Wild North America 1846

Count Dai Changfu's expectations were good. Chief of Naval Staff Count Pan Hengchen came to the palace to meet the emperor and brought two naval development plans, both of which required a large amount of military expenditures;

One is to use the Navy's priority renewal rights to build six steam ironclad frigates in the next three years to further improve the Navy's combat effectiveness and its ability to maintain maritime borders.

The other is that after completing the "Consolidating the Sea Plan", the Navy ambitiously proposed another naval ship development plan, which is the "Guo Zhen Plan".

As the name suggests, the "Guo Zhen Plan" is to develop iron-armored steam main warships of more than 3,500 tons to suppress the country's sea areas and further demonstrate the role of the navy.

As a result, His Majesty approved the first plan and rejected the second one.

No other reason

The 3,500-ton iron-armored steam main battleship developed by the "Guo Zhenguo Plan" is expensive to build. It adopts a waist gun room design and is equipped with four 60-pound large-caliber naval guns and 12 20-pound caliber secondary guns. The gunfire is quite fierce and powerful.

The cost is also gratifying, with the cost of a steam-armored main battleship skyrocketing to nearly 400,000 yuan.

This money is enough to build five armored frigates of more than 1,000 tons.

The reason why the 3,500-ton iron-clad steam main battleship is so expensive is because it uses a new triple-expansion steam engine, a new high-pressure boiler, a large-caliber naval gun recently completed by Colt Arms Company, and a series of new

Technology and the first ship are certainly not cheap.

If more ships are built, the unit price can be lowered, which is around 32,000 to 30,000 for each main steam ironclad ship.

It's not that he is worried about money. The key to Richard is that he lacks motivation to develop the navy. At this stage, the kingdom is still in its first 10-year entrepreneurial period. It must cherish the current peaceful environment and vigorously develop the economy. The development of naval armaments is not an urgent project.

With this 400,000 yuan, Richard can add 15,000 Chinese immigrants to Paradise Island, which can create profits of several hundred thousand yuan that year and implement a rolling development strategy.

In just a few years, this amount of money will allow more than 60,000 Chinese immigrants to immigrate, creating more social value and enhancing the kingdom's heritage.

Building an armored warship is just a waste of money and requires expensive training and daily maintenance expenses. Building at least 2 to 3 warships of a type would cost over one million.

The Tang Kingdom's initial investment in the two immigrant cities of New Xi'an and Donggang, the paradise island, which were key construction projects, was only one million yuan.

Unlike colonization and economic construction, naval expenditure only goes out but does not come in. It is a net consumption.

Currently, the Tang Kingdom has no urgent need to expand the size of its naval fleet in North America. Developing a powerful navy will only attract the attention of the British. So why bother?

Spending a small sum of ten thousand or twenty thousand to incite Americans to kill each other in the Kansas Civil War, wouldn't it be nice for the Tang Dynasty to move a small stool and sit next to watch the show?

Therefore, Richard approved the previous naval development project, rejected the "national subjugation plan", only agreed to allocate 35,000 yuan for research and exploration on ship design, and then expelled Earl Pan Hengchen, chief of naval staff.

Today, the development trend of steam ironclad warships in the world is in the ascendant. Since there is no reference, the designs of various emerging steam ironclad warships are emerging one after another, and they are in the pioneering era.

In the world, there are three main trends in ship design in particular;

The first type is the European naval powers, mainly the United Kingdom, which generally cover large sailing battleships with a displacement of four to six thousand tons with iron armor to enhance damage resistance.

The artillery is arranged along the side of the ship. The battleship sails mainly with sail power, supplemented by side wheels and propellers. This complex power combination not only causes the ship surface to be crowded and tense, but is also prone to malfunctions and has poor reliability.

The British even designed a suspended propeller. When necessary, hundreds of people were required to lift the propeller from the stern of the ship into the sea, which was time-consuming, labor-intensive and ineffective.

The second type is all kinds of strange experimental designs.

For example, the U.S. Navy has a fully armored ship design similar to that of a submarine. This type of ship has an extremely low side and a speed of 5 to 6 knots. If the wind and waves are slightly stronger at sea, it will be overturned and sunk.

Therefore, it can only be sailed along the coast when the weather is calm. The main usage scenario is in inland rivers with less wind and waves. It is used to compete for control of the river and release firepower on the ground to support infantry operations.

But the problem is

The United States does not share rivers with other countries. The only one that borders the Tang Kingdom is the Missouri River. Of the more than 3,600 kilometers long, only less than 800 kilometers are navigable.

Moreover, the Missouri River is a seasonal river with very large changes in water volume. When the ice and snow melt at the turn of spring and summer, the water coming upstream is extremely fierce. It rushes down in a mighty manner, turning the vast area in the middle and lower reaches into a marsh.

The hydrological situation is complex and the water is fierce. Not to mention the American iron-clad steam battleships with poor routes, even ordinary ships dare not pass through and can only stay in the port.

In autumn and winter, the water gradually decreases, and an American-style iron-clad steam battleship with a deep draft may run aground if it fails.

The third type is the simplified design represented by the Tang Dynasty. The outstanding feature is that the sails and side wheels are abandoned and the propeller is used as the only ship power.

In the long-term practice of transoceanic immigration, the shipbuilding industry of the Tang Kingdom gradually found its own path and won a place in the marine steam turbine industry.

The marine steam turbine power produced by the Tang Dynasty is famous for its high-pressure steam boiler with high coal-burning efficiency and good reliability. Through the improvement of the horizontal steam turbine, a new type of steam ship power represented by the triple-expansion steam turbine was formed.

, ranking among the advanced ranks in the world.

The Ship Power Laboratory of the University of California brings together many experts and scholars from European countries and the Tang Dynasty. It is one of the world's high-level ship power research and development laboratories and is well-known in the industry.

A series of enterprises and government agencies such as the Royal United Line of the Tang Dynasty, the Pacific Shipping Company, the Royal Charitable Foundation, and the Ministry of Finance of the Royal Government have allocated large amounts of money to this key laboratory for many years to fund ship power research and technology.

With a large amount of R&D funds accumulated, the University of California Marine Power Laboratory has achieved a series of advanced results that have attracted worldwide attention, including marine triple-expansion steam turbines, high-pressure boilers, 6-horsepower, 12-horsepower diesel engines, 245-horsepower steam locomotives and other projects.

, have all formed flagship products on the market.

Even without the technological level of the mythical steam age, even the most advanced marine triple-expansion steam turbine has a design principle that is easy to understand at a glance and has no secrets.

The key lies in the stress structure of power design, combustion and output efficiency, load-bearing and optimization of mechanical structure, durability and economy, and a reasonable balance must be achieved.

We should not over-consume coal in order to squeeze out more power, but we should also generate more power per ton of coal so that the steam turbine can be more powerful, carry more cargo, and sail longer distances.

Achieving a reasonable balance between power and fuel consumption is the core of an advanced marine triple-expansion steam turbine.

No matter how big a ship is, the amount of coal it can carry is limited.

The steamships of the Tang Dynasty generally carried a heavy oil tank. Heavy oil was used appropriately when sailing to increase the combustion efficiency of coal and squeeze out more sailing power. It is a representative of the advanced power of today's ships.

The ships of the British Royal Navy generally do not adopt this design. This is because the United Kingdom does not have a reliable supply of heavy oil. The British Royal Navy steamships located in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean cannot import heavy oil from the Kingdom of Tang Dynasty all the way, which is unrealistic.

Heavy oil is very viscous and must be heated with steam pipes during loading and unloading. Special transport ships and transport vehicles are used. The heavy oil tank of the ship must be specially designed near the high-temperature boiler, so that it can be used conveniently with the help of the heat of the furnace temperature.

The UK does not have these conditions.

This is the advantage of the Tang Kingdom relying on local resources. When the ships were built, they had special heavy oil tanks designed near the high-temperature boilers.

As a major country in the petrochemical industry, Datang Kingdom's ports along the coast of California have facilities for storing heavy oil. They have convenient steam heating pipelines that can add heavy oil, and nearby coal terminals can also add coal, making it very convenient for ships to use.

In the field of ocean transportation and shipbuilding, the Tang Kingdom closely followed the United Kingdom. Although it could not compare with the United Kingdom in terms of shipbuilding volume and shipyard scale, its technical level was not inferior.

December 16, 1855

Count Esterhazy arrived in St. Petersburg with an ultimatum from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, asking the Russian Empire to accept an armistice.

Otherwise, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would join the coalition camp and start a war against the Russian Empire.

In this way

The top 4 countries in the world are all on the stage. Britain, France, and Austria-Hungary have formed a united front, plus the two younger brothers of the Kingdom of Tang Dynasty and the Kingdom of Sardinia, to jointly deal with the isolated Tsarist Russian Empire.

after many years

European public opinion generally believes that this was the key to the Tsarist Empire's decision to cease the war. While Russia was grieving the ruthless betrayal of its former allies and brothers, the situation on the battlefield was over and it was no longer able to reject the Austria-Hungary Empire's ultimatum.

In January 1856, Sir Collington succeeded Sir Simpson as the new Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. Unfortunately, the timing of his taking office was unlucky. Russian Tsar Alexander II had already agreed to peace talks, and the opportunity to continue to expand the war no longer existed.

January 16, 1856

Tsar Alexander II accepted the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum and agreed to start peace talks.

On February 25, the Paris Peace Conference was held.

Britain, France, Tang, Ottoman, Kingdom of Sardinia and Russia participated. Austria also participated in the peace conference because it proposed the "Vienna Four Points" plan.

The Tsarist Empire hoped that the Kingdom of Prussia would attend to gain its support and avoid being surrounded by wolves during the peace talks, but Britain objected on the grounds that the Kingdom of Prussia did not participate in the war.

In the end, the British opinion overwhelmingly prevailed, and the Russian negotiators had to face the countries on the same front, like a lioness caught in the bite of an African hyena, conducting difficult negotiations.

in fact

Tsarist Russia was not without sympathizers and supporters. French Emperor Napoleon III did not want Britain to weaken Russia excessively, which would put France under greater pressure and face the chaos in Europe alone.

Therefore, at the Paris Peace Conference, France, as the host, often gave Russia strong support.

The Tang Dynasty also had an ambiguous attitude on this issue. Richard also did not want Britain to be too strong in Europe. With Tsarist Russia in front of him who could touch Britain's sensitive nerves at any time, the British could calm down and focus more on it.

In Europe, not North America.

Therefore, on appropriate issues, the Tang Kingdom assisted France and supported Tsarist Russia's reasonable demands in disguise.

For example, on the Crimean Peninsula issue;

Britain demanded that Tsarist Russia cede the Crimean Peninsula, but Tsarist Russia firmly opposed it. France and Tang tacitly supported the position of the Russian representatives, which forced the tough British negotiators to give in.

The peace talks that took place in Paris became the central issue that focused the world's attention in 1856. It was also the first time that the Tang Kingdom entered the center of the international stage and participated in the formulation of the international order as a winner.

This undoubtedly promoted the international status of the Tang Empire, and its status as a third-rate power was generally recognized by the international community.

At the Paris Peace Conference, after intense bargaining, the countries finally reached an agreement.

On March 30, the Treaty of Paris was signed. The main provisions are as follows;

First, the great powers jointly guaranteed the "independence and integrity" of the Ottoman Empire.

Second, the Ottoman Empire promised to improve the conditions of the people within its borders regardless of race or creed.

Third, Russia regained the occupied territory of the Crimean Peninsula, ceded the mouth of the Danube River and southern Bessarabia to Moldavia, returned Kars in the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, and gave up its right to protect the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire.

Fourth, the suzerainty of Serbia, Wallachia and Moldavia still belongs to the Ottoman Empire, and Russia is not allowed to interfere. It is jointly guaranteed by the great powers.

Fifth, neutralize the Black Sea, prohibit warships from various countries from passing through the two straits, and prohibit Russia from establishing or maintaining arsenals along the Black Sea coast.

6. Freedom of navigation on the Danube.

Among the various provisions of the Paris Agreement, Russia was forced to accept harsh conditions and lost many of the rights and interests it had gained through the Russo-Turkish War in the past 200 years. Its reputation and status as the "European Gendarmerie" have plummeted, and it is worse than a phoenix losing its hair.

chicken.

The peace treaty prohibited the Tsarist Empire from having fleets and naval bases in the Black Sea, and prohibited the Tsarist Russian Empire from fortifying the Aran Islands in the Baltic Sea. This allowed the British planned firewall to be implemented, and its strategic purpose of containing the Tsarist Russian Empire was realized.

at the same time

The Tsarist Empire needed to cede southern Bessarabia to the Ottoman Empire, return the Kars Fortress, and recognize the collective protection of the three principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Serbia under the suzerainty of the Sudan by the various powers.

The Paris Peace Conference was an unprecedented disastrous defeat for the Tsarist Empire. After its westward expansion strategy was met with failure, the Tsarist Empire, which was greedy for land, could only turn around and look eastward.

From this period onwards

The Tsarist Empire took frequent actions in Central Asia, Xinjiang, Mongolia, the three eastern provinces and other places, using threats and oppression and other despicable means. In the next ten years, without using a single soldier, through various imposed inequalities

The border treaty seized more than 1.5 million square kilometers of territory from the corrupt Manchu Qing Dynasty.

All this is a story for later.