Dominate the Country

"This Dong Wei..."

The battle report from the Northwest soon reached Chen Ming's hands. Seeing Dong Wei's choice, Chen Ming could easily guess the current predicament of the three cavalry divisions after their initial "bravery".

But Chen Ming would not worry too much about their survival. At most, the condition of the horses of the three cavalry divisions would decline, but the Russians did not have such a good appetite to eat them.

Of course, this would also affect the battles in the following winter.

Chen Ming had completely handed over the battle in the Northwest to Wei Baocheng and others. Relying on the strong national strength of Chen Han, there was no reason for the battle in the Northwest to fail.

Chen Ming now had to focus on the internal affairs that he was not interested in, because the next wave of the Great Seal of the State had entered the charter, which would be on the first day of the Lunar New Year not far away. Once the energy contained in such things erupted, it would have a great boost to the economy of the entire country.

As far as Chen Ming knew, the price of textiles in Chen Han increased by 6.5 percentage points year-on-year this year, and the prices of agricultural tools and ironware also rebounded slightly. The price increase of medicines and medicinal materials was even more amazing, as well as machinery and steam engines.

Of course, no matter how high the growth of these categories is, it cannot compare to ships. Merchant ships that can cross the ocean will make a fortune for shipyard owners this year.

America has food and livestock, and the prices of these things have only fluctuated in a small range, not because of the Chen Han nobles who are about to go to America to establish a country, but because of the Japanese.

The Japanese are also preparing for a long voyage to Madagascar Island in Africa.

They plan to send 5,000 to 10,000 people as the first vanguard to land on the Falkland Islands, of which 2,000 will be guards, and the rest will be colonization immigrants. The initial survival materials - food, farm tools, ironware, and livestock, are all provided by Chen Han's colony in South Africa.

All the Japanese need to do is to transport the people to the Falkland Islands intact!

But this is not easy to do, because Japan has no such experience at all. They sent "security" to India and America before, and they all took Chen Han's ships. But what about now? Chen Han's transportation company and Chen Han's domestic long-distance merchant ships have all been swallowed up by Chen Han's ministers. And for future considerations, the Japanese must also form their own ocean-going fleet.

But how difficult is this.

The formation of an ocean-going fleet is not just a matter of ships, but also of manpower.

The long-distance merchant ships with engine-sail hybrid power have already appeared, but the orders for the latter have been scheduled for three years, and Japan can't get them at all. Therefore, the ships of Japan's long-distance fleet can only be old-style sailing ships, which are much more laborious than the engine-sail hybrid ships. And the safety is worse.

Chen Ming also doesn't want to see the first wave of Japanese overseas immigrants feeding fish in the vast ocean, so he must pay enough attention to it.

There is also a small episode, that is, the news that Chen Han's Second Gold Company discovered gold mines in the Rand Basin seems to have leaked. However, Chen Ming believes that the British should not know how huge the interests hidden under the surface of the Rand Basin are.

In fact, after the gold veins in the Rand Basin were discovered, almost every three to five days, a prospecting team announced the discovery of a new gold mine. A remote corner of South Africa has quickly become the focus of Chen Han's Mineral Resources Department.

According to the Ministry of Mineral Resources, there are at least 3,000 tons of gold hidden in the Rand Basin in South Africa. This is a huge fortune!

But Chen Ming disdained this estimated number, because he knew that on the eve of his crossing, the Rand gold mine had been developed for more than 130 years and had produced 35,000 tons of gold. The proven reserves are still as high as 18,000 tons, still accounting for 52% of the world's total gold reserves. In the second half of the 20th century, the mine produced 650-700 tons of gold annually, accounting for half of the world's gold production, and it is truly the world's largest gold mine. And the high gold grade of the ore here is also rare in the world. It still maintains 7-20 grams/ton after mining, with an average of 10 grams/ton.

Therefore, Chen Ming disdained the estimate of the Ministry of Mineral Resources and was very concerned about the leak of information.

He believed that the British would not come to the door now, and London would not be so brainless, but in the next hundred years, this land would definitely become a focus of Sino-British contradictions-East-West contradictions.

When everything here is exposed, the Rand Basin will attract the attention of people all over the world like a piece of fat meat, attracting the covetousness of hyenas all over the world. And South Africa will also become a node for Chen Han to prevent Europeans from moving eastward.

From Russia to the Ottoman Empire, and then to Egypt and central and southern Africa, this "straight line" together with the vast Atlantic Ocean, together form a huge and solid prison.

A Suez Canal and a South Africa, these are Chen Han's two nodes in Africa. When the British interests in India are overturned by the Indians, Chen Ming will completely lock the Europeans in this huge prison.

Of course, Chen Ming may not see this strategy. This is the route he designed for Chen Han's future.

…

The Guryev Fortress is a fortress with a long history. It stood at the mouth of the Ural River 160 years ago. It quickly transformed from a wooden fortress to a stone fortress.

In the original Russia, as time went by, the strategic significance of the castle gradually declined. In 1810, the castle was demolished, and a city with a commercial population gathered spontaneously around the original castle.

But in this era, this place is still an extremely important fortress. The Russians not only did not demolish the stones here, but also greatly expanded and rebuilt it.

"Boom boom boom..." Time came to December 1812 in the Western calendar. Chen Han's large army finally arrived, and a large number of Mongolian cavalry and Kazakh cavalry also arrived at the east bank of the Ural River at the same time.

Almost effortlessly, the Russians were driven back to the west of the Ural River again.

The bombardment of Chen Han's artillery cluster began. More than 300 hexagonal cannons, which took more than 3,000 cattle and horses to transport to the Ural River. As for the number of livestock specially used to carry shells and gunpowder for them, it was many times higher than this number.

Countless shells streaked across the sky, submerging the front line of defense of the Russian army in a splashing snow fog. In the eyes of Meloyarsky, Pokrov and Kirilenko who had just arrived at the front battlefield, the artillery preparation of the Chinese National Defense Army was completely unscrupulous. They were not worried at all that the Russian artillery in the Guryev Fortress could give them enough damage.

The Chinese were very confident this time!

They were no longer as tactical as in the last war, but pressed straight from the front with absolute strength.

However, according to Chen Ming, the scale of this Sino-Russian war was much larger than the last time. Such a large-scale war was more about the strength of both sides, the real strength, rather than playing some small tricks of "counterattack".

In future wars, both sides will set up battles to fight one after another, and the good thing of the Torghut counterattack will no longer happen.

Moreover, the Russian defense line is very solid. Before any large-scale military operation, it is murdering soldiers to launch an attack without being fully prepared. And once a large amount of ammunition, supplies, troops and artillery are assembled, no strategic intention can be concealed. The only thing that can help them conceal the purpose of the action is the severe cold weather and the vast snow.

In future wars, the troops on both sides will gather, the artillery will be concentrated, and the materials will be mobilized, which will be carried out more and more blatantly.

Because the Russian army cannot come out of the solid castle and fight a field battle with the Chen Han National Defense Army, and the siege war is no longer a sneak attack.

When the weather is good, the hot air balloons floating high can be seen clearly from dozens of miles away. The troops can only use some means of hiding the truth and showing falsehood in the future battle scale, which may not have much significance.

The Russians have invested a lot of money in the defense of the Eastern Front. The fortresses have been operating for a long time. They are all very solid permanent fortifications and equipped with a large number of heavy artillery. If you want to break the position, you must rely on real skills!

Now Chen Wei directly led more than 70,000 people to surround the Guryev Fortress. The latter has only two Russian divisions of garrisons, with a total of only about 10,000 people. In Europe today, Chen Han's reorganized division can match the strength of one of their armies. A division of 4,000 to 5,000 people is normal. In France, only the division-level unit of Napoleon's Guard Corps has 18,000 people.

The Russian army is the same. The ordinary division has 4,000 to 5,000 people, and the Guards Division in the Guards can reach a scale of 10,000 people.

The total number of artillery deployed by the National Defense Army on the northwest battlefield this time is only more than 500 guns - all hexagonal guns, and there are only about 700 guns including the cannons of the Seven Khanates. Now Chen Wei has assembled more than 300 cannons in the Guryev Fortress, and the importance of this city can be seen.

Tens of thousands of carriages continuously transported large quantities of military supplies from the rear to the front line, including clothing, ammunition, food, medicine, guns and artillery equipment. Each of these is an astronomical figure.

Over the years, preparations for war in the northwest have been actively carried out. The amount of war materials that can be concentrated by the efforts of a country is unimaginable for ordinary people. The headquarters, warehouses, hospitals and transportation networks of various arms on the front line are being rapidly built under the hard work of engineers and militiamen.

This war is the first industrial war fought after China's rise. Everything we are experiencing now is the best practical lesson of overall war. Although the overall situation is not Chen Han, but the seven khanates in Central Asia, such experience will be systematically summarized by the elites of the army and become the basis for new military reforms, especially the logistics part.

The sound of artillery rumbled, hundreds of shells kept hitting the Guryev Fortress, and the bombardment lasted for several hours. This is the correct way to open the future war. If the hexagonal gun is replaced with a breech-loading gun, this is a preview of the future war mode.

Wei Baocheng and Chen Wei stood on the high watchtower, watching the rolling snow fog on the outer edge of the Russian fortress with telescopes. The crystal snowflakes were floating in the air, and when they were illuminated by the winter sun, it seemed as if a silver light enveloped the position, and nothing could be seen.

Wei Baocheng couldn't be sure whether the fortress on that position had been blown down. The only thing he could determine was that the breastwork on the Russian position had been completely smashed down, as if it had never appeared in this world.

This scene was still difficult for foreigners and soldiers of the Great Alliance to imagine - after all, it was 1812, not 1912. Several officers who had just arrived from Japan, Siam, and Gurkha, as well as many military academy students who came to practice with them, were holding telescopes with their hands trembling slightly.

Tens of thousands of shells fell persistently on the outer edge of the Russian position, and the breastworks and concrete fortresses were pitted and dented by the long hexagonal shells, and debris flew everywhere.

The breastwork collapsed directly, and the concrete fortress was like an ancient soldier wearing heavy armor, bathed in a rain of arrows. They could withstand one, two, or three waves, but not ten or twenty waves. In the end, they still fell down tragically.