People in the Song Dynasty were lawless

Chapter 492 More money is needed

In the late Qing Dynasty, a 120mm semi-rapid-fire cannon produced by the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau cost about 1.1 taels of silver.

At the same time, the price of the 120mm semi-rapid-fire gun produced by the German Krupp factory was only 9000 taels.

If we only consider the cost, the actual cost may not exceed 1000 taels.

After all, the selling price of 9000 taels not only includes the manufacturing cost, but also the shipping cost and the profit earned by the German manufacturer.

It is normal for the price to increase seven or eight times when sold from Germany to the Qing Dynasty thousands of miles away.

Then why is it that the actual cost of a cannon that may not exceed 1000 taels is more than 10 times the cost in China?

The reasons are too complicated.

The three most important ones are: the lack of technology, the lack of an industrial system, and rampant corruption.

The so-called Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was severely corrupt and was adept at taking bribes. When it came to making guns and cannons, they lacked technology, raw materials, and even fewer talented people.

Even imitation requires hiring foreign technicians, and all the raw materials required, such as steel, steel bullets, steel pipes, etc., have to be imported.

In this case, it is no wonder that Li Hongzhang lamented that it is better to buy than to make.

After all, for the same guns and cannons, the German Krupp cannons and American Remington rifles imitated by the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau are not only more expensive than imported ones, but also far inferior in quality to imported ones.

At present, the artillery technology of the Song Dynasty has made a leap forward.

In the beginning, copper cannons were mainly manufactured. Copper cannons were safe but expensive. The cost of a copper cannon was more than two or three times that of an iron cannon.

Iron cannons are cheap, costing only about a hundred or less than two hundred strings of coins, but their safety is greatly reduced.

This situation did not change greatly until the Wu'an Iron and Steel Plant was established and the technological transformation from wrought iron to steel was completed through new steel technology.

After that, all cannons produced in the Song Dynasty became steel cannons.

At the beginning, the cost of steel cannons was even more expensive than copper cannons, so the army had to use desulfurized wrought iron cannons as emergency response.

After all, steel production was too low at the time and there was no way to supply too much.

After the Qingli year, the production capacity of Wuan Iron and Steel Plant was increased, the number of steel cannons increased rapidly, and they performed brilliantly in the subsequent wars to defeat Liao and destroy Western Xia.

Basically, steel guns and artillery are enough to cover the entire army.

In recent years, the Song Dynasty's steel technology has been improving, the performance and quality of steel have been getting better and better, and even some alloy steels have appeared.

Anyway, the School of Chemistry has always had sufficient funding, so they dare to add all kinds of alloy elements into the molten steel.

Relying on the national exhaustive method, high-strength steels such as chrome steel and nickel steel also appeared in the past two years and were mass-produced at the Wuan Iron and Steel Plant and have long been used in armaments.

Also appearing at the same time was nitrocellulose.

Nitrocellulose is produced by pouring a mixture of sulfuric acid and nitric acid solutions onto cotton. The process is not complicated and all you need to do is master the ability to purify sulfuric acid and nitric acid.

Not to mention that sulfuric acid and nitric acid had already been discovered in ancient times. When Zhao Zhen found the answer in the novel and asked the School of Chemistry to conduct research in this direction.

Of course, the School of Chemistry could not have lived off the old ways over the years, as they had long since completed the production of sulfuric acid and nitric acid through dry distillation of gallstones and saltpeter.

This operation was achieved by the alchemist Gu Gangzi in the Tang Dynasty. The School of Chemistry does not even need to do its own research. The answer can be found by flipping through Gu Gangzi's "The Yellow Emperor's Nine Cauldrons Divine Elixir Classic".

It just so happened that the Song Dynasty now had cotton, so it had smokeless gunpowder.

The only problem is that this thing is too dangerous. It will spontaneously ignite and explode if the temperature exceeds 40 degrees. If it replaces black gunpowder, it can take the Song Dynasty's guns and artillery to the next level, but it will kill one thousand enemies but lose eight hundred of its own.

If you put this thing in a bullet, the bullet will turn into a small grenade, which will explode when exposed to the sun or in high temperatures.

So in recent years, we have been studying how to make it stable.

Two years ago, a doctor from the School of Chemistry mixed it with purified alcohol, stirred it with gelatin to turn it into a jelly-like substance, dried it and sliced ​​it. Since then, smokeless gunpowder has officially entered the historical stage.

Therefore, the artillery of the Song Dynasty has been updated again, and the technology is probably at the level of the late 19th century, which is the most advanced artillery technology between 1860 and 1899.

This brings up another historical issue.

That is, from the first year of Baoyuan to the tenth year of Qingli, the Song Dynasty produced a lot of black powder grenades, flintlock rifles, cannons, field guns and other firearms.

And there are quite a few.

Taking cannons as an example, the Song Dynasty first formed a firearms army of 80,000 people, with each army having 5,000 people, totaling 16 armies. One army had 30 wheel-drawn cannons, and the 16th army had 480 cannons.

Later, the entire army carried out firearms reform, and the number of cannons increased rapidly. The number of thousand-jin-class cannons in the hands of the 3600 standing troops of the Song Dynasty alone exceeded .

Including the artillery pieces defending cities in various places, the total number is about 5000, far exceeding the level of less than 2000 cannons during the Napoleonic era.

The remaining small field artillery exceeded 10,000 pieces, there were millions of grenades, and nearly one million guns. After the technological upgrade, the Song Dynasty once again faced serious problems of overspending on military equipment.

This was mainly due to Zhao Zhen’s fear of insufficient firepower.

Zhao Jun did not expect that the technology would upgrade so quickly. In just ten years, the Song Dynasty was able to get rid of black gunpowder and start moving towards the technological level of chemical gunpowder.

And there is also steel with better performance.

As a result, the problem of eliminating cold weapons and switching to hot weapons occurred again.

At that time, Zhao Jun's solution was to sell the cold weapons in stock to neighboring countries and make a fortune from the war.

Now, the only solution is the same.

Therefore, the diplomatic envoys came out this time with a mission, which was to sell the Song Dynasty's backward iron and crude steel weapons. That would of course be the best outcome.

At this moment, all the envoys were standing on a high tower. The demonstration of Guangzhou just now had already given Jatiraja Chola I a great shock.

The other party quoted a price of four pounds of gold for one cannon, and asked for fifty.

This means that the price of each cannon is 768 taels of silver. Considering the average cost of about 180 taels in the Song Dynasty, and considering that they are second-hand cannons, it is already a huge profit.

However, Tan Wenxue shook his head and said, "Your Highness, I will not accept the price of four pounds of gold you proposed. I will report this matter to the court when I return from my mission to the Arab Empire. As for whether the court agrees or not, it depends on the opinion of His Majesty the Emperor of the Great Song Dynasty."

Hearing his words, Jatiraja Chola I asked anxiously, "Why? Your cost is only three catties of gold. Isn't it enough if I give you four catties?"

"Your Highness probably has no business dealings with the Song Dynasty."

Tan Wenxue laughed.

Jatiraja Chola I shook his head and said, "I really don't have any, and I don't know much about this."

"Then please let Folian tell you."

Tan Wenxue said.

Jatiraja Chola I looked at Buddhalyn.

Fulian had no choice but to whisper to him, "Your Majesty, if Doctor Tan did not lie to us and three pounds of gold is indeed just the cost of production, then the shipping cost alone would have to be more than doubled if it were shipped to our Chola Dynasty, and the selling price would have to be doubled again, which means that they would probably need at least nine pounds of gold before they would sell it to us."

"Nine pounds of gold?"

Jatiraja Chola I was so shocked that he was speechless.

For religious reasons, Indians are particularly obsessed with gold, and since ancient times, temples on the Indian peninsula have been filled with gold.

In addition, ancient Indian nobles also used gold and gems as jewelry and adorned themselves with various gold ornaments.

However, the Indian Peninsula is not a place with particularly large gold reserves, and the local gold production is not ranked high in the world.

In addition to local gold mines, their main source of gold was from the sale of spices. Since the Kushan Empire, due to the development of the Western Silk Road, many countries on the Indian Peninsula sold spices to the Kushan Empire, which then sold them to the Han Dynasty, thereby grabbing gold.

Later, during the Tang Dynasty, spices were brought to the Tang Dynasty by merchants from the Arab Empire. During the Song Dynasty, some countries emerged on the Indian Peninsula, such as the Chola Dynasty, the Later Chalukya Dynasty, etc., and began to trade with the Song Dynasty through sea transportation.

So foreign trade is their main source of gold.

But the real reason why India later became the country with the largest amount of private gold holdings in the world was that during the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, European colonists plundered gold from the Americas, transported it to India in exchange for spices, and then transferred it to Europe.

After the 17th century, European colonists also transported silver from the Americas to the Qing Dynasty in exchange for tea, silk and porcelain. In this way, global gold was transferred to India and silver was transferred to the Qing Dynasty.

Therefore, although there is a large amount of gold in the Indian Peninsula at present, it is actually still very precious. It mainly relies on exchanging spices for gold, and very little is exported.

Jatiraja Chola I thought that four catties of gold was already a high price he could offer, but he didn't know that normally the cost price was three catties of gold, and it would have to be sold for at least nine catties.

If there are fifty statues, that would be 450 jin, which means the price in Song Dynasty is 1728 guan per statue, totaling 8.64 guan, which is basically ten times the cost.

But the price is actually not high. As a wealthy businessman, Fulian has a net worth of millions of coins, which is more than enough to buy a thousand cannons.

The key point is that gold is a religious and aristocratic tool, often used to make jewelry and statues of dignitaries, so countries on the Indian Peninsula all exchange things for gold, and rarely exchange gold for other things.

The loss of 450 kilograms of gold at once was obviously difficult for Jatiraja Chola I to accept.

Although Tan Wenxue didn't understand what they were saying, he could tell from Jatiraja Chola I's expression. However, he didn't say anything and his expression remained calm.

The artillery of the Song Dynasty was not so easy to get. Even if it was a second-hand and outdated cannon, it could at least be fired. Placed in the Middle East and the Indian Peninsula, it was a product that was ahead of its time. How could it be cheap?

What’s more important is that selling artillery at ten times the price is only secondary. The main thing is the subsequent maintenance, shells and gunpowder.

A cannon is sold for 1728 strings of cash, so a shell should cost at least 3 strings of cash.

The gunpowder weighs 1800 kilograms, which would cost at least 200 strings of coins.

And this is just the cost. If it is sold to the Chola Dynasty, all the data will have to double.

For example, in the late Qing Dynasty, the German Krupp factory sold a cannon shell to the Qing Dynasty for 30 to 80 taels of silver.

Various spare parts such as a bullet box cost 35 taels, a saddle for carrying ammunition boxes cost 61 taels, belt parts for carrying a cannon on horseback cost 70 taels, and various equipment for marching and clearing the way cost 132 taels.

Adding up all the things, a 2753mm mountain cannon worth 75 taels, including various accessories and 300 rounds of shells, has a total price of up to 1.2 taels.

This is just a 75mm mountain cannon. The price of a 120mm semi-rapid-fire cannon alone is 9000 taels. The total price of the whole set can reach about 3.3 taels, and the shipping cost is as high as 2 taels per gun.

In December of the 13th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu, Qing minister Xu Jingcheng ordered 12 cannons of various types from the Krupp factory. The price of each cannon ranged from several thousand taels to 50 taels. The total price was 83.5 taels of silver, with an average price of 1.67 taels per cannon.

The products sold by the Song Dynasty were all outdated. They were certainly not as good as Krupp cannons in terms of production cost and price, but they could not lag behind in price.

If others dare to increase the price by seven or eight times, the Song Dynasty dares to increase it by ten times.

The total cost of these 50 cannons plus various supporting facilities is less than 3 taels of silver. Selling them for 30 taels is not excessive.

After all, the Song Dynasty is the only country in the world that has arms, and it has a monopoly.

Unlike the late Qing Dynasty, when Britain, France, Germany and even the United States all had guns and cannons, competition was fierce, which led to severe price pressures.

"Your Highness, please think carefully. We still have to go to Houchaluqi and Daqin this time. If Your Highness doesn't buy it, I'm afraid they will buy it."

Seeing that Jatiraja Chola I was still hesitant, Tan Wenxue added fuel to the fire.

After hearing Folian's translation, Jatiraja Chola I finally made up his mind and said, "Can we exchange it for spices?"

"The price of spices is not constant, and this is considered barter. If a large amount of spices is shipped to the Song Dynasty, their value will depreciate, so we only exchange them for gold and silver."

Tan Wenxue shook his head.

Jatiraja Chola I pondered for a while and said, "If we are willing to buy it at the price of nine catties of gold per statue, can you not sell it to the Chalukya?"

"what?"

Tan Wenxue was surprised and said, "Your Highness, nine catties of gold is the normal selling price. I'm afraid this additional condition won't work. The Song Dynasty has always been about free trade and fair transactions. This is really embarrassing."

"Then what will it take for you not to sell this cannon to Hou Zhaluqi?"

Jatiraja Chola I asked.

"This seriously violates the spirit of free trade in our Song Dynasty."

Tan Wenxue pondered.

Jatiraja Chola I looked at him with earnest eyes.

As if moved by the other party's sincere eyes, Tan Wenxue finally gritted his teeth and said, "But it's not impossible, unless Your Highness is willing to make up for our losses."

"Oh? What do you say?"

Jatiraja Chola I asked hurriedly.

"You have to pay more!"

Tan Wenxue squeezed out a few words from his teeth and said, "Eighteen catties of gold for one ounce is worth fifty statues. Your Highness knows that cannonballs and gunpowder also cost money. If you have nine catties of gold for fifty statues, we can also sell fifty statues to Hou Zhaluqi. That way, we can also make a lot of cannonballs and gunpowder. But if we don't sell them to them, we will lose a lot of cannonballs and gunpowder. We are only doing this because of Your Highness's warm hospitality. Otherwise, "

Eighteen kilograms of gold?
Jatiraja Chola I was also shocked and immediately discussed the matter with several important ministers around him.

After a while, no one knew what the ministers said to Jatiraja Chola I, but he finally made up his mind and said, "Okay, I agree."

Although the price of one statue is 18 kilograms of gold, plus various accessories, the total price may be more than 30 kilograms per statue, but as long as the mortal enemy, the Chalukya Dynasty, is eliminated, this amount of money will be just a small amount.

The wealth of a dynasty is much more than just a few thousand kilograms of gold.
"Then congratulations, Your Highness. When I return, I will report this news to the court. I will definitely lobby the court for this matter. Please wait for my good news."

Tan Wenxue said with a smile.

Although the price was almost excessive, a crude steel cannon with a barrel cost of only 180 guan was sold for 3456 guan, nearly 20 times the price.

As for the shells and gunpowder, you only need to make 10 times the profit, 200 shells and 1800 kilograms of gunpowder.

炮弹报价成本是3贯，火药是200贯，但实际上炮弹成本就1.5贯，火药则是120贯。炮身180加炮弹300加火药120，总成本不超过600贯。

When it was sold to the Chola Dynasty, it cost 3000 strings of artillery shells, 1200 strings of gunpowder, and 3456 strings of gun barrels. The total weight of the full set of artillery was 7656 strings of guns, and with fifty pieces, that came to 38 strings of guns.

The Song Dynasty seemed to be making a lot of money.

But this will mean less business from Houzhaluqi.

Even if they were sold at nine jin each, fifty of them would be worth 30 strings of cash.

The Chola dynasty wanted 50 statues, and when they passed through the Chalukya dynasty they sold another 50 statues, which would amount to 60 strings of cash, a loss of 22 strings of cash.

In the end, it’s not a huge profit, but a huge loss.

But here's the thing.

It’s okay to not allow the sale of cannons.

After all, the Song Dynasty is a country of credibility, and since it has signed this exclusive sales contract, it will naturally abide by it.

But who said that the Song Dynasty only had artillery?

Anyway, the contract only stipulates that artillery cannot be sold.

Grenades, flintlock rifles, ceramic fragmentation mines, primitive rocket launchers, there is always one suitable for the Hou Chalukya.

(End of this chapter)