Napoleon IV and his wife would not have thought at this time that although the "Oriental Magic Box" has become history, a new history has begun in the hands of Lin Yiqing since this day, and they will plunge into the torrent of history together with many other people. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

April 6, 9086 (the 12th year of the Great Dry Mitsui, the 19th year of the Meiji era of Japan), Brest, the Naval Academy of Brittany, France.

At the invitation of Admiral Guba, the honorary president of the Naval Academy, Lin Yiqing and his entourage went to the Brittany Naval Academy for inspection.

As a maritime power, Brest is one of the most important naval bases in France, and a powerful detachment of the French Navy is deployed in the nearby waters. The Naval Academy is located on a peninsula called Coop Brown not far from the city, and it takes about half an hour by boat from the city's commercial port.

The Brittany Naval Academy is a place to train senior officers for the French Navy, and the military center is naturally not a casual entry and exit, of course, there are exceptions, such as this time Lin Yiqing and his party came to investigate, it is a rare open day of the Naval Academy.

In addition to training military personnel for the navy of the country, the Brittany Naval Academy also conducts academic research and exchanges in many other fields, and there are now many students from abroad, most of whom are students from Qianguo and Japan.

Although the French Navy has a large number of academies, there is only one formal academy in Brittany that trains junior naval officers. All naval officers must go through the training of this academy. The main task of the cadets in the Naval Academy is to realize the transformation from ordinary people to soldiers, to master the leadership qualities necessary for a junior commander of the Navy, and to study the basic professional courses of the Navy, but not to carry out professional education. After the expiration of the study period, the academy assigns them to the corresponding naval professional school for professional training according to the needs of the specialty. Professional schools, according to the complexity of the major, the length of study varies, generally half a year to three years, such as the ironclad ship crew major takes 3 years.

France has a relatively well-developed education and a relatively high level of education among its citizens, and the French Navy has made full use of this advantage to train talents for the army. The French Naval Academy is mainly for students who have completed two years of basic cultural study in the local pre-university department. Study at the Naval Academy for two years, followed by an internship on a training ship for a year. During the two years of study, students mainly learn the basics related to the navy and conduct rigorous training in military qualities and leadership skills.

The training objectives of the French Naval Academy are closely focused on the training of command and leadership skills. This is always highlighted from the curriculum, teaching content to practice. For example, the teaching plan of the French Naval Academy is divided into three parts, 45% in the humanities and social sciences, 36% in engineering and technology, and 19% in military vocational training. All officers of the French Navy are required to be trained at the Naval Academy of Brittany, the purpose of which is to provide officers with a high level of leadership and command ability.

The French Naval Academy also attaches great importance to the cultivation of students' practical ability, in addition to arranging many times and more time of practical courses in the teaching plan, in the specific implementation process, it is also highlighting the cultivation of students' leadership ability. In addition to theoretical lectures, the cadets must also go to the field training base for a four-day field training, bring their own tents, tools, and food, and carry a weight of more than 25 kilograms per person, and complete more than a dozen courses designed by the instructors within a radius of several tens of kilometers that approximate the actual combat background.

The comprehensive assessment is the highlight of the cadets of the Naval Academy of Brittany. If a student fails to pass one of the items in the assessment, he will be brutally eliminated in the face of him. During the assessment, seven trainees were assigned to serve as commanders in a group in turn, and they were required to quickly make combat plans, divide labor, coordinate and organize, and complete tasks under extreme fatigue. The instructors who accompany the group are only responsible for issuing training items, judging and grading, and do not give any guidance, aiming to comprehensively train the students' command and leadership ability. When the cadets of the Naval Academy are practicing on the training ship, all the posts on the ship are commanded and operated by the cadets, and the crew is only supervising and protecting the ship, and as long as there are no safety problems, the entire ship is piloted by the cadets, and this training method has played a very good role in promoting the trainees' organizational and command ability and skill training.

The number of trainees trained by the French Naval Academy is not very large, but the teaching facilities and conditions are very complete, the laboratory is not large, and the equipment is relatively advanced. The French Naval Academy has a large training fleet that can meet the needs of more than 1,000 cadets each year. The French Naval Academy has more than a dozen training ships in operation, including the famous "Valmy" sail battleship, as well as eight decommissioned combat ships and hundreds of sampans under the management of the academy.

The French Naval Academy has also implemented a system of socialization of support, with a support company dedicated to naval training and logistical support. The company is responsible for everything from the construction of training equipment, to the management of canteens, greening, and training ships of the academy, and even to the reception of foreign affairs and the planning of outsourced training tasks. The trainees do not clean or wash their clothes, and they are all done by the personnel of the security company.

The instructor team of the French Naval Academy is mainly composed of civilian and military instructors, with a total of 125 civilian instructors, all from local universities, about 160 military instructors, and another 40 instructors dedicated to teaching foreign languages. These civilian faculty members have high academic standards and professional titles. The military instructors are all selected from among the outstanding officers of the unit, have rich practical experience and leadership ability, and have a very strong sense of professionalism, and they all feel that being an instructor at the Naval Academy is a very proud experience. Military instructors are usually rotated every two years. The purpose of their work in the academy is not to manage the cadets, but to use their rich post experience to guide and influence the cadets, so that they can grow into a qualified junior command officer of the Navy.

Lin Yiqing came to the French Naval Academy and first inspected the study situation of the Qianguo Navy students studying here, and saw that these high-spirited and mentally different students and their physique were completely different from those in China, and Lin Yiqing was very pleased: The French did not take money in vain and did not work, but did make great efforts to train these young people, who were originally somewhat cowardly, into real naval soldiers.

After the inspection, Admiral Auber, the current French Minister of the Navy, the leader of the "New School," invited Lin Yiqing to the auditorium of the academy. Looking at the French naval officers and non-commissioned officers below under the black pressure, Lin Yiqing knew that he couldn't run away from this speech.

Before coming to the Brittany Naval Academy, Lin Yiqing made a special trip to visit Gu Ba, who was sick, and Gu Ba told him the news that Admiral Auber, the current French Minister of the Navy and Colonies, planned to invite him to give a lecture on naval development at the Brittany Naval Academy.

At that time, Lin Yiqing knew that he had now entered the ranks of "famous admirals".

Moreover, Aube has also claimed more than once that the "Battle of Kii" commanded by Lin Yiqing during the Southwest War in Japan is the "best interpretation" and "classic example" of the theory of the new naval school!

Lin Yiqing listened to Guba's narration, and immediately understood why Aobei invited him to give a speech, and at the same time, he also knew why Guba told him the news.

After Aubei's theory of the "new school" was released, in the recent naval battles between the world's naval powers, except for the "Battle of Kii" under his command, there were no examples of mineboats and manpower submarines sinking ironclad ships.

Although the "New School" is now in the limelight in the French Navy, the opposition of the "Traditionalists" is also very high, and one of its representatives is Solo.

Guba can be said to have a deep affection for ironclad ships, because the glory of his life - the surprise attack on the port of Kiel and the complete annihilation of the Prussian navy were completely completed by ironclad ships. And now this guy Aube has caricatured ironclads as "saber-toothed elephants" and demanded that the French government completely stop building ironclads, how can he not be furious?

He was not opposed to the development of lightning weapons, but only to the fact that Aube exaggerated the role of torpedo boats and cruisers and abandoned the main ironclad ships of the French Navy.

Guba knew Aobei's intentions, so he told Lin Yiqing the news in advance, hoping that Lin Yiqing would not walk into the misunderstanding of Aobei's guidance in his speech and reverse the prejudice brought by the "new school".

"Now, we invite His Excellency Count Lin Yiqing, the special envoy of the Emperor of the Great Qian Empire, the famous maritime hero, and the victor of the 'Battle of Kii', to give us a wonderful speech on the development of the world's navy!" Aube's passionate voice came, followed by thunderous applause from the audience.

Lin Yiqing calmed down, walked up to the podium, waved his hand to the audience, and the applause gradually calmed down.

Seeing that Lin Yiqing didn't even take the speech, the eyes of Aube and many French admirals flashed with surprise.

Lin Yiqing smiled and nodded at them, and began his speech in fluent French.

“…… As we all know, when commodity production, that is, material production adapted to the needs of exchange, occupies an active position in a country's economic component, and the main object of commodity exchange is foreign rather than domestic, its economic development will inevitably be characterized by large-scale overseas commercial trade, which constitutes the internal motivation for a country to establish the economic foundation of sea power and promote the development of sea power. Booming industrial production urgently needed a huge overseas market and a large number of raw material sources, so overseas trade also rose on a large scale. ”

"The rapid economic growth brought about by high-speed industrialization and the transformation of the national economic structure from an agricultural form to an industry-dominated form have prompted a country to undergo tremendous changes in the structure of foreign trade. In a sense, this change in foreign trade can be seen as an important sign of a country's transformation from an agricultural country to an industrial country. ”

Hearing Lin Yiqing mention overseas trade at the beginning, obviously following his routine, Aobei's eyes flashed with pride.

"Along with a series of policies for a country to establish subsidiary institutions and facilities for overseas trade, sea power has also grown with the development of overseas trade. Sea power is mainly an economic factor, and its motive force and purpose are economic, which arise in the commodity economic activities with overseas trade as the main body, and develop for the purpose of controlling overseas trade and ensuring its smooth development. The establishment and development of sea power is inseparable from the process of large-scale overseas trade and the establishment of the capitalist mode of production, and they are mutually motivated. For this reason, along with the increase in foreign trade in goods, maritime shipping, which has the means to exchange products overseas, has also come into being. ”

"After the surplus product is produced, it has to be transported to the overseas market to realize the exchange of products. Obviously, in order to complete the cycle from production to exchange, the country must have sufficient means of transport - the merchant fleet - to transport goods to overseas markets. The development of the shipping industry, especially the ocean shipping industry, has opened up a broad market and provided a broad stage for the rapid take-off of the economy. It can be seen that the size and capacity of the merchant fleet determine whether overseas trade can be successfully realized. In fact, in our time, wherever a country's merchant fleet goes, its overseas trade advances, and the country's influence expands. In addition, the merchant fleet is not only a means of maritime transportation, it also has the nature of a maritime armed force; Especially before the advent of the permanent armed forces at sea, the merchant fleet could carry goods for overseas trade, and could be equipped with weapons to serve as warships to protect overseas trade, or both. Therefore, the exchange of products is fundamentally dependent on maritime shipping. A maritime power is inevitably a country with a developed maritime shipping industry, and a country with a developed shipping industry has a large merchant fleet. Overseas trade is very fragile and must be protected by the use of armed forces at sea. In order for merchant ships at sea to sail safely and trade smoothly across the oceans, there will inevitably be a large number of competitors on these routes, which will inevitably lead to conflicts of interest, and the result of this will be to resort to force. Under these circumstances, in order to ensure that overseas trade is not interrupted and that sea routes are unimpeded, the naval fleet, a standing armed force at sea, is logically created. These naval fleets were originally derived from the merchant fleet. The increasing scale of maritime shipping objectively required some ships to be separated from the merchant fleet and to perform functions such as escort, warfare, and plundering of colonies. A large number of military ships were launched, a large number of 10,000-ton merchant ships were gradually built, and in order to compete for colonies as dumping places for commodity economy and sources of raw materials, European countries began endless naval battles on the oceans in order to obtain more colonies, and the competition for colonies highlighted the impact of sea power on history. ”

"When a merchant fleet laden with commodities leaves its own shores, it must seek a series of footholds abroad for supply, shelter, repair, anchorage, and trade, without which trade abroad would be likewise impossible. These footholds were usually colonies and military territories in the vast coastal areas of the politically, economically, and culturally backward Americas, Africa, and Asia. In order for overseas trade to take place, maritime powers had to secure and control these colonies and territories to keep their sea lanes open and unsabotaged by the enemy, which required a strong navy. ”

"So, what is the size and direction of a naval force? This question has given rise to a great deal of reverie, and I personally believe that there is only one way to protect maritime trade and colonies in the present situation: it is necessary to have a strong navy, a strong navy that can put them in danger if they go to war with even the most powerful naval powers. ”

"To achieve this, it is absolutely unnecessary for the main fleet of a maritime power to keep up with the size of the fleet of the strongest naval power, for it is generally impossible for any naval power to assemble its main fleet and launch a desperate attack. Even if the enemy poured all their warships to overwhelm us with absolute superiority, it would be a great drain on their mighty fleet to defeat us, and although the enemy may be victorious, their position in the world will no longer be able to sustain this fleet. ”

Hearing Lin Yiqing's words, Aobei's face showed a look of consternation.

He didn't expect that Lin Yiqing's insights into the development of the Navy would be so profound!

Lin Yiqing made a terrible inference here: even Britain, the strongest naval power, maintained its position in the world by a powerful fleet. Therefore, without the fleet, Britain is nothing! The same is true for France! Although his blunt statement is ambitious, it is also flawed because it does not take into account factors such as international relations and alliances.

"The goal is clear, then, what kind of warships do we need to build to form our fleet? As far as I know, the Imperial French Navy now seems to have the answer: new fast cruisers with armor protection and heavy guns, and small ships capable of fighting in the open ocean with torpedoes as their main weapon. ”

Speaking of this, the officers of the "New School" in the audience couldn't help but applaud one after another, while the officers of the "Traditional School" kept silent, just staring at Lin Yiqing, waiting for his next words.

Lin Yiqing smiled again and waved his hand to the applauding audience, and after a long while, the warm applause subsided. (To be continued.) )