I was the Founding Father of the United States

Chapter 175 The Journey West

What is most important to a religion?

Chen Wenbin originally thought they were doctrine and church, the former being the ideology and action program, and the latter being the organization and means to put the ideology into practice.

However, during this time, he and Davis and others carefully studied the history of European religions and combined it with the historical context of other civilizations. Finally, he realized that doctrines and the church were just means, not the true purpose of religion!

The true purpose, or rather the true function, of religion is actually to distinguish between "us" and "you"!

Because we share the same faith, we are friends with a natural foundation of trust. I can entrust my child to your care, and I can fight and sacrifice for everyone.

Because God gave us the meaning of life, God taught us how to live, God led us to strive together for a noble ideal, and God brought "happiness" to humankind.

Conversely, because you do not believe in our God, you are not my compatriot, nor my friend. You are a heretic, a blasphemer, an outsider, born with original sin, and an enemy who must be judged and eliminated!

This is the true purpose of religion!

It defines and distinguishes between "we" and "you," as well as between rulers and the ruled, the noble and the lowly, justice and evil, beauty and ugliness, sublimity and baseness—religion is essentially the original code of the most fundamental ideological, moral, and ethical values ​​of all human civilization!

Different source codes will naturally lead to different or even completely opposite social operating systems.

For example, the original code of Indian civilization is Brahmanism. Because the Aryans who invented Brahmanism were foreign conquerors, Brahmanism emphasizes that people are divided into five classes, and the class cannot be crossed, which gave rise to the caste system, a social operating system.

For example, the European countries of today were actually established by various barbarian tribes on the ruins of Rome after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

It was only because ancient Roman civilization was so mature and advanced that these Germanic, Celtic, and Viking barbarian tribes recognized themselves as the successors of Rome and willingly converted to Christianity, the state religion of Rome.

Modern European Christian civilization is actually a secondary civilization to ancient Roman civilization, and its actual age is no more than 1,200 years.

In a horizontal comparison, European Christian civilization was actually in its thriving adolescence, while India, Egypt, and...

Both Persia and China were either ancient civilizations two or three thousand years old, or their civilizations had been overwritten by emerging civilizations and lost their own dominance.

If we make an analogy, the history of Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century is actually very similar to the period of the Five Barbarian Invasions in the East, and even the time periods are roughly overlapping.

The difference is that Yang Jian, a descendant of Han Chinese, restored the unity of the Chinese Empire, used ruthless methods to eliminate the influence of the barbarians, and began the great cause of the second Chinese Empire.

The Roman Empire was not so fortunate. They abandoned Western Europe, giving the western part of the empire to barbarians. They persisted in the Balkans and Asia Minor for a thousand years before being completely destroyed by the Ottoman Empire.

The Christianity and legal principles of Rome were accepted and contested by European countries, forming the current European Christian civilization sphere.

By the mid-14th century, the Black Death broke out in Europe. The authority of the Catholic Church could not withstand the plague, and Europeans gradually awakened and began to disenchant God. Subsequently, the Renaissance and the Reformation movement emerged in Europe.

As the influence of religion gradually faded in some European countries, European civilization passed its infancy and began to try to reform Christianity as a crutch, while also reclaiming the legacy of ancient Greek civilization from two thousand years ago.

The emergence of Protestantism rendered the church's intellectual monopoly ineffective, and the free intellectual environment promoted the spread of knowledge. Driven by Deism, rational thought ultimately led to the birth of science.

If this trajectory continues, Britain, where scientific development in Europe began first, will experience the Industrial Revolution under the influence of internal and external factors, and ultimately create the "British Empire" that lasted for more than a hundred years in the nineteenth century.

Meanwhile, the Manchu Qing dynasty in the east would continue to imprison the Chinese people's thoughts and pioneering spirit, and would even spare no effort to transform the Han people into slaves.

Chen Wenbin knew they were so close to succeeding!

After the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing government reluctantly began the "New Policies," which liberalized education and allowed people to open private schools. However, when local governors and viceroys sent people to conduct a survey, they found that less than one percent of the people in China were literate!

Ninety-nine percent of the Han Chinese population became illiterate—and it shouldn't be hard to guess who the remaining millions of literate people were, right?

In contrast, before the Meiji Restoration, millions of samurai in neighboring Japan were literate, and public education was also quite developed, with at least half of the Japanese population being literate.

After the Meiji Restoration began, these educated Japanese samurai became officials, military officers, and merchants in the Meiji government, while literate Japanese commoners quickly became skilled workers, minor officials, or junior officers.

Therefore, when Chen Wenbin set the worldview for his Church of Divine Revelation, he directly labeled the Qing Dynasty and the officials and gentry who served the Qing Dynasty as believers and lackeys of the devil!

Since the Manchu Qing dynasty wanted to enslave China forever, they also needed to use religion to redefine the distinction between "us" and "you".

This was actually imitating the practice of the sage Hong Tianwang. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom called the Manchus "Qing demons," which was indeed very appropriate!

Any Chinese person who truly understands what they did would probably find it difficult to see them as normal dynastic rulers anymore—in that case, Chen Wenbin now needs to take the first step in ideological mobilization for the future "demon-slaying operation".

The next morning.

Chen Wenbin got up very early. Without lingering in the comfort of the countryside, he had a simple breakfast and then summoned all the team leaders and above to announce that all immigrants would depart for the west that morning.

Everyone had been waiting for this day. After the cheers, they went back to mobilize the immigrants as required, packed up the tents, and loaded them onto horses and caravans.

At 9:30 a.m., all the tents and supplies were loaded onto the vehicles, and 1,600 people and over 100 caravans equipped with roller bearings set off in a grand procession.

Immigrants traveled along Forbes Highway, some on horseback, some in carriages, and some on foot with their packs, towards Lancaster in western Pennsylvania.

Chen Wenbin was worried that chaos would break out, so he personally led ten cavalrymen to patrol the front and back of the immigrant caravan. To his relief, although the immigrant caravan was large, it was not chaotic, and everyone seemed to know what they should do.

He knew this was because David Jones and Pastor Davis, among others, had done a lot of preparatory work over the past two weeks as he had requested.

For example, they divided ten people or three families into a group, five groups into a team, and five teams into a battalion. The more than 800 immigrants were reorganized into three battalions, which were managed by Reverend Davis, David Jones, and David Klein.

Each group has a group leader in charge, and each team has a captain and a pastor who are responsible for management and coordination. In this way, everyone understands who to contact if there is a problem and who is responsible for them, and order naturally stabilizes.

At noon, the migrant caravan stopped to feed the horses water and hay, and the people also needed to eat dry rations to replenish their energy.

Seeing that things were running smoothly, Chen Wenbin stopped interfering and sent someone to notify Davis and David Jones, instructing them to take charge of directing the migrant convoy.

He then sought out Henry Reinhardt, wanting to discuss with this young officer, who possessed considerable military talent, how to make good use of this opportunity to escort immigrants and train his troops.

The Forbes Highway, which runs from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, is about 200 miles long. The road is mostly dirt and crosses the Appalachian Mountains, so it may take 15 to 20 days to reach your destination.

"—Henry, I have reviewed your Western Legion's marching training plan."

As Chen Wenbin rode on his little Red Hare, he said to Henry Reinhardt, who was also riding a fine horse beside him, "This plan is generally good, but I need you to familiarize yourselves with the performance of the Robin 1765 breech-loading rifle and then figure out new tactics that suit it."

It is now our exclusive weapon, with a rate of fire exceeding that of any other muzzle-loading gun in the world. We cannot simply copy European skirmish tactics.

The western lands are vast and fertile, and cavalry is an indispensable mobile force. We should develop a dragoon tactic suitable for the Robin 1765 rifle's rate of fire and accuracy, rather than simply using it as a new rifle for elite main forces!

Henry Reinhardt hesitated for a moment upon hearing this, but then nodded and said, "I understand, Your Excellency. I will study the new tactics, and you will see my report in three days at the latest."

Chen Wenbin nodded. Of all the officers in the Western Army Corps, he admired this young officer the most for his serious and responsible work ethic and his rigorous work style.

In that marching training plan, he simulated the entire immigrant convoy as a large army of 16,000 people that needed to cross mountains and make a long-distance raid on enemy strongholds.

The 125-man cavalry company, representing a cavalry regiment, was responsible for guarding and reconnaissance in front of and on the flanks of the immigrant caravan, which symbolized the main force, to prevent enemy surprise attacks.

The soldiers of this cavalry regiment were planned to be equipped with Robin 1765 rifles, but Reinhardt did not write how these cavalrymen should use the new rifles to maximize their kills and blockades of the enemy.

Chen Wenbin certainly knew the tactics best suited for the Robin 1765 rifle: digging trenches and then coordinating with artillery and barbed wire for positional warfare!

As a breech-loading rifle, the Robin 1765 had a rate of fire of at least six rounds per minute, which was powerful enough. With sufficient ammunition and the support of trenches and barbed wire, it could form an impregnable fortress, allowing the enemy to be worn down through defensive operations.

He didn't say it out loud for two reasons: first, he wanted to see how competent his officers were, and second, he didn't want to accelerate the pace of military change in the world.

The Robin 1765 breech-loading rifle was a small step forward; without a lathe for production, its cost would have been extremely high, and Britain, considering its military budget, would not have used it to arm its soldiers.

But if he were to directly bring up trench and barbed wire tactics, what would happen would be beyond his control.