Life of Being a Crown Prince in France

North Suburb of Paris.

On the “Gem VI” carriage, Joseph looked at the report in his hand and said to Bertier sitting opposite, “So, the British only reinforced Portugal with 10,000 soldiers and 75 cannons?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Joseph shook his head, “This amount of military expenses won’t hurt Grenville.

“Well, Wellesley is quite confident in himself; it seems we need to put some pressure on him.”

The Chief of Staff quickly asked, “Your Highness, do you mean we should also increase troops?”

“Yes, increase the troops.” Joseph nodded, “Let General Massena lead 20,000 soldiers to Iberia. Additionally, let Madrid continue to increase troops; the money they obtained from the church is enough to support seventy to eighty thousand troops in battle.”

Bertier hesitated for a moment and then cautiously asked, “Your Highness, but you previously said our country should try to control the scale of involvement in the Portuguese war.”

“Yes, it’s best to keep it under 5,000.”

“But you just said, increase troops by 20,000…”

Joseph smiled slightly, “Massena’s troops might move very slowly, only arriving in Gascony by the end of the year. Of course, the send-off ceremony must be grand, and have Scheller write a news release.”

Bertier immediately understood, “Are you trying to stimulate the British?”

“That’s right.”

This is completely an open plot.

France clearly wants to increase troops to attack Coimbra, and the British can only choose to follow with reinforcements, without delay. After all, the speed of the French march is definitely written in the Duke of York’s report to the military.

By the time your British army reaches Coimbra, Massena will have already returned to his base.

But dare the British withdraw their troops?

Absolutely not.

Who knows if the French are plotting something, suddenly jumping out.

By the time the British spies confirm that the French army has not actually entered Spanish territory, at least half a year will have passed.

By then, have Massena parade his army again, and Wellesley there will definitely not dare to rush in.

By dragging-on like this, several tens of thousands of British expeditionary forces will have to squat in the fortresses of Portugal, continuously consuming London’s military expenses.

Bertier thought for a moment and said, “Your Highness, but in this case, the British will have a troop advantage in Portugal. What if they launch a counterattack?”

Joseph casually tossed the document in his hand onto the table, “Then General Massena’s army will truly head south.”

The British want to have a man-to-man showdown with the French army on land; Joseph would definitely welcome it.

Historically, Massena indeed lost to the Duke of Wellington in Portugal, but that was when he forcefully attacked the fortress and was surrounded by Portuguese guerrillas behind him.

Now, with Wellesley actively attacking, and the Portuguese people itching with hatred for the British, there’s no reason Massena can’t win.

Not to mention, there are five or six thousand Spanish troops assisting next door.

Joseph was speaking when he suddenly smelled a pungent acidic smell.

He frowned, knowing they were approaching Antoine Town.

Over the years of development, this place as Paris’s industrial park, already had factories everywhere and chimneys standing tall. There were as many as thousands of workers working here.

Particularly industries like papermaking, pharmaceuticals, chemical production, and coal tar refining were extremely developed, with large quantities of products being shipped daily on the town’s boats, and sold throughout the European Continent via the Seine River.

Of course, the pollution brought by industrial development cannot be avoided.

Joseph took some measures, but the effect wasn’t great. Currently, only “concentrated discharge of toxic wastewater” could be barely implemented; otherwise, the water in the Seine River would make skin peel off even if used to wash clothes.

Joseph helplessly shook his head, seems that the title “Fog City” is likely to belong to Paris in the future.

Soon, the convoy entered Antoine Town, immediately surrounded by the “rumbling” sound of machine operations.

The sound came mostly from steam engines.

Antoine Town now installed over 30 various types of steam engines, from pulp mixing, liquid centrifugal purification, to workshop ventilating, appearing in almost all industries here.

It can be said that the degree of industrial automation in Antoine Town is top-notch throughout Europe.

Another ten minutes or so passed, and the convoy stopped in front of a factory with the sign “Paris Fertilizer and Pesticide Company.”

Eman opened the car door, and Joseph saw Lavoisier leading dozens of senior technicians, respectfully saluting him ahead.

Mirabeau and a group of Ministry of Industry officials got off one after another and surrounded the Crown Prince as they entered the factory.

Joseph looked at Lavoisier beside him, whose dark circles almost extended to his nose, and exclaimed, “I didn’t expect you to complete the trial production so quickly. Your brain is truly France’s most precious treasure.”

Indeed, from instructing Lavoisier to study the industrial production process of potassium fertilizer, up to now only five months had passed, and the first batch of potassium fertilizer was already off the line.

Historically, Mala actually signed to cut off the head of such an unparalleled genius, it’s simply a tragedy in chemistry.

“It’s a great honor to receive your praise.” Lavoisier respectfully said, “In fact, I’ve only done some trivial work; you are the true creator here.”

Yes, currently humans don’t know what “potassium” actually is, only a small number of empirical formulas exist for reactions involving potassium salts, many of which are wrong.

It was Joseph who wrote the reaction equation for potassium salts transforming into potassium sulfate from potassium chloride to Lavoisier, leading to the latter’s further industrial production experiments.

Under Lavoisier’s guidance, Joseph walked into the production workshop, seeing two large iron reaction kettles over a person’s height, connected by several pipes of varying thickness, along with instruments.

On either side of the workshop were the feeding and discharge ports, with many workers busy there.

Lavoisier first pointed to the gray-yellow powder in the square storage tank on the right side, “Your Highness, this is the salt transported from Baladik.

“If not for your discovery, no one would know there’s fertilizer in these ‘bitter salts’.

Salt from the Baladik area contained a large amount of potassium, making it inedible, and always regarded as garbage and ignored.

This led to extremely low mining costs, only requiring labor payments.

Lavoisier signaled to a technician, who checked the temperature and instructed the workers to add dozens of bags of filtered coarse salt into the reaction kettle, then start heating.

“Your Highness, through my repeated experiments, the high-temperature super saturation method is the cheapest production method.” Lavoisier said, “Potassium fertilizer has a high solubility in boiling water, whereas impurities are very low. By distilling some solution at high temperatures, impurities will preferentially precipitate.”

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