Zhu Hongsan's current development has entered a bottleneck, and in the terminology of later generations, the productive forces have restricted the development of production relations. The strength of Zhu Hongsan's army can be said to be the highest in Asia, and even in Europe, the individual combat capability is far higher than that of the European powers. This can be seen in a series of battles in Nan Zhili some time ago.

The new army, armed with well-trained and powerful weapons, completely defeated the Manchu army in the front. It's not something that can be made up for by numbers. Just like at the end of the Qing Dynasty, more than 10,000 British and French troops fought more than 200,000 Manchu troops all over the place; During the Gulf War, the United States paralyzed a country with its air force alone. When the strength forms a generation gap, it doesn't take much effort for the high dimension to play the low dimension.

However, these are based on the corresponding productive forces, Zhu Hongsan has a modern army, but his industry is still ancient handicrafts. Nanzhili's results look very good, but behind it is the strong backing of tens of thousands of factories and millions of workers in Guangdong.

A battle consumes hundreds of tons of gunpowder, thousands of shells of various types, and countless bullets. The battle of Nanzhili lasted for half a month, and the consequence was that Zhu Hongsan's weapons inventory was reduced by more than half, and all the gunpowder was shipped to Nanzhili. If the Manchu Qing Dynasty directly attacked Guangdong at this time, Zhu Hongsan would only have the life to escape by boat.

Zhu Hongsan estimated that if Guangdong's tens of millions of people were under his control, the army he could supply would only be 100,000 at most, and if he wanted more, he would have to be equipped with cold weapons.

Therefore, now Zhu Hongsan's focus is to develop a new type of machinery to provide power and solve this semi-manual and semi-hydraulic production mode. There is also a new machine, which is the big killer steam engine. The principle of this thing is very simple, just get a boiler, but the key is that this boiler must be strong enough and not leak, which is really beyond the scientific and technological level of the Ming Dynasty.

The drawings for the steam engine, Zhu Hongsan, had already been completed, using the Lancashire double-flue boiler, invented in 1844, and then widely used - after continuous design and minor improvements in materials, it served modern industry until the twentieth century.

The Lancashire boiler has a large capacity and can provide a stable flow of steam, it is an atmospheric boiler and cannot provide high-pressure steam, so it is relatively weak in evaporation power and is more limited in use. However, its technology is simple and mature, and it is not difficult to manufacture, riveted with low-carbon steel plates, and can also be manufactured with rolled wrought iron plates, which is no problem for Zhu Hongsan's current production process.

The first steam engine designed and manufactured by Zhu Hongsan was a horizontal steam engine, which was driven by the Lancashire boiler, and the cylinder with steam jacket was located on the cast iron base, and the chute and the base were cast into one piece, and drilled holes. The crank pin is connected to a suspended crankshaft plate, the outer end of which is supported by a separate bearing. The regulator automatically adjusts the degree of expansion according to the load of the machine. There are two main spool valves and expansion valves driven by eccentric wheels on the crankshaft. When the vapor pressure is four kilograms per square centimeter and the speed is ninety-five revolutions per minute, it can produce fifty horsepower.

The ideal is beautiful, but the reality is skinny. Zhu Hongsan's first steam engine design was very successful, but the production process of Daming was delayed in production, and so far no practical steam engine has been produced, most of which have a service life of less than 100 hours.

Later, Zhu Hongsan also lost interest, and left it to the craftsmen to tinker. But now there is no new power source at all, Zhu Hongsan decided this time that he must make a practical steam engine within half a year.

Zhu Hongsan looked at the order to transfer troops in his hand, and smiled bitterly in his heart, these guys are simple, one mouth is how many thousands of people, how many ships, but he knows that now Guangdong's production capacity has reached its peak. But now there is no way, there is no difficulty, and it is necessary to create difficulties.

Zhu Hongsan picked up the red pen and signed his name on the order drafted by Zhang Jiayu, and asked Zhang Jiayu to hand it over to the cabinet for implementation.

Zhu Hongsan is now only in charge of the country, and he still uses the cabinet system of the Ming Dynasty, in fact, this system is very similar to the prime minister system of later generations. The emperor is responsible for the general direction, and the cabinet is responsible for the implementation of the first assistant university leader, and Zhu Hongsan also thinks that this system is perfect and does not need to be changed. So it's completely take-it-or-leave-it, what the Ming Dynasty should do now.

There are many advantages to this, and the scholars have no strangeness at all, and they can handle government affairs very quickly. At the same time, the rational flow of officials from top to bottom can also form a cohesive force. But this is just the cabinet, and Zhu Hongsan, another strange institution of the Ming Dynasty, has not yet figured out what to do, that is, the imperial history system.

This system has existed since ancient times, and since the Qin Dynasty, one of the three princes, the Imperial Historian, has been set up, which is the supervisory body of all officials in the country and is directly responsible to the emperor. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang inherited the old system of the Song and Yuan dynasties and set up six departments in the sixth year of Hongwu, including officials, households, rites, soldiers, criminals, and workers, and the six departments were initially set up in the middle of the matter, and gradually finalized after the 24th year of Hongwu, which became an important development of the supervision system in the Ming Dynasty.

The imperial history system of the Ming Dynasty was divided into two parts, one was the imperial history of the Inspectorate focusing on supervising the officials and general organs of the whole country, and the other was that the six departments were to supervise the business of the six departments, and the two were not unified and could be impeached by each other. Each section is set up to give one person in the matter (positive seven products), one person to each of the left and right (from the seventh grade), and four to ten people in the matter, and its duties are "constant attendants, regulations, supplements, gleanings, and inspecting the affairs of the six departments". Because the Six Ministries were the highest administrative departments in the country, it was necessary for the Emperor that the Six Ministries supervised them as their main responsibility. The authority of the six departments is similar to that of the imperial history, but its specialized business supervision requires that the possible harm be discovered and corrected while the work is still in progress, and the possible damage can be eliminated.

The Ming Dynasty also had high requirements for the selection of this position. According to the regulations, it is generally "a person who has worked in various yamen for more than two years, a doctor and an official, and a county magistrate who has completed the examination for three years". At the same time, the Ming Dynasty also paid attention to the assessment in the matter, and the promotion and promotion of the seven-grade petty officials had to be determined by the emperor. It can be seen that the Ming Dynasty set up a large number of Taiwanese officials, on the one hand, to maintain the imperial power to prevent the powerful ministers from domineering, and on the other hand, to strengthen the connection between the central and local governments, so as to facilitate the exercise of the emperor's power over the internal and external officials.

This strange system of imperial history was a guarantee for the emperor to grasp the power of the whole country in peacetime, but it became a constraint in times of crisis. Just like Chongzhen, it is clear that he can negotiate peace with Houjin and free up his hands to eliminate the civil strife first.