I want to be emperor

Chapter 264 The Untold Secret of Chu's Gunmaking: Spending Money

Making guns requires craftsmen and iron materials, not to mention the high cost, and the output is extremely low.

Because their muskets are all hand-knocked by craftsmen, it takes at least a month for a skilled craftsman to build a musket.

Casting cannons takes even longer.

Here comes the most critical point. Skilled craftsmen are not Chinese cabbage, and Yang Sichang can get tens of thousands of people with just a shout.

Skilled craftsmen who know how to make guns and cannons are limited, and they are very limited... At the same time, they cannot be trained quickly in the short term.

This also led to the fact that even if he had money, he could not find so many skilled craftsmen.

Of course Yang Sichang has no money...

It took him more than two months, but he only produced hundreds of firearms in total, and there were only two two-and-a-half-jin artillery pieces.

This made Yang Sichang extremely headache!
Why is it so easy to make guns by yourself, but the Township Protection Army can make a lot of them?
Do they have a large number of craftsmen?Don't they build guns for free?

He naturally didn't know that there were not many skilled craftsmen in the Great Chu Empire. Even if all the skilled craftsmen in the entire control area were searched for, it would be impossible to support the current production capacity by hand.

At the same time, the Great Chu Empire also spent money on making guns, and it was very expensive.

How did the Great Chu Empire solve the above problems?
The Great Chu Empire has an untold secret about this, Xu, keep your voice down, don't let others hear it, this untold secret is: throwing money!

Not enough skilled craftsmen?The Great Chu Empire replaced it with a large number of machines, engaged in assembly-line production, and hired a large number of ordinary workers to divide the production. Even if the level of ordinary workers is low, the scrap rate in initial production is high.

Even if the level of uniform measurement is not good enough, the tolerance will be relatively large and many parts will be scrapped.

thereby driving up costs.

But Luo Zhixue doesn't care about the high cost!
In order to obtain weapons and equipment in time, he dared to spend several 10 taels of silver to set up a Xiangyang arsenal and supporting factories, and he dared to spend 10,000+ taels of silver every month just to pay salaries and purchase raw materials.

Now the newly launched Hantian Arsenal and the supporting factories have an initial budget of 30 taels of silver.

With so much money spent, the Township Protection Army was able to use a large number of primitive mechanical equipment to manufacture guns, and adopted assembly line production, mass production with a small number of skilled craftsmen.

In terms of cost alone, the cost of weapons produced by the arsenal of the Great Chu Empire is not low. Even if the cost of factory building and scrap rate are included, the cost of guns produced by the Great Chu Empire is actually lower than that of Yang Sichang and his hand-made workshops. The cost of building guns is high.

After all, the cost of manpower these days is actually very low. If you spend a lot of money to replace manpower with machinery, it is actually not worthwhile from a business point of view!

Because the production efficiency brought by high-cost machinery seems to have improved, but in the end, it is not as cheap as directly using artificial weapons.

Because the cost of manpower is so low... these days, if you just give them food, you can make a worker work from dawn to dusk.

However, the Great Chu Empire had to adopt mechanical equipment on a large scale, especially expensive hydraulic equipment, not to reduce costs, but to increase production as much as possible with limited skilled craftsmen.

Yield, that's what matters.

As for money, with so much gold and silver seized during the Great Chu Empire's conquest, why not spend so much money from taxes and keep it?

Money is valuable only when it is spent, exchanged for weapons, and for the combat effectiveness of the troops.

Simply putting a pile of gold and silver in the treasury will not allow the Great Chu Empire to unify Kyushu.

If it was Yang Sichang, he would probably spend money on equipment and combat effectiveness.

But, he couldn't do it even if he wanted to.

Because he has no money...

When Yang Sichang in Changsha was worried about money and guns, Luo Zhixue in Wuchang was in a very good mood.

Because another batch of five-pound field guns arrived in Wuchang smoothly by ship, and began to be assigned to the First Division and the Guards Division.

After the arrival of this batch of five-pound field cannons, the number of five-pound field cannons in the First Division has increased to eighteen, which is six short of the full 24. It is expected to be full next month .

At the same time, the Guards Division also obtained a batch of twelve guns, making the Guards Division the third unit equipped with five-pound field guns.

The second unit equipped with five-pound field guns is the second division located in Nanyang Mansion. This division also received eight five-pound field guns before.

With the arrival of this batch of five-pound field artillery, it already means that the five-pound field artillery production line at Xiangyang Arsenal has entered the stage of full production.

About [-] doors can be produced every month.

And this output is only the output of five catty field guns. Xiangyang Arsenal also retains a production line for two and a half catty field guns. The output has been reduced, but it can still produce about twelve per month.

Although these mass-produced artillery can't be equipped with one division in a month, they can also greatly alleviate the serious shortage of field artillery in the current rural protection army.

In addition, with this batch of five-pound field guns arrived four relatively special large-caliber artillery, that is, nine-pound field guns.

The nine-pound field artillery of the Baoxiang Army, out of the consideration of controlling weight and maintaining mobility, its barrel diameter is not as good as the Hongyi cannon of the same level in the Ming Army.

The barrel diameter of the Hongyi artillery of the Ming army is generally more than 22 times, or even 23 times, or about [-] times. This kind of multiple diameter is a very typical ship-mounted cannon in this year.

However, the field guns of the Protectorate Army have always been relatively small in diameter. The two and a half catty field guns are only sixteen times the diameter, the five catties field guns are eighteen times the diameter, and the nine catties field guns are only eighteen times the diameter.

The barrel was shortened, and these nine-pound field guns of the Township Protection Army were still cast in bronze.

The barrel of the bronze cannon can be made thinner, and the weight is naturally lighter.

Therefore, the nine-pound field cannon produced by the Township Protection Army in the end was much lighter than the Hongyi cannon of the same caliber of the Ming Army.

But even so, this kind of nine-pound field gun is a big guy with a total gun weight of more than 2000 catties.

In terms of mobility, it is definitely inferior to the five-pound field artillery, let alone on par with the two-and-a-half-pound field artillery.

But this flaw doesn’t matter. Anyway, the Township Protection Army doesn’t expect to quickly maneuver the nine-pound field artillery, as long as it can keep up with the infantry’s marching speed during the march. Deployed on the battlefield, then it will not move easily.

After the arrival of these four nine-pound field guns and joining the battle order of the First Artillery Regiment of the First Division, it was enough for the First Division to further strengthen its field long-range artillery capabilities.

Even hitting enemies thousands of meters away is fine.

More importantly, the arrival of these four nine-pound field artillery also means that the nine-pound field artillery has begun to enter the mass production stage. In the spring and summer period, dozens of doors can be produced no matter what.

At that time, the field artillery firepower of the rural protection army will be further strengthened and improved.

As a result, the two-and-a-half-pound field artillery directly supported the infantry battalion operations, the five-pound field artillery was the main division-level artillery force, and the nine-pound field artillery was used as a multi-layered artillery structure for the army and division-level strategic support forces.

As for the two-hundred-pound short robe, it has already been directly included in the infantry weapons in the main force of the rural protection army, and is directly attached to each battalion...

When counting artillery, these small short-barreled guns are not even included in the statistics.

On the sixth day of December, Luo Zhixue watched the confrontation exercise between the first division and the sixth garrison division in the barracks of the first division in the southern suburbs of Wuchang.

For the confrontation exercise, the [-]st Division sent an infantry brigade, a reinforced field artillery battalion and the [-]st Cavalry Regiment.

The sixth garrison division is dispatched by the whole division.

The two sides simulated an encounter in a hilly area.

But in the confrontation exercise, the sixth garrison division suffered a complete defeat!

And it was a complete defeat without any resistance.

And this disastrous defeat was not because of how tough the infantry of the first division was, or how high the armor rate was, because the infantry of both sides did not break out in large-scale battles during the exercise, and even fell into a disadvantage for a time.

Because the infantry of the sixth garrison division has also been 'strengthened', Luo Zhixue directly doubled the infantry strength of the sixth garrison division...with a full four garrison brigades.

It's not because of how strong the cavalry of the First Cavalry Regiment is. In fact, the cavalry of the First Cavalry Regiment are half-baked cavalry and infantry. The elite cavalry of the Great Chu Empire Army are basically concentrated in the First Cavalry Brigade. The cavalry in the divisional cavalry regiment are all half-baked infantry on horseback.

Playing a reconnaissance, sending an order, covering infantry operations is okay, as for the others, don't count on it.

The cavalry unit that can really play horse charge, cavalry and archery, and control a single front is the more than 1000 elite cavalry of the First Cavalry Brigade.

During the confrontation exercise, with a wave of his hand, Luo Zhixue strengthened the sixth garrison division with a cavalry brigade of [-] cavalry... Therefore, in the confrontation exercise, the cavalry regiment of the first division was replaced by the virtual cavalry of the sixth garrison division. Brigade' pressing and playing.

The only thing that has not been strengthened on the side of the Sixth Garrison Division is the artillery!
It was configured according to the configuration of the Ming army's artillery. Thirty general guns weighing more than [-] jin, Franc machine guns, etc. were arranged for the sixth garrison division, and about [-] guns weighing more than [-] jin were arranged. The following are mainly small artillery such as attacking army artillery and tiger squatting artillery under a hundred catties.

This is to simulate the true strength of the large-scale Ming army as much as possible.

After all, it is possible that there were many infantry in the Ming army, and it is normal for there to be many cavalry, but there are really not many field artillery.

In this confrontation exercise, the exercise troops of the First Division began to line up step by step, and then shelled...

Then, there is no then!
No matter how much the chief officers of the sixth garrison division struggled, they couldn't escape the fate of being defeated in the end.

And it was undisputed defeat!
(End of this chapter)