Johime Three Kingdoms

Chapter 398 Building Walls and Roads
In a war, what do the defenders of the attacked side need to defend?
Nature is the most valuable thing...

Life is so beautiful, life is so brilliant.

It is inevitable that the primary goal is to reduce civilian casualties... What's the second?

Taking the current Jinling as an example, the area within the city alone is only six or seven miles square.

With the expansion of workshops outside the city, the area of ​​the industrial zone is dozens of times that of the city, and the population living outside the city is also several times the population of the city...

If the enemy has occupied or destroyed all the industrial areas, what is the point of fighting for the city wall?
Of course, if Bai Tu is determined to build a city wall, and several large cities all build city walls that go hundreds of miles around, and encircle them all, it is not impossible to build them--hasn't the Great Wall also been built?
But this is only in a strategic sense, but in a tactical sense...

The Ministry of Industry's heavy copper cannon has been tested and is about to enter the stage of actual use. More importantly, one of the difficulties in the "Zhen Qi machine", the problem of the large-scale artificial glaze that stores the Zhen Qi, has been solved. As long as the source of the Zhen Qi is solved, If you solve the problem, you can use the Zhenqi machine in large-scale projects.

That is to say...

Within a few years, there is hope that an entry-level stamping machine will be available!
Once the stamping machine comes out, it means that molds can be cast on a large scale, which means that gun chambers and barrels that meet specifications will appear in large numbers...

In terms of performance, guns still need a lot of development to fully surpass the crossbows, especially the crossbows of Chu.

Regardless of the advantages of cost and training cost, there is basically no hope for muzzle-loading guns. At least the emergence of breech-loading guns can be compared, and only after the emergence of bolt-action guns can we talk about comprehensive surpassing.

After all, muzzle-loading guns, which can only be queued for shooting, have slow reloading speeds, and can hardly apply rifling technology. Compared with crossbows... they only have the advantages of being cheap and easy to train.

But as for the cannon, its power can be increased quickly!

Even if the city walls of Cheng Ji's world have the will of the people to persist, they can only resist field artillery at most, and most heavy artillery can't hold it, let alone armor-piercing artillery...

Judging from the effectiveness of battlefields in the early stages of industrialization, as early as the 17th century, there were basically few city wall battles in Europe, and they were mainly field battles.

The technological breakthrough of the Ministry of Industry made Bai Tu feel that the role of the city wall would become smaller and smaller in the next ten years, and it would be completely reduced to commemorative significance in a few decades.

Bai Tu hoped that Cao Cao and Liu Bei would shout more about the immutability of their ancestors' laws and stop trying to develop new technologies of their own. However... the princes from all over the world have never stopped coveting Chu's technology!
Various technologies can still be kept secret during the experimental and accumulation stages, but once they are actually used on a large scale, they will be copied sooner or later. Now, the skills of the crossbows used by soldiers under Liu Bei and Cao Cao have been significantly improved.

Without the development of supporting facilities, no talent reserve base, and no overall development of the industry... Baitu is confident that it can always lead.

What if they come to steal the teacher?
The enemy just had muzzle-loading guns, and Chu State already had breech-loading guns; the enemy had breech-loading guns, and Chu State had already begun to pull the bolt; the enemy had bolt-loading rifles, and Chu State... could already raise the crane gun!
However, Bai Tu didn't think that when Chu took out his heavy machine gun, the enemy was still using a crossbow cutely - the Han people didn't know how to adapt or learn?

The Huns may have thought so before, until they were driven out of Hexi and Mobei by the light cavalry of the Han Dynasty...

Moreover, the development speed after the start of industrialization is completely different from the cold weapon era. Even natural development is very fast.

In the world before Baitu traveled through time, 100 years after the Germans made the first "gun" that could load bullets from the back and no longer had to use a stick to insert projectiles and gunpowder into the muzzle, the island country suffered two Atomic bomb...

The bows from the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the bows from the late Eastern Han Dynasty did not change much, but it was also 100 years from the breech-loading gun to the atomic bomb!

Even if the per capita cultural level in the late Eastern Han Dynasty cannot be made up within one or two generations, once the contents of Bai Tu's hard drive are separated, more time will be needed to make up for the "foundation". Perhaps when Bai Tu dies, Heavy machine guns cannot be set up, and there may not even be a bolt-action rifle in sight.

After all, 100 years before the breech-loading gun, musketeers were still lining up to shoot, and melee cavalry was still the key force that influenced the battle situation.

Upgrading the existing rammed earth structure of the city wall to a masonry and cement structure, with the support of the people, can theoretically play some role.

At least... it can still block a field gun of insufficient caliber.

However, with the rise of industrialization, the workshops concentrated the population of the original countryside. The mainstream counties in the Han Dynasty, such as the city walls with a cycle of more than ten miles, or even four or five miles, would at most serve as a central castle. “Outside the City”…

Just like when Li Yunlong conquered Ping'an County, there were residential buildings everywhere outside the city wall.

Is it really necessary to build city walls that go back hundreds of miles in every major city?
If enough people are concentrated, public sentiment may be able to keep up, but...

No matter how Bai Tu calculated this account, he still felt that he was at a loss!
This is still different from the Great Wall. Although the Great Wall is long, most sections do not need to be too high. They are mainly used to block cavalry and facilitate the movement of the defenders. If a high wall of several hundred miles is built...

It is estimated that the investment of just one Jinling is enough to pave the Chu State's cement roads to cover all the main roads in the country.

It is better to just build some specialized fortresses and fortress groups, focusing on field warfare and trench warfare, so that if we are pushed to the industrial zone, we will not have to fight to the death...

However, among the six departments, many people hold the idea of ​​accumulating food widely and building high walls. Even if Baitu does not demolish the old city walls, some people can't wait to cash in the research results of the Ministry of Industry to the city walls of the main cities. superior.

Of course, Bai Tu also knew that this idea... Judging from the inertia of historical experience before now, there is actually no problem. After all, in its current form, no matter how strong the Chu State is, there is no guarantee that it will not be actively attacked.

On the contrary, the idea of ​​abandoning the city wall, like the two-level system of states and counties, is likely to attract opposition.

For example, now...it's just Zhang Chunhua. Bai Tu has already tried his best to talk about it, but Zhang Chunhua is still unmoved.

Just for the sake of his responsibilities as "Shang Shulang", I can help Bai Tu come up with ideas.

This is what Bai Tu likes...no, it's the second point of recognizing Zhang Chunhua - even if he doesn't agree with Bai Tu's purpose, Zhang Chunhua will help him with ideas as long as Bai Tu asks.

"Chunhua, how can you make everyone accept my idea?"

"If your Majesty must do this, you can try to convince General Lu first. Building the city wall requires the joint efforts of the Ministry of Household Affairs and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the Ministry of Works also needs to provide technology. But if you don't build the city wall, you don't need to convince the Six Ministries... As long as the Privy Council feels that the city wall If it’s worthless, most of the six departments won’t insist on it.” Zhang Chunhua said after summarizing.

Bai Tu's eyes lit up when he heard this.

I decided to wait until I arrived in Xinye and find an opportunity to talk to my adoptive father about this matter - after all, being on the road was not the environment for a conversation, and there was no need to rush the matter.

But after Zhang Chunhua left the luxury carriage where Bai Tu was sitting, Lu Lingqi asked with a smile: "Hard disk, do you really like Chunhua?"

"No, it's recognition." Bai Tu corrected seriously.

(End of this chapter)