After driving away a group of troublemakers, Cixi and her two uncles were left in the palace, followed by Yi Xuan. This is the core of the conservative forces, and everyone else is just trying to make fun of them.
"There are no outsiders. Uncle, let's tell the truth. Is the Xishan Camp capable of fighting?"
Yi? His expression turned bitter, "Then I'll tell you the truth. From the moment I planned to build Xishan Camp, I didn't expect to be able to fight against Xiao Letian within ten years..."
"It's not that my ambition is to destroy my own prestige, but Xiao Letian's army is really difficult to deal with. I have consulted officers from Britain, France, Russia and other countries. Although their words are confusing, I have understood the subtext. This is a powerful army that gives European armies a headache..."
"How was the battle between Prussia and Austria won? We in the Qing Dynasty have not studied it clearly until now, but one thing is unquestionable. The two sides invested a total of no less than one million soldiers in that battle! And they were all Concentrated in a narrow area, the scale of the battle is unimaginable..."
Cixi is not a woman who knows nothing about military skills. The more than ten years of suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Nian Army rebellion have been enough to train her.
Some people say that China has a vast land, rich resources, and a large population, so large-scale battles in ancient times were also large-scale. Reading records in history books about a certain battle of hundreds of thousands or millions seems like a joke. In fact, there is water in it.
In ancient times, people liked to brag when fighting. In fact, there was also a certain element of strategic deception. An army of 50,000 to 60,000 people dared to brag that it was an army of 120,000 people, and an army of 150,000 to 60,000 people dared to boast that it was an elite force of 500,000 people.
Here, combat soldiers, auxiliary soldiers, and civilians are all counted together, and then doubled. According to the efficiency of ancient logistics support, 10,000 elite soldiers must be supported by 20,000 to 30,000 auxiliary soldiers. The soldiers mainly carry out the most difficult offensive battles, such as some special operations, or raids in stalemate situations, and even offensive attacks. The vanguard of the city.
The auxiliary soldiers perform more daily combat tasks, such as filling gaps on the battlefield, daily patrols, etc. These jobs may not be considered dangerous, but they are not enough if there are few people.
Finally, there is the even larger number of civilians. A large army must be followed by a large number of civilians to transport grain, grass, and military equipment. At that time, there was no professional branch of engineering soldiers. It was the work of civilians to open roads in the mountains and fill bridges in floods.
The backward logistics ensured that the number of civilians far exceeded the number of soldiers. Not only that, many armies also have the bad habit of using civilians as cannon fodder. For example, when they attack a city, they will drive away tens of millions of civilians in the first wave of attacks. They don't seek victory, but just hope that these human lives can consume more bows, arrows and rolling stones of the defenders. .
This war model still exists until now. In the more than ten years of war between the Taiping Army and the Hunan Army, the most people who died were actually ordinary people and various auxiliary soldiers. The death rate of the real core elite was not high.
After being familiar with the war patterns of China's past dynasties, it's a bit shocking to look at the wars in Europe. Prussia and Austria actually mobilized more than 1 million soldiers? Are they really all soldiers charging into battle? Isn't there the phenomenon of auxiliary soldiers and civilians making up the numbers?
The Manchus did not understand the perverted military service system in Europe, especially in Prussia, where all the people were soldiers, and all adult males had to receive military training.
And they don't understand that no matter how strict the musket shooting training and army drills are, they are not as strict as the samurai training in the Chinese era. In layman's terms, soldiers who use muskets to shoot can be mass-produced, just like a factory assembly line.
However, warriors in the Middle Ages needed ten or twenty years to hone their skills. They were purely products of manual workshops, and it was impossible to be efficient.
In ancient times, it was impossible to train a crossbowman without seven or eight years of rigorous training. This shows the inefficiency of this kind of troop formation.
However, European musketeers can definitely be produced quantitatively. Adult men undergo three months of queue training to adapt to the atmosphere and discipline of the army, and then two or three months of weapons and tactics training, which can already be used on the battlefield. After spending a year or two on the battlefield and experiencing several bloody battles, he became a veteran of hundreds of battles.
In three years, or at most three years, a group of mature soldiers can appear in Western countries. This efficiency is the root of the later all-military service system.
Some people say that productivity determines the structure of society and even the political system, so can the productivity of the military also determine the transformation of the military system? The answer is yes.
People in modern society have all heard the saying "the iron camp is made of iron and the flowing water of the soldiers" means that the army numbers are made of iron, but the soldiers are absolutely mobile and are in a state of blood exchange all year round.
The core of this military system is the efficiency of training soldiers. Only by getting rid of the backward training efficiency in the Middle Ages can such a miracle be possible.
In ancient society, martial arts were more often taught between fathers and sons, masters and apprentices. Military strategists had a set of training techniques, which were all hidden and would not be shared with the whole people.
Therefore, the military system in ancient times was more inclined to the military household system. In the Ming Dynasty, there were military households and in the Qing Dynasty, there were the Eight Banners Green Camp. After all, the emergence of this system was not determined by the emperor's brainstorm, but was very suitable for the social environment at that time. .
Children from military families have to practice martial arts since childhood. Even if they are useless after more than ten years, they will still be better than children from peasant families. However, no matter how ambitious children from peasant families are, they will have nothing if they cannot be taught by famous teachers. In the end, if you have enough strength, you can only be a ruffian in the countryside and cannot go to the battlefield.
In the late Qing Dynasty, people simply didn’t understand what technology was, what the art of studying things was, they didn’t understand geography, and they didn’t understand what productivity was.
So no matter how smart they are, they can't understand the strategies and tactics of people like Xiao Letian, because it has nothing to do with IQ, but just a different dimension of thinking.
Life forms in the two-dimensional world cannot understand how wonderful the three-dimensional world is, and the three-dimensional world also cannot understand what the four-dimensional space is like.
After analyzing and analyzing, Cixi could only sigh, "After all, I still have to use the old method to deal with him! Last time, I suppressed Xiao Letian with the secret scolding of everyone in the court, and used a violent method. Is it possible that in the future?" Do you still want me to be a shrew?"
"Can't you grown men stand up like this? Do you want me, a woman, to show my face?" After hearing Yi Xi's depressing words, Cixi burst into anger.
"Even if the Ai family is shameless and plays tricks with Xiao Letian, you still have to remember clearly that this kind of trick works once and twice, do you still want to use it for a lifetime? We have to be tougher when it comes to ironing, right... "
