On July 25, 1647, the port of Cádiz was calm.

"What stupid Spaniards, they always make a mess of things and get themselves into trouble after trouble." Standing on the docks, Captain Kouyette looked at the growing number of beggars on the docks, and could not help but despise the intelligence of the Spaniards: "There is hardly a day that they do not fight, and the tax burden is getting higher and higher day by day. It is a wonderful irony that the gold and silver brought back from the Americas have even been leaked into someone's pocket. ”

"They can't continue like this, this country has fought for hundreds of years, and countless people have died. Large tracts of arable land in the country have been degraded into pasture, and the population of the country is still only four or five million, which is not as good as England, and I think something must have gone wrong. ", said in fluent Spanish.

Whether it's Captain Coot or Mr. Hampton, they're all here to do business in Cadiz at the moment. Cadiz produces many goods, but there are two most famous: alum and salt. Captain Couay and his wife had come to Cadiz to buy salt, and the thriving fishing industry in the Netherlands and New England consumed a lot of salt, so it was definitely a good business to come to Spain to buy salt.

At this time, the Dutch controlled most of the salt trade in Europe, and they originally purchased salt from Situbar in Portugal and distributed it to Northern and Eastern Europe, and even to New Zealand6. The salt in Portugal is delicate and pure, and the quality is good, and the coarse brine produced in Cadiz is far away, but the Portuguese have now banned Dutch merchant ships from buying salt, so the Dutch, who account for more than 7o% of the salt trade in Europe, flock to the port of Cadiz to buy salt, leaving the Portuguese aside.

However, the Spaniards were not good at stubble, and the two countries were theoretically still at war, and when the Spaniards were short of money, they would often confiscate enemy ships anchored in the harbor - especially the Dutch, who often had to pay heavy bribes to the dock officials to get out.

In order to be prepared with both hands. While the Dutch went to Cadiz to buy salt at a time when the situation was not tense, the West India Company had occupied Curaçao in the Caribbean many years earlier. The island was borderlands at the time, with a huge salt pond and pirates from the vicinity who often came in boats to fetch salt. After the Dutch occupied here. and monopolized this salt pond. Then it monopolized the salt trade of the new big 6.

And once Portugal and Spain shut down their salt exports to the Netherlands at the same time, the Dutch would be able to transport salt from Curaçao back to Amsterdam for emergency relief. It is then distributed everywhere - mainly in the Baltic countries (where precipitation is abundant and the salinity of the sea is only 1%). Of course, they could also buy salt from Nantes, France, where the salt industry was just starting to develop, but the Dutch didn't seem to be keen on making money for the French people who were close at hand. Therefore, they would rather travel thousands of miles from the Caribbean to sea salt back.

But the dispute between Spain and the Netherlands has apparently faded to the extreme, and Dutch ships even helped Spain transport silver (from Cadiz to Amsterdam) last year, so there is not much risk in coming to Cadiz to buy salt.

Captain Kouyt and the others paid their taxes to the dock officials, and then some of the dealers (mostly Dutch, Genoese, and Portuguese Jews) who had already been contacted came forward to buy their goods. Captain Kuayt brought in a shipload of materials, mainly masts, from Finland. Nowadays it is only in Finland, Sweden, Russia, etc., that you can find enough large logs suitable for the masts of ships, and this is the good business of the Dutch, who control the trade in everything from ropes to masts, from planks to wood tar. More than 9o% of the European shipbuilding market is controlled by them.

Timber for shipbuilding in Spain had been cut down in the last century, and now it has to rely on Dutch merchants to import it from the Baltics, and perhaps the Venetians could also export a batch of beech to the Spaniards from places like Ragusa, but in extremely limited quantities. It can't make up for the needs of many shipyards in Seville, Bilbao, Valencia, etc. in Spain.

The Spanish ships suffered heavy losses in the course of these years, first with the main force of the Mediterranean Fleet being destroyed by the Dutch, and with the Atlantic Fleet suffering heavy losses. But this was not the most tragic thing, and later their navy was even defeated by the little-known French navy, losing some of the already small number of warships. At the beginning of this year, they were defeated on their doorstep (Naples is also Spanish territory) by the unknown trading fleet from the east coast of the new big 6, losing a number of warships and galleys, and losing face among European countries.

King Philip IV of Spain learned of the news from his favored courtiers only a month after the Battle of Tyrrhenian, and in a fit of rage, he immediately replaced several of his admirals and ordered a large number of ships to be built in the country, in an effort to restore the former glory of the navy. However, when the favored retainer carefully reminded him that the kingdom was financially embarrassed, the domestic situation was also very unstable (Catalonia, Naples and other places were in trouble under the operation of the French**), and the decline of the 6 battlefield, it was already very difficult for the Spanish kingdom to maintain its current situation, and it was afraid that it would not be able to build a large scale of gold-swallowing monsters such as naval warships.

But the great Philip IV was still very unwilling, when will the small new great 6 Tatar pagan states also be able to show their teeth and claws to Spain? Moreover, this war is the second time that this warlike little country has challenged his authority, and he must punish him, or he may cause many bad effects. After all, there are still many countries watching him in Italy and Germany, and if he can't even clean up the small new big 6 countries, then maybe the crown on his head will inevitably be stained with a trace of dust, and the glory will be a lot darker.

The kings are like this, what else do the courtiers have to say? So they cut other expenditures while raising taxes throughout the country (including Spain, Naples, and the Spanish Netherlands), while negotiating loans with Jewish merchants from Portugal and Dutch bankers, preparing to revive the navy and wipe out the obnoxious East Coast heretics in one fell swoop. It is all the more necessary to destroy the country when it is heard that there is a large gold mine there, which is the property of the great king, let the sinful heretics prostrate themselves at the feet of the noble Castilian people and beg for forgiveness.

It was against this background that Captain Kouate came to Cádiz, and the mast he brought with him was exactly what the Spaniards desperately needed, so it was sold for a good price. After selling the mast, he found a middle-aged Genoese merchant, Butch from the Doria family, near the docks. Butch has been in the business of exporting alum and salt for many years, and also resells some cowhides, horns, animal fat, cocoa, dyes and other goods from the Americas.

These goods are among the most sought-after in countries with a strong Catholic atmosphere (popular holiday food, daily food for clergy), and they also sell at a good price. Thanks to the thriving fishing industry in New England, there was a growing demand for salt, so Mr. Hampton decided to return home by filling the hold with salt, which could be sold partly for his own use and partly to other fishing captains at a considerable profit.

After the two of them finished talking about business at the Doria family's Butch at the same time, they saw that it was still early, and they met up for a drink at the dock tavern. On the way to a familiar tavern, a well-dressed Spanish official, surrounded by seven or eight retinues, ran haughtily to the idlers (or beggars?). Where they gathered, they loudly announced something, and then the idlers cheered happily, and then they got up and followed the officials in the other direction.

"That's Captain Soldado, who came to recruit soldiers. He would come here almost once a month to recruit a large number of unemployed Spaniards, and then after rough training, he would transport them to the front lines in the Netherlands, Italy, or Roussillon, and of course sometimes some to the New University 6, as the hundred or so people he had just recruited. A Frenchman selling small goods on the side of the road whispered in Spanish, and then he turned to Captain Couaite and smiled at them: "Spaniards are pompous and do not like to work, they only like to conquer and rob. They don't have enough patience to cultivate the land little by little and produce goods in a solid way, and they prefer to talk about who got a lot of money or a lot of land overnight. They were aggressive, irritable, drew their swords at the slightest disagreement, they were not tolerant of pagans or heretics, and the stake was never extinguished at the inquisition. ”

"You see, most of the craftsmen who work on the docks today are Francons, Germans and Italians. Spaniards don't like to work and buy everything, so many of my countrymen have made a fortune within a few years of coming to Spain. "Ever since the Spaniards had taken the trouble to expel the heretics, Moors, and Jews from their country over and over again, their levels of production had fallen sharply, and prices had risen sharply, and now the country was a haven for foreign craftsmen." As long as you have the ability, you can live a very good life here, marry a beautiful wife, and have a bunch of children, haha. There are so many French craftsmen that I don't make any money there, but it's better to go to Spain, where the men go to the battlefield or die in the new big 6, and the women come to us with cute silver coins and ask us to buy things, which is wonderful. ”

Captain Coot and Mr. Hampton smiled at each other's words, an old Spaniard of the Spaniards—an old one that was good news for all Europeans.

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