I want to be emperor

Chapter 365

Luo Zhixue did not express any objection to the officials below increasing the types and quantities of test-fired artillery.

Although he is very clear that they do this purely to attract their own attention, and then to get their own praise, and ultimately to get promoted and make a fortune.

But this reflects a very good phenomenon.

That is the officials of the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Military Ordnance, whether they are generals or civilians, they all attach great importance to military technology, and hope to use military technology to get promoted and make a fortune.

It's better than thinking about writing stereotyped essays and poems all day long to win promotion and make a fortune.

This also proves that through Luo Zhixue's continuous emphasis on and promotion of officials who have made achievements in the technical field, there has been a trend of emphasizing the development of technology in the civil and military officials of the Great Chu Empire.

This is a good thing!

It was even what Luo Zhixue had been pursuing so hard before.

The strength of an empire requires hard military power in addition to cultural and economic soft power.

And how does military strength come from?In addition to factors such as people and money and food, another important factor is weapons and equipment.

Although it is said that war depends on people, people also need tools.

You hold a sword and spear, no matter how brave you are, you can't beat the enemy with machine guns and artillery.

War, to put it simply, is to kill as many enemies as possible while reducing your own casualties. If you die less and the enemy dies more, then you will naturally win.

Weapons and equipment are the tools soldiers use to protect themselves and kill the enemy.

Coupled with the fact that the rise of the Great Chu Empire was too short, the overall quality of the soldiers and officers was actually relatively limited. There were not many soldiers and middle-level and low-level officers who had fought wars for many years and had rich experience in wars. They were used to life and death.

And the military literacy of the middle and senior generals is actually very limited. At least so far, Luo Zhixue has not found anyone under him who has shown the demeanor of a famous general.

There are only a few high-ranking generals with excellent military qualities, capable of various surprise attacks, running raids, and relatively flexible minds, all of whom are surrendered generals of the Ming army, such as He Renlong and Chen Yongfu.

As for the high-ranking generals trained by the Chu army themselves, one or the other are all mediocre, even if they lead troops to fight in a regular manner, they are actually relatively reluctant.

We must know that the staff system of the Great Chu Empire was originally to solve the tactical ability of the senior generals, and the overall planning ability was relatively poor, so a group of staff officers were arranged to check for gaps and make up for the omissions.

The staff system of the Great Chu Empire is not complicated, it can even be said to be simple.

That is, one person's ability is limited, and it is difficult to take care of all aspects, so a staff team composed of many people or even dozens of people is used, and different people are assigned to be responsible for different affairs in the staff team.

In specific operations, especially in large-scale battles, it does not mean that the senior generals can fight as soon as they want to fight, but they will formulate complex and even cumbersome combat plans in advance, and according to different situations Develop different alternatives.

Just like the previous eastward campaign, the staff had formulated more than a dozen strategic plans to deal with different situations.

Under each major plan, there are dozens of different detailed plans.

For example, when attacking Jiujiang City, what if you can’t attack for a long time, what if you win it smoothly, what if you win it early, what if there are too many casualties, etc... The huge staff team at the staff department almost took every A conceivable possibility is listed, and then a corresponding response plan is made according to these possibilities.

Before the Eastward Campaign, the staff prepared a dozen major plans and hundreds of small plans, and the documents and materials were enough to fill an entire room.

And these tactical plans are only used in a very small part in the end.

But you can't say that this is useless work, because the huge number of options means that no matter what happens, there will be a corresponding plan, so as not to confuse the frontline army.

After all, during the Eastward Campaign, the senior generals above the division commander strictly followed the strategic plan formulated by the staff, and never once acted without authorization.

The same is true for brigades, regiments and battalions.

Each of the main divisions of the Chu Army has set up a staff team. The staff team has as many as 30 people, and the types are divided into: combat staff, logistics staff, transportation staff, communication staff, intelligence staff and so on.

The divisional staff develops detailed tactical plans, which are then passed on to subordinate units for execution.

In this way, the officers of the subordinate units, although their personal abilities are not very good, it is not a big problem to implement the established plan step by step.

And these eventually led to the Great Chu Empire Army appearing very dull when fighting.

Watching the Great Chu Empire's army fight will be very boring, because they hardly run long distances, and rarely engage in surprise attacks. Most of the time, they advance step by step. storm.

Even the way of attacking is very low-level...

First build fortifications to prevent enemy sneak attacks in the city, and then dig the fortifications and approach slowly. After the fortifications are completed, use artillery to bombard them intensively, and at the same time dig a tunnel for blasting or something.

When the artillery unit has completely suppressed the enemy at the top of the city, or the engineer unit has successfully blasted, then the infantry unit will launch a charge.

And the charge will always be the same commando, with the sword and shield hand in double armor and the spearman as the core, supplemented by the musketeer/grenademan, and will also carry a few two-hundred-jin guns for close-range direct fire. Short cannon.

Even the Ming army was very familiar with the Chu army's siege routines, because the Chu army's siege came and went with the same set of things.

But... It was such a set of dull tactics without any sense of war art at all, but the Ming army on the opposite side was retreating steadily, from Huguang all the way to Jiangnan.

And this also strengthened Luo Zhixue's idea of ​​fighting hard.

It is to fight with the enemy's troops, guns, and logistics, and crush them with absolute advantages all the way.

Because the military quality of the middle and senior generals of the Great Chu Empire may be mediocre, but the economic strength and industrial strength of the Great Chu Empire are strong enough.

It has already occupied all the areas on the south bank of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and incidentally also occupied the Great Chu Empire in northern Chu and part of the Jiangbei area, which is equivalent to controlling most of the population and food production in the Huaxia region.

At the same time, the Great Chu Empire also had a preliminary industrial system developed by itself. Well, although this industrial system is still at the stage of water power and primitive mechanical equipment, strictly speaking, it is no different from the handicraft industry of this year.

But the scale of the original industrial system of the Great Chu Empire is large enough!
Just one Hantian Arsenal already has nearly [-] workers.

This is not counting the other surrounding factories in the Daye area that provide various supporting facilities for the Hantian Armory. If you really want to count it, it is at least 15, which is several times larger than the original local population of Daye County.

In the Hantianfu Daye industrial base alone, there are more than 15 workers working directly or indirectly for the military industry.

In addition, the Great Chu Empire also had the Xiangyang Arsenal, the Changsha Arsenal, and the Taipingfu Arsenal under construction.

Surrounding these three arsenals, there is also a whole set of supporting factories around them.

Adding all these together, the Great Chu Empire's production capacity of all kinds of ordnance reached a level unimaginable for an ordinary feudal country.

Among them, iron production capacity alone, a Day Smelting Iron Plant has reached more than 4 tons, and according to unreliable data in the late Ming Dynasty, the national iron production capacity was only about [-] to [-] tons.

A big iron smelting plant is enough to match the iron production capacity of the entire late Ming Dynasty.

In addition to the Daye Iron Works, the Great Chu Empire has successively established many medium and small-scale iron works in other places where there are iron mines or where it is convenient to transport charcoal, such as the Xiangyang Iron Works and the Changsha Iron Works. Wait, these forests can add up to a scale of several thousand tons.

Not to mention, the Great Chu Empire is currently preparing to build a new large-scale ironworks in the area of ​​Dangtu County, Taiping Prefecture, to develop and smelt the iron ore in the Ma'anshan area of ​​Dangtu County. After completion, this will be a production capacity Not weaker than the large ironworks of the Daye Ironworks.

After a few years, it is very possible that the iron material production capacity of the Great Chu Empire will exceed [-] tons.

Even the production capacity of steel is very large. Although the technology is still the old-fashioned technology such as frying steel, a large amount of hydraulic power is applied, and the scale is increased if the technology is not good enough. The production capacity is increased simply by increasing the scale. The steel production capacity of the Great Chu Empire is also Very impressive, more than enough to meet military needs.

Steel is the foundation of a country's industry, and the production capacity of steel can basically be seen in its industrial strength.

The industrial strength of the Great Chu Empire is undoubtedly capable of overpowering the Ming Dynasty, or even any contemporary country.

It's not because the technology of the Great Chu Empire is so advanced, it's simply that the Great Chu Empire controls enough population, money and food, and the demand is large enough, so it has the confidence to simply increase the scale and increase production capacity.

In terms of money, grain, and industrial strength, even though the Great Chu Empire was established only two years ago, its comprehensive national strength is actually enough to beat the Ming court or the Eastern Captives, or even any country or force in East Asia.

This kind of comprehensive national strength gave Luo Zhixue enough confidence to continue to implement the strategy of flat promotion.

In this flat push strategy, weapons are naturally very important.

And when Luo Zhixue saw the row of cannons of different types, large and small, by the river, he couldn't help but smile.

And the artillery test firing that followed did not disappoint Luo Zhixue. The humble courtiers were all human beings, so it was naturally impossible for Luo Zhixue to make any mistakes in the test firing when Luo Zhixue wanted to inspect it himself.

The artillery is carefully selected and maintained. The members of the artillery crew are all elite artillery crews. Even the propellant and shells used are carefully selected and top-notch.

Under such circumstances, the entire test firing was successfully completed. After watching the test firing, Luo Zhixue gave a small speech on the spot, once again emphasizing the importance of the defense industry, and rewarding some of the craftsmen who have contributed to the research and development of artillery.

Ordinary rewards are nothing, but Dai Xinhan, the chief engineer of the Hantian Heavy Artillery Factory, was awarded the title of 'Viscount'.

This shocked a lot of jaws!

People know that Luo Zhixue attaches great importance to technology, but they didn't expect that he would attach such importance to it that he would confer a noble title on a mere craftsman!
(End of this chapter)