At the Royal Shipyard in Trieste, Ernst personally inspected the Archduke Ferdinand. By the standards of this era, it truly was a giant.
Ernst himself knew little about ships, but there was no need to worry about Austrians pulling the wool over his eyes. Technicians from Hechingen's Trieste shipyard had also taken part in the supervision. This vessel would be Ferdinand's future command ship, and ordinary people did not dare offend the Emperor's younger brother. Seeing the rapidly taking shape Archduke Ferdinand, Ernst was very satisfied. "Let's go!"
This time, Ernst brought quite a few things with him to East Africa, including many of his collections from Hohenzollern Castle, most of them antiques and cultural relics.
In Europe, Ernst had picked up quite a few bargains—cultural relics purchased from returning soldiers from Britain and France. This was especially true of paintings and calligraphy, things foreigners could not appreciate. Moreover, paintings and calligraphy were less likely to be forged, since the West currently lacked such technical specialists.
Among Ernst's collection, Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies had been bought for less than two shillings. That already counted as a "high price" for recovering it.
Those British and French rank-and-file soldiers had no idea of the value of these abundant cultural relics. Most sold them as spoils of war, while Ernst bought them wholesale. At present, he had collected over four hundred paintings alone.
There were even more books. The most typical example was the Yongle Encyclopedia; Ernst had more than five hundred volumes in his hands, all bought by the pound.
Ernst's own cultural attainments were not high enough for him to appreciate them deeply, but he knew that nothing flowing out of the Old Summer Palace and the Forbidden City could be poor.
Most of the cultural relics