Welcome to 19th-century Europe, where strength reigns supreme

Groups of merchant ships flying the Prussian Black Eagle flag crossed the Strait of Malacca and transported large quantities of military supplies to Jiaozhou Bay. They contained the backward muzzle-loading guns that had been eliminated by Prussia.

These are all old weapons used by the old Prussian soldiers. Some of them are really just fire sticks, which explode when fired. The youngest ones are four years old and above. There are such things as forts, but they are almost non-existent.

It’s been too long, and if you don’t know better, you might think this is some kind of antique boat, but what is it actually? These things are all arms sold to Ming Dynasty.

As for why we want to sell arms to the Ming Dynasty? Of course, they don’t want the Ming Dynasty to plummet and let the British government really rely on war to alleviate domestic problems. Of course, this is not August’s idea, this is Lilian’s idea.

It was Lillian, the British Foreign Secretary who asked August to sell some junk equipment to the Ming Dynasty. We don't talk about the British and French coalition forces, and acting like a normal person is considered a success.

Of course, according to the current situation, this can certainly throw Britain's domestic stability into the hanging bedroom together with its war support, but to be honest, this is not very beneficial to Prussia.

This means that Prussia's exports will also have to shrink, unless the American Civil War is over, so that there will be new sales. However, watching the United States, the United States, and the Confederates fighting each other and eating three bowls on the spot, the situation is Although the United States is in an advantage, when do you think the fight will be over? That's hard to say, because there are no powerful countries near the United States. Otherwise, based on the strength of the United States' army, it would have to find its godfather, France, to sign strategic cooperation projects.

So August refused at first, but she gave him too much, and there was nothing he could do about it. Although Prussia and Japan didn't have much hatred, there was nothing wrong with showing off and showing off their muscles.

The person in charge of escorting the merchant ships this time is Cabinet Secretary Albrecht. The recent task of the Central Prussian Civil Service Group headed by Tina is to plan the next development plan. Now there is a disc generator, but there is no bird. Use it, you can't expect this thing to really work, right?

In order to deal with this, August set his sights on Werner von Siemens. Unlike the world of OTL, Siemens in this world failed to win the telegraph line contract from Frankfurt to Berlin and now only relies on selling compass models. The telegraph kept the company going, and their customer was Britain.

Now that Britain is in decline, Siemens has no choice but to look for other business opportunities. Not long after, August wrote him a letter in his own hand asking him to report to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

When Siemens received the letter, he thought someone was trying to mess with him. It wasn't until he saw the official seal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences that he realized it was true.

After all, unless you are mentally retarded, you should know the consequences of messing with the official seal of a state agency. You can get through it without setting fire to the mountain.

And when he went to Berlin to report, researchers from the Academy of Sciences simply dumped a batch of disc generators and asked him to take them back to study and come up with a more powerful motor. It doesn't matter how he does it. It doesn't matter if the funds are insufficient. Your company has no money. Don't panic.

The almighty Prussian government will take care of everything for you.

Although the Prussian government doesn't have that much cash now, but no matter how hard it is to throw money at me, it won't be enough to find the Prussian Foundation. Those old men in the monopoly group are already rich, so they won't give it to me, right? Then you don't need to be a director anymore, go to Africa to open up colonies for the great Prussia.

This is what the Financial Investment Committee under the Prussian Foundation does. It's not like giving you money without giving it to you, just asking you to spend it. There's so much nonsense.

Capitalists are afraid of August's power. After all, half of their companies are hired by state civil servants. If you don't obey, August won't do anything for you, and your company will suffer. Monopolies are also afraid of power. , especially for someone with means and prestige like August, the capitalists can only obey their orders.

But after all, it is an investment in new products. You may say that it is not a loss. With the capital injection, Siemens can be regarded as a company that has been revitalized. The electric motor will definitely not be produced so quickly. August is not in a hurry. Now the UK The efficiency of the electric motor used is not very good, and the energy consumption is lower than that of the steam engine. In fact, the difference in efficiency is not as big as imagined, and delays are not a problem at all.

……

The Prussian merchant ship set out from the Atlantic Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and passed through the Indian Ocean. After a week or so, Albrecht finally arrived at Jiaozhou Bay, and then began to sell weapons to Ming officials.

Of course, Albrecht did not understand Chinese very well. It was also his first time to set foot on the Ming Empire. In order to complete this task, Albrecht spent a lot of time to find a trustworthy translator. Albrecht Brecht had a wide network of contacts, and after the incident was completed, he could get half of the profits from the weapons sold here.

It was also because of this that he reluctantly accepted this task. He came here for the future of Prussia, not because he could make money here.

To do this, he needs to sell all these rags in this strange continent through bluffing and deception, and he must not let the British below discover it, otherwise it will become very troublesome.

And his approach was very simple. After seeing the powerful Anglo-Prussian and French coalition forces, the Ming Emperor seemed to realize something. Is it possible that the Ming Dynasty had fallen behind the West?

Then the group of eunuchs and eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty who may not be very smart said that the West is barbaric. The reason they lost to the weak Western countries in the last battle was due to insufficient military spending. The Ming army had no fighting spirit but no weapons. I am invincible in the world, how could it be possible? Just because of this little thing, everything got messed up.

And Emperor Ming really believed the lies of the eunuch group, and allocated a lot more money to the army as military expenses. The army was unprecedented in size, except for one thing: it had no weapons.

The weapons of the Ming army were so old that they were worse than shotguns. They never saw cannons. They only saw cannons when they were being beaten.

The military report submitted to the Ming Emperor by the Minister of War stated that the military of Western countries with small countries and few people was stronger than the Ming army only because they had excellent equipment and sufficient supplies. There was no other reason.

The Military Science and Grain Reserve Department of the Ming Dynasty also stated that the quality of the Western Allied Forces was not as good as that of the Ming Army, and that the Ming Army's defeat was only due to poor weapons and insufficient soldiers' pay.

So as long as the weapons are the same as those of the West, then we can win easily. My Ming Dynasty is the overlord of East Asia, and all the countries around me regard me as my father. How can I be so upset just because I lost a battle?

Wouldn't it be nice to win it back later?

Albrecht bribed local officials in Jiaozhou Bay and obtained some inside information. Emperor Ming was using a large amount of silver to expand his army and was in urgent need of weapons.

Albrecht went directly to the local governors and prefects of the Ming Dynasty. After the war, the market in Ming Dynasty was small. Many foreigners came to Ming Dynasty to sell industrial products. As a result, the sales were not good. , because the Ming Dynasty was still a small-scale peasant economy, and they did not realize the importance of industrialization.

He simply thought that as long as the weapons kept up, he could suppress the Western countries, and he made the same mistake as the Qing Dynasty. Although Albrecht did not fully understand what the Ming government was thinking, it was a coincidence that they lacked weapons. Yes, I happen to have weapons here.

In order to sell his weapons, Albrecht also used some dirty methods, such as colluding with bandits, selling advanced weapons to the bandits at a friendly price, and then telling the intelligence to the Ming government, which sent troops to suppress the bandits. , of course it was no problem to suppress the bandits with the strength of the Ming army, but they were also frightened by the bandits' firepower.

When Ming Dynasty officials reprimanded Prussia for selling guns to bandits, Albrecht responded domineeringly, "We are businessmen, and businessmen are interested in interests. The emergence of banditry is the Ming government's own problem. Prussia is just following The buyer makes a deal and then sells the goods to the buyer, and that's it. The Ming government has no right to rebuke Prussia. There are clauses in the Treaty of Peking that allow Prussia to trade."

This made the officials of the Ming Dynasty furious. Albrecht also made an inappropriate metaphor: If I sell kitchen knives to others, and they use this kitchen knife to kill people, then What does this have to do with me? It's the person who kills, not the knife in his hand. What's the point of you coming to trouble me? If Ming Dynasty thought it was Prussia's problem, it means that Ming Dynasty believed weapons killed people. So is the person who made the weapons guilty? So the big Eastern country that invented gunpowder, should this fault be yours?

This combination of punches fooled the Ming officials into a daze. Finally, adhering to the idea of ​​using magic to defeat magic, the Ming Dynasty began to buy Prussian rags. Albrecht also asked the soldiers to teach them how to shoot. After the Ming army, which only had fire sticks in hand, got the prototype gun, they suddenly felt more confident and felt that they could conquer the world again.

Albrecht returned home with a lot of money.