Dahan first prince

Chapter 397 Plate Armor?Breastplate!
Facing the strange gazes of the crowd, Yang Chengyan was completely calm.

How much money has the Shaofu made in these years?
In fact, judging from the accounts alone, there are not many.

The reason is simple: Whether it is the "stunning" grain storage on behalf of the people, or the official grain and rice operation with a slightly longer profit period, most of the income obtained by the Shaofu is grain.

——Store grain on behalf of the people, take one tenth of the stored grain as the storage fee, and share it equally between the treasury of the Xiangfu and the internal funds of the Shaofu;
As for the government-run grain and rice, although because of the price difference, it can indeed bring "money" income to the Shaofu, but under the instruction of the emperor Liu Ying and the strict implementation of Yang Chengyan, this part of the profit is also mostly exchanged. It became grain and stored in granaries all over Guanzhong.

In Liu Ying's words, this is called 'preventing problems before they happen'.

As for the present, the salt, iron, food and salaries that account for the most important part of Shaofu's income are similar.

——For the wrought iron part, instead of allowing the Shaofu to sell the finished products in exchange for income, on the contrary, they have to deposit all the finished products in their internal funds and at the same time throw money desperately into it!
As for salt, although it is said to be a huge profit, there are two big money eaters, 'wrought iron' and 'wrought steel', and a considerable part of the income earned by Shaofu from drying salt is also eaten.

So in fact, the Shaofu didn't save much money at all in the past few years.

Although compared to ten years ago, the situation of running mice with poor treasury is much better, but it is absolutely not to say that there is nowhere to spend money.

Correspondingly, the Shaofu has stored a considerable portion of coarse salt, as well as iron and steel over the years.

As for using iron to make armor, it seems that it is indeed a bit extravagant.

But this is not within the scope of Yang Chengyan's consideration.

——The emperor ordered to make a new armor, what can Yang Chengyan do?
Thinking of this, Yang Chengyan couldn't help but sighed a little, then smiled and lowered his head, pointing to the plate armor next to the scale armor.

Almost at the same time when he was looking at the plate armor, Yang Chengyan's originally confident face suddenly showed a hint of worry...
"This plate armor is forged from evil gold. It weighs seventy catties and is half an inch thick!"

"Young Mansion once invited the Southern Army to try it out. If you get this kind of plate armor, you can resist a ten-stone crossbow and a big yellow crossbow, with only slight damage!"

"Your Majesty once issued an order: plate armor should be made of alloy steel, but now it is only made of evil gold, which is too heavy and not strong enough, so it has not yet been produced and prepared for the army..."

Leaving this sentence a little lonely, Yang Chengyan walked aside, allowing everyone to step forward and look at the plate armor that cost Yang Chengyan countless brain cells.

Perhaps in the eyes of later generations, plate armor is not a high-tech product;
But in fact, the plate armor produced by Shaofu is likely to be the first plate armor produced in human history.

Speaking of plate armor, we have to mention the development of the item 'armor' in human history.

For a long period of time, the development of Chinese civilization in terms of 'armor' still remained at the level of leather armor.

That is to say, the 'advanced leather armor' is composed of rectangular leather pieces flattened on the cloth surface to protect the chest, back, shoulders, back of the buttocks, and thighs as a whole, and sewn together.

The reason why it is called "advanced leather armor" is because in the same period of Western civilization, there is no advanced armor technology that can ensure the mobility of the wearer to a certain extent;

At the same time, the "armor" technology of Western civilization still stayed in the complete tanned leather armor, that is, the "primitive" period when a complete cooked cowhide was directly cut and sewn into the shape of armor.

After the Zhajia in the early Chinese civilization and the leather armor in the early Western civilization, the development of armor in human history has taken a different direction.

For example, just now, the fish scale armor displayed by Yang Chengyan is the main development direction of Chinese civilization;
Western civilization, on the other hand, has embarked on the direction of the hell difficulty level of 'chain mail'.

The advantages and disadvantages of the two are also very obvious.

The composition logic of the fish scale armor is similar to that of the Zhajia, but it is not laid flat like the Zhajia, but is stacked with iron sheets. Both the defense and mobility are much higher than the Zhajia!

The chain mail is composed of circular iron rings one after another, which are connected in series to form a net, which can ensure the maximum mobility of the wearer and at the same time improve the defense to a level that cannot be achieved by other "soft armor" armors. high.

As for the comparison between the two, it is: the mobility of the fish scale armor is obviously lower than that of the chain mail, and the defense power of the two is close to the same;
But in terms of production cost, the fish scale armor completely exploded the chain armor.

Therefore, in the long history, the Chinese fish-scale armor can often become the majority of soldiers in the Chinese army, at least the standing armament of the elite troops, in certain periods, especially in the prosperous age.

However, the western chain soft armor can only be exclusive to the nobles, and it is impossible to be touched by the big soldiers.

——Even in the vast majority of cases, on the battlefields of the European cold weapon era, there will often be a nobleman in chain mail who is surrounded by hundreds of enemy soldiers, but ends up unscathed and extremely counter-killed .

It can be said that the leather wallet - armor - scale armor - chain armor can almost be regarded as the development process of the "armor" technology in the age of human cold weapons.

And from front to back, the defensive power of these four types of armor and the freedom of movement of the wearer are getting higher and higher, and correspondingly, the cost is getting higher and higher.

But whether it is the early Western leather armor that can neither allow the wearer to move freely nor have too high defense, or the Chinese Zhajia that is slightly better in mobility;

Whether it is fish scale armor with further improved mobility and defense, or even chain mail with full mobility and close to perfect defense, there is an inevitable problem.

——It can withstand the slashing and stabbing of sharp weapons, but without exception, it cannot resist the blunt attack of heavy weapons!

Especially the chain mail, which can be called "the pinnacle of armor technology in the cold weapon era", although it has ultra-light weight, super high defense power, and gives the wearer a degree of freedom "nearly equipped with armor", but in the resistance In terms of bludgeoning, the hip stretching is outrageous.

It is no exaggeration to say that the performance of chain armor in terms of blunt attack resistance is not even as good as the leather armor of the primitive man period!

This is because chain mail is different from the more 'backward' wallets, armor, and scale armor: chain mail is the only undoubted soft armor among these four types of armor.

As for the other three types, although they can barely be regarded as hard armor, their performance in terms of resistance to blunt objects is still worrying.

Wallet and armor, due to the materials used, cannot defend against blunt weapon blows with too much force;
Although the scale armor is made of iron or even steel, the unique 'fish scale' manufacturing method also greatly reduces the integrity of the armor.

To put it bluntly: the integrity of the armor is directly proportional to the ability to resist blunt blows, and inversely proportional to the mobility of the wearer.

For example, mail armor has almost no integrity, so it can provide the wearer with almost no freedom of movement like wearing armor; but correspondingly, it can hardly withstand any degree of blunt weapon blows.

Another example is the fish scale armor, although it is made of metal, but also because of its integrity, its ability to withstand blunt objects is worrying.

Compared with the lack of integrity of the chain armor and scale armor, which resulted in low performance against blunt objects, it was completely opposite to the plate armor that was being placed in front of the courtiers and officials of the Han family at this moment.

——A complete piece of iron plate ensures unparalleled frontal defense capability and excellent ability to withstand blunt weapon blows, but correspondingly, it also causes the wearer to lose almost all degrees of freedom of the upper body.

In the original history, this kind of plate armor was invented by Westerners who suffered from the "unbearable blunt attack" of chain armor.

It's just that most of the plate armor in Western history is composed of a layer of iron sheet;
The way of equipment is often to wear a layer of mail armor inside to ensure the performance of other aspects, and finally put such a layer of iron skin on the outside of the mail armor, in order to minimize the weight of the armor and at the same time resist to a certain extent blunt force blow.

As for the front of Yang Chengyan, this piece of plate armor is made entirely of forged iron, with a thickness of more than one centimeter and a weight of nearly [-] kilograms. It is called a breastplate in Western history.

As the name suggests, the breastplate, like the armor in front of you, only protects the armor on the front chest, or the guard plate.

In history, breastplates only existed in a very short historical period, and the heavy cavalry armed by Western religions were eliminated by the rolling wheels of history.

As for the reasons, nothing more than two points.

One: The super high weight of the breastplate makes it necessary for both the cavalry equipped with the breastplate and the horses equipped with the cavalry to have extremely strong physical fitness.

To use a common saying in Chinese history, it is: a man with a breastplate cannot wear it unless he is a fierce general; a man with armor cannot wear it unless he is a famous horse.

To put it bluntly, the breastplate puts forward extremely harsh requirements on both the wearer and the war horse.

The second is the 'undeformable' characteristic of the breastplate, which makes this kind of armor face huge challenges whether it is mass-produced or re-fitted.

Take a very simple example.

I am a cavalryman;
With my tall and burly physique, as well as my superb riding skills and combat effectiveness, I was fortunate enough to be able to equip a breastplate and become a heavy cavalry;

Then, in order to make this breastplate fit my body to the greatest extent, so as to avoid its huge weight bumping and causing excessive damage to my shoulders, this breastplate must be completely in my size, even It is completely tailored according to my upper body.

Even my pectoral muscles and my ribs will be tightly attached to this breastplate, like a pair of tokens that can be embedded in each other.

Equipped with this breastplate, I am invincible and have made great achievements in battle. However, the huge weight of the breastplate and the high-intensity combat missions made me face discharge due to physical reasons after just one year.

At this time, the problem arises.

——I'm leaving the army, what should I do with this breastplate?
For others to wear, let alone 'I' who is tall and burly, with superb riding skills, and has high combat qualities. It is hard to find, even if you find it, the breastplate may not fit!
In other words: Finding someone who is my size and can fit the upper body to this breastplate is no easier than finding someone who looks exactly like me!
But if it is not worn by others, it can only be thrown into the warehouse to eat ashes, or the breastplate can be melted down to rebuild a new breastplate.

This is also the crux of the problem.

A breastplate, weighing nearly [-] kilograms, is a huge fortune in itself!

Coupled with the 'custom-made' level of forging process, the cost far exceeds the value of the [-] kilograms of iron!
Whether such a breastplate is discarded or cast, it will inevitably cause huge losses!
Moreover, unlike the above example, the dilemma faced by 'I': the choice faced by the regime is often not 'how to deal with this breastplate', but 'this batch, these thousands of breastplates' How to deal with'.

Such a huge cost is absolutely unaffordable even for the Han Dynasty, which is rich in China...
"Ugh······"

"Why does Your Majesty insist on making such 'plate armor'?"

"Even if the scale armor is slightly wrong, it is far better than the Zhajia..."

Obviously, right now, Yang Chengyan is facing such worries.

——The plate armor is almost "bound to the wearer for life" and the high production cost makes it difficult for Yang Chengyan to have even the slightest optimism and expectation for this new type of escort.

But as the saying goes: If you are not in charge of your family, you don’t know how expensive firewood, rice, oil and salt are.

Yang Chengyan was worried about the cost-effectiveness of the plate armor, but the courtiers and officials who came to visit were undoubtedly deeply attracted by the appearance of this new type of armor.

"Yo!"

"Sure enough, it's half an inch thick!"

"It's also made of evil gold, not as brittle as copper!!!"

"Unfortunately, it's a little heavier..."

"But it doesn't matter!"

For a moment, everyone looked at the plate armor with enthusiasm;

After a while, everyone who had seen the quality of the plate armor surrounded Yangchengyan involuntarily.

"Dare to ask Duke Yang!"

"—How much does the Shaofu make this plate armor, how much does it cost?"

"If someone wants one, how much does he need to pay?"

The person who spoke first was obviously still a little cautious, and his brows were full of temptation;
But after a while, someone couldn't hold back his excitement and howled, "Hundred gold!"

"Duke Yang, for this plate armor, I am willing to donate a hundred gold and the money of the Shaofu!"

"—If there are still deficiencies, Mr. Yang, you can just speak up!"

Hearing the man's voice, Yang Chengyan raised his eyebrows.

But when he saw that the man was Wei Wei, the military's No. 1 Li Ji, Yang Chengyan's sarcasm quickly turned into a tactful reminder.

"I have no choice but to do this..."

"If Wei Wei wants plate armor, I'm afraid it will be His Majesty's approval..."

Without changing his face, he threw the pot aside, and looked at the emperor Liu Ying who was still smiling at everyone. When everyone gathered around Liu Ying again, Yang Chengyan raised his eyebrows and began to slander secretly.

"One hundred gold?"

"—The evil gold needed to make this plate armor is worth fifteen gold!!"

"Your Majesty ordered that this plate armor be made of cooked steel; when it is completed, the steel needed will cost more than a hundred gold!!!"

(End of this chapter)