King of German Mercenaries

When Marin participated in the trials of the battleship Hoffmann 1 in the North Sea, the autumn harvest in East Friesland was in full swing.

This year's autumn harvest is not much different from last year's. Although it is said that Marin organized more than 10,000 laborers from Saxony to dig trenches and drain the swamps to open up fertile fields. However, it takes a long time to open up swamps to farmland. Therefore, during spring ploughing, Marin only added 3,000 Ugrams of arable land. By October, those laborers had actually reclaimed 20,000 Ugrams of arable land, but they were all completed in the fall, unable to plant crops in time, and had to wait until next spring. Therefore, the autumn harvest is only the 3,000 Ugram new arable land.

The difference from last year was that during the autumn harvest last year, Marin still had 60,000 Eugrams of arable land, and nobles and soldiers had 25,000 Eugrams. But after the Battle of Lyle County last year, Marin split out another 10,000 Eugrams, so he now has only 50,000 Eugrams of arable land.

The arable land of nobles and soldiers yielded 168 million pounds of rye. Of that, they took half, or 84 million pounds, for sale to the Marin organization.

Marin went on to sell the rye to England. However, the price of rye in England fell by 0.1 pence per pound because of the large volume.

Marin learned from the Jewish merchants he hired that the most expensive food price in this era was actually Spain. Under normal circumstances, the price of rye in Germany is 1 penny per pound; in England it is 1.5 penny per penny per pound; in France, it is 1.2 penny per pound; and in Spain, it is 2 penny per pound.

The reason for this is that although Spain is a large country, most of the areas are plateaus. Only 11% of the country's land is located in the plains below 200 meters above sea level. Only in these plain areas, there are agricultural activities. Moreover, these 11% of the plains are not all cultivated into farmland.

Therefore, the Spanish territory looks large, but the area of ​​arable land is not much. In addition, the population is still quite large, so food prices are more expensive. It is a very cost-effective business to transport food to Spain to sell.

Coincidentally, two new Class 250 armed merchant ships were also completed. Marin simply let the two ships go south with 660,000 pounds (about 300 tons) of rye to test the waters in Spain. After all, selling a higher price is also very beneficial to Marin. After all, when the nobles and soldiers in the country sold rye to Marin, they only paid a wholesale price of 0.8 pfennig per pound. Marin sold rye to England for 1.2 pfennig per pound. Even if the price dropped to 1.1 pfennig per pound because of the large volume, Marlin was still very profitable. In Spain, which is more expensive, the price of rye per pound is at least 1.5 pfennig per pound. That way, the profit is even bigger...

As for the more rye from Marin's own land, it was not sold. Because this year, the counties of East Friesland have increased by tens of thousands of people, and Marin will use these rye to feed these new populations.

In October, the accounts between Marin and the Duchy of Saxony were settled. The Duke of Saxony paid 1 million Gulden gold coins and sent over 40,000 families of 18,000 young Saxons who belonged to Marin.

In other words, the East Frisian country of Marin has suddenly increased by almost 60,000 people, reaching a huge population of more than 140,000...

Fortunately, Marin had the foresight to sell all of last year's grain and this year's grain in his territory, which was enough for so many people to consume. And, it seems, there is plenty.

After all, the grain reserves of last year and this year have added up to more than 500 million pounds, with an average of more than 3,000 pounds per person. In fact, 500 pounds of rye per person per year is not bad. In fact, because the bread is mixed with wild vegetables, sawdust, soil and other debris, 500 pounds of bread can have more than 300 pounds of rye ingredients.

Therefore, food is very abundant.

However, Marin does not dare to ship too much now. Because, in this way, the secret of the high grain yield of East Friesland can not be hidden.

This is a terrible secret, enough to drive any large lord with a large number of lands crazy. So, Malin would rather make less money than let anyone see it.

Therefore, Marin has arranged to sell the grain of his subordinates to the UK, and it is sold in the name of the North Sea Chamber of Commerce and other Dutch chambers of commerce, which makes it unclear what the bottom of East Friesland is.

However, because of the information provided by his Jewish merchants, Marin found that Spain has more food demand than Britain, and it relies on imports all the year round. In previous years, Spain transported a large amount of grain from the "Golden Basin" of colonial Sicily back to China, and imported a large amount of grain from neighboring France.

After Marin heard the news, he planned to open up the Spanish grain trade route. Not only to make money for themselves, but also to rob the interests of the French.

Of course, after planning to snatch the Spanish grain market with the French, Marin sent someone to order a lot of Kirk sailboats, intending to use old ships to transport grain, and no longer use 250-class merchant ships to transport grain.

At the same time, Marin intends to let those Kirk sailboats play the flags of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark and other maritime powers, to confuse the French, and to avoid letting the French know that he is digging their corners...

After sending people out to inquire further, Marin also found a shocking news - Italy is also short of food now...

It turned out that although the Italian region is an important grain producing area. However, since 1494, the outbreak of the Italian War has caused the Italian region to be in flames and wars have been endless. A large number of people fled, resulting in a large number of deserted fields.

Coupled with the re-invasion of the Italian region by the French army in the past two years, agricultural production in many parts of Italy has almost come to a standstill.

Therefore, this year's food prices in Italy are even higher than in Spain. In order to obtain enough food, the Italians imported food from Austria and other German regions on a large scale. This was not enough, Venetian merchant ships also went to Egypt and the Polish and Lithuanian regions on the northern coast of the Black Sea, importing large quantities of grain.

Even so, because of the massive shortage of food and the continuation of the war, many people in Italy starved to death this year...

Despite Marin's efforts to block the news, people from abroad did not know that East Friesland had a bumper grain harvest, but people in East Friesland still couldn't hide it. Among them, the father-in-law of Marin, the Archbishop of Rovere, was found to have an unusually good harvest of grain in the counties of East Friesland...

Archbishop Rovere travelled on land from his remote island dwelling with two entourages during the autumn harvest. After observation, it was found that the farmland in the East Frisian country has an abnormally high grain yield. At least, barrels and baskets for food (Europeans were more accustomed to using wooden barrels and wooden baskets for packing things in the Middle Ages, the well-known unit of measurement for wheat, the quart, which is a unit of volume), were used more than those in Italy. This shows that the grain yield of East Frisian counties exceeds that of Italy.

This caused the Archbishop of Rovere to be extremely shocked. You must know that the Italian region has always been the most developed agricultural place in Europe, and the yield per unit has always been higher than that of other parts of Europe.

And, even in Italy, the areas with high yields are only those with more volcanic ash soils. In ordinary areas, the yield per unit is not much higher than that in other areas.

However, according to the observation of Archbishop Rovere, the yield of rye in the East Frisian region is probably higher than that of the richest volcanic ash soil in Italy...

This aroused his great interest, so Archbishop Rovere took the initiative to find Marin, the son-in-law...

When Marin learned that Archbishop Rovere knew the secret of East Frisian's extremely high grain production, for a moment, his eyes flashed fiercely, and he almost wanted to kill the father-in-law's mouth. But he quickly reacted - this special code is the old man, and he also expects him to be the pope to cover himself...

Archbishop Rovere was also stunned, and from the fierce light that burst out in Marin's eyes, he knew that his son-in-law was not a good man. Therefore, he also put out the thought of finding out the secret of high grain yield from his son-in-law.

In the end, Marin once again gave Lao-zhangren 100,000 gold coins for the activities, so that Laozhang-ren could buy more people in the Pope to prepare for his return to Rome.

But as soon as he turned his head, Marin sent someone to arrest the two entourages who traveled around during the autumn harvest with the old husband, permanently restricting their freedom. Because, Marin believed that the old man would not reveal the secrets of East Frisian, but he couldn't trust the two followers who also knew the secrets...

Although Archbishop Rovere was very dissatisfied, there was nothing he could do. Who told him to be under someone's guard now? Fortunately, only two of his followers, who were not important people, knew the secret of East Frisian's very high grain yield. Get up on land. Otherwise, Marin may lose all the people around him...