The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 348: Continue to build the railway

Tribal representatives and officers from the Western Regions, Central Asia and other regions were greatly shocked after watching the Ming army's exercises and visiting the Ming's military supply warehouses.

They all naturally realized that the gap between their military equipment and that of the Ming Dynasty was so great that it was like a myth.

Even the Ming army on the scene did not have enough physical and mental strength and could only barely operate these weapons, which was enough to inflict a devastating blow to them.

The key is that the Ming army at the scene had strict discipline. The officers and soldiers were all tall and mighty. Everyone was energetic and very skilled in operating their weapons.

The choice between Shun State and the Ming Dynasty court is no longer a dilemma, but an inevitable choice to completely turn to the Ming Dynasty.

Now they no longer needed to go back and ask the leader for instructions. All the envoys said with great confidence on the spot:
Their leaders and people will always follow His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and the tribes and countries they belong to will always be the vassal states of the Ming Dynasty.

Yang Yuchun and Ruan Yuan knew that what they said was always nonsense, and there had never been any particularly reliable long-term commitments on the grassland.

But they took the initiative to shout out the word "forever", which shows that their "loyalty" to the Ming Dynasty is now at the highest level.

For Yang Yuchun and Ruan Yuan, it was enough for the tribes to be loyal now.

If the Ming Dynasty does not weaken in the future, they will not be able to escape.

Afterwards, Yang Yuchun and Ruan Yuan put forward a list of requirements to these tribes and arranged a rough battle plan.

First, we immediately started building the railway from Hami to the west.

At the same time, envoys from all settled tribes returned to their tribes with a group of Ming soldiers and engineers.

The environment in the Western Regions and Central Asia is different from the Mongolian grasslands to the north of the Ming Dynasty, and the local residents are not typical nomadic peoples.

Especially the foothills of the Tianshan and Kunlun Mountains, the Ili River Valley, the Seven Rivers Basin, the Fergana Basin, and the Syr Darya and Amu Darya River basins.

These richest places in the Western Regions and Central Asia are basically fixed settlements with rich agricultural traditions. They are also trade transit points between the East and the West.

This kind of place is also the easiest to be ruled by the Central Plains dynasty.

In the past history, they have long been directly subordinate to the Central Plains dynasty, or nominally submitted to the Central Plains dynasty.

There was no objection to the Celestial Empire submitting to the Central Plains.

When the leaders of these cities and tribes in the Western Regions and Central Asia learned that their envoys had returned from Hami with the envoys of the Ming Dynasty, they immediately received them in the palace.

After the two sides greeted each other and exchanged pleasantries, the leaders quickly listened to the reports from their envoys and at the same time asked the envoys of the Ming Dynasty what the Ming Dynasty was going to do this time.

The officers and engineers of the Ming Dynasty did not waste any time at this time. They first let the envoys of the tribal leaders explain to their leaders what they had experienced in Hami.

The messengers still became uncontrollably excited when they thought about what they saw then.

They first handed over photos of the exercise site provided by Daming, as well as detailed photos of automatic rifles, machine guns, motor vehicles, aircraft, and a huge arsenal of ammunition.

At the same time, they all introduced themselves to their leader in an extremely exaggerated tone and manner.

These tribal leaders thought the photo was magical and thought it was a very detailed, small-format black-and-white portrait.

They instinctively felt that their messenger might have been frightened by the things in the paintings, so that what he said sounded like he was sleepwalking.

My messengers must be exaggerating. There can't be such magical things in the world as they say.

However, most of them also believed that the Ming Dynasty must have very powerful weapons. Even if they were not as exaggerated as the envoy's description, they must still be dealt with with caution.

Then, the Ming Dynasty officer who arrived at the same time stood up and took the initiative to lead the accompanying Ming Dynasty soldiers to demonstrate their standard rifles.

The appearance and structure are the same as in the photo, and the performance is the same as described by the messenger. The range is higher than that of artillery, the hit rate has reached an incredible level, and the rate of fire is extremely fast.

"If the Ming army uses weapons like this, the end of traditional armies will come."

Although the tribal leaders had not seen the other exercises introduced by the envoy directly, they could not believe that it was really as the envoy described.

But now the attitude towards Ming Dynasty officers has become more respectful.

Therefore, the officers of the Ming Dynasty put forward a request, asking these tribal leaders to organize local personnel and cooperate with the Ming Dynasty's engineers to build simple battlefield airports.

It would be a good opportunity to fly the plane over so that they can show it to them.

These aircraft, and the equipment they carry, can themselves be displayed as a direct deterrent.

Traditional propeller-driven transport aircraft and fighter jets have far greater adaptability to sites than modern jet aircraft and can take off and land on any relatively flat and hard surface.

Relatively flat beaches and low grass can be used for temporary take-off and landing, and rammed earth and slate surfaces can be used as simple airports.

In winter, water can be directly poured into ice to form a smoother, larger temporary runway.

This is not a troublesome matter. These tribal leaders do not dare to refuse Daming’s request now, and they also want to confirm the matter of Daming’s aircraft.

They immediately asked their officials to cooperate and personally monitored the results.

After the cities and tribes had leveled the ground a little, Ruan Yuan used a small transport plane to carry generators, film equipment, and radio communication equipment over.

For ordinary people of this era, airplanes are something of a transcendent status.

It allows people to fly freely into the sky, observe the enemy from the sky, and launch attacks from the sky, which can have a great deterrent and intimidating effect.

When these transport planes arrived over various settlements, many civilians knelt down when they saw the things in the sky.

That evening, inside the local leader's palace, Ming engineers installed the generator, set up the movie equipment, and began playing the exercise video.

The local leaders and senior officials at the scene, including many religious personnel, and the local people who saw it all with their own eyes, knelt down again.

"The sky, thunder and lightning, sound, light and shadow... these are all miracles... Daming has mastered the power of God..."

The traditional and simple worldview of many people has been completely overturned.

The leaders and officials of various tribes had to completely accept the description of the envoys returning from Hami and had to accept that the Ming Dynasty possessed god-like power.

These tribes, which had originally been inclined towards the Ming Dynasty, turned even more completely to the Ming Dynasty after this series of attacks.

They began to cooperate unconditionally with the Ming Dynasty's officers and engineers.

The Ming Dynasty's engineering corps began to set up temporary radio communication stations in the local area, allowing these tribes to directly accept the command of Yang Yuchun and Ruan Yuan and cooperate with each other in their actions.

In the autumn and winter of the 19th year of Tiangong, these temporary airports were used to transport military supplies as early supplies for subsequent battles.

Although the fuel for the transport plane also has to be transported by air, and the transportation efficiency is not at the same order of magnitude as that of the train, it is still more efficient than the camels on the ground.

Anyway, before the war officially begins, try to accumulate as much war supplies as possible.

At the same time, Li Celing, the emperor of Shun State, was extremely anxious throughout the 19th year of Tiangong.

He knew that at least half of the vassal states in the Western Regions and the Central Asian steppes had gone to the Ming Dynasty for a meeting and ignored Li Celing's advice.

If all these tribes cooperated with the Ming in the war, and attacked directly from these tribes or used them as bases, the entire Western Regions and Central Asia would be destroyed as soon as the war began.

However, Li Celing still does not have the courage to declare war directly on the Ming Dynasty, and still hopes to force the Ming Dynasty to declare war on its own initiative.

This is also because the construction of handicraft production in India takes time.

If possible, Li Celing hopes that this time will be long enough, preferably ten or twenty years.

If the Ming Dynasty simply isolated and verbally attacked, then Li Celing could continue to endure it.

But if Ming continued to win over its allies and divide Shun's territory by non-war means, Li Celing would become extremely anxious and helpless.

At the meeting of the three alliances of Russia, Shun and the Ottoman Empire, a defensive strategy of clearing the countryside had been determined, and they were all waiting for the Ming Dynasty to attack.

The key point is that the generals and officials of the Three Kingdoms now believe that there is no chance of winning by actively attacking the Ming Dynasty.

The only way out is to torment and deplete the Ming Dynasty's power on the homeland, making the Ming Dynasty believe that it is not worthwhile to continue to completely conquer itself. The only way out is to promise and allow itself to continue to maintain independence.

Li Celing also judged that even if he sent people to the Hami tribe, it was impossible for all of them to defect to the Ming Dynasty. Most people would definitely continue to wait and see, waiting for the Shun Kingdom and the Ming Dynasty to officially go to war, and then decide which side to side after seeing clear signs of victory or defeat on both sides.

There should be only a few tribes that would directly jump to the other side when the situation is unclear.

So Li Celing thought about it, hesitated for a long time, and finally chose to be patient and sent people to investigate the situation of these tribes.

However, those personnel sent to investigate never returned during the entire 19th year of Tiangong.

Li Celing had no idea what level of technology the Ming Dynasty had reached now, and naturally he didn't know how shocked the representatives of those tribes were.

If Shun State, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire do not take the initiative to attack, then the Ming Dynasty will not launch a full-scale attack before making full preparations.

Zhu Jianxuan has great patience because he believes that even if other countries have ten years, they will not be able to produce a usable mass-produced bolt-action rifle.

Even if he was given the power to make a rifle, he couldn't make a heavy machine gun or a squad machine gun, let alone an internal combustion engine or an airplane.

The Western Regions and Central Asia are far away from the ocean, and the Ming army had never fought in such remote inland areas before.

The distance between the coastlines on the north and south sides of western Europe is only one thousand kilometers.

It is 900 kilometers from Tianjin to the Hetao area, 1,100 kilometers from the river to Hami, and another 1,000 kilometers from Hami to Alashankou.

It is still two thousand kilometers from Alashankou to the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea.

Moreover, the Western Regions and areas are generally desolate and arid, lacking rivers of sufficient size, and there is no way to rely on inland river transportation.

Although modern armies have strong combat effectiveness, they are highly dependent on logistical supplies.

Without logistics, there is no sustained combat capability.

Therefore, Zhu Jianxuan instructed Yang Yuchun and Ruan Yuan to continue to integrate and transform the tribes and cities that had surrendered, and to continue to build railways deep into Central Asia with all their efforts.

If Shun, Russia and the Ottoman Empire can be patient, then we can continue to build the railway to the Ural River in three years.

Relying on the railway to supply materials, force was used to force the tribes along the railway to surrender, thereby completely cutting off the land communication between Shun State and Russia.

The Ming Dynasty's railway connecting the northwest region first went northwest from Shuntian Prefecture to Zhangjiakou and entered the Mongolian Plateau.

It passes through Ulanqab, Guihua, Jiuyuan and Hetao areas in turn, continues westward into the area next to the desert, and extends all the way to Hami area.

After leaving the Hetao area, although most places are very desolate, the terrain is not rugged.

After passing Hami, the planned route is to follow the Lanxin Line to Alashankou. Along the way, only the Dabashancheng area requires crossing the more rugged valleys.

Other places are mostly relatively flat plateau deserts.

After entering Central Asia, there is a vast plateau that is generally quite flat.

The overall engineering difficulty of building a railway is not high.

The Ming Dynasty also has a large-scale track laying machine designed by Zhu Jianxuan. Now the court's engineering teams are laying railways at a very fast speed, far exceeding industrial countries with similar technological stages in history.

Except for a few relatively rugged places, most of the sections can be advanced at a speed of five kilometers per day.

The railway management company near Hami had already prepared to continue laying railways westward, and all the laying equipment, materials and personnel had been prepared in advance.

After the official start of construction, the normal laying speed was quickly reached.

So by the autumn of the 20th year of Tiangong, the railway had been laid to Alashankou, and the construction speed was even faster after entering Central Asia.

The station facilities cannot be improved simultaneously, so a steel structure factory building is used as a roof for the time being.

Anyway, this railway is currently only used by the imperial court and the military, and will not involve civilian passenger and freight transportation in the short term.

The Ming Dynasty's railways continued to extend inland. In order to maintain a relatively reasonable route planning, after bypassing Lake Balkhash, they continued to go deep into the Kazakh steppe.

After that, they gradually withdrew from the activities of the tribes that had clearly supported the Ming Dynasty.

In the summer of the 21st year of Tiangong, the team that was working hard to pave the road was discovered by a not-so-friendly nomadic tribe.

The cavalry of these tribes discovered a large number of people from the Central Plains. The key point was that these people from the Central Plains were laying tracks on the grassland with steel, which they found incomprehensible and incredible.

After they sent the news back to the tribe, the tribal leader arranged for his generals to confirm the situation.

After confirming that the people from the Central Plains had indeed laid steel on the ground, the general immediately decided to first avoid the large and powerful road-laying team and go to a deserted place behind them to dig up the steel rails on the ground.

But they didn't know that the railway was full of patrolling train soldiers, and there were also patrolling locomotive cavalry on both sides, and most importantly, there were also flying patrolling air cavalry in the sky.

The air cavalry had the largest range of activities and were the first to discover these threatening groups of people, immediately notifying the train troops and locomotive cavalry.

At the same time, they lowered their flight altitudes in batches and flew low over the nomadic cavalry that were galloping towards the railway.

They used the electric loudspeaker on the plane to warn them not to approach the railway and to stop, dismount and surrender immediately.

Then use the onboard machine guns to strafe the ground in front of them as a more direct warning.

When these planes appeared, the cavalrymen of the grassland nomadic tribes were stunned and didn't know what to do for a moment.

When the sound came from the plane, some people were so scared that they fell off their horses, and many others were so frightened that they instinctively turned around and tried to escape immediately.

But planes were much faster than horses, so the air cavalry chased them directly and strafed the fleeing cavalry with their machines.

Immediately, groups of cavalrymen fell off their horses screaming.

However, these grassland nomadic cavalry were smart. When they found that their horses could not escape the pursuit of the planes, some of them quickly stopped, dismounted and surrendered.

But some of them immediately dispersed and fled, because the number of planes was far less than the number of cavalry, and there was no way to chase everyone at the same time.

If the planes go out to chase them, then those who have already surrendered at the scene can also get on their horses and run away again.

Therefore, it is impossible to quickly eliminate a large number of people by relying solely on a small number of aircraft.

The nomadic cavalrymen who made a living on the grasslands soon discovered this through their own survival experience.

However, the patrol teams around the Daming Railway are not just these air cavalry. The main task of the air cavalry is reconnaissance.

The train troops and locomotive cavalry on the ground were the main force to protect the railway, and they arrived quickly.

Some of these soldiers stayed behind to gather the surrendered soldiers, while the other part continued to chase the cavalry who were still fleeing under the guidance of the air cavalry.

It is not very important how many of this group of nomadic cavalry can be killed or captured in the end.

The most important thing is whether we can find the location of their tribal brigade.

With the Ming Dynasty having airplanes and motorized cavalry, once a large nomadic tribe like theirs was discovered, there would be virtually no chance of escape.

Whether mobilizing more troops to defeat them directly or using force to suppress them and force them to surrender directly, one problem can be solved.

The Central Plains dynasties were not good at controlling nomadic tribes because they could operate for a long time over extremely long distances and over a very large area.

The traditional cavalry and mule and horse team logistics of the Central Plains dynasties made it difficult to quickly find their location.

When the nomadic tribes are generally weak, they will do their best to avoid contact with the Central Plains dynasty's army, and if they cannot defeat them, they will find ways to hide.

In history, Zhu Di's several northern expeditions often took him thousands of miles deep into the desert, but he ended up not finding a single enemy.

When half of the supplies were consumed, they had to return to their homeland for repairs.

Now the Ming army's activities revolve around railways, and they receive a steady supply of supplies through the railways, so there is no need to transport supplies from the mainland by mules and horses.

The railway itself can also serve as bait to lure nomadic tribes who are confused about the current situation to attack.

(End of this chapter)