In order to reflect the neutral attitude of the Chinese Empire towards the American Civil War, the Chinese Empire did not sit on the ground and raise prices because the Southern Federation of the United States was in a hurry and asked for a short period of supply, but gave the Southern Union and the Northern government the same offer.

The 1858 Linde rifle was still fifteen pounds, and the 1856 Linde rifle was five pounds!

However, due to the Federal Confederacy's demand for fast supply, the Chinese side even asked the Chinese side to take the initiative to provide ocean-going cargo ships and transport these ordnance to the ports of the Confederation.

So they paid an additional so-called expedited fee, so the Chinese Empire had to supply the first batch of 10,000 Linde rifles of the 1858 model within two months of signing the contract, load them on ships in the port of Shanghai, supply the second batch of 10,000 in the third month, and the remaining 10,000 in the fourth month.

Even in order to make a quick supply to the Chinese Empire, they promised to order an ironclad ship from the Shanghai shipyard!

Many of China's arsenals belong to the royal family, which is not a secret abroad, and many people can know that China's defense enterprises such as the Shanghai Textile Company, Linde Machinery Factory, Shanghai Shipyard, and Jinling Arsenal are all wholly-owned enterprises of the royal family.

This is why the Shanghai Textile Company has been able to represent many Chinese defense companies in signing arms sales contracts with the North and South of the United States.

In order to make the Chinese side pay more attention to the order of the Southern Federation, the Southern Federation put forward a large order for an ironclad ship!

After the news came back to China, the Shanghai shipyard was about to go crazy with excitement, this is an order worth more than 100,000 pounds. And the profit is quite high, if you build such a foreign trade order. The profit was more than the manufacture of three or even four ironclads for the Imperial Navy.

Under the influence of many factors, the team represented by Zhou Suoquan soon signed a formal ship purchase contract with the relevant representatives of the Southern Federation!

The warship procured by the US Southern Union is based on the USS Nunail, which is being built at the Shanghai shipyard. However, the U.S. Confederate Navy also has its own requirements, that is, the speed should be increased. To this end, the Shanghai shipyard relatively reduced the firepower and armor configuration, used the freed up weight for the power configuration, and adopted the sail-steam hybrid according to the requirements of the Americans.

In the end, the Shanghai shipyard revised the design scheme between the first and third schemes, with a design displacement of 1,800 tons, a steam sail hybrid, a maximum speed of 13 knots, and a standard configuration of four 150 mm rear-loading guns and four 120-mm rear-loading guns. The side armor was made of teak wrought iron mixed and equipped with an open-air rotating casemate.

The price paid by the Southern Federation for this warship is 160,000 pounds, which is an absolute price for those wooden warships in the past few years, but it is not expensive for the ironclad ships of this era, especially foreign trade warships.

In comparison, the British Warrior cost more than 370,000 pounds, of course, the Warrior is a huge warship of more than 9,000 tons, while the United States ordered less than 2,000 tons of ironclads.

However, it is worth noting that the firepower of the battleship sold by China is not an old front-loading gun. Rather, they were breech-loading rifled guns, and these naval guns were equipped with open-air rotating batteries

This complete set of naval artillery systems is the most advanced naval artillery system of our time, and in terms of advanced technology, it is even more advanced than the firepower of the Warrior. The Warrior has a rear-loading gun. But at least partially, a lot of them are front-loading guns.

160,000 pounds, according to the current international exchange rate of gold and silver. 1 pound can be exchanged for 4.609 imperial silver dollars, so this 160,000 pounds is equivalent to about 730,000 imperial silver dollars. It's a lot more expensive than the Lady Snail ordered by the Empire!

The Imperial Navy did not order the entire ship, but the steam engine, hull, and naval guns were purchased separately. The final purchase price was about 500,000 yuan, which was the most expensive warship ever ordered by the Imperial Navy.

Compared with the Female Snail, the ironclad ship ordered by the United States has more sail systems and much more power, and at the same time, all foreign trade warships are basically sold at a higher price, so it is understandable that the price is so expensive.

The total value of the arms sales contracts signed by the empire and the north and south of the United States is about 1.2 million pounds, which is only a fraction of the total export value of more than 100 million yuan a year for the empire.

But you must know that the current composition of the empire's export products is mainly raw silk, porcelain, and tea, and as for the export of industrial products, especially guns and warships, this is the first time.

This kind of first time was of great value to the Empire, which meant that although the Empire's industrial base, especially heavy industry, was still weak, it was able to compete with the international powers in the field of military industry.

At the same time, this order of 1.2 million pounds may not be a big deal for the raw silk industry, which often costs tens of millions, but it is a very important order for the domestic heavy industry.

This order will allow the few defense enterprises of the empire to make more profits, which in turn will allow them to upgrade their technology and expand their scale, which in turn will lead to the further development of the entire heavy industry.

After these two orders were transmitted back to China, Lin Zhe even personally instructed the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department to treat these two orders with a positive and serious attitude, and strive to make a name for themselves in the international arms market and win more ordnance orders.

The impact of this order is definitely not just a profit of hundreds of thousands of pounds, and if this order is done well, there will be more orders to come.

Do you think, who is there in the world now, with mature technology and rear-loading rifles that have been tested by harsh war?

Only the 1858 Linde rifle of the Chinese Empire!

Once this rifle performed well in the American Civil War, and even changed the course of the war between the two sides, then it was time for this rifle to become famous all over the world, and it was expected that more orders would come from both the North and the South.

At the same time, other countries may also flock to buy this rifle!

Perhaps, the weapon that made a name for himself in this American Civil War would not have been the 12-pounder Napoleon gun, nor the 1853 Enfield, but the 1858 Linde rifle, the 1859 front-loading rifled gun from China.

Tens of thousands of orders for guns were received at once, and all of them were required to be supplied within a few months, which made several Chinese arsenals extremely busy all of a sudden.

Although the total output of the 1858 Linde rifle of the four major and only four arsenals in China, the Linde Machinery Factory, the Jinling Arsenal, the Changsha Arsenal and the Tianjin Arsenal, has already exceeded 10,000 units per month, it has reached a high level of 18,000 units per month.

But even if the production is not low, the order for this rifle is very large, and the order from the United States is only a small part, adding up to only 40,000 pieces.

But the total number of orders from the Imperial Military is more than 600,000!

In 1861, the Royal Army, Guards, and even the Navy placed orders for up to 200,000 1858 rifles from the four major arsenals.

Originally, the order for the production of the military was enough to keep the factory running, but now it has received an order for 40,000 rifles from the United States, which has once again made the production capacity of several arsenals insufficient.

As a result, the situation of overtime that has not occurred for a long time appeared in these four arsenals again, and at the same time, in addition to the Linde Machinery Factory, the other three arsenals coincidentally began to increase the production line of this rifle to expand production capacity.

As for the Linde Machinery Factory, they are not in a hurry to expand their production capacity, because unlike the other three arsenals. As the largest comprehensive arsenal in China, the rifle business of Linde Machinery Factory is also important, but it is only a part of it.

Linde Machinery Factory is also a supplier of various naval guns for the Navy, producing hundreds of naval guns of various types every year, and they also produce front-loading rifled guns, grenades, various shells and bullets.

Now the scale of Linde Machinery Factory is large enough, and the factory area is getting bigger and bigger, and now it has more than 10,000 workers.

Moreover, the Linde Machinery Factory is located in Shanghai, and now the pressure to set up a factory in Shanghai is also increasing, and at the same time, Shanghai, a coastal city, is not suitable for heavy industry, raw materials have to be shipped abroad, and it is also facing the threat of being attacked by the enemy's navy.

Therefore, many years ago, the royal industry has stopped the expansion of the Linde Machinery Factory, and the expansion of the enterprise is mainly focused on the R&D department, and the expansion of production capacity has stopped.

The main ones that carried out large-scale capacity expansion were the other three arsenals, and their scale was not large, and the smallest Changsha arsenal only produced 2,000 rifles per month.

Since the export of the 1858 Linde rifle had been completely relaxed, it was not long before someone other than the Americans came to the door to purchase some 1858 Linde rifles.

First, the Siamese envoy came over and said that he wanted to order 500 pieces, and then Lin Chengting's envoy also came over and said that he wanted to order 1,000 pieces.

In this regard, Lin Zhe did not refuse, and even felt that they ordered too little!

However, Siam's annual financial income is only so small, and you can't just come up with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds.

As for Lin Chengting, many of his family funds were looted in the country at the beginning, and after running to the poor place in Burma, it was extremely difficult to even feed the tens of thousands of troops under his hands, and it can even be said that in the past year or so, he has been at war with the Gongbang Dynasty and even the British in Burma, and he has become poorer and poorer, and he is no longer the arrogant spirit of taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase various ordnance and weapons with a wave of his hand.

So don't look at the fiscal revenue and expenditure of the United States and Britain in this era, which are casually hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of pounds, but for the vast majority of other countries, especially those small feudal agricultural countries that have not yet been exposed to industrialization, tens of millions of pounds are very reluctant.

Historically, hundreds of thousands of pounds or even millions of pounds of ironclad ships were built by the British a few times a year, and dozens of them were built in one go, but at the same time, the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the Japanese were in the same period, and the purchase of an ironclad ship was a national event, and the British built more than two ironclad ships every year. (To be continued.) )