"Your Majesty, the reason why the capital camp in Annan is victorious in every battle is due to the command of King Qin and General Zhu, but we and the arsenal department also have a lot of credit."
At this time, a doctor from the Arsenal Department of the Ministry of War led the way, while asking for credit.
The entire military department has five departments: military selection, staff division, vehicle driving, arsenal, and ordnance.
Arsenal and ordnance, although similar, are quite different.
The Ordnance Department is responsible for researching and producing ordnance, while the Arsenal Department is responsible for storing and replacing ordnance, and is also responsible for the purchase of daily military equipment such as robes, tents, and saddles.
Naturally, this also includes military rations.
With the development of the commodity economy, textile supplies for the military, such as tents, uniforms, etc., must be purchased from abroad, and even the processing of military rations is the same.
Nowadays, a large amount of military rations are stored in the entire warehouse.
This does not refer to ordinary rice or wheat, but processed military food that can quickly replenish nutritional consumption.
During the shogunate period, military rations were made by adding bean dregs, salt, shredded pork and other things to rice, then mixing them together and frying them, so that they could be easily transported.
Add some water and cook it until it becomes a pot of paste, with salt and meat, which can be said to be rich in nutrients.
Since it is fried, you can even eat it directly in an emergency, saving you the trouble of setting up a pot and starting a stove.
"Nowadays, we also add sugar to fried rice, which not only tastes more delicious, but also can quickly restore the soldiers' physical strength."
The doctor said proudly: "Just a handful of rice mixed with water can fill a soldier's stomach."
"good."
The emperor nodded in appreciation.
Since fried rice is a cooked food, its shelf life can reach two months in winter, but it will become smelly in ten days at most in summer.
Of course, under normal circumstances, a war will be over in a month or two at most. Fried rice is very good and can be processed at the rear.
Therefore, in the warehouse, dried meat, soybean paste, sugar, salt and other supplies are piled densely. As for rice, there is another storage place.
"His Royal Highness the King of Qin said that although Annan fried rice is good, it does not last long. However, he greatly appreciated our long stick steamed buns."
The so-called baguette is a French baguette awarded by the emperor, which is a long baked bread.
This kind of bread is highly praised in the West.
Anything hard can be used as a weapon.
The shelf life is also long, up to about two weeks.
It's perfect as military rations.
Hearing such words, the emperor nodded slightly.
Compared with the previous dynasty, the Ming army's logistical support is now truly outstanding.
Take fried rice as an example. Carrying twenty kilograms of fried rice can enable a soldier to fight for half a month.
Logistics and transportation efficiency has also been greatly improved.
The scope of combat has also doubled.
Of course, what the emperor was thinking about most was canned food.
He came here this time because of canned food.
"Made the iron sheet into a box, then sealed it with military rations, plugged the wooden plug, and then boiled it in boiling water for half an hour..."
Zhu Yixi thought about her experience and began to direct.
The production of canned food is very simple, just make a tin box that looks like a wine bottle, then pour the fried rice into it and seal it with a wooden stopper.
Boil for half an hour to expel all the air inside, which is high-temperature sterilization.
Finally, seal the cork with wax to prevent air and bacteria from entering, thus extending the shelf life of the military rations.
This is a Napoleonic can.
However, they used glass at first, and later they turned into horseshoe-shaped military ration cans.
Obviously, wine bottle-shaped cans are most suitable for today's situation.
Who dares to disobey the emperor's order?
The iron factory immediately makes molds, pours molten iron, cools it, and cans cans can be made in batches.
Zhu Yixi looked at it seriously and weighed it with her hands.
There are three types of cans.
One volume is one kilogram, four inches tall, four inches wide, and about the size of a dictionary.
The medium size is five pounds, about the size of a shoulder bag.
The largest one was the size of a later drawer, holding ten kilograms.
They are all neat cubes, which are easy to stack and don't take up much space.
However, cost is its biggest constraint.
Even the smallest tin can weighs one kilogram, and the largest one weighs almost ten kilograms, which is as heavy as military rations.
In other words, to transport ten kilograms of military rations, you have to transport 10 kilograms of tin cans, which will be too stressful later on.
But the benefits are obvious.
Durable to storage.
Long-term preservation.
Of course, even if iron production explodes now, pig iron still costs ten cents per kilogram, which is much higher than the cost of cloth bags.
Looking at the various procedures, Zhu Yixi's brows were filled with joy, and he said in a deep voice: "Take these back, I want to see how long he can keep them."
"yes!"
No one dared to delay, and after loading three carriages, the group returned to the capital.
This group of military rations was something the emperor thought about deeply.
Ten days later, he asked people to open several cans of three kinds of cans, and they were all edible.
You can still eat it after fifteen days.
Twenty days later, I can still eat.
One month later, the emperor's interest remained unabated and he was still experimenting.
You can still eat it.
Clearly, canning was a success.
"With these cans, most of the pressure on the grassland has been relieved."
The emperor smiled: "Shunzhi, do you think you can always be at ease after escaping to Lake Baikal?"
"Just wait, you will be blessed in a few years."
For more than ten years, Zhu Yixi has never forgotten the Manchus.
Although the imperial court never sent troops and at most sent troops to Mobei, no one knew how obsessed the emperor was with the destruction of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
The biggest factor why no troops were sent was the distance.
The journey from Lake Baikal to Beijing is nearly two thousand miles.
If you are walking on the grassland without map navigation, you can even walk three thousand miles by twisting and turning.
In other words, it’s at least a month’s journey.
As for fried rice, it can only last for about ten days at most. If it goes deep into the grassland, it will be lured and attacked.
Zhu Yixi never dared to take risks before she was sure.
After all, when you were not on the throne, you had no choice to take risks, but now that you have everything in hand, there is no need to take risks.
Reading through history, when the grassland peoples went south, it was indispensable for the Han people to lead the way. For example, those who destroyed the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty were basically Han people.
Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty's counterattack, in which Li Jing destroyed the Turks, seemed very satisfying, but in fact it was a traitor who led the way.
In a certain situation, it is difficult to move forward in the vast grassland without a leading party.
It can even be said with certainty that the reason why Zhu Yuanzhang did not destroy the Northern Yuan Dynasty was because of the lack of a grassland leading party.
There is no way, the grassland is still under the rule of Bei Yuan at this time, and still maintains a whole.
Zhu Di's Northern Expedition repeatedly returned without success, which is the best proof.
But now, with canned food, the army can march for a long time without fear of food shortage, and the danger of the grassland has been reduced by half.
At this time, even if you get lost, you don’t have to panic with the can in hand.
It was the right time to attack the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
A plan was made in mind, but after Zhu Yixi had been the emperor for so many years, he naturally lost his impulse and had to think twice before acting.
Just as Zeng Ying reported, the Qing Dynasty's 200,000-strong army would be difficult to restrain except for the 100,000-strong Beijing camp. We must be more careful, otherwise it will be another civil fortress.
"We have the can, but what we lack now is an opportunity——"
Whispering, Zhu Yixi put down her impulse.
He can afford to wait.
It wouldn't even hurt to wait a few more years, just in time for the prince to accompany the army and accumulate some prestige.
Today's prince is immature and inappropriate.
Thinking like this, Zhu Yixi couldn't help but sigh: "I still love my son!"
Of course, if you have too many sons, you will inevitably have to pick the most important ones to take care of, and the prince is definitely the most important one.
With some calculations in mind, Zhu Yixi left her usual leisure and began to patrol around.
If the Northern Expedition were to take place, then the most important thing would be war horses.
But now there is the Monan region, with vast horse ranches for everyone to choose from, and even the Ministry of War does not have a permanent horse farm.
"There are about 100,000 war horses in the Beijing camp and the frontier army. Among them, there are about 40,000 in the Beijing camp, and there are about 100,000 rogue horses..."
"The Beijing Camp Maintenance Department only has a horse training ground at the foot of the West Mountain. About ten thousand horses are being trained. Basically, the horses collected from Suiyuan and Chahar are trained for half a year before being sent to the capital.
Battalion and frontier troops..."
In other words, the vast Monan area has become the source of war horses for the imperial court. There is no need to deliberately raise them at all, just to buy them.
In this way, the court's costs were greatly reduced. There was no need for anything like converting cultivated land into pasture, encouraging horse breeding, etc.
Although herdsmen don't like to raise horses and prefer to raise cattle, the price of horses is better and they are tax-free, so the number of war horses has naturally doubled.
"Nowadays, in the market, wealthy people always have horses and carriages. I don't know anything else, but to lift people, they always have carriages."
Yang Le, who was well-informed, smiled with her at this time.
"How much is the market price of a war horse?" the emperor asked casually.
"So that I can know that this ordinary horse is worth thirty or fifty silver coins." Yang Le said softly, "It is worth two cows."
"The best war horse will cost you hundreds of pieces."
"good."
The emperor nodded with satisfaction, feeling increasingly happy.
Only when there is a market can herdsmen have the motivation to raise horses. Otherwise, in Monan where the war has been eliminated, who would be willing to raise horses that are delicate and eat a lot?
"Let's go to Zunhua and have a look."
Zhu Yixi gave instructions casually.
Soon, the group of people got on the railway carriage.
As early as last year, the imperial court built the railway track from Beijing to Zunhua, and now it is still building the railway track to the north to connect it with Shanhaiguan.
The reason why I came to Zunhua was because of its status.
Zunhua, also located near Tangshan, was not only an iron-smelting center in later generations, but also the largest iron-smelting place in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
There was no other way. The conditions were unique and it was the closest land to the capital, so it naturally attracted the attention of the imperial court.
Therefore, the railway tracks built were mainly for transporting iron materials, and not many people used them.
It only took the emperor and his party three hours to arrive in Beijing and Zunhua, which were three hundred miles apart.
In other words, the speed of the rail carriage has reached fifty miles per hour.
It seems to be very fast, but an ordinary carriage can travel thirty miles in an hour on the official road. Fifty miles is really not fast, just like the speed of electric cars in later generations.
However, it is excusable for safety reasons.
When we arrived in Zunhua, the sky seemed to have changed color. The blast furnace chimneys shot straight into the sky, emitting pipes of black smoke. It seemed that the clouds were blackened and the sun lost its brilliance.
It's funny to say that the government-run iron works in Zunhua are now just one place, and the output is not high. 99% of the iron is produced by private iron works.
The people in the Ministry of War are not stupid either.
The government-run iron yards are expensive and the quality varies. It is better to buy cheap and high-quality iron from the private sector.
The phenomenon of civilian advancement and official resignation is very common.
Even if it is an official kiln, it only serves the inner court and never sells it.
This is also true except for the iron factory, porcelain factory, silk and satin factory, etc. The people advance and the officials retire, and the court only supervises procurement.
Not to mention, things like wine making, tea, etc., the Ming Dynasty has not had any involvement in for three hundred years.
This is the concession formulated to benefit the people in the early Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, compared to the Song Dynasty, wine, tea, vinegar, etc. in the Ming Dynasty have always been very cheap and ordinary people can afford to eat and drink.
Zhu Yixi also had no intention of re-implementing the government administration.
Just think about those state-owned enterprises. They can't stop even in the 21st century, let alone now?
However, although there are very few state-run iron works, there are tax collection offices. It is really convenient to collect money directly from the iron.
The director of the Commercial and Taxation Department in Zunhua rushed up to say hello.
After hearing the emperor's inquiry, he said cautiously: "Your Majesty, the iron yard in Zunhua is one hundred and thirty-nine in size, and less than half of them are owned by nobles and nobles."
"I generally collect taxes based on blast furnaces. Only one furnace can be smelted a day, which is about three thousand kilograms, so I levy three silver coins."
"There are 670 blast furnaces in Zunhua, which can produce 60,000 silver yuan per day and 60,000 silver yuan per month."
"In other words, one penny per kilogram of iron?"
The emperor made a calculation in his mind, which surprised everyone.
They didn't expect that the emperor could do mental arithmetic.
"This is not high. A pound of pig iron on the market ranges from five to ten cents."
Zhu Yixi actually calculated that it produced 60 million kilograms a month, which is 30,000 tons.
In later generations, this could be produced by any steel plant, but today, it is an extremely exaggerated figure.
He once read a historical record that the annual output of Fujian Province was only 30,000 tons, while Zunhua reached that level in one month.
Blast furnace coal-based ironmaking is indeed something that should not be underestimated.
Now that blast furnaces are widespread all over the world, I am afraid that the pig iron production of the entire Ming Dynasty will have to increase at least five or six times!
"Your Majesty is wise." The host complimented: "It is precisely because of low taxes that the people can afford iron. Nowadays, a hoe on the market only costs fifteen cents.
According to the old man, in the pre-Ming Dynasty, a hoe cost at least twenty or thirty cents, but today's prosperous situation has never been seen in the past."
"Aren't you going to accept the wrought iron?" The emperor waved his hand, he had heard too much flattery.
"I am in Zunhua, but there are only a dozen or so people. There are so many iron yards that I can't take care of them, so I collected them all with pig iron..."
"Um!"
The emperor was unconvinced.
"Do you know the general uses of pig iron?"
"Many of them are repairing railroad tracks, others are making agricultural tools, such as plows and hoes, and the rest are building armor for the court."
Sure enough, the construction of railway tracks promoted the surge in iron production.