Chapter Eighty-Seven: The Bottom of the Cauldron Draws the Firearm

As mentioned last time, after Liu Hou woke up, he left his descendants to visit him, and everyone discussed how to eliminate the impact of Xu Jing's leak. Everyone is no stranger to this kind of brainstorming meeting, and one by one they began to talk about their ideas.

Liu Hou asked people to move some low mounds, please sit down and say slowly, please sit on a stool here in the emperor has become a gift to sit, and it is a face-saving thing to talk about, but the people present are Liu Hou's old subordinates, who are used to it casually in front of him, but there is no special feeling.

Zhang Bao's proposal was very simple, that is, to start a national war as much as possible and destroy the two countries with lightning speed. There is some truth in this opinion, and it is indeed a good choice to strangle them in the cradle because the two countries have not been able to obtain craftsmen for a long time, and in such a short period of time, the firearms produced are extremely limited.

Except for the vulture bone, no one else supports his opinion, the reason is very simple, Shu is not very stable internally, after years of war attrition, the national strength is also very weak, and now to launch a war against two countries at the same time, even if there are firearms troops, they may not be able to win lightly, and even if they can win, they may not be able to win in the short term.

In fact, the Hong army swept all the way through the territory of Eastern Wu, and Liu Hou often felt that he was constrained by the lack of troops, and many times even if he occupied a place, there were no officials to manage it, let alone send troops to garrison it.

The territory of Wei and Wu is even larger than that of Shu, if you occupy so many places for yourself at once, you may not be able to digest it, and this is the reason why you can't chew it if you are greedy.

Huang Xu's opinion was related to his profession, and he proposed to send special combat personnel to infiltrate Wei and Wu, find out the craftsmen who were sent away, and assassinate them. But Guan Xing raised the question of whether the two countries would have allowed these craftsmen to pass on their manufacturing skills to other craftsmen.

In that case, it would be difficult to find all the craftsmen and kill them, and what if they left behind written documents? Even if all the craftsmen are killed, as long as the information about the manufacturing method is still there, they can find another group of craftsmen in the future to learn the technology of making firearms according to this information. In this way, it is like cutting the grass without removing the roots, as long as the spring breeze blows, new grass will grow again.

After everyone buzzed and discussed, Guo You said: "Your Majesty, in fact, things may not be as bad as we imagined. ”

"Oh? I would like to hear about it. As soon as Liu Hou heard what he said, he was immediately shocked, and immediately sat up straight and listened to his next words.

"Your Majesty, the minister has asked Xu Jing clearly, the craftsmen who were sent to Wu and Wei were all from firearms factories, including craftsmen of fire # medicine, fire # guns and fire # cannons. However, the production of firearms is definitely more than that.

The production of gun#medicine requires raw materials such as sulfur and saltpeter, and the production of fire# guns and artillery requires copper and special steel. Can we start with these aspects? ”

Liu Hou listened to Guo Youzhi's words, and couldn't help but light up, yes, the industrial system he worked so hard to establish in the "Ministry of Industry" can be completely copied by a few craftsmen. Thanks to Xu Jing's ignorance, he thought that the firearms factory was everything, but he didn't know that firearms were not so easy to manufacture.

I think that at the beginning, in order to get the materials to make firearms, Liu Hou tried his best to develop smelting technology. At first, copper had to be used to cast guns #, and until now, 10 copper cannons are still used in the Hong army. Now although Wei and Wu have obtained craftsmen to produce guns # cannons, there is no corresponding metal material matching, and it is impossible to produce them in large quantities.

The biggest possibility is that they will use copper to make a batch of guns#cannons, so that this batch of guns#cannons will inevitably be expensive, that is, the number will not be too much. If the number of guns # is small, the effect is very limited.

Fighting a war is to fight a comprehensive national strength, if the cost of manufacturing guns # cannons in Wei and Wu is ten times that of Shu, then even if the national strength of these two countries is several times greater than that of Shu, in the end they will inevitably not be able to withstand such consumption.

"What's Mr. Guo's plan?" Liu Hou asked.

Guo Youzhi stroked his beard and said neatly: "First of all, let's talk about the materials for making gunpowder, at present, most of the sulfur ore and saltpeter ore are in the territory of our Dahan, we just need to control the production of these deposits and not to flow out." ”

"This is easy to do, the mining areas of these mines are already guarded by soldiers, and all the output is dedicated to the use of the 'Ministry of Industry', as long as it is still done according to the previous practice, it is a big deal to send more people to each mining area and strengthen the guards." Liu Hou said.

"There are still some mineral deposits in Wei and Wu, but in recent years, we have also secretly bought them one after another.

Although these deposits are now secretly controlled by us, once the two countries start to start the project to manufacture firearms, they will inevitably realize the importance of these deposits, and when the time comes, they will only use force to take them back. Guo Youzhi continued.

Everyone couldn't help but feel a pang in their hearts when they heard this, everyone knew that when Guo Youzhi said this, the real struggle was coming. Sure enough, I only listened to Guo You's words: "These deposits are in the territory of the enemy country, and we will not be able to control them in the end, but we can't let them continue to be used by us, we can try to make them impossible to use by the enemy country." ”

"Mr. Guo, do you have any good way to say it quickly, don't talk nonsense, I haven't gotten to the point for a long time." Zhang Bao couldn't help but interject.

The corners of Guo Youzhi's mouth twitched twice, revealing a wry smile, and continued: "There are two situations in the enemy's mineral deposits, the first is that in places closer to our country, we can send a large army to occupy these territories and grab the mineral deposits for our country's use. In the second case, if it is expected that it will not be able to be grabbed in the short term, we will destroy it and make it impossible to produce in the short term. ”

Speaking of this, Guo Youzhi arched his hand to Liu Hou and said: "I hope that His Majesty will send special combat personnel to infiltrate the enemy country, blow up these mines, and destroy the bridges and roads that reach these mines." In this way, it will be difficult for the enemy country to enter the mine area to mine and transport ore out, and even if it does, it will be necessary to waste a lot of time to re-excavate and clean up the collapsed mine.

This will not completely stop them from producing gun#, but it will greatly delay the process and buy us precious time, which we can use to capture the enemy's territory and try to destroy both countries before their firearms are large. ”

"Okay, good, Mr. Guo really has a clever plan, comparable to Wolong and Phoenix." When Liu Hou heard this, he couldn't help but applaud him, and the depression caused by Xu Jing's leak was also diluted a lot.

"Your Majesty praised it." Guo Youzhi humbly bowed his hand.

"What about fire # guns and fire # guns?" Liu Hou continued to ask.

"First, for the craftsmen who were sent to the two countries, we can send special combat teams to rescue them, or...... Assassination! Speaking of this, there was a murderous look on Guo Youzhi's face. Everyone couldn't help but feel a rin again, this Guo Youzhi, don't look at it as a scholar, his face does not change when he talks about killing. His construction yì is very similar to Huang Xu's construction yì just now, but there is an extra step of rescue first, and then killing people after the rescue fails.

This time, Liu Hou did not answer, just looked at Guo Youzhi and waited for his next step. These craftsmen are innocent, they are just tools used by those in power. Since Liu Hou wanted to learn from Liu Bei to play the benevolent card, it was naturally inconvenient to arbitrarily set the life and death of a few innocent people in public. However, his non-statement is actually a statement, and a smart person like Guo Youzhi will of course understand that the emperor acquiesced in his proposal, and he only needs to implement it.

I only heard Guo Youzhi say again: "But the minister thinks that it will be difficult to succeed in this plan." Since Wei and Wu spent so much money to obtain these craftsmen, they must have attached great importance to their safety, and it is possible that they will be placed in an isolated place and protected by heavy troops.

So it's hard for us to find them, let alone rescue or assassinate them. So, we have a second thing to do, and that is to control the copper and iron. ”

Guo Youzhi said this, and a smart person like Liu Hou already understood what he was going to say next.

"As long as you control copper and iron, you can control the scale of firearms production in the two countries. First of all, we must strictly limit the outflow of special steel, that is to say, the smelters of the 'Ministry of Industry' must be well managed, and all the special steel produced cannot be sold to the market, but is digested by the 'Ministry of Industry' internally.

Without our special steel, the iron produced by the old methods of Wei and Wu was not suitable for making guns at all.

Although it can also be used, it is very rare and difficult to refine, and the output must not be large.

Then there is the use of copper, so we will buy more copper from the two countries. We used gold, silver, treasures, or other things to purchase a large number of copper coins and bronze utensils in the two countries, and in the future, all the goods we exported abroad were settled in copper coins. In this way, copper in both countries will quickly become scarce, and when the time comes, it will become more difficult for them to cast guns # cannons out of copper. ”

Liu Hou listened, yes, this is another good way, the trade war between the two countries has been going on, but generally Shu exports all kinds of "Ministry of Industry" products, and then exchange them for grain, salt, iron and other strategic materials, and the rest is exchanged for gold, silver and other precious metals, because these precious metals are far smaller than copper coins, easy to transport, easy to store.

I never thought that copper was so important before, and I didn't include it in the list of strategic materials, but now we have to readjust our strategy, list copper as a strategic material, and spend useless things like gold and silver.

However, these things can only be smuggled and smuggled through guò, because the rulers of the two countries are not stupid, and they must know the evil consequences of the outflow of a large amount of copper coins, so they can only come secretly.

But it doesn't matter, Shu has a long border with the two countries, and smuggling is very easy. In the past, the purchase of grain, salt, and iron tools from the two countries was carried out in the form of smuggling and smuggling, but now it is just one more bronze tool.

"Okay, very good, Mr. Guo's plan is very good, then do what you say." Liu Houdao. The biggest advantage of being an emperor is that you don't even have to use your brain to do what you want to do, someone will help you use your brain to think about how to do it, and after deciding how to do it, you don't need to do it yourself, so naturally someone will arrange someone to do it.

"We can also find out what copper mines are in Wei and Wu, send troops to capture these places, or send people to blow up these mines so that they have no copper to mine." Guan Xing came unexpectedly, which was a useful supplement to Guo Youzhi's plan.

"That's right, that's it." Liu Hou appreciated the authenticity.