I want to be emperor

Antong Xuanpu used his personal connections to help the Kingdom of Wales contact the Consul General of the British Region, but it was just a matchmaking and did not participate in the subsequent negotiations between them.

After all, this is very likely to be related to the imperial official's overall strategic layout for the British region... Military trade has never been a purely commercial act, and the Consul General of the British Region is not a businessman, but a serious imperial official. .

Therefore, there are many things involved in the military and trade affairs of the Kingdom of Wales. Even the Consul General of the British Region has no decision-making power. At most, he only has the right to make suggestions.

But these are not important... An Tongxuan doesn't care about what they talked about, or even the possible war between the Kingdom of Wales and the Kingdom of England. He only needs to get a few mineral development rights promised by the Kingdom of Wales. .

The Kingdom of Wales is quite trustworthy, and at the same time, they themselves want to obtain more coal development benefits... This time, although according to the usual practice, they are still unable to receive any taxes from the transfer of mining area development rights, nor is it possible to form a joint stock, Because it is impossible for mining companies with indigenous participation to obtain approval from the Import and Export Commission and then be allowed to purchase mining equipment.

Therefore, the Kingdom of Wales still obtains income through the model of charging annual rent. However, this annual rent has a certain degree of flexibility. It is less in the first few years. In the following years, there is a guaranteed rent, and it will increase as the output of the mining area increases. rent.

Overall, the benefits are much greater than those from the early transfer of mining areas.

Nowadays, it is no longer the case that you can get the development rights of a mining area for decades by just paying a little money.

How should I put it? The Kingdom of Wales is now a formal vassal state of the Chu Empire. The Kingdom of Wales also needs a certain amount of financial revenue to maintain its rule. It is impossible to say that all the benefits are taken away without leaving any for others.

If the squeeze is too severe and the Welsh royal family does not have enough financial resources to maintain its rule, will it be necessary for the Chu State to send its own troops to suppress the many indigenous rebels?

To raise a thug, you have to pay him a salary anyway...

Therefore, for some agent regimes that are stable and have good attitudes, the empire will still leave them with a certain amount of fiscal revenue.

For the Kingdom of Wales, their main industries now are agriculture, animal husbandry and mining.

Needless to say, agriculture, in addition to growing food, fruits and vegetables are also grown in some places close to the lives of Chu people to supply them nearby.

In terms of animal husbandry, it means raising sheep, and then earning Chu Yuan foreign exchange by selling the wool.

In mining, fixed annual rents are obtained by transferring mining rights.

Therefore, in the mining rights transfer transaction of three coal mining areas this time, Anwei Mining Company and the Kingdom of Wales reached a model of guaranteed rent plus production floating rent.

Of course, despite this, most of the profits from the mining area will still be taken away by Anwei Mining Company, and the rental income that the Kingdom of Wales can obtain is still very limited.

However, the income from the Kingdom of Wales, in addition to share dividends, will also come from other aspects.

Such as labor dispatch income!

In order to reduce labor costs, Anwei Mining Company has basically stopped recruiting large-scale indigenous people to mine coal. Although such labor costs are not high, if the labor dispatch model is adopted, labor costs can be reduced by another [-] to [-]%!
Saving costs as much as possible is what any businessman will do.

The development of these new coal mines will still adopt the labor dispatch model in cooperation with local indigenous labor service companies. In addition to the original cooperative Welsh aristocratic companies, the cooperative labor dispatch companies will also Cooperate with the labor service company run by the Welsh royal family.

At the same time, in the procurement of living supplies, building materials and other supplies, mainly fruits and vegetables needed for daily life, stone and wood used for construction, a part of the share will also be allocated to companies owned by the Welsh royal family.

From these aspects, the Welsh royal family can also obtain other additional benefits!

Not to mention that as a kingdom, the Kingdom of Wales can also obtain at least thousands of long-term and stable jobs to solve the already high unemployment rate in their country.

Originally, the Kingdom of Wales did not have an unemployment problem... After all, it was just a purely agricultural country before. Most of the population was gathered among the major noble lords and worked as tenants for these lords to survive. To put it bluntly, it was a purely agricultural population and did not exist. What is the problem of large-scale industry?

However, this stable agricultural economic structure changed drastically after the Chu people entered the British area... because the Chu people were interested in the wool in the British area and wanted to turn it into a super-large wool supply base. .

In the early stage, wool was purchased at a relatively high price!

At the same time, grain merchants from the Chu State imported large quantities of potatoes and other cheap grains to the British area, which greatly affected the local grain industry in England.

At this time, the nobles who held a large amount of land found that the income from growing food on their land was not as much as from raising sheep.

In order to obtain more profits, these nobles began to give up growing food and began to raise sheep on a large scale.

Raising sheep does not require a large agricultural population... This has caused the original large agricultural population to lose the land they can cultivate and become the so-called unemployed population.

This situation can also be called "sheep eating people", which is a very common and special situation in the industrial era.

In fact, similar things are happening in many places around the world today, such as Spain... because it was listed as a wool-producing area by the Chu people, it is also experiencing the same thing.

There are also many areas in India. The people of Chu thought that growing cotton in this place was quite good, so they adopted the old method of raising the purchase price of long-staple cotton and importing a large amount of cheap potato grains, which in turn caused the local nobles who controlled a large amount of land to give up planting. Grain was instead grown in cotton.

The Da Chu Empire has a huge demand for various economic crops, and many economic crops or animal husbandry have certain requirements on the geographical environment and climate. Therefore, the Da Chu Empire prefers to concentrate on developing certain industries in a certain area. Or grow cotton, or raise sheep, or grow cocoa, coffee, sisal, tobacco, etc.

This has resulted in the economic model in many places being very single, and large numbers of people often losing their jobs.

Because the population that many economic crops can accommodate is far less than that of ordinary grain cultivation.

Of course, it was not the original intention of the Chu Empire to cause a large number of unemployed people in the local area... After all, the Chu people came here only to make money, and they did not simply come to do bad things. They could not do it for no reason just to make the locals unemployed. , not necessary.

In fact, the effect that the empire's top officials deliberately wanted was not the unemployment of local indigenous people, but the creation of a single economic system in the colonies to completely tie them up economically and plunder as many economic benefits as possible.

It's just that this kind of thing has the side effect of sheep eating people in some wool-producing areas.

In the British region, this is even more obvious.

The nobles in the Kingdom of Wales freed up a large amount of land to plant pasture and raise sheep, which in turn caused many farmers to lose the land on which they lived. These farmers who lost their land also needed to survive.

Fortunately, at this time, the Chu people were still vigorously developing the mining industry in the Kingdom of Wales. The new mining industry absorbed a large number of unemployed farmers, which prevented complete turmoil in the British region.

At the same time, when the Chu people came here, in addition to the mining industry, they actually brought other industries, such as railways... Building railways requires a lot of workers.

The Great Chu Empire currently has three major economic deregulation policies for its vassal territories: the first allows mining companies run by Chu people to use mining machinery and equipment on a limited basis; the second allows agricultural companies run by Chu people, The animal husbandry company has limited use of animal husbandry and agricultural machinery and equipment; the third article is to allow Chu people to invest in the construction of railways/terminals and operate railways and shipping in the territory of the vassal state.

The economic deregulation policies in the territories of these three major vassal states actually serve the Chu people themselves. The ultimate goal is to obtain more cheap agricultural and mining raw materials from the vassal states to the greatest extent possible.

But objectively, it also brought new economic development opportunities to many vassal countries...

After the Chu people came to start mining, agriculture, animal husbandry and other types of companies, even if they took away the majority of the profits, they would still leave some residue to the local area. In addition, they would also provide a large number of jobs, and employment could also drive services. Industry and the development of other industries!
After all, these jobs, to a certain extent, can also be regarded as labor exports. Even though these mining and farm workers may be prisoners of war and slaves, they can still help labor dispatch companies in indigenous countries earn a lot of money. Yuan foreign exchange.

Only with foreign exchange can we purchase more Chu industrial goods. For example, the large amount of weapons and equipment purchased by the Kingdom of Wales will require a large amount of Chu Yuan foreign exchange.

Not to mention railways and shipping. Although the local indigenous people cannot directly obtain any benefits from the transportation industry, all railways and shipping companies are solely owned by Chu people.

But they can still enjoy the travel convenience brought by the first industrial revolution... They can also travel by trains and ships, and can also transport goods by trains and ships to earn more profits.

So from this perspective, the arrival of the Chu people accelerated the civilizational evolution of local society to a certain extent, allowing many vassal states to experience the convenience of life brought by the Industrial Revolution... and at the same time, it also brought them more advanced Weaponry.

Before the rise of the Chu people, these Europeans were still using matchlock guns... After the rise of the Chu people, influenced by the Chu people, these Europeans began to use flintlock guns.

After the Chu people took full control of Europe, flintlock guns were now fully used in Europe. With the Chu Empire's relevant policies this year, it allowed the bulk export of percussion guns and a batch of better-performing smoothbore cannons. After that, the performance of their weapons and equipment can be further improved. The reason why the Da Chu Empire approved the export of percussion guns was mainly because the Da Chu Empire's own weapons and equipment, in fact, mainly the weapons and equipment of the foreign legions, have reached a new level, and a large number of equipment have been retired from the regular army. A single-shot breech-loading rifle, also known as the Type [-] single-shot rifle.

The reason why the Foreign Legion is able to serve a large number of Type [-] single-shot rifles is mainly because the regular army has already served large-scale repeating rifles with eight-millimeter black powder bullets.

After the successful development of the Type 24 eight-millimeter repeating rifle, and the military's strong promotion of small-caliber rifles, Hebei Arms Company was forced to make rapid progress, using eight-mm black powder bullets as the basis. Based on the Type 25 rifle, It took half a year to develop the eight-millimeter black powder bullet version of the Type 25 rifle, and it was quickly put into production and put into service.

This eight-millimeter black powder bullet version based on the Type 25 rifle has been officially designated by the military as the Type 26 rifle, and together with the Type 24 rifle, it is the military's standard rifle.

In terms of specific procurement and service use, the Navy and armed tax police purchased Type 24 rifles, while the Guards and Army used Type 26 rifles.

However, in actual use, the Army and the Guards actually purchased some Type 24 rifles, which are mainly used in the Guards fleet, Army naval warfare division, Army mountain jungle force, amphibious warfare force, etc.

Therefore, the Chu army actually uses two standard rifles at the same time...but the problem is not big, because the two rifles use the same kind of bullets, and there is no problem of increasing the logistic supply of bullets.

In addition, the Chu army not only used two standard rifles at the same time, but actually used two heavy machine guns at the same time... They used Type [-] water-cooled heavy machine guns and Type [-] air-cooled heavy machine guns, and these two machine guns also used Standard eight mm rifle ammunition.

However, in order to consume a large inventory of [-]mm rifle ammunition and to meet the combat needs of the second-line troops, these two machine guns also have versions that fire old [-]mm rifle ammunition.

You should know that around the 30th year of Chengshun of the Great Chu Empire, the large-scale production of 25mm rifle ammunition began to adapt to the Type [-] rifle, Type [-] rifle, Type [-] rifle (Qiming repeating rifle), Type [-] rifle Fire rifle.

This resulted in the [-]mm rifle bullet, the first standard full-metal bullet in the Chu Empire. The production scale was very large, and the inventory was also huge.

Although the production of eight-millimeter rifle bullets has now been switched to production, and front-line troops are gradually using new small-caliber rifles in service, it does not mean that a large number of firearms using [-]-millimeter rifle bullets, even rifles such as Type [-] rifles, will be retired. .

According to the service plan, front-line troops will successively serve two types of small-caliber rifles, Type 24 and Type 26, as well as two supporting new eight-millimeter machine guns.

A large number of second-line troops will continue to use Type 25 [-]mm repeating rifles, paired with [-]mm caliber [-] machine guns and [-] machine guns.

And a large number of single-shot rifles such as Type [-] rifles and Type [-] rifles that retired from the second-line troops began to continue to exert their residual heat in militia units and foreign legions.

Don't worry about running out... Although these two rifles have been discontinued for many years, there were too many produced before... The cumulative production of Type 40 rifles has reached more than 300, and the cumulative production of Type [-] rifles has reached more than [-] There are thousands of them.

There are even more than 20 brand new, unopened Type [-] rifles in the combat readiness warehouse.

Back then, the Guards had reserved more than 26 brand-new Type [-] rifles for use as strategic reserves. Now these strategic reserves have been gradually replaced by reserves of Type [-] rifles.

These brand-new Type [-] rifles that have been stored for many years will be used together with the Type [-] rifles retired from the regular army, mainly for militia, and some will be assigned to the Foreign Legion.

This also means that the Chu army will comprehensively and completely eliminate muskets... Even the militia and foreign legions will no longer use percussion guns.

After 15 years of transition, the Chu army will fully enter the era of rifled rifles!

Under such circumstances, the Da Chu Empire wanted to raise funds by selling a large number of second-hand flash cap percussion guns to reduce the cost of replacement, and at the same time further bind the vassal states, and also to further suppress them from developing their own weapons industry. Policy on export of flash cap percussion guns.

Another advantage of the export of flash cap firing guns is that it can further control the vassal states in terms of ammunition!
Because the ammunition used in the flash cap firing gun is relatively special, it requires a copper flash cap to fire.

Although this copper flash cap is nothing to an industrial country, in any case, it is an industrial product and cannot be produced by a small workshop in an agricultural country, let alone a large-scale low-cost product. costs to produce.

The Chu Empire could control the military development and war behavior of these vassal states to a certain extent through the export of copper fire hats.

Of course, taking into account many factors such as regional balance, even if the export of percussion guns is released, not all indigenous countries will be allowed to import them at this stage.

Especially between the Kingdom of Wales and the Kingdom of England, the smell of gunpowder is already very strong. When a large-scale war is imminent, the sale of such advanced weapons will have many impacts.

The empire naturally needs to consider the gains and losses in many aspects.

However, to the relief of the Kingdom of Wales, the Empire finally approved their purchase application and allowed them to purchase [-] flash cap percussion guns, and these [-] perch cap percussion guns and matching copper perch cap percussion guns were all included. It is ready-made, deployed directly in the UK, and delivered within just one month.

At the same time, together with these 115 flash cap percussion guns, twenty [-] mm smoothbore field guns and a large number of other military supplies were delivered.

The reason why it can be delivered so quickly is that these weapons and equipment are actually directly replaced from the foreign legions stationed in the local area.

The Foreign Legion stationed in the British area had already begun to gradually replace the Type [-] single-shot rifles and some early breech-loading rifled artillery retired by the regular army. These replaced flash cap percussion guns and smoothbore cannons were originally intended to be exported and sold locally. of.

It is worth mentioning that the export price of these weapons is not cheap. This batch of 23-year-old flash cap percussion guns that have been used for more than ten years is priced at six Chu yuan... This price is not cheap, and it is not as cheap as Chu Chu's back then. The price of new guns purchased by the military is almost the same.

However, even if it is a second-hand product, it is still a flash cap percussion gun. Its performance is much better than that of a flintlock gun. Its all-weather firing rate can reach 90.00%.

And this all-weather firing rate means excellent rain and windproof performance, and this performance is even more important in the humid and rainy British area.

It is enough for the Welsh army equipped with this second-hand flash cap percussion gun to still have combat capabilities in windy and rainy weather, which is something that flintlock guns cannot do.

However, what worries the Kingdom of Wales is that the Dachu Empire not only approved the arms purchase application from the Kingdom of Wales, but also approved the arms purchase application from the Kingdom of England.

Even the number of flash cap percussion guns approved for purchase is exactly the same, [-]!
Obviously, the empire's foreign policy in the British region is to maintain a certain balance in the military power of each vassal country to prevent any one party from becoming too dominant.

However, this so-called balance is just weapons and equipment, but there are many aspects that affect combat effectiveness... Especially when the vassal states are still using line operations, it is not just weapons and equipment that affect the army's combat effectiveness, but also Soldier qualities.

At this point, England has strong confidence!
They imitated the foreign legions of the Chu army and created a royal guard wearing red military uniforms and equipped with pure Chu weapons.

The biggest feature of this English Royal Guards is that they extremely pursue the first shot kill rate, that is, shortening the first shot distance as much as possible.

When pursuing the first salvo, put the muzzle of the gun to the enemy's head and fire!
In the Chu army, this tactic is also called "face-to-face tactics"

This was also a classic tactic used by the Chu army in the early years... However, the enemy at that time did not have strong firepower and even used cold weapons on a large scale. The Chu army actually faced little pressure when using this tactic, so it was able to use it on a large scale.

Then it was adopted by the Foreign Legion... But as the indigenous people of various countries began to use flintlocks and adopted line tactics, the Chu Army's Foreign Legion had much higher requirements when using this close-to-the-face tactic!
Up to now, in the contemporary Chu Army Foreign Legion, when facing other enemies who use flintlock guns, only the most elite infantry battalions can use this tactic... This thing can only be achieved after the enemy's firepower reaches a certain level. The requirements for the psychological quality of soldiers are too high.

In actual combat, it doesn't mean that if you let the soldiers brave the enemy's fierce firepower, slowly walk to a position 30 to [-] meters away from the enemy and fire, the soldiers will be obedient...

This requires very high psychological quality of the soldiers!
When the Chu Army Foreign Legion trained this tactic before, they used a very harsh training mode, directly using sticks, whips, etc. to continuously destroy the soldiers' autonomy and let them form an instinctive conditioned reflex to the orders. Only then can we use this very extreme, but extremely lethal tactic in the online era.

As for the New Kingdom of England, when they formed a new army, they directly referred to the extreme tactics of the Foreign Legion. It took several years and a huge cost of money to create a royal guard of thousands of people. military.

Naturally, this Guards was not used to resist the Chu people... The Chu people all used small-caliber repeating rifled weapons. The combat mode was already beyond the understanding of the natives of various countries. England never had the guts to resist. A native of Chu.

This Guards is an important force used by their king to suppress domestic resistance and deter other nobles. But most importantly, this Guards will be used to fight against the Kingdom of Wales and the Kingdom of York to the north.

For the Kingdom of England, this Guards is the most important direct military force under the king, and it is also an important strategic force used by the entire kingdom to fight foreign battles and protect the country!

The Kingdom of Ingram is extremely confident in the combat effectiveness of this Guards and believes that it can obtain more benefits for the Kingdom by relying on this Guards equipped with new flintlock guns.

The Kingdom of England, which had such confidence, confirmed that the Empire would not interfere in the war between the two countries, and then officially started the war and officially sent troops to the Kingdom of Wales!

(End of this chapter)