Chapter 121: Gathering Naval Talents

Fortunately, the Chinese Territory has mastered the control of the sea, and a large number of materials can be transported to the seaside nearby, and the people of Hanping are also quite supportive of the Chinese Army, and many people have spontaneously transported food and materials for the defense army, which encouraged and supported the entire war. If you want to invade other countries, you must not only have a strong logistics supply line, but also have a strong enough escort force, so Fang Xiaoyu decided to solve the logistics and transportation problem.

In the era when there were no trucks and planes to transport supplies, the most supply on land relied on horses, so Fang Xiaoyu set his sights on Tubo County, which was famous for breeding horses. Wang Xuan's family lives in Tubo County and has always been a large local horse breeder, and Wang Xuan is not only very good at fighting, but also quite good at raising horses.

When he was young, Wang Xuan loved to raise horses, he once visited the good horses of all countries in the world, and carried out crossbreeding and improvement in Tubo County, so that although Wang Xuan's horses could not be said to be the first in the world, at least they were among the best, and Wang Xuan's biggest reliance on the battlefield was that he had an invincible cavalry armed with the best horses.

There are three types of horses raised by Wang Xuan, the first is war horses, which is the most expensive category. War horses are generally used by cavalry for combat, generally divided into two categories: superior war horses and inferior war horses, this kind of horse needs to have enough endurance and sprint ability, and needs to go through strict battlefield training, so the price of good horses is naturally very high, generally excellent war horses need 2,000 yuan each, and inferior horses also need 1,300 yuan.

In addition to the high price, the breeding of war horses also needs to be quite careful, ordinary people may think that horses only eat grass, in fact, if war horses only eat grass, I am afraid that they will soon lose weight and cause a great drop in combat power. The real war horse usually needs to be mixed with a lot of concentrate feed in addition to the grass, including salt, soybeans, oats, bran, etc., and when the wartime sports are more intense, the war horse even has to mix some livestock offal dry powder in the feed.

In this world of food shortage, even if the horses are fed with some coarse grains with higher yields, it is not something that any party can afford to bear. Therefore, except for the Monte Empire, which is equipped with a large number of Monte horses that are resistant to rough breeding, the cavalry of various countries is not very large.

Fang Xiaoyu didn't pay enough attention to war horses before, and the more than 20,000 war horses captured in Ulan City were actually distributed to the people to cultivate the land, and now he also regretted it a little, not enough Fang Xiaoyu didn't want to form cavalry, he just needed animal power to carry supplies, and it was not much use to use those Monte horses with small loads.

In addition to war horses, horses are also divided into pull horses and pack horses. Both of these horses are used to transport supplies, and the price is relatively cheap, only a few hundred yuan a horse, and their feed can also be appropriately lowered. These two types of horses are used for different purposes, with the pull-back horse being mostly used to tow a cannon or pulling a cart, while the packhorse is mainly used for carrying a weight-bearing cartridge.

Fang Xiaoyu consulted with people who have experience in raising horses, and learned that each horse can generally pull goods ranging from 250 kilograms to 500 kilograms, and can travel about eight kilometers per hour, while pack horses can carry about 100 kilograms of materials at a time, and travel about five kilometers per hour.

If you look at the numbers alone, it is naturally better to pull horses, but Fang Xiaoyu knows very well that horses are mostly used to tow vehicles or cannons, and can only travel in flat places, if you fight in the mountains, the best thing is to use pack horses, so Fang Xiaoyu decided to establish a logistics force of 2,000 people in each division, and they will each carry 6,000 horses, as for whether to use horses or pack horses, it depends on the combat environment.

In order to be able to get enough horses, Fang Xiaoyu sent people to contact Wang Xuan, hoping to buy a large number of horses, Wang Xuan, who had a good impression of Fang Xiaoyu, agreed very happily, and finally agreed that the Chinese Collar would buy 20,000 horses and pack horses from Tubo County every year, and trade them with Lanfang coins or grain.

There are a large number of horses and carriages for logistical transportation, and the supply problem can be basically solved, but it is a pity that even any kind of horse cannot do anything against heavy artillery with a caliber of more than 122 millimeters, so Fang Xiaoyu had to reluctantly transfer the heavy artillery to the shore defense or city defense troops.

The logistical supply of the army has been temporarily solved, and there are also many problems on the naval side. Fang Xiaoyu found that although the cruiser had a high firepower density and fast speed, it lacked the strength to make a final decision, so he built two more 14,000-ton warships.

In addition, due to the lack of firepower of the main guns of the 'Tongjiang' class cruisers, Fang Xiaoyu decided to modify them, mainly replacing the main guns of the front and rear with twin turrets, so that the number of guns was doubled while the caliber of the guns remained the same.

The 'Baishan' class gunboats proved to have great limitations in the war, and the gunboats with only two 203 mm guns, although their firepower was very powerful when facing the capital ships, their seaworthiness was very poor, and the firepower density was too low, so Fang Xiaoyu decided to stop the construction of the 'Baishan' class gunboats, and changed the three dismantled batteries in service to two 37-mm rapid-fire guns and two heavy machine guns, which were used as pure anti-smuggling maritime surveillance ships.

The hulls of the five additional gunboats were converted into torpedo boats, equipped with two 420 mm torpedo tubes and four torpedoes, while the torpedo boats were to be equipped with a 76 mm rapid-fire gun and two machine guns for conventional combat, anti-frogman and anti-torpedo purposes.

In view of the problem of law and order in the territory containing the strength of the regular army, Fang Xiaoyu decided to set up a police department and let some retired veterans join the police department to maintain local law and order. In order to better improve administrative efficiency, or to make Fang Xiaoyu more lazy, Fang Xiaoyu decided to formally establish the Chinese Territorial Government to be responsible for the daily administrative work in the territory.

Soon, the Government Council was established under the leadership of the East China Bank, which consisted of a number of departments, such as the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Industry and Commerce, the Department of Infrastructure, the Department of Civil Affairs, the Department of Education, the Department of Science and Technology, and the Department of Military Affairs. At the same time, Zhao Quan set up an intelligence bureau that was directly responsible to the lord, and in addition to the intelligence officers brought out by Zhao Quan, some special combat division soldiers also joined the intelligence bureau and became a special task force under the first generation of the intelligence bureau.

With an efficient government department in the territory, Fang Xiaoyu decided to adjust the industries under his name, first of all, he established the Zhonghua Group Company, which has several subsidiaries to manage various light and heavy industries and agricultural industries in Fang Xiaoyu's hands.

In order to unify the thinking of the people in the territory, Fang Xiaoyu decided to open a newspaper in the territory, and this newspaper called "China Daily" will first be sold throughout the territory of China, and the newspaper is divided into four sections: military, economic, science and technology, and news.

The military section will mainly introduce the military trends of the major countries in the world, including the trends given by various countries in terms of colonization, so that the people in the territory can have a clear understanding of the outside world, and it can also establish a glorious image of Fang Xiaoyu through a large number of reports on foreign wars in the Chinese territory, and greatly improve Fang Xiaoyu's prestige.

The economic section mainly introduces the various policies of the Chinese collar, including the support policy for commerce and industry, the investment in infrastructure, various safeguard measures for the consular people, and the recruitment advertisements of major factories. In the future, when the daily newspaper radiates to other parts of the Lanfang Empire, this column will become a window for people in other regions to understand the Chinese territory, which is bound to attract a new round of immigration from all over the country.

The science and technology page mainly introduces the introduction of science and technology and economic profits in the Chinese territory, especially the science and technology profiles and economic profits that can be exposed to the outside world by Fang Xiaoyu's various industries, which is conducive to stimulating the work enthusiasm of domestic scientific and technological personnel, and will greatly improve the trend of learning science and technology and researching science and technology within the Lanfang Empire.

The news page is the most important position of the newspaper, when the newspaper was first published, this page only reported some domestic and foreign anecdotes and popular fashions, and even published some serialized novels to attract readers. After Fang Xiaoyu's position is stabilized in the future, he plans to use this page to expose some domestic corruption and darkness to help him reach the top, of course, this is just Fang Xiaoyu's just in case, if the royal family is good enough, he doesn't mind supporting the current royal family.

In addition to the establishment of the newspaper, Lanting Bank was renamed Lanting Bank, and Zhao Qingyun, a good friend introduced by Wu Yu, who had worked in many banks, was in charge. As soon as Zhao Qingyun came up, he proposed to Fang Xiaoyu to reduce the storage of Lanfang coins and increase the storage of hard currencies such as gold, and Fang Xiaoyu immediately agreed, he first used hundreds of tons of gold obtained from Han Pingguo as the bank's reserves, and then sent people to secretly buy gold from abroad with Lanfang coins.

In order to reduce the hostility of the Western Continent to the Chinese Lords, Fang Xiaoyu patented the technology of lever-operated rifles and railways, and licensed them to several factories in the Saar Empire for manufacturing. Anyway, these things are not very technical, and they are easy to be made by countries in the Western Continent, so they must be registered first, even if they can make their own money, they can earn royalties.

In order to better control the Barbarian Continent, Fang Xiaoyu secretly ordered Fu Mingcheng to expand the two armies of the Iron-Blooded Army in the Savage Continent, so that the size of the Iron-Blooded Army reached four armies, and its scale was already above the defense army, anyway, it was not bad for money now, and it would be more reassuring to have more military guarantees, after all, the Savage Continent was too far away from the Chinese Territory.

After this war, the Chinese Territory received a large amount of indemnity, with the financial guarantee that the speed of economic development was raised to a higher level again, all the construction projects were carried out in an orderly manner, and the entire territory was a thriving scene, while in the Imperial Navy it was another scene.