Luo Zhixue considered that the steel industry was the basic industry of the industrial revolution. If strict restrictions were imposed, it would be detrimental to the development of the entire industry.
Moreover, it is difficult to completely ban the ban. Even if there are a lot of secretly mined black mines in later generations, it is impossible to completely ban it, let alone in the late Ming Dynasty.
During this period, although the Ming Dynasty nominally implemented a monopoly on salt and iron, there were a lot of private businesses in both salt and iron.
Let’s not talk about salt affairs for now, let’s talk about iron affairs.
In the early Ming Dynasty, it was still government-run, but in the middle and later periods, it was basically a combination of government and private companies. According to unreliable data from later generations, the iron output in the late Ming Dynasty was estimated to be 40,000 to 50,000 tons. This data includes a large number of private iron companies. production capacity.
The Ming Dynasty is a combination of official and private affairs. Naturally, the Chu Empire cannot follow the old path and play a complete iron official camp.
Therefore, Luo Zhixue's strategy for the steel industry is to officially control the main production capacity to guide and regulate the development of the industry, while allowing private participation in the steel industry.
Adopt a combination of government and private sectors, with government leadership and private supplementation, to cooperate with each other and jointly stimulate the good and upward development of the steel industry.
Because the Dachu Empire allowed private ownership of steel, we could not use the excuse of steel monopoly to directly confiscate a large number of private mines and iron-making workshops.
But the Ministry of Industry wanted to control Daye's iron and copper minerals for large-scale development, so it simply spent money to acquire them.
This also gave the gentry in the surrounding areas a clearer understanding of the behavior of the Chu Empire: follow the rules!
Gentlemen are not afraid of you being strict with the rules, but they are afraid that you will not follow the rules.
The reason why the gentry are as afraid of thieves as tigers is because thieves do not follow the rules.
Why were so many gentry under the Chu Empire panic at first, but then they gradually accepted it, and even a large number of gentry began to participate in the imperial examination of the Baoxiang Army?
It's because the Baoxiang Army follows rules.
Rules are very important for a new regime, and they are also an important feature that distinguishes bandits from formal regimes.
After all, there are no rules.
The large iron smelting plant under the Ministry of Industry immediately took over the government-owned minerals and workshops, and at the same time purchased a large number of minerals and workshops at high prices.
In a short period of time, more than 80% of the proven mineral resources and smelting workshops in Daye were integrated.
Then he contacted the military and asked the military to organize the large number of prisoners of war who could not be replenished into the garrison into mining camps and stationed them in various mines in Daye to mine in order to increase the output of iron ore and copper mines.
At the same time, we also contacted factories such as Xiangyang Machinery Factory in the rear to build various mechanical equipment for mining and smelting to increase smelting capacity.
However, many things that happened here in Daye have nothing to do with Colonel Kang Hongbao. He led his people to conquer Daye County, and sent troops to cooperate with the armed tax police to clear out the surrounding mines. After most of the stubborn resisters in the workshops, the army Quickly headed south to the Xingguo Prefecture area.
And here they defeated about 5,000 Ming troops who set out from Jiujiang to reinforce Wuchang.
Then they chased the fleeing two or three thousand Ming troops all the way to Jiujiang Prefecture, and stopped after they captured Ruichang.
The reason why they stopped was not because they encountered a strong enemy force in front of them, but because they were exhausted from attacking for many days. At the same time, their ammunition was almost exhausted and could not be replenished, so they had no choice but to suspend the offensive.
Begin to build a defense line around Ruichang and enter the strategic defense stage.
As the two detachments of the Eastward and Westward Advances successfully completed their strategic missions, the Baoxiang Army also completely captured all other areas of Wuchang Prefecture except Wuchang City.
Now, in the entire Wuchang Prefecture, only the more than 20,000 Ming troops in Wuchang Prefecture are still resisting. However, now that the Baoxiang Army has launched a general attack on Wuchang City, it is estimated that they will not be able to resist for long.
On October 15, the Baoxiang Army launched a large-scale artillery bombardment of Wuchang City and launched civil engineering operations.
In the following three days, although the shelling of the Baoxiang Army was no longer intensive, they still maintained suppression through sporadic shelling, preventing the Ming army from easily attacking the city.
In the past few days, the Baoxiang Army has built many forward communication trenches and many mortar positions on the front line.
The nearest mortar position is only about two hundred meters away from the Ming army's city wall.
In addition to these mortar cannon positions, the Baoxiang Army also built a large number of two-hundred-jin short cannon firing positions within a range of one hundred to two hundred meters to deploy a large number of two-hundred-jin short robes close to each other.
By October 20, a large number of 200-pound turbans and 18-pound mortars of the Baoxiang Army had been deployed.
At the same time, part of the moat was filled in.
During the many days of soil work, the casualties on the Baoxiang Army were very limited. The only more than a hundred casualties were caused by the Ming army's close-range counterattack when they forcibly filled in the moat.
However, the Ming army was not much better. Although they did not go to the city to counterattack on a large scale, sporadic counterattacks were scattered, making the Baoxiang army unable to find the target through intensive shelling.
But in the past few days, especially when the Ming army sent troops to the city to try to counterattack the garrison soldiers of the Baoxiang Army who filled the moat, they were once again attacked by intensive artillery fire from the Baoxiang Army, and hundreds of people were expected to be killed or injured.
Coupled with the casualties suffered during the intensive shelling on the first day, the Ming army defending the city had already suffered nearly a thousand casualties before even seeing the infantry of the Baoxiang Army.
A critical battle lasted for five days. As a result, the attacking army dug so many trenches and even filled up the moat, but only suffered more than a hundred casualties.
On the contrary, the Ming army hiding behind the city wall suffered nearly a thousand casualties. It must be said that this is very rare in siege warfare.
There is only one reason for all this, and that is that the artillery fire of the Home Guard Army is too fierce.
Dozens of mortars plus dozens of light cannons and dozens of field guns, a total of hundreds of artillery bombarded the city wall, and the Ming army lacked corresponding counterattack means.
It is not surprising that there were such huge casualties when being beaten passively.
When the Baoxiang Army basically completed the fortification work, Luo Zhixue also personally led a group of senior civil and military officials to arrive in Wuchang by ship.
He took a boat across the Yangtze River directly from the pier of Hanyang City. The Yangtze River Fleet of the Chu Empire Navy was actually quite worried along the way. The entire fleet was in a tight formation, fearing that the remnants of the Ming Navy's navy would rush out to intercept and disturb them. Holy drive.
However, the Ming Navy did not do anything along the way, and no navy was sent out to intercept from the beginning to the end.
Since the Ming Navy's failed breakout operation a few days ago, they have completely huddled near the dock and conducted defensive operations relying on the temporary forts built on the shore.
In the past few days, a large amount of supplies for the Home Guard Army have actually begun to be transported directly by ship across the river from Hanyang City to the temporary dock on the other side of the river, where various supplies can be replenished nearby.
After Luo Zhixue arrived outside Wuchang City, he first summoned the generals of the First Division, the Sixth Guards Division, and the Guards Division headed by Li Chengtong.
At the meeting, Luo Zhixue affirmed the performance of the troops crossing the river and gave promotions and other rewards to a number of meritorious officers on the spot. He also hoped that in the upcoming battle of Wuchang, the troops crossing the river would continue to carry forward the spirit of heroic fighting and conquer Wuchang as soon as possible. , connecting northern and southern Chu.
The next day, Luo Zhixue personally went to the front line for inspection, symbolically inspected the conditions of some artillery positions, trenches, and military camps, and once again met with a large number of middle- and low-level officers and soldier representatives.
The arrival of Luo Zhixue greatly boosted the morale of the siege troops, which also laid a firm foundation for the subsequent general attack.
On the afternoon of October 22, Luo Zhixue once again held a strategic meeting to discuss the final attack.
"It's early winter now, and the temperature is dropping very fast. It won't be long before heavy snow falls. If we wait until it snows, the difficulty will increase a lot. If possible, we still need to capture Wuchang City as soon as possible. "
Luo Zhixue said to the group of generals below: "I listened to the staff's battle plan before. It took into account both a heavy armored attack and an explosion to break the city. Generally speaking, it is relatively comprehensive and detailed."
"The battle plan has been prepared, but the plan is dead and the people are alive. Whether it can be implemented smoothly according to the battle plan and achieve the desired results requires the efforts of all units."
"You have all seen the battle plan. If you have any questions you don't understand or have any questions, you can speak freely. Three cobblers are like Zhuge Liang. We should work together to find out and solve problems in advance as much as possible, so as not to be caught off guard when the fight actually breaks out. !”
After Luo Zhixue made his opening remarks, he handed over the rest of the meeting time to a group of generals.
These generals were not polite, and soon someone put forward their opinions. Brigadier General Han Ziping, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, took the lead in saying: "In the plan drawn up by the staff department, when the infantry officially attacks the city, there will be blasting operations, but it is not scheduled There are only two blasting locations, isn’t this a bit lacking!”
"After all, there may be mistakes in blasting. Once the blast fails, or the corresponding city wall fails to collapse after blasting, it will greatly affect our army's subsequent infantry siege."
At this time, Xu Zhixian said immediately: "The reason why we only planned two blasting locations is that time is tight and our army's engineering troops only had time to dig two blasting tunnels."
"In addition, blasting requires a lot of gunpowder. Just booking two blasts has already emptied our inventory of blasting powder. If we add another blasting point, I am afraid it will affect the normal ammunition supply of the troops. Got it!"
At this time, Colonel Xie Xiaobo, director of the Engineering Department of the General Staff Headquarters, who was responsible for formulating and implementing the blasting plan, said: "General Li, please rest assured that our engineering troops have made strict calculations on the blasting location and the amount of explosives. As long as there are no major accidents, There is no problem in detonating smoothly!”
With that said, Colonel Xie Xiaobo added: "On the day of the general attack, I will personally carry out the blasting operations. Even if there is an accident, I dare to issue a military order and absolutely guarantee that there will be a blasting point. Detonated successfully!"
When Li Chengtong saw Xie Xiaobo saying such things, he naturally shut up and stopped talking about the blasting issue.
People have already issued military orders, what else do you want...
Although he didn't say it, he was still worried about the failure of the blasting, because it was expected that the first wave of troops rushing to the city would be an assault battalion composed of elite soldiers under his first division.
If the assault battalion fails to attack or even suffers heavy losses due to the failure of blasting, then the losses will be huge.
