Those Dutch people did not expect that the arms dealer they found was not a pure arms dealer, but a former pirate and current bandit who wandered around in crime and killing...
In other words, in fact, no matter which arms agent from Chu they were looking for, the Dutch met the same kind of people.
Because there are only a few ordinary businessmen who dare to do arms business in a wild land like Africa.
Normally, they seem to be selling guns and various other supplies, and buying local specialties from the indigenous people.
But secretly, he does whatever he can to make money, such as the piracy business that Meng Xiu once engaged in, and the labor agency business that he currently engages in... Although there are many twists and turns, he really met a true judicial censor and dug deeper. If he does, he can be sent to prison.
It's just that the censors of Chu State are very busy and have no time to pay attention to these people who are causing trouble in overseas indigenous control areas.
Meng Xiu was like this, and many other Chu people who went to Africa and other wild places were basically the same.
How should I put it? At this stage, only those desperadoes will go deep into the interior of Africa to do business.
In fact, many Chu people, especially those in overseas areas, basically know these things, but these Dutch people don't know.
They thought the Meng Xiu they found was a pure arms dealer.
And they actually took some precautions themselves. They didn't carry much gold with them, only one or two kilograms.
At the same time, they did not intend to say that they went to Maputo to purchase arms and transport them themselves.
What they asked for was for Meng Xiu's company to transport the goods to their doorstep.
This door-to-door delivery does not mean that it is sent directly to their Dutch home base, but to a place hundreds of kilometers away from their settlement.
And these Dutch people also have a certain degree of confidence in avoiding gangsters... After all, most of these Dutch people are young and strong. Although they are not professional soldiers or desperadoes, they can still pull out a few hundred people to protect themselves.
These Dutch people thought they had taken sufficient precautions.
As for Meng Xiu and the others, after discovering such a suspected big fat sheep, they did not do anything else on the surface. They did not even agree to the Dutch's ordnance purchase immediately. Instead, they sent people to do the ordnance purchase with the Dutch. of negotiations.
He said that they can get the flintlock gun and sell it to them, but the price cannot be lowered. There is no discount at 60 Chu Yuan per set.
Very expensive!
If the flintlock gun is now industrially mass-produced in the Chu State, it is basically no longer a self-use version. All production is an export version. The cost is probably between one Chu Yuan and three Chu Yuan, which is quite cheap.
But low cost does not mean low selling price. An ordinary flintlock gun is not cheap overseas.
Among the civilian flintlock guns sold to the people in overseas territories, this one is the cheapest, basically less than ten yuan.
But when exported to indigenous countries in large quantities, the price often starts at 20 yuan. Basically, the export price of these flintlock guns is to add a zero after the cost price.
This is still talking about supplying large quantities to indigenous countries. This kind of transaction often comes with a lot of other trade conditions and even political additional conditions.
If there are no additional conditions, the price will have to be doubled, and forty yuan is the minimum.
However, even the forty Chu Yuan is still very attractive to the natives. After all, the performance of the flintlock guns produced and exported by the Chu people is indescribable.
Basically, low-end models have an all-weather firing rate of 72%, mid-range models can often achieve 80%, and high-end models can even achieve 85%.
Not to mention high-end ones, even ordinary low-end models are not comparable to those flintlock guns made by the indigenous people.
Good things are expensive, that's basic.
Besides, the arms of the Chu people have two great advantages. It can even be said that the reason why the arms of the Chu people are so expensive is because of these two advantages, in addition to their good performance.
One is a large amount of ready stock. As long as you place an order, tens of thousands of flintlock guns can be shipped to you in minutes. If there are hundreds of thousands of them, even if the inventory of the Dachu Empire is not enough, at most the country will increase production. It can be produced in one year.
This means that if an indigenous country encounters a war, it can quickly obtain a large amount of arms from the Chu people.
This is very important. If the arms dealers do not have enough inventory and the production capacity cannot keep up, I am afraid that the indigenous countries will be wiped out and the guns ordered have not been returned yet.
In addition to timely delivery, the arms dealers in the Chu Empire also have a great advantage, that is, they can deliver goods to your doorstep in most parts of the world.
Anywhere, even Antarctica, as long as you give money, the arms dealers in Chu can send you guns and cannons.
This also includes the battlefield!
A very common situation is that the indigenous people on both sides are fighting, and the losses of ammunition, cold weapons and armor are too great and need to be replenished.
At this time, an armed caravan from the Chu Empire came to the battlefield and provided weapons, equipment and even other supplies to both warring parties according to orders.
After the supplies are finished, the two sides continue to fight!
The arms dealers in Chu State said: We are professional in the logistics supply of ordnance. You can rest assured that there will be ammunition after it is finished. If you place an order on the spot, we will give you a 50% discount!
The large quantities and door-to-door delivery services of the arms dealers of the Da Chu Empire greatly promoted the war capabilities of the indigenous countries, and they all roared when fighting.
What the Dutch want is door-to-door arms delivery service from the Chu people, but the price is too expensive.
The price of sixty yuan does not include the service fee for door-to-door delivery. If you want door-to-door delivery, you have to add an extra fee.
Several Dutch people who came to negotiate for the purchase of arms felt for the first time that even if they dug a gold mine, they still didn't have enough money.
Damn, it's too dark.
But there is nothing you can do about it. Who can let the Chu people make good things? And now in eastern Africa, apart from the Chu people, there is no other arms dealer that they can choose from.
Unless the Dutch are willing to cross the African continent and go to the west coast of Africa to find the Portuguese and the Dutch to purchase, the distance is long. More importantly, the Portuguese and the Dutch themselves have no production capacity for advanced guns. They all also asked people from Chu to purchase arms.
So even if it is expensive, these Dutch people have to recognize it.
In the end, the purchase price was finally negotiated, and 500 flintlock guns were purchased at a price of fifty-six Chu Yuan per set. This type of gun was the Guangliu type flintlock gun produced by the Guangdong and Guangxi Arms Company.
The prototype is actually a 2-year-old flintlock gun. After various improvements, a low-end flintlock model was developed specifically for export.
The all-weather firing rate reached 72%, and its performance exceeded the flintlock guns produced by indigenous people in various European countries.
Moreover, a bayonet made of mild steel with a blade length of thirty centimeters was also issued.
This bayonet alone costs more than ten yuan to purchase alone.
You ask why a mere bayonet is so expensive, that's because currently only the Chu Empire in the world can mass-produce such bayonets.
The bayonets used by the indigenous people in various European countries on their matchlock guns are still in the spear stabbing stage.
Because the bayonet needs to withstand huge impact during combat, the strength requirements for the blade are very high. If the materials and processing are not good, the only way to use the spear is to stab the flintlock gun in the early years of the Chu State. Stab with a spear.
The use of real bayonets was only twelve years later in Chengshun.
A complete set of Guangzhou-VI flintlock rifles cost 56 Chu Yuan, and the Dutch directly ordered 500 sets, including flintlock rifles, bayonets, purges, straps, and ammunition boxes.
In addition to flintlock muskets, they also purchased four iron 65mm smoothbore field cannons produced by Jiangnan Weapons Company. This thing is not only liked by Chu people, but also by the indigenous people. It is light and powerful.
And then there are some
Cloth, farm tools, various tools, including a large number of tools used by miners.
They purchased a large number of various materials, whether military or civilian, and the total order quantity reached more than 80,000 yuan at the last count.
Looking at such a huge order, I thought that the Dutch said they would pay directly in gold at that time, and at the same time, I saw that among the materials purchased by the Dutch, there were a large number of mining tools.
Meng Xiu immediately concluded that these Dutch people must have gotten lucky and found a gold mine.
Immediately ordered to go down and prepare the corresponding order materials, and at the same time sent someone to keep an eye on the Dutch people.
The most important thing is that Meng Xiu began to mobilize manpower.
That's right, Meng Xiu had already decided to take action against these Dutch people when he saw their heads shining with golden light.
robbery?
You're wrong. He really didn't plan to commit any robbery. What's the use of such robbery? It's just to earn some gold.
What he wants is to find these gold mines discovered by the Dutch, and then seize them directly.
Meng Xiu couldn't help but tremble when he thought that he might own a big gold mine!
Why did he work so hard to come overseas? Not just to make money, to make a lot of money!
Not just him, the reason why the dozens of brothers under him followed him to Africa, a place where no one shits, was not to make a fortune.
Now, a gold mine with great possibility is right in front of them, and they will be damned if they can hold back.
Meng Xiu began to gather his men, and when he wrote the letter, he could sum it up in eight words: The people here are stupid and have a lot of money, so come quickly.
Two days later, two of the Dutch who came to Maputo left Maputo first on horseback. Meng Xiu immediately sent people to follow them, hoping to follow them to find the Dutch. Lair, the most important thing is to find where their gold mine is.
At this time, these Dutch people still didn't realize that Meng Xiu, who was trading with them, had already exposed his fangs and stared at their necks, waiting for the opportunity to pounce on them and bite them.
The few Dutch people who stayed in Maputo were still attracted by all the new things in Maputo, just like the villagers. They were even more shocked by the sailing ships outside the port.
They had actually seen this large ship of the Chu people in Cape Town before, but those ships at that time were all warships, and the Chu people did not allow them to get close.
Later, in order to avoid trouble and arouse the resentment of the Chu people, they did not stop at Cape Te, but evacuated before the Chu people entered the port.
Therefore, I have only seen the steamships of the Chu people from a distance, and to be honest, I can't see much.
After all, the ships of the Chu people were basically motor-driven sailing ships, and they also had sails on them. Apart from having an extra chimney, they were actually not very different from traditional sailing ships.
Coupled with the distance, it was difficult for them to judge how big the Chu ship was at that time.
But it's different now. Now they can see those motor boats at close range in Maputo port.
One of them, a merchant ship of more than 3,000 tons, shocked them even more. From a close distance, it looked really big!
Far more than these Dutch people imagined for ships.
Just when they were shocked by the newness and power of the Chu Empire, Meng Xiu sent to follow the four desperadoes who left first, and they all successfully caught up with the two Dutchmen in front.
Finally, we arrived at a small town about 400 kilometers away from Maputo.
You can tell at first glance that this town is a new settlement. There is no fortress, not even a simple masonry wall. There is only a circle of wooden walls on the outer layer. The buildings in the town are basically relatively simple wooden buildings.
However, there are a large number of African natives in the town who are wearing wooden shackles and are continuing to build the city wall, and have already built a section of several hundred meters of brick and stone wall.
Just looking at this small town, you can’t actually tell much. Such immigrant settlements are very common.
Tong is not worthy of the attention of Meng Xiu and his group.
So they continued to lurk and observe outside the town. While observing, they found that a large number of Dutch people were heading towards a hill in the south with loaded guns and live ammunition for several days.
After following them immediately, they discovered that the Dutch had even built a checkpoint on the hill, with people watching from above.
After sneaking away from the Dutch checkpoint, they went up the small hill from the other side, and then saw a very shocking scene.
On the other side of the small hill, there is a large flat land, but there are wooden barracks built in several places on this flat land, and in the large area in the middle of the flat land, there are at least thousands of dark people. Huge numbers of natives were working under the command of Dutch guards.
Some of them are excavating soil and gravel, some are using primitive means to separate the gravel and soil, and some are using screens to collect sand.
Just seeing this scene, these people couldn't help but their hearts were beating!
Damn it, these Dutch people have really found a gold mine and have organized a large number of indigenous people to mine it.
Judging from the appearance of this gold mine, I am afraid that the reserves are extremely rich, and the mining difficulty is also very low.
Now, I am really going to make a fortune, a big fortune!
They suppressed their excitement and figured out the surrounding situation, especially the approximate number of Dutch people. After drawing a topographic map, they started to return along the way they came!
Not long after, these sentinels, who had gone through all kinds of hardships, returned to Maputo and reported the situation to Meng Xiu and other company executives.
At that time, Meng Xiu said to more than a dozen middle- and senior-level employees of the company in the conference room: "Brothers, some of you have been with me for five or six years, some of you have been with me for more than 20 years. I used to be Meng Xiu." I don’t have the ability to support everyone until they die, so I just let everyone have enough food and clothing, and I can’t let everyone get rich together. I feel guilty!”
"But now, our chance has come!"
"A gold mine with large reserves and easy mining just fell from the sky and landed under our feet!"
After that, Meng Xiu took a deep breath and said, "I declare that the company will now enter a special state!"
[In view of the general environment,
"Deploy all the manpower that can be mobilized, and then distribute the brand-new batch of 21-year-old percussion guns in the company's inventory, and then equip the brothers with two revolvers, one large and one small."
"Assemble all the animals and carriages!"
"Get ammunition, food, and horses ready."
Having said this, Meng Xiu took a deep breath, looked around and said, "Then I will take you to make a fortune!"
Meng Xiu emphasized his tone again, almost gritting his teeth and said:
"Make a fortune!"
