Chapter 1743 Everyone has his own purpose
Haihan's secret deal with Champa was originally to attack the Dutch so that their intelligence agency could continue to control the direction of the grain market in Batavia. However, it gave Portugal a sap and allowed it to use the 33A rifle. was unexpectedly eliminated from the bidding process. If Thomas knew the truth, he would be furious.
Fortunately, the Champa Kingdom is not as lavish as Fujian and Annan. It only ordered 500 new rifles as a supplement to its existing military strength. Therefore, Portugal will still have the opportunity to make mistakes later, but it will not be able to purchase in large quantities. Just enter.
For the Fujian Xu family and An Nanguo, the purpose of purchasing weapons from Haihan was not only to arm themselves, but also to actively tie their own interests to Haihan, so as to obtain Haihan's long-term support and asylum in the military. Champa does not have enough military strength to complete external expansion. Their purpose is to ensure that the country's armed level is not much worse than that of Annan, its strong neighbor to the north. Moreover, the army still has many purchased in recent years. rifles, so the need to replace new weapons is not so urgent.
Portugal's situation is different from these countries. Since the colony has not actually expanded in recent years, they have always maintained about 1,500 to 2,000 armed personnel in the South Haiti east of the Strait of Malacca. , and the conflict with the Netherlands has not been as intense as before in recent years, so there is actually not much demand for weapons and equipment.
However, the Portuguese are extremely smart. As long as there is an opportunity to purchase Haihan weapons, they will still try their best to mobilize funds to buy more. The weapons made by Haihan are better than those made by themselves. Buying these weapons and sending them back to Europe will also be of great use. At the worst, they can be resold to other countries and make a fortune.
Haihan was not unaware of Portugal's role as a middleman in the arms trade. On the contrary, he intentionally or unintentionally encouraged Portugal to do so. The current war intensity in Europe is far more intense than that in the Far East, and there is a huge demand for high-performance weapons. As for price, it is no longer so important in the intercontinental melee that frequently aims to destroy countries and genocide. As long as the things are easy to use, there are plenty of them. People are willing to pay.
Haihan is also relatively clear about the historical process of Europe, and even understands the trend of the war better than the Portuguese, so he has always been interested in exporting weapons and equipment to Europe through Portugal. On the one hand, the arms trade is highly profitable, and the money earned by this European guy will not be in vain; on the other hand, Haihan also has the intention to make the European war more intense. It would be best to bring all the old colonialist countries together. Weakened, so that the external pressure Haihan faces in the Far East can be reduced.
As for whether these weapons would be copied by local skilled craftsmen after arriving in Europe, Haihan didn't have too many worries. The light and heavy weapons currently manufactured by Haihan are imitations of relatively successful weapons in history, and the origins of these weapons are almost all in Europe. However, Haihan used the information he has mastered to advance them a century or two. Create it.
Even without the existence of Haihan, the Europeans would have made these weapons sooner or later. Now they have just advanced the time by a few years, but there will still be a significant performance gap between the imitations and those made by Haihan. This is because Haihan has technology beyond this era in terms of materials and processes. Even if others can imitate the structure of the weapon, it is impossible to copy the performance of Haihan. What's more, the performance they can imitate is only for foreign trade exports. The scaled-down version is even more incomparable to the model equipped by the Haihan Army.
Although Fei Cexian looked disdainful, he was actually quite interested in this new weapon. If all these thousands of rifles could be sold to the Ming Dynasty, it would be much easier to quell the rebellion of the peasant army in the Central Plains or to resist the Jin people's attack on the pass. But this situation existed only in his imagination. He knew that Haihan deliberately controlled the types and quantities of weapons exported to the Ming Dynasty. Except for Fujian, there was probably no local government that could have the means to purchase large quantities of weapons from the Haihan people. Arms.
Is it possible for the Fujian army to hand over the purchased weapons to the imperial court, or to let them purchase Haihan arms on behalf of the imperial court? The answer is obviously no. The imperial court had already made this attempt a few years ago. Neither Haihan nor Xu Xinsu was willing to cooperate, so in the end they had no choice but to let it go.
Therefore, currently in the Ming Dynasty, the Ming army with the best equipment in Fujian is under the command of Xu Xinsu, and its training is handled by Haihan. Fei Cexian has no doubt that the combat effectiveness of the Fujian Ming army has long been second to none in the Ming Dynasty. . It's a pity that the imperial court can't mobilize Xu Xinsu's troops at all, and the various decrees issued can't be carried out after they arrive in Fujian. Even if Emperor Chongzhen really wants to use these troops to quell domestic and foreign enemies, Xu Xinsu is unwilling to accept the move, and the imperial court There is still nothing to do. Now we can only maintain the status quo reluctantly, and we dare not use the imperial decree to force Xu Xinsu to submit. We just hope that there will be no rebellion in Fujian.
However, after Fei Cexian suppressed his anger, he decided to find an opportunity to contact Haihan's senior management again to see if he could persuade them to release weapons supply to Ming Dynasty, at least to allow Ming Dynasty to participate in the bidding in an event like today. Haihan kept saying that he and Ming were in the same boat, they were of the same race and descent, and they were both descendants of Han Chinese. He couldn't really turn his back on him and watch Ming continue to suffer in the war, right?
While Fei Cexian was thinking wildly, the previous background cloth had been removed from the stage, and a new background was placed on a shelf. This background depicts a battle between two armies on the battlefield. One side is the Haihan Army with red and blue flags, and the other side is full of cavalry charging on horseback with swords.
"It's the Houjin Iron Cavalry!" The first person in the audience to recognize his identity was North Korean envoy Li Xi. He was very familiar with the weird money rat tails of the Jin soldiers, and he could tell the identities of these cavalry at a glance.
"Everyone, the scene depicted on this background is the Liaodong battlefield. Our army does not need to be introduced. I believe you have recognized it. However, our enemies may be unfamiliar with the countries located in the South China Sea. They live in The Jurchens in the far north, their country is the Houjin that everyone has heard more and more in recent years, and the Houjin Cavalry is currently the most powerful armed force in the area north of the Ming Dynasty. ”
Instead of rushing to display the next weapon and equipment, Baikes first introduced the relevant information to the audience present on the content depicted on the background wall. In fact, everyone here has heard a little bit about Hou Jin's rapid rise in recent years. After all, there is a lot of news about Hou Jin in the newspapers published by Haihan. Even countries located in the South China Sea know this. The horseback people have greatly suppressed the Ming Dynasty in recent years.
It has been more than two years since Haihan sent troops to Liaodong. In the past two years, most of the main combat troops have set foot on the Liaodong battlefield through rotational battle arrangements. The scene depicted on the screen is the actual battle situation of the Jinzhou Isthmus Battle last year. .
Bai Kesi continued: "The most powerful skill of Hou Jin is the cavalry charge. This tactic has made the Ming garrison miserable in the past few years, especially in the field, there is almost no way to compete with the opponent head-on. I Mr. Fei from Ming Dynasty should be very clear about this. ”
Fei Cexian felt the complicated looks from around him, but snorted coldly and ignored Bai Kesi's words. He could not refute what Baikes said. The northern border of the Ming Dynasty was becoming more and more tight every year. Later, the Jin army was able to advance all the way to the vicinity of the capital when it went south. The disparity in cavalry strength between the two sides is getting bigger and bigger. The defenders rarely go out of the city to engage in field battles with the other side, except to stay in the city and wait for the enemy to plunder enough, in the name of waiting for reinforcements. Of course, the Ming Dynasty was not content with such a passive situation, especially when Haihan defeated his cavalry by foot in the Liaodong Peninsula. After the battle, the Jin army retreated steadily, and Haihan took over the area south of the Jinzhou Isthmus. This record The encouragement to Daming is still great. But the problem is that the combat power of the Ming army cannot reach the level of the Haihan army. If you attack the Houjin army in the wild, there will undoubtedly be a dead end. If you want to defeat the Houjin army with Haihan's tactics, you must at least use your weapons first. The equipment problem must be solved.
But in this way, it reached a dead end - Ming Dynasty could not purchase large quantities of Haihan weapons through normal channels, and it was difficult to equip the Ming army in an organized manner to improve its combat effectiveness. In the end, Haihan had to be allowed to do his own thing in Liaodong, which was equivalent to exchanging the land of the Liaodong Peninsula for the military deployment of the Jin army after Haihan held back in Liaodong. Although other countries may not know these inside stories, Fei Cexian himself knows it well. Of course, the insider must also add North Korea, who also knows the inside story of the Liaodong transaction.
"As we all know, our country sent troops to Liaodong to assist Ming in resisting the invasion of Hou Jin..."
When Bai Kesi's words fell into Fei Cexian's ears, they were automatically filtered out. Now he would not even believe a word of the beautiful words spoken by these high-ranking officials of Haihan.
"...A very important reason why our army was able to severely inflict heavy losses on the Houjin Cavalry in Liaodong is because we equipped the troops with heavy weapons with extremely strong long-range lethality capabilities, artillery! It can attack the cavalry just when they start to charge. Attack them, no matter how brave the Houjin Cavalry is, they are still made of flesh and blood, and there is no way they can compete with steel! In the middle of the charge, there are only piles of broken flesh and blood foam. What else can be used to threaten our army?”
Bai Kesi's speech almost reduced the Houjin Cavalry to worthlessness, but the more so, the more unhappy Fei Cexian in the audience felt. This opponent who gave the Ming Dynasty a headache was kneaded like dough in front of the Haihan Army. Come on, doesn't this further prove that the Ming army's combat power is vulnerable?
"Everyone, artillery can not only be used to defend and siege cities, but can also exert great power in field battles. Of course, some people may question why the Haihan Army can repel cavalry with artillery, but other countries cannot. Yes, I will answer this question here today.”
Fei Cexian pricked up his ears now, wanting to listen carefully to what Bai Kesi had to say. There are many artillery in the Ming Dynasty army, but it seems difficult to exert the same effect as the Haihan army in field battles. Could it be that Haihan has some advanced tactics.
Then I heard Bai Kesi say: "There are only two reasons. First, there are not enough artillery equipment. Second, the lethality of the artillery is not strong enough."
Fei Cexian almost spit out a mouthful of blood. These two reasons were so shameless that he couldn't think of any way to refute them.
Baikes continued: "But the army artillery we want to provide to various countries this time is to solve the problem that existing artillery is difficult to transport and deploy in the field, and its lethality is not strong enough."
In fact, the field artillery used by the Army is simply designed to be lightweight and easy to move, so that it can be transported easily and quickly using animal power or even manpower. As for the issue of lethality, without increasing the caliber, the only way to achieve this goal is to increase the effective range as much as possible and improve the shell structure.
For safety reasons, Haihan Ordnance must control the performance of exported weapons and not be too close to its own weapons. Therefore, although artillery is also one of the exported weapons, the performance upgrade is actually smaller than that of firearms. To encourage donors to spend money to buy equipment, you have to find a publicity point that can impress them.
Fortunately, Haihan engages in frequent foreign wars, so there is no need to worry about finding actual combat examples to prove the selling point of Haihan artillery’s excellent performance. Baikes used the war in Liaodong as an example to illustrate that Haihan’s artillery is enough to defeat Haihan in field battles. Strong armed cavalry. Of course, the premise is still what Baikes just mentioned: it is effective only if it is equipped with enough artillery.
How much is enough? Of course each army will have different standards. For example, for the Haihan troops with a mature tactical system and rich combat experience, perhaps a battalion of fifteen to twenty field artillery pieces is enough to deal with three to five times the strength of enemy cavalry. And the Ming army, which is not good at this kind of field battle, may need twice as many artillery to stabilize the morale of the army and prevent it from collapsing when facing the enemy's cavalry charge.
The Xu family, who was not short of money, would of course have more, the merrier. It would be best if one battalion could be equipped with dozens of cannons, so that there would be no need to start a fight. If they were to spread out in front of the formation, they would scare the opponent to death. As for North Korea, perhaps three or five cannons in a battalion are enough - it's not that North Korea is arrogant, it's that it doesn't have that much military budget to purchase expensive heavy weapons such as artillery.
The number of artillery equipped will certainly affect the combat effectiveness of the army, but it is not the only factor that plays a role. The Haihan military has always emphasized that talents are the decisive factor in war, followed by weapons and tactics. However, when promoting arms sales to foreign countries, this order must be adjusted to emphasize weapons only, intentionally or unintentionally weakening the role of people and tactics.
(End of chapter)