King of Mercenaries - Chapter 65: Firewood-saving Stove

Four kilometers West of ‘t Horntje, over a small hill there was a narrow beach. The sands on this beach was very fine, if they were in the modern day, it would absolutely be a hotspot for beuatiful women in swimsuits to “lay dead” as they basked in the sunshine.

Of course, they were in the middle ages now, and everyone wore robes. Forget beautiful women, not even guys dared to undress to such a degree and lay down on the beach. Otherwise, the priests of the church would definitely “redeem” soemone crazy like you, and it wasn’t guaranteed that they would tie you to the stake and perform some “human barbeque”…

Not far East of this beach, there was a small freshwater lake called Horspolders, and it could supply freshwater needed for daily life.

Building a salt-boiling facility wasn’t that easy to accomplish. First, they needed to find a suitable location, which must be by the coast, the seawater must be sufficiently salty, it should be clean and not be polluted.

Secondly, they needed to recruit enough manpower. Normally, a giant salt pot requires at least two or three laborers to watch over. One was in charge of adding fuel, one to watch the pot. While the last person was in charge of transporting the fuel. By the time the salt-boiling process ends, they must extract the salt out of the pot and package them.

Meanwhile, a salt-boiling facility mustn’t have only one pot, so they would require rows of salt-boiling pots. Hence, they would also require lots of manpower.

Not only that, the transportation of fuel and salt also required lots of manpower. For example, Marin intends to establish this salt-boiling center around Horspolders, he must first build enough salt-boiling stoves. Secondly,he must also build houses for the salt-boiling workers, to make their lives easier. Finally, from the ‘t Horntje port to the salt-boiling facility, he had to pave a road across, to make it easier to transport briquettes.

Although there was only about four kilometers between ‘t Horntje to the salt-boiling facility, but the Western half of this road needed to go through a hilly area, which increased the difficulty for construction.

Besides that, Marin also had to send someone to a large city to commission a large bulk of huge iron pots and bricks, for the construction of the stoves and houses. As for the houses, Marin pondered for a moment, and decided to continue using Adobe houses. Adobe houses have a low cost of construction, and were quite comfortable.

They were quick to build as well. But for the stoves being constructed to boil salt, Marin intended to use a large amount of bricks and lime powder.

Because he intends to utilize fuel-efficient mud stoves (AKA firewood-saving stoves), and the chimneys for these fuel-efficient mud stoves required the use of bricks.

In his previous life, Marin’s hometown was in the boonies, and his village had once promoted the use of fuel-efficient mud stoves for a time.

As for fuel-efficient mud stoves, the concept was quite simple, it was to increase the thickness of the stove walls, so that when the fuel was burning inside, the energy doesn’t get transmitted to the surroundings.

One must know, a normal mud stove only had a layer or two of bricks surrounding it, and it was not thick enough. When fuel was burning within, the temperatures of the walls would also increase, and the energy would be transmitted to the surroundings across the stove walls, and the final result would be no different than a heater.

However, if they increased the thickness of the stove walls, the heat energy within the stove would not be easily conducted across the walls. This way, the fuel efficiency of these efficient mud stoves have greatly increased.

Also, the chimney for these fuel-efficient mud stoves needed to be tall. Because, tall chimneys would have an easier time achieving the Siphon effect, by sucking away smoke and gas from within the stove, and at the same time, intaking air from the inlet automatically, which aided in burning.

Based on the words of the technician who was promoting the firewood-saving stove, when compared against the traditional mud stoves, they would save one third to half of the fuel, while the burning time could be saved by a quarter to one third.

That’s why the firewood-saving stove was extremely powerful. By using this technology for salt-boiling, Marin can also be considered as strictly managing his costs, and would be a model example for entrepreneurial management.

For the construction of this salt-boiling facility, Marin had decided to perform mass recruiting. Because there was a dire lack of manpower on the island, and they also had their own jobs to fill.

That’s why if Marin wanted to obtain more manpower, he would have to do that inland.

At the end of the 15th century, Europe had recovered for over a hundred years, because of the black plague in the 14th century, the population that had massively decreased had basically recovered.

Originally, many manors were short on manpower. But after a hundred years, after the repopulation efforts of several generations, many manors started showing surplus in manpower.

For example, the number of acres of fields in a certain manor was fixed, and the number of serfs that the local lord would hire would accurately reflect their need.

However, in a serf’s household, they might not have just one boy.

That’s why, aside from a few professions that required a large amount of manpower, the Lords were disinclined to raise so many surplus of men. Because, most of the serfs’ sons couldn’t even inherit their father’s position as a serf.

These people must either seek another newly-established manor to act as a serf, or they would become laborers in cities. Even so, there were still many who had trouble finding a job. As such, most of these people end up as beggars or vagrants. For the bold ones and strong ones, some end up joining mercenaries, while others became bandits…

The reason why Germanic mercanaries could develop, aside from the martial traditions of the Germanic peoples, there was also a large surplus of serf sons who couldn’t get jobs.

What Marin wanted now was to visit manors with a surplus of people, in order to recruit a batch of honest and hardworking serfs to boil salt. Of course, they must first help Marin construct the salt-boiling facility, as well as pave the road towards s’t Horntje…

For that, Marin went on another trip, towards Deutsche Germany. He did not recruit anybody in Holland. Because, the people from Holland had a dialect that was too different from the other regions of Deutsche Germany.

Marin spoke German, Latin, and Frisian languages, but he couldn’t speak Dutch. That’s why, whenever Marin had to communicate with people of Holland, he felt very exhausted, and he needed a translator everytime.

From the looks of it, Holland and Frisian were both Western Germanic languages, and were unable to communicate with the majority of German dialects. This was also the major reason behind why Holland wanted to detach from Deutsche Germany and become independent. For example, the Westphalia region where Marin’s family was located at, although there was a difference in dialect, but if they spoke slower, they could still communicate with the Saxons and Austrians. But against the Dutch of Holland, the Deustche people who spoke Germanic could only find themselves at a loss.

For the sake of convenience, Marin headed straight for his hometown in Ruhr, to recruit those excess manpower in the other manors.

Under Old Hoffman’s help, Marin very quickly recruited 500 serfs, which would follow him back to Texel for salt-boiling…

“Marin, is your salt-boiling method reliable?” Madam Mary asked out of worry.

“Of course, the Britons had made a lot of money with this!” When he whispered the profit they could make from boiling salt to Madam Mary, her mouth hung agape out of shock.

“But, if boiling salt was that profitable, why don’t other people do it?”

“Mother, not everybody could easily purchase such a large amount of coal. The Netherland region are short on firewood, if they wanted to burn firewood, they would have to import it from elsewhere, and that’s not as convenient as us having ships to transport coal. Besides, across the entirety of Western Europe, only the Ruhr river area between Germany and Britain produced coal. The Britons have already made a fortune from selling salt boiled with coal, and we have yet to exploit the coal in the Ruhr region. As for me, I’ll be the first German to make a fortune out of boiling salt with coal!”

Marin was absolutely correct, although boiling salt using coal was extremely profitable. But, the places that produce coal was already few and far in betwen. In Western Europe, it seems that only the Rurh area and the Northern area of England produced coal in large amounts. Even if the other regions wanted to emulate him, they first needed to own coal. Besides, because of the underdeveloped technology (mostly because of the suppression by the Vatican), most people still didn’t know that the heat content of coal was much higher than firewood.

“Marin, my child, you’re so smart! But there’s something that you have to consider!”

“What is it?”

“Where are you selling it! Son, you can produce a large amount of salt, but you need to have the means to sell them, only then would you obtain money!”

“Then Mother, do you have any suggestions?”

“Try doing business with the merchants of the Hanseatic League, those Hanseatic merchants have a lot of priveleges within the empire. If you work with them, you’ll be able to sell in bulk. Otherwise, it would be hard for you to clear your stock of salt. Besides, you aboslutely mustn’t make enemies with the Hanseatic merchants. If you become their enemy, they will blacklist your salt sales!” Madam Mary was really knowledgeable, she knew that within the empire, the Hanseatic merchants owned the place. She was worried that Marin being young and ambitious, would get into conflict with the Hanseatic merchants.

As a matter of fact, Madam Mary’s matrilineal grandma was from a family of merchants. Back then, because her grandma’s family had once offended the Hanseatic merchants, in the end, they were suppressed so hard that they had to pack up their stuff, and were at the brink of being bankrupt. If it weren’t for the help of the Bloch Family, Madam Mary’s grandfather would have taken his own life because of bankruptcy. Precisely because of that, Madam Mary’s grandfather, at the moment when the Bloch Family faced imminent doom, he took in Madam Mary’s father at great risk, and also marrying his daughter to him. That’s why, Madam Mary did not wish for Marin to repeat the past. One must know, the Hanseatic League was extremely influential, they held trading privileges of many cities within the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, they pay less taxes than others, and were offered many conveniences than others.

Although other countries like Britain and Denmark had started to compete with the Hanseatic League, but in the short-term, the Hanseatic League will not face a decline. The true decline of the Hanseatic League will only start when the Dutch merchants start to make a name for themselves. But at this point, Holland was still not tapped yet, and Antwerp had yet to be developed. That’s why, in this day and age, the Hanseatic League is still a beast. At the very least, in the Deutsche Germanic region, they were unstoppable.

“I understand Mother, I will be careful in dealing with them!” Marin answered solemnly.

Then, Marin once again visited Wiggin’s Merchant Association in Cologne, and hired their ships, to transport 500 serfs towards Texel…