No matter what the era, the gap between the rich and the poor between countries is very obvious, and Lin Zhe cannot expect other countries to be like the Americans, casually spending millions of pounds to purchase armaments.

However, these orders add up, and if the 1858 Linde rifle performs well in the American Civil War, it is estimated that there will be more orders.

100,000? Half a million? Or a million?

Historically, during the American Civil War, the British exported more than one million 1853 Enfield rifles to both the North and the South of the United States, and the British could not even complete such a huge production, so that a considerable part of them were still licensed to the Americans to produce their own products.

Now, Lin Zhe hopes that the 1858 Linde rifle can completely replace the 1853 Enfield rifle in the American Civil War!

That's a huge order of more than a million pieces worth tens of millions of pounds!

It makes your mouth water just thinking about it!

At that time, even if it is impossible to produce all of it and is forced to license the patent to the Americans to produce it themselves, it will still be a big profit.

This situation is not only Lin Zhe can hallucinate, in fact, Pan Lixuan of the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department is also extremely eager for this, in order to produce the existing orders that are already piled up, but also to meet more huge orders.

Pan Lixuan has already begun to rectify and sort out these national defense enterprises controlled by the Palace Affairs Department, and has merged and rectified some arsenals in response to the calls of many people.

At present, many enterprises in the royal industry, although they all belong to the royal industry, are basically operated independently, such as Linde Machinery Factory and Jinling Arsenal. There is no direct connection between them, and the shares, R&D, and operations are all separated. Even the Jinling Arsenal had to pay the Linde Machinery Factory royalties for some of its products.

In order to further integrate the resources of defense enterprises, the palace affairs department began to integrate these enterprises. However, in order to avoid the emergence of a monopoly, resulting in no competition in the enterprise, so the integration will not be all integrated, but complementary to each other, and two to three defense industry groups will be established at the same time.

This integration is also a preparation for subsequent expansion!

Therefore, in late May, the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department carried out integration and reform of some of the enterprises under its control, among which some factories of Linde Machinery Factory were split. For example, its chemical plant was spun off and then merged with the dye factories owned by Linde Machinery Company and Shanghai Textile Company.

Jiangnan Chemical Company was established separately, and its business designed cloth dyes, daily chemicals, gunpowder, matches, paints, etc., of course, its main business is still all kinds of military "gun" and explosives, and the military's largest supplier of "gunpowder explosives".

Subsequently, the remaining divisions of the Linde Machinery Factory were merged with the Jinling Arsenal and the Dangtu Arsenal to form the 'Royal Arms Company'

Later, the Tianjin Arsenal will be the mainstay, plus the military plans to build a gun repair factory in Liaoning. Establishment of the 'Northern Arms Company'

At the same time, with the Changsha Arsenal as the core, the newly invested and unfinished Wuchang Arsenal in Wuchang, Hubei Province was integrated into the 'Huguang Weapons Company'.

The reason why the three arms companies were created at the same time, rather than being directly integrated into one arms company, was that they were able to compete with each other. Only through competition can there be innovation, and only then can the military use better weapons.

Of the three weapons companies established, the Royal Arms Company is undoubtedly the largest. The most complete variety, but in order to maintain the competitiveness of the Huguang Arms Company and the Northern Arms Company. will not be reduced to a companion, so the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department injected more than 300,000 yuan into these two companies at one time.

At the same time, the Royal Bank has also promised to give the two weapons companies in the next three years. Provide loans of not less than one million dollars.

This integration, is also the royal industry after the establishment of the largest scale of the integration of Shanghai textile company, the establishment of Shanghai textile company, the complete unified integration of the royal industry belongs to the major steam reeling silk mills and other raw silk related tea, now Shanghai textile company has developed into the largest textile enterprise in China, and the merchant ship has arrived in Europe and the United States, and in London, Paris, New York three places have opened branches.

This is also the first time that a Chinese company has gone abroad to set up a permanent branch office in a foreign country!

Such a big integration of the royal industry is naturally to meet more ordnance orders, and the bulk of its orders can certainly have orders from the United States, but the more important thing is the internal orders of the imperial military.

According to the military's expansion plan, by 1865, if the Royal Army wants to expand to 30 integrated infantry divisions and cavalry units, it will be expanded to at least 130 cavalry companies, and the reason why the cavalry company is used as a statistic is because the cavalry configuration in the Royal Army is relatively flexible, except for a cavalry company with 200 cavalry is a fixed establishment, other cavalry battalions, cavalry regiments, and cavalry brigades are all flexible formations, and some cavalry battalions have three cavalry companies to reach more than 600 cavalry. Some cavalry regiments have only three or four cavalry companies, with a strength allocation of between 600 and 800.

At the same time there will be some oversized cavalry regiments, with five or even six cavalry companies, amounting to a thousand or even one thousand two hundred cavalry.

For example, the 1st Cavalry Brigade currently has three cavalry regiments and one cavalry battalion. The 2nd Cavalry Brigade had only two cavalry regiments.

Moreover, cavalry combat tends to have its standard tactical units multilateral, and it is impossible to maintain infantry divisions as fixed as infantry. In the establishment of an infantry regiment, the standard combat unit of cavalry is a cavalry company, and large-scale cavalry operations are often combined with several cavalry companies.

Therefore, it is inappropriate to discuss the number of cavalry units of the Chinese Army, and to say how many cavalry brigades, cavalry regiments, and battalions there are, and can only be counted by the basic establishment of cavalry companies.

Among the 130 cavalry companies, there are 30 divisional cavalry companies attached to the infantry division, and the rest of the cavalry companies are respectively composed of cavalry battalions, regiments, cavalry brigades, etc.

In addition, there are a number of independent artillery units, including eight separate field artillery regiments, five heavy artillery regiments, etc.

In addition to these, there are also a large number of local garrison troops, and these local garrison units, garrison regiments, garrison battalions, and other establishments are stationed in various parts of the country. Each province has a garrison of about 5,000 to 10,000 men, depending on the situation. Most of the provinces are garrisoned by infantry, while the Mongols, northeast, and northwest regions are mostly cavalry.

Moreover, the expansion of the Chinese army is not only reflected in the expansion of the number. More importantly, the change in the establishment led to the increase of each infantry division from more than 9,000 to 12,000 men, and this reform of the establishment was not only limited to the front-line field troops of the Royal Army, but also the garrison troops, and the Royal Guards will also be reformed according to the new skirmishers.

This will lead to a further increase in the total strength of the Chinese army after the completion of the reform!

According to the current series of expansion and reform plans of the Chinese army, by 1865, the Chinese army will have 30 infantry divisions, 3 guards divisions, 130 cavalry companies (including 33 divisional cavalry companies), 13 independent artillery regiments (five heavy artillery regiments), and three independent engineering regiments. The total field force will exceed 440,000.

The total number of garrisons in the provinces should be 300,000, and although these garrisons are slightly inferior in training and weapons, they are only second-line troops in the Chinese army, but in fact they are still regular troops, and they are still under the system of the Royal Army.

In other words, by 1865, the land armed forces of the Chinese Empire would reach more than 740,000, if you count the civilian personnel in Beijing and other places. cadets, etc., then it will be more than 750,000 people.

The size of this force is roughly the same as the total number of regular armed forces in the former Qing Dynasty.

At the same time, it is also similar to the army power of the West, Prussia, Austria, France, and Russia, which generally have more than 500,000 troops, but they are only limited to about 500,000. In the Crimean War that broke out a few years ago, the Russian army mobilized about 700,000 troops to participate in the war, and the coalition forces mobilized nearly one million troops before and after. Of course, these troops are not all thrown in at once, but in a similar way to add fuel to the tactics. The maximum number of troops maintained by both sides on the front line is only three or four hundred thousand.

For example, the North and the South of the United States, where war is now breaking out, have more troops in the Northern Army. The strength of the Southern Army was smaller, but it was only in the hundreds of thousands.

In the Franco-Prussian War in history, the German army mobilized nearly one million troops before the war, and nearly 700,000 people were used for combat, while the size of the French army was about 600,000, but the combat strength was about 350,000.

As for the army of more than a million, this is basically unlikely, not that countries do not have such a large population, but they cannot afford to support such a large army.

Therefore, the size of the army on weekdays is generally not large, and the general mobilization will not be carried out until the outbreak of the Great War, so that it is possible to form an army of millions as during the First World War.

However, this also involves the ability to mobilize rapidly before the war, and at present, with the exception of Germany, which has a compulsory military service law, all countries do not have the ability to quickly mobilize in the months before the war and quickly double or even triple the number of troops.

The current Chinese Empire does not have such capabilities either!

The current Chinese Empire still implements the volunteer system, because it is difficult to implement a comprehensive compulsory military system in the industrial base, transportation conditions, and even the state system.

For this reason, Lin Zhe has prepared another way, that is, to maintain a large reserve force in peacetime, that is, the local garrison force!

In peacetime, this garrison accepts retired soldiers and officers from the army, and is composed of these retired soldiers and officers, and mainly undertakes the task of maintaining local stability, and when necessary, acts as an armed police officer to assist the local government and the police to deal with local affairs.

During the war, in addition to controlling the localities, these local garrisons were dispatched to the front line and organized into temporary brigades, divisions, or independent units, so as to participate in the battle.

In this way, it can be ensured that once a war breaks out between the empire and other countries, the front-line field troops can be reinforced by at least 300,000 troops in the shortest possible time, and these troops are not newly recruited soldiers who are urgently mobilized to join the army, but veterans who retired from the front-line troops in the early years and are still serving in the garrison forces.

After all, if we want to ensure that these garrison units have combat effectiveness, if they can return to the front-line battlefield at any time, they must keep up with the equipment and training, and even if their salaries are slightly lower than those of the front-line field troops, it is still a relatively large expense.

However, there is no way to do this, and if this is not done, it will be difficult for the empire to obtain hundreds of thousands of reserve troops within the first two or three months of the outbreak of war with the enemy.

How many rifles are needed in the front-line troops and garrison troops combined, more than 700,000 people? At least 600,000 or more.

More artillery is needed in addition to rifles!

And these are all produced by these three domestic weapons companies!

Domestic military orders, orders from the United States, and due to the relaxation of the export of the 1858 Linde rifle, it can be expected to bring more foreign trade orders, so the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department will make the integration of many subordinate arsenals to expand production capacity.

In order to welcome more orders!

In fact, the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department has not yet completed the integration of several arsenals, and a few special guests have stepped on the dock of the Huangpu River from an ocean passenger ship.

The identities of these people are not simple, but the envoys of the Nguyen Dynasty (Vietnam) of the Great Southern Kingdom, when they got off the ship, they immediately found the headquarters of the Royal Arms Company that had just been listed, and then directly said that they wanted to purchase a large number of ordnance weapons! (To be continued.) )