The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 92 The French Captain’s Thoughts

Fénelon Albert, the captain of the "San Farno", narrowed his eyes slightly, stared at Victor Sassoon for a long time, and then grinned.

"Mr. Haynes, if I guess correctly, did you commit a crime in Qi State, and in order to escape their pursuit, you wanted to take our San Farno and hide in Europe?"

Victor Sassoon, whose pseudonym was Walton Haynes, showed a wry smile, then sighed, nodded and said: "Yes, Captain Albert, I offended a very powerful nobleman in Qi State. . He coveted my wealth and used all kinds of means to take possession of most of my property. In the end, in order to cover up his scandal, he showed deep hostility towards me and tried to kill me. I It is very sad that as a Jew, I never imagined that the Qi State, which prides itself on being strong and civilized, would also suffer similar tragic things that our nation has experienced."

"Oh!..." Captain Fénelon Albert heard this and immediately showed a knowing smile.

Look, you Jewish businessmen who make a living by sucking blood are not welcome anywhere!
"In this case, Mr. Haynes, if you and your entourage want to take our San Farno to Europe, the price of the ticket cannot be calculated according to the normal market." Captain Fénelon Albert stared at He looked into the other person's eyes and said, "Because we will bear great risks for this. You think so?"

"I understand." Victor Sassoon nodded and said, "We will pay twice the price of the original ticket for this trip."

"No!" Captain Fénelon Albert shook his head and said: "You need to pay three times the price of the original ticket. This is worth the risk we take to bring you safely to Europe."

"Captain Albert, I have to admit that you have very outstanding economic talents." Victor Sassoon said sarcastically: "Well, we are willing to pay three times the price. But I hope that on the ship we can To get a clean and comfortable cabin. After all, we paid an extremely high price.”

"Mr. Haynes, I regret to inform you that our San Farno is a merchant ship and cannot provide you with a very comfortable and clean cabin." Captain Fenelon Albert said with a smile: "But we You can free up a few seats near the vents in the sailor's rest area in the bottom cabin. You have to know that on the sea voyage from Hanzhou to South Africa, only the people of Qi are operating regular manned liner transport, and only in Only those ships will have the comfortable treatment you mentioned. ...However, I think you will definitely not take a manned merchant ship of the Qi people."

Victor Sassoon's face suddenly turned ugly when he heard this.

From Hanzhou to the European continent, the journey is tens of thousands of kilometers and the voyage takes more than four months.As you can imagine, being crowded in the bottom of the cabin with a group of dirty sailors, without fresh food or clean drinking water, or even regular personal hygiene, and with fleas crawling everywhere on the floor and bed, is simply depressing. shudder.

What's even more unbearable is that this ship is a cargo merchant ship. It will not frequently dock at the port like a manned merchant ship, allowing people to disembark for some fresh air and a short rest.This means that during their long journey, they will likely only stop at a few key ports for supplies. For most of the time, everyone will have to stay in cabins with poor conditions.

Moreover, this French merchant ship is still a traditional three-masted sailboat, which can only rely on trade winds and ocean currents to travel along a route that has been established for hundreds of years.Instead of being like those motor sailing ships or steamships from Qi, they were not afraid of the influence of wind direction and ocean currents, and sailed directly across the Indian Ocean to South Africa in the shortest distance and fastest time.

It is said that the fastest steamship in Qi can sail at an ultra-high speed of 13-15 knots per hour (1 knot = 1.852 kilometers per hour) starting from Guizhou and can reach Cape Town, South Africa in less than 20 days.

But the traditional sailboat they were riding on, even with the help of trade winds and ocean currents, could not reach a maximum speed of more than 10 knots, and it also needed to constantly change direction to avoid missing the wind direction and ocean currents. This made the same voyage longer. Spend more than a third of your time.

Under this huge gap in transportation efficiency, Qi's merchant ships are extremely competitive. Not only are their sailing speeds far faster than traditional European sailing ships, but because they are not affected by the monsoon, they can transport more frequently each year, making their Transportation costs still have a huge advantage even when a large amount of coal is used.

During this period, in the face of Qi's deliberate technological blockade, in the entire Europe, only the Netherlands and the United Kingdom owned a few immature steam-sail hybrid ships. However, due to imperfections in design and technology, they did not dare to conduct ocean voyages. , limited to short sea transportation.Moreover, anchors broke down at sea from time to time, which forced merchant ships equipped with steam power to rely on the sails on the ship to complete the rest of the voyage with difficulty.

Captain Fénelon Albert was in a particularly happy mood after collecting a large sum of money for the voyage from Victor Sassoon and his party.After leaving the dock tavern, he rented a freight carriage and headed straight to the city with a few crew members.He needed to buy some cheap daily necessities and prepare enough supplies for the upcoming journey.

Guizhou is the largest city in the southwest of Hanzhou and the capital of Kunzhou Province. With a population of more than 30, it is the most important political, economic and cultural center in the region.

It is hard to imagine that more than 70 years ago, this place was still a barren river beach and woods, with a meandering River Kwai (today's Goose River) running through the valley.The topography of the whole area changes alternately, on both sides of the river, from steep headlands to broad shoals of the highest quality. The promontories are covered with huge blue gum trees in the fertile red soil, and the shoals are dotted with water purplish trees. , occasionally narrow strips of acacia trees appear.From the plains to the foot of the mountains, there are high-quality woodlands and meadows everywhere.

Now, this place has become a prosperous city, with tall buildings, heavy commercial buildings, traditional oriental eaves and hanging buckets, huge factories and countless chimneys. The streets are bustling with traffic and crowds of people. Large and small trading company shops are filled with a dazzling array of products, and enthusiastic shopkeepers and waiters greet customers eagerly.

"The people of Qi are really the darlings of God. They not only invent and create countless novelties, but also have unparalleled productivity and can produce so many goods!" This is not the first time Captain Fénelon Albert has come to Hanzhou. , but every time I come, I seem to feel a huge change. The commodities are becoming increasingly abundant, the population is also increasing significantly, new buildings are constantly rising in the city, and there is a scene of prosperity everywhere.

Sometimes, Captain Albert wonders why their great French nation cannot have such outstanding economic talents?I still remember that during the reign of Louis XIV, France crushed the entire Europe militarily. Economically, with Colbert's efforts, France rebuilt its economic structure, which greatly increased fiscal revenue and made the country self-sufficient.France successfully expanded France's industrial and trading capabilities through direct government control of economic sectors, the establishment of colonial trading companies, and the opening of new factories.

However, in order to complete the "important mission given by God" and consolidate and strengthen the sacred status of Catholicism, the great Sun King Louis XIV began to attack the Huguenots in the country and abolished the "Edict of Nantes".For a long period of time afterwards, the French economy suffered a heavy blow. Caen lost all its textile machines, Lyon and Tours lost three-quarters of its textile machines, and 60 paper mills in Angoumwa closed down to only 16. , 129 of 101 shops in the commercial town of Mezières closed down, and only 400 of the 54 tanneries in Tours were left. Commercial ports such as Marseille and Bordeaux were also hit hard, and the entire economy fell into a severe recession.

Those Huguenots who fled France went to the Southern Netherlands, the United Provinces, Germany, and England to set up factories again, producing a large number of local goods that were originally imported from France.Oh, by the way, the former Spanish Canary Islands occupied by the Qi people seem to have also received a lot of Huguenots to dilute the Spaniards there.

After all this trouble, the economic system that Colbert had built began to collapse. The French government's industrial revenue dropped sharply, and financially it had to fall into the trap of loan sharks. Life became extremely difficult.

What's even worse is that during the War of Spanish Succession, faced with the siege of several major European powers, France almost exhausted all its energy, its treasury was empty and on the verge of bankruptcy, and the entire country faced a severe crisis.

Could it be that without the Protestants, France would have to rely on Jewish businessmen who made a living by lending money?

Even if we are not as good as the Qi people and the Protestants in Europe, why are the Italians who are also Catholics so economically successful?Their businessmen are shrewd and capable, their craftsmen are ingenious, and their scholars are versatile. Why can they achieve better economic results than the French?
You know, Italy is still in a state of fragmentation. The Spanish, Austrians, Genoese, Venetians, Popes, and the French have torn this wealthy area into pieces.

At that time, the Sun King Louis XIV also asked this question. However, the ministers and privy bishops of the kingdom had no conclusion and could only explain it as Italians' natural sensitivity to business.As for the people of Qi, oh, God, their set of things looks simple, but many countries, including France, cannot and cannot learn it, so they can only give up.

This is because government officials in Qi, even if they come from high-ranking aristocratic families, once they enter politics, they must first prove themselves by performing at the grassroots level, and then they can stand out in the fierce competition and reach the pinnacle of power step by step.Even their future successor to the empire, the crown prince, seems to need to practice in various government departments for a long time in order to become familiar with the specific operating procedures of the government and accumulate a lot of political experience.

On the contrary, in France, except for officials in the church system who may have experienced this similar pattern, the children of the domestic nobles will be awarded important positions when they reach adulthood, even if they have no experience in it.

In the United Provinces, where governance is more liberal, those rhetorical MPs are more attractive to people. They only need to defeat others in theological and business debates to hold the most important positions, even if they have not yet proven themselves in actual work. .

Perhaps it is because of the innovative and pragmatic spirit of the people of Qi that they have risen rapidly in just a few decades, and then extended their influence to Europe, becoming an important force influencing the situation in Europe.

After the War of Spanish Succession, the French government's fiscal deficit reached 25 billion livres, which was almost equal to France's national income for 18 years.The people in the country were plunged into extreme poverty and bankruptcy, and the mortality rate was high.It is roughly estimated that the continuous war has reduced the population of France by 100 million people.When Louis XIV died, he left a bankrupt country to his young great-grandson, Louis XV.

In order to save the country's financial crisis, the regent Philip, Duke of Orleans, adopted John Law's financial reform policy.The government first carried out currency reform, followed the example of Qi State, banned the use of gold and silver, and established a national bank to issue banknotes, so that such banknotes would have the same circulation as metal coins in the market.

However, this kind of banknotes issued without sufficient precious metal reserves cannot withstand the unlimited issuance by the government, laying a huge "landmine" for the entire French economy.

Sure enough, four years ago (1720), with the burst of the Mississippi Bubble, the entire French economy was in a state of ruin. All the excessively issued banknotes were reduced to pieces of waste paper, and countless people went bankrupt.

Captain Albert was also one of the victims of the Mississippi Bubble. In that huge economic crisis, he lost almost all his property and turned from a trading businessman with tens of thousands of livres into a poor man heavily in debt.

And precisely because of this, he traveled thousands of miles across the rough Indian Ocean and came to the mainland of Hanzhou, preparing to purchase a shipment of high value-added Qi industrial products, steel bars, hardware, and anti-malarial drugs (Cinchona cream). , tea, and exquisite Oriental porcelain, and then shipped them back to Europe for sale in an attempt to turn around in one fell swoop.

He made a calculation in private and found that buying from Hanzhou itself would save [-]% of the cost compared to buying from second-rate dealers in Qi's South African territory.Then the funds saved can be used to purchase more goods and maximize the profits of this ocean trade.

"Hey, who are you?...Why are you blocking our car?" Just as he was immersed in his beautiful thoughts, the rented freight carriage suddenly stopped.

Captain Albert looked for his voice and saw several men with solemn faces reaching out to stop their carriage. They were wearing black double-breasted tops and straight trousers, and they were holding flintlock pistols in their hands, staring at them eagerly.

Qi's military and police spies! ——
(End of this chapter)