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"Your Excellency General, this carriage was brought from Hong Kong, and it was a gift from me, would you like to try it?"

Zhu Jishi pointed to the black four-wheeled Western carriages that had just been equipped with haode, and smiled at the Tokugawa family, who came to greet him at Edo Pier. While talking, he also looked at Jiaqing, this is a bad old man who is overly drunk, although he is only 56 years old, but he looks like he is 70 years old. There is not a trace of vitality in the body, and Japan will not have any future under his leadership.

As for Masahiro Abe, who accompanied Tokugawa Iekei, although he was young and strong, he exuded a kind of lofty arrogance, although he was very polite to Zhu Jishi, but he did not take a good look at Zhu Jianyu and Saigo Takanaga......

Zhu Jishi's words, Zhu Jianyu translated them into Japanese and told Tokugawa Iekei and Abe Masahiro.

Seriously, Zhu Jishi was a little stunned when he saw the coffin and a sedan chair prepared for him by the shogunate. Wouldn't these Japanese imitate a Chinese-style green tweed sedan chair? It's better to sit comfortably, how to sit in this coffin sedan chair? Curled up in and sitting cross-legged? It's no wonder that the legs and feet don't get numb! So he hurriedly pulled Tokugawa Iekei and himself in the carriage.

"Thank you so much." Tokugawa Iekei was also quite curious about the heir of the Ming Dynasty in front of him, who was wearing a bright yellow robe and a black gauze hat, especially this person also brought two hundred guards wearing big red flying fish suits and carrying foreign guns-I heard that it was called Jinyi Pro-Army, and the whole set was the costume and name of the Ming Dynasty. But look at these two Western carriages, and the three Western galleons on the pier. General Jiaqing had a deeper understanding of the "national capital" in the "Theory of the Founding of the First Army".

"This carriage is so comfortable!" Get into a carriage with soft cushions. Tokugawa Iekei couldn't help but praise it. This car is indeed more comfortable than a small coffin-like sedan chair. It's better to ride a horse than to walk in that sedan chair.

"We don't need to believe in Western Catholicism. But their good stuff, we should still use, don't we? As Zhu Jishi spoke, he took a beautiful cherry wood box and handed it to General Jiaqing. This is a six-shot foreign gun, which is much more advanced than the ancient iron cannon, and it is also a gift to His Excellency the General. ”

"Six shots!" The general opened the wooden box and took out a Colt revolver produced by the "Jason-Churchill" factory. Look at it carefully for a while. The workmanship of this gun is extremely exquisite, I don't know how much more exquisite than the "fist gun" produced by Japanese craftsmen, and it is also six consecutive shots!

"Do foreigners' spears have such a six-shot shot?" General Jiaqing asked.

"Not really, but recently the trend of rifles with an effective range of up to three or four hundred yards has become popular, and it is estimated that the old smoothbore guns can be completely eliminated within ten years."

Zhu Jishi was talking about the Besser Mai rifle, and in addition to Lan Fangxing's gun factory, the "Jason Churchill" gun factory also obtained the production authorization to start producing this rifle in Britain. In exchange, Lan Fang also obtained a license to produce ammonium oil explosives in Lan Fang. By the way, the Grand Duchy of Lanfang also has a Patent Law. And because Lanfang is a British protectorate, it is a valid patent in the UK. Also protected in the Grand Duchy of Lanfang.

"There are such foreign guns? Is it easy to reload? Jiaqing hurriedly asked.

"Your Excellency General, this kind of foreign gun has been used in Hong Kong, and it is extremely convenient to reload, because this foreign gun uses a special bullet." It was Zhu Jianyu who answered this question. "This time, the armed merchant ships that came to Japan with Lord Ming Gong were equipped with 500 of these foreign guns, 3,000 imitation brown bass smoothbore guns, six 32-pounder guns, and 12 12-pounder cannons. All of them were intended to be sold to the shogunate for military reinforcement. ”

Needless to say, the sale of arms to the shogunate was certainly a crucial step in opening the door to Japan, and although Zhu did not want Japan to be truly founded, he wanted to let Jishixing squeeze into Japan's almost completely closed market.

As the size of the Jishi army continued to increase, the expenses of the Zhu Jishi rebel group also increased. Although there are three major sources of wealth, such as the dividends of the World Bank, the coolie trade, and the "fraud" of the Qing Dynasty, Zhu Jishi has not forgotten to find more ways to make money, and trade with Japan is an important part of it.

"I'm afraid it will cost a lot of money to buy so many weapons at once, right?" Tokugawa Iekei was a little embarrassed.

The Tokugawa shogunate's finances were in trouble more than 100 years ago in the Genroku period, and the depletion of gold and silver mines and the outflow of silver from overseas trade caused signs of deflation in Japan. The main purpose of the subsequent Kabo, Lenien, and Tenpo reforms, which is now being implemented, was to improve the shogunate's revenues. However, the effect was extremely limited, and so far, the shogunate's annual fiscal deficit was still high in the hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, which had to be covered by the minting of bad coins. Therefore, it is difficult to squeeze out funds to buy the weapons brought by Zhu Jishi.

However, according to the theory in the "Theory of the Founding of the Shogun", in order to maintain its power, the shogunate must strengthen its armaments, organize a new army, build forts, and consolidate coastal defenses. Inevitably, another huge expense is one of Tokugawa Iekei's biggest headaches at the moment.

"Money is not an issue." Zhu Jishi smiled and waved his hand, took out a silver dollar from his pocket and handed it to Tokugawa Iekei.

"Riyang?" Tokugawa Iekei had seen a silver dollar, but this was the first time he had seen this "Japanese ocean".

"Shogun, this is the legal tender designed by HSBC for the future of Japan, the Japanese Ocean." Zhu Jianyu explained, "If you weigh it, it is equivalent to seven coins and two cents of the Qing Dynasty's treasury, and the silver content is ninety percent." At present, in the Qing Kingdom and Nanyang, such silver dollars are legal tender. Master Ming suggested that the shogunate also issue the same currency, and if the shogunate could entrust the issuance of Japanese and foreign currencies to HSBC, HSBC could lend three million silver dollars to the shogunate for the purchase of weapons and equipment for the Jishixing and Lanfangxing, at an annual interest rate of 6%. ”

Borrowing from a foreign bank? Tokugawa Iekei was stunned for a moment, most of the feudal lords in Japan now owed a butt of loan sharks, and the total debt was said to be as high as 60 million taels of silver! It costs 3 million stone of rice to pay interest alone. As a result, the feudal lords of Japan were basically poor - in fact, this situation was deliberately caused by the Tokugawa shogunate, and Tokugawa Ieyasu used a system of pilgrimage to make the feudal lords run between the domains of Edo, and they also had to maintain their own mansions and retainers in Edo and a decent life, so the cost was staggering, and over time the financial resources were exhausted and they could not fight against the shogunate.

However, as a result of the exhaustion of the financial resources of each domain, the bankruptcy of the middle and lower class samurai was also exacerbated, and a large number of ronin with only one sword and one life appeared, which became an almost inexplicable factor of instability.

Compared with the feudal lords, the shogunate itself was quite passable, because the shogunate had the right to mint money, and by indiscriminately issuing bad coins, the shogunate received 1.6 million taels a year (of course, including copper coins and gold and silver mines). Now it is naturally impossible for Tokugawa Iekei to exchange the coinage rights for a loan of 3 million silver dollars.

"If the shogunate can designate HSBC as the only currency issuing bank in Japan, HSBC can pay 1 million yuan in seigniorage to the shogunate every year." Zhu Jishi raised the price with a smile.

The mines controlled by the shogunate can still provide hundreds of thousands of silver dollars in revenue every year, plus the 1 million yuan seigniorage tax provided by HSBC, which can basically be offset by the income of the shogunate's indiscriminate issuance of bad money.

At this time, Japan's economy was far inferior to China's. China has three major export commodities of tea, silk, and porcelain, oh, and in the past two years, there has been an extra Coptis chinensis (which Jishixing bought to produce berberine), and if it is not for the damn opium, it can get a surplus of several million taels of silver from the international market every year, so there is no shortage of silver in the country. At this time, Japanese tea, silk and porcelain could not compete with their Chinese counterparts. As a result, there are no export products, and there is a deficit in international trade year after year - this is probably the reason why imperialism has not invaded until now, right?

But how is Zhu Jishi going to profit from this small and poor Japanese country? Tokugawa Iekei didn't quite understand.

"A million silver dollars a year is enough...... But how is HSBC going to make a profit? (To be continued......)