The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 173: Wu State and Ming Crisis

While the Ming central court and the Qing dynasty were busy with disaster relief, Zhu Jianxuan, the King of Wu of the Ming Dynasty, was working hard to train his troops and accumulate equipment.

Zhu Jianxuan planned to form at least ten main infantry divisions using bolt-action rifles before the end of the 41st year of Xianning.

Four main naval divisions were formed, operating four 6,000-ton steel-structured warships and forty pure steel warships with a displacement of 1,000 to 2,000 tons.

All soldiers and sailors were required to know the basic 4,000-word word list of the telegraph system.

All officers were required to recognize and be able to write all 8,000 standard characters, and to be able to complete simple numerical calculations and statistical records.

Company commanders and above are required to be able to write relatively standardized reports and orders.

At the same time, based on actual logistical capabilities, ten to twenty auxiliary divisions and servant divisions will be formed, and the standards will be generally one level lower than those of the main divisions.

Soldiers do not have to be illiterate, but platoon and squad officers only need to know 4,000 characters.

Only officers at the company level and above need to know 8,000 commonly used characters, and only officers at the regiment level and above need to be able to write standard reports and orders.

The ordinary soldiers are mainly from the Ming Dynasty, so they are the auxiliary division; the ordinary soldiers are mainly from vassal states, so they are the servant division.

In order to achieve his goal, Zhu Jianxuan adjusted Wu's officer management and command system.

He established the Privy Council to assist him in managing military affairs.

Although the name of the Privy Council of the Song Dynasty was used, the duties of the Wu State Privy Councilor were completely different from those of the Song Dynasty. It was a military secretary similar to the Secretariat and the Cabinet Scholars.

The number of privy councilors is not fixed and none of them have decision-making power. They can only make proposals and suggestions and act entirely in accordance with the king's orders.

Routine government affairs are handled by the Secretariat, while military affairs are handled by the Privy Council.

The General Staff Department, Teaching Department, Military Command Department, Military Law Department, Military Merit Department, Ordnance Department, Logistics Department, Army Department, Navy Department, and Audit Department were established.

The General Staff Department is responsible for formulating combat plans, the Teaching Department is responsible for ideological and cultural education, the Military Order Department is specifically responsible for uploading and issuing orders, and the Military Law Department is responsible for disciplinary inspection, supervision and trial.

The Ordnance Department is responsible for military equipment, the Logistics Department is responsible for other supplies, and the Navy Department and the Army Department are responsible for military training and carrying out combat missions.

The Military Merit Department was responsible for the selection and promotion of officers, and the Military Affairs Department was responsible for conscription and the management of the dusi and weisu.

The Audit Department is responsible for auditing military budgets and expenses.

While transforming the military management and command system, Zhu Jianxuan was also trying every possible means to collect equipment.

The first set of experimental equipment used to verify the feasibility of seamless steel pipe production technology was handed over to the seamless steel pipe factory for trial transformation and use in continuous production.

In December of the 39th year of Xianning, only one to two meters of seamless steel pipes could be produced every hour, and the machines often malfunctioned, with a very low yield rate.

By February of the 40th year of Xianning, the production speed reached ten meters per hour, and a maximum of two hundred meters could be produced per day.

The vast majority of the mass exceeds that of rolled barrels, and more than half of the tubing can be used in rifle production.

The Type A 8mm rifle also began production in March.

In May of the 40th year in Xianning, the daily output of seamless steel pipes reached 500 meters, and more than 70% could be used for gun barrel production.

In August, daily production reached one thousand meters.

The newly built 8mm seamless steel pipe production line for guns was also officially put into production in August.

On September 1, Song Wendao specifically found Zhu Jianxuan and reported a piece of news that seemed quite important:
"The monthly production of the Type A 8mm bolt-action rifle has exceeded 10,000 units."

Zhu Jianxuan was a little surprised after hearing this:
"The monthly production has reached 10,000? That means we can produce at least 120,000 a year?
“We started producing 12mm black powder bolt-action rifles using rolled barrels in the 38th year of Xianning.

“It’s been more than two years now, and the cumulative number of rifles produced is less than 50,000.

"Now the monthly output of Type A rifles has reached 10,000.

"The output in one year is twice that of the past two years, and the speed has increased four times?"

Song Wendao said with great excitement and emotion:

“Yes, my king, just estimating the production speed now, it is already four times faster than before.

“Previously, the speed at which rifles could be produced was limited by the speed at which barrels could be produced and procured.

“I designed and adapted specialized machine tools for other parts around the Type A bolt-action rifle, built a dedicated production line, and never ran it at full capacity.

“Firstly, the production speed of rolled gun barrels is slow, and the price of purchasing them locally is also very high, so purchasing was not liberalized before.

“Secondly, the gun barrel is a bit special. The Ming Dynasty’s Governor’s Office also has a large demand for it, and most factories are suppliers to the Ming Dynasty.

"The production that Wu State was able to obtain was originally small, and there was no opportunity to open up purchases.

“Now that we have solved the problem of the production speed of gun barrels, the production speed of rifles has begun to catch up with the production speed of seamless steel pipes.

"The current rate of 10,000 units per month is still at the stage of ramping up production capacity.

“After the second seamless steel pipe production line is put into operation and the production capacity of the relevant production lines is fully released, the annual output should be able to exceed 300,000 pipes.

“I believe that in two years at most, the speed at which the Wu Arsenal produces rifles will be higher than all other regions of the Ming Dynasty combined.

“The key is that this is still a seamless steel tube, and the final quality of the product far exceeds that of traditional hand-rolled gun barrels.

“The 12mm A-type rifle can finally use smokeless propellant.

"Within a distance of one kilometer, any traditional armor and shield of any army will be shattered like waste paper by this rifle bullet.

“If you choose the best quality barrel and aim it with a telescope, you can still get a certain level of accuracy at a distance of two kilometers.

“It can kill enemy artillery and generals from a long distance on the battlefield.

“I think we can stop producing rolled barrel rifles and stop importing rolled barrels.

"We can even export gun barrels and rifles to the Ming Dynasty."

Zhu Jianxuan listened to Song Wendao's introduction and sorted out the logic of these data in his mind.

The increase in the production speed of the Wu State Type A rifle is the same as the increase in the efficiency of large-scale industrialized production compared to handicraft production.

In the original history, the first standard rifle in China after the liberation of Shenzhou was the Type 296 cavalry rifle, which imitated the Mosin-Nagant. Factory 86 produced of them in just four years.

Zhu Jianxuan barely hesitated and directly agreed to Song Wendao's final suggestion:

"Okay, we will stop the production and import of traditional rolled gun barrels, and all the existing workers will switch to producing new rifles and pistols.

"The export of gun barrels and rifles will have to wait until our troops have finished re-equipping."

In combination with a seamless barrel and metal fixed ammunition, craftsmen specially designed a new type of revolver this year, which was named Wu Guo Type 2 Pistol.

A revolver designed to replace the previous paper shell bullets.

Song Wendao agreed casually, said goodbye to Zhu Jianxuan, and continued to work on his research project.

More than a month later, at the end of October of the 40th year in Xianning, the production line of seamless steel pipes for 80mm guns was officially put into production.

The trial production of a new 80mm breech-loading rifled gun designed to match the gun began.

Production of the Type A-2 12mm rifle using smokeless powder began.

Production of the Wu Guo Type 2 revolver, which used seamless steel tubes and metal-loaded bullets, began.

By the end of the 40th year of Xianning, the monthly output of Type A rifles reached 20,000, and the cumulative production volume had exceeded that of bolt-action rifles with rolled barrels.

By May of the 41st year of Xianning, a total of 150,000 Type A rifles had been produced.

At the same time, the fighting in North Africa and the Ottoman region finally came to an end.

The Ming Dynasty, Wu Kingdom, Russia, Habsburg and Ottoman Empire completed the final peace negotiations with the mediation of Britain and France.

On May 1787th of the Ming Dynasty (June 6th of 29 in the Western calendar), the parties signed the Cairo Peace Treaty in Cairo, Egypt.

The Ming Dynasty Wu Kingdom acquired Crete, Palestine, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and other regions.

Independent Morocco became a vassal of King Wu of the Ming Dynasty.

Russia acquired Wallachia and Moldavia east of the Carpathian Mountains.

The Habsburgs acquired the central and northern regions of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina west of the Balkan Mountains.

At the same time as the Treaty of Cairo was signed, the Ming Dynasty's Wu Kingdom expeditionary force began to return.

The three rifle divisions left behind a brigade and sent 8,000 new rifle soldiers from the mainland to form a main force division of the Wu State to guard Cairo and the surrounding areas of the canal construction site.

The main division completely replaced its Type A 8mm bolt-action rifles, and the original 12mm black powder bolt-action rifles were transferred to the Japanese corps.

The Japanese Army left one of its six divisions in the North African battlefield, and at the same time recruited 20,000 new soldiers from Japan to reorganize them into three vassal divisions in North Africa.

One of the divisions was stationed in Cairo, and the six brigades of the other two divisions were stationed in Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Haifa and Crete.

The process of on-the-spot reorganization in North Africa is also a process of rewarding people based on their merits. Those who have made contributions will be promoted across levels during the reorganization.

Ten thousand veterans were also selected from the four Japanese divisions in Oman and East Africa to return to the capital of King Wu together with the five divisions in North Africa. The remaining three Japanese divisions in the area were changed into three vassal divisions.

In early July of the 41st year of Xianning, the returning troops arrived at the capital of Wu one after another.

On July 21, Zhu Jianxuan took the throne in the Chengyun Hall of the Wu Palace and summoned the returning generals and meritorious personnel. After everyone paid homage, Zhu Jianxuan immediately asked his secretary to read out the edict prepared in advance and conferred titles on all the officials.

Since military equipment was much more advanced and opponents were not the strongest countries of the era, most battles were not particularly difficult.

Especially after the riflemen entered the battlefield, they could basically defeat the enemy with just one charge.

Therefore, rewards are basically based on official positions.

The commanders of the three rifle divisions were all conferred the title of county viscount, and all the commanders of the Japanese divisions were all conferred the title of county baron.

The commander-in-chief of the land force and the commander-in-chief of the navy were both named Earl of Fengzhou.

Finally, a group of officers at all levels who had truly outstanding performance were awarded the titles of gentry and countrymen.

Tian Yiming's situation was special and his performance was quite good, so he was awarded the title of a local scholar.

All the titles of the Wu Kingdom came with no fiefdoms, only relatively high additional salaries.

After being conferred the title, Zhu Jianxuan began to reorganize the army.

The three rifle divisions returning from North Africa, a training division that had led troops in the Japanese army for three years, and the 80,000 new recruits trained by King Wu were reorganized into twelve main divisions.

Ten thousand training divisions will remain in the Japanese army, together with forty thousand veterans of the Japanese army and sixty thousand new Japanese recruits trained by King Wu, to form ten servant divisions.

During this major reorganization, officers who had been on the battlefield had opportunities for promotion.

Liu Biao was promoted from the commander of the Japanese division to the commander of the main division, and Tian Yiming was promoted from the battalion commander of the Japanese division to the commander of the auxiliary division.

After the reorganization, the Wu army had a total of thirteen main divisions, sixteen vassal divisions, and the navy had four main divisions, a total of thirty-three divisions with about 350,000 people.

At that time, the total population of Wu State was less than six million, which was definitely a warmongering level based on the population ratio.

However, most of the population of Wu State were disaster victims, and the proportion of the elderly and the weak was already very low. The most extreme case was that of Cui Er, whose family of eight theoretically had seven young and strong people.

At the same time, the vast majority of Wu’s people were either members of the guards or workers in the king’s factories.

The vast majority of the country's human resources are under centralized management, and there is basically not much manpower and resources wasted on inefficient private facilities and industries.

In addition, the food for overseas garrisons is supplied locally, and the Wu Kingdom only needs to supply bullets and other military supplies.

That is why the State of Wu was able to maintain such a high proportion of troops.

This also led most of the civil and military officials of Wu to conclude that their king must have other intentions.

Either he was preparing to conquer America or Europe, or he had some other great ambition.

As Zhu Jianxuan was adjusting the military organization, time slowly came to the beginning of October in the 41st year of Xianning.

Another group of disaster victims, totaling more than 300,000 people, and a letter from Ming Emperor Zhu Zhonglin to Prince of Wu Zhu Jianxuan were sent to the capital of King Wu.

Zhu Jianxuan asked the Civil Affairs Department to settle the new immigrants, and he returned to his bedroom to read his father's letter.

Zhu Jianxuan couldn't help frowning after reading a few sentences.

The letter from my father was unexpectedly "vulgar", but it also revealed his special concern for me.

"You should come back to see your parents," "You should get married at your age," and "You have to come back before my 70th birthday."

He also revealed some special information to himself.

"Conflicts between local workers and disaster victims", "Conflicts between workers and employers", "Conflicts between workers' wages and profits".

Some special questions were also asked
"Are you ready for what you want to do?"

Zhu Jianxuan was already worried about the situation in the Ming Dynasty, especially in Yingtian Prefecture and its surrounding areas.

Now I am even more worried.

Zhu Jianxuan discovered a huge hidden crisis from his father's simple description.

The years of floods and droughts in the Ming Dynasty provided a large amount of cheap labor to the cities, reducing the labor costs in the core areas of the Ming Dynasty to the freezing point.

The Ming imperial court continued its disaster relief and immigration efforts, and the amount of purchases from official and private factories increased year by year.

Therefore, both official and private factories have been increasing production at a frantic pace in recent years.

Now it is the taxation of official purchases and the supply of factories which maintains a very tenuous balance to some extent.

The court's finances seemed to be relatively good. Agricultural-related taxes had been significantly reduced, but taxes on industry and commerce continued to grow.

The market situation also seems to be quite prosperous.

However...the prosperity of macro-generalized data does not mean that there are no problems in the micro details.

If we look at the gross domestic product, the Qing Dynasty was number one in the world before the Opium War, but the Qing Dynasty itself had a lot of internal problems.

Compared with the capable British, the Qing Dynasty was a loser when it came to fighting a war.

The core market of Ming Dynasty seems prosperous now, but the greatest demand is provided by disaster relief and immigration from the imperial court.

Workers' wages have been reduced to almost nothing, and demand in the regular market has also been reduced to almost nothing.

The speed at which factories produce products has been increased to the extreme.

When the continuous natural disasters ended, the court's disaster relief operations gradually came to an end.

The demand to maintain factory production will be gone, and private demand will not increase immediately.

There may be a terrifying relative overproduction in the market.

Factory owners will certainly instinctively reduce production or even close down, which will cause a large number of workers to lose their jobs and further reduce market demand.

The result of this vicious cycle is capitalism’s lingering disease - economic crisis.

But for the Ming Dynasty court, the economic crisis was not the most dangerous thing.

The most dangerous thing is another consequence of factory closures: intellectuals such as craftsmen, managers, and shopkeepers will lose their jobs.

The vicious cases that have occurred in Yingtian Prefecture now, whether it is fights between local workers and disaster victims from other places, or angry workers stabbing their own bosses, are still isolated.

The murderers in these cases basically did not think deeply or have any goals, and they killed and burned people in anger to take revenge on the world.

But the craftsmen and shopkeepers knew how to organize people and how to solve engineering problems.

If they had joined forces with the angry workers...

Most of the peasant wars, revolutions and uprisings in history were caused by a small number of intellectuals mobilizing the power of workers and peasants.

This was the case with the Huang Chao Uprising and the French Revolution.

Zhu Jianxuan has some ways to deal with the current situation.

For example, to create another demand, we must launch a large-scale Northern Expedition to the Central Plains to use military supplies to replace the disappearing disaster relief and immigration needs.

At the same time, increase workers' wages and benefits, thereby restoring normal demand in the private market.

However, Zhu Jianxuan was worried whether his father could understand the logic of the current crisis, whether he could accept his approach, and whether he could get the cooperation of private employers.

After all, paying workers out of thin air may seem incomprehensible to people of this era.

Usually, they will take the initiative to raise wages only when there is market demand but they cannot find enough workers.

But the current situation may be that market demand disappears faster than the workers, and they probably won't even have time to wait for that situation to occur.

However, even if they fail to do so, these problems will no longer be a problem once the Northern Expedition is truly successful.

With the military might of the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains to recover the old capital, any uncooperative capitalist can be crushed directly.

The Northern Expedition to the Central Plains was the last question from my father. It was also what I wanted to do and what my father had hinted to me at the beginning.

Now it is indeed almost ready.

Wait until Wu's troops are reorganized, continue training for a period of time, and accumulate more bullets and artillery shells.

By the time spring arrives in our home country next year, we can almost send out troops.

From this perspective, this letter from my father came at a very timely moment, and I now have a legal reason to return to my homeland.

However, with the crisis lurking in Jiangnan, even if he returned to his homeland, he should not go directly to Yingtian Prefecture.

They have a huge force in Australia and more than 200,000 of the world's most advanced troops. They can defeat the main force of any country head-on.

But if he entered Yingtian Prefecture alone, and a large-scale civil uprising broke out within Yingtian Prefecture.

There is no difference between me and an ordinary person.

A few random soldiers can kill me.

So even though my father asked me to go back and see him, and I was ready to take the opportunity to return to my homeland in a big way, I couldn't really go to see him.

I cannot leave the protection of the army.

(End of this chapter)