According to the plan, the Sixth Army will be formed by a completely new force, and it is expected to have the two main forces of the Sixth Division and the Eighth Division of the Royal Army, as well as a heavy artillery regiment and cavalry regiment directly under its jurisdiction, and an independent engineering regiment under its jurisdiction.

The artillery regiment and cavalry regiment under the direct jurisdiction are not new, the previous First Army was in this configuration, but this engineering regiment is the first time to hear of it.

At present, the auxiliary units of the various units of the Chinese Army generally only have baggage troops, and there are no engineering units that specialize in opening roads and bridges and being responsible for construction and other affairs, and this part of the task is generally undertaken by the auxiliary defense force.

In the 1858 expansion plan, Lin Zhe personally proposed to the military to try to form a professional engineering unit, and the Sixth Army expected that this engineering regiment under its jurisdiction would be the first engineering unit in the Chinese army.

The preparation for the establishment of a professional engineering unit was not a whim of Lin Zhe, but the inevitability of military development; with the increasing number of artillery pieces equipped by the Chinese army, the increase in logistics materials also led to the further increase in the difficulty of the troops' march.

When encountering rivers or hilly mountain trails, the marching speed of the troops is simply unacceptable, and it is not a matter to use the Auxiliary Defense Army to open roads and build bridges, although the Auxiliary Defense Army is cheap, but after all, they are ordinary cannon fodder, and when it comes to hands-on ability, it is actually not as good as those people.

Therefore, the formation of a professional engineering unit must be on the agenda!

Just looking at the establishment on paper, Shi Qingxuan knew that once the Sixth Army was completed, the total strength of two infantry divisions, a heavy artillery regiment, a cavalry regiment and an engineering regiment would be enough to surpass that of the First Army.

The large number of troops of the Sixth Army is not enough to explain the importance of his expansion plan in 1858, but more importantly, Lin Zhe also wanted to build this army into a standard army for the next ten years and twenty years.

Therefore, the equipment of the Sixth Army is also different from that of the previous Chinese Army.

The Sixth Army will be the first to be massively equipped with front-loading rifled guns, as well as infantry equipment. It will be the first to be equipped with rifled rear-loading guns copied by Linde Machinery Factory.

It is not the first time that front-loading rifled guns have been equipped in the Chinese army, and more than a dozen of them are currently in service with the Guards Division. However, it was all an experimental service, and the results were good because of the experimental service. Therefore, the Ordnance Department has placed a large number of orders with the Linde Machine Factory, and the first order is fifty guns, which will be assigned to the artillery units of the Sixth Army.

The large-scale armament of front-loading rifled artillery will be the Sixth Army's leading position in the ranks of artillery.

And the rifled rear-loading rifle, this thing is currently considered experimental equipment in the Sixth Army!

In 1854, it had begun to invest a lot of manpower and financial resources in research and development, but the progress has been relatively slow, due to the slow progress of independent research and development, and later simply copied part of the design of the German Dresser rifle. For example, the rotary rear pull machine is used, but it is not a complete copy, but an improvement on some of the defects of the Dresser rifle, and it is also an optimized design of the gun to make the gun conform to the system of Chinese soldiers.

For example, in order to solve the problem of air leakage in the Dresser rifle, Linde Machine Factory uses rubber pads in the bolt of new guns, which can effectively prevent air leakage. It is quite possible for a soldier to quickly change the rubber pad in battle.

At the same time, the primer in the Dresser cartridge was changed from the middle to the bottom, avoiding the problem that the long firing pin was too long and easy to break, as with the Dresser rifle.

At the same time, there is also an improvement that the caliber has been further reduced, from the current fifteen mm caliber to eleven mm. Reducing the caliber was enough for an effective reduction in the weight of the rifle.

When the Linde Machinery Factory finally completed the final design and produced a handful of foreign guns and sent them to the Ordnance Department for testing, the performance figures for the 1858 Linde rifle had already been set.

The total length of the whole gun is 1.3 meters. The barrel length is seventy-nine centimeters and the weight is four .7 kilograms. The caliber is eleven millimeters, and the muzzle velocity of the bullet is higher due to the reduced caliber. It reached almost 400 meters per second, the theoretical effective range was up to 800 meters, and the theoretical rate of fire could reach 12 rounds per minute.

However, there are also many problems, such as the rubber pad is very easy to age, and it needs to be replaced frequently on the battlefield, which will greatly affect the combat rate of fire, and if the soldier forgets to replace the aging rubber pad when the battle is tense, there will be a serious air leakage problem, and the high temperature air leakage will hurt the soldier.

In addition, the reduction of the caliber and the increase of muzzle velocity also represent a significant increase in the chamber pressure, which puts forward higher requirements for the manufacture of the barrel, and the increase in requirements represents the increase in cost.

Then in terms of bullets, although the current relatively mature paper shell bullet is used, but unlike the previous Mini bullet, this kind of bullet can no longer be manufactured on a large scale by soldiers on the battlefield with simple molds as before, because the whole bullet involves a series of problems such as bullet packaging and primer, and it is difficult for soldiers to use recommended tools to manufacture it on the battlefield.

If the arsenal is allowed to concentrate on large-scale manufacturing, although the cost will not increase too much, it will also put forward higher requirements for logistics and transportation.

Strictly speaking, the 1858 Linde rifle was not much more technologically advanced than the German Dresser rifle, and the industrial scale and craftsmanship requirements were not higher than that of the Mini rifle.

After this rifle was finalized and a small number of prototypes were made, it also caused a lot of discussion in the Chinese army, and many of them were opposed.

Proponents say the new rifle has a higher rate of fire and can be fired while lying on its stomach, allowing the military to have more tactical options.

Opponents say that the new rear-loading rifle still has obvious technical shortcomings, and it is even inferior to the Mini rifle in terms of shooting accuracy.

Because the 1858 Linde rifle was found during the test, due to the high muzzle velocity, the lead bullet was directly deformed in flight after being discharged, and the bullet was deformed, which did not affect the accuracy, and the lethality was not as good as the Minnie rifle.

Xu Yanqing, who opposes the use of rear-loading rifles, said that once this new rifle is equipped, in order to maintain a division equipped with this rifle, it will be necessary to replenish at least 100,000 rounds of ammunition for each battle, and this will cause great pressure on the existing logistics system.

However, there is still the problem of cost, Linde Machinery Factory has been working hard for several years to develop rear-loading rifles, which has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in research and development, and to manufacture this rifle, it is necessary to establish a new rifle and bullet production line, need to build a factory, purchase machinery, and at the same time the barrel needs better steel, rubber and other materials.

The R&D experience and factory construction expenses of the Linde Machinery Factory will not pay out of pocket, but will convert these costs into the factory price of the guns.

After all, although the Linde Machinery Factory is a royal industry, it is still a commercial company in the final analysis, not only will it not do loss-making business, but it will also make a lot of money from arms manufacturing to maintain its own development and subsequent research and development expenses of advanced weapons.

For this reason, the first quotation of the 1858 rifle from the Linde Machine Factory was forty yuan, which was more than ten yuan more than the 1855 Mini rifle.

At the same time, the bullets used in the gun were not cheap, reaching fifty yuan per thousand rounds.

Such a high price makes the ordnance department responsible for the procurement of guns and artillery very unhappy, the chief of the ordnance department Han Xiangfang personally found Pan Lixuan, director of the finance department of the palace affairs department, to say that the item, but Pan Lixuan also said with a bitter face, tens of thousands of workers in the Linde Machinery Factory also have to eat, and the salary paid to more than 100 foreign engineers every year is nearly 100,000 yuan.

If you want to use more advanced weapons, you have to pay the corresponding price!

Due to Lin Zhe's strong support, in the face of this high-priced rifle, he had to pinch his nose and place an order for 5,000 rifles, but Linde Machinery Factory did not say that it would always maintain this high price, saying that the subsequent batch, that is, the second batch of 15,000 orders, would reduce the price by 10%.

And if the military continues to purchase in the future, then the price will continue to decrease!

After all, this rifle is an industrial product, and the more industrial products are made, the cheaper they are, because the cost of R&D experience and the construction of production lines in the early stage will be evenly spread, and the more the military orders, the cheaper it is.

The first and second batches of 20,000 orders are expected to be for the Sixth Infantry Division, the Eighth Infantry Division, and the cavalry and other rifle equipment of the Sixth Army.

If it is equipped with new rifles, then the establishment and tactical use of the Sixth Army are required.

Because the 1858 Linde rifle is a rear-loading rifled rifle, the fast rate of fire is only one of them, and more importantly, the rear-loading rifle allows the soldier to load and fire while lying on his stomach, and this can evolve more tactics in a targeted manner.

The Operations Division of the Joint Staff Department has raised a number of questions, that is, is it reasonable to continue to operate in line formations after adopting rear-loading rifles, so as to maximize the advantages of such rifles?

If it is said to reload and shoot while lying on your stomach, then how to use it?

The equipment of a rear-loading rifle is not just as simple as changing a rifle, it also brings changes in tactics and even changes in military concepts.

And this kind of thing has no precedent for the Chinese army, Shi Qingxuan himself has not even seen this kind of rear-loading rifle now, how to use this rifle to bring greater tactical advantages, this problem Shi Qingxuan will still be a little difficult to solve for a while. (To be continued......)