stubborn thief

Chapter 409 The Most Expensive Iron

Liu Chengzong had never seen the shipbuilding budget of the Marshal's Mansion in the Navy Yamen.

After all, throwing Zhou Tongzhi here, in just two years, there are all kinds of ships on the huge Qinghai Lake, and the military activities of the Marshal's Mansion will never be delayed.

This time I went to the Navy Yamen to take a closer look. To be honest, building a ship is not an easy task.

In the dock of the navy yamen, a horse transport ship from Longju Island was almost finished. According to Zhou Riqiang, the prototype of this horse transport ship was a sentinel ship patrolling coastal defense in Shandong.

The captain is six feet and seven feet long, one foot and eight feet wide, and six feet deep. The plank of the ship is two inches and a half inches thick. It is equipped with a battle shed and a small boat for short-distance cruises on rivers and rivers.

This ship is used to transport war horses between Navy Yamen and Longju Island. The cargo space in the ship must be considered, so the ship structure is not used in the design. It has two masts and four oars. equipment.

Just such a very simple cargo ship used dozens of large Chinese firs, 780 catties of iron nails alone, [-] catties of grass roots, and [-] catties of lime.

Most of the material processing is not done in the Navy Yamen. The rough ship plank processing is outsourced to Mongolian carpenters in Haibei County... In fact, their main business is lumberjack.

And some materials that need to be finely processed are processed by the Juerwan Baigong Bureau. Only some large pieces that are not easy to transport require the Military Weapons Bureau to send several craftsmen and apprentices to the Navy Yamen to manufacture.

As a result, the Navy Yamen is only responsible for the design and assembly of shipbuilding, which requires 45 workers and costs [-] taels of silver.

If this is a shipbuilding by the imperial court, the cost of this ship is 45 taels.

Because all materials for shipbuilding are within the scope of taxation, the cost is only the craftsman's food and silver.

The shipbuilding of the Marshal's Mansion is more like that of private merchants or pirates in Ming Dynasty. The materials are either harvested and processed by manpower, or purchased in Xincheng or even Hehuang. Calculated according to the market price, the material is 360 taels of silver.

The total cost of the whole ship is [-] taels of silver. Five hundred shipwrights and eight or nine arsenal craftsmen work hard for a month, and ten boats can be launched into the water.

The artisans of the arsenal were seconded here, mainly responsible for building anchors.

Take this ship for example, it has five anchors, the largest one is called housekeeper anchor, which weighs [-] jin, and cannot be cast, but must be forged. It is made by military craftsmen to the Navy Yamen.

In fact, Batur Huntaiji has been fascinated by the artisans of the Military Bureau for forging and welding anchors. The blacksmith Tatar who paid tribute to Oirat can make the best swords, spears and arrow clusters, and can also make arrows from metal wires. Hard-to-piercing chain mail...but they can't beat the big stuff.

Perhaps the blacksmith Tatar can make iron anchor rods and iron anchor claws?

Batur Huntaiji didn't know, he had never seen the blacksmith Tatar knock out such a big thing, not to mention, how did he glue these two big iron blocks weighing two to three hundred catties?
The blacksmith of the Marshal’s Mansion built a two-story wooden scaffold on the forge. Eight apprentices dragged the iron chains to hoist the heavy iron anchor claws. The yellow mud is evenly sprinkled on the fracture, and the apprentice pulls the blower beside it. Every time the yellow mud is sprinkled, the fire will increase.

Seeing Hun Taiji fascinated, he was full of doubts: "Why use mud, can it stick to iron?"

Dai Daozi didn't know, and even if he knew, he didn't know if he could tell, so he could only turn his eyes to Liu Chengzong for help.

Liu Chengzong smiled and said: "I asked you to look at the boat, but it looks like iron. It's not yellow mud, it's called Chen Bihui."

In fact, it is the soil scraped from the corner of the old house, because forging and welding are not like casting. The blast furnace for casting pig iron is sealed and reflected, and the temperature in the furnace is relatively high; Burn red and bond with cupronickel powder.

However, a large piece like an iron anchor cannot be burned to full red in the fire, and it is difficult to keep the firepower at a suitable temperature due to the ventilation of the fire, so it is necessary to burn oxygen locally to increase the temperature.

The corners of the old house became damp, and the scraped soil contained nitrate. The old wall ash played the role of an oxidant in this process, and continued to heat up the section, softening the iron and forcing it to fit together.

Liu Shizi didn't want Batur Hun Taiji to become a master blacksmith, so he asked Dai Daozi to pull Hun Taiji, who was sweating profusely from the heat, away from the forge, and pointed to the horse transport channel in the dock : "Look at this boat, how is it?"

Batur Huntaiji looked at it again and again, shaking his head at Dai Daozi one after another: "No, no, this boat can't do it."

Liu Chengzong was quite surprised: "Why not? Do you think this boat can't beat that centipede boat?"

Afterwards, Hun Taiji muttered a lot of words, Dai Daozi frowned with doubts on his face, and after a while he said to Liu Chengzong dumbfounded: "Handsome, he said that this boat is not bad, it's too bad... They can't build such a big bullock cart, and they can't pull it away."

Liu Shizi opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but felt that the profound and profound Chinese was so weak at this moment, he paused, and then he took a deep breath and said: "It's relatively small in the boat, and it used [-] pieces of wood. , about [-] catties, are you sure you want to drag it back?"

Sailing on dry land is not new. At Hukou Waterfall, in the past, during normal business transactions, empty boats were unloaded upstream of the waterfall, pulled to the ground and bypassed the waterfall, and then the empty boat was launched into the water to load the boat.

But how far is that?
What's more, Qinghai Lake is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Pulling the boat out is tantamount to nonsense.

Hun Taiji's face was also full of helplessness: "Then what should I do, can't it be demolished? What a pity."

Liu Chengzong smiled, looked at the bustling dock, asked someone to move some high-ranking chairs, sat with Batur Huntaiji by the lake, and asked: "If we trade, can I provide Oirat with warships, guns, and cannons?" , and all kinds of fine and expensive utensils, what can Oirat offer me?"

Batur Huntaiji was not sure, he said: "If you trade here, Oirat can not bring much. If the general can find a way to receive goods in Suzhou, Oirat can bring a lot of things to the general. .”

He explained: "From Tianshan to Suzhou, after Hami, there is no water for four days, so it is not easy to walk; but from Hami to Wulan Mountain, except for Tuidan, there are eight days without water and eight days without food. eat."

This is indeed a problem. Even if the Marshal's Mansion spreads pasture land to Chuidan and Golmud, the conditions of the local trade routes are still not as good as those in Gansu.

However, the Gansu issue was already within the consideration of the Marshal's Mansion, so Liu Chengzong didn't mind that much. He just asked: "If it is in Tuidan, what can Oirat provide; in Suzhou, what can Oirat provide?"

"Then you don't have to worry about it, we can send things directly to the sea."

Batur Hun Taiji said: "Persian brocade and silk, all kinds of leather, Bukhara's sheepskin fox fur, gemstones, indigo, as for Oirat, living things are difficult to transport because of the long distance..."

He thought for a while and added: "Every year, there are [-] to [-] sand and yellow fox skins, [-] ermine skins, [-] to [-] sheepskins, [-] snowsweeping skins, and [-] wolf skins. Eight hundred mink skins, five hundred lynx skins, three hundred leopard skins, and one hundred white rabbit skins."

After all, he looked up at Liu Chengzong, and realized that these huge furs did not seem to be very competitive in the goods of the Marshal's Mansion, and said again: "If the Marshal can receive the goods in Suzhou, I can let the merchants Bring over the living things."

In fact, 10,000+ furs per year are still quite competitive for the Marshal’s Mansion. For sheepskin alone, including big sheep, goat and lamb skins, the total annual trade volume of Juerwan is about 15.

Oirat was able to traffic 6000 to [-] sheepskins over a long distance, and the price alone was worth [-] taels, which is not a small number.

It's just not as much as Liu Chengzong imagined.

He then asked: "If you can bring the living things here, how many will there be?"

"Every year there are [-] sheep, [-] horses, and [-] cows." Batur Hun Taiji said, "These things should be worth some money in the Marshal's Mansion... Can you exchange guns and warships in the Marshal's Mansion? "

Liu Chengzong nodded with satisfaction. These things are indeed valuable in the Marshal's Mansion. The annual cattle and horse market in the Juerwan market is no more than a thousand, and the sheep market is only [-].

Each sheep is one tael, each cow and horse is eight taels, plus those furs, the goods that Oirat can provide every year are close to 20 taels.

As for the 20 taels, it is impossible for Oirat to bring all of them back to the Tianshan Mountains. He must buy them in Juerwan.

"Yes, enough, and even more."

Liu Chengzong said: "I know that Taiji can also make guns. It must be cheaper to use Taiji's own craftsmen to make them, but after all, it is made slowly and rarely. I can provide a large number of guns, and it depends on how much Taiji wants to buy. gone."

Batur Huntai Jixin said it was the matter, gritted his teeth and opened his hands and said, "We can make five hundred muskets a year, how much can the Marshal's Mansion sell me?"

After that, he quietly glanced at Liu Chengzong again, very guilty.

Because Junggar can’t make so many muskets a year, his muskets come from a few blacksmith Tatar tribes nomadic near the Ob River. Each small tribe pays him [-] to [-] muskets every year, and [-] muskets a year. up and down.

They began to give tribute muskets to Junggar in the 48th year of Wanli. Now counting the seizures of several large-scale conflicts with the Tsarist Russian expedition, the entire tribe has less than [-] muskets.

But Liu Chengzong really believed it.

What does Hui Taiji think of the concept of producing [-] muskets a year?

A blacksmith Tatar department with thousands of men worked hard throughout the year, and could only knock out thirty or fifty muskets besides digging iron, forging iron, and making weapons, five hundred guns a year, which means that under the rule of Junggar Ten thousand blacksmith Tatars are about equal to the unprecedentedly powerful overlord of the Tianshan Mountains.

In Liu Chengzong's mind, the figures of five Oirat gunsmiths with drunken noses and sledgehammers appeared.

They took 45 little Tartar apprentices and worked three days a month to knock out the barrels, and the remaining 27 days in the workshop, drinking kumiss, directing the apprentices to pull the drilling machine, and giving themselves two months of paid vacation every year , and finally handed over five hundred muskets.

The productivity in the minds of the two of them is not at the same level at all.

Hun Taiji thinks I'm so awesome, why don't you sell me a musket cheaper?

And Liu Shizi felt that this guy in Junggar controlled tens of thousands of strings, and he only had fifty gunsmiths in his hands for a long time.

"The production of military weapons by the Marshal's Mansion has always been to supply the military supplies of the Marshal's Mansion, and there are not too many weapons available."

What he said was true, so he plans to open another arsenal for Oirat to supply foreign trade: "From next year, it depends on what kind of weapons you want. The skins are worth 10 taels, and the goods are worth another 10 taels. There are two options."

"I can arm a thousand-man team for Junggar every year, that is, 120 sets of armored weapons, including four hundred muskets, ten three-hundred-jin cannons, one thousand-five-hundred-jin cannons, six hundred Waist knives, 420 hand-handling knives, 220 spears, 120 five pairs of mail armor, 120 five pairs of cloth armor, [-] five cotton soldier clothes, [-] five leather soldier clothes."

After Liu Chengzong finished speaking, he said: "These things are 5 taels, which is half of the skins you brought; I can strive to provide you with two thousand-man teams every year in three years. If I win Suzhou , counting your living creatures, it can provide the armed forces of three thousand troops."

Dai Daozi watched the handsome face without changing his face, and performed a lion's mouth under his nose, his eyes were wide open, and the translation was a bit stuttering.

As far as these things are concerned, they are all individual equipment. In terms of the productivity of the Central Plains Dynasty, individual equipment is the cheapest thing. The biggest cost of the army has always been the cost of raising troops.

A soldier who is armed to the teeth is only 20 taels including his horses and his property, but the salary of this soldier is almost 20 taels a year, and 20 taels are added if the rations are included.

He just doubled the calculations, these equipments are less than 2 taels of silver, and the commander wants 5 taels. Isn't this treating Hui Taiji as a fool?

In fact, in Dai Daozi's opinion, the most important thing is not that Liu Chengzong opened his mouth, but that he and Huntaiji had more dismissals. is the shrewdest man.

Sure enough, Dai Daozi said to Liu Chengzong with an ugly face: "Commander, Hun Taiji asked the unit price of each equipment."

"Don't be nervous, buy and sell, everyone gets what they need."

Liu Chengzong comforted Dai Daozi indifferently, and the answer was fluent: "Firearms cost 15 taels, waist knives three taels, hand knives and spears all cost one tael, mail armor ten taels, cloth covers 30 taels, and cotton and leather clothes all cost ten taels a piece. Artillery will save you trouble." Yes, by the catty, two taels per catty."

What Dai Daozi didn't expect was that not only Liu Chengzong had this attitude, but Batur Huntaiji also had this attitude: "Don't be nervous, Anda, you can ask the commander again, can these guns be delivered with ammunition?" .”

He knew that Liu Chengzong wanted to earn his money, even without Dai Daozi's embarrassed expression, he could guess that these things cost very little to Liu Chengzong.

But the same thing is, the cost of those leathers is also very low for him, he will not collect and sell the leathers needed by the people in Qinghai, they are the leathers handed over to him by the tributes of the northern tribes every year .

Those piled up hides that have nowhere to be used can be exchanged for one thousand or even three thousand troops, and the shepherds who are skilled in bows and horses can immediately become the most elite warriors.

And relatively speaking, except for muskets and cannons, the price of other equipment is even cheaper than self-made after he converts it into cow and sheep leather.

It is equivalent to his tributes providing him with one to three elite thousand-man teams every year.

"Forget, Cannonball."

Liu Chengzong suddenly realized that Oirat did not know how to cast iron, and the shells had to be knocked out. He said: "It's easy to handle. For three hundred catties of guns, five hundred one catties of shells and gunpowder will be given away; for one thousand and five hundred catties of guns, five hundred seven catties of shells and Gunpowder, just retire after firing the cannon.”

Dai Daozi also nodded with a smile in Hun Taiji's successive words of praise for the generalissimo.

He has already seen that the weight of this cannon and shells is completely different from the artillery currently in service in the Marshal's Mansion, which means that the Marshal intends to sell the iron cannon to Oirat.

The cost of one cast copper cannon was equal to five cast iron cannons. The price of iron in this transaction was two taels a catty. He had never seen such expensive iron!
　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)