"Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Hu has already knocked Fengyang down! More than 20,000 catties of gunpowder were seized this time, and Hu Junshuai sent you 10,000 catties. Hu Chenghe, commander of the Shouzhou Military Division, and the communications staff officer sent to Wei Ze brought "good news."

"Can you Marshal Hu expand your army?" That's all Weeser can think of. If it weren't for the expansion of the army, Hu Chenghe might not have needed so much material in the short term.

The communications staff officer replied: "Chief of the General Staff, Mingjian." Hu Junshuai began to collect taxes in many areas around Shouzhou. In particular, a lot of territory was expanded near Fengyang, and a large number of local people came to join the army. ”

"Then Hu Chenghe is not afraid that after the Qing demon comes back, he will collect taxes from the local people for the second time? Since you collect other people's taxes, you have the responsibility to protect one party. What can he get north of the Huai River? Weser asked.

The communications staff officer did not seem to be very supportive of Wei Ze's conservatism, and he replied: "Chief of the General Staff, at present, the Qing demon is retreating all the way, and our army is constantly expanding its territory, and with the current trend, we don't need to spend too much effort to control the whole of Anhui. ”

Wei Ze didn't bother to discuss too much with the communications staff on strategic judgment, and he asked, "How many people has Hu Chenghe expanded?" ”

"Now the 15th and 19th armies have a scale of 30,000 people." The staff officer replied.

"Tripled, huh? No wonder Hu Chenghe dared to leave 20,000 catties of gunpowder, if he didn't have so much gunpowder, he was afraid that he wouldn't even be able to complete the training of the troops. I know he started an arsenal, but does Hu Chenghe have so many muskets in his hands now? Weser asked.

So Marshal Hu asked the General Logistics Department to provide more supplies to Shouzhou. Marshal Hu assured that as long as the supplies could keep up, he would be able to ensure that there would be no problems with the Huai River defense line between Shouzhou and Hongze Lake Mouth. The communications staff officer earnestly relayed Hu Chenghe's views.

"Hu Chenghe doesn't want you to be high, he is ready to attack Wuhe. After defeating Wuhe, Hu Chenghe let the 19th Army guard Wuhe, and he himself led the 15th Army to defend Shouzhou and Fengyang. Weser said with some mockery.

The communications staff officer was stunned for a while before he asked tentatively: "Chief of General Staff, has Marshal Hu already given you a message?" ”

"Humph!" Wei Ze sneered, "Is this still used in Wen Jiàn?" Wouldn't it be clear if you look at the map? Besides, is the 19th Army still ready to become a naval army? Or are you going to let the 19th Army go to Hongze Lake to expand the army again? What does Hu Chenghe think? Or, has he thought about the matter of the water army? ”

"Chief of the General Staff! You're amazing! The communications staff officer immediately slapped Wei Ze on the back, "Marshal Hu has been sending troops everywhere in Shouzhou for more than a month, and the Qing demon is fleeing in despair. Seeing that the situation was good, Marshal Hu worked out a defensive plan from Shouzhou to Hongze Hukou in accordance with the strategy put forward by the chief of the general staff to defend the river and the Huai. If an offensive defense is carried out in this area with 60,000 troops. ”

"Then his 60,000 troops are a field army or a tax police regiment?" Weser laughed.

"What kind of regiment? Chief of the General Staff, can you say it again? "The communications staff officer has never heard of the term tax police corps.

"It's nothing, I'm just talking about it." Wei Ze didn't want to criticize Hu Chenghe, after all, he was able to adhere to Wei Ze's strategy of guarding the river and guarding the Huai, which was already a strategic perspective. As for turning the field army into a tax police regiment, Wei Ze didn't think there was anything wrong with this idea, you must know that the combat effectiveness of several tax police regiments in the ** era of the year could not be regarded as weak.

"You go back and tell Hu Chenghe, if he wants to make so many mouths for eating, we can't supply logistics at all. I look at historical examples of military reclamation, such as Cao Cao's tuntian system. If there are people, it is better to engage in tuntian. ”

Having knocked out Hu Cheng and the people over there, Wei Ze didn't want to bother thinking about Hu Cheng and his ambition to establish a defense line on the Huai River. This idea seems very reasonable, but in fact it is a typical case of missing the crux of the problem.

Before the establishment of modern communication technology and social institutions, all countries were under imperial power. In Europe, feudalism runs rampant, and the United States is dominated by local interest groups. Compared with them, the penetration of China's imperial power into the grassroots is already quite good.

But Wei Ze knows that the unprecedented social management system in human history, this high-intensity management system, can not only allow the central government to penetrate into the county level, but also allow the grassroots organizations to penetrate into the villages. The problem with Hu Chenghe is that he fails to understand the meaning of the grassroots.

Wei Ze's current completion of grain and tax payment is itself a reshuffle of the grassroots. The best outcome is that Wei Ze was able to pay taxes through grain and create a new rural system. Of course, this is not realistic. New China's new rural system is supported by an industrial idea, and the rapid development of New China's industry is also providing a large number of heavy industry feedback to the countryside. Weeser did not have these two conditions in his hands.

If Wei Ze knew the chips in his hand, Hu Chenghe was obviously worse. He did not have a theoretical understanding of the current situation, but simply believed that the problem could be solved by excluding the Qing army from the base area by relying on the army. This is undoubtedly beginning to move in the direction of reckless militarism. At present, the level of the Qing army is rotten, and this is not a stupid move, if there are really smart and capable people in the Manchu court, there are many ways to resolve this situation.

So Wei Ze could only let Hu Cheng and himself toss first, and his attention was on another matter. If you go on a northern expedition, there will be many roads to the north, but which way to return to Anhui?

"King Qi, do you want to draw people from the gentleman's camp to join the Northern Expeditionary Army?" Wei Changrong asked.

"Draw people from the gentleman's camp?" Weezer was stunned.

The Junzi Camp is Weezer's initiative to learn from Shiler. In the district, all the families that were designated as landlords and gentry had to ask one person to join the army. These people were grouped into the "Gentlemen's Camp". Wei Ze said that it is naturally very good, these people can also be treated according to military dependents, their wives and children can not pay taxes, and their parents can also reduce taxes by 3%. Weeser also announced that these people, once trained and trained, could be used as future officers as well as civilian reserves.

Weeser never told the landlords and gentry that there was no concept of good luck in his troops. No matter how well this "gentleman's battalion" was treated, it was just to allow the landlords and gentry to have some tricks to collaborate with the enemy. And Wei Ze also believed that the landlords and gentry would not be stupid enough to see through this.

Whether or not to obediently send people to join the gentleman's camp is a game and a compromise between the Taiping Army commanded by Wei Ze and the local landlords and gentry in Anhui. Weeser is tantamount to drawing a line for tax reduction. If the landlords were willing to give in and show their deference and support for Weese, Weser didn't care about giving them tax cuts. If the landlords insist on their position of non-cooperation, then they will have to accept the rules set by Wei Ze that they pay more taxes for the completion of their grain, pay more taxes for those who have more land, pay less taxes for those who have less land, and do not pay taxes for those who have no land.

Up to now, the number of people in the Junzi camp is very small, and the total number of people is only 2oo. At least 18o of these 2oo people must be the sons of landlords with less than 1oo acres of land, and all of them are sons who have no status in the family. There were even a few bold landlords who recognized some godsons and sent them.

For these people, Wei Ze didn't care at all. But I don't know how Wei Changrong thought of using them. Wei Ze refused: "This is not appropriate, I told them that they will not be allowed to go into battle to die, if these people are used, it is tantamount to breaking the promise." ”

"There are also boys here who are not afraid of death, and the twenty or thirty people have asked to join the army." Wei Changrong replied.

"Let them ......" Weser paused halfway through speaking, pondered for a moment, and then Weezer said: "Then you sue them, they also start from ordinary soldiers, and they may die if they fight." And if these people dared to flee and surrender to the Manchus. The whole family was unlucky. If they still want to fight together after they have determined this, then let them enlist. ”

After all these things were done, Weese still had to solve the gunpowder problem. The best saltpeter mines in the world come from Chile, and at least before the Germans discovered the ammonia process before World War I, the British controlled a large part of the Chilean saltpeter sales channels. At that time, the British thought that the Germans would soon be unable to hold on to the lack of saltpeter during World War I, so they dared to let go and fight with Germany. As a result, because of the disregard for the power of technology, the blood of the British Empire was almost exhausted in the First World War.

Weser did an exercise in his junior high school chemistry textbook, and it was about solubility saturation. It is said that there is a lake in Xinjiang where salt can be harvested in summer and potassium nitrate in winter. Ask why. This is a test of saturation at different temperatures. If the information is correct, this is also a question about the origin of potassium nitrate.

Since Wei Ze can't go all the way to Xinjiang to get potassium nitrate, the rest of the way is very, very stupid. Find some saline-alkali land, draw the brine from the ground, filter it and boil the brine. The crystals are separated according to different solubilities, and the crystals of sodium nitrate are like table salt, which is square. The crystals of potassium nitrate are long crystals.

Anhui is not short of saline-alkali land, and this problem is very easy to deal with. Anhui is not a volcanically active area, so it is quite lacking in sulfur. Near China, Japan and the Ryukyus are all sulfur sources. The volcanoes in these places are very active, or at least once very active, so there are large amounts of sulphur mines.

This is Wei Ze's biggest headache, one sulfur, two nitrate and three charcoal, don't look at the proportion of sulfur to look at the lowest, but it is particularly difficult to get a large number of products. Charcoal can be fired at will, and saltpeter preparation is a bit of a task at most. And without sulfur mines, then you can only scratch the blind.

Wei Ze was even thinking about whether he would simply give up black powder, make full use of Anhui's pyrite resources, and develop smokeless gunpowder. But in the end, he held back, and the problem of technology diffusion in these years could not be solved. The new technology that Wei Ze worked so hard to come up with is likely to be just one or two insignificant small flaws, which will lead to leakage. If that's the case, then it's better to honestly continue to play black powder.

Just when Weeser was worried about the shortage of gunpowder encountered in the large-scale expedition, a young staff officer in the new staff approached Weese, "Chief of the General Staff, my subordinates have contacted a batch of sulfur, and I hope that the Chief of the General Staff can approve the contact transaction." ”

ps: There is only one chapter today, and tomorrow it will be restored

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