In late March, just as the report of the Northern Frontier Army's capture of Chita had just been delivered to Nanjing, Chen Ming's long-prepared imperial drive finally drove out of Nanjing City.

He was about to take the lead in his own army, but the resistance he suffered in the city of Nanking made him feel stronger than the enemy he had to face.

Whether it is the harem concubine, or the cabinet minister, or the members of the ministry, almost no one agrees with his personal conquest.

This war is not a battle to determine the country, in the eyes of a series of people in Nanjing, this battle is undefeated by China. There was no need for Chen Ming to personally command the troops. How did they know the significance of this war in Chen Ming's heart?

This is an attack on Lao Maozi.

No matter how close the relationship between rabbits and polar bears was in the era before Chen Ming's time, Chen Ming will never forget the harm caused by the Russians to China in history.

The last time the war was just a last resort, this time it was his intention to participate. This is an absolute initiative attack!

There was also his eldest son Chen Ding in the accompanying crowd, he is now a fourth-year student in the Army Department of the Central Military Academy, he was married two years ago, and he has three children - of course, this child is not the daughter of the Zheng family - I seem to have reversed Zheng Hongyu and Wei Xiuzhi before, and it is Wei Xiuzhi in the Northwest Military Region - after the eldest son of the emperor married the main house, it is normal for the eldest son to take two small rooms by the way. This time, Chen Ding followed Chen Ming as a staff officer. If he performs well this time, Chen Ming will give him a knighthood after returning to Beijing, and then throw him to the logistics department.

After two years of training in the logistics department, and then two years in the general staff, he jumped out of the military system and entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs......

As a member of the royal family, even if he can't sit on the throne in the future, he can get a piece of fertile soil in the Americas, and he is called a lonely king, and there is really no great need to understand the internal and political system in detail, even if Chen Ming, who has been the emperor for more than ten years, does not dare to say that he can handle the specific affairs of the prefecture and county, and he can be stronger than the prefect and prefect below.

If you don't want to lose power, you just need to hold the military power. The training of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is to broaden his horizons and understand the world, so that he will not be fooled in the future......

This route is not only designed for Chen Ding alone, all of Chen Ming's sons have to go through the tempering of this system after graduating from college.

His son does not need to really enter the front line of the army, he personally leads the soldiers to fight. The tradition in China is very different from that of Western countries, where most of the royal children have to enter the army, taking Russia, Prussia and Austria as examples, each generation has a royal blood relative, prince and other figures become army marshals, and even famous generals in Europe. But in the Eastern world, military power is something that no wise prince dares to touch.

Even if the digital army is very hot in the 21st century, the relationship between Yong Lao Si and Lao 13, everyone says okay?

After Yong Lao Si succeeded to the throne, Lao Thirteen not only got a ***** but also sat on the Prime Minister Wang.

But does the hand of the old thirteen still dare to reach out to the military power after the fourth Yong Lao succeeds to the throne?

Peeling back the layers of glossy clothing, the inside is very skinny.

But they must also understand the military and know how to infiltrate their influence into the army. This is the basis for maintaining power!

Chen Ming also brought a Praetorian Guard army of about 10,000 people, which was the elite general he selected from the Guards Division, the Guards Division and the Guards Cavalry Division.

The army boarded the ship from Nanjing, traced the river and went up to Wuhan, then went north to the Central Plains, and then entered the Shaanxi Pass from the Central Plains, and the eight hundred miles of Qinchuan ran to the end of Gansu.

Over the years, Chen Han has worked hard to build a transportation infrastructure that will play a huge role in this process.

It is also a national highway or a railway. The end result is one thing – to save the time of the army.

The troops went north from Xiangyang to the Central Plains, and Chen Ming proposed to take Chen Ding back to his hometown Lushan, and in addition to worshipping the ancestral temple, he also feasted the old and young in the old capital.

Then he rode his horse and went after the army.

Chen Ming originally planned to do so, the time of calculation was not bad, he felt that when he was in Luoyang, he could just catch up with the team. But in fact, he made the large army wait in Luoyang for two more days, because his speed was far from as fast as originally planned. After a long ride, the flesh on his inner thighs was worn out.

"Resurrection of the flesh, ......"

No one knew that when Chen Ming galloped back to Lushan, the flesh on the inside of his legs was already painful. It's just that Chen Ming can endure it, his physical fitness is still very strong, and he endured it.

But when he left Lushan and went north, he naturally slowed down.

Chen Ming was very surprised by this unexpected situation. Knowing that he was also riding in a carriage.

Liu Ranran's original sigh actually fell on him, which was really unreasonable.

But if you think about it carefully, how many years has he not led troops to war? Since Dingguo, he has rarely left Nanjing, and he rarely rides a horse, except for rouge horses. And if you leave Nanjing, the way to travel must be to take a treasure boat.

Horseback riding is really rare, very little.

At the beginning, Liu Ran had only been stable in Jingzhou for five or six years, and he loudly lamented that he was about to grow old and his achievements had not been built, so he had a "sigh of flesh". Chen Ming has been stable in Nanjing for two 'five or six years'.

I haven't ridden a war horse for a long time, and the flesh on my thighs has grown, although Chen Ming doesn't feel that he has spent more than ten years in waste, he also secretly has a wake-up call-time is short. In the blink of an eye, his body was almost forty years old.

And just when Chen Ming and his army had just entered Shaanxi, the Sino-Russian war had been in full swing.

In the northwest, northern Xinjiang, and northeast, the national defense forces in the three battlefields all entered the offensive, and the total number of troops invested by Chen Han was as high as 1340,000.

Among them, the northwest battlefield alone accounted for 80,000 people.

Wei Xiuzhi's vanguard was 30,000 people, and there were 50,000 follow-up troops. And this is still the early stage of military strength, if necessary, Chen Han can invest more troops, they are financially abundant.

And how many Russians are there opposite them?

The strength of the Orenburg Governorate has been strengthened by St. Petersburg over the years, and two years ago the number of troops was more than 20,000 - which is already a large number, and now it is estimated that it will be doubled, that is, about 50,000.

Although Catherine II repeatedly ordered the conscription of troops, it is rumored that the total number of Russian troops has reached 500,000 men. But how much water is there?

Don't forget how many people there are in the whole of Russia, just over 30 million [including the annexed Polish regions].

So how many men will be between the ages of twenty and forty in this country?

On the basis of more than 30 million, 500,000 troops were recruited, which can be called exhaustive.

And as far as Russia's finances are concerned, to support 500,000 troops, are they feeding beggars?

Some intelligence from the MIA indicates that many people in the Russian army use Tula muskets of poor quality, thanks to their low cost (1/4 of their British counterparts). The Russians contracted a significant portion of their arms production to six arms dealers, both state-run and private, all of whom were trying to squeeze the workers in order to make as much profit as possible. Besides, Russia's military manufacturing is quite primitive, and the production process is extremely dependent on manual work, but many effective and durable tools are beyond the reach of the Russians, especially hammers and drills, and it is almost impossible to obtain excellent iron processing machinery. Russian craftsmen sometimes had to use only planers and chisels, which was a major disadvantage of the Russian military industry. And how high the quality of the gun chamber produced in this way, and how time-consuming and labor-intensive, can be imagined.

Had it not been for Peter I's visionary establishment of Russia's first large steel factories in the Urals on the border between Europe and Siberia, which allowed Russia to meet its military needs, even though it was still far behind in its era in metal smelting, the cost of their muskets would not have been overwhelmed.

Russia is Europe's largest iron producer, second only to Britain in copper production, and Siberia has all the important raw materials needed for the Russian military-industrial system, iron, copper and timber, and Russia has abundant such resources. This is one of the important reasons why the cost of Russian muskets is only a quarter of that of the British. And with the huge scale of production and the rapid pace of production, it is not surprising that there will be rifles of substandard quality.

When Chen Ming got this information, he felt that Lao Maozi often fought with people with bayonets, was it because the performance of their own muskets was too poor, and the platoon guns were completely at a disadvantage, so they played hand-to-hand combat again and again?

Then there is the financial problem of Russia. The latter is a very serious issue for all countries in the world, especially as a big country, once they enter a state of war, they must pay attention not only to the financial crisis, but also to the political crisis caused by the financial crisis, such as France is a living example.

Finance has a great impact on a country's foreign and military policy, and in the Napoleonic Wars in the original time and space, Prussia and Austria all changed their policies because of financial problems.

But Russia's fiscal policy is very strange. They rely on loans. As soon as Russia is caught in the middle of a war, their finances will be beyond their means, and their annual expenditures will often exceed their annual revenues by large sums of money. But Russia was able to make up for it with loans from Dutch bankers, and then the fiscal deficit had to be made up by triggering paper rubles. So much so that the actual value of today's paper rubles is only about 1/2 of the silver ruble. Inflation led to a surge in state spending, runaway inflation and the collapse of paper money credit also made Russia's treasury sit on the edge of its seat, and in addition, when fighting on foreign territory, no one wants to exchange goods and services for paper rubles.

But in the opinion of Catherine II, none of this was a problem. She just needs enough money to win the war.

The biggest advantage of Russian human resources is that the price is low, even if the Russian army is paid in silver kopecks, the British soldiers are 10 times that of their Russian counterparts, and the ruble has depreciated so much. What's more, the salaries of the British Red Shrimp soldiers were not high in the first place, at least much lower than the actual income of the Chinese soldiers.

In peacetime, soldiers from Britain and France, Prussia, Austria and other countries could get rice, meat, peas and cheese in addition to bread, while Russian soldiers only had flour and beans, although in wartime there would be meat and vodka. Russian soldiers are sometimes given not uniforms and boots, but clothing and leather, and they have to make their own clothes and shoes. The same was true of ammunition, gunpowder, lead and paper were distributed to the regiments for the soldiers to make themselves.

Chen Ming couldn't believe his eyes when he got this information, the cost of the Russian army was really too low, and he couldn't imagine that these Russian mother's sons were so easy to feed before.

The low cost of recruiting recruits made the Russian army the largest and cheapest army in Europe, and their sources were basically dependent on peasant and slave populations. The average army battalion of the Russian army consisted of 74% peasants, 24% slaves, and 2% townspeople (craftsmen, merchants, etc.), or ethnic minorities, such as Tatars. This system makes the Russian army more competitive and superior.

The recruitment limit of the Russian army is 17~35 years old, and the minimum height standard for soldiers is 1.6 meters. The shortest levy is assigned to the light infantry company, and the taller one is assigned to the grenadier company.

Chen Ming doesn't believe in the number '500,000'. What kind of concept is this, in a country of more than 3,000 people, to recruit a standing army of 500,000 people, if it is true, Catherine II's mind is full of Yoneda Ko.

But to say that the Russians have been wary of China, and the number of troops has increased over the years, reaching a total of 300,000+, Chen Ming still believes it a little.

Chen Han's main force was in the northwest, and as for the northern and northeastern battlefields, they could be combined as a whole, and the scale of 50,000 or 60,000 troops on both sides was enough to cut off the eagle's head that Russia was looking to the east.

The Russians, plus the total number of troops in the remnants of the Qing Dynasty, may have been only about 30,000. Chen Han also occupies an absolute advantage.

And don't forget that Chen Han still has a nail planted inside Russia, and at the same time they can recruit the Mongols.

From the western part of the Kazakh steppe to the Ural River, the Mongols flew freely. In the future, Chen Han will also provoke them to attack Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the south, and wipe out the khanates in Central Asia.

It's not because Afghanistan is a bullshit 'graveyard of empires', and conquering it can satisfy Chen Ming's inner passion. And purely because of the geography and resources of Afghanistan.

Don't look at Afghanistan's sense of existence in the international community is constantly being beaten and wars, but Afghanistan's territory is not small, and there are 650,000 square kilometers in later generations, and now although I don't know its specific size, it is basically there, isn't it?

Located at the intersection of West Asia, South Asia and Central Asia, connecting East and West, connecting Central, West and South Asia, this place can be called the "key" to the South Asian continent, and its strategic position is very important.

The third brother was conquered by foreign peoples several times, and that was all from Afghanistan.

It is bordered by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north, a prominent narrow strip (the Wakhan Corridor) to the northeast bordering China, India [Pakistan] to the east and southeast, and Persia [Iran] to the west. After taking this place, Chen Han will be able to explore India from another angle, and he will also be able to have further exchanges with Persia. Although the Chinese allies of the Celestial World were the Ottomans.

But those who do not seek the overall situation are not enough to seek a corner; Those who do not seek the general trend are not enough to seek a moment. We need to take a long-term view, and look at the world in a few decades.

What would the Ottoman Empire be like at that time?

With the development of science and technology, the Europeans will have another chance to resist China's hegemony, perhaps they will no longer have the confidence to overthrow China at that time, but they will definitely compete with China in the heavenly world and Africa.

Persian oil is very eye-catching.

Sooner or later, Chen Han will also have a close relationship with Persia.

……

Without further ado, let's look at the terrain of Afghanistan. The reason why this place is called the graveyard of empires in the 21st century is because of the mountainous nature of Afghanistan, with highlands and mountains covering 4/5 of the country's area, and deserts in the southwest. The complex topography makes it a haven for 'guerrilla warfare'. Even in the 21st century, when science and technology are advanced, the lighthouse country has not yet been able to completely complete the base. Not to mention this era.

If the local tribe insists on resisting, it will really hurt.

And Afghanistan really fascinates Chen Ming is its mineral resources, although it is not as rich as oil in the Middle East, but it itself is a miracle in the history of the world's metal mineral reserves, and the entire Afghan territory is buried with metal resources that make the world tremble!

These include iron, iron, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, lithium, beryllium, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, talc, marble, barite, precious and semi-precious stones, salt, uranium, and many more.

In this day and age, of course, it is difficult to effectively exploit the resources of the mines there. Not only the problem of transportation, but also the problem of smelting. Afghanistan is rich in minerals, but it lacks coal. It would be wishful thinking to start developing it in the current era. It will have to wait until 200 years from now.

But this is enough for Chen Ming to remember. Who made Afghanistan so close to China?