Volume 4 is in the ascendant Chapter 397: Building Walls and Roads
In war, what do the defenders of the attacked side need to defend?
Nature is the most valuable thing...
How beautiful life is, how brilliant life is.
It is inevitable that reducing civilian casualties is the primary goal...what's the second?
As for today's Jinling, the area within the city alone is only about six or seven miles square.
With the expansion of workshops outside the city, the industrial area is dozens of times the area of the city, and the population living outside the city is also several times the population inside the city...
If the enemy has already occupied or destroyed the industrial areas, what is the point of fighting for the city walls?
Of course, if Bai Tu is determined to build city walls, it is not impossible to build walls hundreds of miles in circumference for several large cities to enclose them all - didn't the Great Wall get built?
But this is only in the strategic sense , in the 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 of the "Qi Machine", the problem of large-scale artificial glass that stores Qi, has been solved. As long as the problem of the source of Qi is solved, the Qi Machine can be used in large-scale projects.
In other words…
In a few years, we hope to develop a primary punching machine!
Once the stamping machine is available, it means that large-scale mold casting can be carried out, which means that gun chambers and gun barrels that meet the specifications will appear in large quantities...
If guns are to surpass crossbows, especially the crossbows of the Chu State, in terms of performance, they still need a lot of development.
If we ignore the advantages of manufacturing cost and training cost, there is basically no hope for the muzzle-loading rifle. At least the breech-loading rifle needs to appear to be able to be compared, and only after the bolt-loading rifle appears can it be considered to be completely surpassed.
After all, a muzzle-loading rifle, which can only be used to shoot people in queues, has a slow loading speed and is almost unable to apply rifling technology. Compared with a crossbow... its only advantages are cheapness and ease of training.
However, the power of cannons can be increased rapidly!
Even if the city walls of the Chengji World were supported by the people, they could only withstand field artillery at best, and heavy artillery would probably not be able to withstand it, not to mention armor-piercing artillery...
Judging from the battlefield effectiveness in the early days of industrialization, as early as the 17th century, there were basically few city wall battles in Europe, and most of the battles were 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 would completely become a memorial in a few decades.
Bai Tu actually hoped that Cao Cao , Liu Bei and others would say more that the ancestral laws cannot be changed and not to covet their own new technologies. However... the princes from all sides have never stopped coveting the Chu technology!
Various technologies can be kept secret during the experimental and accumulation stages, but once they are put into practical use on a large scale, it is only a matter of time before they are imitated. Now, the skills of the bows and crossbows used by the soldiers under Liu Bei and Cao Cao have been significantly improved.
There is no development of supporting facilities, no talent pool base, no overall industry development… Baitu is confident that it can always stay ahead.
So what if they come to steal my skills?
The enemy just had a muzzle-loading rifle, but the Chu State already had a breech-loading rifle; the enemy had a breech-loading rifle, and the Chu State had already started to use the bolt action; the enemy had a bolt-action rifle, and the Chu State... was already able to set up a heavy machine gun!
However, Bai Tu did not think that when the Chu State took out the heavy machine guns, the enemy was still using bows and crossbows - did the Han people not know how to adapt and learn?
The Xiongnu may have thought so before, until they were driven out of Hexi and Mobei by the Han Dynasty's light cavalry...
Moreover, the development speed after the beginning of industrialization is different from that in the era of cold weapons, even if it develops naturally, it is very fast.
In the world before Bai Tu traveled through time, a hundred years after the Germans made the first "gun" that could be loaded from the back without having to use a stick to poke bullets and gunpowder into the muzzle, the island nation was hit by two atomic bombs...
There was indeed no change between the bow in the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the bow in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, but it was also a hundred years from the breech-loading rifle to the atomic bomb!
Even if the per capita cultural level at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty could not be made up within one or two generations, once it was separated from the contents of Bai Tu's hard drive, it would take more time to make up for the "foundation". Perhaps by the day when Bai Tu passed away, heavy machine guns could not be set up, and even bolt-action rifles might not be seen.
After all, a hundred years before the invention of the breech-loading rifle, musketeers were still lining up to be shot, and close combat cavalry was still the key force that determined the outcome of battles.
In theory, if the existing rammed earth structure of the city wall is replaced with a brick, stone and cement structure and with the support of the people, it can play a role.
At least... it can still block field artillery of insufficient caliber.
However, with the rise of industrialization, workshops concentrated the population originally from the countryside. The city walls of the mainstream county towns in the Han Dynasty, which were more than ten miles in circumference or even four or five miles, could only serve as central castles. By then, most of the people and industrial areas were "outside the city"...
It was just like when Li Yunlong attacked Ping'an County, there were residential houses everywhere outside the city wall.
Is it really necessary to build city walls with a circumference of hundreds of miles in all major cities?
If enough people were concentrated, people might be able to catch up, but...
No matter how Bai Tu calculates this, he feels like he’s losing money!
This is different from the Great Wall. Although the Great Wall is long, most sections do not need to be too high. It is mainly used to block cavalry and facilitate the movement of the defenders. If a wall of hundreds of miles is built...
It is estimated that the investment in Jinling alone would be enough to build cement roads for Chu State and pave all the main roads in the country.
It would be better to just build some specialized fortresses and fortresses, focusing on field and trench warfare, so that if they are really pushed to the industrial zone, they don’t have to struggle desperately...
However, many hold the idea of storing up grain and building high walls. Even if Bai Tu does not demolish the old city walls, some people can't wait to implement the research results of the Ministry of Works on the walls of the main cities first.
Of course, Bai Tu also knew that this idea... based on the inertia of historical experience before today, was actually nothing wrong. After all, in the current situation, no matter how strong the State of Chu was, it could not guarantee that it would not be actively attacked.
On the contrary, abandoning the idea of city walls and adopting a two-level system of prefectures and counties would likely lead to opposition.
For example, now... Bai Tu has tried his best to persuade Zhang Chunhua, but Zhang Chunhua remains unmoved.
It’s only because of my duties as “Shangshu Lang” that I can help Bai Tu with some advice.
This is the second point that Bai Tu likes... no, it is the second point that he approves of Zhang Chunhua - even if he does not agree with Bai Tu's purpose, as long as Bai Tu opens his mouth, Zhang Chunhua will help him come up with ideas.
"Chunhua, how can I make everyone accept my idea?"
"If Your Majesty must do this, you can try to persuade General Lu first. Building the city wall requires the joint efforts of the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the Ministry of Works must also provide technology. However, if you don't build the city wall, you don't need to persuade the six ministries... As long as the Privy Council thinks the city wall has no value, the six ministries will most likely not insist." Zhang Chunhua said after some consideration.
Bai Tu's eyes lit up when he heard that.
I decided to wait until I arrived in Xinye and find a chance to have a good talk with my adoptive father about this matter - after all, we were on the road, and it wasn't a good environment , and there was no rush for this matter.
However, after Zhang Chunhua left the luxurious carriage where Bai Tu was, Lu Lingqi asked with a smile: "Hard Drive, do you like Chunhua very much?"
"No, it's recognition." Bai Tu corrected seriously.
