This Lin Dabiao is bold enough, four capital warships of 5,000 tons? In contemporary terms, a warship of this scale is a veritable first-class capital ship even in Britain and France, how can it be so easy to build, even if it is a battleship of three or four thousand tons, it is also a rank of main battleships in contemporary times, and it is not so easy to build

Let's not mention whether the navy has the money to buy it, but with the current and even the next few years of technical strength of the Shanghai shipyard, it is difficult to complete the construction of such a huge scale of warships.

Contemporary warships are still in the stage of wooden, and if you want to build a wooden battleship to the size of four or five thousand tons, the technology required is not ordinarily high, and it is more difficult than the ironclad ship of 10,000 tons built after ten or twenty years.

On the contrary, those cruisers of about 1,000 tons are simpler, and the current Shanghai shipyard can manufacture them, although the cost of building ships is quite high, and it is much more expensive than imports, but it can always be built.

In the first half of this year, the Shanghai shipyard delivered to the navy the largest in the navy, but also the latest cruiser Suzhou, the tonnage reached 1,300 tons, more than 200 stews larger than the previous ones, still using conservative wooden hulls, the power of Linde Machinery Company to provide two special marine steam engines, the maximum speed of pure steam power can reach nine knots, still retain the sails, steam and sails are used at the same time, the speed is expected to reach more than 14 knots, Of course, the ultimate speed depends on how strong the wind is.

Its naval guns were breech-loading rifled guns produced by the Linde Machine Factory, with a 150-mm main gun in the front and rear, and a total of four 120-mm secondary guns on both sides, which was one more 150-mm main gun than the original three 1,000-ton cruisers.

It is worth noting that the price of the Navy's purchase of the Suzhou is as high as 200,000 yuan. If it is converted to the mainstream currency of the contemporary world, it is about 43,000 pounds.

But the Navy asked several foreign companies about the time to order warships from the British. A 1,500-ton cruiser from a foreign company was only offered for 35,000 pounds.

In other words, at present, the price of China's self-built warships is actually far higher than the import price!

Why is this so?

Because of the construction of warships. Especially modern warships are new affairs for China, although they can be reluctantly produced but need to spend more energy than foreign countries, you think that foreign ships have mature steam engines to use directly, but China's side are Linde Machinery Company's own new research and development, and the purchase of large shipborne steam engines is not high, because of the high price, many civilian ships are willing to directly import foreign countries, especially French steam engines. At present, Linde Machinery's shipboard steam engines are basically supported by orders from the Navy.

This total output is small, and it is impossible to form a scale utility, and it is impossible to share the cost of research and development and the cost of setting up a production line. Naturally, the unit price is higher.

In addition, it is also related to the large-scale use of rear-loading rifled guns in the Chinese Imperial Navy, and everyone knows the benefits of rear-loading rifled guns, so there is no need to say much, but the only thing to mention is that the current price of rear-loading rifled guns is too expensive.

Due to the very high processing accuracy, at present, Linde Machinery Factory in the production of large-caliber breeched rifled guns scrap rate is quite high, basically a batch of four barrels for processing, but the final finished product at most only one, and even sometimes all four barrels are scrapped, have to be rebuilt.

Various factors have led to the fact that the price of rear-loading rifled guns in the empire is quite high at present. The price of a door is tens of thousands of yuan, not everyone can afford it, at least the army side does not have enough funds to replace dozens of doors.

Now on the ocean-going warships purchased by the Empire, the cost of naval guns accounts for at least a third of the total cost!

The only consolation is that the wages of workers in shipyards are now much lower than their counterparts abroad. Basically, the wages of the workers in the Shanghai shipyards were only one-third or even one-quarter of the wages of the workers in the British shipyards.

However, this wage gap is limited to ordinary and low-skilled workers. Highly skilled positions, especially those filled by foreigners. Basically, it is similar to that of foreign countries, starting with an annual salary of 500 pounds or even 1,000 pounds.

The Navy will have to purchase a thousand-ton cruiser for almost 200,000. And that's not even counting the ongoing maintenance costs.

If the scale of the navy is really expanded to the scale described in Lin Dabiao's plan, it will have to be smashed at least 20 or 30 million a year, and this is not a one-time investment, but a continuous investment every year, and if it is not invested for a year, it will end up with the same fate as the Beiyang Naval Division.

If you invest tens of millions of yuan every year, this pressure is not ordinary.

You must know that China does not only have a navy, but also a huge army, and China is a typical continental country, and there are no so-called overseas colonial interests that need to be protected by ocean-going warships, so the core pillar of contemporary China is not the navy, but the army.

Maintaining a large army was the established national policy of the Chinese Empire, and this was a decision that Lin Zhe had already made in his heart.

If the size of the navy is too large, it will affect the construction of the army, which is more than worth the loss for China!

However, although Lin Zhe said that he focused on the army, he was also concerned about the construction of the navy, after all, China's long coastline needs the navy to defend.

However, Lin Zhe had to think carefully about how to develop the navy, and he could not do whatever the navy wanted.

We will not talk about how to expand the size of the navy's fleet in the future, but at present, the navy is under the army, and even the power of operational command is controlled by the army, and this situation needs to be changed.

When the Joint Staff was built and the operational command of the Navy was directly integrated into the Army, it was because the Navy was too small to exist as a transportation and artillery support force for the Army, but this situation will certainly not be preserved in the future.

Therefore, it is necessary to break up the current chaotic relationship between the Navy and the Army!

Just three days after Lin Dada's secret fold, Lin Zhe summoned the military Shi Qingxuan, Lin Dabiao and many generals to discuss the separation of land and sea.

Shi Qingxuan learned that Lin Dabiao wanted to completely separate the navy from the army. There is not much opposition to it, and the navy and army are not a branch of the army in the end. In addition, the current Admiralty already has a certain degree of independence, although the Army side controls the operational command of the Navy. But the officers in the Naval Operations Division under the Joint Staff are all naval officers.

In fact, it has little to do with the Army!

Therefore, the military side quickly formally submitted a plan for the separation of land and sea, and the most important of these was to transfer the Naval Operations Division of the Joint Staff to the Admiralty.

At the same time, the Naval Academy was separated from the Military Training Department and crossed the Admiralty.

The coastal defense facilities and ports along the coast, such as the Wusong Fort, the Shanghai Naval Base, and the Mawei Fort in Fuzhou, were officially assigned to the navy, and the coastal defense artillery units set up therein were also placed under the jurisdiction of the navy.

After a series of adjustments, the Joint Staff Department has become the Army General Staff, and the Navy Department is fully responsible for all naval affairs, including operations, military training, military administration, logistics, ordnance and other affairs.

Although there are not many changes in the current structure of the General Command on the whole, after this adjustment. The Army and the Navy have officially separated from each other.

However, it can be seen from the fact that the High Command still directly administers the Ordnance Department, the Quartermaster Department, the Logistics Department, and many other army departments, while the Navy is a separate department of the High Command, and it can be seen that the Army's position in the Chinese Army is still an unshakable leading force.

After the separation of the sea and land, the military expenditure was naturally scored, but this time Lin Dabiao suffered a lot, for example, in the remaining 30 million of the total military expenditure in the second half of this year, the navy only divided 3 million, which is only one-tenth.

But this distribution ratio was also set by Lin Zhe himself, and Lin Dabiao couldn't change it if he wanted to!

After all, the army is still continuing its campaign to the west. The task of clearing illegal armed forces in the occupied and controlled areas and the plan for reorganization and expansion are quite under considerable pressure on military spending, while there is no pressure on the navy in a short period of time, and even logistics and transportation and inland river support have nothing to do with the navy.

Even if it is to march into Sichuan and send warships over in the future. But now the size of the Navy's river gunboats is already enough to meet the existing operational needs, and there is even a surplus.

Lin Dabiao knew this, so after he couldn't win it, he focused on next year's military spending competition. And for this reason, he made many plans to try to impress Lin Zhe so as to compete for more naval military spending.

Just when there was a civil and military dispute in Nanjing, and the sea and land were separated. The pace of the Chinese army's westward expedition did not stop.

When the Chinese Army basically controlled Guangxi, Huguang and other places, the Fourth Army began to march into Guizhou. The Fifth Army went straight to the Second Region of Sichuan, and the Third Army also marched from Guangxi to Yunnan.

In June and July, the Chinese army broke out many small and medium-scale battles with the Zhenhu army and the Taiping army in the above-mentioned areas, but in these two areas, the Chinese army did not break out large-scale, even decisive battles with the enemy.

Because the Chinese army is still on the road, when the Chinese army runs to Kunming, Dali, when it goes to Chongqing and Chengdu, then there will be a war.

In the northwest, the Sixth Army is also marching towards Shaanxi and Gansu, and its next strategic core is to capture Xi'an, and after the capture of Xi'an, it is to march into Lanzhou, the political and cultural center of the Shaanxi and Gansu regions, in order to achieve the strategic goal of controlling the land of Sanqin and deterring the Western Regions.

Although the war in the northwest region broke out more frequently, mainly because there was a large number of Qing army forces left in this area, and the Qing army in Shaanxi and Gansu did not surrender as simply as Zeng Guofan, but held a stubborn attitude, but the strength of the Qing army in the place was quite weak, although the new army of thousands of people was barely trained in the past few years, but basically sent to Shanxi and Henan to fight, and finally was annihilated by the Chinese army one after another.

At present, although the military troops left over from the Qing court in the Shaanxi and Gansu regions, including Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang, are as high as 20,000, their combat effectiveness is actually quite poor, and they are completely unable to pose a threat to the Sixth Army and other Chinese army units advancing westward.

Thus, the march in the north-west, as it may be, was in fact an armed march, and it was not the enemy's armed resistance that caused the greatest trouble to the Chinese army, but the supply lines that were long enough to make people desperate.

Throughout the summer of 1859, the Chinese army on the march was basically spent on the march, even when it captured Xi'an in August, it did not make any waves, and the local Qing army only symbolically resisted for a long time, and then announced its surrender to the Eighth Division, which belonged to the Sixth Army.

However, at this time, there were some unexpected changes in the Shaanxi and Gansu regions, in order to resist the Chinese army's westward expedition, the local Qing officials and the Qing army in Shaanxi and Gansu were generally oppressing the local people, coupled with the local traditional Hui-Han contradictions, which directly led to large-scale turmoil in the Shaanxi and Gansu regions.

In just a few months, the turmoil spread to the entire three provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu, and even the eastern part of Shaanxi, which was already under the control of the Chinese army, was back in turmoil.

This turmoil not only plunged the local Qing army in Shaanxi and Gansu, which tried to continue to resist, into a desperate place, but also directly affected the follow-up plan of the Chinese army's westward expedition! (To be continued.) )