The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 807 Moore: Comrades, this is an industrialized war!

Venice, winter 1866.

In the meeting room of the Doge's Palace in Venice, the flames in the fireplace cast the shadows of Napoleon III and Franz Joseph I on the walls inlaid with gold leaf. Outside the window, the cold wind from the Adriatic Sea, carrying the moisture from the sea, swept through the city that was soaked in the sea water and exuded a faint musty smell.

"My friend, this is the future!" Napoleon III suddenly lifted the crimson velvet covering the model. The light of the crystal gas lamp immediately jumped on the riveted steel tracks of the "Emperor's Chariot". The barrels of the 50-barrel Mitreus multi-barrel gun looked majestic, and the surface of the barrel was engraved with exquisite patterns. It was obvious that it was a luxury weapon from France - the cheap American goods used by Lincoln could not be compared with it.

Emperor Franz Joseph was stunned. He had already received the parameters of this "Emperor Chariot" - 25mm steel-iron composite armor, all-wrought iron frame, 80-horsepower high-pressure steam boiler, independent compartment design ammunition depot, and riveted steel tracks. Every detail showed the industrial strength of France, but what shocked him most was the price. French products are not cheap!

"How much does it cost?" The Austrian emperor's voice was a little lower than usual.

Napoleon III smiled a triumphant smile and raised a finger: "One hundred and eighty thousand francs."

"One hundred and eighty thousand?!" Franz Joseph's teacup slammed down on an antique Venetian coffee table. This price was enough to equip two complete Hungarian Hussar Regiments, or to build several kilometers of railway. "This is equivalent to..."

"It's equivalent to the price of twenty of Prussia's latest Krupp cannons." Napoleon III took over the conversation and unfolded a topographic map of Bohemia. "But can one cannon crush the Prussian defenses?" His nails scratched heavily across the Elbe Valley. "I plan to build 60 cannons and equip each of my 5 infantry divisions with . As long as your army can hold out against the Prussians for a month..."

Franz Joseph suddenly interrupted him: "Three hundred? That's 54 million francs! The production capacity of your Saint-Etienne Arsenal"

Besides being expensive, French goods also have another characteristic: they are "rare". Rare things are rare, and rare things are expensive! The Saint-Etienne Arsenal mentioned by the Austrian Emperor is a typical example of "rare things are expensive" in France. The workers inside are three times more expensive than those outside, and are known as "French national craftsmen". They are all well-educated and have superb craftsmanship, but they work slowly. When making a Mitellius multi-barreled gun, they don't forget to carve patterns on the gun! This craftsmanship is something that the Prussian workers next door have never heard of!
"It will be finished next summer, and then we can crush Prussia together!" Napoleon III said confidently, deliberately ignoring the report from the Minister of War this morning - the actual monthly production was less than 10.
The Austrian Emperor walked to the window and looked at the warship anchored outside the Governor's Palace - it was a brand new "Alma" class ironclad ship, with a displacement of only half of the "Numancia" class that was sunk by the Chinese two years ago.
Franz Joseph also knew the hidden meaning that Napoleon did not say: France needed Austria to consume Prussia's main force first. But thinking of the growing ethnic conflicts on the streets of Vienna and the increasingly tough demands for autonomy from the Hungarian Parliament, he turned around and held out his hand: "Deal. I will mobilize one million troops!"

Napoleon III also extended his hand with satisfaction: "I will also mobilize one million troops!"

Seven people sat around a long oak table in the library of the Whiteswen mansion in South Kensington, London, the firelight dancing on their faces, making the front-page photo of Le Figaro showing the French Emperor embracing an emperor particularly dazzling.

"Look at these two mummies of the old world!" Varlan threw the newspaper on the table, and the rough palms of the workers clapped their hands so hard that the teacup trembled. "They nailed their own coffins with gilded nails, but they want the proletariat to shed their last drop of blood!"

Bakunin grabbed the newspaper, his thick beard shaking with a sneer: "Secret reports from Paris say that the French have even used the Mexican expeditionary force's military pay to build those iron coffins. Algerian mercenaries are looting everywhere in Mexico City!"

Friedrich pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses and said, "Mexico is no longer important to the emperor." He silently spread out a stack of tables and tapped the paper with his pen tip. "Comrades, look at these numbers."

"Prussia: Annual output of pig iron: 150 million tons; steel output: 44 tons; total railway mileage: 2.2 kilometers; coal output: 3500 million tons."

Friedrich's pen moved to another column: "France and Austria combined: less than 20 tons of steel; 2.1 kilometers of railways; 2800 million tons of coal."

Dombrovsky, who had just returned from the North American front, suddenly slammed the table and said, "Can numbers decide a war? The French Mitellius multi-barreled rifle killed countless people in the American battlefield! And the Prussian Krupp cannon... They didn't even fight the Danes properly!"

"That's not the French Mitellius multi-barreled gun, it's made in Mexico!" Ma Baocai knocked on the table with his pipe. "In fact, it was manufactured by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's arsenal, then taken to Mexico for branding, and then smuggled into the United States on a fast steamship. But this weapon is actually not easy to use at all, and is completely inferior to the Gatling machine gun. The only advantage is that it does not require metal shell bullets."

"But Krupp's cannons have not seen much combat use."

"That's a breech-loading gun that can fire 6-pound shrapnel shells! The Prussians can produce dozens of them a month. How could it be worse than a broken multi-barreled gun?" "Actual combat! Actual combat. Without actual combat, data on paper is unreliable!"

The argument grew more and more intense until Moore stood up and knocked on the table with his pipe, and everyone fell silent.

"This is not the era of cavalry charges, comrades." Moore's voice was low and firm. "When Napoleon III's toy chariot was trapped in the Prussian defense line, Krupp's railway guns would blow the palaces of Paris into ruins. This is not a war between two emperors."

He walked to the bookshelf and pulled out a manuscript with the words "On Industrialized War" written on the cover in German: "I think this is the ultimate showdown between crucible steel and pig iron, compulsory education and illiteracy, historical progress and reactionary regression."

On Christmas Eve in 1866, at the Berlin Military Academy, snowflakes silently covered the footprints of soldiers training on the playground. At the shooting range on campus, Moltke's military boots rolled over the scorched earth after a mine test, and the soles of his boots were covered with black mud mixed with the smell of nitroglycerin.

"It's powerful enough." The Chief of the General Staff took off his monocle that was shattered by the shock wave and nodded to the boss of Krupp. "The Chinese formula for gelatinous explosives is worth exchanging."

Alfred Krupp looked at the twisted armor plate with a distressed look - this was a low-quality product specially made by them, with a carbon content of only 60% of the standard military steel, to imitate the French product.

"Write the error parameters into the technical manual." Moltke interrupted him, his mouth curled up into a sneer, "Master the scale and make sure that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's steel is always 20% worse than ours."

Three kilometers away, on Unter den Linden, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's ambassador to Berlin, Weng Tongjue, was looking at a newly arrived steel sample with a magnifying glass. Outside the window, two "snowmen" wrapped in thick coats had been standing guard for six hours - they were spies from the Prussian Military Intelligence Department, and their notebooks were filled with Oriental faces entering and leaving the embassy. About five years ago, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began to send a large number of students to Europe, and Prussia was the European country that received the most Taiping Heavenly Kingdom students.
Two young international students wearing gold-rimmed glasses put down the technical manual and ingredient list that Krupp had just sent them and nodded to Weng Tongjue. One of the students with a Cantonese accent said, "Sir, this formula should work."

Another international student from Hunan laughed and said: "At least it can solve the problem of whether our ironclad ships can use steel armor instead of 'steel-iron' composite armor."

His voice was drowned out by the sudden ringing of Christmas bells. The bronze church bells roared in the cold wind, as if announcing an impending steel storm.

In the Saint-Etienne Arsenal in the suburb of Saint-Antoine in Paris, a French "national craftsman" is installing a piece of "steel-iron" composite armor on the frame of the "Emperor's Chariot" with rivets, with the cooperation of two apprentices. While installing, he also taught the technical points to his apprentice in elegant French: "You must memorize it. Oh, and before starting work, you must ask Engineer Pierre to clarify the work drawings. If you really don't understand, ask him to make a sample of the same size with paper, and then do it according to his instructions. Do you understand?"

At the Krupp factory in the Ruhr area, technicians who had received rigorous Prussian vocational high school education could assemble the products themselves based on the drawings sent by engineers.

Here, everyone from lathe operators to quality inspectors can understand technical manuals!
The blackboard in the workshop still has today's production targets: 12 30-pound gun barrels completed today, with a pass rate of 98%. In the corner, a line of small words written in chalk - "Compulsory education is Prussia's most powerful weapon."

In Buckingham Palace in London, Moore, who is still serving as an adviser to the British royal family, is analyzing the "Franco-Austrian War" for the Queen and her husband in fluent Oxford English.

"The French war was pure plunder. Hundreds of thousands of lives in the Crimea, Mexico, and Italy were exchanged for nothing but the emperor's vanity and the bankers' gold coins."

"Although Prussia is led by Junker landlords, unifying Germany is in line with the historical trend. More importantly, their compulsory education factories are mass-producing better workers than France."

“History will prove that in the industrial age, the most powerful warriors are not the brave and fearless knights on horseback, but the workers who sweat in the factories and have received good compulsory and vocational education, as well as engineers who have received higher education and have sufficient professional knowledge. They are the foundation of a strong country!”

(End of this chapter)