Copper coins, copper coins, copper is money, and money is copper!

A bronze cannon can weigh more than a thousand kilograms at the lightest and two or three thousand kilograms at the heaviest. A Ming Dynasty Longqing Tongbao weighs one and a half cents and contains 95% copper. The materials for a heavy cannon alone cost two or three hundred thousand coins. Who can afford this?

If you equip a ship with a few cannons, the price of the cannons will be much higher than the price of the ship.

In comparison, human life is so cheap. Therefore, no matter whether it is the government army or the sea lords, although they know that bronze cannons are good and not easy to explode, and will not hurt people when they explode, no one is willing to spend this money, nor can they afford it.

Only a fool like Mr. Zhao, who is stupid and rich, would be willing to give the soldiers an extra sense of security.

Oh no, he wasn't the only one. In the same year, there was another fool in Western Europe who also decided to equip her fleet with bronze cannons. Her name was Queen Elizabeth, and her purpose was to compete with the Spanish Armada.

This makes Mr. Zhao seem less naive.

Of course, if you want to be extravagant, you have to have the ability to do so! The Ming Dynasty was a country that lacked copper. Ask the government troops and the sea lords, can they get so much copper?

In fact, there were copper mines in Tongling, but they were all owned by the imperial court. All the copper mines in the Ming Dynasty were owned by the imperial court, and Mr. Zhao had no right to get involved. So he could only think of copper coins and copperware.

However, the large-scale purchase of copper coins and copperware will inevitably cause the price of copper to soar. Do you believe that with the sharp business acumen of Ming merchants, they can make you spend several times more money on a cannon?

Therefore, Mr. Zhao almost never bought copper directly. Instead, he relied on the Jiangnan Bank as a powerful weapon to issue small-denomination silver notes to absorb copper coins on the market.

Ordinary people have a simple perception that they feel more comfortable with small-denomination banknotes, as if even if they cannot be converted into cash, the loss will not be too great.

Moreover, copper coins did have the problem of being bulky and cheap in daily transactions. One string of coins weighed 13 jin but was only worth one tael of silver, making it very inconvenient both in circulation and storage.

Therefore, once the small-denomination silver notes were introduced, a large number of copper coins were withdrawn from circulation. The effect was much better than that of the large-denomination silver notes!

Especially after defeating Hengtongji and driving it out of Jiangnan, the common people had no doubt about the strength of Jiangnan Bank. Hengtongji had been scheming and taking advantage of the right time, right place and right people, but it still failed to run the bank. Who else could defeat Jiangnan Bank? Jiangnan Bank could be said to be invincible!

The copper coins on the market soon became less and less, and they gathered from all directions into the silver vault of Jiangnan Bank. Then Jiangnan Group bought these copper coins with silver at a premium, transported them all to Xishan Island, melted them, and re-refined them into bronze!

Moreover, there were many temples in the south of the Yangtze River, and there were bell-casting masters in almost every county. With a command from Master Zhao, two hundred skilled bell-casting masters were hired from Wuhu, Suzhou, Nanjing and other places, and they used the refined bronze to cast a total of 500 cannons!

After all, wars are fought with logistics and financial resources. With the support of Jiangnan, the richest city in the world, Mr. Zhao could mobilize resources in a short period of time, which could make Queen Elizabeth want to give up her virginity.

If he starts from another place, you will find it difficult to build fifty gates!

Of course, this is also inseparable from the strong support of Sister Xueying. Without this talented and beautiful girl to plan, Jiangnan Group would not be able to operate efficiently and mobilize the resources of the entire Jiangnan for my use.

At the moment the cannon roared, Master Zhao remembered that he had not seen Xue Ying for more than half a year and missed her.

~~

After the artillery fire, the military exercise ended successfully and medium and large warships returned to the port in a formation.

The marines landed on Niu Island Beach in small boats to retrieve the shells fired by the artillerymen. The solid shells were large, weighing ten jin, and small, five jin, but they were all cast iron. No matter how rich Mr. Zhao was, he couldn't just throw them away after they were fired.

According to regulations, after training to fire at land targets, more than 70% of the shells must be recovered to be considered qualified. 80% recovery is considered good, 90% is excellent, and this is all recorded in the assessment results.

Qi Jiguang was a detail-obsessed person to begin with, and he met Mr. Zhao, a guy who believed that management was unscientific without quantification. It was no surprise that the army, oh no, the police force, led by two Virgos would be so perverted.

Mr. Zhao invited all the guests to the port for lunch. When they got off the review ship and stood on the dock looking up at the thousand-ton ships, they truly felt what it meant to be as tall as a building and understood their own insignificance.

In fact, it was also the first time that Zhao Hao saw his main fleet.

These twenty thousand-ton large frigates came from the order he placed with Longjiang Baochuan Factory and Suzhou Shipyard a year ago.

At that time, he placed orders for 200 thousand-ton seagoing ships at two official shipyards. The first batch of ships was built in March, but the hulls had to be left to rest for several months so that the wooden structures of the ships could be fully mortised. The size of these ships was obviously prohibited in inland rivers, so they could only be registered under the name of the Caojiang Censorate. Uncle Wu would not transfer the ownership of the ships to Mr. Zhao until he obtained the permission for the sea transportation of grain and was qualified to build thousand-ton seagoing ships.

Therefore, it was not until July when Chen Huaixiu led his people back to Jiangnan that they completed the formalities at the two shipyards in Nanjing and Taicang and received eighty large ships with a capacity of 1,000 tons.

Although both are produced by official shipyards and have the same blueprints, the Longjiang Shipyard's ships are much better than Suzhou Shipyard's in terms of materials and construction quality. Zhao Hao was not surprised by this, otherwise he would not have valued Yang Fan so much and wanted him to take charge of Jiangnan Shipyard.

So Zhao Hao decided to select half of the best quality Dafu ships built by Longjiang Factory as warships, equip them with artillery, sail to Jeju Island, and join the Garrison Area Coast Guard Corps!

The reason why only half of them were used was partly due to the limitation of artillery, but the main reason was the lack of sailors. Even these twenty warships had already emptied the sailors of Jiangnan shipping. As a result, the newly established Ming Dynasty Royal Shipping did not have enough skilled workers to transport grain by sea...

~~

However, the luncheon was held on the flagship ship 101. In the spacious and luxurious top-floor stern cabin of this unexpected Wuwei ship, Mr. Zhao entertained the guests of the Joseon Dynasty with a sumptuous luncheon.

Where did this ten thousand hu Wuwei ship come from? Speaking of which, we have to thank Zeng Yiben, the number one sea master in Fujian and Guangdong.

Last autumn, this devil who had been rampant in Southeast Asia for many years led hundreds of large and small ships to invade Guangzhou, killing and looting the people. Finally, the capital was shocked and ordered Fujian and Guangdong to join forces to suppress the rebellion. Two famous anti-Japanese generals, Guangdong General Yu Dayou and Fujian General Li Xi, mobilized the elite naval and land forces of the two provinces to jointly suppress the rebellion.

The governor of Fujian also recruited Zeng Yiben's mortal enemy, another Dahai master Lin Daoqian, and with his help, he continued to disintegrate and divide Zeng Yiben's followers. Finally, in early June this year, he broke into Zeng Yiben's old nest in Zhelin in one fell swoop.

Zeng Yiben was very alert. Seeing that things were not going well, he immediately set sail and fled under the cover of darkness. His followers also tried to escape.

The owner and boatmen of the Zhelin Shipyard were also terrified. Although they had not participated in the robbery, they had been building ships for Zeng Yiben. They knew that the government troops would not let them go if they came, so they discussed how to escape quickly.

In the past, they would flee to Guangdong when there was trouble in Fujian, and flee to Fujian when there was trouble in Guangdong. But this time, Fujian and Guangdong were jointly suppressing the bandits, and Guangdong was afraid that it would also suffer. They hated Lin Daoqian who colluded with the government troops, and for a while they felt that they had nowhere to go.

At this time, someone suddenly remembered the big customer, Manager Tang. Since last year, Manager Tang has spent a lot of money to order Wuwei boats from them, and has also lobbied them to move the shipyard to Jiangnan, and has offered a price that no one can refuse. It's a pity that their lives are more important, so no one dares to betray Zeng Yiben.

But things are different now. Zeng Yiben has already fled. Who can care where they go?

But you have to sell yourself for a good price. If you refused the offer in the first place and now you are fleeing with nothing, you will inevitably be looked down upon by the other party.

There happened to be a newly completed Wanhu Wuwei ship parked in the dry dock. It was a new ship prepared for Zeng Yiben, but it had not yet been equipped with cannons or hoisted with sails. So when Zeng Yiben escaped, he did not even think of this ship.

The owner and the craftsmen discussed and decided to use the Wanhu Wuwei boat that Manager Tang had been longing for as a gift. So everyone in the boat yard worked together to open the gates, release water, hoist the sails and pull up the anchor as quickly as possible, and escape from Zhelin Bay before dawn, heading east to Penghu.

The owner asked his trusted manager to go to Penghu to find the warehouse of Jiangnan Trading Company according to the contact information left by Manager Tang. Manager Tang Baolu happened to be in Penghu. As expected, he was the son of Fatty Tang. When he heard that the government troops were going to attack Zhelin, he hurried over to see if there was any bargain to be made.

The two sides hit it off immediately, and Tang Baolu promised that the original conditions would still stand and he would buy the Wanhu Wuwei ship for 20,000 taels. Thus, this ship, which originally belonged to Zeng Yiben, became the flagship of the Tamra Garrison Coast Guard.

~~

After lunch, the journey of the guests of the Li Dynasty came to an end, and Zhu Jue sent a boat to take them to Jingyi County. The next step was up to Yin County Supervisor.

Young Master Zhao stood on the deck of Ship 101, watching them get off the Wuwei ship and board an armed sand ship, and waved goodbye to his guests happily.

Regardless of whether the guests were happy or not, Mr. Zhao was very happy anyway.

When he turned around, he saw Zhao Shizhen, whom he had not seen for a long time, running towards him with a smile on his face.

"Uncle, it's obvious that you're getting old!" said the nephew who had delivered the cannon from a thousand miles away, kneeling in front of him and kowtowed firmly.

"Get up, good boy!" Young Master Zhao smiled as soon as he saw him. That bright smile from the heart showed that his nephew had made another great contribution.

My nephew should be credited for being able to make these bronze cannons!

At the end of last year, after the research center received the task of making bronze cannons, Zhao Shizhen and Zhang Jian formed a research team, with several cannon casting masters recruited from the Ordnance Bureau, relying on several copper tributes made by Portuguese machines and several ghostly drawings provided by Master Zhao. It took only half a year to complete the development, testing and finalization of three types of bronze cannons, and also formulated standardized production process specifications.

ps. Second update, one chapter left, please vote for me!