The giant flame tower burned for three days and three nights, until the first day of the Julian calendar year 838 AD.
The four huge trees supporting the main structure of the wooden tower finally collapsed, leaving behind a pool of bluish-white ashes at the site of the fire tower. The central area was still smoldering at high temperatures, and the heat was enough to burn mud into pottery.
The afterglow of the festival has not yet faded, and the ashes on the beach are still hot.
Thanks to the huge fire tower, the surrounding generals have indeed undergone tremendous changes.
It is like an artificial sun, a scorching lighthouse, which instantly scorches the snow in a large number of areas. Even the area facing Fort New Rose facing the Fire Tower has returned to a snow-free appearance, and the snow on the walls in this area has been lost.
After the fire tower disappeared, the snow melted and the mud refroze, making it impossible for sleds to operate in such an area, which caused a little trouble for the people.
Kagan especially remembers how people sang and danced in the fire tower when it burst into flames.
The whole city was bright and warm for three consecutive nights. He had never had such an experience in his hometown. Now his life in the royal city of the Russians was like a dream.
Once upon a time, in his world view, the world existed around a grassland, with forests in the north and the sea in the south. The forest was the territory of the Slavs, and the sea was controlled by the Romans. The vast grassland was filled with powerful people from all walks of life.
I appear on the stage. The Pecheneg Alliance is not weak, but it cannot become strong.
Unexpectedly, there is a world of ice and snow among the forest people, with a frozen ocean. The people here live a different kind of wonderful life. What particularly shocked him was the abundant iron supplies and low prices.
Centered at the mouth of the Neva River, there are no iron ores in a radius of 100 kilometers, not even mountains. Geographically, the nearest overland stone mine is somewhere on the Karelian Isthmus, nearly 200 kilometers away.
That area has not even been touched by the various hunters in the principality, and even the Finns have not discovered it.
Theoretically, the Principality of Rus has conquered all of the "Eastern Land" and its territory has expanded to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. There is a serious lack of knowledge about what is in the territory. The huge area needs to be explored urgently, but this bitter cold land naturally repels explorers.
.If possible, the Russians would be more willing to go south to find land more suitable for farming and warm hunting grounds.
It is in this bad land that a small group of people chasing reindeer tracks always stand out. All deer herders are legally citizens under the principality. The registered deer herders pay tribute every autumn.
Taxes mainly on deer skins and live deer were paid to the governor of Ironburg in the far north, and ironware and salt were purchased locally using deer skins as special currency.
If they could purchase urgently needed necessities peacefully, the scattered deer herder clans would completely give up their resistance. They did not care about their homeland. They were so-called carefree herding reindeer in the vast tundra and forests, but they were attacked by strong men.
They fled home until they found themselves unable to escape.
Even the deer-herder clans who have gone to the Kola Peninsula are moving west. As long as they pay taxes, they can get a small flag. With this Rus flag, they have the power to trade, and in principle, Rus hunters from all walks of life dare to attack them.
, the Rus hunters who committed legal crimes will be severely punished for murdering tribesmen according to its regulations. According to general principles, wild and unruly hunters are all blond and strong men, and they simply look down on a group of nomadic dwarfs in the wilderness. Unexpectedly, it is still possible to attack these nomadic clans now.
It became a serious crime, which was never like this before!
The history books of the principality clearly record that the immigrant Ross ancestors annihilated the deer herders living in the fjord and established Rossburg.
Why does the prince demand mercy from the people? Is it just because of the high priest's background?
In fact, it is not the case. As a monarch, which monarch would kill his own tax source group without any trouble? What's more, the principality sells ironware to free deer farmers, and the price is far higher than the principality's market price. The industrial and agricultural scissors here are frantically exploiting a group of free people.
, people in a matrilineal clan society.
The rise of the Principality of Rus is not only due to its own efforts, but also due to the huge dividends of a long-term gambling-style war. The principality has already emerged as an industrial pioneer, and the sensitive Rurik noticed the rise of industrial capital in the principality. In this regard, there are certainly people like him
The policy of Renjun is an example until I think about it, even if I don't intervene, industrial capital will inevitably rise. The emergence of the Hanseatic League is a historical necessity. The business groups in the cities around the Baltic Sea are not really second-rate businessmen, most of them are also doers.
, in order to gain more wealth, we must step up the production of materials and then trade across the ocean.
Even if there is no ore in Novorosberg at the mouth of the Neva River, it is theoretically not suitable for the development of the metallurgical industry. However, it has inexhaustible timber resources and is home to a decent northern port. It is the hub of the east and west regions of the principality.
Here, a large population has gathered here, which means that a large number of people have a strong willingness to work in order to increase their income and improve their lives.
In an open space in the city of New Roseburg, some special factories have long since been built.
When stone and cement began to be used in urban construction, the factories in this area immediately began to "renovate stone materials." Because the workmanship here is quite special, they are more alert to the possibility of fire than other buildings.
The large ironworks of New Roseburg is located here. It does not smelt ore but can make steel. There is not a single blast furnace here, but there is a matrix of twenty furnaces based on traditional improvements. They are mixed with iron ore.
The fired refractory bricks make the interior of the furnace stronger and greatly extend its service life.
Because the two large ironworks in Ellenburg and Roseburg Blast Furnace Town alone cannot digest the pig iron they produce. The two large ironworks are both adjacent to the mines. With the application of blast furnace technology, there are
The molten iron is smelted and a batch of pig iron is cast. If only axes, hammers and shovels are cast, they can be cast and put into production. However, they can only be used as production tools, and their quality is not high, so the selling price is also high.
Can't get up.
As long as they are processed into steel, the price will skyrocket!
The large amount of pig iron ingots cannot be digested by the large iron factories in the north unless there are more local workers. However, a large number of people are rushing to the south. The lack of labor and more output form a sharp contradiction. So how to transport pig iron ingots?
It became very necessary to go to the new large ironworks in the south for finishing.
The shipyards in Roseburg's hometown are fully engaged in the production of light and fast standard cargo ships, and they are taking advantage of the warm period to deliver pig iron ingots to New Roseburg.
In line with the principle of maximizing profits, the two large iron plants in the north devoted all their efforts to smelting iron ore. The so-called labor force responsible for steelmaking was mainly used to dig ore. When the sea froze, the large iron plants in the north changed their strategies and took into account mining.
The work of making molten iron and steel.
The principality currently has three large ironworks. Legally, they are the assets of the principality, and they are also the assets of Rurik himself as the monarch. After all, he spent his own money to build the factory, and he also trained a group of workers. Since the principality
The internal blacksmith alliance signed a contract. The blacksmithing families in the entire duchy are in complete alliance with the prince's family, so the heads of the large ironworks in various places must unconditionally obey the prince's decline in production capacity.
Therefore, the labor force of the two major iron factories in the north supports their families through labor remuneration, and their consumption also affects the lives of other people in the two settlements.
In the "post-immigration era" after the principality moved its capital, Rossburg and Ellenborg found their key new position - large iron works.
Roseburg is more complex. It is also the location of the northern leather trade center and the northern shipyard. Ironburg also has its own characteristics. It guards two northern rivers, is the herring fishing center of the principality, and is also a hub for northern hunters and registered deer farmers.
It is an activity center and even the largest station in the north on the overland trade route with the port of Narvik.
Pig iron ingots from the north come in all shapes and sizes and are piled up in mountains and left out indifferently, so that large areas of the surface of the iron ingots must have rusted and turned red.
Rusting is not a problem at all. The iron with excessive carbon content was smashed into pieces by strong men and then stir-fried in the stove.
The principality fully uses the fried steel method to smelt iron ingots into low-carbon steel. Based on the intuitive feelings of the craftsmen, the carbon content of the semi-finished products is reduced to a certain range as much as possible, and then processing continues.
A young and rather strong boy became the director of the New Roseburg Iron Works.
He was none other than poor Kamni, whose parents were killed by an evil bear.
Those painful things are long gone, and now this boy not only has a successful career, but also found a wife, and even just became a father.
The Novorosberg Iron Works is full of traces of young boys. They are the first batch of young blacksmiths trained by Rurik. Their identities are generally Slavic, and most of them are from Novgorod. There is no need for loyalty.
Doubtful.
Kamnier, who had grown into a strong man and looked like a Viking, was most pleased that the prince came to visit in person. This time, he acted as a tour guide and introduced to the prince the current production capacity of the large iron factory.
Although it is a large iron factory, there are only twenty furnaces here. The furnaces can naturally be expanded, but based on the current supply of iron ingots, twenty furnaces that work all year round can completely eat them up.
Although from the perspective of ordinary people and professional blacksmiths, the pig iron produced in the principality every year can be called huge! But when calculated accurately, it is not even five tons.
Is this worthy of claiming to have a huge production capacity?! According to the per capita iron production, the data of the Rus Principality is indeed close to the per capita peak value during the Western Han Dynasty. Of course, the Rus people also imitated the smelting process of the Western Han Dynasty. Perhaps this is the limit that this process can reach
.
In this poor European world, the Principality of Rus's annual output of five tons of iron with a nominal population of 100,000 is already comparable to the entire Frankish Kingdom, which is huge and infighting. At least the Principality of Rus is simply unable to consume so much iron production and sell iron to the outside world.
It was an important way to make money, so when the Danish king destroyed the local Russian shops, it was equivalent to stabbing the arteries of the Russian people with a knife.
Realistically speaking, if the Russians had not guarded the best iron ore veins in Northern Europe, as well as the extremely high iron content in the ore, and even the blast furnace technology, they would not have been able to do this.
A large amount of iron exists in the market as tools cast from pig iron, such as large quantities of heavy cast iron pots and pans used in daily life, including iron woks and frying pans used by princely families and wealthy merchants.
Only a portion of the pig iron is refined into steel, but the latter accounts for only 20% of total production capacity.
In fact, even if the steel-frying method is used to make steel, it cannot change the fact that steelmaking is time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Ross man-made steel is almost always used in weapons, such as forged swords, forged spears, forged steel armor-piercing arrows, forged steel axes, and forged crossbow arms.
Even some special tools, such as the vibration damping reeds of special carriages, curved shaft plows, and even the elastic reeds of woodworking lathes.
The steelmaking workshops of all large ironworks are dedicated to these tasks, while the large ironworks in New Roseburg are currently only responsible for processing iron ingots into steel.
The factory area keeps making tinkling sounds all year round, and even at night there are craftsmen hammering.
The young craftsmen are deeply favored by the emperor. They are all ordinary poor peasant children. In principle, they are now the prince's private blacksmith slaves, but they live a good life that they could not imagine in the past. The brothers usually have good food and clothing.
They had to sleep well, work hard for a long time, and all of them had their arms thicker than their legs and their whole bodies full of tendons. It was because they would get bonuses if they worked more, which drove them to squeeze out as much time as possible to forge steel weapons.
This time the prince came again.
Kamni had a beard, wore a coarse and loose top, rolled up his sleeves and was not afraid of the cold outdoors.
Indeed, even if the windows of the entire blacksmithing factory were open for ventilation, twenty furnaces were arranged in a matrix to form a huge crowd of people. Rurik even saw some blacksmiths working with bare backs.
"Prince, you must have important arrangements for your visit..." Kamni said with a naive smile.
"clever."
After saying that, Rurik motioned to his men to bring the cloth bag and took out one of the items.
"What is this?" Kamne was a little confused.
"These are the horse's shoes."
"Horse's iron shoes? Very strange."
"It's not surprising." Rurik decisively handed it over to Kamne: "You can imitate it immediately according to my arrangement. I know your strength. Now I need five hundred of them, and you must quickly complete them."
"Ah?!" Kamne was shocked.
"What? You're not happy?"
"I wouldn't dare. My lord, I can't see how it fits on a horse... a horse's hoof."
"That's natural. It's going to be nailed to the horseshoe."
"Ah?! Then the horse will hurt to death. That's your horse, your cavalry."
Rurik then thought that his little brother didn't know about horseshoes? He hurriedly explained the reason, and then he barely made the smart Kamni understand.
Even if the horseshoe is hammered into the horse's hoof with a nail, the horse does not feel any pain? On the contrary, it is said that doing so can prevent the wear and tear of the hoof.
As for the horseshoe that Rurik took out, it was removed from the hoof of a horse. It was made of wrought iron by the Pechenegs, and the quality was naturally not as good as the steel parts of the Russians. It was too damaged and was used.
When the cavalry gathered at Fort New Ross, the Ross people just completed the imitation of horseshoes and quickly installed them on all horses.
Rurik issued a fatal order: "Stop all smelting orders, and all the weapon forging tasks I assigned will be postponed for seven days. You and your brothers will do your best to imitate horseshoes, and come up with 500 horseshoes in seven days. After completing the task, you will all
Get a handsome reward."
Kamnier readily agreed and then looked at the iron in his hand. He inadvertently showed a hint of contempt. He was young and had been working as a blacksmith for many years. He rarely took a break during the year. The high-intensity work made him rich in experience.
.
"Whoever made this kind of iron tool, the quality is indeed not good. When it's my turn to imitate it, it will naturally be made of excellent steel, and the horseshoe will be completely flat."
"Who else is our Pecheneg friend?" Rurik shrugged and pointed out: "It's not an absolute flat surface. There are some dents on the side that touches the ground. I want to enhance the grip.
You understand the mechanical knowledge entrusted to you."
"As ordered, I will organize a meeting for the brothers..."