In April 1651, Amsterdam, the capital of the Dutch Republic, suddenly appeared in Amsterdam, the capital of the Dutch Republic, a group of local tyrants from China, that is, the Ming delegation led by Ji Kun.

The Ming Mission has now been transformed into a Ming Purchasing Mission. On the way out of China, Ji Kun and others were still relatively economical and did not purchase aggressively. But as soon as they arrived in Amsterdam, the center of international capitalism in the 17th century, Ji Kun and others finally stopped waiting and began to spend money!

What a spend! An important task that Zhu Cihong gave to the Ji Kun mission was to go to Amsterdam, the Netherlands to make a big purchase!

This time, they left Nanjing with 300,000 taels of gold and came to Europe!

The 300,000 taels of gold were all taken out of the account of the Royal Chamber of Commerce, and they were all Emperor Zhu's private money.

In order to transport the 300,000 taels safely to the Netherlands, Zhu Cihong sent 5 large ships of 10,000 stones (gold cannot be placed on one ship), and also sent 500 officers and soldiers to escort (half of them were navy).

In addition, there is also a team dedicated to procurement, which is in charge of Yun Shangqian, the chief steward of the "Lao Xiyan General" who defected to Emperor Zhu in Yangzhou. This Yun Shangqian has been in charge of business affairs since he voted for Emperor Zhu, first working in Yanshang Bank, and later in Haishang Bank, where he was the head office manager of the bank before going abroad. Now he is responsible for the purchase of 300,000 taels of gold!

The list of purchases was drawn up by Zhu Cihong himself, and there were all kinds of things. The biggest item is the ship! 800-ton warships or armed merchant ships from the Amsterdam shipyard - the largest battleship of this era was the British Navy's battleship "Sea King", with a load of 1,683 tons and 102-104 cannons, which was built in 1637. However, a battleship of this class was not for sale and could not be placed on the shelves of Amsterdam merchants.

Therefore, a master craftsman named Sun Xing of the Nanjing shipyard who followed Yun Shangqian selected a sail battleship "Feixiang" that could be equipped with 44 guns, which was not a new ship, but a second-hand goods that were left in the dock for maintenance, and belonged to the Dutch Provincial Navy (now there is no unified Dutch Navy, only the Provincial Navy). By Fan. Dimen acted as an intermediary and won it at a price of 25,000 taels of gold.

Of course, a captain and sailors are needed to buy a ship, and Ji Kun also hired a man named David for 5,000 taels of gold. Jones's Dutch captain and dozens of his crew were responsible for driving the "Flying Flight" back to the city of Shanghai in the Ming Empire. In order to prevent the warship from "mutiny" on the way, Xie Xun, an officer from Liaodong who graduated from the Sailor Academy, also brought 120 officers and soldiers of the Ming Navy.

In addition, Ji Kun also purchased several sets of drawings of warships and armed merchant ships from several shipyards in Amsterdam at a high price, as well as a 50-to-1 simulation model.

In addition to ships, artillery is also a key object of procurement. In addition to the 44 naval guns placed on the "Flying Flight", the mission also purchased a batch of cast iron guns produced by Dutch capitalists in Sweden (there were no good iron mines in the Netherlands), all of which were field heavy guns, eight 24-pounder "one-half cannons" and eight 12-pounder "quarter cannons". According to the plan, 6 of each model would form an artillery battery, and the remaining 2 would be used for testing and imitation.

If the 24-pounder cast iron cannon and the 12-pounder cast iron cannon can be successfully imitated (China's cast iron technology is not too bad, there are many self-produced iron cannons, but the yield rate is not ideal), then the Ming army field troops can form an artillery system consisting of 3-pounder bronze regimental guns and 12-pounder and 24-pounder heavy cast iron cannons. The 3-pounder guns were used to kill enemy infantry, the 12-pounder guns were suppressive artillery and could bombard the enemy's artillery positions from long distances, and the 24-pounder guns were siege guns.

This is Gustav II's field artillery system, which has been tested by thirty years of war and is the mainstream of Europe in this era.

In addition, the Ming mission also purchased 5,000 Dutch-made flintlock pistols.

In Europe, flintlock pistols have begun to replace arquebuses, and there have been many workshops in the Ming Dynasty that have begun to imitate flintlock pistols, but the quality is still unsatisfactory.

Therefore, the mission sent by Zhu Cihong placed large orders for several large arsenals in Amsterdam, and at the same time sent master craftsmen and officers who came with the regiment to "supervise" (steal teachers).

Of course, the mission will also ask the manufacturers to provide formal drawings, and will also abduct a few Dutch craftsmen by the way.

However, even if you get the drawings and turn to the craftsmen, it is difficult to produce enough flintlock pistols in a short time. So the 5,000 "Made in the Netherlands" were used to equip eight battalions of flintlock muskets (with socket bayonets) for maneuvers and new tactics.

The third major purchase item after ships and guns is books, whether they are religious, philosophical, technical, literary, geographical, historical, one is counted as one, and all the books that can be bought in Amsterdam are all bought in a set. After being shipped back to China, it was up to Song Yingxing and Zhu Cihong, the directors of the Tongwenguan, to decide which books should be translated and published immediately, and which books would not need to be published for the time being.

Machinery and equipment is also a major procurement item, but the era of machine industry has not yet arrived, and there are all kinds of water conservancy machinery in Europe. Ji Kun doesn't care if those things are available in China? Anyway, I will buy it when I see it, and I will buy a few sets for various purposes, but I don't buy second-hand ones, all of them are first-hand, and the price is easy to say, but the requirements for after-sales service are very high. There must be a package of installation, maintenance, and operation skills of the three guarantees of service. Therefore, Dutch manufacturers must send engineers and technicians to China, and the cost is, of course, paid by Zhu Cihong.

Moreover, Ji Kun was also instructed to request that the engineers and mechanics sent to China be as young and unmarried as possible......

The Persh horse, which was produced in France, was also purchased in large quantities by Ji Kun, which was a heavy horse, although not as large as the Sharma, but the shoulder height was between five feet three inches and five feet five inches, and although the body was large, it was agile and agile in its movements, and had a gentle temperament, which was very suitable for use as a military horse. And because there are many noble estates in France, the population of Pershma is large and easy to buy. So Ji Kun asked Fuquet to help buy more than 400 Persh horses, all of which were sent to Amsterdam.

In addition, Ji Kun also purchased a lot of miscellaneous things according to the list given by Zhu Cihong, from stationery to experimental equipment, to daily necessities, clocks and watches, woolen clothes, everything.

Because there were too many things to purchase, one "Feixiang" could not fit at all, so it had to hire three other armed merchant ships of seven or eight hundred tons to return to China with the "Feixiang."

However, the Flying and the other three sailing ships have not yet set sail, because the route from Europe to Africa and then through the Strait of Malacca to the East is not only long, but also very dangerous. Even if there are 4 armed sailing ships, it is not much of an insurance, so Ji Kun is ready to pull the ship on which the British delegation is traveling and return to the sea together, so that nothing will go wrong.

Lord Grey, the representative of the British President Cromwell, in early May took the Governor of the British East India Company, Thomas Grey, with him. Brown arrives in Amsterdam, hostile to them.

Britain and the Netherlands have had a long-standing contradiction, and although they have not turned their faces now, both sides are sharpening their knives. Ji Kun introduced Britain into the South Seas at this juncture, I really don't know if it was for "peace" and "free trade", or to ignite the flames of war in the South Seas?

Although war between the British and Dutch was imminent, the negotiations between China, the Netherlands, the British, and the Portuguese (who were the representatives of João IV) in Amsterdam were relatively pleasant. Because the negotiations did not involve any core interests, it was only decided that the Governor of the British East India Company, the Governor of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia, the Portuguese Governor of Macao, and other dignitaries would go to Nanjing together to discuss with the Ming Emperor himself how to reasonably distribute the interests in the Nanyang Islands and their waters......