The officers of the Guards did not strongly oppose the reform with the officers of the Royal Army, for the simple reason that the Guards had only three divisions, and that the Guards, due to their peculiarities, were not necessary or possible to expand to more divisions.

Today's three divisions are considered a lot.

The officers of the Guards took a look at the establishment table, and then found that the total strength of a newly established division had reached more than 11,000 people, and they immediately agreed, which was 2,000 more than the original establishment.

The three divisions of the Guards system can be expanded by more than 6,000 people in total.

As a result, there has not yet been a formal new reform division on the army side, and the Guards Army has already taken the lead in carrying out the reorganization and application of the new formation, of course, not all three divisions at once, but only the First Guards Division, and as for the remaining Second Guards Division and the Third Guards Division, they will have to wait for the follow-up.

Let's take a look at the actual adaptation results of the 1st Guards Division, and it will be better to adapt it when the time comes.

I dare not say how to say it, the Chinese army has officially entered the era of stragglers, and is no longer limited to the framework of the era of line columns.

Compared with the army's new establishment and tactical conservatism, the navy is more open, and even this openness can be regarded as radical.

In 1861, the Navy was already no longer satisfied with the wooden-hulled warships of the sail-steam hybrid, nor with the existing 120-mm, 150-mm breech-loading rifled guns, they wanted larger, stronger hulls. Faster speed, more firepower naval guns.

For the past two or three years. On the naval side, there is a lot of messy design, such as building an exceptionally robust one. Without sails and with multiple oversized naval guns mounted on them, this design is actually a mobile maritime battery.

Because it is necessary to load more artillery and thicker hulls, then a larger hull and a larger horsepower steam engine are needed, and limited by the current level of industrial technology in China, it is difficult to complete this design, so it is simply designed as a pure turret without power. If you want to move, you have to take a few steam tugboats with you.

The initial idea of the navy's technicians was to build a few ships and then place them at the mouth of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River to serve as sea batteries!

But as soon as this design came out, it was shot by the navy, what are you kidding, you think that the shipbuilding body does not need money, and the naval guns do not need money, so the funds needed to make a sea battery are enough for the navy to build several batteries directly on land.

Moreover, in this design, the sea battery is still an unpowered pit daddy!

Then there were also technicians who came up with an alternative design, which was to load several hundred and twenty-mm breech-loading guns with a more slender hull, sacrificing defensiveness. Those bulletproof thick wooden shells are not needed, just design a water compartment, and then carry a high-power steam engine, and strive for a maximum speed of more than 15 knots.

As for the use. The technician said that the ship was fast enough to meet the enemy's capital ship and not be able to turn around and leave. If you encounter an enemy non-capital ship, you will be beaten hard.

As a result, he was shot from within the Navy!

The battleships of such a battleship would have been at least 1,800 tons or even more than 2,000 tons, but they were only armed with a pitiful four 120-mm guns. There were no traditional warships with thick wooden hulls on the sides, and at the same time at least six or more steam engines were needed to run fifteen knots.

The cost will definitely not be much lower than a traditional warship of two thousand tons. It's even more expensive, but when you encounter a united front ship, you can only turn around and leave, otherwise it will definitely be dead in an artillery battle.

The Navy's designers have a lot of brains and often come up with some design plans that make people speechless, but the top brass of the Navy are still reviewing them seriously, and even if they reject these plans, they will explain the actual reasons.

This is enough to prove that the desire of the Imperial Navy's top brass for a new type of warship is a new mode of naval engagement.

There is no way, there is an Englishman here, the British Far East Fleet is not weak, once the war breaks out, Britain can easily draw more warships from other places, and the Imperial Navy will have no chance of winning at all.

There is such a big mountain as the British Royal Fleet on this, and if you rely on conventional means to develop the navy, such as developing step by step with the British, it is destined to not be able to catch up with the pace of development.

In order to change the current huge maritime disadvantage, the Imperial Navy can only start from other aspects, and the Navy also hopes to use more advanced tactics to change the gap between the industrial scale and the technological base over the years, as the Army did.

In these years, it is unreliable to fight with the British, they have already completed industrialization, and the technical reserves in all aspects are very rich, such as rear-loading rifles, the British did not recognize the role of rear-loading rifles before, but after the fiasco in the Battle of Shanghai, the British began to develop rear-loading rifles for the first time, and did not encounter any technical problems, even the modification of the 1853 Enfield de Mini rifle was carried out easily, and the cost of the modification was only 1.5 pounds.

This kind of technological ability, not to mention the contemporary Chinese Empire, other European countries are far inferior to the British.

At present, China is still importing steam engines and various industrial equipment to Britain and France, so there is still a big gap in technology.

Now there is only one shipyard in China that can produce steam dark ships, that is, Shanghai Shipyard, even if the Navy has supported the opening of a naval shipyard in Qingdao, but this Qingdao Navy Shipyard has not yet been completed.

There are not many other shipyards that manufacture sailboats, most of them are small and medium-sized, and can only manufacture some ships of tens of tons and hundreds of tons, except for the Shanghai shipyard, there is currently no other shipyard in China that has the ability to produce ocean-going ships of more than 1,500 tons.

Relying on such a Shanghai shipyard, it only takes a few ocean-going warships to be launched in a year, and it is about 1,000 tons. And those warships of more than two thousand tons, the Shanghai shipyard said that the technical level was limited. This can be built reluctantly, but there is no guarantee that it will sink after encountering wind and waves when running the ocean.

Low shipbuilding technology. As a result, many Chinese merchants who run ocean-going trade go to the Nanyang region to purchase ocean-going merchant ships, especially large-tonnage merchant ships, and only some ships that go to offshore and inland rivers are ordered from China.

Their own technical capabilities are low, and their industry is small, but they face the main enemy, that is, the navy of Britain and France.

Britain is the leader of the contemporary world, and the leader of naval technology development, in 1861. That is, this year, one of the largest warships in the world has been launched, that is, the ironclad ship Warrior. The displacement of the Warrior ironclad ship is as high as more than 9,200 tons, and unlike the so-called ironclad ships in the past, which are only wooden-hulled ironclads, it is a real iron-clad battleship, which is the world's first real steel-clad battleship.

When the diplomats in London said that they had learned some time ago that Britain was building a steel battleship with a displacement of more than nine thousand tons, the top brass of the Imperial Navy sighed one by one.

Now that the empire has not even completed the 2,000-ton wooden-hulled and wood-armored battleship, the British have already played with steel battleships, and the gap here can be regarded as a real difference between heaven and earth.

In this environment, the Navy needs some innovation that is free from the limitations of traditional thinking. In this way, it is possible to balance the gap in strength with the British Navy in the shortest possible time, and at least ensure the security of the Empire's 10,000-mile sea frontier, anyway, the Imperial Navy absolutely does not want to see its own navy hide in the Yangtze River after the outbreak of the next war. Then only by sinking can the enemy warships be blocked in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

And after learning that the British and the French had entered the ironclad age, it was naturally impossible for the Imperial Navy to continue to invest a lot of manpower and materials in the research and development of wooden-hulled and wood-clad warships that were destined to be backward, since they had to catch up. Then you have to aim directly at the steel battleship.

At this time, as an important component of the steel battleship. Jiangnan Mining Company, the country's largest and even the only steel supplier, faced the Navy's bidding consultation. It was made clear that although the overall output of steel in Jiangnan Mining Company is not too high, and the technology of steel is not good, it is still not a problem to wrought iron.

Subsequently, the navy consulted the Shanghai Machinery Company, asking about the company's research and development progress of the ship's steam engine, whether there was a steam engine with higher horsepower, and the company said that although their steam engine was not as good as foreign products in terms of overall performance and reliability, it was definitely usable.

Of course, there will definitely be some gaps in performance, and the battleship will definitely run slower when the time comes.

The suppliers of wrought iron armor and steam engines gave guarantees, and the Shanghai shipyard also said that it could try to build ironclad ships, of course, to build ironclad ships, it was necessary to upgrade technology, which must be very expensive, and if the imperial navy could afford to pay for it, Shanghai shipyards would dare to go directly to Britain and France to introduce technical equipment and talents.

No matter what, you have to get the ironclad out!

After learning that the country could barely produce ironclad ships, the Imperial Navy could still take care of the cost, but it was unreliable and so on, so it immediately launched the design plan of the ironclad ship.

This time, the half-designers of the Navy Ship Administration Department once again opened their minds, and there were all kinds of messy designs, not to mention those strange schemes for the time being, but there were still several design schemes that were more in line with reality.

One of the most important things for the Navy is the design of a 2,000-ton ironclad ship, whose hull design and wrought iron armor installation are references or direct copies of the British Warrior.

The teak hull is clad in wrought iron and the power mode is still a mixture of sail and steam, and it can reach a top speed of 15 knots.

At the same time, following the previous installation mode of naval guns of the Chinese army, the naval guns were concentrated in the middle of the hull, but this time the designers not only installed the guns on the ironclad ship, but also provided rotatable turrets for these naval guns.

This rotating turret allows heavy guns to quickly change the angle of fire, while the rotating turret is surrounded by a low steel armor that is directly above the head in the open air.

The rear-loading guns, mounted on rotating turrets, were expected to be armed with four 150-mm naval guns, and six 120-mm secondary guns were deployed around the hull.

In terms of firepower, it is not much stronger than the previous warships of about 1,500 tons, but this is mainly because the iron armor occupies too much weight, and the buoyancy of the hull is basically used by the hull and steam engine, leaving less buoyancy for the artillery, so it is impossible to say that too many guns are loaded in one go.

However, although the firepower is not much stronger, the protection performance is much better, and the protection performance of the ironclad ship is incomparable to the previous wooden-hulled wood-clad ships.

According to the designers, once completed, this ironclad ship would be able to resist the firepower of two or even more than three other wooden-hulled warships in service in the Imperial Navy, and at the same time give counterattacks and sink them one by one.

Although the designers made a loud noise, the navy's top brass still maintained the necessary caution, and they took this design and the design of the other three ironclad ships as a total of candidate designs, and finally sent these design proposals to Lin Zhe's side. (To be continued.) )