Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 412: Steel Stir-frying Method

As a person grows older and accumulates more experience, he or she becomes more and more devoted to the experiences that have helped him or her survive and even succeed.

It can also be said that the older a person gets, the more stubborn he or she tends to be, which is the so-called old stubbornness.

Based on his own experience, Korner came to two conclusions in the conversation just now.

First of all, Gillis is just making big promises for himself. There is no loss for Gillis by making such empty promises.

When you actually implement this idea, you will encounter many problems that you have never imagined before.

No matter how good your idea was, you will encounter problems. This has nothing to do with any theory, but is pure experience.

Secondly, twenty thousand gold dinars is a huge sum of money for most people in this world.

That's about 176 pounds of gold, the same weight as a strong man.

But for a person of Garys's level, money of this magnitude is really just a number.

Even for larger businessmen, such as Puliwan, this price is just a gift for marrying a wife.

Since the money is not really that much, then if it is lost, it is lost. Even if this thing fails, as long as you have a relationship with someone like Garys who can influence a country, why worry about not making the money back?

"Besides, I have plans to find a way to have you accepted as a disciple by Garys or other apostles."

Corner was not a believer in the theology of Gérice; as a Venetian, he had flexible standards of faith.

For him, the reason he believed in Catholicism was simply because society required him to believe in it.

After all, it is impossible for a businessman to be independent. If he does so, it will be difficult to deal with if he is hated by people around him.

But in recent months, inspections in the Holy Land have convinced Korna that the business atmosphere here is even more open than in Venice.

There are even more investment plans available.

From the canal plan promoted in the newspapers, to the horse-drawn railway proposed by Gellis, or simply investing in plantations...

As a country with a booming economy, Korner was convinced that as long as he took the lead and invested more than others, he would make a profit.

In this way, he understood why old man Delfino often regarded himself as a Jerusalemite and had prejudices against Venice.

After all, although the relationship between Venice and Jerusalem is good, long history has proved one thing - there are no eternal friends, only eternal interests.

One day, we will have to make a decision to go our separate ways. By then, we won't fight to the death, but we won't be as close as we are now.

"Is this a token of surrender?"

"It's not enough, this is just one of them."

Korner was sure that a man like Garys would never make a promise easily just for such a small amount of money, but fortunately, his previous investment in the Delfino family ensured that he had sufficient liquidity on hand.

Of course, for people like Delfino and Corner, there is no need to bet all on one side. They can just split the family into two.

The eldest son Federico inherited the investment in the Holy Land, while the second son stayed in Venice to maintain the family business.

This situation is not uncommon in Venice's history.

At this point, we need to review the development of the Middle Ages.

Contrary to many people's stereotypes, strictly speaking, the Middle Ages was not a process of rising again from an absolutely barbaric stage.

Before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the western part of the empire was actually already quite chaotic, and the original economic system was difficult to maintain.

In a sense, the Franks' rule over Western Europe was a reconstruction of the collapsed order, and to a certain extent, it even restored the central government's power to appoint local bureaucrats.

In this relatively stable political environment, the economy has naturally recovered to a certain extent.

However, with the collapse of the Frankish Empire and the rise of local lords, the market order actually deteriorated.

At this stage, long-distance trading was a risky business. The various lords occupied the land as kings and had no business sense at all. They basically regarded the passing merchants as fat sheep.

And entrusting the caravan to other people also represents a huge risk.

In that era, there was almost no institutional organization that could enforce a certain level of punishment across regions.

Therefore, for merchants, participating in the caravan in person can give them peace of mind, at least to ensure that they will die with a clear conscience.

But as the order in Europe gradually stabilized and the Crusaders' colonies were established in distant places, merchant groups no longer needed to travel around with their goods themselves.

Merchants also do not need to look for buyers or sources of goods everywhere, because both have fixed market locations.

They can directly order ships to transfer fixed cargo from fixed ports in fixed seasons, which is more efficient in terms of safety and efficiency.

The biggest problem is how to find someone you can trust in a distant market to help you purchase or sell.

From this period onwards, Venice's business families became more important.

It became a business organization that used blood ties as a bond and extended its business network to the Mediterranean.

Compared with traditional nobles and lords, the family concept and internal solidarity of Venetians or Italian merchants are obviously much higher.

In Corna's plan, the eldest son Federico converted to the Jerusalem Church and settled in Cyprus or Tyre for a long time, while the second son Francesco stayed in Venice.

Federico could send spices, cotton, sugar and other Levantine goods here to Venice.

The second son, Francesco, sold it in Venice and sent back the cash for purchasing the goods.

Brothers working together can make the family stronger.

……

When Paul woke up from a drunken sleep, he couldn't help but feel a little regretful.

Mr. Villeroy, whom they met yesterday, was indeed quite generous. He invited all of them to drink without saying a word.

Paul was not polite either. Except for the first few glasses of beer, the rest were all strong liquor. He felt great drinking it at that time, but now he felt very uncomfortable in his head.

After splashing cold water on his face, Paul felt a little more refreshed.

When he arrived at the blast furnace, he heard a piece of news that made him wonder if he was still dreaming. "What? Say it again? What do you mean, you want us to cast two iron bars weighing 200,000 pounds?!"

Paul thought Marwan was joking, or that Marwan had said the wrong number.

Two hundred thousand pounds?

If it was twenty pounds, that would be understandable.

Marwan was of course not joking. He explained to Paul in detail what a railway was and even drew a schematic diagram on the mud to help Paul understand what was going on.

After figuring out that it wasn't a matter of casting 20 pounds at once, but could be cast in sections, Paul felt that it was feasible.

It is not difficult to split the rails into pieces of 10-step length for casting.

After that, it depends on the skills of Paul and his team.

According to the discussion between Korner and Garys, they would first build a thousand-step long track to see the effect, and then discuss other things.

After that, Gellis did not stay in Paphos for too long and went to another blast furnace in Cyprus.

The emergence of blast furnaces was only one manifestation of the progress of the kingdom's metallurgical industry.

Although the emergence of large amounts of pig iron lowered the price of metals in the kingdom, it was still not enough for the production of refined farm tools or weapons.

When Marwan arrived in Cyprus, he followed Gellis's requirements and not only built a blast furnace, but also implemented the technology for large-scale steel production.

The crucible steel technology used at the beginning was relatively mature and the quality of the steel produced was also very superior, but it was not suitable for popularization and use in the production of agricultural tools.

Therefore, today, the kingdom's main steelmaking technology has also been updated under the attention of Garys.

The most widely used method at present is actually the frying steel method. Other types of steelmaking, such as the pouring steel method or the sprinkling steel method, also have technical reserves, but the scale is not large.

After understanding the definition of steel, it is actually very easy to understand the principles of these steelmaking methods.

The raw material of crucible steel is wrought iron obtained by the block smelting process, which is upgraded to steel by increasing the carbon content in the crucible.

The logic of the steel-making method is the opposite. It is to heat the pig iron previously smelted in a blast furnace in the air to make it molten or semi-molten state.

Then, through constant stirring, the contact area between oxygen and molten iron is increased, so that the carbon in the molten iron is continuously oxidized, so that the carbon content drops to less than 2%, and it becomes steel.

The length of the subsequent steel frying time determines whether the final product is high carbon steel or low carbon steel.

It is not to say that stir-fried steel is without disadvantages. The steel made in this way is usually uneven in texture and large in size, which inevitably makes subsequent processing quite troublesome.

But no matter what, the steel-making method at least solved the problem of having or not having, and made an outstanding contribution to the agricultural development of the kingdom. It enabled most farms or rural areas to move towards steel farm tools on the basis of popularizing iron farm tools.

Compared with heavy wooden farm tools, lightweight steel farm tools allow farmers to cultivate more land and reduce the loss of animal power.

……

The economy is booming and technology is advancing by leaps and bounds.

Without many people noticing, many aspects of the kingdom had actually far exceeded the level that should have existed in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 13th century.

But this does not mean that many people's brains have been upgraded. In fact, George and Purdock have complained about this.

It is the first year of the new calendar, 1201 years after Brother Tian's birth, and some people are still thinking of going back to the days of Old Jerusalem, hoping to divide the newly conquered lands as a reward for military nobles.

After all, the new kingdom was rebuilt on the basis of the old kingdom, so it is inevitable that there will be many compromises and the absorption of old forces.

Even though all kinds of overt and covert purges and political struggles have been carried out, it does not mean that everything is completely clean.

The art of politics lies in compromise, and there must be checks and balances within a system. In other words, if one does not know how to compromise and does not have a proper system of checks and balances, any political system will be difficult to sustain.

Simply put, absolute power leads to absolute corruption, but in the feudal social system.

Especially in the feudal system of Western Europe in the 13th century, corruption was not a big deal. For those feudal lords, the real problem was that they felt they were not needed.

At present, the main financial income of the Kingdom of Jerusalem comes from cities such as Acre, Tyre, Tripoli, Latakia, Antioch...

The fall of the old Kingdom of Jerusalem did not cause any devastating blow to the royal power. Instead, after the new king was crowned, he took the opportunity to consolidate the power in the hands of the nobles.

Controlling the kingdom's main financial revenue is only one of the reasons. Being able to maintain a standing field army of more than 10,000 people, plus border guards in various places, represents the military power of the monarchy and can easily crush the remaining feudal nobles.

Under such circumstances, those who still hold the idea of ​​restoration will no longer think about starting a civil war, at least not now.

There is a person standing in the way of all the conspirators. Until that person changes his position or exits the stage of history, all settlements seem impossible.

Logically speaking, no one in this world can resist the power of time, so as long as one grows old or even dies, there will always be a way to reverse the current wrong path.

But considering that the man is only thirty-two years old so far, some of the survivors of the era can no longer wait.

They can't survive, they really can't survive, they are too young. For that person, there are still decades left in the future, but for these survivors, they can't tell when they will die.

Many times, even if a miracle is performed, it does not mean that everyone will be convinced. There are always some people who do not believe in it and want to test the quality of the product.

For many people, the last time they saw that man perform a miracle was the last time, and that last time was at least ten years ago.

Many pilgrims or mercenaries who came here from Europe had only heard about it but had never seen it with their own eyes.

Gerard is such a person.

"Gerard! Someone is coming to inspect today, so tidy up!"

Facing his companions' shouts, Gerard's breathing became heavier. He quickly put the bag of gunpowder into the appropriate position and inserted the fuse as he had practiced before.

He knew exactly what he was going to do, gunpowder, blast furnace... create an accident.

Although it was unclear who this was aimed at, Gerard could not refuse. As a pilgrim from Europe, he had spent all his money in the Holy Land, and even by working, he could earn a lot.

But that money was not enough for him to save for the fare back home.

In addition, he had bad habits and would lose all his money at the gambling table. Not long ago, he owed a considerable debt. If he didn't find a way to solve the problem, he might be killed.

(End of this chapter)