I want to be emperor

Chapter 364 Four Forts
After the Fourth Division captured the Jiangbei area of ​​Yingtianfu, that is, Jiangpu City, which was separated from Jinling City by the Yangtze River, it took advantage of the situation to take Liuhe, which was almost voluntarily abandoned by the Ming army.

As a result, the Ming army was initially completely expelled from the Ming army on the north bank of the Yangtze River in Jinling City. There is no need to worry about the Ming army directly setting up heavy artillery on the edge of the Yangtze River, directly bombarding the Yangtze River near Jinling City, and even directly praising and bombarding Jinling city.

Well, when the Ming army was on the north bank of the Yangtze River before, they would secretly set up artillery to shell the Yangtze River outside Jinling City. The actual damage was not much, but it was extremely insulting.

Now that the Fourth Division has successfully captured the Jiangpu area on the north bank of the Yangtze River, it will be able to better ensure the strategic security of Jinling City. For this reason, the Great Chu Empire also set up a new river defense fort in the north of the Yangtze River, which is located on the Yuejiang Tower on the south bank of the Yangtze River. On the opposite side of the fort, there are four fourteen-pound heavy artillery and eight nine-pound heavy artillery.

In this way, there will be a fort on the north and south banks of the Yangtze River in the east of Jinling City, collectively known as the Jinling East Fort. The entire Jinling East Fort is equipped with ten heavy artillery pieces of 22 catties and [-] artillery pieces of various types ranging from five to ten catties.

A total of 32 heavy guns.

In order to ensure the safety of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and prevent the Ming court's navy from advancing along the river to threaten the safety of Jinling City, the Great Chu Empire not only built river defense forts in Jinling City, but also set up river defense forts in Zhenjiang Prefecture, Jiangyin, Changzhou Prefecture, and Wusong Prefecture, Songjiang Prefecture. These three places built the fort.

Although the Jiangfang Fort in Zhenjiang Mansion took a short time to build, it formed combat power very quickly. A few days after the Chu Army took Zhenjiang, the Chu Army Army had already built a simple fort here, and deployed more than ten A batch of more than 20 artillery pieces were specially deployed to reinforce the area. Currently, Zhenjiang Fort has a total of more than 30 artillery pieces.

The firepower density is no worse than that of the Jinling Fort, but these forts still exist as field artillery positions for the time being, and their defense capabilities are slightly worse.

Jiangyin Fortress in Changzhou Prefecture, because the river is narrow and the terrain is relatively good, it is more suitable for building a large river defense fortress.

Therefore, the Chu army here not only wanted to build a large river defense fort, but also built a large fortress facing the ground to attack, and even planned to open a naval base behind Jiangyin.

This is a large comprehensive fortress that can attack the river and resist ground attacks at the same time, and garrison naval warships.

In the hearts of the top leaders of the Great Chu Empire, Jiangyin Fort was more important than Zhenjiang East Fort or even Jinling East Fort.

This place is the best strategic place to block the Yangtze River and prevent enemy warships from going up the river.

Therefore, the design scale of Jiangyin Fort is very large. It is expected to build hundreds of artillery positions, and most of them will be heavy artillery positions.

Even many artillery positions are designed and built according to the 24-pound heavy artillery and even the [-]-pound heavy artillery that are still under development.

It's just that the entire project will be very large, and the current heavy artillery production capacity of the Great Chu Empire is also limited. It is estimated that even in this tense war period, it will take at least a year of construction.

So for the time being, the Jiangyin Fort is the same as the Zhenjiang Fort. It is said to be a fort, but it is actually a field artillery position...

There are quite a few cannons, more than 40 of them. This is mainly due to the efforts of the navy, which took out part of the cannons for the fort.

Finally, there is the Wusong Fort in Songjiang Mansion. This fort is a bit special, because this fort is not actually used to block the Yangtze River.

This place is already the estuary of the Yangtze River. The entire estuary is tens of kilometers wide, even if it only counts the distance from Wusong Fort to Chongming Island on the opposite side, it is more than ten kilometers wide.

As far as the effective range of contemporary artillery is concerned, it is impossible to block such a wide river.

This Wusong Fort was actually used to block the Huangpu River in Songjiang Mansion, preventing enemy warships from entering the hinterland of Songjiang Mansion along the Huangpu River, and then going deep into the hinterland of Jiangnan along the water network.

For this reason, the Great Chu Empire built the Wusong Fort here, and like the Jiangyin Fort, it also built a garrison fortress, with thousands of troops stationed there.

The Fourth Infantry Regiment of the First Division of the Great Chu Empire Army's core main force is stationed here.

The above-mentioned four large river defense forts in Jinling City, Zhenjiang, Jiangyin, and Wusong are the efforts made by the Chu army in recent months to build the Yangtze River defense.

For this reason, the Great Chu Empire spent a lot of manpower and material resources.

It’s okay to say that there is a shortage of manpower these days, but there is no shortage of people. When the Great Chu Empire moved eastward, it captured a large number of prisoners of war. Various reclamation camps and construction camps.

And because there are not many wastelands available for reclamation and development in the Jiangnan area, and there are many places that need construction, such as the palace, major forts, barracks, etc., many of them were incorporated into the construction camp.

In addition to these construction battalions directly controlled by the military, there are also a large number of young and strong civilians who can't eat enough and come to work as long as they are given a bite of food.

For example, among the more than 1 workers who built the Wusong Fort, half of them were young and strong hired locally.

And the wages of employment are also very low, three meals a day, two dry meals and one porridge... and then it's gone!
As for extra wages, don't count on it.

However, there are still a lot of people coming to work!

Especially during the slack season, these young and strong people come to work not to make money or anything, but purely to eat and reduce the burden of food rations for the family.

The Great Chu Empire not only did this when building the fort on the Wusong River, but actually carried out other large-scale projects in other places, and recruited young and strong rural people to carry out construction on a large scale during the slack season. On the one hand, it was to reduce labor costs. On the other hand, it is also to provide odd jobs for the young and strong during the slack period to fill their stomachs, so as to save some rations for the family.

Even on weekdays, there will be some young adults who can't survive to work.

Because the labor cost is very low, when the Great Chu Empire built the four fortresses, the wages spent were not much, but it was a little more troublesome to supply these workers with food. This trouble does not mean that there is no food, but that it is more troublesome to transport food. .

In terms of pure grain, this is not a problem for the Great Chu Empire, which controls important grain-producing areas in the Yangtze River Basin.

Since the occupation of Chubei, the officials of the Great Chu Empire have never been short of food.

North of Chu, South of Chu, North of Jiangxi, Central of Jiangxi, Jiangnan, and North of Zhejiang.

Take a look at these places occupied by the Great Chu Empire. One counts as one, and they are all lands of fish and rice in the traditional sense.

It's just that these grains are scattered all over the place. The Great Chu Empire allows the people to carry the taxed grains to the tax office in the town by taxation.

The local tax office will hand over the levied grain to the finance department on the spot and put it under the jurisdiction of the national treasury, and discount it according to the official grain purchase price.

This is why when the Great Chu Empire levied agricultural tax, it levied tax in kind, but when it counted, it was counted in units of taels of silver.

The grain included in the financial departments of various places will be separated from other materials included in the national treasury, and will be handed over to the grain storage department for storage or sale or for salary distribution.

After a large amount of food is concentrated in various counties, some of it will be sold locally to supply the local non-agricultural population.

Some of them will be transported to other places where there is a shortage of food, such as prefectures and provincial capitals with more non-agricultural populations, but these are normal business practices.

There are also some that will be stored in official warehouses in various places as strategic food reserves for emergency food needs in famines or other needs, and these grains will be replaced with new grains for old grains every year according to regulations.

Finally, there is a part of the transportation that is more convenient, especially in places close to the Yangtze River. The food in these places is often concentrated in warehouses along the docks along the river, and then further shipped to various places, whether it is used as military food, or for relief food, or It is to supply cities in other provinces and so on.

There is a complete set of procedures from the collection of grain to the transportation management of the grain storage department.

However, even so, the transportation cost of grain is not small, especially in places where river transportation is not convenient, there is no way to transport grain abroad on a large scale.

The cost is too high!

Fortunately, after the Great Chu Empire moved eastward, it obtained a large amount of local food in the Jiangnan area. At the same time, the water network in the Jiangnan area is very good. Even if it is difficult to use the Yangtze River Basin in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, it can still pass through other water networks, especially the Jiangnan Canal. There are many cities in the south of the Yangtze River, and the Jiangnan Canal can pass through the East Zhejiang Canal and continue to extend eastward, connecting all the way to Ningbo.

If the many large and small streams and lakes connected to the canal are counted, then it can basically cover more than half of the south of the Yangtze River.

Through shipping, the Great Chu Empire was not only able to conveniently mobilize ammunition and troops to various places in the south of the Yangtze River and even to the Zhejiang area, but it was also able to use the water network in the south of the Yangtze River to gather a lot of money and food in the south of the Yangtze River.

And this is why the Great Chu Empire built large-scale forts in Wusong, Jiangyin, and Zhenjiang.

The Wusong Fort was designed to prevent the Ming court navy from entering the Huangpu River and further destroying the Jiangnan water network and transportation network.

Jiangyin Fort and Zhenjiang Fort, both of them can guard the Yangtze River, and then block the Ming court navy from outside, preventing the Ming court navy from continuing to break into the Zhenjiang area unscrupulously, and then destroying the life of the Yangtze River-Jiangnan Canal of the Great Chu Empire traffic line.

For the Ming Dynasty, Zhenjiang was an important node in water transport, because grain was collected in Zhenjiang through the Jiangnan Canal, then passed through the Yangtze River to Yangzhou on the north bank, and entered the Hangzhou section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal.

Similarly, for the Great Chu Empire, which occupied the south of the Yangtze River and began to penetrate into Zhejiang, Zhenjiang is also an important traffic route and a strategic node.

A large amount of materials, especially weapons and ammunition, will be transported to Zhenjiang through the Yangtze River, and then distributed to various places in the south of the Yangtze River and even Zhejiang through the Jiangnan Canal.

Similarly, a large amount of money and food will be collected to Zhenjiang through the Jiangnan Water Network-Jiangnan Canal, and then transported back to Jinling City or other places through the Yangtze River.

Zhenjiang, for today's Great Chu Empire, is a strategically important place that cannot be lost.

For this reason, the Great Chu Empire built a fort in Zhenjiang and deployed thousands of troops here.

If it's purely for Jiang's defense, Jiangyin is actually more suitable. The reason why the fort is still built in Zhejiang is because Yangzhou on the opposite side of Zhenjiang is still under the control of the Ming army, and the Ming army in Yangzhou still has naval divisions. .

If there is no fort here, the navy of the Ming army will come and wander around in three days, so the Zhenjiang water transport will not be needed.

The above-mentioned four river defense forts are considered a big project even for the Great Chu Empire. This is not to say that the infrastructure is difficult to manage. Jiangyin Fortress.

Even though the civil engineering is huge, the actual cost will not be too high. Even with more efforts, it is estimated that it will take almost a year to complete it.

But the real problem is not here, but the artillery above.

Generally speaking, the artillery in these river defense forts is naturally all long-barreled and heavy artillery.

Nine-pound cannons are too small, and it is best to use heavy cannons such as fourteen-pound or even eighteen-pound, 24-pound cannons.

However, the output of these heavy cannons is limited!

To be honest, before the Eastward Campaign, or even before taking Jinling City, neither the military nor the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire had given much thought to the development and production of large-caliber long-barreled cannons.

Because the total artillery production capacity of Hantian Armory and Xiangyang Arsenal was limited. At that time, the various arsenals under the Ministry of Industry even made very few nine-pound naval guns and fourteen-pound naval guns used by the navy. Most of the production capacity was It is used to produce two-and-a-half catties, five catties, and nine catties field guns.

Before the Eastward Campaign was launched, there were only four fourteen catties of heavy artillery produced in the entire Great Chu Empire!
And these four [-]-pound naval guns were originally used as large warships scheduled by the navy, but later the large-scale warships disappeared, and in addition to the army's need to attack fortified positions in the Eastward Campaign, these four [-]-pound naval guns were installed On the field artillery mount, it was used by the Army's siege heavy artillery on the spot.

Later, it was pulled down and used as a river defense heavy artillery on the fort of Yuejiang Tower.

After taking Jinling City, faced with the fact that the Ming army navy could attack at any time, and the navy was not strong enough, the Great Chu Empire felt deeply embarrassed by Youjiang Wufang for the first time.

After the Battle of Jinling, Luo Zhixue personally decreed that the Ministry of Industry should speed up the development and production of large-caliber long-barreled artillery.

In this way, the Great Chu Empire began large-scale research and development and production of heavy artillery.

The nine-pound naval gun production line and the fourteen-pound naval gun production line at Hantian Armory were separated separately, and a heavy artillery factory was set up to distinguish it from the original artillery factory.

In the future, Hantian Artillery Factory will focus on the R&D and production of various field artillery.

The Heavy Artillery Factory will specialize in the development and production of various types of artillery for fortresses and battleships.

The reason why they are specially separated is that apart from being artillery, the two are very different in other aspects, and even many of the performance requirements of the artillery are in conflict.

For example, the artillery used by the Jiangfang Fort is naturally a longer and more powerful artillery. As for the weight and mobility, these can basically be ignored!
This is in conflict with the army's field guns that are extremely focused on maneuverability, for which power and range can be sacrificed.

In order not to interfere with each other, and the scale of the artillery factory is getting bigger and bigger, and the management is getting more and more bloated, the Ministry of Industry simply divided the artillery factory under Hantian Armory into two, and established Hantian Artillery Factory and Hantian Heavy artillery factory.

However, the above two factories are still directly under the jurisdiction of Hantian Armory, so as to facilitate the coordination of various resources.

After several months of hard work, the Hantian Heavy Artillery Factory has finally produced its own results. It not only greatly increased the production capacity of the nine-pound cannon and the fourteen-pound cannon, but also produced four eighteen-pound cannons.

Today, the transport ship transporting the four [-]-pound cannons has arrived at the Jinling City Wharf and is waiting for the cooperation of the naval escort ship. After the naval escort ship arrives, the transport ship will continue south to Zhenjiang and wait.

Wait for a suitable safe time to avoid the Ming army navy still active in the waters east of Zhenjiang, and transport the four cannons to Jiangyin Fortress.

While the transport ship was moored at the Jinling City Wharf, Luo Zhixue took the time to take a look.

After all, this is the most powerful cannon built by the Great Chu Empire, and even in the history of China. When the first prototype of the cannon was produced for test firing, because the distance was too far, Luo Zhixue was not able to go there in person. read.

It will be good to see it on the pier.

As for the lowly ones, after learning that Luo Zhixue was going to the pier to inspect the batch of heavy artillery destined for the Jiangyin Fort, and that he was very interested in the [-]-jin cannon.

It turned out that they organized people overnight to hoist an [-]-pound cannon on the ship, and then dragged it to the open space by the pier, wanting to give Luo Zhixue a test shooting performance...

Obviously, this must have been done by relevant officials from the Ministry of Industry and the Ordnance Department. They just want Luo Zhixue to be rewarded with a good mood after watching the test shooting...

Regarding their small thoughts, Luo Zhixue didn't say much.

Although he didn't intend to watch the test firing at the beginning, he just went to the ship to see the real thing. In addition to satisfying his own curiosity, it was more to show that he attached importance to heavy artillery, so that the civil and military officials below would also pay attention.

After all, whether it is Jiangfang or warships in the future, they cannot do without these heavy artillery.

But since the subordinates have pulled out all the cannons, let's take a look at the test firing.

When they arrived at the open space beside the pier in the outskirts of Dongcheng, the military had surrounded and sealed off the entire area.

And when Luo Zhixue arrived here, it was estimated that the artillery involved in the test firing would not only be one [-]-pound heavy cannon, but also a [-]-pound heavy cannon, and two [-]-pound heavy cannons.

In addition, the army temporarily pulled in a few nine-pound and five-pound field guns and some mortars to make up the numbers.

(End of this chapter)