When he arrived at the cabinet this time, Gao was pragmatic but had nothing to do. He only sealed the cabinet with the decree sent shortly after and completed the approval procedures for "Fengge Luantai" and had nothing to do. At this time, Wang Jiaping was still in the pavilion. When Gao Pingshi went to find him, he was writing furiously, probably writing a poem.
Gao Pragmatic couldn't point it out, so he had to pretend not to know, handed over today's chief author and the cabinet seal to him, and then walked out of the palace and went to the Ministry of Household Affairs.
Because of Zhao Zhigao's incident, Yang Junmin, one of the right servants, was absent today on the pretext of inspecting the warehouse. Cheng Wen, the left servant, Hu Zhili, and Zhao Yumin, the right servants, were all at the Yamen. As soon as Gao Pragmatic arrived, he sent someone to invite them to discuss the material preparations for the Western Expedition.
Without further ado, several of the Gods of Wealth of the Ming Dynasty quickly took their seats in the small meeting hall. Cheng Wen, as the Zuo Shilang of the "Big Household Department", was actually equivalent to the "Standing XX" in later generations, so he first reported to Gao Pangshi. .
But surprisingly, the first thing Cheng Wen reported was not the material preparations that Ming Dynasty had made, but the thick piece of information that Jin Yiwei had handed over to the Ministry of Household Affairs.
Theoretically, this intelligence is not military intelligence, but happens to be related to the economy. However, it is not intelligence from the Ming Dynasty, but Jin Yiwei's civilian economic investigation of the Yarkand region - or the current Chahar occupied area. .
It must be noted here that although Jinyiwei conducts both internal and external investigations, since Dongchang has long been a permanent institution, and Dongchang generally only conducts internal investigations, Jinyiwei’s external investigations are, to some extent, more It's even more powerful inside.
Historically, the Jinyiwei had a relatively tight intelligence network on both Mongolian ministries and North Korea. They even showed that they had some penetration into Japan during the War to Resist Japan and Aid Korea.
Of course, it should be said that Jin Yiwei's investigation of the Jurchens was quite problematic. It was not that there was no intelligence network, but that its network was severely penetrated by counter-infiltration, and many front-line managers were bribed and corrupted. But these are all mentioned casually, because of Gao Pragmatic's butterfly wings, these things have nothing to do with today's Jin Yiwei.
Over the years, Jin Yiwei's external investigations have always focused on Mongolia. After the Chahar tribe fled west, Jin Yiwei also adjusted the direction of its investigation and penetrated its forces into the Yarkand region. Over the years, these newly established intelligence networks have been able to send back some valuable intelligence.
Unfortunately, due to the great geopolitical changes, although Jinyiwei has newly established an intelligence network in the Yarkand region, it is currently unable to penetrate the top leadership of Chahar and can only get some information from the middle level and the private sector.
However, ancient society had its limitations after all, and intelligence analysis work was far from being comparable to that of later generations. Therefore, the information sent by Jin Yiwei to the middle and lower levels was often ignored - just like the ones sent today.
In fact, they had been lying in the Jinyiwei Yamen for a long time, and no one looked at them at all. Until this time, the Suzhou and Weilu guards were almost wiped out, Suzhou city fell, and Burihatu personally led an army known as a hundred thousand menace. Ganzhou and the Five Ganzhou Guards did not dare to fight and could only defend the city. Only when the Jinyiwei senior officials remembered this incident, they hurriedly found it and copied a copy to the Supervisor of Rites, the Ministry of Husbandry and the Ministry of War.
However, the Jinyiwei senior officials were not completely idle. At least the information they sent this time was carefully analyzed and sorted out. They even basically understood what Gansu Governor Xu Sanwei said in his memorial that the former Burihatu army "possessed firearms." , almost as good as me.”
Jinyiwei comprehensively analyzed more than 40 pieces of information of varying lengths sent back from the Yarkand area, and came up with a comprehensive and in fact quite accurate information.
They learned that the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Muhammad III sent many envoys to Central Asian countries in order to alleviate the threat from Tsarist Russia. They hoped that these countries could attack Tsarist Russia's eastward expansion within their capabilities and provide as much support as possible. Tsarist Russia was bleeding.
However, there was a little surprise in this diplomatic operation. That is, there was no response from the other khanates contacted by Sudan. Instead, the former Yarkand Khanate in the east and the now occupied Chahar Ministry, actually responded enthusiastically to Sultan Muhammad III.
Burihatu representative Buyan Chechen Khan expressed to the Sudanese envoy that they were willing to go north to curb Tsarist Russia's eastward advance, and were also willing to contact the Ming Dynasty eastward to "help Sudan develop trade." However, they lack strength, especially the lack of firearms, and may not be able to defeat the vanguard of Tsarist Russia's eastward expansion.
This is naturally nonsense, because the eastward expansion of Tsarist Russia after defeating the Siberian Khanate could hardly be regarded as a state behavior for a long time. It was just that the Tsar supported some adventurous groups in his own name, and these often only numbered 100 people. , an adventure group of hundreds of people spontaneously marched eastward.
Tsarist Russia's level of firearms at this time was not very high, and it might even be inferior to that of the Ottomans. In contrast, due to the highly pragmatic military reforms of the Ming Dynasty, the overall level of firearms was higher than that of Tsarist Russia at this time.
Of course, the Ming Dynasty and Tsarist Russia are still far apart. Even if Tsarist Russia crazily advances eastward, the most they can encounter is the Tumote tribe, which became powerful after the victory in the Battle of Yuan Dynasty. And Tsarist Russia has more firearms than Tumut is still much taller.
At least Tsarist Russia's "shooting army" has been established for about fifty years now, which shows that it has an established musketeer unit. Of course, the main force of Tsarist Russia's eastward expansion was not the shooting army, but the Cossack cavalry. This will be discussed later.
Although Tsarist Russia has a shooting army, the Chahar tribe has acquired the Yarkand and Hami areas in recent years, and its strength has recovered quickly. At least it will not be a problem to defeat Tsarist Russia's adventure team.
However, the Sultan's envoy did not know this. After sending someone to conduct a private investigation, he believed that this large tribe that claimed to be the orthodox Yuan Dynasty might only have a total population of more than 400,000. It would indeed be difficult to defeat the Czarist Russian advance team - —Well, the envoy actually didn’t understand that Russia’s eastward expansion was not a state action.
Therefore, the envoy believes that it is feasible and appropriate to provide Chahar with some firearms, but it cannot be free assistance and must be traded fairly. The two parties should complete the transaction through transactions rather than unilateral gifts from the Ottoman Empire.
Burihatu readily accepted the proposal of the Sudanese envoy, and immediately discussed the specific matters of the transaction seriously with the Sudanese envoy. At this point, Jin Yiwei has obviously compiled intelligence, because they explained in detail the current basic economic development of Yarkant.
The economy of the Yarkand region has always been based on nomadism, and there are not many goods that can be provided to the Ottomans, and the Ottomans are not in short supply. However, it may be that Burihatu, who has experienced high pragmatic reforms and "Tumote reforms", was inspired. Under his promotion, Chahar tried to take a new path in the past few years.
Under the personal arrangement of Burihatu, manpower was actually assigned to farm in the Ili Valley!
Of course, the Mongols in the Chahar tribe really have no interest in this. Most of the people assigned to farm by Burihatu are local people who were conquered by them. In addition, there are also some Han people who came all the way from the original left-wing Mongolia.
These Han people were kidnapped to the Chahar tribe a long time ago. Their status was very low at first, but now they are very precious, because almost all of them have become technicians - specialized in farming.
In addition to farming, they also grew cotton, and by the way, they also built Ming Dynasty looms to weave cloth with cotton. Now we have found the right path. The local conditions are extremely suitable for growing cotton. As a result, the yield is getting higher and higher year by year. The cotton cloth produced is sold to various Central Asian khanates and is very popular. It has become the flagship product of the Chahar tribe.
Although these Han people were taken away early and had not seen the Jenny spinning machine, their spinning efficiency was not very high. However, no matter how low it was, weaving cotton for trade was still better than the original life of herding. Too much. Of course, since they were Han Chinese anyway, Jin Yiwei obtained the above information through some of them.
Therefore, the result of the discussion between Burihatu and the Sudanese envoy was to "exchange cotton for muskets". In this way, Burihatu found that the population currently controlled by the Chahar tribe was not enough.
Whether they hope to expand cotton cultivation or expand the textile industry, they are in desperate need of population now. However, the population of Central Asia has always been relatively limited. Even if they conquer the Kazakh Khanate, Bukhara Khanate and other places westward, I am afraid they will not be able to capture many people. Moreover, these khanates are not in decline yet. They have just finished licking Chahar, who was wounded, did not dare to use force rashly.
What about the Northern Expedition to the Junggar tribe? Although Junggar is severely divided, their current combat effectiveness is not bad. Burihatu carefully tested it twice and launched two limited-scale operations, but found that the effect was not good.
The Dzungars were originally one of the Oara tribes, and they were also the descendants of the Mongols. They were also a serious horseback nation, so although Burihatu won the battle twice, and the victory was not difficult, he didn't catch it. Several people arrived, which made Burihatu very disappointed.
In this way, Burihatu had no choice but to turn his attention back to the Ming Dynasty again, and the firearms held by their army were the Rumi guns obtained from the previous "cotton for muskets" transaction.
At this point, Gao Pragmatic finally confirmed the source of Chahar's muskets, but this coincided with his previous guesses, and it did not fully reflect the value of Jin Yiwei's intelligence - although it was indeed valuable.
However, Gao Pragmatic soon obtained more valuable information: a Chahar army was equipping a large number of standard Rumi guns. Cheng Wen said that Jin Yiwei tried every means to get this Rumi gun from a centurion of the former army of Burihatu who had strict management. In order to get this Rumi gun, Jin Yiwei even went to the last resort. Take it in and save three lives.
The gun was now placed in front of Gao Jingshi. Gao Jingshi picked it up carefully and inspected it carefully, while Cheng Wen took the information sent by Jin Yiwei and told him some information about the gun.
The Rumi gun Gao Pragmatic held weighed about seven or eight kilograms, but Cheng Wen said that Jinyiwei said that the weight of the Rumi gun Chahar received varied, and some only weighed six kilograms. Jinyiwei people speculated that the weight The difference may be due to the use of better or worse iron.
After all, Jinghua's firearms are at the pinnacle of today's Daming firearms. As an early technology provider, Gao Pragmatic is quite familiar with today's firearms. After a brief look, he roughly understood the level of Rumi Gun.
This Rumi gun is about six or seven feet long, and the firing mechanism is in the bed. It will fall off when pinched and will rise again when the fire burns. There is a steel knife at the end of the bed. If the enemy is approaching, it can be used as a slaying sword. When firing a gun, you should grasp the stock in front and push the butt in the back.
Although this is just a matchlock rather than a flintlock gun, firing only requires pulling the trigger. This Rumi gun has a front sight, which is slightly away from the eye. From the design point of view, the smoke when the gun is fired should not be too big, so that it will not be eye-catching. It should be more effective than the Japanese shotguns captured in the Korean battlefield not long ago.
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic looked at the original gunpowder and lead bullets sent by Jinyiwei with the gun, and judged that the amount of powder and lead bullets used was four qian, and three qian for lead bullets. He kneaded the gunpowder carefully and looked at it. The black gunpowder manufacturing technology was pretty good. Although it obviously had not reached the so-called "granulation" technical level, he had a certain foundation and should be able to be called "granulated" in black gunpowder. The quality is above average.
However, the level of lead bullets is relatively average. The projectiles are of different sizes and the shapes are not regular enough, which makes them look a bit crooked. Gao pragmatically doubted that this thing was not manufactured by the Ottoman Empire itself, or it was not a projectile standard for the Ottoman Empire's military. Maybe it was a low-end version produced by a private workshop for the purpose of "earning foreign exchange."
Of course, it is also possible that the Ottoman Empire was too lazy to send projectiles all the way to sell. The Chahar people might have produced this stuff themselves. Due to the number and level of Chahar craftsmen, the quality of these lead bullets was obviously not as good as that of muskets. level.
At this time, Cheng Wen also stopped the introduction. Gao Pragmatic frowned slightly and asked: "There is another very critical question, that is, how many Rumi guns the Chahar tribe has obtained, and the Buriha Tudong crime this time." How many did Gansu bring...Did Jin Yiwei not find out or did he forget to mention it?"
Cheng Wen shook his head and said: "It's not clear yet, Jin Yiwei's statement didn't explain it."
Gao pragmatic said decisively: "Send someone to the Jinyiwei Yamen and ask their person in charge of this matter to come to the household department immediately. I want to inquire personally."
Cheng Wen responded and clapped his hands to call someone in. He was a clerk from the Department of Household Affairs. Gao pragmatically took out a pen and ink and wrote a note, stamped it with his personal seal, and asked the secretary to go to Jinyiwei to inherit the throne.
After the secretary left, Cheng Wen saw Gao Pragmatic and was silent, and asked: "Is this Rumi gun considered to be sophisticated?" Cheng Wen is a typical civil servant. He really doesn't know much about ordnance, so he asked this question.
Gao pragmatic shook his head slightly and said: "Compared with the firearms used by our officers and soldiers, this gun cannot be said to be sophisticated, but firearms... there is a big difference between having and not having them, especially when there is a large amount of equipment. Down."
"Really?" Cheng Wen was still a little doubtful when he heard the words because he didn't understand.
Gao Pragmatic nodded in affirmation and said: "As long as the firearms and the instruments themselves are not far apart, the difference in their use on the battlefield will not be too big. The more important thing is actually the usage. What I am most worried about now is that Burihatu is seeing If someone who has mastered the art of arranging guns under my command deliberately imitates it and is very charming, then the battle to conquer the west may... be a river of blood."
That's not true. If both sides engage in queuing and shooting, rivers of blood will be inevitable.
——
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PS: There are still 5 minutes left until 0 o'clock, not bad, not bad, recovery is going well today.
