King of German Mercenaries

After returning to Texel Island with 500 serfs, Marin immediately took everyone to build a big project. First of all, adobe houses were built for 500 households as residences.

Then, 700 male laborers from 500 serfs were organized to start building roads. As for the seaside salt cooking center, Malin specially invited several professional masons from Cologne to help build a wood-saving stove. In addition, Marin also sent a boat to the mainland to pull a lot of bricks.

In fact, there is no technical difficulty in the firewood-saving stove, the only trouble is to build a high chimney. Ordinary people have no problem building a furnace wall, but they are not professional masons and cannot build tall chimneys. If one does not get it right, the tall chimney is easy to fall down. Therefore, Marin specially invited masons to build a wood-saving stove for boiling salt.

A professional is a professional, and a few masons did a good job building 20 firewood-saving stoves with high chimneys. And Kohler, also from Amsterdam, took back the 20 large iron pans he had ordered.

Because there was so much to build on the island, Marin simply kept the eight masons he borrowed from Wright. Moreover, he sent someone to greet Wright and picked up the families of these 8 people. Because of the alliance of interests, Wright did not hesitate and immediately agreed to Marin's request.

It took a month to build the salt boiling center by the sea. The road from Thorencher to the Boiled Salt Center was also successfully completed by 700 men. In addition, they also took time to dig a ditch on the beach in the center of the boiled salt, leading to the sea, so that the sea water can be flooded in, so that everyone can get the sea water. In addition, Marin asked them to dig a small drainage ditch to discharge the brine...

After the road was repaired, the briquettes loaded and unloaded from Thorencher began to be continuously transported to the salt boiling center. This salt boiling center was named Salttown by Marin...

20 cauldrons were fully activated, and after many tests, everyone finally determined that the Nissan Sea Salt 1,000 quarts...

Moreover, the new technology proposed by Marin was applied to the boiled salt, and refined salt with a good taste was obtained...

In fact, it is not an advanced technology. The main thing is that when the salt is boiled to the final stage, a part of the seawater is left, not completely evaporated, but dumped.

This part of seawater actually contains salts such as chloride-magnesium and chloride-potassium, which are more soluble than salt. Unlike table salt, magnesium salt is bitter, while calcium salt is astringent. If the seawater is dried, the salt left is coarse salt, which is slightly bitter due to the inclusion of magnesium salts, calcium salts and other magazines.

The part of the seawater that was dumped was called bitter bittern. Pour out the bittern, and the salt obtained is barely refined salt. This refined salt also contains some magnesium salts, but the content is already very low. The bitter taste of refined salt is relatively light and difficult to taste. The difference in taste between this and the refined salt that has been chemically processed in later generations has been relatively small.

In the Middle Ages, the British boiled salt without knowing how to remove the bittern. Therefore, their salt can only be regarded as coarse salt. The mineral salt from Lüneburg and other salt mines has a lot of bitterness, and there are few high-quality refined salts without bitterness.

In fact, the secret of removing bittern is that in the process of drying salt, people unintentionally took some salt grains under bittern and tasted it, and found that there was no bitter taste. Later, they specially left bittern and only took good taste. Refined salt. In the era of boiling salt, people used to boil seawater dry to obtain coarse salt at the bottom of the pot. Generally, no one pours out the bittern during more than half of the cooking process, and does not know how to remove the bittern...

The refined salt produced under the guidance of Marin has a taste better than most of the current European salts. After Wright tasted it, he immediately rated it as high-quality refined salt, and believed that this refined salt should only be eaten by nobles...

Wright was not sure why, but thought it was the quality of the water in the Texel area. And he didn't know, Marin just added an extra step to drain the bittern. But it is this simple step that greatly improves the taste of salt.

The refined salt produced in Yancheng, after pouring out the bittern, Marin also asked to add some fresh water,

Dilute some impurities such as magnesium ions, and then pour it out... In this way, there will be less bittern residue...

Then, heat the remaining salt and evaporate the water. Then, someone used a copper hammer to smash the salt particles. In this way, the refined salt produced in Yancheng is the powdery white salt similar to the refined salt of later generations...

This white powdery salt was definitely considered high-grade salt in medieval Europe, and it is no wonder that Wright gave it a high rating.

Even, because of the high grade, Wright took the initiative to increase the purchase price to 4 shillings, of course, the benefits of his 3 pfennig remain unchanged...

After cost calculation, every day, these 20 salt-boiled cauldrons only consume 15 Charteron briquettes because of the use of firewood-saving stoves. That is to say, the briquettes of 50 Chartrons provided by Hoffman Manor every day could not be used up, only less than one third was used.

In fact, Marin can expand the production of salt. However, Marin felt that at the beginning, it was necessary to test the reaction of the market, and not to produce so much. Otherwise, if there is too much production, it will be troublesome if it cannot be sold.

And 20 salt pans, plus the labor for transporting coal, add up to less than 100 people. Then, there are 600 more young and strong laborers...

This time Marin brought 500 serf families to the island, bringing the total number to 3,100. There are as many as 700 young workers alone.

Right now, it only takes 100 people to cook salt, and Marin simply took the remaining 600 people to reclaim wasteland near Denburg...

Now, it is the beginning of March in the early spring season. Well, spring ploughing is about to begin. And Marin has 1,000 draught horses in his hands, which can be used to cultivate land. It's just that these draught horses lack ploughs.

So Marin sent Kohler to a nearby city, recruited a group of blacksmiths with good craftsmanship, and settled in Den Burg. At the same time, I bought a lot of iron ingots, wood, and some forging equipment...

When the blacksmiths arrived on the island, Marin immediately arranged for them and the carpenters on the island to manufacture a batch of curved ploughs and various iron labor tools.

Afterwards, these farm implements were distributed to the serfs. The farmers of the original three farms were arranged to take care of the original 800 Ugram arable land.

Under Marin's arrangement, all the human dung on the island, as well as the horse dung, were thrown into the fields. This caused widespread protests from the serfs, who felt that by doing so, Marin simply soiled the grain fields and made the grown grain disgusting.

But Marin had no time to ignore their protests. Under the suppression of 400 soldiers, the serfs had to do the same. Otherwise, the angry serfs would have to beat Marin. However, Marin has a castle, and there are 400 fierce and fierce soldiers who have seen blood. These honest serfs, although they feel disgusting, can only do it.

While arranging for the serfs to farm, Marin also asked Kohler and Sauer to lead people to pick up the families of these guys from house to house according to the addresses given by the big bosses.

The reason why Kohler was sent was because Kohler was Marlin's most slick squire and was very good at doing things. For example, Kohler has enough eloquence to negotiate with those whose family members were detained by the original manor and refused to let them go. You can even bargain and use money to redeem.

Therefore, in this matter, only Kohler is suitable to do it, Sauer is barely able to do it, and Schwartz and others are not suitable. Marin himself is actually quite suitable, but now that he is the lord, there are so many things in the territory that he is too busy. Moreover, it is too much to go out to pick up a soldier's family by himself. If the family members of the generals under his command go out to pick them up in person, that's not too bad. But the family of Schwartz, the number one general under his command, had already been placed in the Hoffman Manor. So, you don't have to go out and win people's hearts at all. Those big-headed soldiers are not worth going out on their own...

After Kohler left, Marin calculated the cost himself. He found that the actual selling price of 1,000 quarts of refined salt produced in Yancheng was 3 shillings and 9 pfennigs per quart. After deducting the price of briquettes, transportation costs, and labor costs, the total is about 9 pfennig. On average, he made three shillings for every quarter of refined salt. 1,000 quarts is 3,000 shillings of pure profit. And 3000 shillings is 150 pounds (or 225 marks), equivalent to 600 ducats...

That's a day's profit! Marin is dizzy, 600 gold coins a day, 365 days in that year, even if Christmas and New Year holidays are deducted, there are at least 350 working days (there are no weekends in this year, and most major holidays are closed). So, can't I earn 210,000 gold coins a year? Marin shivered a little with excitement, like the second neighbor Wu who had a cerebral thrombosis...

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