers have given up the opportunity, and only hope that the Xiu family can settle the money for the plate armor, and as for the other goods, they only hope to meet a destined person next time.

Just when the two brothers gave up, Xiujia asked, "Can you make matchlock guns?"

In fact, Xiujia just asked casually. European fleets often encountered pirates who looted goods at sea. Iron cannons had their own shooting orders, and not every blacksmith in every place could repair them.

Therefore, the crew generally have some skills in repairing iron cannons, and if they encounter missing parts, they will borrow local blacksmiths to build them.

If the two of them can be introduced by acquaintances, the Xiu family doesn't mind giving some rewards, which can be regarded as sponsoring the two brothers. After all, business is not righteous.
Unexpectedly, upon hearing Xiujia's question, Francis suddenly raised his head, as if he had found a life-saving straw, and asked Xiujia
"Sir, are you going to hire someone who can forge matchlock guns? I would like to recommend myself to Mr. Not only can I forge iron cannons, but I also forged cannons for the Duke when I was in Milan."

Woah!Is it true that masters come out of garbage dumps?How could there be such a talent among the two brothers whose life was a problem?
　In fact, I didn’t think so at first. I wanted this translator to be a down-and-out gunsmith who owed the captain’s gambling debts to be an interpreter here.

　　Unexpectedly, the writing deviates from the track.

　　Personally, I am not very satisfied with this plot, but the overall difference is not bad. The purpose is to achieve it, and Xiujia will master the casting process of iron cannons and cannons from now on.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)