The French envoy was dumbfounded, he happened to have studied the seal letter and the monarch's signature, and recognized the signature of the English king. In addition, you can smell the special ink.

But the result surprised him - the purchase contract turned out to be real! The seal and signature of the English king, including the smell of ink, are exactly the same as those of regular English documents, and are obviously genuine. In this way, Marin shook the pot successfully.

Seeing that the envoy believed in this procurement contract, Marin smiled in his heart, but explained aggrievedly on his face:

"You know, Messenger, I'm also the Earl of Newcastle, England! His Majesty wants to buy a batch of muskets from me, do I dare not agree? I didn't send troops to participate in the war directly, so I attach great importance to my relationship with the great Kingdom of France......"

Seeing that there was indeed a formal contract, and that the time was indeed a little too long, the French envoy had no choice but to believe that Marin was unintentional. However, he didn't know that Marin had turned around and bought another 30 Hongyi cannons for England......

While this is a bit of an intimidation, the benefits are clear – it keeps the French on fire......

Moreover, in this era, it is not surprising to admit cowardice towards France. After all, France at this time was the first power in Europe. Just like the future generations, will you be ashamed of Lao Mei? It's a shame, but it's not a shame that everyone does it......

In this way, the French envoy, who had been fooled and lame, was sent back in such a daze. The news he brought back was obviously of little value.

In France, at this time, there was also a big discussion about the safety protection of sewer iron gates. Because, according to John. Raffi's findings suggest that the fortress of Calais was breached by the British from the iron gates of the sewers.

In addition, after the assassination of Margaret's mother and son in Tudor before, the British escaped through the sewer iron gate, which made the French realize one thing - the British seem to have found a good way to open the sewer iron gate. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the defense of the iron gate of the sewer!

And the sewer is known to smell very bad. Especially in the summer, the smell of the sewer is simply unbearable. Therefore, the soldiers who generally guard the sewers are also deployed dozens of meters away to avoid being smoked.

However, after the British used the sewers to bypass the city defenses twice in a row, the French learned from the pain and decided to strengthen the defense of the iron gates of the sewers.

For this reason, in order to ensure the safety of the city, King François I of France ordered the construction of a post next to the exit of the sewer, so that the soldiers could be on duty directly at the exit of the sewer......

This made the French soldiers on duty at night miserable, because the smell of the sewer was really bad! If you camp next to the sewer outlet, you're going to smoke people to death......

However, for the sake of safety, the French government and opposition still decided to permanently station troops and horses at the exit of the sewer to ensure the safety of the iron gate of the sewer. As for the soldiers' unaccustomedness, whatever......

In fact, the French did not know that when they intended to attack Calais with the iron gates of the sewers, Marin was prepared to abandon this method in the future.

Everything can be one or two, and once or twice with this trick, someone may be fooled. But if you want to take advantage of this vulnerability all the time - people are not stupid!

Therefore, Marin is not afraid of this kind of loophole being discovered. Anyway, he didn't plan to use it next time. There is aqua regia, not to mention corroding the sewer iron lock, you can directly corrode the big iron door. If it's a wooden door, it's even easier - bring a bucket of gasoline and burn the wooden door!

In this way, the French are also busy in vain. It's just that the French soldiers who were sent to guard the sewer exit were miserable and had to endure the stench of the sewers. Especially in summer, it stinks to death!

……

After sending off the French envoys, Marin went about his business. At the moment, Marin has his own big things to be busy with, a very, very important thing - the replacement of junior officers in the army!

Twenty years ago, when Marin created the Beihai Army, it was basically composed of southern German mountain people and Alsatian peasants. Even the grass-roots officers, such as company captains and squad leaders, were appointed illiterate mountain people. Because, he also has no literate junior officers available under him!

But 20 years on, the situation has changed a lot. In particular, more than 10 years ago, after Marin occupied the East Friesian Lam, he began to open schools in East Friesland, and also ran a crash course for junior officers, and began to acquire some literate people.

The crash course for junior officers has been running for several years and has trained hundreds of junior officers. Later, these hundreds of young officers were incorporated into the army and became the first batch of literate grassroots officers in Beihai State.

But this was not enough, and later Beihai Guo also selected a group of young people who were not very smart (the smart ones were arranged to continue their studies), but were very loyal and brave, among the primary school students in ordinary schools, and continued to train them as officers.

Before going to the Ming Dynasty (around 1508), the first batch of primary school students graduated, and a group of about 1,000 primary school graduates were sent to the non-commissioned officer school for part-time work and study to continue their training. Elementary school graduates are generally around thirteen or fourteen years old when they graduate, and now six or seven years later, the first batch of primary school graduates have reached adulthood......

In fact, last year, 1,000 students from the non-commissioned officer school came of age, and this spring another 1,000 graduated to adulthood, making Marin have 2,000 more non-commissioned officers at once!

This is a non-commissioned officer student who has been educated since childhood, and the level is much higher than that of the previous students in the crash course for junior officers. Anyway, the cultural level of people is equivalent to that of junior high school students in later generations!

Of course, in the junior high school curriculum, a lot of knowledge is incomplete (which Marin deliberately deleted), but these people have received a complete primary education. Unlike those students in the crash course for junior officers, the level of knowledge is only the third or fourth grade of elementary school. There's no way, it's quick, and the foundation is poor......

And these 2,000 disciples are solid and normal non-commissioned officers, which is what Ma Lin values the most. The previous hundreds of students in the crash course for junior officers, Marin had found that they were not brainwashed enough, and their loyalty to themselves was not as good as that of these non-commissioned officers who received formal education since childhood.

You know, Marin is carrying out a loyalty education similar to the North Stick. These children have received a brainwashing education of "absolute loyalty to the Hoffman family, absolute loyalty to the Grand Duke of Marin" from an early age, and they are very loyal to themselves. And the students of the crash course for junior officers, although more loyal than the mercenaries recruited from the mountains of southern Germany, were not enough to reassure Marin.

Therefore, when the two batches of non-commissioned officer students graduated, Marin paid so much attention. Because, these children are very reassuring to Marin. At least, that's how it is in loyalty.

The only drawback, presumably, is that they are too young. Unlike the graduates of the first batch of crash courses for junior officers, many of them are in their twenties and can be entrusted with important tasks.

If these newly grown children were to be appointed as military commanders, Marin was worried that they would not be able to do the job. After all, not everyone is a genius. On the battlefield, experience is also very important.

Marin thought about it for several days before he finally found a solution - let these non-commissioned officers and students enter the army first, serve as the deputy of the squad leader or even the company leader, and learn command experience from those veteran squad leaders and company leaders. After a few years of training, the ability is sufficient, and then let them replace those veteran grassroots officers. Anyway, there will be a lot of grassroots officers who will grow old at that time, just to let these loyal children go up......

Of course, not all 2,000 cadets will be placed in the army. Marin only plans to select half of the outstanding students to enter the army to serve as deputy positions and train them. The other 1,000 were temporarily unable to serve as officers because of their grades. However, Marin will program them into a new army. Many of the military reforms that could not be carried out before could be tried in this army, which is composed entirely of educated young people......