Chapter 747: No Buying or Selling, Only Exchanging Gifts

Ji Kun and Juerju's party arrived on December 2, 1650, under the escort of Frederick Schomberg, at the Château de Saint-Germain, about 5 leagues (roughly 20 kilometers) northwest of Paris. It was called a castle, but in fact it was a rather magnificent royal palace, first built in 1122, with the existing château constructed in 1539; after its completion it served as a secondary residence of the French royal house. Louis XIV was born there in 1638.

Near the Château de Saint-Germain there was also a small town called Saint-Germain-en-Laye, built along the Seine, with very convenient transport by both water and land. The town was not prosperous, however, and its population was small; within it stood many villas of high officials and nobles. The members of Ji Kun's Great Ming mission were lodged in a luxurious villa belonging to Cardinal Mazarin, while the Ottoman foreign minister Juerju stayed in another grand residence whose owner was unknown.

Ji Kun and his party had just finished settling in when they saw the Swede Coit walking briskly toward them. "Ambassador, the Cardinal and Chief Minister of the Kingdom of France, Mazarin, and the Foreign Minister of the Ottoman Empire, Juerju, have come to call."

"Good," Ji Kun said with a smile, straightening the official robes he had just changed into. Then he picked up a brand-new black gauze cap and set it on his head, and said to Coit, "Lead the way. This official will go and receive them."

What was to be held tomorrow morning was the ceremony — that is, the elaborate formalities staged for public viewing. The visit of a Great Ming imperial mission to Europe was, in this age, an enormous event! It was also an opportunity for the host European country to expand its influence, and of course it had to be put to good use.

The real diplomatic consultations, however, were conducted quietly beneath the surface. The meeting about to take place should be the beginning of the diplomatic negotiations between the two sides — or rather, the three sides.

Because the Ottoman Empire was a traditional ally of France, and envoys of the two sides frequently visited each other, with each having dispatched permanent envoys to the other, Chief Minister Mazarin had surely long since discussed repeatedly with the Ottoman envoy how to draw Great Ming, that great power at the far edge of the sky, into the circle of "Franco-Turkish friendship."

The meeting was held in a reception hall filled with all manner of splendid ornaments and luxurious furniture. Mazarin, Fouquet, Juerju, Ji Kun, and Coit, along with several other French, Turkish, and Great Ming officials serving as interpreters or responsible for keeping records on the spot, sat scattered about this very spacious room.

Several French attendants in embroidered livery (arranged by Mazarin) stood by attentively, bearing France's specialty fermented grape juice (truly not wine, so Juerju could drink a bit more), and whenever they saw anyone's cup was empty, they immediately went over to refill it.

Not a few greasy pastries were also brought in by the French maids working in the villa, all giving off a heavy smell of butter that made Ji Kun feel waves of nausea.

He had originally brought a cook along on the mission, so the whole journey he had been able to eat authentic Yangzhou cuisine. But that cook had been left behind in Vienna by Li Shaoyou, who said he wanted to find a few German girls to apprentice under the cook, and once they were trained he would send him on to France. Who knew how long it would take to train them? So these days Ji Kun could only eat French haute cuisine every day.

"Ambassador Ji, I hear you have signed an agreement with the Ottoman Empire to exchange gifts?"

Once the pleasantries were finished, Cardinal Mazarin came straight to the point — this was not yet the time to discuss an alliance against anyone, but it was possible to discuss trade — no, the matter of exchanging gifts.

Trade was not easy to conduct. In this age there was no concept of free trade; what was practiced everywhere was monopoly trade. At present, trade between East and West was essentially divided among four parties: the Netherlands, England, Spain, and Portugal.

If Great Ming, France, and the Ottoman Empire wanted to join in and take a share of the profits, they would need the support of great navies — but such navies could not simply be conjured into existence. Moreover, a navy was not merely a matter of building ships; naval officers also had to be given opportunities to sail the open ocean and accumulate experience.

A navy first sails, and only then fights!

And in this age, seafaring was not simply a matter of sailing a ship out to sea; it also required familiarity with all kinds of sea conditions and shipping routes, the charting of nautical maps, the establishment of overseas bases, and so on — a great pile of tasks, and not something that could be accomplished overnight.

If the seafaring hurdle could not be cleared, there would be no battle to fight at all.

Therefore, with none of the three — Great Ming, France, and the Ottoman Empire — possessing a great navy, they could only operate on a small scale under the pretext of exchanging gifts.

After all, Great Ming, France, and the Ottoman Empire did carry some deterrent weight; the four parties of the Netherlands, England, Spain, and Portugal would not go so far as to be so overbearing as to forbid friendly mutual visits among them.

One must understand that the Dutch Republic, which now ranked first among the four maritime powers, had just disbanded its army — a strange case indeed: in order to limit the power of the House of Orange-Nassau, it had seized the opportunity of William II's death from illness to do away with the powerful Dutch army.

With the army gone, it naturally did not dare act tough with France, so France's "gift-bearing ships" could still make their way to Asia.

Of course, the French could not go too far either; otherwise, even if the Dutch did not dare turn hostile, there were still Spain, Portugal, and England!

Furthermore, because the Fronde had been raging for more than two years, France had also been badly weakened, and the size of its navy had been reduced again and again; it was now a weak power at sea.

So Mazarin's thinking was to start with small-scale business in the Mediterranean: ship goods from the port of Marseille to Suez, then have Ottoman ships carry them on to the port of Aden, where Great Ming merchant ships would come to collect the goods.

And the business could not be done on too large a scale either; five ten-thousand-dan ships a year would be about right.

"What good things does your France have that can be sold to the East?"

Once the general principle of the "gift trade" had been settled, Ji Kun asked about "French specialties" — he had already discovered that France and the Holy Roman Empire did have good things.

Wine, for instance, was quite good; armor was also well made; foreign muskets and cannon went without saying; and there were fine horses too — whether for riding or for pulling carts, they all looked very sturdy!

In addition, French glass was very good, far better than the glass of Guangdong. The last time Emperor Zhu built the Western-style mansion, he had gone to Zheng Zhilong over the matter of glass.

Old Zheng had had no solution either, and could only tell the glass merchants of Guangdong to think of something. In the end they had managed to obtain some blurry, uneven glass to make do with the task.

France also had very fine Western clocks and watches. Although Great Ming could now produce Western-style timepieces, they were far inferior to the products of France and the Holy Roman Empire.

Mazarin said with a smile, "Mister Ambassador, I am merely a bishop, not a merchant. I think matters of business should be left to merchants to handle."

Talk of "exchanging gifts" and the like was all for external consumption; now that the doors were closed, of course they spoke plainly.

Ji Kun nodded, feeling the same way. He was a "legal expert," and not much good at doing business either.

Fouquet, who was at Mazarin's side, took up the topic and said to Ji Kun, "I have an idea: under the name of convening a trilateral diplomatic conference, establish an Aden Conference Committee.

Not one committee, but rather one for France, one for the Ottoman Empire, and one for Great Ming — three committees all based at the port of Aden. In practice, they would be three chartered trading companies, and it would be up to them to discuss matters of trade."

Fouquet's proposal was in fact to turn the port of Aden into a trading port shared by the three parties of France, Great Ming, and the Ottoman Empire, and at the same time to make it a forward outpost for French colonization of the Indian Ocean region.

Ji Kun did not answer immediately, but turned his head to look at Juerju. Aden had originally belonged to the Arabs, and had later been occupied by the Portuguese; afterward the Arabs had brought in the Ottoman Empire, which had taken all the territory, including the port of Aden.

So this matter required Juerju's nod.

"No problem," Juerju said. "With troops of the Ottoman Empire garrisoned at the port of Aden, neither Portugal, Spain, nor the Netherlands would dare entertain any designs on Aden!"

At present the military strength of the Ottoman Empire was still first in the world. Portugal went without saying; even when the Dutch army was still intact, it would not have dared claim it could defeat the Ottoman Empire.

(End of Chapter)