Clean and tidy, this is the common feeling of almost all the indigenous people who have been to the overseas territories of the Tang Dynasty or the embassy area.
Secondly, the environment of the whole place is naturally beautiful, with large grasslands, trees, and neat and tall houses.
For Hammond, who is used to stepping on three pieces of shit, this place is paradise.
With shock, he met the negotiating delegation of the Tang Empire. In addition to the official people, there were also people from the Royal Bank and the Datang Arms Trading Company.
The fundamental purpose of this negotiation was for the English royal family to raise military spending to cope with the war.
Therefore, they need to borrow money and purchase weapons, and these require the Royal Bank and the Arms Import and Export Company.
The Royal Bank was the first bank in the Tang Empire with operations all over the world. It was also the main bank in the Tang Empire that provided policy loans to overseas indigenous countries.
As for the Datang Arms Trading Company, it is currently the only company in the Datang Empire that has a weapons import and export license. Well, the import license can be ignored. Their only business is to export weapons.
Across the world, multiple regions have been established to export different weapons and equipment to each indigenous country.
In China, it is connected to three major arms companies at the same time.
To put it bluntly, this arms trading company was jointly invested and established by the three major arms companies in order to avoid abnormal competition of Datang Arms in overseas areas and to regulate arms exports and avoid the export of some weapons that cannot be exported.
The Tang Dynasty had long known about the intention of the English royal family and was fully prepared.
At the beginning of the negotiation, Datang said that they have money and weapons. The question is what price do you plan to pay to obtain a loan to purchase weapons?
Based on the royal family's proposal, Hammond said on the spot: "We can use customs duties to apply for loans!"
But then the Royal Bank took out a document and said: "According to the commercial agreement we reached two years ago, part of your customs revenue has been used as collateral. In the past two years, under our custody, although you
The tariff revenue has increased significantly, but after repaying the annual loan, the remaining amount is less than 5,000 Tang Yuan per year."
"If you just rely on these customs surplus revenue as collateral to repay the loan, I'm afraid I won't be able to provide you with too many loans!"
Hammond said: "We still have coal revenue. We currently export a large amount of coal to your country every year, and after winning the war, we will be able to control more coal mines and export channels. By then, the coal revenue will also increase.
It has risen sharply, and we are prepared to use coal revenue as collateral to repay the loan!"
"Coal revenue is okay!" The Royal Bank person took out an abacus and calculated for a while, and then said: "If you use the remaining tariff revenue and coal revenue as collateral, then we can provide you with half a million Tang
Yuan loan!”
Hammond was a little dissatisfied: "Only 500,000 Tang Yuan? This is not enough, far from enough!"
This is not because Hammond thinks that five hundred thousand yuan is too little. In fact, this money is not too little for him, and even for the entire royal family.
But the problem is that they are in urgent need of money to purchase military weapons from Datang.
And Datang's weapons are now famous.
What reputation?
Easy to use!
The second one is that it is expensive.
The ordinary model muskets exported by Datang Arms Trading Company to Europe are basically priced at ten Tang Yuan each. If it is a high-end version of the flash cap fired musket, this thing starts at twenty Tang Yuan.
This price is very expensive for most indigenous countries.
It’s not just muskets that are expensive, but also artillery. A new iron smoothbore cannon with a caliber of 90 mm (six pounds) costs more than 500 Tang Yuan. If it is a new iron smoothbore cannon with a caliber of 120 mm, it will cost more than 500 yuan.
, then one thousand two hundred Tang Yuan is needed.
This price is much more expensive than smoothbore cannons produced by indigenous countries.
But there is a reason why Datang dared to sell this weapon at such a high price.
Because many indigenous countries simply do not have the ability to produce on their own on a large scale, even if they can barely produce, the performance is much worse.
For example, artillery, England itself can actually hand-make smoothbore cannons, but their smoothbore cannons have a limited range and can basically only maintain an effective range of five to six hundred meters. However, the effective range of the smoothbore cannons exported by Datang can basically reach more than one thousand meters.
, the new 120mm smoothbore gun can reach about 1,500 meters.
They also deliver grenades.
More importantly, the Tang Empire never sold arms to just one company, but sold them everywhere.
Now both sides in the England Coal War are customers of the Tang Empire.
This means that if one party is equipped with advanced Datang weapons, then the other party must keep up, otherwise it will be beaten.
So in the end, they will find that if they don't buy Datang's weapons and equipment, they can't even fight the war!
After Hammond talked with Datang's negotiators for a whole day, after his hard work, the loan amount was finally increased to 800,000 Tangyuan.
As for how much it could be higher, a representative from Royal Bank said directly that the loan limit is only so much, so it’s up to you whether you want it or not.
After negotiating the loan amount, it was much easier to use the loan amount to purchase ordnance. Someone from the weapons trading company directly gave Hammond the product list.
Every weapon has a clear price tag, and we refuse to bargain. Just place an order for whatever you want to purchase. Once you place an order, it will be delivered to your door immediately in London.
When he received the product catalog, which was hundreds of pages thick, Hammond couldn't help but sigh!
Everything I had done before was to be able to see this product catalog, which contained various weapons, ammunition and combat weapons that the royal army continued to use.
There are guns, bullets, cannons, various cold weapons, plate armor, even horses, sails, wooden warships, and even military cans, etc.
Basically, weapons trading companies sell everything that can be used in a war. Sometimes they not only sell products, but also services. As long as you can afford the price, the weapons companies can even provide instructors to train their troops.
However, in Hammond's view, this product catalog is more like a devil, a devil that swallows all the money of the English royal family.
This is not the first time he has purchased weapons from the Tang Dynasty, this is already the fifth time.
Since the outbreak of the Coal War, due to the needs of the war, the English royal family has purchased four batches of weapons and ammunition for the royal army, which has completely emptied the English royal family's wealth and owed a huge debt.