In addition to planning to set up a number of furniture factories and wooden craft workshops in the Netherlands, Marin suddenly remembered that he seemed to be short of oak barrels......

Europe in this era is an era of barrel domination. In the current Europe, everything is in barrels. Even if wine and beer are served in oak barrels, gunpowder is also barreled, otherwise why is it called a powder keg? Bacon is also in barrels, cane sugar is also in barrels, and flour is also in barrels. Even, table salt and stinky salted fish are served in barrels...... It's really a barrel age......

In this era, there is a shortage of linen cloth in Europe, let alone weaving sacks, even weaving clothes is not enough. As for the animal skin pocket, not to mention the one that is more expensive. And Marlin's behavior of using oil-paper bags to pack cane sugar is completely impossible for other European countries to imitate. Because, now European artificial paper is still using rags and fishing nets. And European cloth is expensive, and the poor are reluctant to throw the cloth around, so they always sew and mend and continue to wear it. Therefore, raw materials are difficult to find, resulting in European paper prices are also very expensive. In other European countries, it is absolutely a luxury to want to use oiled paper as packaging. Not to mention, the oil used to soak the oil paper is also very scarce......

So, in this era, the demand for wooden barrels in Europe was very high, more than furniture. When Marin realized this, he immediately decided to invest in the construction of several barrel factories in the Netherlands, specializing in the manufacture of oak barrels. First, it consumes the limited oak resources of the Netherlands; and can also meet the huge demand of the market......

As a result, the Netherlands, which was gifted by Marlin, became not only known as the "Kingdom of Furniture", but also the "Kingdom of Barrels", supplying high-quality oak barrels to all of Europe...... The barrel manufacturing industry has also become one of the pillar industries in the Netherlands...... Then, you walk down the streets of Amsterdam, during rush hour, and you can easily hit a cooper by throwing a brick at a crowd......

But the little wood in the Netherlands alone is clearly not enough to make furniture and hoop oak barrels. Eventually, Marin organized the transport of oak from the forests of southern Norway and Sweden to the Netherlands for furniture factories to make furniture and coopers for hoop barrels. But in order to prevent the Dutch from using oak for shipbuilding, Marin stipulated that all timber brought into the Netherlands must be short timber. Long timber, which can be used for shipbuilding, is not allowed to flow into the Netherlands......

……

This was not enough, in order to completely cut off the future of the Dutch Great Voyage, the Great Demon King Marin also sent fishing boats to fish in the waters near the Netherlands and compete with Dutch fishermen for herring resources.

In addition, Marin also introduced a knife that the Dutch were proud of to scrape off the intestines of herring, processed the herring and smeared it with salt, and sold it to Europe to compete with Dutch fishermen.

Although everyone's fish is the same, caught from the North Sea. But salt is different......

The Netherlands does not produce salt, mainly due to the lack of firewood to cook it. Dutch fishermen who wanted to pickle herring had to import sea salt from England or low-quality mineral salt from Germany.

And Marin himself is a salt-producing tycoon, and he has a lot of salt in his hands. In order to crush the Dutch fishermen in the competition, Marin did not hesitate to lower the price of salt, so that his Friesian fishermen could sell the salted fish at a lower price, so as to achieve the purpose of dumping.

Marin's trick is very ruthless, the quality of salted fish on both sides is about the same, and the price of salted fish from the fishermen of Friesland in the North Sea country is even lower, and fools know who to buy. Dutch fishermen can't afford to cut their prices at will, because the cost of salt is very high. If the price is reduced, it may be difficult to recover the cost. Then, the fishing industry in the Netherlands slowly began to decline. More Dutch fishermen gave up fishing and moved into the cities, working as laborers in woollen mills, furniture factories and coop mills...... And with the decrease in fishermen, the Dutch had fewer sources of sailors, and the Great Voyage became even more unavoidable......

……

Marin spends too much time calculating the hapless Dutch, and the Dutch don't know that the Great Demon King Marin has used all kinds of means to snuff out the signs of the Netherlands becoming a great seafaring empire. As a result, the Netherlands remained mediocre in the European history that followed, and its presence was as weak as that of declining Denmark......

If the Dutch had known that Marlin was responsible, perhaps they would have attacked Marin in anger, eager to scrape Marlin's intestines out with a fishcutter......

……

As time passed, it was mid-to-late September. As a result of the application of phosphate fertilizers, crops in several regions of the North Sea Kingdom, such as East Friceland, West Friesland, and Oldenburg, which have used new agricultural technologies and "three fertilizers", have matured and started the autumn harvest early.

However, in the face of the golden autumn of a bumper harvest, Marin could not care about the autumn harvest. Because, he was going south to Italy, preparing for the attack on the Republic of Siena in advance.

As the old saying goes, "Knowing oneself and knowing one's opponent will not be defeated in a hundred battles". In order to successfully defeat Siena, Marin naturally needs to go over early and make adequate preparations, so as not to fall short due to insufficient preparation after the launch.

Defeat is a trivial matter, and the key is not to let the army lose too much. Most of Marin's soldiers are now seasoned veterans, and they are invaluable to the makeshift conscripts who use them as cannon fodder. If there is a large loss of professional veterans, Marin will probably cry and faint in the toilet.

Therefore, Marin planned to take advantage of the autumn harvest season to go south as soon as possible, and he would quietly go to the Siena area to observe the terrain first. When the official start of the fight, you will be more confident.

In addition, in order to prevent the desperate situation of running out of ammunition and food, Marin also planned to buy some houses outside the city of Siena and hide some food in the houses. In this way, even if the attacking Beihai Mountain Infantry ran out of food, they could use the food they had hidden in advance for a while, and wait until the Fourth Army arrived with baggage and grain and grass......

……

And just as Marin was about to leave, Gustavo, the chief instructor of the crash course for junior officers, suddenly approached Marin and asked to take his cadets south to Italy to fight the war......

Speaking of which, in the past few years, Marin has almost forgotten the crash course for young officers that was established in the first place. Because, in order to hone those teenagers who participated in the crash course for junior officers, Marin specially put the location of this officer class in Dengbao, the capital of Texel Island, where he started.

Where is Texel Island? It was the westernmost part of the West Frisian Islands, almost connected to the northern end of the Dutch province of the Netherlands, to which the Habsburgs belonged.

Because it was too far from home, and Gustavo was not very good at drilling, Marin almost forgot that he also had a crash course for junior officers on the island of Texel......

This crash course for junior officers was founded in 1502 and has been around for almost six years now. When the class was first established, Marin specially selected 200 smart and brave 16-year-old boys, and also wrote a simplified infantry training syllabus for them, compressing the vocabulary into 800 professional military-specific terms (mainly those teenagers were illiterate, and in that era, it was difficult to find someone who was not illiterate).

Originally, Marin was going to let the cadets of this crash course for young officers speed up and then integrate into the army. But then, Marin changed his mind. While teaching the cadets of the crash course for young officers the basics of military affairs, he also taught them literacy and arithmetic in a serious way, intending to train them as regular officers.

And the learning cycle of cultural knowledge is long, and then Marin has a long time, and almost forgets about the teenagers in the junior officer class.

It was only now that Gustavo and the teenagers of the officer class felt that they had almost learned the cultural knowledge and almost reached the level of elementary school graduation, so they came to Marin. At this time, the cadets of the junior class are already twenty-two or three years old after six years, and it is a good time to go to the battlefield.

It just so happened that Gustavo heard that Marin was quietly transferring troops recently. So, he began to inquire about the news......

Gustavo was also an officer who followed Marin very early at the beginning, and his military literacy was good. Otherwise, he would not have been arranged by Marin to manage a crash course for junior officers. Even, at the beginning, Gustavo's status in the East Frisian army was relatively high, and there were many relatives and friends in the army.

It's just that this thing is not good at drilling, and he is immersed in cultivating those 200 teenagers, causing Marin to almost forget about him. Fortunately, his old relationship was still there, and after inquiry, he learned that the North Sea State was transporting troops to Italy, and it was obvious that he was going to make a big move. So, he simply went directly to Marin and asked to bring his young reserve officers into battle......

"Let those teenagers go to war...... Is it reliable? Marin hesitated, this is a cruel war, it seems too risky to let those children who have never been to the battlefield......

"Allow me to correct your opinion, Grand Duke, that they are no longer children, but young people of 22 or 23 years old. After all, the cadets of the 'Crash Course for Junior Officers' have been studying for 6 years! ”

"It's been 6 years!" Ma Lin sighed infinitely that the group of teenagers selected at the beginning had all grown into young people.

Originally, Marin still intended to refuse Gustavo's request. However, he suddenly remembered the "Whampoa Student Army" in the history of his previous life. It seems that the student army of the Whampoa Military Academy participated in the war to quell the merchant group and Chen Jiongming's rebellion for the first time, and its performance was very impressive. I just don't know if I, the 200 young reserve officers, can also grow up and shine as quickly as the Whampoa Student Army?

Marin was full of expectations for this, knowing that these junior reserve officers were different from those officers in the army. Now those officers in the Marin Army have certainly stood out from the brutal fighting on the battlefield. However, these people are generally more vulgar, and many officers can't even understand military orders, and they also need heralds to convey military orders orally, which makes Marin very helpless. Moreover, let them read and read, and they will not be able to read.

Therefore, Marin is very much looking forward to this group of educated junior midshipmen who have been trained and studied for several years. Therefore, he learned from Jiang Guangtou's practice in those years, and organized these graduates of the officer class into a teaching group, organized independently, and followed him. Of course, it wasn't for them to charge. After all, it was the first battle, and Marin only asked them to learn more by his side. Then, find an opportunity for them to see blood so that they can accelerate their growth...... ()

Please remember that the first domain name of this book is:. Mobile version reading URL: