Making guns requires craftsmen and iron materials, not to mention the cost, and the output is extremely low.
Because their muskets rely on craftsmen to manually hammer the barrels, it takes at least a month for a skilled craftsman to build a musket.
Casting the cannon took even longer.
Here comes the most critical part. Skilled craftsmen are not cabbages. Yang Sichang can get tens of thousands of them just by shouting.
There are only a limited number of skilled craftsmen who know how to make guns and cannons, and they are very limited... At the same time, they cannot be quickly cultivated in the short term.
This also led to the fact that even if he had money, he could not find so many skilled craftsmen.
Of course, Yang Sichang didn’t have any money either…
It took him more than two months, but he only made a few hundred muskets in total, only two cannons weighing two and a half kilograms.
This gave Yang Sichang a huge headache!
Why is it so easy to make guns yourself, but the Baoxiang Army can make a lot of them?
Do they have a large number of craftsmen? Doesn't it cost them money to build guns?
Naturally, he didn't know that there were not many skilled craftsmen in the Dachu Empire. Even if all the skilled craftsmen in the entire control area were recruited, it would be impossible to support the current production capacity by handcrafting.
At the same time, the Chu Empire also had to spend money to make guns, and it was very expensive.
How did the Chu Empire solve the above problems?
The Great Chu Empire has an untold secret about this. Xu, keep your voice down, don’t let others hear it. This untold secret is: Throw money!
Not enough skilled craftsmen? The Da Chu Empire replaced it with a large number of machinery, engaged in assembly line production, and hired a large number of ordinary workers to divide the production. Even if the level of the ordinary workers was low, the scrap rate in the initial production was high.
Even if the level of unified measurement is not enough, the tolerance will be relatively large and many parts will be scrapped.
This in turn drives up costs.
But Luo Zhixue doesn’t care about the high cost!
In order to obtain weapons and equipment in time, he dared to spend hundreds of thousands of taels of silver to build a Xiangyang arsenal and supporting factories. He dared to spend hundreds of thousands of taels of silver every month just to pay wages and purchase raw materials.
The initial budget for the newly built Hantian Arsenal and supporting factories has reached 300,000 taels of silver.
Spending so much money enabled the Baoxiang Army to use a large number of primitive mechanical equipment to manufacture guns and guns, and adopted assembly line production to achieve large-scale mass production with a small number of skilled craftsmen.
In terms of cost, in fact, the weapons produced by the arsenal of the Dachu Empire are not low in cost. Even if the factory construction costs and scrap rates are taken into account, the cost of the guns and cannons produced by the Dachu Empire is actually higher than that of Yang Sichang and his others. The cost of making guns is high.
After all, labor costs are very low these days. If you spend a lot of money to replace labor with machinery, it is actually not cost-effective from a business perspective!
Because the production efficiency brought by high-cost machinery seems to have improved, but in the end, it is not as cheap as directly using manual weapons to build weapons.
Because the labor cost is so low... These days, you can make a worker work from dawn to dusk if you just give him food.
However, the Dachu Empire had to adopt mechanical equipment on a large scale, especially expensive hydraulic equipment, not to reduce costs, but to increase output as much as possible with limited skilled craftsmen.
Yield, that's what matters most.
As for money, with so much gold and silver captured during the Great Chu Empire's campaign, why not spend so much money from tax collection?
Money is valuable only when it is spent, converted into weapons, and converted into the combat effectiveness of the troops.
Simply putting a pile of gold and silver in a treasury cannot allow the Chu Empire to unify the nine states.
If it were Yang Sichang, he would probably spend money on equipment and combat effectiveness.
But, even if he wanted to, he couldn't do it.
Because he has no money...
While Yang Sichang in Changsha was worried about money, food, and guns, Luo Zhixue in Wuchang City was in a very good mood.
Because another batch of five-pound field artillery successfully arrived in Wuchang by ship and began to be assigned to the First Division and the Guards Division.
The arrival of this batch of five-pound field guns has increased the number of five-pound field guns in the First Division to eighteen, which is six short of the full complement of twenty-four. It is expected to be completed next month. Fully edited.
At the same time, the Guards Division also received a batch of twelve guns, making the Guards Division the third unit equipped with five-pound field guns.
The second unit equipped with five-pound field guns was the Second Division located in Nanyangfu. This division had also previously received eight five-pound field guns.
The arrival of this batch of five-pound field guns means that the five-pound field gun production line at Xiangyang Arsenal has entered the full production stage.
About eighteen doors can be produced every month.
And this output is only the output of five kilograms of field guns. The Xiangyang Arsenal also retains a production line for producing two and a half kilograms of field guns. The output has been reduced, but it can still produce about twelve guns every month.
Although these mass-produced artillery pieces cannot be equipped with one division in a month, they can also greatly alleviate the current serious shortage of field artillery in the Baoxiang Army.
In addition, along with this batch of five-pound field guns arrived four more special large-caliber artillery pieces, namely nine-pound field guns.
The Baoxiang Army's nine-pound field cannon, for reasons of weight control and mobility, has a barrel diameter that is not as good as the Ming Army's Hongyi cannon of the same level.
The barrel diameter of the Ming army's Hongyi artillery is generally more than twenty times, even twenty-two times, or about twenty-three times. This kind of diameter is a very typical ship-borne cannon in these days.
However, the field artillery of the Baoxiang Army has always been relatively small. The two-and-a-half-pound field gun is only sixteen times, the five-pound field gun is eighteen times, and the nine-pound field gun is only eighteen times.
The barrel has been shortened, but these nine-pound field guns of the Baoxiang Army are still made of bronze.
The barrel of a bronze cannon can be made thinner, which naturally makes it lighter.
Therefore, the nine-pound field cannon produced by the Baoxiang Army was much lighter than the Hongyi cannon of the same caliber by the Ming Army.
But even so, this nine-pound field gun is still a big thing with a total gun weight of more than two thousand kilograms.
In terms of maneuverability, it is definitely inferior to the five-pound field gun, let alone the two-and-a-half-pound field gun.
But this shortcoming does not matter. Anyway, the Baoxiang Army does not expect the nine-pound field artillery to maneuver quickly. As long as it can keep up with the marching speed of the infantry during the march, it is enough to maneuver on the battlefield. Once an artillery of this level is used, Deployed on the battlefield, it will not move easily.
The arrival of these four nine-pound field guns and joining the combat sequence of the First Artillery Regiment of the First Division is enough for the First Division to further strengthen its field long-range artillery capabilities.
It can even attack enemies thousands of meters away.
More importantly, the arrival of these four nine-pound field guns also means that the nine-pound field guns have begun to enter the mass production stage. Even if the output is temporarily not too high, in the following months, that is, when the cold winter passes, During the spring and summer period, we can still get dozens of doors out.
By then, the field artillery firepower of the Baoxiang Army will be further strengthened and improved.
This resulted in the formation of a multi-layered artillery fire structure in which the two-and-a-half-pound field artillery directly supports infantry battalion operations, the five-pound field gun is the main division and brigade-level artillery force, and the nine-pound field gun serves as the corps and division-level strategic support force.
As for the two-hundred-pound short robe, this thing has been directly included in the infantry weapons of the main force of the Home Guard Army and is directly attached to each battalion...
When counting artillery, these small short-barreled guns are not even included in the statistics.
On the sixth day of December, Luo Zhixue watched the confrontation exercise between the First Division and the Sixth Garrison Division in the military camp of the First Division in the southern suburbs of Wuchang.
During the confrontation exercise, the 1st Division fielded an infantry brigade, a reinforced field artillery battalion, and the 1st Cavalry Regiment.
The entire Sixth Defense Division was dispatched.
The two sides simulated an encounter in a hilly area.
However, during the confrontation exercise, the Sixth Defense Division suffered a complete defeat!
And it was a complete and complete defeat without any resistance.
This disastrous defeat was not due to the strength of the infantry of the First Division or the high armor coverage rate, because the infantry of both sides did not break out in large-scale battles during the exercise, and even fell into a disadvantage at one point.
Because the infantry of the Sixth Garrison Division has also been 'strengthened', Luo Zhixue directly doubled the infantry strength of the Sixth Garrison Division... with a full four garrison brigades.
Not because of how strong the cavalrymen of the First Cavalry Regiment are. Well, in fact, the cavalrymen of the First Cavalry Regiment are all half-baked cavalry infantry. The elite cavalrymen of the Chu Empire Army are basically concentrated in the First Cavalry Brigade. The cavalry in the division's cavalry regiment are all half-baked mounted infantry.
It's okay to do reconnaissance, send orders, and cover infantry operations, but don't expect anything else.
The cavalry troops that can truly charge and shoot on horseback, and control a front alone, are the more than a thousand elite cavalry members of the First Cavalry Brigade.
During the confrontation exercise, Luo Zhixue strengthened the Sixth Defense Division with a cavalry brigade of two thousand cavalry... Therefore, during the confrontation exercise, the cavalry regiments of the First Division were all replaced by the virtual cavalry of the Sixth Defense Division. The brigade' pressed and fought.
The only thing that has not been strengthened on the Sixth Garrison Division is the artillery!
The configuration was still based on the artillery configuration of the Ming Army. Thirty general cannons weighing more than 200 kilograms, Folang machine guns, etc. were arranged for the Sixth Garrison Division, and about three hundred 200 kilograms were also arranged. The following are mainly small artillery such as offensive artillery and tiger crouching artillery under 100 kilograms.
This is to simulate the true strength of the large-scale Ming army as much as possible.
After all, it is possible for the Ming army to have many infantry, and it is normal for the Ming army to have many cavalry, but there are really not many field artillery.
In this confrontation exercise, the drill troops of the First Division began to form their formation step by step, and then carried out artillery fire...
Then, there is no more!
No matter how hard the chief officers of the Sixth Defense Division struggled, they could not escape the fate of a huge defeat.
And it was defeated without any controversy!
