After listening to Marin's explanation, Caesar was so surprised that he could stuff eggs in his mouth. He really didn't expect that this America, which was desperately promoted as a "wild land" by his father Marin, would be so rich and vast.

At the same time, he was also well aware that what he was going to inherit would be an extremely large empire. Because, Marin made it clear that the North American colonies alone were several times larger than Western Europe......

"Dad, can we hold such a large territory?" Caesar was a little worried. He knew that the population of Beihai was too small, only more than two million. The Kingdom of France, on the other hand, has a population of more than 15 million. Even Spain has a population of seven or eight million.

With a population of more than 2 million, it is still not enough to develop the territory, let alone develop land several times larger than that of Western Europe?

Marin laughed, introduced the Pexan cannon and the thousand-ton battleship that were being studied, and said confidently:

"As long as this kind of mass killing weapon is developed, the Beihai Kingdom will be equipped with hundreds of ships. Then there will be no one in Europe who is our opponent. We don't need to defeat all our opponents on land, we just need to sink all of our opponents' ships. After all, if you want to compete with us for colonies in the Americas, you must first have a fleet......"

Caesar thought for a long time, and then suddenly realized:

"I see, father, you asked me to marry Princess Margaret of England in order to get the vast fleet of Great Britain? With the new cannons and warships you mentioned, combined with the sheer size of England's ships, we were able to protect the interests of the American colonies, right? ”

Marin snapped his fingers and said happily:

"That's right, son, you're so smart! If it weren't for the sprawling colony, I would have married you to Princess Anna of the Kingdom of Bohemia. In this way, it was possible to obtain two crowns of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Kingdom of Hungary, plus the Duchy of Silesia. ”

But Caesar frowned, and said:

"No, doesn't His Majesty Vladislas II have Prince Lajos? How do you say that marrying Princess Anna will annex Bohemia and Hungary? ”

Marin smiled and didn't explain. He can't tell his son that this is the history of the future, can he? Moreover, now that he has crossed over, he has also influenced history. Then Lajos II may not have died at the hands of the Turks, as he had done in the original history.

But in any case, that's a headache for others. After all, his second son, William, is too young. If he had been born earlier, Marin might have married Princess Anna. But now, I'm afraid I don't have that chance. After all, Princess Anna is much older than William.

……

Looking at Marin's standard map of the Americas, Caesar's heart was thrilled. He felt that he had the whole world. Because, according to Marin, North America is twice as large as the whole of Europe. If you can keep and rule such a large place, you really have the whole world.

However, looking at the map, Caesar suddenly remembered a question -

"Dad, America is so big, it's not easy to mess around. So, how are we going to maintain such a large territory? You see, these undeveloped places must be inaccessible. If there is a rebellion in central North America, we can use carrier pigeons to deliver the news. However, how to mobilize troops to suppress the rebellion? After all, it is very difficult to send troops deep into the interior......"

"Then, in the end, we may only be able to maintain our rule in the coastal areas and along the banks of the great rivers......"

Caesar's question is to the point, pointing directly to the core of the problem. It's like someone asked-why didn't China expand more territory in history?

It's not that it can't, it's that it can't maintain its rule even if it expands. After all, transportation was too inconvenient in ancient times.

Why did the Mongol Empire sweep across Eurasia at the beginning, but in the end it had to be divided into four khanates? It's not that the central government of the Yuan Dynasty doesn't want unified management, but that the four khanates are too far away from the Central Plains to be taken into account. The only way is to divide the four khanates to manage it.

In order to beat the Xiongnu to Dad, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty mobilized the power of the entire Han Empire, and dispatched countless war horses and ox carts to transport materials. In the battle of Mobei alone, the Han Dynasty dispatched 240,000 horses and 500,000 troops, which cost countless money and food.

After 15 years of war, the Han Dynasty lost more than 100,000 young men and hundreds of thousands of war horses, and the loss of grain, grass and money was even more numerous, and all the family wealth left by the Wenjing era was lost.

In desperation, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty had no choice but to stop the northern expedition, and issued an edict to begin to restore national strength. Among them, most of the loss of money and food was not used in combat, but in the march and transportation......

From Guanzhong, the core area of the Han Dynasty, the money and grain needed by hundreds of thousands of troops were transported to Mobei, thousands of miles away, and the loss of grain and grass along the way was extremely alarming. The time to really engage the Huns was actually very short, and most of the time and money and food were basically spent on the way......

Therefore, after the successive dynasties obtained the Central Plains region, they were generally no longer willing to expand. Especially the land on the grassland, there are few benefits and a lot of money and food, so it is not cost-effective.

Generally speaking, only powerful dynasties such as the Han and Tang dynasties, or minority dynasties such as the Yuan and Qing dynasties, would be willing to seize and manage the Mobei and Western Regions. Because, the cost of operating Mobei and the Western Regions is too high. Unless, there are enough steppe cavalry available.

……

In the face of Caesar's thoughts, Marin was very pleased. This is indeed the biggest problem in colonization, and after the European voyages, they can only go around the coast of the colonies for hundreds of years, until ......

Until the advent of the train......

……

With the advent of the train, it was very simple for the colonists' armies to move from the coast into the interior. Not only is it fast, but it also has a lot of volume. Therefore, from the 19th century onwards, colonizers were really able to colonize landlocked countries in a more comprehensive way. At that time, wherever the railroad was built, the power of the colonists expanded.

In the same way, trains are of great significance to a country with a large area. For example, in the United States, when the Civil War had just ended, the United States still had a fairly weak control over the western region. At that time, the people who went to California to pan for gold wanted to bring the gold back to the east, and they had to take a boat around the whole of South America and back to the east coast. For this reason, another ship with gold called "Central America" sank.

After the end of the Civil War, the United States relied on policy incentives to encourage private construction of the Pacific Railroad. For this reason, the US authorities did not hesitate to give the land along the railway line to private individuals who built the railway. This policy greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of private companies to build the railway, and the Pacific Railroad was successfully built in six years. And the Americans, also by rail, finally completed control over several western states. Before that, Americans went to California and had to take a ship around the whole of South America.

Similarly, Russia, although it occupied Siberia, had a weak grip on the Far East. It was not until the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Russia was able to project its forces into the Far East on a large scale. Ironically, after the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1916, Tsarist Russia collapsed the following year and was replaced by the Soviet Union.

In the Russo-Japanese War that broke out before the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Russians were defeated by the Japanese because they could not transport the million-dollar army that crushed Europe to the Far East in time. You know, in that war, the Japanese actually had a much more death toll than the Russians. However, Tsarist Russia had a million-strong army and could not transport it from Europe, which gave Japan a chance to win. The Battle of Normenheim, which broke out more than 30 years later, was directly choked by the Soviet Union because the Soviet Union was able to transport large-scale aircraft, tanks and various military supplies from the European mainland through the Trans-Siberian Railway. At that time, the Soviet Union transported 60,000 tons of munitions from its mainland to the Normenkhand region in August alone. There were 20,000 tons of shells alone. Then the bravery of the Japanese was useless, and they were instantly beaten into fools. However, the Japanese army's arms supply was always stronger than that of the poor army in China, so the Japanese army could still show off its might in China...... Until the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, freed their hands from the European battlefield and cleaned them up......

Many people are boasting about the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army, but in fact, the Japanese invasion of China is nothing more than a rookie pecking at each other. In this mutual pecking, because the Chinese army was poorer and lacked ammunition, the air was completely controlled by the Japanese army, so it was always pressed and beaten. How brave you are? In the face of the repeated bombardment of aircraft and artillery, no matter how brave the martial arts are, they will be beaten into a sieve.

However, in the United States and the Soviet Union, which had plenty of ammunition, the Japanese army, which was already short of ammunition, was instantly beaten stupid. Let's not talk about how heroic the Soviet army was, just about the American army. The bravery of the US military is completely incomparable with that of devils. But people have a lot of ammunition, and when they hit a small island with only a few dozen people stationed, they also washed the ground with tons of shells first. And then, all sorts of firepower did not stop. No matter how brave the devil is, in the face of this tactic, he has to kneel......

Therefore, the railroad was extremely important for the colonizers to control the interior, or for the great powers to rule the distant frontiers. In fact, Russia's control over the Far East was very poor until the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed. The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War proved this. If the Qing Dynasty had been a powerful regime at that time, it would have been no problem to take Siberia by virtue of its local advantages. But the last Manchu Qing was a mud that couldn't hold up the wall, and Tsarist Russia could frighten the Manchus by sending some expeditionary troops at will. Otherwise, it would not have been easily lost to the Outer Northeast......

……

Railways and trains were so important that Marin had arranged for Leonardo da Vinci to begin the development of a train that would bring the Watt steam engine to the carriages.

But Marlin was well aware that this early vertical horizontal bar steam engine was actually very inefficient. Just like Stephenson's early invention of the train, because it uses a low-efficiency watt vertical single-cylinder steam engine, the train is very slow, only ten or twenty kilometers per hour, and can only drag 30-ton carriages. Later trains often carried two or three thousand tons of cargo, which could not be compared.

But Marin also knows that the meal has to be eaten one bite at a time. So, he's now asking Leonardo da Vinci to test a train system powered by a Watt single-cylinder steam engine. When this kind of low-speed and low-load train is successfully developed, the horizontal twin-cylinder steam engine will be developed to improve efficiency......

Once the train is developed, it will be very simple for Marin to control the interior of North America in the future. There is no Indian tribe that cannot be leveled by a train of troops, and if there is, then another train of troops will be transported over......

。 m.