On the Christmas table, Ferdinand introduced roast turkey for the first time, which contributed to the development of Christmas dining, and corn and sweet potatoes also entered the table, in addition to the paella from Barcelona - southern Spain and the Po plain of Italy are famous European rice producing regions, Ferdinand still prefers rice, and there are also hams from Granada and Extremadura, the latter is the home of the famous Spanish ham, which is still the poorest area of Spain at this time. Ferdinand had previously dumped indulgences by Ferdinand's treasurer, who in order to compensate for this, encouraged the development of livestock and poultry farming and declared Extremadura's ham to be one of the royal meals. Sure enough, Extremadura's ham became popular all of a sudden, competing with Granada ham in Spanish restaurants. But it doesn't matter, it's all Ferdinand's shop anyway......

The day before Christmas, the Bishop of Mendoza spoke out about the promotion of sweet potato cultivation.

"Your Majesty, although this kind of thing is very productive, after all, it is never recorded in the Bible, maybe it is an unreliable crop, maybe it has the devil hidden in its roots, tubers, and I am afraid that people who eat it will get leprosy, tuberculosis or rickets......"

Ferdinand didn't know how to answer him, and it took a long time for him to come up with a sentence: "The Inquisitor had a cold yesterday, if it is for this reason, please hurry up and assist him in completing his confession!" ”

……

When it comes to crop cultivation, in the three months of Ferdinand's absence, everyone has been shocked.

The greatest achievement of Sardinia in the last two years has been the development of agriculture.

Among the agricultural crops in Sardinia, 437.4 million kilograms of wheat and 48.6 million kilograms of buckwheat were produced in 1494! (Production and prices have been adjusted, not so exaggerated, so there will be no price reductions across Europe)

Based on the calculation of 0.2 pounds per quart for wheat and 0.04 pounds per quart for buckwheat, if all of them are sold, the total price will be 7,041,260 pounds, or 1,408.252 ducats! This is close to the revenue of the Spanish treasury in 1620!

In the second half of 1493, the Castile-Aragon alliance was on the verge of war at the height of its confrontation with Portugal, but it ended in the Portuguese backing down, and Sardinia, which had been in a state of war readiness, was able to wait for the wheat to overwinter, and the summer wheat harvest was accompanied by a replanting of buckwheat, and the harvest was completed by the autumn of that year.

After all the grain was harvested, Queen Isabella in Burgos, although she was mentally prepared for the more than 38 million quartes of grain (Ferdinand once said, "Sardinia's annual grain production in 1494 is expected to be close to 40 million quartes"), in the face of the real results, she still wondered if the data had been added with a zero.

Granaries were built on Sardinia to store grain that had not been brought back to the mainland.

Isaac Abravanel and Luis de Santangel discussed that they could sell 30 million quarts (381 million kilograms) of wheat and store the rest.

The three countries of the Iberian Peninsula were crammed with 8 million quarts, and the same sales were arranged in France and Germany (the whole of the Holy Roman Empire and the Teutonic Knights), and the remaining 6 million quart wheat was sold to England, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Northern Europe, and the Baltic region.

The flood of wheat into the market led to a 10% drop in prices, resulting in a net profit of 8.4 million ducats after deducting the cost of 20% of the original selling price. That's almost 8 times the annual revenue of France and 10 times that of England at this time!

The rest of the wheat and buckwheat remained in Sardinia, partly for the internal digestion of the hundreds of thousands of people in Sardinia, and partly for the consumption of the armies of Aragon and Castile. A small portion of the remainder, after consulting Ferdinand, was distributed to the most remote and impoverished villages of Castile, such as Alcaglia and Extremadura, and sold to poor local farmers at a quarter of the market price.

These almsgiving to the poor villages of Castile highlighted the contribution of King Ferdinand of Aragon, who found himself in Castile with a somewhat ...... reputation Not so good, after all, Aragon and Castile are next to each other, and they can let their neighbors know about any bad things they have done in their own house before. Considering the history of the Castilian populace who supported Archduke Philip and despised King Ferdinand, Ferdinand felt that he was a failure, at least in Castile. Even a sadist who is uneducated and unskilled, and who is extravagant in lewdness, is more popular than himself? And Castile, as the main body of Spain, had to make a good impression on the people there.

Fortunately, this good impression has grown, and the previous experiment of "God's coercion" with the Pope made the simple Castilian people have some awe of Ferdinand, and then Ferdinand resisted João II to completely annex the New World to Castile, which made the people cheer. Ferdinand deliberately made people publicize - and it is true anyway - that the new territory belonged entirely to the Kingdom of Castile according to the Pope's order, and had nothing to do with Aragon, but Ferdinand was indifferent to fame and fortune, and fought for the well-being of the Castilian people, even at the risk of the Hundred Years' War, to ensure the interests of Castile.

However, it is worth mentioning that once the New World was discovered, it was declared that all the land was the domain of the crown (for the time being, this does not conflict with the Santa Fe Agreement), and that taxes and commerce were monopolized by the crown (to be mentioned later).

Now to help the poor farmers, there should be a wave of prestige, right?

Ferdinand inquired about the local agriculture and found that there was no famine in any area this year, so he dismissed the idea of giving relief in other areas, after all, the style of the European pig country in Spain in later generations was famous all over the world, and Ferdinand felt that he could not easily spoil the Spaniards, so he could work for relief.

As for Sardinia itself, the island brought in workers and craftsmen from all over the country, and took in some poor and even bankrupt peasants in the Castilian countryside, while recruiting some fishermen. There were 98,000 serfs in Sardinia, 3,000 peasants in special territories (who signed semi-sell-out agreements and obtained land on loans but were not allowed to leave the island without permission), 5,000 fishermen, 10,000 workers and their families, 1,200 craftsmen and technicians, 300 officials, 10,500 generals, officers and soldiers, 500 intelligence agencies Nidhogg, a total of 128,500 people, and 4 million quartes of wheat were enough for them. And fishermen don't need wheat.

Wait, isn't there something missing? Where did the aristocracy go?

Oh, the current puppet kingdom of Sardinia, from a political point of view, may be the darkest, most autocratic, most dictatorial, and most human rights country in the whole of Europe, the orders of the king and the prime minister can decide the life and death of everyone, the few local nobles of Sardinia have been purged because of the yang and yin and the "rebellion tendency", a large number of homesteaders have left the island after being forcibly bought land, and a large number of serfs and a small number of local poor peasants who are loyal to the royal family and have to buy indulgences even if they live in extreme poverty have taken their place, Nidhogg can arrest and try anyone suspected, with an army of 8.17% of the population and a fortress defense system that covers the entire island.

……

In this way, 8.4 million ducats entered the treasury of the Sardinian puppet kingdom, and then transferred to the private treasury of the king of Aragon, plus the profit of more than 600,000 ducats from Ferdinand's salt, a total of about 9 million ducats!

Now Ferdinand is undoubtedly the richest man in Europe, but Ferdinand can't be alone, after all, the country still needs to develop, and there is no use for saving money, Ferdinand only added 700,000 ducats to his private treasury (not that he is greedy, but also useful), and the rest can be invested in the construction of Sardinian cities, cotton textiles, steel production, lead and zinc mining, etc.

But the three most important of these expenditures were military spending, industry, and the development of the New World!

Ferdinand spent 3.5 million ducats on military spending in one go! They will be used to maintain a large army of 236,700 men – 150,000 Castilian Army, 85,000 Aragon Army, and a 1,700-strong cantonment corps.

At the same time, the construction of the two major fleets of the Union Navy was accelerated, the Castilian Navy was good at ocean voyages, and the Aragon Navy was good at fighting in the Mediterranean. It was the latter who received the most ships in 1495, as the war with France and later the conflict with the Ottomans were about to be faced.

Therefore, as early as before leaving, Ferdinand directly ordered that from the second half of 1494 to the whole of 1495, the Aragonese shipyard and the Castilian shipyards in Galicia and Granada should build 50 500-ton English Galen warships (now the first in Aragon) and 50 Galen ships to arm merchant ships, which were respectively allocated to the Mediterranean Fleet and the Atlantic Fleet, and together with the 2,000 18-pounder Cofflin cannons to be given to the navy in 1495, it would definitely make the French want to die, and the Portuguese would be under great pressure.

However, the French should not suffer any casualties, because the western Mediterranean has no place for them to speak.

It was difficult to imagine at the end of the 15th century that an army of this size could have been maintained for a long time while fighting several wars in succession, except for the Ottoman Empire, but it was not that no European country had reached this level at that time.

The Castilian-Aragon army in 1492 was close to this level, due to the needs of large-scale wars, the army swelled dramatically, almost 200,000 men, but was quickly disarmed in history.

In the 16th and early 17th centuries, half of the Spanish Empire's military spending was spent on expensive gunpowder, replenishing damaged weapons, and procuring food to feed the army. In addition to the soldiers, the horses of the Spanish army also had to consume a lot of grain and grass to feed, and the grain and grass consumed by one horse was equivalent to the rations of several soldiers.

On the contrary, mercenaries are not paid a large amount. According to the data, even at the beginning of the 17th century, when prices were soaring, the annual salary of each mercenary was only about 12.5 ducats, cavalry was higher, and infantry was less than that, about 12 ducats.

The 10,000 soldiers in Sardinia, at the end of the 15th century, spent only 25,000 ducats per year. The soldiers of the Reclamation Corps before had an annual salary of 32 ducats each, which was equivalent to 160 ducats in 1620! It is more than ten times that of mercenaries, which is a treatment that only first-class sailors from aristocratic backgrounds can enjoy, and it is popularized to every soldier in the army-based reclamation corps, which naturally makes them grateful and desperate. The entire Reclamation Corps, with about 1,700 troops, actually gets an annual salary of 60,000 ducats every year!

For the 236,700 troops of the combined Castilian-Aragon army planned by Ferdinand, even if they were to build a barracks and purchase enough gunpowder and weapons, the total cost would only be about 1 million ducats.

However, the word "only about" is only applicable to Ferdinand, who invested 3.5 million ducats in military spending in one go, in this era, England's financial revenue is only six or seven hundred thousand ducats, and France's financial revenue is worth 1 million ducats, if you let them use 1 million ducats for military spending, then the king of France can't do anything other than expand his army, and the king of England is still out of reach even if he doesn't eat or drink, as for the empty Castilian treasury that has just barely gotten rid of, Even if you run a horse for ten years, it will be difficult for you to scrape together so much military spending.

In fact, in this day and age, maintaining an army is not the most expensive. What really spends money is to actually fight a war.

At present, in Europe, the price per pound of gunpowder is about 0.5 shillings.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the European countries may not have to think about the shape of war a hundred years later, but in Spain it would become a reality within twenty years, and more than half of the army in Aragon had begun to adapt to it, and the Sardinian garrison was fully equipped with the level of equipment of the Thirty Years' War - it was normal for a musketeer to carry a pound of gunpowder in each battle. Each shot has a charge of 10 grams, which can shoot about 45 shots.

And the artillery is even more amazing, and now, the entire Sardinian garrison has reached the level of artillery of the Spanish army at the beginning of the 17th century. At the beginning of the 17th century, the ratio of Spanish artillery to ammunition was generally about 1 to 2. That is, to fire an 18-pound shell, you need to hold 9 pounds of gunpowder. 9 pounds of gunpowder worth 4.5 shillings, 10 shillings for 1 ducat...... That is, it costs almost 1 ducat to fire two shots. Two hundred artillery guns fired a salvo, one shot per gun, and 100 ducats, or 37,500 Malawidi, were knocked out in one round...... And a battle, even if each cannon is fired 10 rounds, it is enough for a huge amount of money of 1,000 ducats, even if there is only such intensity, lasting 30 days, it will cost 30,000 ducats, and Ferdinand produced 2,000 18-pounder Kofilin cannons for the navy in 1495, if you follow the gameplay of modern naval warfare, several rounds of salvos......

As for the muskets, the number of musketeers in the Spanish phalanx was about one-third of the total, the number of Aragonese musketeers, who had already begun to implement the Spanish phalanx (the Sardinian garrison did not engage in such "low-end" things, they had lined up to shoot, but the proportion was about the same). Aragon currently formed a "First Army of the Western Reclamation Corps" of 25,000 men, with about 8,000 musketeers.

These 8,000 musketeers, each shot they fired, they had to consume 10 grams of gunpowder, and 8,000 people fired a salvo, knocking out 80,000 grams at a time. 80,000 grams is 80 kilograms, which is equivalent to 160 catties, and the price of gunpowder per catty is 1 tael of silver. 160 pounds of gunpowder, that's about 4 pounds, 8 duccats.

In a battle of several hours, the musketeers had to fire at least 10 shots. In the 17th century, Europeans were stupid and liked to stand there for long periods of time, and the musketeers would not draw their swords until they had finished a pound of gunpowder. Other words. 8,000 musketeers, a battle costs almost 8,000 pounds of gunpowder, worth about 200 pounds, or 400 ducats, 150,000 malawidi. Add to that the price of lead bullets and iron balls, which is simply astronomical.

Therefore, a war that lasted for several years, even more than ten years, and decades was enough to bankrupt a world hegemon like the Spanish Empire, especially since Spain only relied on local taxation and colonial wealth, and did not develop its own agriculture, cotton textiles, and iron and steel, which were fundamentally productive industries, so it was eventually dragged down and quickly declined.

In the East during the same period, the Ming Dynasty, which had developed productive forces, had gunpowder prices 20 times cheaper than those in the West, so it could still afford the wars against the Later Jin. Houjin in the era of completely cold weapons naturally doesn't have to care too much about military spending. Moreover, under the harsh autocracy of the Eastern feudal dynasties, the soldiers were poorly paid and had heavy obligations, and it was not a problem to support the war of hundreds of thousands of troops.

The Eastern countries had a complete taxation mechanism that could feed more armies, while Western countries could not over-tax the nobles and commoners in peacetime, and could only rely on the production and trade taxes of the royal domain. Therefore, in terms of financial resources, the feudal dynasties in the East also surpassed those in the West.

Therefore, the royal family of Castile immediately declared trade in the New World a royal monopoly. Ferdinand even more desperately, directly declared the new western territory as the "Western Territory of the Royal House of Castile", immigrants can be in the past, merchants can also do business, but you are all equal to the people, so that the army of the American continent can be mobilized in wartime, and taxes can always be levied on the new territory in peacetime, and the nobles don't want to get involved in the New World, at least it is impossible to turn even an inch of land above into their own territory. Ferdinand would not have given colonies to the nobility as the kings of Western Europe had done in history, and immigration would have been led by the royal family and government.