I want to be emperor

Chapter 668 Northern Strategy Enlightenment

It was the Jiangnan Province that requested the construction of the railway. They planned to build a railway in the Jiangbei area of ​​Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture to reach the mouth of the Huangpu River, which is the Suzhou Industrial Zone where Jiading County of Suzhou Prefecture is located.

The three major industrial zones on the north bank of the Huangpu River are the Suzhou Industrial Zone in the Haikou area, the Songjiang First Industrial Zone near the Suzhou Industrial Zone in Shanghai, the Songjiang Second Industrial Zone, and the Shanghai Jiangbei Industrial Zone. These five industrial zones are actually It is connected together, and the outside world also generally calls it Songjiang Industrial Zone.

Regarding this general name, the Suzhou government has a lot of opinions, because among the five major industrial zones, there is an industrial zone that belongs to Suzhou Prefecture, and has a fart relationship with Songjiang Prefecture.

But unfortunately... This is because most of this large area still belongs to Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture, so the outside people spontaneously formed such a name.

So apart from emphasizing the Suzhou Industrial Zone in the official documents and calling it the Jiangnan Industrial Zone in general, no one paid any attention to them...

These five major industrial zones stretch for more than 20 kilometers from the north bank of the Suzhou River in Shanghai County to the west bank of the Huangpu River until they reach the mouth of the Huangpu River.

Then turn north in Wusong Fort, and there is a large area along the Yangtze River in the north of Wusong Fort... This is also the production base of Jiangnan United Iron and Steel Company. There is a Jiangnan United Iron and Steel Factory built nearby. Such companies, shipbuilding and other industries provide steel raw materials.

If the route along the river is followed, the length of the five major industrial zones along the river can reach [-] kilometers!
Within these [-] kilometers, there are countless large and small factories and various offices.

Most of the famous large enterprises in China are either headquartered in this area, or have offices here, and many even have their main production bases here.

Among them, there are hundreds of large factories with more than [-] employees.

Jiangnan United Iron and Steel Company, Songjiang Naval Shipyard, Luohua Shipyard, Songjiang Production Base of Guangzhou Machinery Company, Songjiang Iron and Steel Company, Songjiang Machinery Company, Wusong Naval Arsenal, Songjiang Production Base of Tianjin Machinery Company, Daye Heavy Machinery Company's No. The second branch factory, Wusong military food factory, the new base of Lee's Machine Tool Company under Lee's Iron and Steel Company, the main cloth production base and raw silk production base of Suqin Textile Company, a leading textile company, etc.

There are many large enterprises well-known to Chinese people or key enterprises directly invested by the Ministry of Industry.

In the entire Pan-Songjiang Industrial Zone, in addition to these large enterprises, there are actually more densely populated ones. Even the local industrial and commercial departments may not be able to figure out how many small and medium-sized enterprises there are.

I'm afraid it's not very accurate to describe it in terms of quantity. It should be said that everything that can be bought with money in the Great Chu Empire can be bought here.

Armed merchant ships with iron ribs and wooden shells as large as more than 2000 tons, as small as a screw.

Then to all kinds of large-scale machine tools driven by steam engines, all kinds of ultra-high-precision processing equipment, etc., can be found in this place.

And it's always in stock...

These are all kinds of industrial products, and all kinds of messy ordinary consumer goods, no matter if they are luxury accessories imported from overseas, or precious furs obtained from the northern ice sheets, or other things, you can basically buy them if you have money.

Here, after more than ten years of sustained and rapid development, it has evolved into a super industrial city relative to this era.

Maybe you can't see any high-rise buildings here... But you can see endless, endless factories and various residential areas where workers live.

As a digression, it is precisely because there are no high-rise buildings these days that the Pan-Jiangnan Industrial Zone is so large, because without high-rise buildings, the floor area ratio is very low, and in addition, factories these days like to move to larger buildings. Repaired.

For example, the production base of the United Iron and Steel Company is more than 2000 meters long, and next to it is the production base of the Wusong Iron and Steel Company, which is also more than one kilometer long...

These two steel companies alone have actually occupied one-tenth of the riverside area of ​​the entire Pan-Jiangnan Industrial Zone.

And these factories need a lot of workers, there are thousands of workers at every turn, and these workers also need places to live and live.

Due to technical and cost problems, these living places have been built into several stories high, basically one-story bungalows, and it is remarkable to make them two stories.

Coupled with other business, education, transportation and other supporting facilities.

This has also led to the fact that the industrial zones created by the Great Chu Empire these years are basically large in size.

There is no way, you can't ask for the area from the sky, you can only ask for more area from the surrounding expansion.

In the entire Pan-Jiangnan Industrial Zone, there are countless factories, and the population in it is super large, up to a million. It belongs to the most densely populated area in the Great Chu Empire, not one of them...

Even the capital, Jinling City, has to bow down...Because there are no large factories in Jinling City, especially factories in heavy industry. Luo Zhixue still loves his living environment, but he has no intention of turning Jinling City into an industrial base. .

Jinling City is a political, financial, and cultural center, and this is enough, there is no need to add another industrial center.

In a broad sense, the Dangtu Industrial Zone not far away belongs to the industrial center of Jinling City. After all, it belongs to Yingtianfu.

The Panjiangnan Industrial Zone has such a large population, and all of them are paid administrative, technical, workers, tertiary industry employees and their families.

This also means that they have the need to buy a lot of goods.

Therefore, this area is also a consumer goods market with the strongest per capita consumption capacity and the largest total consumption in the Great Chu Empire!

Well, this is also the largest market for industrial products in the empire!
Whether it is end consumer goods or the steam engines used by various enterprise factories, if they can seize this market, it means that they have really gained a foothold.

And if you want to truly become the top-ranking product in the empire and surpass your competitors, the market in the Pan-Songjiang area is even more indispensable.

The Pan-Songjiang market is so important that there is a saying in the industrial and commercial circles of the empire: Whoever wins Songjiang wins the world!

Such a large industrial city has a huge demand for cargo transportation and personnel transportation!

Previously, ground transportation in this area mainly relied on ordinary freight carriages and river transport on the Huangpu River.

And the river transport on the Huangpu River is also very limited. After all, it can only be transported along the river, and it has to be transported by horse-drawn carriage after landing.

Although there are many carriages, the cost is also high.

Under such circumstances, Jiangnan Province is thinking of simply building a commercial railway to meet the transportation of goods and personnel between various industrial areas.

However, because this kind of thing is relatively large, it does not mean that it costs a lot of money. After all, the railway here is only [-] to [-] kilometers long, and the construction cost is almost a million Chu Yuan. But because this is the first day of commercial railway, There is no precedent before, and it is impossible for the officials of the Great Chu Empire to provide this kind of public transportation to private individuals, so the officials have to come forward.

In order to avoid potential political risks, the local government naturally couldn't do it directly, but adopted the method of reporting first.

In this way, there is also a report on such a commercial railway that Luo Zhixue saw.

Naturally, Luo Zhixue would not block it, but readily approved it.

The construction of commercial railways is the main trend in the future, and the construction of commercial railways cannot be done by the mining companies themselves like those railways in mining areas. It still needs to be handled by a unified organization.

After all, the railway is a basic livelihood facility, and it is impossible to let the people mess around.

After giving the approval, Luo Zhixue thought about it, added a few more comments, and directly asked the Ministry of Communications to organize manpower and set up a special railway construction, operation, and management organization to coordinate and manage many matters related to the railway.

As for the construction of the railway by the local government, Luo Zhixue vetoed it from the very beginning and let the Ministry of Communications do it directly.

According to Luo Zhixue's instructions, the Ministry of Communications transferred a number of personnel from the Department of Civil Affairs and established a railway management office to formulate various railway regulations, set various standards, and guide the construction of private railways by mining companies. , at least to unify the railway type and gauge...

The mining area railways in the Great Chu Empire are very diverse, and there are even several types of rails. In fact, the latest I-shaped rails are not used much. As for the gauge, there are more. Mining companies build railways with gauges as small as 1.6 centimeters and as large as [-] meters according to their own needs.

The railway management office requires that the newly built commercial railways in the future have a standard gauge of 1.5 meters... As for why it is this gauge, there are no special requirements, because the carriages of the Great Chu Empire also have this gauge.

The various official roads, the various packaging and transportation dimensions used by the carriage, the hoisting equipment, etc., and the design dimensions of many goods are basically designed by the wheel and rail dimensions of the carriage.

It is easy to change the track gauge, but if you move the whole body, the size of many things will have to be changed, so it is better not to change it.

Of course, this is only limited to commercial railways. As for some private mining railways, companies like to do whatever they want. After all, you can’t let a mine in a mountainous area where the cost of building a railway is high and the transportation volume is average. The company must follow your 1.5-meter standard to repair the railway in the mining area, isn’t it?

However, for convenience, the Railway Management Office has formulated a number of mining railway standards, which are 75 cm, 120 cm, 1.5 cm and [-] meters.

In the future, if you want to directly connect to commercial railways conveniently, and if the terrain is flat and the transportation volume is large, you can use a standard 1.5-meter gauge.

If it is a mountainous terrain, in order to save costs, follow-up to change the track, or simply transport it directly to the mining area railway of the wharf and river, you can also repair a 75 cm railway. Anyway, if you repair the railway in your own mine, no one cares about you.

At the same time, several standards were finalized, such as the use of I-shaped wrought iron rails, the standard size of the carriages, and so on.

Finally, the Railway Management Office announced that a commercial railway will be built in Songjiang Prefecture and Suzhou Prefecture, which will be operated by horse-drawn carriages and will be used for both freight and passenger transportation.

This day is April 21th, 27st year of Chengshun, which is also the starting point of the commercial operation of the railway in the Great Chu Empire.

Even if it is just a railway that uses horse-drawn carriages, it still has great historical significance.

Jiangnan Province in the south has started a commercial railway, and the northern grassland railway, especially the northern grassland railway that the army can think about, is naturally in the foreseeable future...

But you have to fight without railways.

The Great Chu Empire prepared for the northern campaign for more than two years, but it would not stop fighting because there was no railway. Besides, when the empire was preparing for the northern strategy, it had never considered any railway.

With the completion of the empire's strategic preparations in the north, the deployment of troops is in place, and a large amount of supplies are also stored in advance. Even the Kur City Arsenal has completed emergency construction and started small-scale production.

The large-scale military operations of the Great Chu Empire in the northern region finally kicked off on May 21th, [-]st year of Chengshun.

On this day, the commander of the Third Army officially ordered to launch a comprehensive counteroffensive, launching a devastating blow to all Russian colonial strongholds in the area east of Lake Baikal.

The core strategic goal is Yakutsk in the middle reaches of the Lena River!
This is also the strategic location that the Great Chu Empire wanted to seize when it launched a large-scale war in the north for the first time many years ago. Unfortunately, the supply was interrupted due to the too long distance and the severe cold in the north, and the army was eventually forced to withdraw.

The withdrawal of troops back then was also one of the rare battles in which the Great Chu Empire failed to achieve its strategic goals in its internal and external wars over the years.

It's not that the enemy is too powerful, but the environment and climate of the Arctic ice sheet is too abnormal!
Fighting in such a broken place, what kind of guns, the courage of the soldiers, etc. are secondary. What really matters is the ability to supply logistics, in other words, the ability to transport,
This is true for the Chu army, and it is also true for the Russians.

This cannonball can't be transported, no matter how many artillery pieces you have on the front line, there are eggs to use.

No, this transportation capacity is not good, and your artillery can't be transported either...

This time, in order to be able to capture the city of Yakutsk, the Chu army spent a lot of money and spent a full two years building a large number of inland watercraft locally.

There are not only a large number of inland river warships, but also a large number of inland river transport vessels.

Because fighting in the north requires a kind of reliance on river transportation, so although carriages are also very important, ships are more important.

In order to support ground operations, the Navy's Small North Sea Fleet has continued to expand over the past two years, making the Small North Sea Fleet the veritable largest inland river fleet in the Navy.

However, the ships in this small North Sea Fleet are mainly divided into two parts, one part is in Lake Baikal and the Angara River, and it is mainly used for operations in the Yenisei River Basin.

Another part is hundreds of miles north of Lake Baikal, and Beihe City in the upper reaches of the Lena River is the main base for operations in the Lena River Basin.

And because the small Beihai Fleet seems to be a whole, but in fact there is no way to gather together to support each other in combat, they all fight separately, and the ships they use are all manufactured locally.

Whether the navy's small North Sea Fleet can control the river transport in these two major river basins and ensure the army's logistics supply line and marching safety is very important.

It is also rare for the navy to be able to stand out in the battle in the inland northern region, so it is very hard to mobilize a large number of experienced inland river combat officers and soldiers.

Under the cover of the navy, more than 8000 troops from the Lena River Dispatch Army, stationed in Beihe City and assembled specifically to conquer Yakutsk City, officially attacked Yakutsk City.

Although there are only more than 8000 troops...but this force is already considered a large army in this desolate northern ice field. In order to gather more than 8000 troops here and maintain their follow-up operations, the Great Chu Empire has spent a lot of money Energetic.

After all, this is not only more than 8000 people, but also dozens of artillery pieces and various weapons and ammunition.

At the same time, this dispatched army also has a cavalry unit of more than 1000 people.

These personnel, mules, horses, artillery, and a large number of food, grass, and ammunition are not so easy to maintain.

Just to maintain the smooth northward movement of this force, the Second Battalion of the Small Beihai Fleet, the brigade responsible for operations in the Lena River Basin, has more than 40 various inland warships and hundreds of various transport ships to provide fire cover. as much.

Then a huge fleet was formed and went down the river, heading straight for the city of Yakutsk.

In addition to mobilizing [-] troops in this strategic direction, the Chu army also dispatched many troops in other places in the Lena River Basin, especially in the hinterland of Edong.

These troops range from 500 to [-] to [-]. Those who travel by water are mainly infantry and artillery, while those who travel by land are mainly cavalry.

In the entire Lena River Basin and the area to the east, the Third Army dispatched a total of more than 3 people to attack various predetermined targets.

For a time, a full-scale war broke out between the Great Chu Empire and Russia in the Far Eastern Siberia region, which was entering summer and was not so cold.

The Chu army has a regular army of more than 3, relying on dense gun firepower, strong cavalry force as support, and the support of many logistics and transportation personnel in the rear.

Launch an assault on numerous colonial forts held by the Russians.

The Russians, on the other hand, relied on their colonial mercenaries, mainly Cossack mercenaries, plus soldiers recruited from the local natives, and some militias from the immigrants to resist.

The core area of ​​the war is naturally the city of Yakutsk.

More than 8000 ground combat troops of the Lena River Dispatched Army of the Chu Army, supported by thousands of naval personnel, traveled all the way down the river, and finally arrived in Yakutsk on June 24.

On the way, I also captured three Russian colonial strongholds along the Lena River, which was an appetizer.

However, both sides are very clear that the key to this battle is not other things, but the outcome of the Battle of Yakutsk City.

To be precise, it is the victory or defeat before the arrival of winter!

If the Chu army can successfully capture the city of Yakutsk before the arrival of winter, it can basically declare that the control of the Russian Lena River Basin and the area east of it has been completely shattered, and there will be nothing to worry about in the future.

If the city of Yakutsk cannot be captured before winter arrives, then the Chu army will have to retreat obediently and return to Beihe City like last time, thus declaring the failure of the entire northern strategy!

(End of this chapter)