Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 457 Untitled
It was a nice afternoon. Williams, the British Minister to Brazil, who had just finished lunch, sat in a chair, sipping his tea comfortably while looking at the unfolded newspaper.

The war broke out again, and the world's attention was focused on the fertile land in southern South America.

On one side is the aggressive Republic of Brazil, which intends to recover lost territory, and on the other side is the South American Han Kingdom, which is ready to strike and has long had ambitions for Paraguay's territory.

As for the original protagonists of the war, the several forces involved in the Paraguayan Civil War, they were ignored by almost all countries because the disparity in strength between them and the Brazilian Republic and the Han Kingdom was too great.

The military confrontation between the Han Kingdom and the Republic of Brazil has just begun. As the first contact between the two sides on the Paraguayan battlefield, the Battle of Villarrica has not yet ended. However, the comprehensive combat strength demonstrated by the Han Kingdom’s army through just a short positional battle has surprised diplomats from other countries who have been closely following the battlefield situation.

The Han Dynasty was the first country to invent smokeless gunpowder and the first country to apply smokeless gunpowder in the military field. Following the Han Dynasty, countries such as France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, etc., which acquired smokeless gunpowder technology from the Han Dynasty, also successively developed new rifles and artillery using smokeless gunpowder as propellant, and gradually equipped their own armies.

Compared with traditional black powder, bullets using smokeless powder as propellant have more obvious advantages in terms of explosion speed and power.

Bullets made of black powder as the main raw material often have an initial velocity of only more than 400 meters per second. Therefore, in order to ensure that the bullet has enough kinetic energy to kill, the diameter of the bullet is generally more than 11 mm and the mass is also large.

Smokeless gunpowder can provide more propulsion, making the initial velocity of the bullet faster (700m/s+). Due to the increase in initial velocity, the mass of the bullet can be reduced while ensuring kinetic energy to obtain a flatter trajectory.

Therefore, the caliber of the first rifle using smokeless gunpowder, the Jianye Six-Year Rifle, was shortened from a dozen millimeters in the black powder era to 7.62mm.

The Jianye Six-Year Rifle is 1.18 meters long, 1.6 meters long with bayonet, weighs 3.5kg without a rifle, and has a barrel length of 710mm.

Equipped with double-row exposed magazine, the magazine capacity is 10 rounds. Bullet caliber is 7.62X51, and the muzzle velocity is 715m/s;
Effective range is 800 meters.

The Jianye Six Years Rifle borrowed the design of the Mosin-Nagant, Mauser and other smokeless gunpowder era rifles. Compared with the smokeless rifles of the same period,

The design of the Jianye Six-Year Rifle is relatively simple, and the overall handling is not as good as the later Enfield Rifle.

However, the advantages of the Jianye Six-Year Rifle are that it is easy to produce and simple and reliable to use. This is extremely important for the Han army, which has not yet completed the construction of the industrial system and is relatively short of highly educated officers and soldiers. Especially during the protracted war, it is necessary to increase the production of weapons to meet the needs of the front line, and the large number of supplementary garrison troops, militia and other combatants often have insufficient training time. This advantage of the Jianye Six-Year Rifle can ensure that the Han army has sustained combat effectiveness and counterattack capabilities.

With higher accuracy, longer range, and greater lethality from full metal jacketed bullets, the first appearance of the Jianye Type 6 rifle on the battlefield officially marked the beginning of smokeless gunpowder replacing black powder and becoming the protagonist of the battlefield.

The United States, France, Germany, and even Japan, which was far away on the other side of the ocean, were all trying their best to steal intelligence about the new weapons of the Han Dynasty. On the other hand, Britain, as the undisputed overlord of this era, was inherently arrogant, which made the group of gentlemen and aristocrats in London lag behind other countries in the military application of smokeless gunpowder.
All of the Han Dynasty's more than 20 regular troops had completed the replacement of their troops with new rifles. The French completed the technical research and development of the Leber rifle in 1886 and officially started large-scale production in 1887. The German Empire, which had close economic ties with the Han Dynasty, also started equipping its troops with new rifles in early 1888.

The British seemed to have not noticed the intensive efforts of China, France, Germany and other countries to develop new weapons. Faced with the arrival of the smokeless gunpowder era, the British Army failed to complete the design of a new rifle using smokeless gunpowder as propellant in nearly six years from 1883 to 1889.

Williams was puzzled by the London government's slow response to smokeless gunpowder. In contrast, he was surprised and shocked by the vigorous creativity shown by the South American Han Kingdom, a country established by wandering Chinese workers!

The Far East was the second largest economic colony of the British Empire after India. In order to open up the economic market of the Far East, Britain launched two long-distance expeditions covering tens of thousands of kilometers in 1840 and 1860, and in the following period, it gradually embedded British influence in the Far East by using political, diplomatic, and economic means. Through war, the British gained another huge economic market besides India, and as the losers of the war, the people living in that land had to endure the brutal rule of the Qing court and the colonial oppression of Western powers.

Natural disasters, man-made calamities, famines, wars, and a once-in-a-century famine continued. From the 1850s to the 1890s, the people living in the Far East were in a desperate situation on the verge of death. Tens of millions of people became homeless refugees due to famine and war, and nearly million people collapsed at the crossroads of their escape due to lack of food, eventually turning into piles of bones.

In troubled times, civilians were treated like grass. During the Dingshu famine, skinny, weak and swollen Chinese people squatted on the roadside waiting for death with desperate expressions.

In the bankrupt towns and cities, the Chinese women who were suffering from the disaster stood at the street corners, numb as they were being directed and selected by the human traffickers; the naive children aged three or five years old holding broken bowls, holding on to their last bit of strength and begging for food... Such desperate and depressing scenes often appeared in the Far East, and Williams, who was a diplomat of the British Empire and had spent a long time in the Far East, had witnessed them many times with his own eyes.

Perhaps the gods believed in by the Orientals really exist. Or perhaps it is destined by fate!

At a time when the descendants of that ancient nation were suffering, a hero in the eyes of overseas Chinese came into being.

The times call for heroes! Heroes emerge with the mission of the times. Twenty-one years ago, on a day similar to today, Emperor Li Mingyuan of the Han Kingdom led a group of desperate miners and set off a great uprising that changed the course of history!
After thousands of years of civilization, the belief of hero worship has always been passed down among the Eastern national groups! When the Chinese workers in South America were most desperate and helpless, Li Mingyuan appeared at the right time and assumed the role of a hero who placed hope on the Chinese workers!
The influence of Li Mingyuan's identity as the prince of the Taiping Army, the added power of mysterious beliefs, his background, the mysterious aura surrounding him, his outstanding military command ability, his foresight in strategic judgment and other factors combined together have made Li Mingyuan's legendary achievements possible, and also established his unique and unshakable leadership position in the South American Han Kingdom!

The Chinese community has a tradition of monarchy, and monarchy is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. The monarch has unique power.
A monarch's personal ability and subjective will can influence or even change the development direction and survival of a country.

Li Mingyuan used one victory after another in wars and one reform decree after another to prove his ability to govern the country and lead the people toward prosperity. The Chinese people, who had generally experienced the hardships of war and had extremely low standards of living, after adapting to a happy life that they could never imagine, almost regarded Li Mingyuan as a living god. They treated him like a god, infinitely admired and obeyed any of his orders.

A wise and foresighted monarch, a group of hardworking, brave, studious citizens who have infinite admiration for the monarch, a modern army educated in advanced ideas and with firm beliefs, and a group of new officials who obey the monarch's orders and have limited and supervised power.

The four groups combined together to form a strict and efficient social system, in which the Han Emperor Li Mingyuan played the most core role. The people, officials, the military and other groups were all under the macro-command of the emperor, with rare obedience and discipline, each performing their duties, doing their best and playing their roles in their respective positions for the development of this emerging country.

After seeing through the surface of the war, the essence of the operation of the social structure of the Han Dynasty, and understanding the memories of the various social groups in the Han Dynasty about their past sufferings and their gratitude for their current happy lives,

Williams began to understand and appreciate the achievements made by the Han Dynasty in the past twenty-one years.

Civilization and tradition are the foundation of a nation, and suffering is the best medicine to awaken a nation.

When an ancient nation endures all kinds of hardships and setbacks, and then awakens at the call of one or a group of heroes,

The tremendous energy unleashed by the entire group will surprise and shock everyone!

(End of this chapter)