Chapter 270 The wind rises in North Africa
Chapter 271 The wind rises in North Africa
Viscount Olivier hesitated and said: "Your Highness, if there are too many prohibited sales orders, the factory will be unsustainable..."
Joseph smiled and waved his hand: "Please rest assured that the vast majority of order associations will not interfere. Only individual buyers who may endanger national security will be banned, and this may only happen once in a few years."
All the factory owners were relieved when they heard this. If this is the case, it is almost equivalent to no restrictions.
Compared with the benefits brought by the new technology - a significant improvement in the quality of iron ingots and an increase in refined steel production - this is completely acceptable.
In fact, none of them noticed the "quality assessment" clause. And this is the main means of constraining steel plants.
The so-called quality assessment is conducted on a company, which is equivalent to rating the company.
Everyone knows how powerful the three major rating agencies in the United States are in later generations. If you don't like it, they will lower the rating and your stock will explode immediately.
At the moment, none of these factory owners have ever seen this kind of operation. Just imagine, other steel plants are all grade A++, but yours is grade B. Who will buy your products?
In the future, these factory owners will not be allowed to cooperate honestly with His Highness the Crown Prince?
Joseph threw out another bait: "Oh, soon the association will also announce an iron-making technology that uses new fuels, which can further reduce impurities in iron ingots and increase production."
He was referring to the use of coke to make iron.
After gas lamps came into use, one of the by-products of distilling gas was coke.
As a fuel for iron-making, this stuff has the advantages of low impurities and high heat. It can be developed as one of the supporting industries of gas lamps.
This time it was Mr. Gregor who couldn't sit still at first: "Your Highness, Gregor Brothers Steel Company sincerely hopes to join the Steel Technology Association."
Viscount Olivier and other factory owners immediately followed suit, "Your Highness, Hilke Steel Company has also applied to join the association!"
"There is also the Red Furnace Ironworks..."
"And Will Howery Steel..."
Joseph motioned to Ramo, the development zone director on the side, to distribute the already prepared association management regulations and application forms to everyone: "Everyone just fill out the application and submit it to Mr. Ramo. After that, the association will send technicians to teach you new skills." Smelting technology, you may have to wait for a while, after all, there will be a lot of procedures. "
In fact, there are no procedures, but Joseph has not yet applied for a patent for "hot blast ironmaking", and technicians are still required to turn their principles into drawings, which all takes time.
Factory owners don't mind being a few months late. After all, given the efficiency of this era, it won't be too fast to produce something new.
Joseph warned again: "Oh, by the way, you can first purchase some refractory bricks and a steam engine to drive the blower. These will be used later."
The factory owners hurriedly asked their technicians to write it down.
Joseph stayed in Nancy for three days, finishing all aspects of the development of the industrial enterprise, and then set off south to Saint-Etienne.
The newly built industrial development zone there was officially put into use four months ago - because it is located closer to Paris, its scale is no smaller than that of Nancy.
Joseph naturally had to go there to take a look, and at the same time, he also wanted to bring the steel plants there into the "Steel Technology Association."
The trip to Saint-Etienne was much the same as that of Nancy. When Joseph left the development zone here, he was ready to continue eastward to Lyon, the center of the textile industry in France, to promote the automatic loom that had just been successfully imitated.
There was no way around it. Nowadays, every industrial field in France required him to build the framework and lay out advanced concepts before gradually handing it over to Mirabeau and the others. This time, he was so busy that he couldn't even touch the ground.
But when he came to Forey, east of Lyon, he met the messenger waiting here.
The latter placed the letter from the Royal Ordnance Factory into his hands. The letter stated that the mass-produced automatic looms had encountered some problems. The main reason was that the craftsmen were not precise enough in processing and had to be guided by Louis XVI one by one. This resulted in the first batch of ten looms not being completed until the end of next month.
Joseph reluctantly took out his itinerary, looked down, and finally decided to return to Paris first and apply for a patent for "hot blast ironmaking."
However, before he could leave, he received another report from the National Intelligence Agency, the upgraded Police Intelligence Division.
He opened the secret letter and handed it to Emang along with the codebook.
The latter quickly decoded it skillfully, and then turned to look at Joseph:
"Your Highness, there was a coup in Tripoli six days ago."
Joseph frowned and took the translated report, and saw that it read: On March 18, the Ottoman officer Ali Benjiur launched a coup in Tripoli with the nobles who were dissatisfied with the Pasha.
Ali I, Pasha of Tripoli, fled to Egypt. Benjiur declared Tripoli returned to Ottoman rule.
There are signs that the British were involved behind the coup, including that most of the weapons, equipment and funding for the coup came from the United Kingdom.
British? Joseph was immediately alert. The British would never go to a small Mediterranean country with a population of only a few hundred thousand to interfere in a coup for no reason. Most of them were aimed at France.
It seems that although he has been very restrained, limiting his sphere of influence in North Africa to the small Tunisia, and not directly attacking Algiers as in history, he still attracted the attention of the British.
Something is fishy, so we must not be careless.
Joseph picked up the itinerary again, looked at the last line, sighed and said:
"It seems that it is necessary to go to Tunisia in advance."
Tunisia has basically restored order after several months of governance after driving away the chaos caused by the Janissaries. He was originally going there to deal with some problems and arrange follow-up development plans.
He looked at Emang:
"The Mulan Army is still in Montpellier, right?"
The latter recalled it, nodded and said:
"Yes, Your Highness, they have just completed the reorganization of the Montcalm Army and should not have returned to Mulan yet."
Joseph immediately wrote a letter, sealed it with wax, stamped it with a private seal, and handed it to Emman:
"Send someone to Montpellier immediately and hand it over to Lieutenant Colonel Andre."
In his letter, he asked Andre to take two regiments and immediately go to Toulon, where they would then take a ship to Tunisia.
He wrote another letter and told Emman: "Send this to the Palace of Versailles and ask the General Staff to make a copy of the transfer order."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Now, we are also going to Toulon Port to take a boat. Oh, if Her Majesty the Queen asks, she will say that I am going to the 'domestic province'."
Well, this is definitely not nonsense. Tunisia is now a province of France.
