Chapter 813 Letter From Yanzhou

"Let's go and see how rich the Xie family is. Read" Zhao Xu retracted his steps towards the Golden Palace.

Compared with the Jinling Treasury and granary, the Golden Palace seems insignificant.

From now on, this will be just an ordinary city in the south of the Yangtze River.

Following the general out of the palace, the group stopped in a courtyard not far from the palace.

This courtyard is ordinary, and from above it looks like a quadrangle with a larger courtyard.

But in fact, there is a mystery inside, and this mystery is under the low house.

In order to conceal, the treasury is hidden underground.

There are many places under the entire courtyard that have been hollowed out to store silver, gold, jewelry, calligraphy and paintings, antiques and other valuables.

Following the general into the middle house, and then going down the stairs, seeing the things piled up in the underground secret room, Zhao Xu, Chang Wei and others immediately took a breath.

I saw that the secret room was full of wooden boxes, the lids of the wooden boxes were open, and there was white silver inside.

Each of these silver ingots is ten taels. According to a rough estimate, there are at least five or six million taels of silver in this secret room.

"We've made a fortune." Chang Wei and others couldn't help laughing, winking at each other.

Zhao Xu also smiled and nodded.

Although the Xie family is not as rich as the Liang family, it is probably second only to the Liang family among many wealthy families.

After the Jinling Rebellion, the Dou family looted Jinling and took away a lot of wealth.

But after the Xie family controlled Jinling, they stored their property in the national treasury.

If there hadn't been the disaster caused by the Dou family, the national treasury would have been even more amazing.

Then, everyone went to other secret rooms and found three more secret rooms full of silver and one secret room full of gold ingots.

The rest were jewelry, calligraphy and paintings, ancient porcelain and other artworks.

Among these items, Zhao Xu also found a large number of silver ingots cast by the Han family and the Wang family.

This made him suddenly realize that in addition to the Xie family, there were probably also Han and Wang families in the national treasury.

The Han and Wang families were living under someone else's roof, and they didn't give something as collateral to the Xie family.

How could the Xie family support them for nothing?

"Send more people to guard the treasury. The development of Jiangbei depends on these silvers." Zhao Xu said.

For hundreds of years, the Western countries relied on plundering all over the world to accumulate capital.

Dasong also needs capital to develop.

At present, he took over Goryeo and looted Japan, which is a way to accumulate capital.

Now the war in the south and robbing the wealth of the powerful families have become another way for him to accumulate capital.

Of course, he doesn't want to continue like this.

After unifying Jiangnan, he will let the Westerners spit out what they have eaten bit by bit.

If they want Dasong to die, he will kill them.

After leaving the treasury, Zhao Xu went to the granary again.

The world's grain comes from the Xie family. In this war, the Xie family naturally hoarded a lot of grain in Jinling.

After a tour, he estimated that the food and grass in Jinling City was enough for 400,000 troops to eat for a year.

After checking the treasury and the granary, Zhao Xu was satisfied and climbed the city wall with the generals.

The powerful families not only left food and grass and wealth when they retreated, but also gave them the trenches they dug.

At present, the soldiers of the royal family are repairing and perfecting the trenches under the command of the generals.

Relying on these trenches and Jinling's food and grass.

Jinling City will become their first stable bridgehead to the south.

"Jinling City has been taken, and the rest of the battle will be left to you." Looking at the endless wilderness, Zhao Xu said to Chang Wei.

His most important purpose this time is to participate in the crossing the river battle.

Now the crossing the river battle has ended beautifully, and Jinling has been taken.

Relying on this city, the royal family's personal army has gained a firm foothold in Jiangnan.

The remaining small battles can be left to generals such as Chang Wei.

If there is any major change again, it won't be too late for him to go to the battlefield in person.

After all, now there are steamboats, and it only takes about two days to go from Yanzhou to Jinling along the canal, which is very convenient.

"Your Highness has led us to fight a beautiful battle, and the rest is left to me. I will not embarrass your Highness." Chang Wei said loudly.

He estimated that the King of Yan would go back after conquering Jinling.

After all, there are many affairs in Jiangbei, and the King of Yan cannot be away all the time, delaying government affairs.

Zhao Xu nodded, "According to the direction of the escape of the powerful army, they should have gone to Sucheng. If you fight another fierce battle, the southern part of Ningzhou will be taken over. They will never go to Songcheng by the sea."

After a pause, he continued: "Although they are now a remnant of defeated soldiers, they must guard against arrogance and impetuosity in fighting, and they still cannot be careless."

As the two were talking, a soldier hurriedly climbed the city wall and presented a letter, "Your Highness, a letter from Yanzhou."

"Oh?" Zhao Xu took the letter and tore it open.

After a quick glance, he smiled, "I don't want to go back, but I have to go back this time. It's a happy event."

"Happy event?" Chang Wei and others looked at each other and suddenly smiled very ambiguously.

Lu Chang has always been heartless. He said, "Could it be that the princess found out that she is pregnant?"

"Go, what nonsense are you talking about." Zhao Xu glared at him, "It's a good thing for you. After a while, you can change your muskets again."

"Change guns?" The generals were stunned.

Zhao Xu nodded.

This letter was sent by Wang Ying. Since he instructed him to develop a percussion cap breech-loading rifle, he led the craftsmen to overcome the technical difficulties of the breech-loading rifle day and night.

Recently, he and the craftsmen successfully assembled the bolt of the breech-loading rifle using parts made on a lathe.

This means that needle-percussion breech-loading guns can be mass-produced next.

In fact, according to the development history of firearms.

The appearance of needle-percussion breech-loading guns was earlier than the muzzle-loading rifles that used conical bullets.

One was born in 1836, and the other was born in 1849, thirteen years apart.

During this period, the Dreyse rifle, represented by the needle-percussion breech-loading gun, was equipped with the Prussian army, but it has always been unknown.

Because at that time, the mainstream was that generals of various countries believed that the difference between muzzle-loading guns and breech-loading guns was the same as whether people eat with their mouths or buttocks.

So they were full of contempt for breech-loading guns.

It was not until the Dan-Pu War that muzzle-loading guns were beaten by breech-loading guns, and they corrected the chaos and immediately equipped breech-loading guns.

At present, the replacement of his army's muskets is also going through this process.

This is not that he deliberately took a detour, but the process requirements of breech-loading guns are much higher than those of muzzle-loading guns.

Now Fang has the ability to mass-produce.

But even so, with the current technology, the rifled guns currently equipped by the royal guards can increase the effective range to 900 meters, while the effective range of the next breech-loading guns will only be about 600 meters.

The reason is that the sealing of the breech-loading gun is not as good as that of the muzzle-loading gun, and there is some leakage.

After that, the progress of the breech-loading gun is to see who leaks less.

However, the flaws do not outweigh the merits. The breech-loading gun can fire ten bullets per minute and can be fired in any posture, changing the situation of the war.

This is something that muzzle-loading guns cannot do.

When the royal guards are equipped with these breech-loading guns, even if the Westerners crack the secret of the conical bullet, it will be of no use.