At the entrance of Ceuta Hotel, a European nobleman wearing a wool wig rushed out and opened the door of a carriage. Several imperial officials followed him quickly and shouted, "Vissue Guzman, please wait a moment, please wait a moment."

The nobleman named Guzman had already stepped on the carriage with one foot, but turned around and said, "No need to say more. Denmark will never accept your proposal. We Denmark will never tolerate your hegemony, absolutely not!"

"No, I just want to say..." the young Chinese official explained, but the words were interrupted by Guzman again. Guzman shouted: "No need to say anything. No one can take away what God has given us, and you Chinese cannot do it either. Don't think that you can do whatever you want if you are a powerful country, and don't think that you can surrender if you get the support of Sweden and other countries. Even if you double the price, we cannot agree."

However, these words of righteousness did not resonate at all, and several Chinese officials actually laughed.

"Are you laughing at us? Is this the etiquette of your Chinese diplomats?"

A young man in the lead shook his head: "Vissue, you misunderstood. We are not here to persuade you to go back. I am just ordered to offer you a boarding permit so that you may miss the ship date for your return home."

After saying that, several officials handed the certificate to Guzman, turned around and left, with no intention of debating with Guzman.

Guzman felt even more embarrassed and got on the carriage and closed the car door vigorously. A young Danish man got on the car from the other side. The man was named Hart, who served as Guzman's translator and his illegitimate son. A few years ago, he was sent to Xijin to study and spoke fluent Chinese.

"Sir, where are we going?" Hart asked.

Guzman took a deep breath, looked at the boarding pass, and found it was all in Chinese, and handed it to Hart. After reading it, Hart said, "This is a diplomatic ship specially arranged by the Chinese. The next ship will set off four days later, stop at Lisbon, London and Amsterdam along the way, and then arrive in Copenhagen."

"Go back to the hotel," Guzman said.

Hart greeted the groom to the hotel, and Guzman fell into deep thought and still couldn't let go of what happened today. Hart wanted to say something several times, but in the end he didn't want to provoke Guzman on the brink of furiousness.

"Hart, do you think the Chinese initiative has been approved by all countries?" Guzman asked.

Ha Te nodded: "Yes, your priest. Even the Spaniards and the Ottomans do not object. The proposal of internationalization of the Straits will inevitably be passed."

After Li Junwei arrived in Europe, he used the mediation of the Spanish throne to inherit the matter, and constantly contacted countries, and held international conferences in Ceuta to supplement and deepen various international laws. The international conference began in September and achieved considerable results within two months. He successively passed various ocean-related laws such as the "Sea Warfare Act" and the "Marine Border Law". As a small country, Denmark has always followed suit and expressed his attitude with several major countries.

But a recent proposal to International Channel Law completely angered Guzman, which requires that merchant ships qualify for all straits in the world in peacetime without compensation.

The reason Guzman disagrees is that this bill is closely related to Denmark's interests, which controls the Sond Strait, the only Baltic estuary. The Danish government requires every ship passing through the Sond Strait to pay one to two percent of the value of the goods to Denmark as a toll tax. This is an important income of the Danish government and is also considered a golden rice bowl.

Denmark has been arguing about this issue for more than half a month, and Guzman has tried his best to do it on this matter.

At the beginning, China joined forces with Sweden, Britain and the Netherlands, three countries closely related to the Baltic navigation rights, and put pressure on Denmark to make Guzman agree with it by buying a large amount of money. He even bribed Guzman in private, but Guzman was unmoved. It was not that he was not greedy for money, but he loved money very much, but he knew that if he did this and returned to Copenhagen, the king would behead him and show it to the public.

After careful consideration, Guzman decided to differentiate the alliance. He proposed that if the Strait of Sond is allowed to be freely navigated, the Suez Canal must be freely navigated. Obviously, it is completely unreasonable to hook up the naturally formed strait with the artificially excavated canal, but countries that voted to participate in the international conference have all expressed their support.

Because all the maritime countries in Europe wanted to get a hand in the Suez Canal, they finally found an opportunity, so they would not let it go. Fortunately, the Ottomans, who had a strong head, stood up for the empire, and the Ottoman envoy directly claimed that they would rather backfill the Suez Canal than be free.

The empire also settled the Danes' determination in this matter, directly announcing that the empire will no longer bear the redemption amount, which also expressed the empire's determination.

In fact, the reason for doing this is very simple. Since war is about to break out along the Baltic coast, let the war be resolved if the negotiation table cannot be solved.

"Then let them go for free." Guzman said fiercely.

As the carriage stopped, Guzman was about to get out of the car, but when he opened the door, he found that the car did not stop at the entrance of the hotel, but stopped at an intersection dozens of meters away from the main entrance of the hotel. In front of him, dozens of carriages were lined up at the door. Seeing that it was difficult to get through for a while, Guzman simply took Hart out of the car, walked into the hotel, climbed to the second floor and entered the room, drinking coffee, Guzman opened the window, and a smell of horse manure came in.

Guzman spitted it directly on the curtains. Logically speaking, the hotel arranged by the Empire was very clean and hygienic. How could this happen? When I opened the curtains, I saw that there were more than a dozen carriages parked in the backyard of the hotel. A group of people were unloading the cargo boxes one by one. The ground was separated by lime, or the flag of a certain country or the badge of a certain noble.

"What are they doing? This is a hotel, not a warehouse, it's a bunch of country bumpkins." Guzman waved his fists and shouted fiercely.

Hart re-received the coffee and explained: "The international conference is coming to an end, it is a private procurement by representatives of various countries."

"What does private procurement mean?" Guzman asked, suddenly, remembering the stench that came from the diplomatic cruise ship when he came to Ceuta, and he already had the answer in his heart.

A total of nineteen countries participated in this international conference. The Empire prepared five cruise ships as diplomatic ships, three routes to and from the Mediterranean and two routes to the North Sea-Baltic Sea. Only the French King Louis XIV brought a boat himself.

The cruise ship was arranged by the Empire, with more than 30 delegations in each country and seven or eight fewer. The Empire not only prepared luxuriously decorated rooms for it, but also planned private spaces for representatives of various countries on the ship.

These private spaces have become the basis for the profits of representatives of various countries. As early as ten years ago, in the international law reached by various countries, diplomatic ships were only clearly defined and provided various types of convenience and protection, especially the inability to inspect at will, and the taxation of diplomatic materials could not be carried out.

Therefore, many diplomats will use diplomatic ships to trade and make money, including some diplomats in the empire.

On the way, the Danish delegation and the Swedish diplomatic group were on the same ship. After the Swedish diplomatic group stuffed a large amount of fur into a private warehouse, it emitted a violent stench and was forced to park the diplomatic ship in Amsterdam for rectification.

Because Guzman's diplomat was sent out temporarily, he had no chance to take advantage of the opportunity to make a profit. But Guzman decided very early that he must make some purchases when he went back.

"Carry it off, let's go to the commercial street."

Ceuta is the pearl of the Mediterranean and the window of the empire to Europe.

Although the empire has been granted Ceuta for only eight years, it has developed into an extremely prosperous trading city facing the entire European market. Ceuta's commercial streets are full of banks, shopping malls and companies. This is the intersection of Eastern and Western civilizations and the overlap between colonies and civilized worlds.

Anything in the world can be bought in Ceuta, and that's Ceuta.

As a diplomat from Denmark, Guzmann is most in love with goods from Eastern China. This is related to Denmark's trade policy. Trade east of the Suez Canal is still monopolized by the King's East India Company. Any Eastern commodity will be sold at a high price in Copenhagen.

Silk, porcelain and jewelry, because it was too expensive, Guzman only purchased part of his wife. What really cost him a lot of money was tea. On the first day, Guzman spent all the money he carried with him, and even spent all the money given by the king for diplomatic expenses.

As a Danish noble, the bankers of the empire were not familiar with him and could not make loans. Fortunately, Ceuta had many Dutch bankers, and these people were very familiar with Denmark. Some even knew Guzmann, which allowed him to successfully get a loan of 6,000 silver dollars and buy and buy in Ceuta.

"It is absolutely good to produce in Penang Watch House. So, there are indeed several similar pocket watches in Ceuta, but such beautiful rose gold women's watches are absolutely unique." In the watch house in a precision instrument mall in Ceuta, the manager kept telling Guzman about the pocket watch in a beautiful gift box. Although Guzman could tell at a glance that this was a pocket watch produced in Italy, he did not deny the beauty and artistic atmosphere of this pocket watch.

After translating, Hart took the initiative to ask: "How much is it."

The manager raised five fingers and a smile appeared on Hart's face. He knew that Guzman had no more money.

"Vic, come and treat it." The Chinese manager immediately greeted the Portuguese guy beside him, and he was very happy to meet the new guest. Guzman was originally a little unhappy, but when he heard the guest speaking Swedish accent French, he looked back and then gave Hart a look.

Hart secretly looked at it and found that the guests coming in were several merchants in the Swedish delegation, all of whom were privileged merchants from Sweden who served the Swedish king.

"Bring these two pieces over and let's have a good look." Guzman said to Vick, then stuffed him two Chinese silver dollars.

Vic smiled and accepted it. Not only did he hold his pocket watch and deliver it to the table beside him, but he also brought coffee.

"Vic, are you Portuguese?" Hart talked with Vic, in French. French was the most popular in Europe at this time. It was because Vic understood French and Chinese that he had an errand in this watch business.

"I'm a native, my father is a Portuguese officer, but unfortunately all he gave me is life."

Ceuta was a Portuguese colony for most of the time in the past, and was later seized by Spain and later belonged to the empire.

"That's a pity. If your father saw you now, he would definitely regret it." Hart said in a compliment.

Guzman put down his pocket watch and quietly came to the VIP room on the excuse of going to the bathroom to eavesdrop on the conversation between Swedish merchants and Chinese watch dealers. The reason he did this was because the two sides mentioned words such as firearms and flintlocks in the conversation in the hall, which Guzman believed was military cooperation.

However, through the thick oak door, Guzman couldn't hear much, and later there was a servant coming to serve, so Guzman had to retreat. Although he had not achieved any results, Hart's side had achieved results.

Vic is a local mixed-race child who has obtained his current position by relying on his language skills, but he faces many expenses, especially at the moment when he is married. Vic is willing to sell the trade secrets of the watch shop for money.

Hart and Vic agreed to go to Vic's house to trade after get off work.

Although Vick is in a watch shop, like many overseas trading companies, it does not specialize in certain products, but involves the industries where the main products are located. For example, the watch shop involves all precision instruments, from telescopes and glasses to microscopes used in laboratories, and then to some equipment and components. Swedish merchants purchased flintlock parts for flintlock guns at watch shops.

Although this kind of parts is also produced in Sweden and is not a high-end product, the Empire is different from Europe. The flintlock machines produced by the Empire are not only of good quality and cheap, but also have interchangeable parts, which is completely different from those produced by Europe by purely handmade products.

"I have found out from Vick, and what is now certain is that this watch shop will provide technical services to the Swedish Navy's steam-powered warships, repair equipment such as car clocks, and provide some naval equipment such as telescopes and sextant.
Chapter completed!