I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 552 Technical Means

"Reporting to Your Highness, the Ministry of Light Industry is already doing its best to complete the tasks assigned by Your Highness, but I don't have any more news at the moment," replied the Minister of Light Industry.

Zhu Houxuan pondered for a moment and said, "The Light Industry Department has performed very well in logistics before, but the last thing I tell you is the key to our victory."

"I understand, and I will certainly not dare to slack off." The Minister of Light Industry replied quickly.

"I won't say anything else. You must recognize the seriousness of the matter." Zhu Houxuan said lightly.

The meeting ended quickly. Zhu Houxuan did not feel sleepy at all as he had been sleeping very little in recent times.

He looked at the city wall in the distance and sighed deeply.
He appeared calm on the surface, but in his heart he was more anxious than anyone else.

He pushed a lot of tasks down, and he knew that his subordinates had done their best. The entire Royal Group had been fully mobilized. Some things were not completed because time was too tight.
He received the news of Zhu Houzhao's fall into the water on the ninth day after that. He rushed back to the capital on the thirteenth day and made up his mind to start a general mobilization.

It took seven or eight days to mobilize millions of people to besiege the capital, and now it is the third day of the siege, 24 days after Zhu Houzhao fell into the water.

To be honest, he was already very satisfied that the Royal Group had achieved this level, but people are like this, they always want better.
He wanted to break into the city as quickly as possible, but the plan still had to be implemented step by step.
He looked at the leaflet on the table again. He didn't expect that the Royal Group's propaganda power would be suppressed due to technical reasons.
The reason why the Royal Group's propaganda power did not play a big role during this period was purely due to technical reasons.
Don't underestimate the difficulty of promoting in a closed city like Beijing.

One of the key elements of publicity work is how to deliver the information to the target group.
For the capital of this era, some old means of information delivery are really not useful.
Many people may think that propaganda can be carried out by shooting books into the city, or by shouting to the city.
The Propaganda Department also thought and acted in this way at the beginning, but found it difficult to implement.
The main reason is that there are a large number of red cannons on the walls of the capital.
Shooting books into the city is the most primitive method and seems quite feasible, but the heavy snow in front of the city has not melted yet. The mobility of the cavalry in Zhu Houxun's team is greatly reduced under this circumstance, and they have no way of riding and shooting in front of the city. If they slow down, they will become the target of the muskets and artillery in the city.

Moreover, the range of fire guns is longer than that of bows and arrows. If we insist on using this method, it will not only be inefficient, but also cause a large number of casualties. In addition, shouting to the city is not feasible because of the artillery.

The effective range of the artillery in the city is three thousand meters. Within three thousand meters, the shooting is still relatively accurate.

The Royal Group's amplification methods are all physical methods. To put it bluntly, it is to build a large enough iron speaker. However, the volume amplified by this physical method cannot be transmitted as far as three kilometers. Or it can be transmitted as far as three kilometers, but the people on the city cannot hear what is said.
The only way is to get closer, to within 2,000 meters or 1,000 meters, so that the people on the city walls can hear clearly, and the artillery on the city walls can also fire more accurately.
So there will still be huge casualties, and making propaganda amidst the enemy's gunfire is itself a very ineffective method.
The Propaganda Department even thought of doing propaganda at night, but because the Royal Group was vigorously engaged in coal chemical industry, kerosene had been widely used as a cheap fuel among the people, so even at night, the capital city really had no shortage of kerosene for lighting.
Moreover, the lighting technology on the walls of the capital city is also extraordinary. This lighting technology also comes from the Royal Group, which has been building navigation lighthouses in various places in the past decade.
The beacon light on a lighthouse is not as simple as everyone imagines. It is not as simple as lighting a fire. It has its own independent design. It consists of a hollow tubular wick and a glass cover. Its brightness can reach 4 times that of an ordinary oil lamp.

The Royal Group already has a certain understanding of light and knows that adding a reflector behind the light source can effectively increase the brightness of the light source. If the reflector is made into an arc shape, it can concentrate the light beam in one direction to the maximum extent.

There is also a convex lens in front of the light source, which further converges the light and greatly increases the brightness.

To put it bluntly, the lights on the city wall are primitive searchlights, so if you get close to the city wall at night, you will be illuminated and nowhere to hide, which is not much better than during the day, so the plan of night propaganda has failed.
So now there is no effective means to deliver propaganda information to the city.
However, Zhu Houxuan was prepared for this.
The next morning, the open space outside the city was littered with flyers thrown out from the city.
A series of railway guns appeared again and continued to bombard the capital.
Zhu Houxuan also received good news from the Minister of Light Industry that 40 sets of the things he wanted had been delivered, and another 60 sets would be delivered in two days.
"Since it's here, use it now! Also, notify the Propaganda Department." Zhu Houxuan finally showed a smile on his face.
Jiang Bin was motivating the guards in the city. In order to avoid unnecessary casualties, the guards in the city had completely evacuated the city walls. They set up observation posts on high buildings in the city to observe the movements outside the city.

The city was not bombarded all the time, because after firing a dozen or so shots, the city needed to cool down. During this time, the city's guards would climb the city walls to guard, and the attacking infantry would immediately retreat.
After all, the technology in this era was limited, and it was impossible to coordinate infantry and artillery, and it was impossible to carry out artillery bombardment and infantry siege at the same time.
After the seven representatives of the Imperial Guards met Zhu Houzhao, Jiang Bin clearly felt that the morale of the Imperial Guards had risen a bit, and there were fewer doubts about him.
At this moment, a personal guard suddenly asked him to go to the nearest tall building, saying that there was something unusual outside the city.
When Jiang Bin hurriedly climbed up the tall building, he was surprised to find that there were dozens of extremely huge round objects behind the positions outside the city, and they were colorful and had all kinds of colors.
"What is that thing?" Jiang Bin asked in shock, "It must be taller than the city wall of Beijing."

"It looks like a Kongming lantern." A bodyguard said carefully.

"Then what do they want to do? Want to fly?" Jiang Bin asked with a grim face.

No one answered him, but he soon found out the answer.
Several round objects rose into the sky amid the cheers of everyone, and then slowly drifted towards the capital, twisting and turning like drunks, and finally dropped pieces of paper like rain in front of everyone in the capital.
(End of this chapter)