I want to be emperor

Chapter 247 The Holy Driver Across the River
Luo Zhixue considered that the iron and steel industry is the basic industry of the industrial revolution. If strict restrictions are imposed, it will be detrimental to the development of the entire industry.

Moreover, it is difficult to completely ban it, even if there are a lot of black mines that were secretly mined for a period of time in later generations, it is impossible to completely ban it, let alone in the late Ming Dynasty.

During this period, although the Ming Dynasty implemented the monopoly of salt and iron in name, there were a lot of private companies, whether it was salt or iron.

Leaving aside the salt affairs, let's talk about the iron affairs.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, government operations were still implemented, but in the middle and later periods, the government and the private sector were basically combined. According to unreliable data from later generations, it is estimated that the iron production in the late Ming Dynasty was [-] to [-] tons. This data includes a large number of private iron companies. production capacity.

The Ming court is a combination of government and private affairs. Naturally, the Great Chu Empire cannot follow the old path and play a complete iron-official camp.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue's strategy for the steel industry is to officially control the main production capacity to guide and regulate the development of the industry, while allowing private participation in the steel industry.

Adopt the combination of government and private, the government leads, the private supplements, cooperates with each other, and jointly stimulates the sound and upward development of the steel industry.

Because private iron and steel was allowed in the Great Chu Empire, it was not possible to directly confiscate a large number of private mines and ironmaking workshops under the pretext of iron and steel monopoly.

However, the Ministry of Industry wanted to control Daye's iron and copper mines for large-scale development, so it simply bought them with money.

This also allowed the gentry in the surrounding areas to have a clearer understanding of the actions of the Great Chu Empire: follow the rules!

The gentry are not afraid of you being ruthless, but they are afraid of you being unruly.

The reason why the gentry are afraid of thieves like tigers is because thieves don't follow the rules.

Why did the many gentry under the rule of the Great Chu Empire panic at first, but then gradually accepted it, and even began to have a large number of gentry take part in the imperial examination for the rural protection army?
It is because the Rural Protectors follow the rules.

Rules are very important for a nascent regime, and it is also an important feature that distinguishes rogue bandits from formal regimes.

After all, there is no rule without rules.

The Daye Iron Works under the Ministry of Industry immediately took over various mines and workshops run by the government, and at the same time purchased a large number of mines and workshops at high prices.

In a short period of time, more than 80.00% of the proven minerals and smelting workshops in Daye were integrated.

Then they contacted the military and asked the military to organize a large number of prisoners of war who could not be recruited into the garrison as mining battalions and stationed in various minerals in Daye to mine, so as to increase the output of iron ore and copper mines.

At the same time, he also contacted Xiangyang Machinery Factory and other factories in the rear to build various mechanical equipment for mining and smelting to increase smelting capacity.

However, many things that happened here in Daye have nothing to do with Colonel Kang Hongbao. He took people to conquer Daye County, and sent troops to cooperate with the armed tax police to clear out the surrounding mines. Quickly head south to Xingguo Prefecture.

And defeated the Ming army of more than 5000 people who set off from Jiujiang to reinforce Wuchang here.

Then they chased the fleeing two or three thousand Ming troops all the way to Jiujiang Mansion, and stopped after conquering Ruichang.

The stop was not because they encountered a strong enemy force ahead, it was simply because they had been running for many days and the soldiers were exhausted. At the same time, the ammunition was almost exhausted and could not be replenished, so the offensive could only be suspended.

Started to build a line of defense around Ruichang and entered the stage of strategic defense.

As both the eastward and westward detachments successfully completed their strategic tasks, the Township Protection Army also completely took down all areas of Wuchang Mansion except Wuchang City.

Now, in the entire Wuchang Mansion, only the more than 2 Ming troops in Wuchang Mansion are still resisting, but now that the Xiangbao Army has launched a general attack on Wuchang City, it is estimated that they will not be able to resist for long.

On October [-]th, the Township Protection Army launched a large-scale bombardment of Wuchang City and started civil engineering work.

In the next three days, although the bombardment of the Township Protection Army was no longer intensive, it still maintained its suppression through sporadic bombardment, so that the Ming army did not dare to go to the top of the city easily.

In the past few days, the Rural Protection Army has already built many forward traffic trenches, and built many mortar positions on the front line.

The nearest mortar position is only about 200 meters away from the city wall of the Ming army.

In addition to these mortar positions, the Township Protection Army also built a large number of 100-jin short-cannon firing positions within a range of 200 meters to [-] meters, which were used to deploy a large number of [-]-jin short robes.

By October [-]th, a large number of [-]-jin short robes and [-]-jin mortars of the Township Protection Army had all been deployed close by.

At the same time, part of the moat was filled.

During the many days of soil work, the casualties of the rural protection army were very limited. The only hundred casualties were caused by the Ming army's counterattack at close range when they forcibly filled the moat.

However, the Ming army was not much better. Although they did not go to the top of the city to counterattack on a large scale, the sporadic counterattacks were scattered, so that the rural protection army could not find the target through intensive shelling.

But in the past few days, especially when the Ming army sent troops to the top of the city to try to counterattack the garrison soldiers of the rural protection army who filled the moat, they were once again attacked by intensive artillery fire from the rural protection army, and hundreds of people were expected to be killed or injured.

Coupled with the deaths and injuries suffered during the intensive shelling on the first day, the Ming army defending the city had lost nearly a thousand people before they even saw the infantry of the rural protection army.

A fortified battle lasted for five days. As a result, the attacking army dug so many trenches and even filled in the moat, but only killed or injured more than a hundred people.

On the contrary, the Ming army hiding behind the city wall killed and injured nearly a thousand people. It has to be said that this is very rare in siege battles.

There is only one reason for all this, and that is that the artillery fire of the Township Protection Army is too fierce.

Dozens of mortars plus dozens of light cannons and dozens of field cannons, the total number of hundreds of artillery bombarded the city wall, and the Ming army lacked corresponding means of counterattack.

It is not surprising that such a huge casualty occurred in the case of being passively beaten.

When the rural protection army basically completed the fortification work, Luo Zhixue also personally led a group of civil and military officials to Wuchang by boat.

He came across the Yangtze River by boat directly from the wharf of Hanyang City. The Yangtze River Fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy was actually quite worried along the way. Holy ride.

But along the way, the navy of the Ming army did nothing, and did not send a navy to intercept it from the beginning to the end.

Since the failure of the Ming army's navy to break out of the siege a few days ago, they have completely huddled near the pier, relying on the temporary fort built on the shore for defensive operations.

In the past few days, in fact, a large amount of supplies of the Rural Protection Army have begun to be directly transported by boats, crossing the river from Hanyang City to the temporary wharf on the opposite bank of the river, and replenishing various supplies nearby.

After Luo Zhixue arrived outside Wuchang City, he first summoned the generals of the First Division, the Sixth Defense Division, and the Guards Division headed by Li Chengtong.

At the meeting, Luo Zhixue affirmed the performance of the troops crossing the river, and gave promotions and other rewards to several meritorious soldiers on the spot. At the same time, he hoped that in the next battle of Wuchang, all the troops crossing the river would continue to carry forward the spirit of heroic fighting and conquer Wuchang as soon as possible. , Connecting the north and the south of Chu into one piece.

On the second day, Luo Zhixue personally went to the front line to inspect, symbolically inspected some artillery positions, trenches, and barracks, and once again received a large number of middle and low-level officers and soldiers representatives.

The arrival of Luo Zhixue greatly boosted the morale of the siege troops, which also laid a solid foundation for the subsequent general attack.

On the afternoon of October 22, Luo Zhixue once again held a strategic meeting to discuss the final issue.

"It's already early winter, and the temperature is dropping very fast. It won't be long before there will be heavy snow. When it snows, the difficulty will increase a lot. If possible, we still need to take Wuchang City as soon as possible. "

Luo Zhixue said to the group of generals below: "Before I listened to the battle plan of the staff department, it not only considered the heavy armor attack, but also took the method of breaking the city by explosion. Generally speaking, it is relatively comprehensive and detailed."

"The battle plan is ready, but the plan is dead, and people are alive. Whether this can be implemented smoothly according to the battle plan and achieve the expected results requires the efforts of all troops."

"You have all seen the battle plan, and you can speak freely about what you don't understand or have questions about. Three cobblers are better than one Zhuge Liang. We should work together to find out and solve problems in advance as much as possible, so as not to be caught off guard when we really fight. !"

After Luo Zhixue made his opening remarks, he handed over the rest of the meeting time to a group of generals.

These generals were not polite, and soon some people put forward their opinions. Brigadier General Han Ziping, the commander of the [-]st Infantry Brigade, took the lead in saying: "In the plan drawn up by the staff, when the infantry formally attacked the city, there will be an explosion operation, but the planned There are only two blasting locations, isn't that a little less!"

"After all, there may be mistakes in the blasting. Once the blasting fails, or the corresponding city wall fails to collapse after the blasting, it will greatly affect our army's subsequent infantry siege."

At this moment, Xu Zhixian immediately said: "The reason why only two blasting locations are planned is that on the one hand, time is relatively tight, and our army's engineering troops only have time to dig two blasting tunnels."

"In addition, a lot of gunpowder is required for blasting. Just booking two blasting gunpowder has already emptied our stock of blasting medicine. If we add another blasting point, I am afraid it will affect the normal ammunition supply of the troops. Already!"

At this time, Colonel Xie Xiaobo, Director of the Engineering Department of the Staff Department, who was in charge of formulating and implementing the blasting plan, said: "General Li, please rest assured that our engineering unit has carefully calculated the blasting position and the amount of charge. As long as there are no major accidents, There is no problem with a smooth detonation!"

As he said that, Colonel Xie Xiaobo added: "On the day of the general offensive, I will carry out the blasting operation myself. If there is any accident, I will dare to issue a military order and absolutely guarantee that there will be a blasting point." Successful detonation!"

Seeing that Xie Xiaobo had said such things, Li Chengtong naturally shut up and didn't talk about the blasting issue.

Everyone has issued a military order, what else do you want...

But although he didn't say anything, he was still quite worried about the failure of the blasting, because it was expected that the first wave of troops rushing to the top of the city would be an assault battalion composed of elite soldiers under his first division.

If the assault battalion's attack failed or even suffered heavy losses due to the failure of the blasting, the loss would be huge.

(End of this chapter)