I want to be emperor

Chapter 706 Affecting the Situation in Europe

In July 24th of Chengshun, the Songhang Railway was officially opened to traffic, connecting other sections of the Jiangnan Railway and put into commercial operation. Since it was put into operation, the passenger flow has continued to be full.

In August of the 24th year of Chengshun, the railway from Wuhu, Taiping Prefecture to Guichi, Chizhou Prefecture was opened to traffic, which added one more place where the railway opened in the Great Chu Empire, and also extended the Jiangnan Railway to the west by more than 100 kilometers.

In September of the 24th year of Chengshun, the Guangdong section of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway, and the Guangzhou-Heyuanzhou section opened to traffic, announcing that Guangdong, the most important economic province in the southern part of the empire, also has a long-distance railway, and it is actively extending northward, preparing to cross Pass through the mountains of northern Guangdong and enter Jiangxi.

In November of the 24th year of Chengshun, the southern section of the Central Plains Railway, the Xuzhou-Suzhou section was completed and started trial operation.

In December of the 24th year of Chengshun, the Hantian-Yueyang section of the Huguang Railway was completed and opened to traffic, officially kicking off the construction of the Huguang Railway.

The 24th year of Chengshun was a year in which the construction of the Great Chu Empire Railway continued to achieve fruitful results after two or three years of hard work.

During this year, the total mileage of road sections completed and opened to traffic reached more than 400 kilometers, including many long-distance railways of more than [-] kilometers.

The two vertical and two horizontal arterial railway networks have entered the comprehensive construction stage, from the Jiangnan Railway to the Longhai Railway, to the Huguang Railway, the Central Plains Railway, and the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway. Some roads are open to traffic.

Similarly, the Great Chu Empire's investment in railways during this year also reached an extremely terrifying level.

The funds directly invested in railway construction have reached tens of millions of Chu Yuan, and the investment in railways is still expanding.

The huge railway investment, in addition to giving the Great Chu Empire a large number of rapidly developing railway networks, and driving the flow of people and materials along the railways.

More importantly, it has also led to the rapid expansion of a large number of upper industries.

Especially the upstream core industry of railway construction, that is, the steel industry.

Affected by the huge demand of the two major iron-consuming industries, the shipbuilding industry and the railway industry, the iron and steel industry of the Great Chu Empire has more than doubled the steel output in the 20 years of Chengshun compared to the 23 years of Chengshun, and there are still a large number of The construction of steelmaking plants and facilities is speeding up, and the steel output of the Great Chu Empire is expanding at an extremely alarming rate.

In the past, although the steel output of the Great Chu Empire also increased every year, and the growth rate was also very large, it has never experienced such an exaggerated expansion as in the past two years, and the market demand for steel seems to be increasing. There is no end, no matter how much steel is produced, it will be consumed by the market in an instant.

As a result, there has been a substantial increase in steel production, but the value of steel has increased compared to a year ago.

Because although the production of steel has increased, the market demand has increased even more!

The railway industry and the shipbuilding industry, these two industries are both big eaters of steel. As far as the current steel output of the Great Chu Empire is concerned, they can also consume it if the output is increased several times.

Not to mention that the shipbuilding industry of the Great Chu Empire is still undergoing technological updates. Many shipyards, including the military, have begun to try to design all-steel ships after the high-pressure steam engines used for ships have been put into use.

Not to mention civilian ships, let alone the navy, the Ministry of Ship Administration has begun to design an all-steel and pure steam-powered ironclad ship.

The design concept is to use all-iron warships to obtain comprehensive protection capabilities, and then rely on this powerful protection capability to directly approach the enemy's coastal defense and river defense forts for bombardment, destroy the enemy's forts, and cover the rear fleet.

The main usage scenarios will be the offshore and inland river areas of the enemy country.

It is conceivable that the combat effectiveness of this all-iron warship will not be discussed, but it will definitely consume a lot of steel.

The current iron-ribbed wood-hull ships already consume a lot of steel for shipbuilding. If all-iron ships are used for shipbuilding, the consumption of steel will double.

The rapid development of the railway and shipbuilding industries directly led to the shortage of steel industry.

In addition to the iron and steel industry, the explosive development of these two industries has also led to the rapid development of industries such as heavy machining and precision machining.

For example, Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd. is an important manufacturer that provides various types of marine load-bearing wrought iron parts for the shipbuilding industry, that is, various main parts such as ship ribs, keels, and beams.

Their production capacity has continued to rise in the past two or three years, but the supply is still in short supply.

Also engaged in this industry are Hantian Heavy Machinery Company, Tianjin Heavy Machinery Company, Panyu Heavy Machinery Company, Songjiang Heavy Machinery Company and other domestic heavy machinery companies capable of processing large iron parts. The production volume increased rapidly to meet the huge demand of the market.

However, Guangzhou Machinery Company, Dangtu Machinery Company, and Tianjin Machinery Company, the three major domestic steam engine manufacturers, have worked hard to produce various types of high-pressure steam engines.

However, although the output is increasing year by year, the supply is still in short supply, because the technical content of these high-pressure steam engines is still very high, and the output is still relatively limited
These stand-alone high-pressure steam engines with horsepower ranging from hundreds of horsepower to as small as a few horsepower represent the highest industrial strength of the contemporary Great Chu Empire, and can be called the industrial flower of the Great Chu Empire.

If you look at these steam engines with the eyes of future generations, even if they are all stupid and rough, the performance is rubbish to death, but these steam engines, their processing accuracy, material smelting technology, etc. belong to the contemporary Great Chu Empire. Top challenge.

Why are only three domestic steam engine manufacturers able to produce high-pressure steam engines? This is not a patent issue, but a pure production capacity issue.

If you want to produce this kind of high-pressure steam engine, your materials must first pass the test, not any messy iron materials can be used as cylinder materials.

Not to mention the processing, it is not something that ordinary manufacturers can do if they want to process such a large cylinder with ultra-high precision.

At present, only the three major steam engine manufacturers and several artillery factories that produce large artillery have this processing capability.

It is worth mentioning that the military uses artillery factories to process the cylinders and pistons of small high-pressure steam engines according to the limited patent authorization of Guangzhou Machinery Company, and then assemble them into small steam engines for military use.

Although using arsenals to manufacture high-tech products such as high-pressure steam engines is not professional enough, so that the technical performance of the small steam engines produced is not good, and the cost is extremely high, but as emergency products in special periods, these small high-pressure steam engines are still It was installed on a group of small steam ships.

At present, the small steamships produced by the Kur Arsenal in Siberia have a full-load displacement of only a few tens of tons, but they undertake the transportation function of a part of the Siberian river network. These small steamships with sails can already be seen on the three main rivers of Siberia.

Well, the first batch of steam ships used by the Chu Army in Siberia were not used as battleships, but as transport ships and even tugboats.

The most often seen scene is that a steam ship is smoking white smoke, dragging several or even a dozen sail transport ships behind it.

Sometimes this kind of scene will scare some aboriginals along the way to death... shouting all kinds of aboriginal vocabulary such as devils in a language that outsiders cannot understand.

Well, including the Russians!

When the Great Chu Empire put steamships on the Ob River for the first time in the spring of the 24th year of Chengshun, it frightened the Russians on the opposite side...

They couldn't imagine that a ship without sails and trackers could go upstream... It's okay to go upstream by yourself, and there are several boats behind it!

These Russians who still believed in God were frightened and stupid, and then shouted the devil...turned around and ran away. In the next few months, this group of Russians did not dare to harass the Great Chu Empire on the banks of the Ob River. stronghold.

To some extent, the use of steam ships on the Ob River can be regarded as completely dispelling the Russians' plan to return to the Ob River.

The main stream of the Ob River has completely and comprehensively fallen into the hands of the Great Chu Empire in the 24 years of Chengshun. The subsequent continuous fighting between the Great Chu Empire Army and the Russians will be transferred from the main stream area of ​​the Ob River to the farther west. Part of the tributary of the west bank of the Ob River and even the Ural Mountains.

The most important location is Tyumen on the banks of the Tula River, a tributary of the Ob River.

Since the Russians continued to retreat in the three major river basins of Siberia, and even lost several major cities in the Ob River basin, the Russians could only retreat to the Ural Mountains and garrison heavy troops in Tyumen, east of the Ural Mountains!
Qiumen has become a bridgehead to prevent the Chu people from continuing to advance westward. Once this place is lost, the Chu people will be able to march to the Ural Mountains in a short time... Once the Chu people are allowed to cross the Ural Mountains, it will be over...

If the Siberia region is just a sparsely populated colony for the current Russians and has no real value, then the Eastern European region west of the Ural Mountains is the core hinterland of the Russians.

Once the Great Chu Empire enters this area, they can all prepare for the Great Patriotic War...

Therefore, when the Siberia region was lost and the Chu army approached Tyumen, the Russians were terrified and began to send a large number of troops to Tyumen and other important areas on the Ural Mountains.

Not the hundreds or thousands of people in Siberia, but tens of thousands of troops sent over.

Just one Tyumen alone sent more than 3 soldiers to garrison, and other front-line cities also had a large number of troops. In order to defend the Ural Mountains and their own core land, the Russians dispatched more than [-] soldiers on the entire Eastern Front .

It is worth noting that these [-] soldiers are already a regular army among the Russians, not the kind of colonial mercenaries in Siberia before.

At the same time, in the Tyumen region, they have been able to obtain various supplies in the area west of the Ural Mountains more conveniently. They don't have to be the same as when they were fighting in Siberia. The transportation of both personnel and supplies is very troublesome.

Conversely, the transportation of supplies by the Chu army in the Ob River Basin has become very troublesome!
The distance has become the biggest enemy of the Great Chu Empire Army!
Because the Chu Army in Tobo City (Tobolsk), which is the closest to the Russians and at the forefront of the Western Front, has the closest arsenal to the rear, that is, the small Hetong arsenal in the upper reaches of the Irtysh River. There are more than 1000 kilometers...

The scale of the Hetong Arsenal is actually very small, not even one-third of the output of the Yining Arsenal, let alone comparable to those large arsenals in the hinterland of the Central Plains.

Not to mention other things, just to provide supplies of weapons and ammunition to Tuobo City and other garrisons in the Ob River Basin has already cost the Chu army time and effort.

This is also the reason why the Chu army did not launch a large-scale attack on Tyumen City since the main stream of the Ob River was controlled last year. .

It's not that I don't want to fight, but that I don't have the ammunition to fight... It's no problem to defend Tuobo City with the current logistics supply, but it's not so good to attack.

After all, the Russians in Tyumen were not hundreds or thousands, but tens of thousands. According to the Chu army's consistent firepower superiority.

To attack such a strong city with a large number of troops and artillery garrisons, it is impossible to have tens of thousands of troops, hundreds of artillery, and dozens of heavy siege guns.

As for fighting with the lives of soldiers... What kind of barbarian jokes are you talking about? When did the Chu army fall to the point of relying on the sacrifice of soldiers to win the war?

I can't afford to lose that face!
Besides, there is no practical benefit in capturing Tyumen. The territory of the Great Chu Empire is already large enough, and the vast Siberia region behind it is not yet fully controlled. It is actually very difficult to continue westward and take the Ural Mountains. control.

Another reason is that the Great Chu Empire is now in a period of explosive development of industry and commerce. The emergence and large-scale use of ships and trains has made the domestic industry and commerce economy take off. Now the whole country is focused on developing industry and making money. Pay attention to the Russians who are thousands of kilometers away and have no real threat to the empire...

Besides, even if you want to fight, you can wait until the Northwest Railway is opened, and it will not be too late when troops and supplies can be continuously sent to the Ural Mountains through the Northwest Railway.

The Ural Mountains and the Eastern European Plain, it is there, and it can't run away...

Under so many circumstances, in fact, the high-level empire has no idea of ​​​​letting the army continue to advance westward. Relying on the Ob River to defend first, and then turn around to completely localize Siberia, and take away all the messy things left in the area. Let's talk about the integration of the aborigines.

As for the area west of the Ob River, we will look at it in a few years.

But the top officials of the Great Chu Empire didn't want to fight anymore, and the Russians didn't know... The Great Chu Empire didn't send anyone to find them for peace talks.

The Russians thought that the Great Chu Empire would continue to advance westward, just like the Mongols did in the past, and wanted to go directly to Europe.

For this reason, they have been frightened in the past year and have continued to send more troops to the east, which has also affected the strategic layout of the Russians in Europe.

As soon as the European countries inquired why the Russians had shifted their strategic focus, they then discovered the maritime trade and colonial disputes between the Dutch and the Portuguese, and even the Spaniards and the Great Chu Empire for many years.

As a result, some European countries, such as France, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and other countries discovered that the Great Chu Empire, which had been out of touch with them for eight lifetimes, had actually begun to affect the situation in Europe.

(End of this chapter)