Daming Military Empire

Chapter 546 Latitude and Longitude Coordinates

The bastion originated in the European continent at the end of the fifteenth century and had a history of more than 100 years by the Chongzheng period of the Ming Dynasty.

The emergence of gunpowder weapons turned the original horizontal and vertical cities into layers of bastions. The emergence of bastions also changed the main form of European warfare from field warfare to siege warfare. All countries are keen to build bastions, the most famous of which is France. Building bastion fortresses on the border will be a major feature of France in the next few centuries.

However, when it comes to building the most bastions, or maximizing the effect of bastions, it is Tsarist Russia.

When European countries built strong ships and guns one after another, and colonized the world everywhere, Tsarist Russia was silently expanding eastward along the land. They successively wiped out the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, and the Kazan Khanate , Siberia Khanate, the territorial area has expanded rapidly, and the benefits obtained are no less than those of the European powers that have seized colonies all over the world.

In the battle against the nomads, they discovered a secret that is not a secret, that is, the bastion is the nemesis of the cavalry!
It should be said that ordinary cities are relatively restrained against cavalry. However, once the number of cavalry exceeds five times the number of defenders in the city, they can still be captured if they attack hard. Times, if there is no more advanced gunpowder weapons than the defenders, it will be difficult to conquer the bastion.

It is naturally impossible for nomadic tribes to have more advanced gunpowder weapons than Tsarist Russia. Therefore, Tsarist Russia relied on its bastion to fight so that the Mongolian Yuan Khanates dominated by nomadic tribes could not find their way to the north.

It is precisely because the bastion is easy to defend and difficult to attack, the biggest advantage of the nomadic tribe's strong mobility is firmly restrained. As long as the bastion is repaired all the way to block the main waterway, no matter how mobile the cavalry is, it will be a dead end.

Tsarist Russia has already tasted the great sweetness of the bastion in the process of invading the major khanates. If the Ming Dynasty does not come, their next target is the Kazakh Khanate. According to historical records, the Tsarist Russian Senate was responsible for making the plan to invade the Kazakh Khanate Kirov, a civil servant of the secretariat, once put forward a suggestion. His suggestion was very simple, that is, to build 1000 bastions between Orenburg and the Aral Sea, just over 45 miles away. Tsarist Russia’s enthusiasm for bastions can be seen.

Of course, now that the Ming army has overwhelmed the country, they probably have no chance to invade the Kazakh Khanate.

However, the bastion they built when they invaded the Siberian Khanate is still there, and, in order to resist the Ming army, Rozov also ordered Golovin and Franzbekov to brave the severe cold to build bastions on the Siberian plains. Therefore, Sun Chuanting sent detectives to investigate and found that the entire Siberian plain was almost covered with bastions!
Although it shows that the army is not the cavalry with cold weapons like nomadic tribes, and Ming's gunpowder weapons are much more advanced than Tsarist Russia, but facing the bastions is also a headache, because the bastions are really too difficult to attack.

The only record of the Ming Dynasty conquering a bastion head-on was when Chongzheng recaptured Dongfan in the seventh year and conquered the Dutch Zeelandia Castle. The defenders scared by the siege vehicles did not dare to fire, and then rushed in with a surprise attack with grenades, and at that time there were only 500 Dutch defenders in Zeelandia Castle, and the Ming army alone had 15, with the cooperation of super battleships, the difference in strength between the two sides is too great, and it is impossible for the Dutch to hold on.

This time it was different. The Ming army detected nearly 50 Tsarist Russian defenders. It is impossible to have only a few hundred people in each bastion, and Tsarist Russia does not only have one bastion, but is full of bastions. If the Ming army attacked in an all-round way, it would be difficult for the Ming army to gain an absolute advantage in numbers, and if they were defeated individually, the enemy might support them at any time, or sneak attack from behind. After all, they were more familiar with the terrain than the Ming army.

Is it an all-out attack or a separate attack?Not only Sun Chuanting, Lu Xiangsheng, and Cao Wenzhao on the front line fell into deep thought, but Zhu Cijiong who was far away in the capital also fell into deep thought.

He specially sent someone to check the offensive and defensive records of the bastion, among which the most famous battle was the offensive and defensive battle of Metz in 1552 AD.

In May 1552, 5 French troops unexpectedly captured the city of Metz in Lorraine. Half a year later, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V led an army of [-] to besiege Metz in an attempt to take it back.

But in the past six months, [-] French defenders have rebuilt a bastion behind the old city wall of Metz. As a result, Charles V led an army of [-] to attack and failed to capture Metz for more than a month.

It wasn't that the firepower of the Holy Roman Empire was not strong enough. At that time, Charles V mobilized hundreds of cannons to bombard them continuously. On the most day, more than 7000 shells were fired, and the city walls collapsed hundreds of meters. However, the bastion defense line behind But still intact.

Charles V organized countless storms but failed to capture the city of Metz. In the end, the army of the Holy Roman Empire suffered heavy casualties and had to withdraw its troops.

Fifty thousand against five thousand, the attack lasted for more than a month, and finally the attacker suffered heavy casualties and had no choice but to retreat. This is the power of the Bastion!
Based on the density of the bastions discovered, Tsarist Russia built at least hundreds of bastions on the Siberian Plain. That is to say, if the Ming army attacked in an all-round way, each bastion could send up to 1 people at most. No matter how advanced the Ming army's weapons were, it would be impossible to attack, so the plan of an all-out attack was quickly rejected by Zhu Cijiong.

There is no way but to choose to break each one.

With the continuous return of scouts, more and more bastions were discovered by the Ming army. In order to accurately transmit the location information of the bastions in the telegram, Zhu Cijiong specially compiled a set of longitude and latitude coordinates. This set of coordinates is consistent with the longitude and latitude of later generations The coordinates are very different, because the datum of this set of longitude and latitude lines is the Daming capital, that is, with the Daming capital as the center, draw a cross line, the left is the east longitude and the right is the west longitude, the top is the north latitude and the bottom is the south latitude. A hundred miles is once.

Although this system of latitude and longitude is a little troublesome in calculating the time zone, it is relatively simple and easy to understand, especially for marking the location. Zhu Cijiong can't care about the time zone calculation. Who has the time to measure the circumference of the equator and the distance between the North and South Poles? The whole set is simple to use.

To put it bluntly, the longitude and latitude coordinate system is to add basically equidistant horizontal and vertical lines on the map, which looks like a Go board. Anyone who has read a little about the Go board in the Ming Dynasty has seen it, but it’s nothing So strange.

Soon, a layer of light-colored latitude and longitude lines were drawn on the maps of the Ming army, criss-crossing, as if a Go board was drawn on the map, but the latitude and longitude were marked at both ends of each line.

From then on, no matter how far away the Ming army reported the location on the map, they didn’t need to send someone to carry the map back and forth or explain it for a long time through reference objects such as mountains and rivers in the telegram. Just report the coordinates directly in the telegram, which is absolutely accurate!
(End of this chapter)