In August 1651, the 24th year of Chongzhen, the Ming army was divided into three groups. King Ding Zhu Cijiong led six cavalry divisions to march westward. At the same time, they threatened the women and children of the Junggar tribe and drove the Junggar surrender troops to serve as the vanguard.
The first target of the Western Route Army's expedition was the Kazakh Khanate, which had just been founded.
Before the army marched westward, Zhu Cijiong found many leading parties of the Kazakh Khanate through the Torgut merchant Abaiyi. At this point, Zhu Cijiong had already surpassed Chongzhen and made full use of the leading parties.
Using the leading party to deal with the nomads is really accurate.
The reason is also very simple. In addition to the Jurchens who were still in a slave society before entering the customs, most nomadic tribes have entered a feudal society. They are a group of small lords who are in charge of many small lords. The small lords have their own herdsmen and livestock herds.
and pastures. When encountering invasion by foreign enemies or needing to go out to fight, the herdsmen would be summoned to go out.
Any feudal tribe like this is bound to have conflicts.
The dissatisfied small tribal lords are the natural choice for the party to lead the way.
Abhay found two such small tribes for Zhu Cijiong, each with more than a thousand herders.
One thing that went beyond Zhu Cijiong's expectation was that when he heard that the Ming army was going to launch a large-scale conquest of Kazakhstan, the nearby Kyrgyz and Nogai people actually called herdsmen to help.
Speaking of which, the Nogai, Kyrgyz and Kazakh people all have similar ancestry. Their maternal lines are all indigenous herdsmen in Central Asia, and their paternal lines are all from the Golden Family, who also had the same family four hundred years ago.
They were under the rule of the Golden Horde, but after four hundred years, they no longer recognized each other as relatives, and instead became enemies. Fighting over water, grassland, cattle and sheep was a common occurrence.
When they heard that the Ming army was conquering the Kazakhs, the Nogai and Kyrgyz people not only had no sense of crisis, but instead added insult to injury and wanted a piece of the pie.
These nomadic tribes who were greedy for small profits had no idea what would happen to them once the Ming army conquered the Kazakhs.
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Zhu Cijiong's West Route Army has 6 cavalry divisions, more than 2 million cattle, sheep, horses and camels, hundreds of thousands of women and children accompanying the army, and 30,000 servants from the Junggar tribe. Li Yan's South Route Army only has 2 cavalry divisions.
There are more than 500,000 cattle, sheep, horses and camels. In addition, Li Yan's Southern Route Army has no women or children, they are all single men.
But Chongzhen had already made a promise to Li Yan.
When these two divisions conquer the Heshuote tribe and occupy Qinghai-Tibet, they can demote all the herdsmen of the Heshuote tribe into slaves, and at the same time reward the wives and daughters of the Heshuote nobles to the officers of the cavalry division as wives, and then use these
The Qinghai-Tibet Zhentai was formed on the spot based on the soldiers of the two cavalry divisions.
In addition to ensuring the security of Qinghai and Tibet, the mission of Qinghai Zhentai is also responsible for conquering countries such as Nepal in the south. The ultimate goal is to assist the navy in conquering the Mughal Empire in South Asia.
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In addition to Zhu Cijiong's West Route Army and Li Yan's South Route Army, there was also Chongzhen's East Route Army.
The Eastern Route Army's military strength consisted of only the female barracks and the Guards Brigade, totaling nearly 10,000 people.
To be honest, before the Heshuote Khanate was destroyed, it was still risky to take 10,000 people across the Hexi Corridor. There was nothing to fear from the elusive sand bandits in the desert, but once you were with Heshuote's large cavalry
It would be troublesome if it happened. Of course, the risk was not big, because according to the world line, the Kashote Khanate had just been established at this time, and the country was not stable. Several sects of Theravada Buddhism were still fighting endlessly.
The final facts also proved Chongzhen's judgment.
From Yilibari, they passed through Turpan and Hami, and then marched into the Hexi Corridor. The Heshuote cavalry stationed in the Hexi Corridor only had 2,000 cavalry, and they were quickly defeated.
The Ming army recaptured the Hexi Corridor without any bloodshed.
Then, Chongzhen left a regiment to garrison and continued to lead his army towards Xi'an.
After walking on the Gobi Desert for two months, the army successfully arrived in Xi'an. At this time, Xi'an was already in a different situation, no longer as depressed and dilapidated as it was during Li Zicheng's rule.
The biggest change is the train station and railway.
Compared with the construction of the Beijing-Beijing Railway, the number of workers involved in the construction of the Yunxi Railway has increased from nearly one million to 1.5 million, which is really an exaggeration.
Note: Some readers doubted that the Beijing-Beijing Railway could not be built within two years. In fact, it was possible. The Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, the first railway in modern China, took four years, but the number of laborers was only more than 10,000, while the Beijing-Beijing Railway was nearly 100
Tens of thousands of workers can work on multiple sections at the same time, as long as the iron and wood materials can keep up, two years is enough]
Therefore, the Yunxi Railway is constructed in sections from Xi'an, Tongguan, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, Xuzhou, Shanyang and Yuntiguan. The nearly 1,300 kilometers of railway are divided into more than 100 tender sections and are being constructed simultaneously.
Of course, before the railway construction started, Nanjing had already completed the surveying and mapping work.
As early as three years ago, Nanjian had established a geology department to be responsible for land surveying and mapping, and also did railway surveying and mapping. However, the railway construction company had to pay Nanjian.
Closer to home, although Xi'an has changed greatly, the entire Guanzhong is still in decline.
Years of war have caused serious damage to the land of Guanzhong. Not only has the population been greatly reduced, but agricultural and water conservancy facilities have also been greatly damaged. It will take decades to fully recover.
Chongzhen did not stay in Xi'an for too long. After inspecting several suburban counties near Xi'an, Chongzhen led the female barracks and the Imperial Guard Brigade to set off again, leaving Tongguan via Luoyang to Xuzhou, and then took a train directly back to Nanjing.
The current political structure of the Ming Dynasty has basically matured. Government affairs are fully handled by the cabinet, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs is fully responsible by Prince Zhu Cixiang. Chongzhen is now only in charge of the military, that is, the general headquarters.
Also, the general headquarters of the Ming army was located in Nanjing.
So most of the time, Chongzhen worked in Nanjing.
As of now, the land threats around the Ming Dynasty have been basically eradicated, leaving only maritime threats.
Strictly speaking, threats at sea are not threats, they can only be considered minor troubles at most.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Because the Western powers at this time were not very powerful, whether it was the old maritime powers such as Portugal and Spain, or the rising star of the Netherlands, the naval strength was not very strong.
As for the navies of England and France, they are even less worth mentioning.
Therefore, Chongzhen did not have much sense of urgency when building the navy because he had enough time.
However, the Ming Dynasty's industrial machinery has started to operate, and it still bursts out with powerful kinetic energy, so the construction speed of the 2,500-ton Zhou Yu-class main battleship is actually very fast. The Longjiang Shipyard in Nanjing has a total of eight docks and can start building sixteen ships at the same time.
Zhou Yu class destroyer.
So far, the Navy has 20 Zhou Yu-class destroyers.
In more than half a year, another 16 Zhou Yu-class destroyers will be commissioned.
In addition, Shipping and Shipbuilding Bank has prepared to build Zhaobaoshan Shipyard in Ningbo.
The dock of Zhaobaoshan Shipyard is larger and deeper than that of Longjiang Shipbuilding. It can start building 5,000-ton destroyers and leaves room for expansion. If necessary, the dock can be further widened and deepened to build 10,000-ton destroyers.
The above large battleships are the long-term goal for the future.
No one can tell how big a wooden hull can be built.
But Chongzhen felt that the risk of a 10,000-ton wooden hull ship was too great.
Therefore, in the era of wooden hulls, building a 5,000-ton destroyer was almost enough. As for a 10,000-ton battleship, we should wait until the problem of electric welding is solved before considering it.
By the way, Pascal had already "created" electricity.
Pascal not only created electricity, he also created the light bulb.
However, since there is no inert gas, the bulb can only be filled with carbon dioxide, so the life of the tungsten filament is very short. But even so, Pascal was extremely excited.
Because Pascal felt like a whole new door had opened.
As a result, a strange scene appeared on the land of the Ming Dynasty. The first industrial revolution represented by the steam engine had just begun, and the second industrial revolution represented by the application of electricity also followed. Of course,
, so far the second industrial revolution still remains in the laboratory.
Chongzhen was not too involved, and he didn't quite understand the key.
Chongzhen naturally knew some common sense about physics.
But it is difficult to translate this common sense into actual devices.
Chongzhen put more energy into the development of primers. Since returning to Nanjing, he has been spending time in the laboratory with Boyle, developing primers with great skill.
Then, Boyle struggled to develop mercury fulminate, which was unavailable for several years, but was accidentally created by a first-year chemistry student who had just joined the team.
A very paradoxical fact is that many great inventions are discovered accidentally.
For example, Schönbai accidentally wiped the nitric acid from the poured wine with a rag and discovered nitrocellulose.
The discovery of mercury fulminate occurred when this first-year freshman accidentally knocked over a container of mercury and poured a small amount of mercury into a container of nitric acid. He did not say anything because he was worried that the teacher would scold him.
Then, without knowing it, another student added "nitric acid" to another raw material and exploded when heated. Fortunately, it did not cause much damage. The student only had some scratches on his face from the splinters.
Then, Boyle quickly took out the explosive mercury fulminate.
Holding the white powder crystal in the container, Boyle asked Chongzhen quietly: "Your Majesty, didn't you tell me that mercury fulminate is definitely not prepared by adding mercury to nitric acid? Then is the crystal in my hand a mercury fulminate?"
Chongzhen was speechless. This is really taking it for granted that half a bottle of water can kill someone.
Chongzhen always believed that fulminic acid was a completely different kind of acid from nitric acid, so it was absolutely impossible to prepare mercury fulminate by adding mercury to nitric acid. For this reason, he specifically told Boyle not to do anything unnecessary, and Boyle also completely trusted him.
, from the beginning to the end, there was no experiment using nitric acid and mercury, and the result was that nitric acid and mercury were added to create mercury fulminate.
Boyle's great youth in recent years was wasted by Chongzhen.
But fortunately, mercury fulminate has been discovered, and primer technology is about to be released.
With primers, metal-cased fixed bullets and artillery shells will soon be available.
