I want to be emperor

Luo Zhixue stayed in Singapore for seven days. During these seven days, he inspected many places and met with many officials. In the end, he took a day to take the queen, the concubines, the prince and the princess to the port park on the outskirts of the city.

The next day, Luo Zhixue and others boarded the Royal Princess, which had been overhauled.

The inspection fleet sets sail again, this time they will pass directly through the Strait of Malacca and head first to Dagon City, the provincial capital of Myanmar Province.

This Dagon City was actually Yangon in later generations. Before the arrival of the Chu people, this place was actually just a small fishing village.

Later, the Chu people rented this place from the Burmese people to build trading posts and military bases. With the gradual development, this place became a strategic location for the Chu Empire to control Burma and surrounding coastal areas. Go here There are more and more Chu people living and doing business.

After the Chu Empire completely took over Myanmar, this place naturally became the provincial capital and governor's residence of the newly established Myanmar Province.

In the late 1930s, the Chu Empire planned a southwest trunk railway plan to build a southwest trunk railway to connect Yunnan, Myanmar and other southwestern provinces, and connect the Yunnan-Guizhou Railway to the hinterland railway network of the Chu Empire.

It's just that the construction of this southwest main railway is too difficult... It's not that it can't be built, but it's too costly and takes too long.

Building railways in places with complex terrain has always been a time-consuming and extremely costly project.

In order to build the Yunnan-Guizhou Railway, the Chu Empire spent more than ten years building it. Construction began in the 1920s, and it was not completed and opened to traffic until the 42nd year of Chengshun.

The Sichuan-Yunnan Railway currently under construction, which connects Sichuan and Yunnan, is also very difficult to build.

However, it is the continuous construction of these two railways that has also allowed the Dachu Empire Railway Corporation to gain valuable experience in building railways in complex terrain.

What experience?

What experience do you have? If you can go around it, go around it. If you can't go around it, just build a bridge and open a tunnel.

However, it is okay to build bridges these days, and the cost is acceptable, but the cost of building tunnels is extremely high. Therefore, railways in these complex terrains are basically built in twists and turns, and they can go around as much as possible.

As for efficiency, let's not consider it for now... No matter how slow the winding train is, it is still faster than hiking over mountains and ridges.

Unless there are special terrains such as snow-capped mountains, frozen soil, or simply complex mountainous terrain that are difficult to traverse, it is actually difficult to prevent the construction of railways... but the construction cost will be very high.

However, the Southwest Main Line Railway is of great political, military and economic significance, and it must be built even if the cost is high.

The Dachu Empire Railway Corporation builds strategic trunk line railways only based on whether they are needed, not whether they are difficult or difficult, or whether they will result in a loss of money.

Once the Southwest Main Line Railway is completed, you can take a train from Jinling City all the way to the southwest, and then arrive at Dagon, Myanmar Province, directly seeing the Indian Ocean!

At the same time, through the Bangkok-Dagon railway line that is already under construction, you can also go all the way south to Bangkok and then transfer to Singapore.

At the same time, there is also a planned railway line from Bangkok to Annan Province, and Annam already has a railway connecting Thang Long Province in the north, and Thang Long Province already has a railway line connecting Guangdong, and there is also a railway connecting Kunming in Yunnan.

Together, these railway networks can form a trunk railway network that connects all provinces in the southwest at the same time. Starting from any big city in the country, you can reach Malacca, Singapore, Siam, Bangkok, Annan, Phnom Penh, and Thang Long Hanoi by rail.

In addition, as an important branch line of the Southwest Railway, it will continue to be built westward in Myanmar Province, all the way to Bangladesh Province.

The Bengal region was established as a state in the 31st year of Chengshun, and underwent comprehensive localization in the following years. After completing localization, it was officially established as a province in the 43rd year of Chengshun, and has since become one of the territories directly under the jurisdiction of the Chu Empire.

The reason why the Da Chu Empire made this place a directly-administered territory was mainly because this place had a large area of ​​coastal impact plains with great agricultural potential.

So it took more than ten years to localize, and finally obtained a territory directly under the jurisdiction of only Chu people.

In this process, the foreign legions recruited in the Indian region contributed a lot. These Indian soldiers with untouchable backgrounds were much more ruthless than the Chu people when they carried out various expulsions and purges.

It was very easy to use. Later, the Chu people sent some of these foreign legions to the Fuso area to carry out the final localization work. Progress was extremely rapid, and it took only two years to complete the comprehensive localization of the Fuso Islands.

Of course, the Fuso Kingdom did not disappear... it just moved to the Indian Peninsula. Just like many previous indigenous countries in the Southeast Asia, it did not disappear, but gradually moved to the Indian Peninsula.

So the current Indian peninsula is very chaotic. In addition to the indigenous people in the southern and central areas of the Indian peninsula, there are Mongols from Central Asia in the northwest, and some are even Caucasians.

Then in the past 20 years, a large number of Dongna, Southeast Asians and Fuso people have gradually moved in.

They fought with each other, fighting for land and other interests, and they fought very cruelly.

As for the Chu people... The Chu people have established a province of Bengal and South India, as well as several small-scale independent prefectures, such as Bombay and Goa. They have no other directly governed territories... Well, Ceylon Island does not count. In the official geographical concept of the Great Chu Empire, Ceylon Island does not belong to the Indian peninsula, but belongs to the concept of an independent island. The Great Chu Empire established Ceylon Province here long ago.

This place is the real strategic location of the Chu Empire in the Indian Ocean.

In addition to the directly administered territories, the Chu Empire also established a large number of administrative territories in many coastal areas of India, covering almost all coastal areas of the entire Indian peninsula.

In the inland areas, a large number of colonies such as protectorates and puppet states were supported.

Therefore, despite the seemingly numerous forces and chaotic situation in the Indian Peninsula...in fact, the entire Indian Peninsula belongs to the Chu Empire.

All the indigenous countries of some size are all vassal states or protectorates of the Chu Empire... It's just that the vassal states or protectorates of the Chu Empire have always only protected the interests of the Chu Empire. Just protect their interests.

As long as these indigenous countries do not infringe on the interests of the Great Chu Empire, the Great Chu Empire will generally not care about conflicts or even wars between these vassal states, protectorates.

Just like the war between the Kingdom of Wales and the Kingdom of England... they are both vassal states of the Great Chu Empire, but the Great Chu Empire does not care about the war between them.

Even if one of the parties is defeated, as long as it does not affect the balance of the situation too much and the victor recognizes the debt of the defeated party and ensures the interests of Chu State, then the Chu Empire will go along with the flow and recognize the annexation of their territories.

To put it simply, the people of Chu just want to make money and don't want to bother and interfere with the fighting between these natives.

The same is done here in the Indian peninsula.

Luo Zhixue's inspection fleet, after arriving in Dagon City, Myanmar Province, stayed for three days for inspection, and soon set off for Jiande City, the provincial capital of Bangladesh Province.

Before the arrival of the Chu people, the city was just an ordinary small village. After the Chu people came to this place, they wanted to go deep into the interior of India along the Ganges River. At the same time, the Chu people particularly liked to visit this place. , controlling the river's entrance to the sea.

Jiande City is located at the mouth of the Ganges River, and this section of the river is very narrow, only about two kilometers wide.

Continuing to go south here, we will reach the sea entrance which is seven to eight kilometers or even more than ten kilometers wide.

Therefore, the Chu people chose to build a trading stronghold here, and took the name of the local small fishing village and transliterated it as Jiande. Then there were fortresses, forts, and military bases... The Chu people regarded this place as their In a large aspect, it continues to penetrate into the Ganges River Basin and then control the Ganges River Basin.

During this process, Jiande City became larger and larger, and its population increased. Later, it also became the provincial capital and governor's residence of the newly established Bengal Province.

But even so, there are actually not many people in Jiande City. So far, there is only an urban population of more than 30,000, which is much less than the more than 80,000 people in Dagon City in Myanmar Province. ...This is actually not that small. You have to remember that the entire province of Bangladesh only has a population of about one million, and it is spread over the vast area of ​​​​the entire province of Bangladesh, so most towns are very small.

Jiande City has a population of 30,000, and this is because its geographical location is really convenient, making it convenient for trade.

So Luo Zhixue has seen the smallest provincial capital in so many years!

During previous inspections in the hinterland of the mainland, or previous inspections in Nanyang, the provincial cities I saw basically had a population of several hundred thousand or more. The smaller Luzon and Manila also had more than 100,000 people, and Singapore had 200,000 to 300,000 people. , Myanmar’s Dagong is smaller, but there are still 80,000 people.

But this Jiande City has a pitiful urban population of just over 30,000 people.

At this scale...it's not even as good as many local counties.

The development of industry and commerce in this place is not very good. As for agriculture... it can only be said to be barely adequate. Although this place has a huge and fertile Ganges impact plain, like all the lower deltas of large rivers that have not been fully managed these days, this place Floods in this place are very serious every rainy season.

Without complete water conservancy infrastructure construction, it is actually difficult to become a true granary... But for large-scale construction and development, the investment will be too large.

There are many good places for development in the empire, and the Ganges Delta is not bad... the price/performance ratio is too low.

Back then, the Chu Empire suffered a lot in order to develop the Red River Delta and the Mekong River Delta... It had just completed its overseas expansion. When it saw such a large fertile plain, it couldn't help but want to start construction.

Then after countless funds were poured into it, although it was indeed achieved, as the world expanded eastward, the top leaders of the Chu State took up the abacus and calculated... Well, the amount of money spent on two small delta plains can be spent The whole of Eastern Europe was developed.

The more and more these good places are occupied, the more and more Chu people look down on the value of these so-called good places...

By the time Bangladesh was established as a province, the empire's top officials no longer had any interest in large-scale investment and construction. What could they do with the money? Why would they have to deal with these deltas?

Therefore, the construction of water conservancy infrastructure in Bangladesh is very backward, and agricultural development is limited to some places that will not be affected by floods.

Industry is not good, and agriculture is not good either. We can only rely on the Ganges River transit trade to make extra money, so the economy of Bangladesh Province is naturally not that good.

This place may see development in the future, but now, it's too early.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue is not very interested in inspection. He came here simply because this place is a newly established province. It would not be good to pass by and not take a look.

In addition, the fleet also needed to rest and replenish supplies, so we stayed for two days and then set off to leave.

After the inspection fleet sets sail again, it will not stop at many small-scale directly governed territories on the Indian peninsula, but will go straight to the island of Ceylon.

Ceylon Island, this should be an overseas territory that the Chu Empire attaches great importance to. It captured this island from the Dutch a long time ago, and then launched an army attack. It only took more than a year to complete the complete localization process. , then began building military bases, ports, and encouraging official immigration.

Up to now, Ceylon Island has become a strategic location for the Chu Empire to control the Indian Ocean!

Here, there are large-scale shipbuilding and ship repair industries that are rare in overseas territories, as well as steel plants, machinery industries... and these industries actually serve the navy and passing ships.

In the early years, the Colombo Shipyard was a warship repair facility run by the Navy itself. Later, it was converted to civilian use and handed over to the Ministry of Industry. Today's Colombo on the Island of Ceylon is the residence of the governor of Ceylon Province. It is also the residence of a series of important civil and military institutions such as the Indian Garrison Command, the Army's 24th Army Command, the Indian Ocean Fleet Command, and the Fourth Fleet Command. .

Its strategic position is roughly equivalent to that of Singapore in Malacca Province!

Because ships traveling to and from the Indian Ocean basically need to transit in Colombo to replenish coal, fresh water and other supplies.

For the Chu Empire, Ceylon Island was an unsinkable battleship in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and its strategic position was extremely important.

This place is also Luo Zhixue’s key inspection place!

And unlike Malacca, where the inspection was limited to Singapore, Luo Zhixue would also take a train to inspect around the island.

Because the island of Ceylon has a large population, currently more than three million people, and the purge operations were carried out very thoroughly, so except for the fact that Ceylon Province is far away from Jinling City and has a different climate, other places There is no difference from the local provinces in terms of aspects.

Luo Zhixue had already seen this when he was still on the Royal Princess.

Looking out from the deck, there is almost no difference between the Colombo city ahead and the local coastal cities. You can even see many traditional Chinese buildings, including many temples and Taoist temples.

And it also has the characteristics of billowing thick smoke unique to local cities... Don't think this billowing smoke is bad, behind every thick smoke is a big factory.

When I went to Jiande, Bangladesh... they wanted to cover the city with thick smoke, but they couldn't get it.

After arriving in Colombo, Luo Zhixue met with the local governor of Ceylon Province and the governor of southern India, several important local military generals, and several other local civil and military officials as usual.

On the second day, we inspected the military, and on the third day, we inspected industry and commerce.

On the fourth day, Luo Zhixue got on the armored train and began to inspect the interior of the island.

The railway network on the island of Ceylon is much larger than that of other overseas territories, such as Bangladesh, Myanmar and other places... In a small island, there is a railway network consisting of three vertical and one horizontal lines, with a total mileage of more than 700 kilometers.

It may seem that more than 700 kilometers is not much, but for an overseas territory and an overseas province that is not very large, it is already pretty good.

In the early years, so many railways were built here, initially for military defense needs, and later for local economic development needs.

It's just that because the railway was built relatively early, and it was built in accordance with emergency military railway standards... the overall level of railway line construction is average, and the maximum operating speed can only reach about 40 kilometers per hour.

Unlike railways in local areas, express passenger trains can basically reach a speed of 60 kilometers per hour. They also operate at night on a large scale. The overall transportation efficiency is much higher than that of railways in other overseas regions.

As for Ceylon, the railway level is probably still at the level of the 1930s.

It seems that there is only a difference of about ten years, but in this era where technology changes every year and huge changes can occur in ten years, the technological gap in these ten years is actually already huge.

Ten years ago, the Chu Navy was still using single-shot rifles. Now it is using small-caliber repeating rifles on a large scale, and a new generation of rifles using smokeless powder bullets has entered the test competition of multiple prototypes. stage.

According to this progress, when Luo Zhixue returns from his inspection, the next generation of smokeless powder small-caliber repeating rifles will basically be determined.

As for whose new rifle will win the bid and become the next generation unified new rifle for the three armies of the Chu Empire, it all depends on the level of the five major weapons companies.

It is worth noting that in this rifle tender, the military has clearly stated that the next generation of standard rifles using smokeless powder will be unified among the three services, that is, the Army, Navy, and Guards will use the same rifle.

At most, according to the needs of specific arms, it can be subdivided into long-barreled versions for infantry, short-barreled versions for the Navy and Marines, and ultra-short-barreled versions for auxiliary forces such as cavalry and artillery.

The big guys at the Military Academy are fed up with using a variety of main rifles in service at the same time, which leads to the need to maintain multiple logistics support systems at the same time. Logistics supply is also very troublesome... because although they all use eight-millimeter black powder standard bullets, Later, Hebei Arms Company came up with a so-called improved version of the eight-millimeter bullet to better match their Type 26 rifle.

Even the Shaanxi-Gansu Weapons Company has developed an eight-millimeter bullet that is more suitable for machine guns and weighs more.

This also leads to the fact that the eight-millimeter-caliber bullets currently used by the Chu army seem to have only one caliber, but in fact there are many kinds...and some of them are not universal.

This makes the unified ammunition supply promoted by the military's top brass in the early days a joke...so that in the era of eight-millimeter black powder bullets, ammunition supply is more complicated than in the era of 11-mm black powder bullets.

At that time, the major weapons companies did not produce exclusive 11mm bullets individually. They all produced 11mm bullets with unified specifications.

But after the era of eight-millimeter black powder bullets, although there are still universal standard eight-millimeter bullets that can be used by all rifles and machine guns...but the eight-millimeter bullets specially optimized and designed by major weapons companies for their own weapons cannot be used in other countries. Used on firearms, or there are many problems such as poor accuracy and jamming during use.

For the sake of performance and safety, front-line troops will naturally tend to use matching special bullets.

As a result, the military would have to purchase and supply seven or eight types of eight-millimeter bullets at the same time... This would be a disaster for the logistics system.

Therefore, the current military leaders are eager to throw away all the current firearms using eight-millimeter black powder bullets, and then equip them with new firearms using smokeless powder bullets!

Because of this, except for machine gun bullets, which have received special exceptions and can continue to develop and use specialized heavy machine gun bullets, other firearms only use an eight-millimeter caliber smokeless powder standard rifle bullet.

If anyone dares to produce other eight-millimeter smokeless gunpowder bullets next time, the military bosses at the Military Academy will kill them with their knives.

In order to avoid this trouble, the military bosses from the Military Academy came and, under the instruction of Luo Zhixue, forcibly stipulated that the next generation of the three armies must use the same rifles and even machine guns... When only one kind of gun is used, naturally there will be no There are a lot of requirements for different bullets.

This has also led to unprecedented fierce competition among the five major arms companies in the research and development of new rifles... Especially the competition between the two major rifle R&D and manufacturing manufacturers, Hebei Arms Company and Hantian Arms Company, can be said to be quite fierce.

Among them, Hantian Weapon Company is based on the Type 24 rifle and developed it through improved design. It is a rifle that can fire smokeless powder bullets... To put it bluntly, it is the smokeless powder bullet version of the Type 24 rifle.

But the new rifle of Hebei Arms Company is different... They did not improve on the Type 26 rifle, but started from scratch and re-developed a new type of rifle.

Of course, some basic designs still have a lot in common with the Type 26 rifle, such as the rotating rear cocking mechanism and the front section locking.

But the magazine design is completely different. They adopted a complete internal magazine that can hold five rounds of bullets... This is different from their previous Type 26 and Type 25 rifles, which both used under-bulged magazines. totally different.

It is also different from the under-bulged magazine and double-row ammunition supply design of Hantian Weapons Company’s Type 24 rifle.

Their design concept is also based on the fact that many military, mainly the army generals hate the downward thrust magazine or magazine of the rifle... Even though it has been used for many years, quite a few army generals still dream about it. I want to get rid of this damn undershoot magazine or magazine.

If you ask them for specific reasons, it is nothing more than adding weight, not beautiful, affecting tactical movements, etc.

This is also the reason why the Type 24 rifle was not favored by the Army back then... It was not that the Type 24 rifle was not good enough, but that some generals in the Army really didn't like the detachable magazine.

Moreover, the Type 24 rifle has a double row of ammunition, coupled with the short-stroke design of the tail end lock, and the magazine can be disassembled and replaced with a new magazine filled with bullets at any time... these combined, resulted in the Type 24 The rate of fire of the rifle is very terrifying.

In the hands of a skilled shooter, the rate of fire of this thing is not much different from that of later semi-automatic rifles.

In the eyes of many people, this rifle has no shortcomings except that it is expensive!

However, because the rate of fire of this thing is so fast, the Army even asked Hantian Weapons Company to create a spacer card to change the magazine loading into a top single-shot loading, and forcibly fired a magazine continuously. The rifle became a single-shot rifle.

The reason is that if there are no restrictions, the rate of fire of this thing is too fast. Many senior officials in the army believe that such a fast rate of fire is meaningless. Shooting fast does not mean that it can kill more enemies, but it will definitely cause more enemies. Much consumption.

Moreover, if you fight too fast during combat, the bullets on the soldiers will soon be exhausted. When the bullets are gone, you will have to fight with the natives on the bayonet.

This series of changes has also led to the fact that some of the Type 24 rifles equipped in the army have an extra partition card compared to the prototype version used by the Navy. It can be said that they are repeating rifles, let alone new-style rifles. Single shot rifle.

Anyway, it’s pretty weird!

If you want to refute, people will come up with a lot of reasons to defend you.

In the end, we ended up in this embarrassing situation.

In order to meet the needs of the army, the designers of Hebei Arms Company carefully designed the new gun with a fully built-in magazine.

But the new design will inevitably have many problems. It is said that during various preliminary tests, the new gun of Hebei Arms Company did not perform well. The accuracy and range were good, but there were many faults, and it would jam from time to time...

Faced with this new gun with many faults, the navy and armed tax police have made it clear that the new gun will be more inclined to an improved version of the Type 24 rifle.

As for the crappy new gun from Hebei Arms Company, if your army insists on it, then just get it yourself. Don’t count on this tri-service unified rifle.

The Army is also very confused about this...

And Hebei Arms Company is also very helpless... Their Type 26 rifle seems to be able to be improved... but the foundation of this thing is the Type 18 rifle, which is a product of the single-shot rifle era, and has been used ever since. After the modification to the Type 26 rifle, it can be said that the improvement potential has been exhausted.

They also tried to improve it, but the performance of the new gun was too poor, the parts were complicated, the accuracy was not high, and there were many faults... so they used a new design.

It’s just that although the paper performance of the new gun is good, it has many faults but it is a flaw... It will probably take many years to perfect it. At the same time, the five-round built-in magazine also caused opposition from some army generals, navy, and armed tax police.

Some people within the Army support built-in magazines, but others support under-bulged magazines and prefer a lower ammunition capacity.

Therefore, in the end, it is still unknown whether the opinion formed within the Army is to use this new rifle.

Therefore, there are still great variables in the battle for the next generation standard rifle of the Da Chu Empire.