Chapter 28: Impact I
Amsterdam is one of the most vibrant cities in Europe at this time. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info
A refuge for Jews, heretics, reformers, Puritans, a paradise for bankers.
It's not the seat of the Dutch regime, but it's easy to get here. In addition, there was still a war going on in the south, and Chen Jian bypassed the northern route, so he could only choose to stop there.
After a month and seven days of sailing, Chen Jian finally saw the figure of the Dutch fishing boat on the sea. Legend has it that a knife and a herring changed the fate of the Netherlands, and these boats have run to the waters of northern Britain to catch fish.
It was north of England, with high winds and rough seas, and recruited Dutch sailors and navigators carefully commanded the ships.
It's about to arrive, and they don't want anything wrong so they can get paid well.
The opening of a new route was not simple, and one ship in the fleet sank, but fortunately, everyone was rescued.
Two ships were blown away from the flotilla by the storm and were nowhere to be found. One can only hope that the two ships did not run aground.
Heading to the Netherlands, Jian Chen was eager to meet the legendary Maurice of Nassau, the legendary army reformer, and it would be better to take a group photo.
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At this time, Amsterdam is in full swing, and sailboats are constantly passing through the harbor every day. The war in the south did not affect this area, and the soldiers fighting the war were still mainly mercenaries, which was not at all the kind of war scene that a real nation-state should have.
The wealth that these fleets brought to the Netherlands also brought with them the military expenses needed by the mercenaries.
For businessmen, although they care about the victory or defeat of the war, they still care more about those business information.
In the past two years, there have been two pieces of news that have attracted great attention from businessmen.
Two years ago, the fleet of the "West" India Company captured a Portuguese cargo ship carrying raw silk from Nagasaki in the waters near Macao.
Soon, the ship, laden with raw silk, returned to Amsterdam's trading market from far away Asia. Just in time for the natural disaster of the Italian sericulture industry, the raw silk was sold for a whopping 2 million guilders.
This was good news for these investors, who had been defeated in the previous war in Macau, and had not been able to open the door to trade with the Ming Dynasty.
The profits from this raw silk also allowed the Dutch to gain better trading channels, so they wanted to bribe officials to obtain a treaty port in the Ming Dynasty in order to compete with the grape people.
Another thing.
It was a Dutch ship that had returned from the Americas half a year ago, bringing with it a shipment of cargo from another mysterious country.
These exquisite goods also sold for a high price, making the captain an overnight celebrity.
After telling the story of his adventures in the Spanish colonial archipelago, the captain became a celebrity in Amsterdam, and the stories he told became more and more mysterious.
It was thought that the northern route to the east did not exist, or that it was just an ocean full of storms.
But in the face of these delicate goods and the two flintlock pistols that Jian Chen gave him as gifts, it all became a real possibility.
Some merchants were already dissatisfied with the West India Company's monopoly on the routes, and there was no news of the previous explorations.
This time, it was like a shot in the arm, once again setting off a wave of eastward exploration of northern trade routes.
The incident also caused the rest of the political repercussions.
Since the beginning of the year, Eugenia and his wife have already proposed peace talks to the north, and the Spanish royal family is unable to fight anymore and has acquiesced in the secret peace talks between the two couples.
Some people, headed by the speaker of the Grand Assembly, Alden Barnefeldt, hope that the peace talks can proceed quickly.
Morris and his brother insisted that Spain was running out of oil and was only using a delaying tactic and that the war should continue.
On the one hand, with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom, the Dutch side has also reached the point of exhaustion.
On the other hand, the seemingly stable internal power struggle has also begun. The growing prestige and growing support of the Morris brothers is not good news for some Republicans in the United States. Some want a Dutch of free association of provinces, not a governor-general, a ruling Netherlands.
The differences between the two sides are getting bigger and bigger, and the rift is getting deeper and deeper as this peace talks are discussed.
And the news of the rich captain who came back from the eastern islands also became a bargaining chip in the internal peace talks.
Some people thought that they should hurry up and negotiate peace with Spain, and focus more on sailing eastward to explore that mysterious country and start trading.
For this reason, Spain could agree to some conditions, not to focus on Spanish America, but to bypass Spain to trade with this rich country and transship goods.
And the captain, after becoming rich, gave a flintlock pistol as a gift to Maurice, and told the show of the volley of musketeers he had seen, which caused Morris to think deeply.
His tactical idea was to maximize the power of his musket, but due to the rate of fire, his tactics had to rely on a large number of spearmen.
If what the captain said was true, the war could go on, and it would have been easier to change his tactical system if he had enough muskets.
After seeing the flintlock pistol, Maurice believed what the captain had relayed, and a fleet of ships sailing east in search of the mysterious republic began to prepare.
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Chen Jian's round-the-world fleet arrived in the Netherlands under such circumstances.
In fact, before they reached the port, they encountered the Dutch fleet.
After some negotiations, the translated official documents were handed in, and I was able to enter the port.
For the Dutch, Chen Jian's group is a group of people full of exotic customs, and it is a huge team of more than 1,000 people.
The same was true for Jian Chen and the rest of the fleet, who couldn't find anything familiar here, the only similarities they could find were the busy trading and harbor here, and the tinkling of coins.
It has to be said that the Netherlands was the busiest port at this time, and the shipping advantages connecting the Baltic Sea and the rest of the shipping lanes overshadowed the ports of Minjun.
The sails are like a forest, the population is dense, and the boats on the canal that are used as houses show the prosperity of this place.
The Dutch did not express much shock at the army after Chen Jianjian. This is a standard legation corps, and it makes sense to have an army escort. Moreover, at this time, the Netherlands did not have the concept of a national army, and Morris's army was still dominated by mercenaries from England, Scotland and Germany, and the real Dutch were only more than 20 companies.
The strong business atmosphere here was quickly verified, but in the morning, a large number of businessmen came to discuss the sale of goods with Chen Jian.
Chen Jian blamed the matter on some employees of the Nanyang Trading Company, and asked them to talk to them about the issue.
Later, he expressed the idea of meeting with the Speaker or the Consul, and as an interaction between the two countries, this opinion should also be taken seriously.
Amsterdam, although prosperous, is not the seat of parliament in the Netherlands, but should be in The Hague to the south. However, the country is not big in the first place, and the speed of messaging should be fast.