Chapter 11: Damn Virtual Currency

In order to give the saviors a full understanding of the concept of wealth in medieval Europe before the Age of Discovery, Knight Levi took out his money bag from the cabinet under his desk, then loosened the string at the mouth of the bag, and poured out a large pile of coins with a clatter.

-- In this purse, there are four coins of different denominations. Two are copper coins: the Opol (e) and the Half Aopol, which were small medieval coins that can be compared to the one-yuan and five-dimel coins in modern China.

The other two types of coins with more purchasing power are silver coins. The smaller silver coin bears the name of the ancient Roman Empire and is called the Denire (CE, which can also be translated as the name of the Dinar Labes and Europeans, which is actually the heritage of Roman civilization). This was the general unit of equivalent commonly used in the Middle Ages. Rather peculiarly, in England, this silver coin was called "penny" and has been used until modern times. Of course, medieval pennies are not the same thing as modern English pennies, and their purchasing power is many times higher.

The larger silver coin was the French Turkros cru, which weighed 42 grams, and was equal to 13 or 14 French dinars, but only 4 pence - because England was in a much better financial position in the Middle Ages than France, and the silver content of pennies was not significantly reduced. On the other hand, the French dinar was adulterated with more and more impurities, depreciating year after year, and finally from silver to copper. Of course, the French dinar at this time is still a silver coin mixed with a lot of copper...... Or a copper coin mixed with a lot of silver.

According to the prices in the south of France at the time, a chicken was worth six dinars, a large hare cost twelve dinars, a bottle of western vinegar made from grapes was worth two to five dinars, and a pound of high-quality crackers in a pastry shop could be sold for three dinars, but because sugar and cream were too expensive for ordinary shops to use, medieval pastries were not as sweet and delicious as modern pastries.

Obviously, if you don't take into account the antique collection value, the medieval Opol copper coins are worthless scrap copper in modern times, and the medieval dinar silver coins ...... In fact, the silver content is also very problematic, and there are not many impurities mixed in it. And even if it's a real solid silver coin, these gadgets are worth a few dollars a little bit each of them – don't forget, a gram of silver in the modern world is worth only a few yuan

In short, after listening to the price of goods introduced by Li Wei, Wang Qiudu pondered whether to mint some silver coins by himself to set up shopping materials in the Middle Ages.

At the same time, Doraemon frowned and stuffed all these coins into the [automatic pawn machine], and then he was not without disappointment to see that the [automatic pawn machine] that slammed the door really did not value these copper and dinar coins as antiques......

“…… It's only 10,000 yen in total, and it's not even enough for the price of the medicine I gave you just now," looking at such a lonely bill in his hand, Doraemon couldn't help but sigh, "...... Is this the pocket money of elementary school students? It's a shame that you're still a lord, unless you're a homeless person who can't eat in modern society, any working adult won't just go out with such a pitiful little money."

“…… This bag already contains eight Turgros, more than 100 dinars and more than 300 opol, you are still too little? ”

Knight Levi rolled his eyes, "...... That's enough to hire a small team of strong men to go into battle with you."

Well, the wages of the average commoner in medieval Europe seem to have been so miserable that the daily wage of a female weaver was only one dinar.

As for the more valuable gold coins, there are no zài in the pound, franc and mark in those days, let alone rubles. In Europe in 1348, only the Italians were able to mint gold coins on a large scale, specifically in three types: the Genavino gold coin cIu minted in Genoa, the gold florin coin rt minted in Florence, and the Ducatel gold coin (at) in Venice Bank. Regardless of the type of gold coin, the weight is B6 grams, and the purity is relatively high. Among them, the Genavino gold coins of Genovia are mainly circulated in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea Rim, and rarely appear in the European market. As a result, in the big 6 in Europe, the international gold coin pattern of florin and ducart was formed.

According to the market price of gold in 214, the value of a gold florin coin is about 1,000 yuan, which is a very valuable thing.

Because he often had to trade with merchant ships from Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt, he had three gold coins, the florin, the ducat, and the Genavino, on his hands. But the problem is, the number of these gold coins ...... Isn't it a little too little?

“…… Ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two...... Well, that's all there is to it. But you can't take it all, and I'll have to pay my taxes and pay the servants and guards next month, though I don't know how many of them will live until the next month......"

In front of everyone's eyes, Levi counted the gold coins one by one from a beautifully made cedar wooden box, and piled up two small mountains of gold on the table, "...... The eighty gold coins here, you can take them all, count it as the money for the medicine just now and my wife's obstetrics and gynecology hospitalization expenses......"

-- Eighty gold coins, with a net weight of 2o grams, is about 80,000 yuan at the beginning of the 21st century......

Well, although this is already a year's income for ordinary people, deducting the money for medicine and living expenses, it is probably enough for a pregnant woman to give birth to a child in the hospital, but as a noble man, you live in such a big manor, how can you come up with such a small amount of money? This is too picky and too cheap

Moreover, you are only willing to come up with such a small amount of money in total, how can Doraemon profit from it to pay off his debts?

Seeing that Levi was so stingy at such a life-and-death juncture, Doraemon who was in debt of 15 billion yen was suddenly very dissatisfied, "...... Hey, Mr. Levi, it's all over the place, why are you still thinking about saving money? Now is not the time to be thrifty and thrifty, are you still nostalgic for this medieval Europe shrouded in the plague, and don't want to go back to your hometown? Then let's go for nothing."

“…… Yes, Brother Levi, you see that Doraemon is so unhappy, or open the vault happily, do you still want to hold the gold and learn from Grande? Now that he is about to die, how can he be reluctant to give up money? Ma Tong also echoed and persuaded.

“…… Treasury? I'm not a banker, so how could there be such a thing. Levi rolled his eyes angrily, spread his hands, and pushed the pile of eighty gold coins on the table in front of Doraemon, and immediately poured it down, "...... All the gold coins in the entire estate were already here, and there were about 10,000 dinars of silver left. You can't find any more even if you dig three feet into the ground...... Believe it or not"

“…… Is that really all there is to it? No," Wang Qiu touched his chin and said suspiciously, "...... Didn't you say before that this manor was the business base of the Knights Hospitaller, and they had to make a big deal of tens of thousands of gold florins every year? How can you get such a small amount of money? ”

“…… Please, business is business, cash is cash, will Bill Gates pile hundreds of millions of dollars in bills in his villa? ”

Knight Levi rolled his eyes again helplessly, "...... Of course I have assets worth tens of thousands of gold coins, but if you want me to take out tens of thousands of gold coins at once...... Unless it is a usurious Jew, there is no chamber of commerce in this day and age that can casually come up with tens of thousands of gold coins."

As he spoke, he opened a locked drawer and pulled out a thick stack of books, IOUs, deeds, and mortgage contracts, "...... Look at the fifty thousand florins I inherited from the Bacon family, all of these things, can you turn them into money? ”

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Before Columbus came to the New Great6 and thus obtained gold and silver from the Americas, gold and silver precious metals were scarce in medieval Europe.

Since the time of the Roman Empire, there has been a constant outflow of gold and silver from the Euro-Mediterranean world to the East due to the need to import oriental silks and spices. At the height of the Roman Empire, Europeans were able to obtain a certain amount of gold and silver replenishment from black Africa, which was rich in gold and silver south of the Sahara. But with the Arab conquest and the occupation of all of North Africa, even the only way to replenish Europe with gold and silver was cut off.

This was not a problem in the darkest of the early Middle Ages, when commercial trade in Western Europe was almost at a standstill, the few remaining commercial exchanges were mainly bartered, and professional merchants and money even disappeared from the social life of Western Europeans for a time.

However, with the revival of European civilization, merchants, trade, and currency also reappeared on the stage of history, resulting in a huge demand for metal coinage. However, the relatively scarce stock of gold and silver in Western European society soon became more and more difficult to mint a sufficient number of coins to meet the surging demand for money with the commercial exhibition, which meant that the money supply could not keep up with the demand for market transactions, which led to deflation.

If it is in the era of credit money in the 21st century, in the face of this situation, governments only need to engage in a few "quantitative easing" and print more money. But in this ancient era when only gold and silver were recognized, it was not so easy to abuse money - where did the gold and silver used for coinage come from?

The Americas have not yet been discovered, the Gold Coast of West Africa is still the territory of the Muslims, and the gold and silver mines of Europe itself are depleted.

The economic countermeasure of some medieval kings was to continuously reduce the silver content of coins until they turned them into copper coins, achieving a special form of quantitative easing in the coinage era, but the effect was very bad - the indiscriminate banknotes looked exactly the same as the original banknotes, while the silver coins with reduced silver content were of inferior quality at a glance, so they were rejected by the people or used at a discount, which made deflation even more severe.

Especially on the eve of the Black Death, when the population of the Catholic world in Europe had reached a peak, the productive forces were greatly expanded, and the commercial trade was increasing, but the total social stock of gold and silver did not increase much.

Moreover, in the Middle Ages, there were many small countries in Europe, bandits were rampant, and the security environment was very bad, and many nobles and knights in the countryside also had the habit of making cameo appearances as robbers. It was very dangerous for an unarmed ordinary merchant to walk in the wilderness with a large amount of gold and silver coins.

Therefore, as described in "The Wolf and the Spice", merchants in medieval Europe mainly relied on mutual credit and bill of exchange transactions to do business, and cash transactions that paid directly to buy things only accounted for a small part, which was equivalent to entering the era of credit money and virtual currency in advance

-- Although Europeans loved gold and liked to keep a record of their income and expenditure in gold coins in their account books, the main thing they could actually get was silver coins.

Of course, compared with modern e-commerce, this kind of medieval bookkeeping transaction is extremely dependent on honesty and credibility, because most merchants' main assets are on other people's debt bills, and if everyone is accustomed to not being trustworthy and defaulting, then it means the total collapse of the entire trading system

In other words, the merchant circle in medieval Europe was a tightly knit network of countless contracts, bookkeeping, and bills of exchange. In this network system, every businessman owes money to many people, but there are also many people who owe him money, as long as someone's credit can be maintained, the flow of funds can still be turned, even if the deficit on the books is high, he can still operate. Unless the businessman is unlucky enough to suffer from a serious crisis, is on the verge of bankruptcy, and unfortunately there are rumors, there will not be many people rushing to collect the debt.

But on the other hand, when there is an unexpected situation and it is necessary to urgently call for a large amount of gold and silver coins, even a well-run merchant will not have a place to come up with too many coins for a while, and must try to borrow money from peers, relatives and friends, or go to the loan shark merchant to take out a loan.

The problem was that in the face of a catastrophe like the plague, the usurers were usually the quickest to escape.

As a result, due to this former virtual credit currency system, Doraemon was unable to obtain a sufficient amount of gold and silver coins from Levi.

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“…… It was true that I had a net worth of more than 50,000 florins on my books, but I had to take the contract to Florence, Venice, Paris, Lyon, Antwerp, Cologne, London, Bordeaux, and so on to cash it into money. And in the current tragic years of the Black Death, I doubt that by the time we have traveled long distances with the contract to find a place, the other party will have died to the point that there are no bones left. As for the money-lending Jews in Marseille, the Black Death soon came and fled. ”

Sitting behind his desk, playing with a quill pen, Mr. Levi, who was more like a merchant than a knight, spoke eloquently.

“…… Even if it is a bookkeeping transaction, there should generally be collateral, right, we also accept gold, silver and jewelry," Ma Tong said with a frown.

“…… Of course, there is some collateral, and if you want, you can take it as much as you want......"

Knight Levi said this calmly, and at the same time handed over a box of very important collateral: a large number of various title deeds......

Well, these title deeds are indeed very strong and valuable collateral, but unfortunately they are worthless to Doraemon.

In desperation, Doraemon and the others had no choice but to lose their face and discipline, and raided Levi's villa - from the silver tableware used during the meal, the gold wine bowls and gold wine glasses from Levi's private collection, to his wife's gold and silver ornaments and mink coats, and other things that were considered family heirlooms, all of them were swept away. In the end, most of the horses in the stables were even removed: anyway, the knights in this manor had almost died of plague, and it was useless to keep the remaining horses, and they had to be carefully served and cared for, so it was better to pawn them directly: a good horse of European origin can be sold for at least fifty or sixty thousand yuan in modern China, and even a horse pulling a cart can be sold for at least ten thousand yuan.

In the end, Doraemon finally managed to collect about 30 million yen - although it was still a drop in the bucket.

Of course, in return, not only did Doraemon agree to bring Levi's pregnant wife back to Nobi's house, and arrange for her to be admitted to a professional hospital in Tokyo to give birth - for such a "black household" with no household registration and no documents, only the powerful and lawless Doraemon could handle the hospitalization procedures - Teacher Shizuka Jukawa also carefully explained to Levi the simple treatment of the Black Death, so that he could use it for his next medical practice.

“…… Those who have not been ill for a long time and have mild symptoms can be given sulfonamide powder by mouth with an equal amount of sodium bicarbonate powder. But in general, only bubonic plague has a relatively obvious effect...... By the way, both of these powders are white, so don't get confused."

“…… Streptomycin injections are specific drugs that can treat all forms of plague and require higher doses in severely ill patients. ”

“…… There is no silver bullet in this world, and antibiotics and sulfonamides are not guaranteed to cure every plague patient, so please don't mess with the ticket. ”

By the time Shizuka Jukawa had finished explaining and demonstrating to Knight Levi, the others were ready to go on their way back.

――Right now, in Nobi's room, there is still a political commissar Guo Jing who fell from a high altitude and his bones were shattered and unconscious.

It was only at this time that Wang Qiu suddenly remembered something, turned to Levi and asked, "By the way, Brother Levi, I already know about the affairs of your French camp." But do you know anything about the newcomers in the British camp who have been forced to stay in this world? ”

“…… This one...... I don't know anything about the guys on the Fried Chicken Team, and I haven't even figured out how many of them there are, and they haven't met on the battlefield at all......" Levi shrugged, "...... Do you have any news about them? ”

“…… Unfortunately, not at all. You are the only surviving newcomer shown in the Book of Travel. Wang Qiu raised his head and looked at him in confusion, "...... You all escaped alive on the losing side, but why didn't they, as members of the winning side, survive? ”

“…… All the people in the fried chicken team are dead? Levi was shocked at first, but then relieved, "Well, this is actually understandable." We left the battlefield after the Battle of Cressy. And the British army, after winning the Battle of Cressie, had to sweep Normandy, besiege the city of Calais, and fight continuously for more than a year before they were able to return home triumphantly - it is not unusual for a few people to be sick and wounded for such a long time......"

“…… Probably it can only be explained in this way," Wang Qiu sighed, "...... Okay, Brother Levi, let's say goodbye for the time being, let's take my sister-in-law back to the hospital to give birth. In order for your family to be reunited as soon as possible, you have to work hard to change history and earn points here."

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