After prying open the iron door of the basement, you are faced with a room of more than thirty square meters. This should be where the guards are on duty, but it is already empty.
At the end of the room was a heavy oak door with iron hoops, with six huge locks hung in a series on it. It is estimated that these six keys were kept separately, which was also a means of guarding against house thieves.
"Prepare explosives and blow him up..." After the order was given, soldiers who were proficient in blasting took detonators and began to plant the explosives. After a while, there was only a loud bang in the basement, and smoke sprayed out along the door. I went out for a full five minutes and didn't leave.
After the smoke dissipated, Qiu Wei led the marines into the vault and was stunned on the spot.
"Oh my God! Did the French kill all the elephants in Africa? Why are there so many tusks?"
"Sir, look, there is a whole box of gems here. Is this a diamond? This is a ruby..."
"Gold coins...gold ingots...look, these big boxes are full of gold. They are all gold coins and gold ingots that have been minted!"
I am rich, I am definitely rich. The vault is more than 90 square meters, and there are shelves made of hardwood everywhere, on which some rare and special products from Africa are neatly placed.
Ivory, rhino horn, diamonds, rubies, sapphires... there are also various special ores that cannot be named, and even naturally occurring gold nuggets.
At the bottom of the shelf is a large wooden box. After opening it, it is full of all kinds of gold. It is visually estimated that there are 50,000 to 60,000 ounces. This is nearly 1,500 kilograms of gold!
Qiu Wei swallowed hard and said, "Oh my god, how come these French people are so rich? Just one Dakar vault holds so much gold?"
A Prussian soldier next to him replied, "It's not just the gold in Dakar. Dakar is the most important port under French rule in West Africa. The wealth in Senegal must be gathered here before it can be transferred to Paris..."
"One of the two black slaves we just interrogated is actually literate, and he is also a supervisor of the black slaves in the Governor's Palace. According to his confession, the entire Senegal's tax revenue for one year is now hidden in the Governor's Palace, and there are nearly ten years left. fiscal surplus..."
"Why wasn't it shipped to Paris in time?" Qiu Wei asked.
"Because of the railway, Dakar is preparing to build a railway to the north. This money should be used to build the railway..."
Qiu Wei smiled, "Railway? Hahaha... Our Prime Minister also wants to build a railway. On-site survey of the railway from Tanggu to Kaiping and Luanzhou has begun. Now is the time when we are short of money!"
"Go! Get me a team of black slaves and move all the things that can be moved here..."
In a short time, the Marines grabbed hundreds of strong men from the street. No one dared to resist under the pressure of the bayonet. In addition, the black slaves had been enslaved for three to four hundred years. They had already A submissive slave culture has formed.
As long as they can survive, they will not consider resisting, not to mention that these water ghosts have promised that the last person will give them ten gold coins.
The kitchen of the Governor's Palace started to smoke, the Marines started to set fire in a planned way, and the black slaves were carrying gold, gems and ivory. No one dared to think wrong under the threat of bayonets.
All the documents in the Governor's Mansion were swept away. Qiu Wei had no time to read them one by one. He planned to pack them all and take them to the Zhiyuan, and then find an opportunity to contact the Prussian intelligence agents and send all the French secrets. To Prussia.
In the light of the fire, hundreds of French soldiers attempted to counterattack the Governor's Palace. However, under the precise strikes of snipers, the command system of the two companies soon collapsed, and anyone who dressed like an officer was focused on.
Not only did the snipers form a huge suppression on the French army, but the rear-loading Mauser also caused unprecedented suppression on the front-loading legal mle1857 minimun rifle.
The fixed-loaded Mauser has fired four or five bullets, but the mle1857 rifle opposite can only fire one bullet! How could this battle be fought? In less than ten minutes, two French companies had collapsed.
Qiu Wei looked at the French army retreating like water and did not order a pursuit. Instead, he looked back at the team of black slaves who were constantly carrying gold out and sighed, "Colonialism is so good! The feeling of bullying others is so good!"
It was not until this moment that Qiu Wei and his group of foreign students fully understood the importance of colonies to European civilization. This plunder of global resources ultimately made European civilization absolutely powerful.
Senegal in West Africa alone can amass so much wealth. Now France is the second largest colonial country after the United Kingdom. This shows how much wealth can be amassed in a year.
There are some things that Xiao Letian did not tell his subordinates. In his previous life, Xiao Letian clearly remembered that after the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia finally unified Germany. At that time, Bismarck opened its mouth to the French lion and asked for 5 billion gold francs in war compensation.
This was Bismarck's first strategic mistake in his life. He thought that 5 billion gold francs was too much. At that time, the French government's treasury was already empty and it could not afford a single gold coin.
According to the price of silver at that time, 5 billion gold francs was more than 700 million taels of silver. Throughout the history of the Qing Dynasty, during the Qianlong period, the richest period, the peak of treasury revenue was more than 80 million taels of silver. After that, even Nian Rui However, in the late Qing Dynasty, fiscal revenue could not make ends meet, leaving only empty figures on the books to barely support the facade.
Bismarck is really good at calculating. The purpose of setting a sky-high price is to make France unable to pay back the money in the short term, thus forming a situation of suppressing France in decades. Moreover, the money will not be paid back. Alsace and Lorraine regions, There is no reason to return it to France. ,
It can really take over a generation, and the promotion of German education alone can change the population and cultural structure of this land.
But Bismarck underestimated the foundation of the old powers. It can even be said that he underestimated the real foundation of the colonial economy, because after all, Prussia had never experienced the feeling of getting rich in owning a colony.
Bismarck definitely misjudged the amount of wealth among the French people, and he also misjudged the strong nationalist spirit of the French people who had been baptized by the Great Revolution.
After the war, in order to pay off the war compensation as quickly as possible and redeem the land occupied by Prussia in the north, the new government began to issue national debt to the private sector on a large scale.
A scene that stunned Bismarck occurred. The defeated French government, a new government that had not yet established credit, actually issued three treasury bonds of 5 billion gold francs in succession, and there was an unprecedented rush to buy each treasury bond. .
The 15 billion treasury bonds were sold out in an instant, and the total subscription amount actually reached an astonishing 45 billion gold francs, which was nine times the size of the Bismarck Lion.
At this point, Bismarck's wishful thinking was completely shattered, and later Lenin even gave France a special nickname, called usury imperialism.
