On 17 February, Shi Langyi, commander of the Fourth Army, came to the Jiujiang front in person, accompanied by the main force of the Fifth Division and the 1st Guards Mixed Brigade.

On the 19th, after many days of preparation, it was Jiujiang that launched a super-large-scale offensive battle.

The Chinese army that participated in the battle numbered more than 20,000 people, more than 100 large and small artillery pieces, and there were also naval warships to provide fire support, and its momentum was no less huge than when the Sixth Army launched a strong attack on Jinan last year.

However, Jiujiang defended by the Zhenhu army was obviously much more difficult to bite than Jinan, and the Zhenhu army made full use of the trenches and breastwork and other fortifications to offset the firepower advantage of the Chinese army, and waited for the Chinese army to rush closer many times before engaging in a medium and close battle with the Chinese army.

In this way, when the combat distance between the two sides was shortened to about 100 meters, the Mini rifles equipped by the Chinese army in large numbers lost the advantage of range, although the accuracy was still much better than the flintlock pistols used by the Zhenhu army on the opposite side, but there was not much difference in the amount of rifle bullets projected by the two sides.

Although he used the advantage of artillery to continue to advance, the increase in casualties also had to make Shi Langyi more cautious, he didn't want to take a Jiujiang, and then lose a lot of his troops here.

At this time, the 1st Guards Mixed Brigade, which had been independent of the Fourth Army, was quite eye-catching, and on the 21st, due to the tight war, Lin Wei, the commander of the 1st Guards Mixed Brigade, took the initiative to negotiate with Shi Langyi, and then the 1st Guards Mixed Brigade was solely responsible for the offensive of part of the right flank front.

However, in just one day, the 1st Guards Mixed Brigade successively conquered the defensive strongholds of the four Zhenhu troops, killing and capturing more than 2,000 Zhenhu troops, while its own losses were less than 200 people.

Such a record quickly attracted the attention of Shi Langyi and other senior generals!

"Could it be that this Guards are all iron? Why is the combat effectiveness so high? Xu Pengan was a little incomprehensible, when it came to the quality of all aspects, his Fourth Division was obviously much stronger than these newly formed Guards. But why is it that the results achieved by his own troops are not as many as those of a mixed brigade?

"What kind of iron, it's just relying on my identity as a guard, and I'm just equipped with rear-loading guns and rifled guns earlier than us, if I let my fifth division also change to rear-loading guns, maybe it will hit Jiujiang City now!" The commander of the Fifth Division, Du Yongtao, had obvious resentment on his face.

Since the Chinese army was equipped with rear-loading rifles on a large scale last year, the generals of many units have hoped that their troops will be able to change their equipment earlier. However, due to the limited production problem, and the fact that the Chinese army is expanding rapidly almost every day, the newly produced breech-loading rifles are basically assigned to the new troops.

For example, the Eighth and Ninth Divisions of the Sixth Army, as well as the 13th Division and the Second Guards Division, later gave priority to the replacement of short-barreled breech-loading rifles for each cavalry unit in order to improve the combat effectiveness of the cavalry.

Again, the newly formed 1st Guards Mixed Brigade and the 1st Guards Division stationed in Nanjing also successively changed their breech-loading rifles.

The guns required for such a unit have basically exhausted the rear-loading rifle production capacity of the two arsenals of the Chinese Empire, and even if the troops that use Minnie rifles in active service are reloaded, they will give priority to the use of 1851 Linde rifles. That is, the early smoothbore rifle was converted from the Miney rifle to be reloaded, and the troops using the 1856 Linde rifle will have to wait a while longer if they want to change their outfit.

Not to mention anything else, even if the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division was reorganized into the future Fourteenth Infantry Division, its rearmament plan was earlier than that of the Fourth Division and the Fifth Division.

Why? Because the 14th Division still uses flintlock pistols captured from the Qing army, while the 4th and 5th Divisions use 1856 Linde rifles.

In this case, if the 4th and 5th Divisions with 1856 Lindermini rifles were to be reequipped in advance, how could you make the 14th Infantry Division, which was still fighting with flintlock pistols, and the 1st Division, which was still armed with 1851 Mini rifles, be embarrassed.

"I'm afraid it's going to take a while to change the gun. However, I heard that the Ministry of Ordnance has already renovated the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, and it should not be long before production can resume. At that time, the production of ordnance should increase further, and the speed of reloading should be faster! Xu Peng'an said.

"Yes, I have received the news that the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department has funded the purchase of the Bureau and renamed it the Tianjin Arsenal, and I heard that the Linde Machinery Factory and the Jinling Arsenal, which are also under the command of the Finance Department, have sent many people to Tianjin to support. After the transformation is completed, even if it is impossible to mass-produce heavy ordnance such as rifled guns for a while, guns and bullets are still not a big problem! ”

Du Yongtao continued: "This finance department is still very rich, but I heard that the Ministry of Munitions has offered a price of up to one million yuan, and the price of the finance department has not been returned. I signed the check from the Royal Bank directly, and I can make those people in the Quartermaster Department happy! ”

"It's good to have money, if they don't have money, they won't be able to build these arsenals, and without arsenals, we won't have any ordnance available!"

The two of them talked about the military industry from the current war, and then to other aspects of the empire, and the conversation between the two basically couldn't bypass the many industries belonging to the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department.

At present, many industries belonging to the Imperial Family, the Imperial Palace, and the Treasury Department have basically replaced the traditional government-run industries and the so-called state-owned enterprises in later generations.

The industries under the command of the Finance Department involve almost all contemporary industries, the most important ones are steel, coal, chemicals, machinery, shipbuilding and other typical national defense heavy industries, as well as raw silk, spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing and other textile industries, as well as matches, soap, paint and other daily chemicals.

And then there's the Royal Bank, which is almost inextricably linked to the entire empire!

In addition, the royal industry is also responsible for the exploration of various new technologies and emerging industries, the most obvious sign is the Xuzhou Railway that began to be built in order to develop the Xuzhou coal mine, this experimental railway is still under construction, but in order to build this section of only a few tens of kilometers of railway, the Finance Department of the Palace Department has smashed hundreds of thousands of yuan for the "Xuzhou Railway Company", and smashed so much money, just to verify whether the railway is useful. Can it be repaired?

Of course, there are many kinds of things in the royal industry, such as tea estates, several estates in West Lake, Zhejiang, traditional granges, and real estate, with a large number of real estate in Shanghai and Nanjing. In addition to the Bund Hotel, the first luxury hotel in China, the Royal Family Industry also built several hotels in Shanghai and Nanjing, of course, the scale cannot be compared with the Bund Hotel.

However, many of these industries are side businesses, and there are actually only three real main businesses, one is banking, one is textiles, and one is the defense industry.

The others are just side hustles in the nature of playing tickets.

The three main industries of the royal industry also have a certain basis, among which the textile industry is used to make money. Banks are used to maintain the normal functioning of the domestic economy and support the development of domestic industry and commerce, and the defense industry is purely to support the military in the war effort.

From the investment in the establishment of Linde Machinery Factory, Shanghai Shipyard, Jinling Arsenal, and now Tianjin Arsenal, although the scale of these industries is getting larger and larger, and there are more and more surface assets, especially fixed assets, in fact, the royal industry cannot make a dime in the defense industry, because the profits are invested in further expansion, let alone profits. Even the royal family has to continue to invest.

Some people may say that the Linde machine factory is getting bigger and bigger. Isn't it a sign of more and more total assets that means more money? In fact, it is not seen in this way, because it is impossible for an enterprise related to national defense and security such as Linde Machinery Factory to change hands, and even if the total assets are 100 million or even 1 billion yuan, it is useless, because it is impossible for the royal family industry to sell the shares of these enterprises and then cash them out, as for dividends. Now that the war is going on, the profits are used to expand production, and when the war is over, it is a good thing not to lay off employees and lose money on a large scale, and there are still dividends there!

The Royal Bank is similar, although this Royal Bank has a lot of money. But this money is depositors' money, and even a considerable part of it is a tax of the state, and the Royal Bank's own assets are not worth mentioning in relation to the deposits he has.

Moreover, in order to support the development of domestic industry and commerce, the interest rate of the loans provided by the Royal Bank is generally low, so naturally do not expect to make much money, and the Royal Bank is expanding at the same time as the pace of the Chinese army.

So the Royal Bank is actually not very profitable for the royal industry, and it may bring a lot of profits in the future, but that is all for the future, and now, it is not easy for the Royal Bank to use its own profits to maintain a large-scale expansion, don't expect it to pay dividends to the Treasury Department of the Palace Affairs Department.

The real money-making industry is actually only the textile industry, in the early years of the Lin firm as the first domestic to open a steam reeling factory firm, followed by a large-scale investment, has been in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Huzhou, Guangzhou and other places to establish thirteen steam reeling factories, another three are still under construction, is a veritable giant in the domestic silk industry, in 1858 under its command of a silk reeling factory of the total export volume of up to 30,000 bales, according to the average export price of about 480 yuan per package of silk, Its output value is as high as more than 14 million.

And this is only the export output value, in fact, China's raw silk production is so large, although exports occupy an important position, but domestic sales also occupy a considerable share, even not less than the export share.

At the same time, the raw silk industry of the royal family industry not only produces raw silk by itself, but also directly buys some small and medium-sized raw silk or raw silk from handicraft workshops, and then sells it from its own channels to obtain profits.

The entire raw silk industry chain of the royal family industry has tens of thousands of employees, hundreds of cooperative merchants and foreign banks, and annual sales of more than 30 million.

For contemporary China, the raw silk industry is a veritable intensive capital investment, an industry with an ultra-high rate of return, and its profit ratio can even reach more than 30%.

Raw silk alone can provide more than 5 million yen of net profit for the royal family industry every year.

At the same time, the royal industry also began to get involved in the cotton industry at the end of last year, and then also monopolized the sales of imported woolen materials and machinery.

These have led to the annual profits of the royal industry is quite rich, officially with huge profits, the royal industry can be frequently reinvested, railways, banks, and the defense industry are all industries that require a lot of money, and there is no money to play.

Strictly speaking, in fact, the royal industry is no longer a simple commercial enterprise, but has a strong state-owned enterprise nature.

Only an enterprise of this nature will not hesitate to spend millions of dollars to build an experimental railway with no real benefits in sight, and spend a huge amount of money to acquire an arsenal and then upgrade it, in order to provide more ordnance to the military. (To be continued.) )