When Xiao Ming received the report of the battle about Manila, it had been ten days since the battle.

Carefully studying the details of the battle report, his brow furrowed deeply, first of all, in this landing operation the Dutch dug a deep trench, which even required the Dutch to step on a bench to stick their heads out of the trench.

The trenches reminded him of the trenches of the modern World War I, when the two sides used it to confront each other.

And the node of the appearance of this deep trench is also the emergence of machine guns and the increase in the power of artillery, z now all this seems to be repeating, the only thing to be thankful for is that even if there are trenches in the West, there is no machine gun and Guards artillery such weapons, otherwise the war will really become a meat grinder.

He was not surprised by the fact that the Dutch had used fire hedgehogs to fight back against the Imperial soldiers, causing an increase in wounded, for a normal commander would have thought of such a solution.

Of course, he believed that the Imperial soldiers would definitely achieve the final victory, but the casualties would also increase, which he did not want to see, because any soldier was extremely precious now.

After all, the spread of the empire is very large now, the occupied Goryeo and the country need garrisons, and the colonies also need soldiers to maintain, and the natives there are still in the civilization of the barbaric era, and they will not reason with you at the negotiating table, and the tribal leaders may declare war on you at any time according to their preferences.

In addition, the war between the empire and Tsarist Russia on land has not really begun, and the regional situation there is more complicated after crossing the Tien Shan, whether it is Iran, which is still known as Persia, or Afghanistan, which is called the Durrani dynasty, and the huge Ottoman Empire, which is not easy to deal with, plus a Tsarist Russia, it will become a powder keg at any time, and it will explode at a moment.

Therefore, when he chatted with Yue Yun, he mentioned his own idea, that is, to slow down the pace of expansion, compared to the colonial system that the Europeans had established for more than 200 years, he had done it in just a few years.

As the saying goes, he is not greedy to chew too much, and now he is facing this problem, a large territory is being conquered, but the construction on it is almost zero, so that these lands cannot provide any help to the economy of the empire, and this is not happy to see.

Now every war is a huge consumption of bullets and ammunition, and a large amount of domestic copper ore can indeed meet the current use, but it is a fool not to dig up resources in the hard-fought territory.

Moreover, the empire now has a mature ironclad construction technology, and the next step is the construction of large steam merchant ships, which will explode the empire's maritime transportation capacity, which will make it easier for overseas resources to be transported to the country.

More importantly, even if he defeated the Western army in Nanyang, it was impossible for him to land in Europe and attack Europe.

If it really reached the level of a landing operation, the potential for war to break out in Europe would still be terrible, and trench warfare would turn the war into a protracted war, which he could not afford.

Therefore, the next war is still the battle for colonies and the maritime war in the process of establishing maritime supremacy.

Thinking of this, he gave Yue Yun an order to destroy the Western warships in the Indian Ocean after capturing Yagda.

This time, along with Yue Yun's war report, Wang Xuan provided information that he had learned that Western troops were gathering in India to launch a war to retake Xinjiapo, and at the same time to guard against the imperial invasion of India.

It's just that in Xiao Ming's opinion, Westerners have once again guessed the wrong action he might take.

With the ironclad ship group, he will not stupidly run to confront them head-on, and want to attack Xinjiapo, at least their warships must be able to reach Xinjiapo, and it is simply a fool's dream to attack the empire's colonies under the maritime supremacy of the empire, and the soldiers in India are also waiting indefinitely for ships to come to pick them up.

Just thinking evilly, at this time, a sound of footsteps suddenly sounded.

After a while, Qian Dafu looked at Chen Qi and went to the imperial study, and saluted, Chen Qi said: "Your Majesty, the improvement of the mortar has been completed, and the lower officials have specially come to report to the emperor." ”

"So fast." Xiao Ming was slightly surprised, and then smiled, "Yes, yes, the soldiers who are fighting in Nanyang now need this artillery very much." ”

With that, he got up and walked outside, "Let's go, I'll see the effect." ”

Chen Qi followed with a smile, and when he arrived at the military workshop, he asked the technicians of the military factory to take out a short artillery.

"Your Majesty, this is an improved mortar, now this mortar no longer needs to be carried by two people, and one soldier can carry it." Chen Qi pointed to the green-painted short-barreled cannon in front of him and said.

Xiao Ming nodded with satisfaction, in fact, the mortar is the predecessor of the mortar, and it is a curved artillery.

After the appearance of the Guards artillery, he asked Chen Qi to improve the mortar, and the current mortar finally had the appearance of a mortar.

"Your Majesty, now this mortar cannon weighs 9.4 kilograms, the gun carriage weighs 5.8 kilograms, the shell weighs 2.18 kilograms, the effective killing radius is 17.8 meters, the maximum firing range is two thousand meters, and the caliber is 82 millimeters. Chen Qi said with a smile.

In fact, he used to have the idea of improving the mortar, but the quality of the alloy steel at that time was not good, and now with the advent of electricity, the School of Chemistry uses pressurized condensation technology to produce pure oxygen, which greatly improves the quality of the oxygen blowing of the electric furnace, so that the quality of the steel refined has also improved a lot.

"The most important thing in a mortar is a shell, is this shell qualified?" Xiao Ming didn't praise Chen Qi immediately, but continued to ask.

Chen Qi spoke to the technician at this time, and then a box of mortar shells was moved in front of him.

Xiao Ming picked up an artillery shell and observed, the mortar fire was different from the Guards artillery.

To put it simply, the firing of the mortar relies on the mass of the shell itself to let the primer hit the firing pin at the bottom of the barrel, and when the primer is fired, the basic tube at the tail of the shell is ignited, so that the shell can be shot far away with the power of smokeless gunpowder explosion, and then use the fuse of the head of the shell to touch the bottom to ignite the explosive, and finally explode.

It is precisely because of this principle that the difficulty of the mortar is higher than that of ordinary shells, mainly composed of four parts: the projectile body, the tail fin, the bottom basic charge tube and the fuse, and the shell body also has a closed air ring to achieve a complete fit between the shell and the barrel, and now the shell Xiao Ming is in line with the standard of mortar shells.

With a slurp of his tongue, Xiao Ming sighed that the empire's industrial capacity was really advancing by leaps and bounds, and now many technical bottlenecks in the science and technology spar were disappearing.