Chapter 855: Being Targeted by Thieves

The West Sea along the Caspian coast.

"I think we are changing the Russian military."

One morning, when Pan Chang was running around the city with the military troops as usual, he saw a Russian troop not far away shouting slogans and running over. The officer at the head followed them very friendly. They said hello - something that was becoming more and more common. Therefore, the guards and battalion officers around Pan Chang all sighed like this.

Pan Chang is now a serious brigade commander. There are now only 6,000 people in the National Defense Force in the West Sea. The other 2,000 people have either died in the battle or were injured and were pulled back to the rear to recuperate. The remaining 6,000 people were A brigade was formed which was not full of personnel.

"If these people are dispersed by the Russian army and return to their respective stations and units, a lot of our training content will be spread among the Russian army immediately..."

Pan Chang didn't take it seriously:

"The prerequisite is that their military discipline and rules can remain so strict. Their food and nutrition can also keep up."

"In my opinion, this old guy's physical fitness is indeed not bad, but their logistics are too poor. This aspect cannot be changed, and no matter how big you are, it is useless. This does not depend on the training method, but on logistics and money. No money."

Pan Chang's understanding is more direct to the core.

The training intensity of the National Defense Forces is very high, but this is based on the excellent logistical supplies of the National Defense Forces officers and soldiers. In fact, if it were not for the sensitive place of the West China Sea, the only troops in the entire empire that could maintain such intense training were the Nanjing Guards. .

This is the "A" plan with the greatest amount of exercise in the training program of the National Defense Forces, while the training program adopted by the general main force is only the "B" program.

There is a nutritional issue here.

If the nutrition of the officers and soldiers cannot keep up, and the army still maintains such a strong training level, it will completely destroy the team.

I don’t know if the Russians are aware of this problem. In his opinion, Russia's own military training methods cannot be said to be very bad. Today's European armies place great emphasis on military orders. In this regard, they still retain a strong style of the volley shooting era. As the head of the army, he has had relatively few contacts with the Russians these days. Many people know more about the real situation in Russia than before. However, the Russians did a really poor job in supplying soldiers, that is, they supplemented them with some meat during the battle. In peacetime, British soldiers can get rice, meat, peas and cheese in addition to bread, while Russian privates only have flour and beans. Only when celebrating festivals or war can Russian soldiers smell the smell of meat. and vodka. In addition, Russian soldiers sometimes may not receive tailor-made uniforms and military boots, but clothing and leather. The uniforms and military boots must be made by themselves. The same goes for ammunition, with gunpowder, lead and paper distributed to regiments for the soldiers to make themselves. From this we can better see how easy it is to support the sons of these Russian mothers.

The Russian army follows the tradition of recruiting new recruits every year, making the Russian army the largest and cheapest army in Europe. At the same time, it does not impose an unbearable burden on the people. This system makes the Russian army outstanding in the overall competition. But don't place too much hope on the quality of individual soldiers.

If the Russians really fully study the training methods of the Wehrmacht, they will be the ones who suffer in the end. Unless St. Petersburg is willing to change the status and cost of the ‘grey animals’.

"Compared with the training methods, I think they are more interested in our fighting methods - including Baku Khan. Yesterday, the eunuch Said Muhammad Khatami came to me again, and he talked about it for a long time before listening. I understand what he means: he wants to exchange some arms with us privately, preferably cannons and rockets. He also wants to hire some instructors from our team."

"As long as I do this, I will be the most distinguished friend of the Baku Khanate." Pan Chang said to the guard battalion officer with a smile. Baku Khan regarded the National Defense Force as the army of Tianfang World, and thought that the commander-in-chief was the supreme master of the army.

But in fact, let alone Pan Chang's private arms trade with the Baku people, even if he dared to do the trivial matter of sending a few instructors to Baku, the brigade instructor would dare to unite with the military police to arrest him. The guard battalion will no longer guard him.

Pan Chang continued to say while running:

"The Russians also came to me and wanted to exchange gold for muskets and cannons, and the price was very high..."

The National Defense Forces in the West Sea have defeated the Russian attacks several times. They must have a lot of Russian military equipment in their hands, and the Russians are willing to pay to redeem them.

And in these days, whether it is the Baku people, the Ottomans, the Persians, or the Russians, they have all discovered the secret of the fire hat. Listen to the report from the people below. Someone is directly contacting the Wehrmacht soldiers, saying that as long as they are willing to sell guns and flash caps privately: a rifle [with attached flash caps] is 100 pounds, and ten flash caps are sold separately for one pound. And if a soldier is willing to join the Russian army, he will be treated as a school-level officer in the past, and he will also be given fertile land, beautiful houses, beautiful women...

"It's a very troublesome harassment..."

The control the Wehrmacht has over its officers and soldiers is truly unimaginable to Europeans in this era. Therefore, the Russians' wooing was exposed early on. Taking Xihai as an example, although I am not sure that no one sells flash caps privately, there is absolutely no one who dares to sell flash cap guns or defect. Unless that person has no worries in the country and is a useless person.

But this is a troublesome matter after all. If someone in the army can't think about it anymore, wouldn't it be Pan Chang who is embarrassed? There are 6,000 people. There are all kinds of birds, right?

The war is over, and China and Russia have restored peace. Naturally, the troubles caused by getting close to Russia are getting bigger. Russia has always coveted the weapon advantage of the National Defense Army. Although there are no rainforests or tropical areas in the Russian territory, the strong winds and heavy snow in the north are also troublesome. After all, the flintlock rifle is not as convenient and safe as the percussion cap rifle.

Of course, China refused. The percussion cap is far less effective than the Minié rifle, but its "research and development" is much more difficult than the Minié rifle. However, although all the Europeans' requests in this regard were sternly rejected by Chen Han, European countries including the Russians will not give up.

With the gradual easing of relations between the two sides recently, Russia can't help but use various soft means to achieve its goals. Its temptation is not only for Pan Chang and other senior military officials, but also for middle and lower-level officers and ordinary soldiers. Various inducements are endless.

The loyalty of the National Defense Army does not need to be doubted. But when there are many people, their thoughts will be complicated. There are all kinds of birds in the forest, and it is inevitable that some people will be confused for a while. And they also have to guard against others stealing or kidnapping them when they are alone. Therefore, although the war is over, the National Defense Army still sets the area outside the barracks as a combat zone. All soldiers who leave the barracks must act in squads, at least two people in a group - to prevent Russia or other countries from secretly making a move.

However, as the saying goes, "I am not afraid of thieves stealing, I am afraid of thieves thinking about it." It is not a solution to always be on guard. Individual weapons such as percussion cap guns are different from bulky rockets and artillery. Once they are publicly unveiled, it is impossible to say that they will never leak out - from the time they are equipped to the troops to the present, dozens of percussion cap guns have been lost one after another, but no matter how many of these things are taken by foreign countries, they are not too many, before the secret of the percussion cap is completely cracked.

Even the Military Intelligence Bureau can be sure that there must be four or five of the rifles on the missing list that have fallen into the hands of the Tokugawa Shogunate or local daimyo in Japan, and they must be organizing forces to crack the technology and attempt to copy it. But this road is not so easy to take - for Chen Ming, they have already considered the issue of technology diffusion in depth.

The percussion cap can be said to be the most difficult thing to be cracked and imitated among the technologies mastered by Chen Ming, because modern chemistry in this era has just emerged, and many inventions are not developed according to a certain scientific context, but are obtained through repeated experiments, or even accidental experimental errors.

This is how the percussion cap came about. Therefore, although he showed these equipment to the world, he was sure that these weapons would not escape the attention of foreigners and other countries. But as long as they do not actively pass on these technologies, with the scientific level of this era, others may not be able to easily imitate them even if they get a full set of real objects.

For example, the percussion cap, this thing is more scattered outside than the rifle, but the key item is fulminate of mercury, and without sufficient chemical knowledge, it is impossible to guess what it is. And even if it is guessed, how to make it and how to passivate it after making it, all require a lot of experiments and a lot of time.

Chen Ming does not think that the percussion cap can lead the world for many years. But at least it should last until the Napoleonic War, right?

As for the harm caused by advanced weapons, a small number of advanced weapons have fallen into the hands of others through abnormal means, and it is useless if they cannot form a scale. However, what is currently causing headaches for a group of foreign military officers represented by Pan Chang is that Europeans have not yet realized this. They still rely on their traditional experience and think that as long as they get a few sample guns from the National Defense Forces, they can definitely imitate the same thing after taking them apart, and then they can obtain the same individual combat effectiveness as the National Defense Forces, at least the gap in individual weapons can be caught up.

It is such an unrealistic and beautiful fantasy that makes them act without scruples and at any cost - and it is not just one country or one family that thinks so. The earliest hands have "given up", and the later ones are still working hard. It makes domestic and foreign intelligence departments such as the National Security Bureau and the Military Intelligence Bureau busy!

Under such a huge temptation, even with the solid ideological work of the National Defense Forces, it cannot prevent some people from being confused. The dozens of guns that were lost before, as well as the scattered caps, are a good positive. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of people, and they will have all kinds of strange ideas.

What Pan Chang feared most now was that someone in the army would run away with a gun, making the entire West Sea garrison take the blame for him.

What made Pan Chang even more depressed was that this more advanced new rifle would soon be dispersed from his garrison.

If Pan Chang had not received the emperor's personal order, he would definitely not want to take the blame.

This incident, coupled with some things that happened in the nearby West Sea, although the latter were not big, the mess added up was quite annoying. Until returning to the barracks, Pan Chang was still worried about it.

…

It was mid-July. After the two clipper ships named "West Sea" and "East Sea" anchored at the West Sea pier, Selim got off one of them with a tired face, but he still looked around in disbelief.

Using a clipper ship to pass through the Caspian Sea, following the sea breeze and ocean currents here, the speed was really fast and broke through the sky.

Selim was still in a daze. At the dock, a group of Ottoman civil and military officials had hurried over. When they met, they asked about each other's well-being. As Selim was so popular, all the local Ottoman officials who got the news rushed to greet him.

This was a great contributor to the Ottoman Empire.

And Selim was naturally very good at dancing. He was a diplomat, so he entertained everyone one by one. During the period, he couldn't help asking about his new experiences in China. When the special envoy Selim mentioned this, he sighed and said that he didn't expect China to develop so fast.

There is no need to talk about water and land transportation, and there is no need to talk about railways.

In the Second Sino-Russian War, China's railways also became famous. On the two narrow rails, horses ran back and forth, supporting the military supplies connection between the northwest and the inland of China.

Although a large number of military supplies were transported from Yili, it seemed that horse-drawn carriages were still used, taking the grassland route.

But the real effort is not on the surface, but in the connection between the northwest and the inland.

That railway is more useful than tens of millions of horses.

Not only is the transportation volume huge, but the speed is also extraordinary.

Although the dispatch of this train seems to be extremely troublesome, there are also a large number of maintenance workers, and there is a transfer station every fifty miles along the way, and maintenance workers and road protection troops are also stationed in these transfer stations.

But the effect is also very significant. This railway played a huge and unimaginable role in the war. Whether it is the transportation of troops or the active transportation of materials, it is definitely not comparable to the traditional horse-drawn carriage.

The European world has long had the concept of trams, but at most they play with tram public carriages in big cities. It is unimaginable to lay thousands or tens of thousands of miles like Chen Han's incredible long carriages.

But after the end of the Second Sino-Russian War, the name of the railway became famous in Europe. Perhaps it will not be long before Europeans will build the first long-distance track in the West.

In this era, no one can imagine that trains will appear soon, and then in a short time, trains that can be put into actual operation can run on the earth.

The two railways that Chen Han is building now cannot pass trains, but their construction has laid a solid foundation for the construction of railways in the true sense.

When the railways in Mongolia and Xinjiang began to be officially built decades later, they only widened, enlarged and reinforced the existing two railway lines. Instead of "hollowing out" the northern Xinjiang and "hollowing out" the northwest as they did when these two railways were built.

The construction of such long-distance and long-distance transportation lines has never spent the most energy on "funding", but on the exploration of the lines.