Time passed quickly, and the wedding of the emperor's grandson Zhu Zhanji came soon. At this time, there was no trace of tension and panic in Nanjing.
The entire city of Nanjing was in a state of joy, and even the kings of Han and Zhao did not do anything at this time.
Chu King Zhu Muchen naturally attended Zhu Zhanji's wedding, but he only made an appearance. After all, he is too busy now.
After sending the gifts to celebrate Zhu Zhanji's wedding to the Prince's Mansion and visiting the imperial concubine, Zhu Muchen left directly. At this time, he still needed to organize the preparations for the establishment of Xiaoliuli Island.
Zhu Muchen and Yu Qian were having a drink in the house. He smiled at Yu Qian and said: "Yu Shaobao's plan is really shocking. It was just an illusion, so the mastermind behind the scenes had to sell the iron ore at a low price."
, now we not only have iron to use, but we can even buy it at the lowest price."
Yu Qian waved his hands repeatedly, "This is not my strategy, but the strategy left by the senior masters."
"Just putting a bunch of potatoes in a sack can be passed off as iron ore. Then the people behind the scenes know that the iron ore is useless and cannot be held in their hands, so they sell it at the lowest price."
After Zhu Muchen drank a glass of wine, he looked into the distance, "No matter what, this ironclad problem has been solved, and now we will start our first step of the project."
"Building a shipyard on Xiaoliuli Island to develop the maritime technology of our Ming Dynasty is easy to say, but it is very difficult to actually do it. We must find talents who are familiar with shipbuilding knowledge.
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After Yu Qian heard this, he also put down the wine glass in his hand. He said excitedly: "King Chu, I, Yu Qian, am not very talented. I am willing to recommend someone to you. He is proficient in shipbuilding and other technologies and is a skilled craftsman."
Zhu Muchen was also interested when he heard this, and asked: "Who is that?"
Yu Qian stood up and pulled Zhu Muchen outside.
"The King of Chu will know as soon as I see you."
Then Yu Qian led Zhu Muchen all the way to a very remote blacksmith shop in Nanjing City, where a lame old blacksmith was forging ironware.
The first time Zhu Muchen saw the old blacksmith, he knew that he was a skilled and highly skilled forger.
When the old blacksmith saw Yu Qian coming, he puffed his beard and stared.
"Yu Qian, you still dare to come here, I don't have any wine for you this time."
Yu Qian's face turned red when he heard this, and he waved his hands in embarrassment, "Old Wang, I'm not here to beg you for a drink this time, but I'm here to take a job for you, a big job of building a shipyard."
The old blacksmith was suddenly stunned.
"What? Build a shipyard? Are you kidding me? Why is it my turn to do such an important task?"
At this time, Zhu Muchen had already walked into the blacksmith shop. He glanced at this small room. In addition to iron tools, there were various drawings.
There were actually a large number of models. He nodded with satisfaction, "Your craftsmanship is indeed good. These iron tools are forged to a very high standard."
When the old blacksmith heard this, he knew that Zhu Muchen was an expert, so he immediately started a conversation with him.
In the end, during the conversation, Zhu Muchen also learned that this old blacksmith was once a royal craftsman in the palace, but now he was old and frail, and he made some mistakes and was demoted, but his exquisite craftsmanship was still there.
In a few words, Zhu Muchen made the old blacksmith willing to participate in the plan to build a shipyard.
Now that the shipyard matters have been settled, all that is needed is to start construction on Xiaoliuli Island. Next, Zhu Muchen is still preparing to upgrade armaments.
Now the Prince of Chu has begun to gradually use firecrackers and other weapons to replace traditional cold weapons, but the entire Ming Dynasty is still in the era of cold weapons.
To promote firearms and other weapons to the entire Ming Dynasty, very complicated steps were required.
Zhu Muchen first went to the person in charge of the Ministry of War to discuss it. The matter of upgrading armaments was the same as that of the shipyard. It was impossible for Zhu Muchen to organize it alone. This matter must be communicated with the Ministry of War.
After communicating with the Ministry of War, Zhu Muchen still had to contact the Ministry of Household Affairs. If he wanted to replace all military equipment with firecrackers and other equipment, he would need a large amount of iron ore, sulfur, craftsmen, etc.
These are all very costly and cannot be done by him alone. He has to go through the accounts of the Accounts Department.
Fortunately, Zhu Di had already issued an order for all ministries to actively cooperate with Zhu Muchen in his work, so the heads of the Household Department did not deliberately embarrass Zhu Muchen. They just mentioned all the things that needed attention, and then began to make these preparations.
The key to making firecrackers is the need for drawings. After all, not all craftsmen have knowledge of gunpowder.
Zhu Muchen gave a detailed forging drawing of the fire gun to the Ministry of Finance and asked them to find some blacksmiths to familiarize themselves with it. After his modification, the drawing has become very simple and easy to understand, and anyone who knows a little bit about forging can do it.
Make the firecracker according to this drawing.
In addition, forging fire guns also requires a very important material, which is gunpowder. The constituent materials are mainly sulfur, nitre, charcoal, etc.
Nowadays, if all the armaments of the Ming Dynasty are to be replaced by firearms, then this gunpowder is indispensable, and even a very large amount is required.
But the charcoal that makes up the gunpowder is okay, but for sulfur and nitrate, you need to find a way to purchase it in large quantities.
Especially for saltpeter, it would be very difficult to obtain it without advanced industry for extraction. Even now, when firearms were not widely used in the Ming Dynasty, the inventory of saltpeter was already very scarce.
If Zhu Muchen begins to gradually promote the use of firearms, saltpeter will be in even greater shortage, so he must find a way to store a large amount of saltpeter.
After Zhu Muchen combined his knowledge, he directly wrote a memorial to be uploaded to Zhu Di. The content of this memorial was how to obtain saltpeter in large quantities.
"First of all, we should order all the state governments to post notices so that people can exchange saltpeter for money, food, etc., and then order the Ministry of Industry to process the obtained saltpeter to produce finished products."
"I will outline the specific methods for collecting saltpeter."
"People are encouraged to collect soil containing saltpeter, then find craftsmen to put it in a bucket, add water to soak it, filter it, and then boil or dry the filtrate to get saltpeter crystals."
“In addition, people everywhere can be informed of the main locations where saltpeter is found, on certain rock surfaces, in caves or in salt marshes.
Every autumn, saltpeter usually precipitates in the form of crusts or salt flowers, covering the ground and wall bases. This is called ground frost, especially in corners near pig pens, stables, and toilets."
After Zhu Muchen finished writing, after seeing that there were no other problems with the memorial he had written, he sent someone to the palace.
As for sulfur, another component of gunpowder, although the Ming Dynasty did not have a lot of it in its treasury, it already had skilled manufacturing methods.
Just send more manpower to increase the scale of manufacturing.
At this time, the matter of upgrading armaments has been handed over to the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of War. Seeing the excited expressions on the faces of these two ministers, Zhu Muchen knew that there should be no problems with this matter.
Then he began to study another thing, which was training the navy. This link was a very important step in the ocean strategy plan.
Zhu Muchen contacted the Ministry of War and began to recruit young people with excellent water skills from various places, and then gathered these young people together to start training. This training included the driving and use of docks, the use of firearms, etc.
After that, maritime battles mainly relied on equipment such as firecrackers and cannons. If you want to become a naval force, you must be able to use these weapons skillfully.
At the same time, Zhu Muchen found the only captains with rich driving experience in the Ming Dynasty to let them transfer their experience to those talented talents.
From now on, the Ming Dynasty will have a very large number of ships, and these ships must be commanded by experienced captains in order to exert their strongest combat effectiveness.
The fastest way is to find a group of people to train in batches, which is to set up a so-called navy academy.
After implementing all these plans, Zhu Muchen can finally breathe a sigh of relief. He has provided very detailed development directions for these plans. As long as he follows the direction he has set, the long-term ocean strategy will be realized sooner or later.
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This process will also take a very long time. During this period, Yu Qian, Zhu Zhanji, Prince Zhu Gaochi and others will strictly supervise it to prevent malicious sabotage, or officials from laziness and corruption, etc.
These three people are the pillars of the Ming Dynasty. They work very seriously and think about the Ming Dynasty wholeheartedly. Therefore, Zhu Muchen is very relieved to entrust this task to these three people.
After stabilizing these things, Zhu Muchen was ready to start the plan of "moving north". This plan was different from the ocean strategic plan. If anything was not done well, it would be a mess.
The move to the north was mainly implemented from two aspects, one of which was about the luck of the Ming Dynasty, and the other was about the specific implementation of construction.
Compared with the actual implementation of the construction, Locke was more troubled by the aspect of luck.
These royal families are very sensitive to these metaphysical things, including the construction location and time, etc., which require very detailed arrangements. Fortunately, Xia Yuanji helped him solve this trouble.
Xia Yuanji gathered a group of the most famous Taoist priests and scholars in the Ming Dynasty, and based on various almanacs and various metaphysical books, finally finalized the specific location and period of the "Northern Migration".
With the implementation of the plan to move north, Zhu Muchen finally breathed a sigh of relief.
