The ruins of the battlefield still existed, but this did not stop the people's passion for peace and wealth.
Before the sky turned dark, the newly established 'Revolutionary Army' of the Goa Special District sent people to set up a guide station in Goa to answer and guide the merchants and residents in the direction of Panjim. About three hundred people wanted to go, but due to the limited reception capacity, only about fifty to sixty people could be selected.
Many people in the city felt that they could go to the banquet if they wanted to, so they hesitated. But now, they realized that the number of people who could attend was so small that they had to fight for an invitation. At this time, who could go and who could not? They had to compete for qualifications and power.
The carriages sent off the lucky ones one by one, and the others could only raise their heads and wait. Those who were able to attend the banquet felt extremely honored. After all, many of them had ordinary identities and could not attend the banquet of their country's royal family. But now, a more powerful monarch actually invited them to the banquet. This was something that they could brag about for the rest of their lives.
The banquet was not held in the fortress, but in the open air outside the fortress. It was rainy in the tropics, and it started before dark. Many people thought that the open-air banquet was over, but when they arrived at the venue, they found that a giant flag that controlled the weather within a radius of three hundred meters was controlling the weather. Despite the lightning, thunder, and wind and rain outside, it was still cool and peaceful inside the flag.
This was really novel …
Although Europe had also developed magical alchemy, they did not have something as good as the one in front of them.
When the guests got off the carriages, Father Marcelo called their names to enter. Zhou Qingfeng welcomed them with a smile at the entrance with Wen Ruolan and the other ladies, and allowed them to enter the venue freely.
Goa had an abundance of fish and prawns. The ghost chef made a large seafood feast and provided drinks. The people who came to the banquet were first amazed by the 'Emperor's' youth, and then they were attracted by the exquisite decorations on the table. Just as Father Marcelo had once exclaimed, the gorgeous ceramic cutlery made the banquet dazzling.
But the people soon discovered that the tables, candlesticks, and even many of the servants used in the banquet were actually from the Goa Governor's Office and the church. In a corner of the banquet, there were many treasures received from the church. If someone asked, the answer would naturally be auction items.
"There are too many churches in Goa, and this has brought me great trouble. I will forbid anyone from spreading any religion in Goa, and the church buildings will be converted for other purposes. These things are useless to me. If someone needs them, they can be bought at a low price. "Zhou Qingfeng's words were equivalent to locking down his own religious policy.
Goa had dozens of churches of various sizes. They were sturdy buildings that required a lot of manpower and resources to build. It would be a waste to demolish all of them. Zhou Qingfeng planned to use them as schools, hospitals, barracks, and administrative facilities. In short, he could not use them for religious purposes. Many of the items in the church were not made of pure gold or silver, but were gilded with silver. Chopping firewood was too wasteful, so it was better to auction it.
Seeing so many crosses and Jesus statues piled up on the ground and sold according to size and age, the believers in the city must have a deeper understanding of their own faith. The accountants sent by Xu Bing might not know anything about Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary, but they could judge the value of the items from the way they were carved and the degree of oxidation. It was absolutely impossible for them to be sold cheaply.
In short, Grandpa Zhou was a money-grubber.
"The auction items are being sorted out. At present, it is only a very small part. Everyone can slowly choose when you have time. When you taste the food tonight, you can carefully look at the tableware on the table. These are the goods that I can provide in large quantities. I have already set the price of these samples on the table. If you have any questions, feel free to consult me or Santos. "
The banquet of fifty to sixty people began naturally. The merchants and residents gathered around Zhou Qingfeng as much as possible, listening to the translation from the child Santos. Zhou Qingfeng had already established the Goa Special District. He had stuffed a large number of his own and employed personnel into the special district government, intending to make it operate normally in a month or two.
The merchants quickly smelled the business opportunity of the porcelain trade.
The sea route from Goa to Macau was nearly four thousand nautical miles. A normal merchant ship would need to spend three years to travel back and forth between various ports, and it had to rely on the monsoon to sail.
During this period, they had to take huge risks. Natural disasters and human looting would cause the merchants to lose everything, and the time efficiency was very low. Limited by the production capacity of the goods, it was not easy to fill a merchant ship with a displacement of hundreds of tons.
For example, Jingdezhen specialized in the production of Clark porcelain for sea trade, and shipping it all the way from Jiangxi to Macau would cost lives. The shipping cost, loss, and time were too troublesome. The cheapest porcelain bowl might only be worth a few copper coins when it came out of the kiln, but it had to be priced in silver when it was shipped to Goa.
Zhou Qingfeng had now cut out a series of links. Without a middleman to earn the difference, he directly sold his own ceramics and bone porcelain at half price. He was also very considerate in making the porcelain designs that Europeans liked, such as little angels, nudes, and the Virgin Mary in love with the world. Anyway, as long as he made money, he could have whatever the customers liked.
Even if it was sold at half price, Grandpa Zhou's half price was still dozens of times more expensive than the factory price in Jingdezhen's kiln. But the merchants in Goa immediately felt the sincerity of this "half price." Grandpa Zhou still did not collect taxes, which made the merchants even more excited.
As for the source of goods, the Revolutionary Army had begun to develop Dandong Kaolin on a large scale, and the number of porcelain they could provide was "100,000" as the basic unit. A trade fair could be held every month, and the supply was extremely abundant. Compared to the Portuguese merchant ships that could only make one trip every three years, Zhou Qingfeng's supply capacity was enough to make the merchants in Goa unable to eat it all.
In addition to silk, tea, and porcelain, Zhou Qingfeng also provided medical drugs and equipment for export. The two doctors in the transmigrator had been unknown, but the medical staff they trained and the medical system they established had played a huge role.
The maternal and infant mortality rates in the territory of the Revolutionary Army were dropping dramatically, and infectious diseases were curbed. People would not die from headaches or fever. For example, berberine, bupleurum extract, alcohol, and other simple drugs could be mass-produced. Zhou Qingfeng also wanted to sell these goods to make a lot of money.
As for drugs, the merchants were not very interested. After all, it depended on the curative effect. However, in addition to silk and porcelain, Zhou Qingfeng also sold weapons, which was very surprising.
The Europeans rarely sold weapons. The so-called "Red Barbarian Cannon" at the end of the Ming Dynasty was first salvaged from a stranded British merchant ship. The smoothbore cannon on the ship was outdated and was resold by the Portuguese to Ming Ting.
It was this thing that Ming Ting treated as a treasure.
Zhou Qingfeng decided to sell some small-caliber cast-iron cannons, which were different from the large-scale bronze cannons and the forged cannons used by the Imperial Guard. The cast-iron cannons were made of gray iron and cast in a sand box. The inner wall was polished with a boring machine to ensure its smoothness, and the outer wall was reinforced with iron hoops. The front was small and the back was large. The cannon frame was heavy and very classical.
Compared to the widely used bronze cannons, the advantage of the cast-iron cannons was that they were light and cheap. The disadvantage was that they were easy to rust, so the artillerymen had to pay more attention to maintenance. Zhou Qingfeng took out six-pound and nine-pound cannons, which weighed about half a ton to a ton. He even said that he could provide naval cannons with thicker and longer barrels, more powerful, and a weight of more than two tons.
The price was half of the bronze cannons, and he could also be responsible for training the artillerymen and carry out maintenance and other services.
Grandpa Zhou liked to do half-price promotions.
In order to show off the quality of his cannons, Grandpa Zhou deliberately put on a show of firepower. A six-pound cannon aimed at a target a few hundred meters away and fired a base number of twelve consecutive shots. All the merchants present were amazed by the firing speed and accuracy of the six-pound cannon.
Only the artillery guards in charge of the demonstration cursed behind their backs. This broken cannon was heavy and difficult to use, and its firepower was not as strong as our cavalry cannons. Firing a base number of cannonballs would tire us to death. Why would we build this thing?
But the artillery guards hated it to death. When Muhammad, who attended the banquet, saw the dazzling firepower, he shouted excitedly, "We want this cannon, we want to buy a hundred of them."
The white people at the banquet were immediately shocked …
Zhou Qingfeng, on the other hand, clapped his hands and shouted, "Congratulations, Master Muhammad, for getting your first order tonight. A hundred six-pound cast-iron smoothbore cannons for only a thousand silver dollars each. I will give him a thousand fine matchlock muskets for free. "
The Revolutionary Army did not have the spring steel back then, so in order to protect themselves, they could only let go of their hands and feet and make matchlocks. Who would have thought that in just a year, these matchlocks would be replaced by flintlock muskets? Back then, a fool like Wu Daimen held his big axe and refused to use firearms no matter what. Now, he was not even willing to use a matchlock, let alone an axe.
The Revolutionary Army had produced a total of 30,000 smoothbore muskets. Many of them were brand new, other than the dozens of bullets that had been fired on the training ground. Grandpa Zhou was also worried when he saw that these things were going to be included in the inventory. When he first made them, he was afraid that it would affect the combat readiness if he made too few. Now, they did not affect the combat readiness, but the combat readiness warehouse.
With a sucker like Muhammad jumping out, if Zhou Qingfeng did not sell these useless things to him, who else could he sell them to? He even took the initiative to show Muhammad a matchlock gun and accurately hit a target about seventy to eighty meters away. The white people attending the banquet were shocked by the sale of the cannons just now, and now the white people were even more shocked by the sale of the guns.
Muhammad touched the barrel that had started to heat up after firing and praised, "Good, good, good … This oriental musket is really good. The muskets we bought from the Portuguese can't even compare to it. "
To be honest, the quality of the Revolutionary Army's matchlocks was really good. Compared to the current Europe, which still used cast iron to drill the barrel and even rolled the barrel with iron, Zhao Ze, who designed and manufactured these matchlocks, used the forging method from the beginning. After all, these things were for his own use. If they were not made well, it would be a joke with his life.
In Europe, it was popular to use heavy matchlocks with large calibers in exchange for more power. The matchlock that Zhao Ze made was a light matchlock, but it relied on a strong barrel, granular gunpowder, and superb craftsmanship to achieve even more power than the heavy matchlocks in Europe. The weight was only half or even one-third of the opponent's, and the shooting accuracy was higher.
Not only was Muhammad full of praise after trying it, even the white people in Goa had a big change in expression after trying it. If this new type of musket and light cannon were to spread, not only would it immediately change the power balance in the Near East, even Europe, which was in full swing at the war, would want to buy and imitate it. These firearms would probably be more sought-after than porcelain and silk.
Seeing Muhammad holding the matchlock with his beard curling up, Zhou Qingfeng felt that this must be the ancestor of the rich. It was all hereditary.
While the people attending the banquet had different thoughts in their minds, Zhou Qingfeng was proud of his exhibition. On the other hand, a skinny and dark-skinned native suddenly approached him in a cowardly manner. He knelt down and started mumbling. Santos translated, "This is the butler of a local king near Goa. He said that they also want to buy weapons, but they don't have the money."
No money …?
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