The Song Dynasty has been deliberate for 16 years, only to know that it is the Water Margin

Chapter 654 Bamboo Armor, Crossing the River

In the fourth year of Jingkang, on March 18th, the regent of the Qin Dynasty, Zhao Tao, commanded an army of 200,000 men and marched south to conquer the Fanyi.

The Southern Expedition is no better than the Northern Expedition. The Southern Expedition does not require too many men and horses, and there is no need for heavy cavalry. It only takes 20,000 light cavalry, and the remaining infantry is enough.

Due to the terrain, infantry is more useful than cavalry in the south.

Especially those areas further south from Guangnan West Road and Dali, where jungles are dense, mountains are complex, swamps are rainy, and the climate changes from time to time, so armor and soldiers are more useful.

The most important preparation for Zhao Yu's southern expedition this time was medicine. After all, the south is full of poisonous diseases, snakes, insects, mosquitoes and ants. Since ancient times, almost all the southern expeditions of the Central Plains Dynasty have fallen to poisonous diseases. If this aspect is not fully prepared, , then there is almost no possibility of victory.

No matter how strong your troops are, even if they are several times stronger than the opponent's, once you are infected with a poisonous disease that cannot be cured, it will be useless and you can only sit back and wait for defeat.

Secondly, when selecting an army, most soldiers from the southern routes are selected because they are relatively heat-resistant. If the soldiers are from the Yan-Zhao land, they simply cannot stand the heat there. Maybe they will get hot even before the battle starts. Passed out.

The third step is the choice of armor. Regardless of generals or soldiers, conventional fine steel, iron, leather armor, or even cloth armor will not work.

These armors were airtight and very thick, so they were not suitable for the climate there. The bamboo armor that Zhao Tong had studied for many years came in handy at this time.

After the holes are drilled, the inside of the bamboo holes still need to be polished. This is much easier. After all, the inside is almost the same and not as rough as the outside. However, you must know that a set of bamboo armor has nearly a hundred pieces, and each piece has at least four holes. So, The polishing project inside this hole is actually huge.

Adding these together makes the cost even higher, so although bamboo is cheap and cheap, except for the material, everything else is more expensive than iron armor, and the manufacturing time is several times longer than that of iron armor.

He had long planned to use bamboo armor, because bamboo armor is as strong as iron armor on the battlefield, and is several times stronger than leather armor and cloth armor. Although the flexibility may be less than leather armor and cloth armor, If the infantry wears it, it won't waste anything.

If we only rely on labor, a pair of bamboo armors will have nearly a hundred palm-sized bamboo slices. Not to mention logging and cutting, just polishing is a huge project, and the labor cost will be extremely high.

The most important thing is that bamboo armor is easy to obtain. Bamboo is cheap and easy to grow. While the cost is infinitely reduced, the effect will be doubled. This is simply a weapon for military defense.

Moreover, it is not like what Duan Siyan can do to raise the price at the most critical moment of his own Xixia war.

In addition to these, there are also the problems of moisture-proof, corrosion-proof and moth-proofing after the bamboo nails are completed, as well as the repair costs after damage. After all, bamboo nails are so difficult to make, so you can't just throw them away if they are damaged. You still need to repair them and continue to use them.

But compared with drilling, this polishing is nothing, because although it takes a long time, you can still persist in doing it. Drilling holes in bamboo slices can make people hysterical in the end.

For drilling holes alone, it would be okay to make less armor, but if more armor is made, it would take years and months to complete. The time cost, labor cost, and money cost, all piled together, would exceed that of iron armor.

The second reason is that the rattan armor in the Qin army was all made in Dali. It sounded good at the time and faced various hardships, but Zhao Tong didn't believe it. He Yu didn't know about it. If he didn't know it at the beginning, he later made it in large quantities. , are constantly being transported to Longyou, which is something Duan Siyan cannot cover up.

If you want to remove the burrs from the bamboo, you will probably need to use a knife to remove it bit by bit. Similar to a woodworking plane, it is not the best tool for planing bamboo because the fiber of bamboo is harder and sparse. When cutting with a woodworking plane, it is easy to cause uneven surface, which will As a result, the planed bamboo is rough and uneven, and the defense power of the armor strung with such bamboo slices is greatly reduced.

But Zhao Tong had made up his mind to make bamboo armor as early as after he conquered Wang Qing. There were two reasons for this.

Horsetail and green brick are also not suitable for polishing bamboo.

If the bamboo pieces are not polished and polished, there will be a lot of stubble and barbs, which will hurt the wearer. If the movement is large on the battlefield, it is very easy to be injured by one's own armor, even if just a bamboo thorn pierces the flesh, In that case, it is impossible to say that it will directly affect the situation of the battle, not to mention that such bamboo armor is uncomfortable to wear.

The two most important steps of polishing and drilling add up to the labor costs infinitely.

At least four holes must be drilled into a piece of bamboo. How? Hitting it hard with a sharp object will definitely crack the bamboo. The normal way to punch holes in bamboo in this era was to use a candle and an awl.

First, use an awl to carve a circular trace on the bamboo where the hole needs to be punched. Then light the candle, place the area where the bamboo needs to be punched above the candle, and continue to heat until bubbles appear on the surface of the bamboo. , then remove the bamboo, use an awl to puncture the air bubbles, and slowly grind to make holes.

However, there have been very few dynasties that used bamboo to make armor throughout the ages. The reason is that although the cost of bamboo itself is extremely low, the cost of making armor is very high.

And because bamboo has very strong elastic deformation characteristics, it will also damage the blade of the woodworking planer. If two bamboos are planed, the woodworking planer will be broken. And due to steel-making technology, the bamboo planer has not yet come out at this time.

In this era, polishing was still limited to manual work, and most of it was jade and agate. There were actually very few people who polished bamboo. Wood could be polished with horsetail, blue bricks, or a plane.

The first one is that at that time, I thought about conquering the barbarian countries in the south. Bamboo armor is the most suitable defensive armor, and rattan armor is not suitable, because rattan armor has a heat-storage effect when it is soaked in oil for a long time. , it's okay to use it in places like the north or Dali, but it won't work if you go further south. The inside of the rattan armor will be as sad as a steamer.

If it's not Duan Heyu, the leader of Dali, it's the Gao family!
The Gao family had ostracized the Duan family for many years and even usurped the throne. Although they later returned the country to the Duan family, they did not return the power but still firmly held on to their power.

Duan Heyu's uncle Duan Zhengming, Emperor Baoding, and his father Duan Zhengchun, Emperor Wen'an, had been fighting secretly with Gao Jiaming all their lives, but the results were not satisfactory.

Because the Gao family was not only a powerful official, but also a descendant of Dali. Historically, almost all the queens had the surname Gao and Yang. After the death of the Yang family, all the queens had the surname Gao.

Duan Heyu's queen was surnamed Gao, his mother Duan Zhengchun's queen was also surnamed Gao, and Emperor Duan Shouhui's queen was also from the Gao family.

Duan Heyu, on the other hand, is relatively indifferent. His uncle and his father failed to fight against the Gao family, so he didn't have so many ideas when he came to him. He himself was not very willing to be the emperor. When he was young, he went to the Song Dynasty to wander the world. Heroes and children, if Emperor Wen'an Duan Zhengchun hadn't forced him, he wouldn't have wanted to return to Dali at all.

And Duan Siyan was married to the Gao family, so Zhao Tong estimated that it was hard to say that the Gao family was the instigator of the subsequent Tengjia incident.

So, will all the rattan armor you create be sold to you? But not necessarily. After all, Duan Siyan could not control the large amount of rattan armor later. If Duan Heyu or the Gao family directly intervened in this matter, some of them would definitely be left behind. It is impossible to say... that the rattan armor would be sold to him before. If there's anything fishy left on it, there's a way to break those vine armor.

Therefore, when he went south to conquer Dali, he could no longer use rattan armor. These are the two reasons why he used bamboo armor. To arm the infantry in the Southern Expedition, bamboo armor is truly the best equipment.

In the past ten years, he has solved all the problems of how to prevent bamboo nails from moisture, corrosion and moth, as well as repairs after damage.

Later, he also thought of a solution to the problem of polishing and drilling.

Since labor is too expensive or even impossible, then we should find ways to save labor, or use a small amount of power to increase and increase it in some way to perform these two tasks.

Polishing and drilling in later generations were actually machines. The machines were not only irresistible in power, but also extremely fast during the process. Grinding wheels were used for polishing and electric drills for drilling, so that similar piecework work could be completed with high efficiency.

Zhao Tong also wanted to come up with this kind of machine at the beginning, but power was a problem. Don’t think about electricity. It really couldn’t be done. It was easy to generate electricity and difficult to transmit. It involved collaboration in multiple fields. He himself knew little about it and had no time to study. Later, Then he thought about steam, which was also troublesome, so he gave up as well.

It was still necessary to rely on human power, and then came up with crankshaft connecting rods and the like, using the principle of leverage to invisibly amplify the power by ten or even dozens of times.

Then Zhao Tong came up with two machines, one for polishing and one for drilling. They were manually operated. Not only did the speed increase by an unknown amount, but each time they could not only polish one piece of bamboo, but also punch one hole. You can do five or six at the same time, and drilling holes is almost the same, which virtually saves a lot of labor and time costs.

A bamboo armor army slowly took shape.

The army marched all the way south, and various states came out to welcome it. Zhao Tong did not interfere too much in local political affairs. Huang Jue and Li Gang inspected the place carefully before and arrested many people. Now Luzhou officials have their tails between their legs and dare not Excessive as usual.

Except for the common people who blocked the army and complained about their grievances, Zhao Tong asked people to handle it, and there were no more investigations, which also made the local officials feel relieved.

Basically, all places were officials from the Song Dynasty. After Zhao Tong became the regent, he did not move much about his local position, and he did not hold any imperial examinations in the past two years. The ranks are filled up one by one, and those at the bottom are selected by the Imperial College and given Jinshi status to fill in the past.

Zhao Tong knew that few of these officials were clean, but he couldn't make any big move at the moment, because the war had lasted for several years, and the people had long been exhausted. Getting rid of these moths seemed like a good thing, but in fact, it affected the whole body, and the court and the people would follow. In such turmoil, we can't kill everyone from top to bottom, right? That would be really messy.

The war must be over and the people have been recuperating for a few years, and the people's lives are stable and their hearts are at peace before we can start. At that time, there is no need to kill them all. We can only intimidate and monitor them in front of them to restrain them and not dare to act too recklessly. Just check back in the next few years!

This road going south is not fast or slow. After passing Jinghu North Road, we entered Chengdufu 4th Road. Chengdufu was originally one road, but later because the area was too vast, it was divided into four roads during the Xianping period, namely Chengdufu. Road, Lizhou Road, Kuizhou Road, Tongchuanfu Road.

The army took Kuizhou Road, then entered Tongchuanfu Road, and soon arrived at the border between Qin and Dali, at the Yangshan River.

The Song Dynasty wielded a jade axe. When the Song Dynasty was founded, Emperor Taizu said on the map that the area beyond the Yangshan River was not the territory of the Song Dynasty. From then on, the boundary between the Song Dynasty and Dali was determined.

The Yangshan River is the Dadu River, stretching for more than two thousand miles. In fact, the army is not flowing in the Yangshan River, but is leaning towards the Tuo River. After all, it is easier to travel here.

It is difficult to enter Sichuan, and it is not easy to enter Yunnan. There are too many mountains and rivers, and you have to cross rivers.

However, Zhao Tong was not in a hurry at the moment. He suppressed the army first and waited for news from the other side.

Before the army left Tokyo, he had issued a decree to Dali. Naturally, he told him to surrender to the Qin Dynasty, not to become a vassal state, but to submit completely, change his flag and name, and be included in the territory of the Qin Dynasty.

But the decree should have arrived in Dali City long ago, but there has been no news from there.

This matter would have been easier when the Song Dynasty was founded. At that time, Dali had wanted to annex it many times. In fact, it was not impossible to persuade Dali to surrender directly. However, Emperor Taizu had many concerns and always thought of Nanzhao's rebellion against the Tang Dynasty. The matter, let alone accept it in the end, even the subordinates did not agree. It was the Emperor Daojun who accepted the matter.

Now it is no longer as long as it was at the beginning. There is no intention of surrendering to the Central Plains Celestial Empire. Otherwise, there would be no news for so long.

Zhao Tong's army pressed down on the riverside, just to show the other side that they were serious and not just talking.

He is stationed in a narrower section of the waterway, which is convenient for crossing the river. From this side, you can see some villages in Dali over there. This location belongs to Dali Huichuan Prefecture, which is a slightly flat place and easy to walk.

Dali has never sent heavy troops to guard the riverside. Even now, there are no camps or military fortresses. There are only some local soldiers in twos and threes, walking cautiously and talking in low voices from time to time. Apparently they are unaware of the Qin army on the other side of the river. What do you want to do?

The news that Zhao Tong issued an order to Dali to persuade him to surrender has not been leaked, which is understandable, but it is a bit unbelievable that he does not send troops to defend the riverside at this moment.

Zhao Tong raised the tent to discuss the matter, and Song Jiang said: "Your Majesty, I feel that Duan Heyu is in a dilemma at this moment. He knows that he cannot defeat our Great Qin Heavenly Army and will only increase the damage. If he surrenders directly, he will not be willing to do so, so he This will happen on the other side.”

Zhu Wudao: "If this is true, this person's indecisiveness is evident."

Hua Rong wondered: "Since you are not willing to give in, you have to put on a show and just give up like this. Could it be that you are looking too far ahead and looking back, or are you afraid of offending my country, Great Qin?"

Wu Yong shook his head and frowned: "I feel that the situation at this moment is extremely strange. It is estimated that the higher-ups in Dali have different views on His Majesty's will. Some want to surrender to our country, Great Qin, while others do not want to surrender. This is already a mess."

Li Kui said: "What are you waiting for? Hurry up and kill a bunch of birds."

For a moment, everything was said in the tent. Zhao Tong looked calm and said, "Wait another three days. If there is no news, it will not be too late to cross the river."

Three days later, there was still no news from Dali, and the scene across the river was still chaotic. Upon seeing this, Zhao Tao ordered the army to assemble, and then spent one day crossing the Yangshan River...

(End of this chapter)