The price of a crossbow machine was extremely expensive, and even in the more technologically advanced Han Dynasty, a crossbow machine cost 8,000 yuan. The crossbow that Xiong Jing asked the Chu army to equip was naturally not an arm crossbow, nor a crossbow, but a waist crossbow with both feet stepping on the string. This kind of crossbow has not yet been installed in the world, and the reason why it has not yet been installed may be because of the way of thinking, but the more important factor is that the current crossbow generally does not have Guo.

Guo is not the Guo of the city, but a copper box on the crossbow arm, with Guo's crossbow machine is fully loaded in the copper box, without Guo's crossbow can only be carved on the wooden arm, and then loaded into the crossbow machine. The strength of the crossbow arm can not be compared with the copper Guo, maybe the wooden arm can withstand the tensile force of the twelve stones - after winding, it depends on the crossbow machine to maintain the tensile force of the twelve stones, the copper Guo is strong and the force surface is large, and the crossbow machine installed by the wooden arm is small and the wooden strength is not as good as the metal, so the damage rate of the crossbow is greatly increased, and it is not durable.

The crossbow is already expensive, and in order to withstand the pull of ten or twelve stones, the price of the copper crossbow is even more expensive. The price of a bow is cheap, five or six hundred dollars can make a mulberry longbow with excellent performance, but unfortunately the archer training time is very long, and the price is also very expensive - a light arrow shaft costs four or five yuan, plus arrows and feathers, each one needs at least six or seven yuan. Even if the arrows were reusable, the archers would have to consume more than a thousand arrows a year, and in four or five years, they would have spent more than a crossbow.

At the same time, a qualified archer is not something that can be piled up with money, but also requires talent. Of the tens of thousands of archers in the Chu army, the three-stone bow (81 city jin) accounted for more than half, more than 60 percent, the four-stone bow (108 city jin) accounted for about 30 percent, and the five-stone bow (135 city jin) was very few, and there were less than 600 people who could open a six-stone bow (162 city jin...... There have been records in this regard, in fact, including several crossbowmen, who could not open a six-stone bow.

The crossbow is simple, not to mention the arm open crossbow of the three stones, and more than half of the soldiers of the crossbow from six stones to eight stones can be opened, and the range of the crossbow is not inferior to most of the archers of the Chu army. If it is a waist crossbow, the range of a light arrow is more than two hundred steps. It's just that the crossbow is expensive, and 8,000 yuan is just the price of the crossbow machine, plus the crossbow arm and bowstring, the price of a waist crossbow is almost equal to one gold. The 300,000 Chu army had about seven or eight hundred soldiers, each of whom had sixty-four crossbowmen with their waists, and it took four or fifty thousand gold to equip the whole army.

At the moment, it seems that the finances are more than enough, but this is not the case.

The sea ship is assumed to be 500 gold each, and 200 ships will cost 100,000 gold - he really retreated to Jiangdong one day, and if it is not enough to grow sweet potatoes and potatoes and grain, the solution can only rely on foreign trade. If you are lucky, you can buy food on the Korean Peninsula and the Indochina Peninsula, and you can make several trips a year; Unfortunately, there was not enough food on the Korean Peninsula and the Indochina Peninsula, so the sailing fleet could only cross the Strait of Malacca and go to India to buy grain or simply harvest grass grains.

Two hundred 400-ton sailing ships can only transport 80,000 tons of grain a year. If 80,000 tons were all rice, it would only feed 400,000 people; If 80,000 tons were all rice, that would feed 600,000 people. However, the state of Chu has a population of 3 million, and if all of them are moved to Jiangdong, 80,000 tons is far from enough. In the early stage, at least 160,000 tons, that is, 400 sailboats, will cost 200,000 yuan;

In addition to the ship, the horse's previous budget was 72,000 gold, not including the cost of forage, stables, slaves, etc.; Large wing, middle wing, small wing, 1,000 river warships are definitely not enough, and 2,000 river warships will cost at least 50,000 gold;

These are just the big heads, and the entire army has to be redressed into huge iron weapons, as well as equipped with armor made of huge iron, which is also a huge amount of money. Although the drawing and rolling technology minimizes the cost of redressing, it still costs countless money to build a new Chu army.

As the king of Chu, Xiong Jing is not facing a single thing or a certain problem, he is facing a piece of cloth that is connected vertically and horizontally and intertwined, and he has to observe the overall situation for any small problem, even if it is just a crossbow machine. Now he thought of the choice of equipment for bows and crossbows from the crossbow machine, and from the expensive crossbow machine to the financial difficulties that the Chu State would face in the future.

"Da Sima Mansion thinks that it should not be equipped with a waist crossbow?" Xiong Jing settled down and began to rethink the choice of bow and crossbow.

"Yes." Nao sly nodded, "Although the crossbow is strong, a crossbow is almost equal to a horse, and I think that the crossbow machine is too high, and it is not as good as a bow." Archers are difficult to practice, and arrows cost a lot, but arrows can be made by archers, and the Great Sima Mansion can distribute twelve stone corn every year. ”

"Twelve stone corn? If there are 100,000 archers, how much will it cost? Xiong Jing asked. Don't forget that the price of corn is going to rise to fifty cents. ”

"That year there were more than 6,000 gold." Nao cunning estimated the number in his heart, and it was roughly correct. "Then ......"

"Ten years is more than 60,000 gold, how many of your 100,000 archers can pull the four-stone bow?" Xiong Jing interrupted. "More than 60,000 gold is equal to more than 60,000 waist crossbows, and 100,000 archers can have 60,000 four-stone bows and five-stone bows?"

Archers must be trained from childhood, and only when they are cultivated from an early age can they be able to open a five-stone bow, and if they are not trained when they are young, they must be physically strong when they grow up, and they can only be opened after a period of training. The range of a four-stone bow is equal to that of an eight-stone crossbow, and the range of a twelve-stone waist crossbow is equal to that of a six-stone bow, and with the same range, the armor-piercing ability of a crossbow is stronger than that of a bow. In practical terms, instead of training archers at the age of seven or eight, it is better to use the money to build a waist crossbow, even if a crossbow costs a gold.

"King, the Qin army does not have iron armor, only leather armor." Nao Cunning changed his angle. "Although the new armor-piercing heavy arrow has a short range, it can be very good at armor-piercing. A twelve-stone crossbow requires one arrow to kill someone, and a four-stone bow kills one person with one arrow. Moreover, there were too many sixty-four crossbowmen per pawn, 300,000 Chu troops, and nearly 50,000 crossbowmen, and the Great Sima Mansion thought that thirty-six crossbowmen per pawn were enough. ”

"Thirty-six?" Four times four is sixty-four, and three times three is thirty-six. There are only 36,000 crossbowmen in 1,000 pawns, which is not much different from the number of archers in the current Chu army.

"Exactly. There were thirty-six soldiers each, and the whole army was less than 30,000. If the existing archers are not able to open the four-stone bow, they will no longer be archers, but spearmen, and those who are not enough should be selected from among the boys to teach. The king ordered all counties to run township schools, and the township schools had three classes: archery, spear art, and riding art, from which archers could be selected. In this way, 5 to 6,000 people can be selected every year to make up for this number, and the cost is very small. ”

The method proposed by Nao Cunning is indeed the most economical, and when Xiong Jing was still hesitating, Nao Cunning said again: "The king asked before if he could make a crossbow with iron, but the generals did not think so, but the ministers thought so. Why?

In the summer and summer months, the rainy season is steaming, and the tendons and corners are easy to come off, so use a wooden crossbow; In the autumn and winter months, the wind is cold, and the wooden rope is stagnant, so the horn crossbow should be used. The wooden horn seems to be better than the big iron, but the crossbow of the huge iron can be used in spring, summer, autumn and winter, but the crossbow of the wooden horn is not. For this alone, the iron crossbow is superior to the wooden crossbow horn crossbow. The crossbow with the waist open should be used to make two kinds of wooden horns, so that they can be used all year round. ”

"Two kinds of crossbows?" Xiong Jing smacked his tongue, one crossbow is already very expensive, how can it be possible to build two.

"Exactly. Otherwise, there are only wooden crossbows, and the Chu army can only fight in spring and summer, and only horned crossbows, and the Chu army can only fight in autumn and winter. "Nao's military knowledge is much richer than Xiong Jing's, and his understanding of bows and crossbows is much deeper than Xiong Jing's. Chu was the first country to invent the crossbow, but the crossbow could not be popularized on a large scale, one of the reasons was that the crossbow was too expensive, and the bow and crossbow were not all-weather weapons.

"Then choose a bow." Xiong Jing, who recognized the reality, had to retract his previous thoughts, he really wanted Qin Jun to taste the taste of the waist crossbow. "Is it too few to have only thirty-six archers in one pawn?"

"How many people does the king think is suitable?" Nao asked rhetorically. "Don't forget, the king, how many dingkou there are in my Chu country."

"Three million." Xiong Jing said. After he finished speaking, he remembered another thing in his heart, and after thinking about it, he mustered up the courage to say: "Nao Qing, look, when will my Chu State be able to anticipate the people?" ”

"Never, never, never, As soon as he mentioned the material, Minnao's face changed drastically, and he waved his hand again and again. "The people are the head of the evil government, even if the ministers agree, the courtiers and the countrymen will not answer."

"Hey!" Although he guessed that Nao Cunning would react like this, Xiong Jing still sighed.

What is a material? The people are expected to be the imperial court, which holds a nationwide census from top to bottom. This was very normal in later generations, and it would come every few years, and there was no objection to it. But in this era, the earliest time that the people of the kingdoms were the king of Zhou Xuan's people in Taiyuan' (789 BC). Even if it is not a national census, just the people in Taiyuan have caused complaints from all over the world for hundreds of years. "The people are unpredictable" and "the head of the evil government" starts here.

Xiong Jing seems to have forgotten that the Qing court said that it was to implement constitutional government, and in the 33rd year of Guangxu (1907), it was also expected that the people would be unexpected, which unsurprisingly caused civil unrest, and the villagers rioted and burned the official offices, all in the north and south of the river.

What is the purpose of the people? This is like an IQ and experience test, thinking that the people are for the good of the common people, the IQ and experience of those who think that the people are for the good of the people are self-explanatory, and everyone else knows that there are only two purposes for the people: one to conscript, and the other is to collect taxes.

King Xuan of Zhou was expected to be in Taiyuan, it was the Zhou army and the Jiang clan who fought in a thousand acres, the Zhou army was defeated, and it was urgent to recruit soldiers; At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the people of the national nature were pretended to be for constitutional government, but in fact, because the annual income of copper yuan and opium was decreasing, they could ask for money for the new policy, and they needed money to train the new army of Mongolia and the new army of 36 towns to defend the 'Qing Dynasty', so they had to raise taxes.

The people of Qin are not a problem, and the people have no power to resist at all; The three Jin Dynasty all expected the people, but that was a few decades ago, when the country was strong, and the people were forcibly expected. In the 800 years of the Chu State, the number of Fu people was all reported by the townships and counties, rather than the top and bottom of the imperial court. The number of households is more than 460,000, and the number of Dingkou is more than 2.8 million.

"The minister just wants to remind the king that the Ding mouth of the Chu State is limited, and the soldiers have huge armor, so they should reduce the archers. There were two hundred and twenty-five spearmen, sixty-four archers, and one hundred horsemen, and four hundred men and drummers. The 300,000-strong army had 750 soldiers, including 48,000 archers and 75,000 horsemen, and the number of soldiers in the array was less than 170,000. ”