It is very time-consuming to quarrel between countries, and if England decides to send someone, it will be able to cross directly from the Strait of Calais to do things, and we will have to wait for the reply from the French side.

Of course, Robinson certainly had no problem going to Calais. Because, Baron Robinson's good friend Baron Marquis is currently in France, and he is courteous to the French court. As long as Marquis helped to speak and show that Robinson was "one of his own," it would not be a problem to allow him to enter Calais.

The only problem, presumably, is the landing of the army......

After all, that's a landing of 20,000 troops! The Strait of Calais is indeed very narrow, less than 30 kilometers. However, the landing of the army was very troublesome. If you use the commercial terminal of the port of Calais, you can only land a few hundred people at a time. With an army of 20,000, it is estimated that it will take a few days to land. Moreover, provided that the French do not stand in the way.

However, because it was a surprise attack, it required 20,000 British troops to quickly land and surround the fortress of Calais, and take the fortress before the French could send reinforcements. Therefore, the speed of landing is very important.

So, these days, Edward's soldiers are training to land. But practice and practice can't change the big problem of insufficient berths at the port of Calais.

Ma Lin wanted to recommend the method of "beach-grabbing landing" applied by the Beihai Kingdom, so that the army could wade into the water and land. However, in the spring the sea was a little cold, and I am afraid that the English soldiers were not used to it.

Fortunately, among the 20,000 troops, 5,000 soldiers of the Beihai Kingdom are accustomed to wading and landing. Many of them had participated in the waterfront landing in Edinburgh, Scotland a few years ago. Moreover, most of them are equipped with the artifact of wading and landing - long leather boots.

Boots are not afraid of the tide, and the beach does not sink as easily as the silt of the swamps. So, wearing these shoes, it is convenient to land.

This is modeled after the rain boots of later generations, but the tube is longer. Moreover, the materials of both are not the same. The rain boots of later generations are all rubber products with low cost. But in this era, the Cuban rubber plantations in Marín produced very little production. Rare things are expensive, and rubber is obviously more precious these days! So, it's better to use leather as a material for leather boots! In this way, these 5,000 people were equipped with the first leather boots of the North Sea Kingdom, most of which were made of animal leather exchanged from the North American Indians.

In addition, since it is a "beach-grabbing landing", it must be indispensable to have a small boat that can directly rush onto the beach. Rubber boats are not available, they can only be made of wood. But normal wooden dinghys seem inconvenient to stack on the ship, and there are at most two or three small boats on a large ship.

So, after thinking about it, Marin might as well build a raft......

Actually, bamboo rafts are better and more buoyant. After all, bamboo is hollow. But there is no bamboo in Europe, so we can only use rafts.

The buoyancy of the raft is average, not as good as the bamboo raft. However, it was easy to manufacture, and it could be stacked on the deck of a ship to facilitate the needs of the warriors to land on the beach. As a result, the simple, low-cost raft became the most important tool for most of the soldiers on the ship to land on the beach. These days, the British soldiers are practicing how to use rafts to row from boats to the beach and land on the beach.

As long as the raft is practiced for landing on the beach, most of the soldiers can be sent ashore in one night, and the time for the surprise attack of the army will not be delayed. In this way, even if the French sent reinforcements from Paris, it would not have been too late to support Calais......

……

While the British were busy negotiating with the French, the spring ploughing in the two countries was not yet over. At this time, most of the spring ploughing in the two countries has come to an end. That is to say, the ploughing of the land has basically ended, and now it has entered the stage of sowing.

However, these two countries did not have the cocoons that Ma Lin introduced from the Ming Dynasty, and sowing seeds could only be done by hand. The male farmer is responsible for digging a small hole in the ground, while the woman is responsible for scattering the seeds into the hole, and then filling the small hole in the soil with their feet. Then, gently step on it with your foot. Of course, you can't step on it too hard, otherwise, the seed will not be able to break through the confines of the land and sprout. It is also technically active, the land is too compact, and it is difficult for the seeds to germinate. If the land is too loose, it will not work, and it will affect the seeds to take root. Of course, a farmer who has done it well does not need to think so much, and can solve the problem with one foot, which is an empirical problem......

However, the sowing efficiency is very low, and only one or two acres of land can be sown a day, generally no more than 3 acres, that is, half an acre.

Of course, there is also the option of direct sowing – the oxen plough the ground and then sow the seeds directly into the ground. Then, with a wooden pickaxe, simply break and turn the clods of soil that have been ploughed up by the plowshare, and after breaking the clods, pick up the soil and cover the seeds that have been sown......

But this kind of spreading is not very effective, especially because of the great randomness. In some places, the seeds are sown, and in other places, the seeds are not sown. In addition, multiple seeds sprout in clusters, resulting in a competition for nutrients. Then, no one can grow a few crops......

As a result, Europeans are now more in favour of on-demand technology that works with men and women. It's slower, but it's much better than extensive spreading. In terms of yield, the yield per mu is sometimes less than 100 pounds. And on-demand broadcasting, basically exceeded the yield of 100 pounds per mu......

And at this critical moment of spring sowing, in the castle of a large estate near Dijon, the capital of the former Duchy of Burgundy, a group of nobles from the Burgundy region are gathering in the banquet hall of the castle......

Of course, they were not holding a banquet, but a secret meeting......

The owner of this castle is called Paul. Lizarazu was a viscount of Burgundy. Originally, the Lizarazu family was mixed with Charles the Daring, but after the death of Charles the Daring, Louis XI took the opportunity to annex the Duchy of Burgundy, and the Lizarazu family saw that the situation was not good, so they switched to the French royal family.

However, after all, it is a wall-to-wall grass, and the Lizarazu family has never regarded the French royal family as a monarch to whom they must be loyal, but because they cannot resist the power of France, they have to take refuge. In Paul. In Lizarazu's eyes, it was clear that the interests of the family were more important......

……

And the theme of this secret meeting is also interesting - it was a private meeting of the usury nobles in Burgundy......

Since he came up with the method of using profits to trap the French peasants, Marin secretly sent a large number of spies to go deep into the disaster areas in France, secretly contact the local French nobles, and trick them into lending usury to the victims, so as to achieve the goal of finally depriving the peasants of their arable land and property.

The Burgundy region has only been subordinated to the French court for several decades, and it has not yet fully surrendered to France. After all, the previously bold Charles had been seeking to establish a separate Burgundian kingdom, and his internal propaganda had always been de-French. And from that time Paul . Lizarazu, naturally, could not be said to be very loyal to France. Similarly, many of the nobles in Burgundy did not have a strong sense of belonging to France.

Marin's spies entered the Burgundy region, and Paul. Seeing the huge benefits, Lizarazu was the first to step up and respond. Then all the responding nobles were formed to Paul. The group headed by the Viscount of Lizarazus was dedicated to the victims of the disaster in Burgundy and distributed usury at rolling interest. And this group was called the "usury group" by Marin.

And this secret meeting of this loan shark syndicate was to discuss how to do things with the seeds lent to the peasants......