On the Qing side, the forces of the three vassals and the Manchu Qing court were engaged in a game around the third prince Zhu and the third grandson Zhu.
Zhu San’s grandson Zhu Hesheng is busy...starting a business!
That’s right, he’s starting a business again!
Although his father, Zhu Jushan, was still surrounded by the troops of Deng Guangming and Liu Jinzhong in the capital of Guiyu, Zhu Hesheng was not in a hurry to rescue him. Instead, he was busy setting up the real economy and engaging in industry to save the country.
Compared with commanding a large army to fight the Qing Dynasty's heavenly soldiers, Zhu Hesheng still knows better about opening factories and running industries.
Even though he came to Chaozhou in the tenth year of Kangxi's reign, he had already found a "blue ocean" to make a fortune. Of course, it was not the production of high imitation Martell and French perfumes - because there are no genuine Martell and French perfumes yet. Even if Zhu Hesheng wants to imitate, he can't. If he can make it, it is original!
Since then, Chaozhou Martell, Chaozhou Hennessy, Chaozhou Lafite, Chaozhou Yves Saint Laurent, and Chaozhou Lancôme have all become genuine...
However, the entrepreneurial project Zhu Hesheng chose was not genuine Chaozhou wine and Chaozhou perfume, but the very high-end arms industry! And it also directly cuts into the core, most critical, and most choked industry of the arms industry in the seventeenth century - the accumulation and production of saltpeter!
As we all know, the 1770s and 1980s of the 17th century were already an era when gunpowder weapons dominated warfare!
Gunpowder weapons, whether guns or mines, consume a large amount of gunpowder during use.
Take the Turtle Dove Foot Musket, which is very common in Guangdong, as an example. This heavy-duty musket consumes about one tael (ming liang) of black powder for one occurrence...and one kilogram (ming jin) of black powder is only enough for one gun. Turtle Dove's musket fired sixteen times.
Without black powder, the powerful turtle dove's foot heavy musket is worse than a fire stick!
And fire saltpeter is the main ingredient of black gunpowder!
For various forces in Guangdong and Fujian, fire salt is a treasure that is difficult to obtain. The supply is always in short supply and it is always stuck - the Qing court is stuck on the road, and the British and Dutch East India companies are stuck on the sea.
So in the north, fire salt sold for only five or six taels of silver per catty, but at Dahao Commercial Port, it was directly sold for 2,30 taels of silver per catty!
And even if you have money, you may not be able to buy it. You have to give a nod from the boss Hui to "evenly distribute" some fire salt or gunpowder to various buyers - Qiu Hui himself doesn't have enough, and he also has to use fire salt and gunpowder. The neck of the following group of dependent forces.
These various buyers are actually forces that rely on Da Lao Hui, mainly powerful families in the hundreds of townships and capitals that rely on Qiu Hui's resistance to relocation.
The three cities Qiu Hui "gifted" to Zhu Hesheng were this kind of rural capitals that relied on him. Whether Zhu Hesheng could firmly control them depends on his ability. And this ability... of course also includes the ability to get the fire salt and gunpowder stuck in someone's neck.
With fire, saltpeter or gunpowder, these Chaozhou clans could use the turtle-dove-foot muskets passed down from the Ming Dynasty to guard their buildings to resist the "forced evictions" of the Qing Dynasty officials!
Only by guarding the fortress can we protect the surrounding land. With the land, we can have children and carry on the family line... This fire salt and gunpowder were equivalent to real estate certificates and marriage certificates outside the boundaries of Chaozhou in the tenth year of Kangxi!
That is an extremely rigid need!
So Zhu Hesheng, who returned to Gucheng Village from Dahao, sent Brave Su to lead hundreds of "armies" to "recover" Tianwang Village in Danan Mountain (in fact, Tianwang Village was not lost); at the same time, he began to go all out to build "Tianwang Village" A pigsty without pigs is a saltpeter!
The first saltpeter pond built by Zhu Hesheng in Gucheng Village is now approaching the "harvest" time. On the surface of the saltpeter pond, a large area of light yellow nitrate soil visible to the naked eye has appeared. Zhu Hesheng took some saltpeter and put it on red-hot charcoal for testing, and found that sparks could explode, which showed that the purity of the saltpeter was satisfactory.
According to his knowledge, a nitrate pond that can contain two thousand kilograms of sand, plant ash, and three hundred kilograms of smelly fish and rotten shrimp (feces and urine can also be used) can also be protected from the sun if it has the right temperature, humidity, and good ventilation. Under the irradiation of light, after twenty days of fermentation, the produced saltpeter can be purified into approximately thirty kilograms of high-purity fire saltpeter.
If we do not take into account labor, depreciation of fixed assets, capital costs, the cost of obtaining sand and plant ash, and the cost of consumables for refining fire salt, it would be ten pounds of smelly fish and rotten shrimp to produce one pound of fire salt.
Gucheng Village itself is a fishing village, and Haimen Port opposite is the largest fishing port in Chaozhou Prefecture. The price of smelly fish and rotten shrimps is very low, and there is absolutely no problem in buying a pound for a few copper coins. Ten pounds of smelly fish and rotten shrimps costs twenty to fifty copper plates... plus various other costs, the cost of producing fire saltpeter using the saltpeter method in Gucheng Village is nothing. It will cost more than one hundred copper coins per pound.
And if a pound of fire salt is sold directly to Qiu Hui and Chen Jinnan, it will not be less than one tael of silver!
That’s more than ten times the profit!
And you don’t have to pay value-added tax, income tax, and various surcharges, and you don’t have to worry about sales. Of course, there is no account period, and you can even receive payment in advance to occupy the next family’s funds... Manufacturing high imitation famous wines and French perfumes If you don’t do this, you’ll make money quickly!
If Zhu Hesheng could go one step further and use self-produced high-purity fire salt to produce granular gunpowder...then the profits would be even higher.
However, Zhu Hesheng did not have time to open a gunpowder workshop now, nor did he have time to train technicians to make gunpowder. All his energy was spent on expanding the saltpeter pond.
The entire idle labor force in Longjingdu was hired by Zhu Hesheng with money, and his "Da Nanshan Rebel Army" temporarily became a labor force. Together with the hired farmers of Longjingdu, they were under the personal command of Zhu Hesheng. Build a nitrate pond.
In order to facilitate future management, Zhu Hesheng also found two "managers" for himself. One is Mr. Yu's uncle Swen Bai. Capitalist Zhu wants to train him to be the manager of the saltpeter - Swen Bai will become the pig pen Bai. .
One is the young father-in-law Pang Siming. Zhu Hesheng has accepted him as his apprentice and plans to pass on the skills of making saltpetre to him and let him be the saltpeter manager in the future. The young father-in-law will become the father-in-law of saltpeter. If Zhu Hesheng teaches him how to make granules in the future. If he looks like gunpowder, then he is the owner of the gunpowder factory!
Early this morning, Zhu Hesheng took them together to inspect the construction site of the saltpeter pond outside the Pang family's gate building. The construction site of the saltpeter pond was beside the "Gulou River" outside the Pang family's gate building. It is planned to build twenty-nine more, and now one can be completed every day. Coupled with the previous "pig pen", when all these ponds are completed, Zhu Hesheng will have thirty saltpeter ponds.
If production can be straightened out, a pond of saltpeter soil can be harvested every day and another pond of saltpeter soil can be "planted" at the same time.
From a pond of saltpeter, you can extract twenty kilograms of high-quality fire saltpeter - if you sell them all, you can earn at least twenty taels of silver. If production and sales can be continued uninterrupted for a month, that will be 600 taels of silver, and 7,200 taels a year. If the number of saltpeter ponds can be increased ten times... that is comparable to being a bandit, no, compared to Being a rebel brings in money quickly!
To "plant" a pond of nitrate soil, you need to put in 300 kilograms of smelly fish and rotten shrimps - this is nothing to Haimen Port and Gucheng Village, even ten times more!
Therefore, the military industry in Gucheng Village is really promising!
When Zhu Hesheng was looking forward to a happy life in which he would earn one or two thousand taels of silver a day in the future, he suddenly heard the sound of rapid horse hooves. Zhu Hesheng looked back following the voice and found that his good aunt Da Boling was leading a few young men from the Su family and a bald monk on horseback.
My aunt finally couldn’t help but come to see me!
When Zhu Hesheng saw Da Bo Ling from a distance, he was pleasantly surprised. Since Zhu Hesheng and Qiu Shuzhen got engaged, this good aunt moved to the Su family's old house in Haimen Port, and then ignored Zhu Hesheng.
This made Zhu Hesheng miss him so much, but he was busy starting a business and had no time to "pick up his aunt"... Finally we met again today, and it was a good aunt who took the initiative!
Looks like there's something going on!
Thinking of this, Zhu Hesheng strode towards Da Boling who was coming on horseback, and waved to Da Boling with a smile: "Aunt, I haven't seen you for a few days, but you miss me so much!"
Da Bo Ling seemed to still be angry with Zhu Hesheng. She drove her horse up to him with a cold expression, then pointed at the monk following behind her and said to Zhu Hesheng in a calm voice: "Cannon Zhu, this is Master Yang Qilong Yang from Beijing..." ....He brought you a treasure and military information about Qinglu!"
