The inability to make a breakthrough in the design of warships not only plagued the navies of the Reich, but also the navies of other countries, the most obvious example of which was the British, who experimented and experimented for two decades from the sixties to the eighties, tossing back and forth, in order to break through the barriers of existing warship design.

Unfortunately, despite the rapid development of technology in the past two decades, it is still very limited for warships.

The Imperial Royal Navy in 1878 was similar, it was at the current level of technology, and no matter how much the battleship designer's brain hole played, it could not be changed too much.

Because in 1878, after the Navy and Ship Administration Department slightly modified and improved the Shaohao, it was built as a new battleship this year.

It is reported that the tonnage of the Bi is several hundred tons larger than that of Shaohao, and the total tonnage has exceeded 11,000 tons, but although the tonnage is several hundred tons larger, the basic design still follows the Shaohao, so it is still included in the Shaohao class, which is the third ship of the Shaohao class.

The armament is similar and the speed is similar, the only difference is that the headquarters is located on the ship, which is expected to be used as the flagship of the new generation of the Royal Navy.

Compared with the Koubi, there is not much change, and the Royal Navy's third armored cruiser, the Laurel, which started construction last year, is more changed than the previous Qinglong-class armored cruisers.

Because the Laurel armored cruiser is used for a new generation of warships, and introduces many design concepts and new technologies of the Shaohao-class battleship, the gun used by the ship is a newly developed 250 mm 35 times caliber naval gun, you must know that the power of this main gun is even stronger than the previous 250 mm and 30 times the caliber main gun installed on the Yandi-class battleship.

It can be said that this gun is the most powerful main gun in the empire except for the 300 mm 30 times the caliber of the naval gun, the Laurel is expected to be equipped with four of this main gun, using the front and rear twin turrets deployment, and the secondary gun is also the latest research and development, and the same 35 times 150 mm naval guns on the Shaohao.

The power of this ship's guns can only be overpowered by the larger tonnage Shaohao battleship, and the people on the ship administration department say that the Laurel, which is only 8,000 tons, has increased its comprehensive combat effectiveness by at least 50 percent compared with the armored cruiser Qinglong class of the previous generation.

Although the number of main guns is smaller, the speed is fast, the protection is faster, and the penetration and range of the main guns are incomparable to those old guns.

The only drawback was that the new guns had longer barrels and weighed more, so it was not possible to install a single main gun on the side as before, and could only supplement the firepower with more 150 mm secondary guns.

The reason for the change in the main gun layout of the Laurel-class armored cruiser is also the inevitable development of technology, and the main guns of the Shaohao-class battleship have also changed from six to four in the past.

Because in the case of little change in tonnage and hull, the caliber of the main gun is getting larger and longer, which leads to the rapid growth of the weight of the main gun, and after the weight of the gun increases, if the Royal Navy continues to use low freeboard, it can be equipped with more guns.

However, the Imperial Navy has always been very determined to implement the line tactics, and disdain the horizontal line tactics that have become popular in Europe, because when the Imperial Navy fought at the mouth of the Pearl River, it relied on the tactics of a single column, and then ran through the entire British line.

However, although the Imperial Navy tried the bow to the enemy policy, the Imperial Navy found after in-depth research that the reason why the Pearl River Estuary Naval Battle was won was not because the bow was against the enemy, but because the side firepower was maximized at that time.

Thus, from the late sixties onwards, almost every warship of the Imperial Navy was designed with battleline tactics at its core, and the most obvious feature was its unwavering use: front and rear twin turrets.

When the hull had a design margin, a diamond-shaped layout was also adopted, and single or twin main guns were installed on the side to strengthen the side firepower.

However, with the increase in the caliber of the main gun and the length of the barrel, the weight of the gun and turret increased.

More critically, after entering 1875, the strategy of the Imperial Royal Navy had shifted from coastal defense to deep-sea defense, and the intended area of operation was no longer the coastal waters of the Empire, but was expected to be in the waters far from the Empire, including the North Pacific where Alaska is located, the Central Pacific where Hawaii is located, and then the South Ocean and even the Indian Ocean.

The extension of the combat area required the battleship to have excellent seaworthiness, so the low-freeboard design that had existed in the empire for many years was completely abandoned.

The new ships would rather sacrifice some of their firepower and maintain a regular freeboard design to ensure that their ships would be able to cross the ocean and appear in the waters where the Empire needed them.

The use of conventional freeboard, front and rear twin main gun layout, these characteristics have been very similar to the historical pre-dreadnought battleships, but the battleships of the contemporary empire are still very different from the pre-dreadnought battleships, the biggest obvious feature is that the modern warships do not have a large number of more than seven inches of secondary main guns.

Because there is no hardened armor in contemporary times, the main warships of various countries use wrought iron armor or steel-faced armor or steel-faced iron armor, and the protection ability of these armors is far less perverted than hardened armor.

The Shaohao-class battleships and the Laurel-class armored cruisers basically represent the highest level of the development of contemporary imperial warships, and if you want to continue to break through, then you can only hope for a large breakthrough in the industrial level.

It is necessary to wait for the appearance of hardened armor and three-expansion steam engines before it is possible to make significant changes to the existing warship design.

Due to the difficulty of breaking through the technical level, and at the same time, the number of capital ships of the Imperial Navy is also slowly increasing.

By 1878, the Empire had six 10,000-ton battleships and five armored cruisers, not counting the large number of old ironclads in the past, which had surpassed the East India Fleet of the British Royal Navy.

At the same time, because the Imperial Navy changed its coastal defense to a deep-sea defense strategy, and controlled Alaska and Hawaii to meet the needs of many Pacific waters along the coast of Japan and the South China Sea, the Imperial Navy has increased the construction of cruisers and other secondary warships in recent years.

From 1873 to 1878, in just five years, the empire successively commissioned 16 cruisers of different types, some of which were fast cruisers that joined the main fleet for reconnaissance missions, and several were conventional cruisers for ocean-going cruising and escort missions.

And these cruisers are also responsible for the navy's exploration and experimental nature of the design of new warships, with a variety of main gun layouts and armor layout patterns, so the cruisers that have been commissioned and built by the empire in recent years are relatively messy, and many of them are a single one of a class.

From conventional iron-ribbed wood-hulled unprotected cruisers, to protective cruisers with wrought iron or steel-faced iron armor, from armored cruisers to dome cruisers, and even cruisers with a key defensive armor layout, basically all the armor layouts that existed in these years can be found out from these dozen cruisers.

If the British liked to use those large-tonnage capital ships to carry out various explorations and experiments over and over again, then the Imperial Navy liked to use cheaper, more numerous cruisers for exploration and experimentation.

Among these tests, the Imperial Navy was most satisfied with the Dome Cruiser, which was not bad in terms of protection and low cost, and it was also perfectly compatible with some of the mission characteristics of conventional cruisers.

Therefore, in the last two years, most of the cruisers started by the Imperial Navy were dominary cruisers.

Then there were the small-tonnage armored cruisers that were also favored by the Imperial Navy, and this kind of cruiser was actually a smaller version of the large-tonnage armored cruiser, with a smaller tonnage, a smaller hull, and a smaller main gun.

For example, a cruiser with armor belts that the empire just commissioned this year has a tonnage of only 3,800 tons, but its protection capability is not bad, and its firepower is strong enough, and the only flaw is that it is not fast, only fifteen knots.

This kind of small armored cruiser is naturally unable to compete with those capital ships of more than 7,000 tons, but if it is compared with other cruisers of similar tonnage, then except for the difference in speed, the others can basically beat those unprotected or low-protection cruisers.

This small armored cruiser was used by the Imperial Navy as the flagship of overseas fleets, such as the Japanese task force, the Hawaii task force, the Alaska task force, etc.

In 1878 and 1879, these two years were peaceful and stable for the Chinese Empire, and the only major event was the canonization of the crown prince in 1878, but this was also a good thing, and it did not affect the development of the empire.

In 1878, despite the impact of the Siberian War, the empire maintained a high economic growth rate of 6 percent, and in 1879, it grew at a rate of 9 percent.

Although the growth rate was only a single-digit percentage, the total economic volume of the empire was very large, and the primary industry represented by agriculture still occupied the main part, and this primary industry has always had no growth potential at all, after all, the number of people and the number of fields are fixed, and there is an increase but it cannot be added there.

For the Empire, the main engine of economic growth can only be industry and commerce, especially industry, so don't look at the empire's total economic output has only increased by a single-digit percentage point, but when it comes to the industrial part, the growth rate has reached a double-digit percentage point.

Only a substantial increase in industry and commerce could drive the overall economic development of the empire.

The empire is stable at home and abroad, but it is impossible to be idle, the internal government affairs will not be said, the only thing worth mentioning is that in 1879, Lin Zhe set off a large-scale crackdown on official corruption and rectified the rule of officials.

And in external affairs, the basic foreign policy of the empire is strikingly similar to that of the Americans, that is, it is committed to opening foreign markets, whether it is war intimidation or direct money.

Secondly, it is to make trouble for a few traditional European powers when there is nothing to do.

For example, in November 1878, when the British invaded Afghanistan again, the empire on the side naturally did not sit idle, and began to use a lot of secret means to support the Afghans.

Even joined forces with the Russians to support the Afghans!

As the weakest in Central Asia, the basic Central Asian policy of the empire is that Russia will strengthen its penetration into Central Asia, and the empire will fight against Russia together with the British. The British invaded Afghanistan, and the empire sided with the Russians.

However, even with the support of the empire and the Russians, the Afghans were defeated in the face of the British invasion, and they did not have the bravery of the first Anglo-Afghan war, which was able to annihilate more than 16,000 British troops.

In the Second Anglo-Afghan War that began in 1878, the Afghan army was defeated, and after Shir Ali Khan fled to Russia, he died shortly after, but his son gave up resistance after inheriting the throne and then threw himself into the arms of the British.

This move, naturally, was intolerable to both the Russians and the Empire, who agitated in Central Asia for the nephew of Shil Ali Khan, Abdu? Rahman returned to Afghanistan to continue organizing the rebel army against the British army, and the empire also found Ayub, the second son of Shir Ali Khan, who had always been better with the empire and had a pro-China attitude, and gave a large number of ordnance and materials to support the Ayubid in organizing the rebel army.

Based in the northeastern region of Afghanistan near the borders of the empire, Ayyub relied on the vast assistance of the empire to raise an army of tens of thousands of men.

So by the second half of 1879, the situation in Afghanistan was completely chaotic, with the Russian-backed Rahman, the Empire-backed Ayyub, the British-backed Yakub Khan, and the British themselves.

The combination of various chaotic armies, and then the many tribal warlords and so on, has turned the whole of Afghanistan into a battlefield.

By 1880, the British army, which had spent at least 200 million pounds in Afghanistan and had suffered more than 3,000 casualties, felt that it was difficult to sustain itself and began to want to withdraw from the quagmire of Afghanistan.

It's just that although the British want to withdraw, they don't want to take nothing and leave, they still want to maintain their special interests in Afghanistan, especially the British absolutely don't want to see the Russian-backed Rahman completely control Afghanistan.

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the British Minister to the Reich sought to see the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs in Nanking. (To be continued.) )