In August of the 24th year of Chongzhen (1651), the Ming army was divided into three routes, and Dingwang Zhu Cijiong led 6 cavalry divisions to the west, and at the same time took the women and children of the Dzungar Department as a threat to drive the Dzungar army to act as the vanguard.

The first target of the Western Route Army was the newly established Kazakh Khanate.

Before the army marched westward, Zhu Cijiong found a lot of leading party in the Kazakh Khanate through the Turk merchant Abaiyi, and in this regard, Zhu Cijiong had surpassed Chongzhen and made full use of the leading party.

The use of the Belt and Road Party to deal with nomads is really a dozen and one accurate.

The reason is also very simple, in addition to being like the Jurchens who were still in a slave society before entering the customs, most nomadic tribes have entered the feudal society, that is, they are in charge of many small lords, and the small lords have their own herdsmen, herds and pastures, and when they encounter foreign invasions or need to go out to fight, they will call the herdsmen to go out to fight.

But where a feudal tribe like this is made, there will inevitably be contradictions.

The disgruntled tribal lords were a natural choice for the Belt and Road Party.

Abayi found two such small tribes for Zhu Cijiong, each with more than 1,000 herdsmen.

However, there was one thing that Zhu Cijiong did not expect, that is, when he heard that the Ming army was going to conquer Kazakhstan on a large scale, the nearby Kyrgyz and Nogai people actually summoned herdsmen to help the farm.

Speaking of which, the blood of the Nogai, Kyrgyz and Kazakhs is almost the same, their matrilineal lines are all indigenous herdsmen in Central Asia, and the paternal lines are all golden families without exception, and they also belonged to the Golden Horde four hundred years ago, but after four hundred years, they no longer recognize their kinship, but have become enemies, fighting with each other for water and grassland, cattle and sheep, it is a common thing.

Hearing that the Ming army was conquering the Kazakhs, the Nogai and Kyrgyz people, instead of having the slightest sense of crisis, fell into the well and wanted to get a piece of the pie.

These nomadic tribes, greedy for small profits, had no idea what would await them once the Ming army conquered the Kazakhs.

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Zhu Cijiong's Western Route Army had 6 cavalry divisions, more than 2 million cattle, sheep, horses, and camels, and more than 100,000 women and children who went out with the army, as well as 30,000 servant troops from the Dzungar Department, while Li Yan's Southern Route Army had only 2 cavalry divisions and more than 500,000 cattle, sheep, horses, and camels.

However, Chongzhen had already made a promise to Li Yan.

When these two divisions conquer the Heshute Department and occupy Qinghai-Tibet, they can reduce all the herdsmen of the Heshute Department to slaves, and at the same time reward the wives and daughters of the Heshute nobles to the soldiers of the cavalry division as wives, and then use the soldiers of these two cavalry divisions to form Qinghai-Tibet Zhentai on the spot.

In addition to ensuring the security of Qinghai-Tibet, the mission of Qinghai-Tibet Zhentai was also responsible for the conquest of Nepal and other countries in the south, with the ultimate goal of assisting the navy in the conquest of the Mughal Empire in South Asia.

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In addition to Zhu Cijiong's Western Route Army and Li Yan's Southern Route Army, there was also Chongzhen's Eastern Route Army.

The strength of the Eastern Route Army consisted of only the women's barracks and the Praetorian Guard Brigade, adding up to nearly 10,000 people.

To tell the truth, before the Heshute Khanate was destroyed, it was still necessary to take a certain risk to cross the Hexi Corridor with 10,000 people, and the elusive sand thieves in the desert were not afraid, but once they encountered the cavalry of Heshute, they would be in trouble, of course, this risk was not big, because according to the world line, the Heshute Khanate at this time had just been established, and the country was not stable, and several sects of Theravada Buddhism were still fighting endlessly.

In the end, the facts also proved Chongzhen's judgment.

From Yili Bari through Turpan and Hami, and then swung into the Hexi Corridor, the Heshute cavalry stationed in the Hexi Corridor was only 2,000 cavalry, and was quickly defeated.

The Ming army recaptured the Hexi Corridor without bloodshed.

Then, Chongzhen left a regiment to garrison and continued to lead the army towards Xi'an.

After walking on the Gobi Desert for two months, the army successfully arrived in Xi'an, which was already a different situation at this time, and no longer the depression and ruin of Li Zicheng's rule.

The biggest changes are the train stations and railways.

Compared with the construction of the Liangjing Railway, the number of laborers involved in the construction of the Yunxi Railway has increased, from nearly one million to 1.5 million, which is really an exaggeration.

[Note: Some readers question that the Liangjing Railway cannot be repaired within two years, in fact, it is really possible, the first railway in modern China, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, took four years, but the number of laborers is only more than 10,000 people, and the Liangjing Railway is nearly a million laborers, and multiple sections can be started at the same time, as long as the iron and wood can keep up, two years is enough]

Therefore, the Yunxi Railway is built in sections from Xi'an, Tongguan, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, Xuzhou, Shanyang and Yuntiguan, with nearly 1,300 kilometers of railway, divided into more than 100 bids and sections to be built at the same time.

Of course, before the start of the railway, the South Supervisor had already done a good job of surveying and mapping.

As early as three years ago, the Southern Supervisor had already set up a geological department, which was responsible for land surveying and mapping, and carried it to do railway surveying and mapping, but the railway construction firm had to pay the Southern Supervisor.

To get back to the point, although Xi'an has changed very much, the entire Guanzhong is still withering.

Years of war have caused serious damage to the land of Guanzhong, not only the population has been greatly reduced, but the agricultural water conservancy facilities have also been greatly damaged, and it will take decades to fully recover, to say the least.

Chongzhen did not stay in Xi'an for too long, after inspecting several suburbs near Xi'an, Chongzhen immediately led the women's barracks and the Praetorian Guard Brigade to set off again, out of Tongguan to Xuzhou via Luoyang, and then took the train directly back to Nanjing.

The current political structure of the Ming Dynasty has basically matured, government affairs are handled by the cabinet with full power, the internal affairs office is under the full responsibility of the crown prince Zhu Cihong, and Chongzhen is now only in charge of the military, that is, the general headquarters.

In addition, the general headquarters of the Ming army was located in Nanjing.

So most of the time, Chongzhen is working in Nanjing.

Up to now, the land threat around Daming has been basically eradicated, and only the sea threat remains.

Strictly speaking, a threat at sea is not a threat, at best it can only be regarded as a minor trouble.

Because the Western powers at this time were not very strong, whether it was Portugal, Spain and other old sea powers, or the Netherlands, a rising star, the strength of the navy was not very strong.

As for the navies of England and France, it is even less worth mentioning.

Therefore, Chongzhen did not have much sense of urgency when building the navy, because there was enough time.

However, the industrial machinery of the Ming Dynasty has been started, and it still bursts out with strong kinetic energy, so the construction speed of the 2500-ton Zhou Yu-class main warship is actually very fast, and the Longjiang Shipyard in Nanjing has a total of eight docks, which can start construction of sixteen Zhou Yu-class destroyers at the same time.

By now, the Navy has 20 Zhouyu-class destroyers.

In just over half a year, another 16 Zhou Yu-class destroyers will enter service.

In addition, the shipping shipbuilding silver has been prepared to build Zhaobaoshan Shipyard in Ningbo.

The dock of Zhaobaoshan Shipyard is larger and deeper than that of Longjiang Shipyard, which can build 5,000-ton destroyers, and leaves room for expansion, if necessary, the dock can be further widened and deepened to build large battleships of more than 10,000 tons, which is a long-term goal in the future.

No one can say exactly how big a wooden-hulled hull can be.

But Chongzhen felt that the risk of a 10,000-ton wooden-hulled ship was too great.

Therefore, in the era of wooden hulls, it was almost enough to build a 5,000-ton destroyer, and as for the 10,000-ton battleship, it was still necessary to wait until the problem of electric welding was solved.

By the way, Pascal has already "made" electricity.

Pascal not only made electricity, but also made light bulbs.

However, since there is no inert gas and only carbon dioxide can be filled in the bulb, the life of the tungsten filament is very short, but even so, Pascal is too excited.

Because Pascal felt that a whole new door had opened.

Therefore, there is a peculiar scene on the land of the Ming Dynasty, the first industrial revolution represented by the steam engine has just begun, and the second industrial revolution represented by the application of electricity has also followed, of course, so far the second industrial revolution is still in the laboratory.

Chongzhen didn't get too involved, and he didn't understand the key very well.

Chongzhen naturally understands some common sense about physics.

But it's hard to translate this common sense into a tangible device.

Chongzhen devoted more energy to the development of the primer, and since returning to Nanjing, he has been soaking in the laboratory with Boyle, seeing the development of the primer.

Then, Boyle worked hard for several years on mercury thunderate, which was unavailable, and was inadvertently created by a first-year chemistry student who had just joined the team.

It is a paradoxical fact that many great inventions are discovered by accident.

For example, Schoenbay inadvertently wiped the nitric acid from the wine with a rag and discovered nitrocellulose.

The discovery of mercury thunderate was also the result of this first-year freshman accidentally knocking over the container containing mercury and pouring a little mercury into the container containing nitric acid, but did not say anything because he was worried about the teacher's scolding.

Then another student didn't know it, took "nitric acid" and added another raw material to explode when it was heated, fortunately it didn't cause much damage, and the student was only scratched by fragments on his face.

Boyle then quickly extracted the explosive mercury thunderate.

Holding the white powder crystals in the container, Boyle asked Chongzhen faintly: "Your Majesty, didn't you tell me that mercury thunderate was definitely not prepared by adding mercury to nitrate?" So is the crystal in my hand mercury thunderate? ”

Chongzhen was speechless, this is really a matter of course half a bottle of water kills people.

Chongzhen has always thought that thunder acid is a completely different acid from nitric acid, so it is absolutely impossible to prepare mercury thunderate by adding mercury to nitric acid, so he specially told Boyle not to do more, Boyle also completely trusted him, and did not use nitric acid and mercury to do experiments from beginning to end, and the result was that nitrate and mercury were added to create mercury thunderate.

Boyle's good youth in the past few years has been wasted by Chongzhen.

But fortunately, mercury thunderate has been discovered, and primer technology is about to come out.

With primers, metal-shelled cartridges and shells are on the horizon.