People in the Song Dynasty were lawless

Chapter 511: Ten-fold Return, Advantages of Industrial First-Developed Countries

Compared to steel mills, the first stop for envoys from most countries is the shooting range.

Many of them asked Song officials about the scale of the steel industry and how much it would cost to build a steel plant.

The answer given by the officials was an astronomical figure and came with many harsh conditions.

In this situation, most envoys silently estimated the national strength of their own country, and then wisely stopped mentioning the matter.

After all, building a steel plant is not something that countries like these can handle.

Even for relatively wealthy, territorially vast and populous countries such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Seljuk Empire, the Chola Caliphate, and the Chalukya Empire, building a steel plant required almost the entire country's efforts.

In addition to technology, materials and funds, there must also be an adjacent coal mine and iron mine in the country. Even if wealth worth millions of Song coins is invested, there is a possibility that it will be wasted.

So from a pragmatic point of view, firstly, they do not have enough authority to make such an important decision, and secondly, compared with the huge investment and slow returns of steel mills, firearms are better.

At least firearms can produce immediate results, allowing the country's military strength to increase rapidly in a short period of time, which is more immediate than building a steel plant.

Therefore, except for a few powerful countries, the rest of the countries flocked to the outskirts of Bianliang.

Originally, the imperial guards of the Song Dynasty were stationed in the city, but were later transferred away by Zhao Jun. Except for a small number of imperial guards who were responsible for city defense, most of the imperial guards left the city and were stationed in the suburbs.

For this purpose, the Song Dynasty established many suburban military camps and shooting ranges for testing various weapons and artillery. The research of the School of Physics and the Firearms Bureau was also conducted in the suburbs.

At this moment, in the shooting range outside the northern suburbs of the city, with a command, nearly a hundred cannons fired at the same time. Amidst the smoke, the hills in the distance roared.

Shrapnel bombs hit the ground and exploded, sparks flew, dirt flew, and smoke rose into the sky.

"It's horrible. If it exploded on a person, they would be torn into pieces in an instant."

"I've long heard about the power of Song's firearms. Previously, I only heard that they easily defeated enemies ten times their number in Baghdad with firearms. Now it seems that even if they have ten times their number, it will be useless."

"I really hope that our country can also have such a heavy weapon."

Envoys from about thirty countries gathered on the parade ground, sitting in the audience seats and watching the test launch in the distance through telescopes, all with their mouths wide open.

They never expected that they would be able to see such a spectacular scene in their lifetime.

The West is now in the Middle Ages.

The Roman Empire and the French Capetian Dynasty shared Western Europe, while Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Principality of Kievan Rus were located in Central and Eastern Europe.

Next came the Byzantine Empire in the Mediterranean region, and then the Fatimid Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate, and Seljuk Empire in the Middle East.

These countries are those with relatively large territories and populations. The rest of the small countries survive in the cracks among them, and their national strength and status depend on the powerful big countries.

But at this moment, even those small countries saw the power of firearms.

If they could possess these firearms, even if they could only equip a few thousand people, even if they could not sweep across the West, they would be able to dominate the area around them, or even conquer vast territories and achieve great things.

Therefore, the attraction of firearms was much greater than that of steel mills. When they saw the smoke and dust caused by the explosion of these firearms in the distance and the splattered dirt, they made up their minds that even if they had to sell everything they had, they would bring a large number of firearms to their country.

"This is our Song Dynasty's firearm. It was developed and manufactured by our firearms military factory. It is extremely powerful. One bullet can kill an enemy. One shell can blow away even the thickest armor."

"We in the Song Dynasty have long abandoned cold weapons such as swords and guns. These weapons are no longer useful. Only guns and cannons will be the king of future wars."

"Okay, okay, please rest assured, envoy, we will never go back on our word regarding the weapons order we agreed on on the spot."

"What? You're going to add more orders?"

Many accompanying officials proudly introduced and explained the matter to the envoys.

Even though these were outdated firearms eliminated during the Song-Xia War and the Song-Liao War, their main power was black gunpowder, rather than the yellow gunpowder guns and cannons used by the Song army today.

But in the Middle East and Europe, it is already a dimensionality reduction attack. No matter how powerful the heavy cavalry and heavy infantry are, they are as fragile as a piece of paper in front of them.

At that moment, many envoys present, some who had not negotiated orders before, wanted to negotiate immediately, some who had already negotiated orders wanted to increase the order quantity immediately, and some simply asked the officials of the Song Dynasty whether a production line could be built in their country.

At this moment, the Song Dynasty's mountains of outdated military equipment were quickly cleared out, and various orders came in like raindrops.

A few days later, on the 23rd, there was still one day left before the celebration.

In the cold winter, there was no snow in Bianliang, the air was quite dry, and the sun was not visible during the day.

But the sky was not gray, but rather bright like it is at five or six o'clock in the morning in summer, but not very bright.

The Constitutional Court was spacious, and thanks to its special design, it was able to allow sunlight to shine in, filling the room with light.

Now that there is no sunlight, we can only turn on the lights.

The dim incandescent lights filled the room with light. Each prime minister's desk was piled with documents, and the sound of rustling was heard all the time.

"Zhiyuan."

As the director of the Imperial Decree Bureau, Su Huan handed over the latest official document from the Outer Court.

In the past, the Constitutional Yuan's working method was that each ministry would send documents to the Constitutional Yuan, which would then make a ruling or review.

Later, Zhao Jun thought that this way of doing things was too inefficient and very troublesome, so he changed the Zhongshu Sheren who was originally used to refute the emperor's edicts, that is, the Zhongshu Province, into the Zhichi Si, which served as a secretary.

The official documents submitted by various ministries will be reviewed by the Imperial Decree Bureau, so even though the Imperial Decree Bureau is only a third-level agency, the director Su Huan is only a fourth-rank official.

But just like Gao Yuliang and Li Dakang had to respectfully address Xiaobai as Director Bai, no one among those second-rank ministers dared to underestimate Su Huan.

Everyone knew that the prefect was training Su Huan to be the prime minister, and it was said that Su Xun's son Su Zhe quickly became one of the best students in school after he entered Bianliang Middle School. Perhaps in the future the Su family would produce another prime minister.

"what happened?"

Zhao Jun put down the pen in his hand and raised his head.

He has just signed some guidelines for next year's policies. The Ministry of Statistics and various ministries submitted data a few days ago, and the prime ministers have also been busy with this matter these days.

Plus, the New Year celebrations will begin tomorrow, so although there are still three days of working time from the 25th to the 28th, those are basically all we have.

Therefore, the Constitutional Yuan is extremely busy with its year-end tasks.

"This is the result of the talks between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Rites, the Firearms Department, and the Ministry of Commerce in the past few days. This is the list of gifts that kings and envoys from various countries used to bribe officials. This is the list of items they purchased in the past few days, and this is also included."

Su Huan sorted out each document clearly, then put the thinner one at the bottom on top and said, "This is a wish list from several countries that want to buy steel technology. There is another one at the bottom, which is the total price calculated by their departments."

"Let me see."

Zhao Jun took them and glanced at each of them. The thickest one among the official documents was the purchase list, which was more than a foot high, and the thinnest one was the steel technology wish list.

It is estimated that the total technical price was not counted. These things are relatively complicated and involve the establishment of an industrial system. Several departments may not be able to do it in a short period of time, so they just counted the other party's wishes and requirements.

The price lists were relatively detailed, about eighty pages long, listing in detail the weapons and ammunition that each country needed to purchase, with the total price recorded on the last page.

There are currently more than fifty countries that want to purchase guns and artillery. Except for a few small countries that just made up the numbers and only bought some muskets to arm the King's Guards, most of the other countries have bought a lot of guns and artillery and grenades, and some have even increased the quantity.

For example, the Chola Dynasty originally wanted 50 cannons, but now it has been changed to 80. It also needs to purchase 300 Weiyuan cannons, 12000 flintlock rifles, 90 bullets, and 3 grenades.

The situation of other Chalukya dynasties was similar, but the Chalukya Dynasty was restricted by the agreement between the Song Dynasty and the Chola Dynasty and could not sell cannons. Therefore, it bought 7 flintlock rifles, 620 million bullets, and 20 grenades.

There are also relatively powerful countries in the Western world, such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Abbasids, the Seljuks, and the Fatimids. They have purchased more than 100 artillery pieces, hundreds of cannons, tens of thousands of guns, and tens of thousands of grenades.

All in all, the Song Dynasty sold most of the firearms produced from the Baoyuan period to the tenth year of the Qingli period. The total price of various orders reached an astonishing 30 million strings of cash.

"36,420,000 strings of cash."

Zhao Jun picked up the last page of paper, flicked it gently, and a happy smile appeared on his face.

"How many?"

His words immediately attracted the attention of several prime ministers around him.

Everyone was working, but when they heard this, they almost all raised their heads and looked over at the same time.

"More than thirty-six million strings of cash."

Zhao Jun smiled and put the paper down, saying, "They are all big customers. The stronger countries bought about a million Guan worth of goods, and the weaker ones bought 700,000 to 800,000 Guan worth. The small and medium-sized countries bought as much as 300,000 to 400,000 Guan worth, and the smaller ones bought between tens of thousands and more than 100,000 Guan worth. But even a small amount is meat. More than 50 countries want to buy goods, and the total amount is more than 30 million Guan worth. Not only did we recover the cost, but we also made a lot of money."

This time, with all nations coming to pay tribute, the effect of bringing goods was surprisingly good.

For example, the Chola Dynasty initially planned to buy only 50 heavy cannons, each costing 180 guan, but the price they negotiated was 1728 guan, which was almost a ten-fold premium.

However, due to the Chola Dynasty's additional conditions, which did not allow the Song Dynasty to sell artillery to the Chalukya, the price doubled again. Including accessories such as shells and gunpowder, the price of a cannon reached 7656 strings of cash, and the total price was 38.28 strings of cash.

But now there are 30 more heavy artillery pieces, 300 small steel cannons, 12000 guns, 3 grenades, and consumables such as gunpowder and bullets. The total price has reached 122.49 million strings of cash.

This almost drained the Chola Empire's finances for half a year, but after watching the shooting range demonstration and seeing that its arch-rival Chalukya Dynasty also wanted to buy firearms, the Chola Empire had to grit its teeth and buy them.

no way.

The Song Dynasty was rich. One million strings of cash was a huge fortune for most countries in the world, including some powerful ones.

During the Liao Dynasty's heyday, its population was about 900 million, and its annual fiscal revenue, including the tribute from the Song Dynasty and the tribes in Liaodong, was only to million strings of cash, less than one-tenth of the Song Dynasty's annual fiscal revenue.

Although the Chola Dynasty had a population of about 1500 million, its productivity and prosperity were even lower than that of the Liao Dynasty, so its fiscal revenue was basically only about three to four million strings of cash a year.

This military expenditure was quite large, consuming almost one-third of the Chola Kingdom's annual fiscal revenue.

same.

Since the Chalukya Kingdom could not buy artillery, it could only buy more guns and bullets.

The Song Dynasty dared to sell a flintlock rifle that cost about 1.5 strings of coins for 12 strings of coins. Including bullets, gunpowder and grenades, the Chalukya Dynasty, which was richer than the Chola Dynasty, bought more than 160 million strings of arms.

The arms trade of other major countries such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Abbasids, the Seljuks, and the Fatimids was also over one million strings of coins.

Those dozen countries alone spent nearly 1500 million strings of coins, and the remaining forty or so small and medium-sized countries shared the other half of the firearms sales, so the total value reached more than million strings of coins.

"Is this true or false?"

After hearing what Zhao Jun said, Yan Shu could no longer sit still. He stood up and walked to Zhao Jun.

Zhao Jun handed him the list and said, "Look for yourself."

"Let me see."

Yan Shu picked up the paper and read it up and down three times before he came to his senses and said excitedly: "It's really unexpected."

"It really is 36 million guan? I remember that a few years ago, the government asked the Firearms Department to produce a large number of firearms, which cost more than 10 million guan. In this case, isn't it a huge profit?"

"Well, it also helped us clear out a lot of inventory and saved us the cost of maintenance."

"That's great. Although our annual income is now more than 2 million guan, the money we have to spend every year is countless. Not only can we not save money, but we have to borrow money. Now it seems that the treasury can save some money this year."

"What a pity, what a pity."

"what?"

Hearing Fu Bi's voice of regret, Wen Yanbo beside him said in surprise: "What's so regrettable about this? Isn't it a celebration for all the people?"

Fu Bi smiled bitterly and said, "I feel bad that a lot of firearms have been damaged over the years due to poor maintenance. I guess they will buy more in the future. It would be great if they can be preserved."

"That's a pity indeed."

Everyone couldn't help but agree.

In fact, the Song Dynasty did cut a lot of military spending in recent years.

However, the investment in firearms was still very huge. For example, most of the steel produced by Wuan Iron and Steel Plant in the early years was used to manufacture firearms.

In order to deal with the threats from Western Xia and Liao, the Song Dynasty began to manufacture a large number of firearms starting from the Baoyuan period.

Like the initial 80,000 firearms troops, there were 16 armies, each army had three artillery battalions, each artillery battalion had ten large cannons and 60 Weiyuan cannons, totaling 480 heavy artillery pieces and 3,000 small steel cannons in the entire army.

This does not include the city defense cannons and defective products.

Because heavy artillery was difficult to move and often got stuck in pits when pulled by tractors, the army was deployed very sparingly and the main heavy artillery was placed in border cities.

So from the beginning of the war, the Song Dynasty had been frantically piling up firearms, and the guns and ammunition it produced piled up like mountains.

Even if the war stopped, because Zhao Zhen suffered from a fear of insufficient firepower, the Song Dynasty continued to manufacture firearms on the original basis, and the number of firearms naturally increased.

More than ten years later, according to statistics from the Firearms Bureau, the Song Dynasty had built more than 5,000 of the 2,000-jin heavy artillery, more than 10,000 Weiyuan cannons, more than one million flintlock rifles of various types, and millions of grenades.

The cost of a heavy artillery is about 180-200 strings of cash, the cost of a Weiyuan cannon is about 20-30 strings of cash, and the cost of a flintlock rifle is low, about 1.5 strings of cash. Grenades are consumables and cost very little, just a little iron and black gunpowder, worth about a dozen cents.

Taking into account the costs invested in firearms over the years, including research and development, manpower, materials, maintenance, etc., the total cost is almost more than 10 million strings of cash.

Among them, the most expensive item is gunpowder. The rest of the items can be made and used. However, gunpowder has to be made as it is consumed a little, which leads to high costs and has always been the biggest expense.

However, there have been no wars in recent years. Apart from daily training, most firearms can only be kept in warehouses. Due to the limitations of storage technology and various reasons, the damage to firearms is still very large, and many of them have become scrap on the cruel battlefield.

There may be some problems with inadequate supervision, but there is basically no problem of reselling arms.

Because the Song Dynasty strictly controlled guns and did not allow them to be sold to the public, and transportation was inconvenient at that time, a large amount of military equipment could not be transported abroad. Even if the military wanted to resell the arms, they had no way to sell so many things.

So it’s almost like improper storage, which leads to frequent problems such as damage and rust.

But there is nothing we can do.

In the tenth year of the Qingli period, the Song Dynasty upgraded its firearms. Experts from the School of Chemistry used gelatin to solve the stability and flammability problems of nitrocellulose, allowing the Song Dynasty to officially enter the era of smokeless gunpowder.

In addition, steel technology has also been improved, and high-strength steels such as chrome steel and nickel steel have emerged, and new materials have quickly become popular.

The smokeless rifles and smokeless cannons developed using smokeless gunpowder and new steel are basically technologies from the World War II era, so they naturally need to be updated.

This made the previous black powder guns and cannons no longer popular, and the imperial court was unlikely to spend so much money and effort to maintain them.

Therefore, no one can be blamed for this matter. It can only be a historical legacy.

The Firearms Department did some statistics last year.

Including the equipment damaged in previous battles, less than half of the more than 5,000 heavy artillery pieces remained, 60% of the Weiyuan cannons were left, and a large number of flintlock rifles, grenades and other firearms were preserved, including seventy or eighty guns and several million grenades.

It can be said that the remaining firearms have been damaged by nearly 50% due to lack of maintenance over the years.

But even so, selling these black powder guns and cannons in stock would make a huge fortune. It could be said that the return on investment was ten times, and the Song Dynasty made a lot of money.

Seeing everyone's excitement, only Zhao Jun smiled without saying a word, looking unfathomable.

Seeing his expression, Fan Zhongyan asked, "Why, you are not happy that this difficult problem has been solved?"

"Happy, but not too happy."

"why?"

“Because this is the normal thing.”

Zhao Jun smiled calmly, looked out the door with a deep gaze and said, "The advantage of being a first-mover industrial country is here. There will be more profitable things happening in the future. Sometimes you still have to learn to be calm. You will see such things often in the future. Don't make a fuss."

Everyone looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

hateful.

Let him install it.

(End of this chapter)