4600】

"Bastion? What is this?"

Yataro Iwasaki asked first.

For the Japanese today, the bastion is still a very unfamiliar concept.

Qingdeng thought for a while and replied:

"To put it simply, it is a battle-specialized city outline like a five-sided outline."

As soon as these words came out, Yataro Iwasaki and others all showed expressions of sudden realization.

Goryokaku - a star-shaped fortress built in the Hakodate area (today's Hakodate City) of Ezo Island (today's Hokkaido).

When it comes to this city outline, everyone really knows about it.

After all, this was the first time the shogunate built a Western-style bastion in Japan.

In March of the first year of Ansei (1854), Japan and the United States signed the Treaty of Kanagawa. According to the provisions of the treaty, Hakodate officially opened its port. The Edo shogunate immediately took back the Matsumae clan's territory in the Hakodate area and established Hakodate in June of the same year.

.

In order to defend the northern frontier, the shogunate decided to build a solid fortress in Hakodate.

Construction started in the fourth year of Ansei (1857), and now most of it has been completed.

If nothing else goes wrong, it will be officially completed next year.

As soon as Aoto mentioned the "Five-sided Castle", Iwasaki Yataro and others all came over and knew what kind of castle Aoto wanted to build.

History textbooks say: Gunpowder blasted open the castle of the knightly class - this sentence is both correct and incorrect.

Gunpowder did blast open the castles of the knights, but it only destroyed the square, classical castles.

When the "spear" evolves, the "shield" will also evolve.

In order to deal with the attacker's gunpowder, the defender quickly came up with a countermeasure - the bastion.

The essence of the so-called bastion is to build the city into a concave polygon.

This improvement makes attacking any point of the castle exposed to more than one bastion face (usually 2-3).

In this way, the defense can easily use crossfire to carry out multiple strikes.

It is not difficult to imagine how much headache such a castle would cause to the attackers.

Otsu Castle has long been reduced to a historical term, with only a few black stone foundations left - this is exactly what Qingteng had in mind!

If Otsu Castle was still alive, he would feel a headache.

Classical castles like Edo Castle and Osaka Castle are no longer useful and cannot keep up with the trend.

Japanese classical castles can only bully cold weapon troops who lack firearms.

Nowadays, times have changed. As long as groups of artillery are brought in, even the bastard shell of Edo Castle will be as fragile as a piece of paper!

Iwasaki Yataro looked at Aoto next to him, and then looked at the overgrown stone foundation in front of him:

"...Mr. Tachibana."

He said with a wry smile.

"I understand what you mean."

"But...please forgive me for pouring a basin of cold water on you."

"The cost of building a castle with a five-sided outline is astronomical."

After Qingdeng heard this, he suddenly looked helpless.

"I know...well, things like 'money' are never enough."

Things of superior quality will naturally become more expensive.

Building a city is an extremely expensive and huge project, let alone a battle-specialized city outline like a bastion!

Take the five-sided outline as an example.

The cost of the five-sided outline project is not unusually high.

The budget for moat, civil engineering and stone wall projects is 98,000 taels; the budget for construction projects is 25,000 taels; the budget for waterway projects is 20,000 taels; and the overall budget is 143,000 taels.

This massive project employed about 5,600 workers in its heyday, and the Hakodate began to prosper.

After providing the Shinsengumi's daily expenses, the Shinsengumi Chamber of Commerce had very little money left.

Even if you save money bit by bit... you can save enough money, but in this way, the efficiency is really too slow.

What's more, the projects Qingdeng wanted to carry out were far more than just building bastions.

Otsu is undoubtedly a blessed land, and it has more than just vast arable land.

Just like Changzhou, Dajin has a lot of hidden assets.

The stone height of Changshu on the surface is only 370,000 koku, but because it is adjacent to the Shimonoseki Strait, it has been able to develop ocean-going industries and capture a large amount of tariffs, with actual income exceeding one million koku!

Matsumoto tiles, Zensho tea... Which of these Otsu specialties is not Jinshan?

They are all waiting for Qingdeng to develop them one by one!

Once the development is successful and the operation goes smoothly, Qingdeng's income and Otsu's income will skyrocket exponentially!

Qingdeng has made careful arrangements on how to develop Dajin.

The first thing to be done is 6 big projects.

First, build a bastion.

Second, cultivate new fields.

Third, build a silver mirror factory to further expand the production scale of silver mirrors.

Fourth, develop specialty industries such as Zensho tea and Matsumoto tiles

Fifth, develop overseas trade.

Sixth, introduce steam engines and develop industry.

In addition to the first bastion, the other five projects are all linked to the economy.

In other words, Qingdeng’s construction philosophy is to vigorously develop productivity.

With the economy, everything is easy to say.

Without economy, everything is empty.

Every item in the "plan" drawn up by Qingdeng is a huge and expensive project.

Based on Qingdeng's current revenue capacity... while ensuring the normal operation of the Shinsengumi, it can barely support two projects at most.

If 6 projects were launched together... It is no exaggeration to say that even if the Shinsengumi and Shinseng Chamber of Commerce were packaged and sold together, Qingdeng would not be able to raise the money!

Money, money, money...Qingdeng was troubled by money again.

He didn't think he would be lucky enough to find a product as profitable as the silver mirror this time.

Shannan Keisuke, who had been silent since just now, suddenly interrupted:

"If you want to raise funds...then you can only borrow money..."

After Qingdeng heard this, he immediately shook his head:

"Kingsuke, you are wrong. We shouldn't borrow money. We should attract investment."

Shannan Keisuke raised his eyebrows.

"'Investment'?"

Kinoshita Mai and Iwasaki Yataro also cast confused looks at Aonto.

Currently, there is no concept of "investment" in Japan.

Shannan Keisuke and others only know the meaning of "borrowing money" and "repaying money", so it would be too troublesome to explain to them the difference between "loan" and "investment". So Qingteng casually said:

"I will explain it to you slowly later."

Rich people contribute money, powerful people contribute efforts - an everlasting business model.

For Qingdeng, who is currently short of money, if he can find an investor with strong capital, it will undoubtedly be a multiplier.

If you want to say who is the richest group in Japan, it is undoubtedly the wealthy businessmen of Osaka!

All the businessmen in Osaka are extremely rich.

Because they are too rich, the wealthy businessmen in Osaka have almost become a new privileged class of their own.

If we can get heavy investment from Osaka businessmen, these projects planned by Ayoto can be launched quickly! The construction speed of the feudal kingdom will be greatly improved!

——Businessman from Osaka...

Qingto thought to himself, thinking about ways to connect with the giant businessmen in Osaka.

Although he has friends all over the world, he lacks connections in Osaka.
To be continued...