Strictly speaking, facing the defense of anti-cannon holes, barbed wire and trench fortifications everywhere, cannons alone cannot completely solve the problem. Moreover, in the era without synthetic ammonia, whether it is launching drugs or explosives, they all come from saltpeter or nitroso. The output of these things is quite limited. Even after the Panama Railway was opened, the French were able to import a large amount of saltpeter from Chile. However, these saltpeters were also consumed very much, and they were mainly consumed not in the military, but in agriculture.

Yes, the main purpose of these saltpeter mines is to be used as fertilizers to increase agricultural output. In France, Napoleon's most determined and stable supporters were the farmers in rural France. One thing that is interesting to say is that in today's France, farmers' enthusiasm for participating in politics is significantly greater than that of urban residents.

During the Great Revolution, French urban residents were significantly more motivated to participate in politics. However, in the Napoleon period, the peasant organization became increasingly organized by the veterans' associations. Today, veterans' associations have become completely a monopoly syndicate in economic terms (a corporate alliance where enterprises cannot independently sell and purchase raw materials, and must be handled by the general office in a unified manner, thus intensifying competition for product sales and raw material allocation share. Although they maintain independence in production and law, they lose their independence in commercial terms.).

Today, the procurement and export of various raw materials and commodities in rural France are almost carried out through the Veterans Association. This has given this organization a great economic and political influence. With the order of the association, the entire French rural area will stand up to support Napoleon.

Of course, no support will be priceless. All gifts given by fate are secretly marked with prices. The reason why the Veterans Association supports Napoleon is not just because many of their members are Napoleon's old subordinates - this is a factor, but not a decisive factor. The most decisive factor is that Napoleon's various policies represent their interests and safeguard their interests.

Napoleon did not collect agricultural taxes. In theory, agricultural taxes still exist, but in fact, they were almost not collected because of the existence of a series of exemption conditions. (Of course, it would be hard to say whether the agricultural taxes were still collected or not.) Moreover, Napoleon relied on unified electricity irrigation and exploring foreign markets to them, which brought them a lot of benefits. Therefore, the entire countryside has always supported Napoleon.

The situation in cities is different. Today, the population mobility in cities is relatively large, and many people in cities are still so-called "honor French" or "preparatory French". As Mencius said, a person must have a reliable industry to have a reliable political attitude. Therefore, those in cities actually have weaker support for Napoleon than in rural areas.

One of the tricks in politics is not to betray the basic market. Many times, the wavering force seems particularly critical, so that those in power are prone to illusion, or for the so-called election interests, they think that the basic market will always stand on my side. As the saying goes, "I abuse the basic market thousands of times, and the basic market treats me like my first love." Then sacrifice the basic market to please the so-called "centricists". This is completely a problem with the mind, thinking too beautifully, and really thinking about eating and sleeping in the other family? Even the king knows that he can't do this.

However, there are always many such fools in history. For example, the roasted (K) steamed buns (M) heads (T) in later generations have already rolled to the Ghost Island, and they always make such mistakes, always thinking of becoming the "president of the whole nation". Then the centrists found that they must not become the basic plate for roasting steamed buns, otherwise they would be baked by them; and the centrists also found that they were treated as steamed buns by roasting steamed buns. So not only did the centrists not hold on, but the basic plates also ran away, and finally became what they were now in dying.

Napoleon was not a fool, nor was Joseph and Lucien. So Napoleon often publicly stated: "No matter how poor you are, you cannot be poor in agriculture, and no matter how hard you are, you cannot be hard in peasants."

And he not only said that, but also did it. For example, most of the saltpeter that was dragged back from thousands of miles from South America was made into ammonium nitrate explosives. Oh, no, it was ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which was sprinkled into the wheat fields by farmers. So France's wheat yield was high, the cost was low, and it was popular in the market, making Ukraine, which has the most fertile black soil in Europe, go to famine again. Of course, this is a matter of the free market and a matter of the Russian government. In short, it is definitely not France's responsibility.

As for the signs of famine in Ukraine, the main reason is that some Russians are too eager for quick success and instant benefits. After the tension between France and the British became tense, the British naturally sent diplomats to try to form an alliance with Russia to fight against France. However, the Russians believed that relying solely on Russia and Britain was not enough to fight against France and the large number of vassal countries in Europe. Unless the British could bring Austria, Prussia, and Spain in, Russia would not have joined such an alliance.

The Russians did not have the idea of ​​forming an alliance with the British and taking the blame for the British, but this does not mean that the Russians have no other ideas. If the French's actions towards Britain triggered a craze to divide the UK, then it would be difficult for the Russians from a distance to get a piece of the pie in this matter. However, if the French and other European countries are attracted by the UK, then taking the opportunity to bully Turkey in the south seems to be a good choice.

However, although the Turks are no longer as powerful as before, it still takes a lot of effort to defeat them. As the saying goes, a lean camel is bigger than a horse. This is a huge empire after all.

Moreover, over the years, the Turks have trained new troops and purchased various weapons, especially the things that the French retired, and many of them have been picked up by the Turks.

Therefore, the Russians also need to strengthen their arms and buy weapons and supplies. And they even have more expenses, such as developing their own industries, so they have to buy machines; they have to maintain their own machines, so they have to hire French engineers; they have to train their own engineers, so they spend money to study in France; they have to build their own universities, so they have to... In short, all of this requires money, but where does the money come from? Russian industry has made considerable progress in recent years, but compared with France, it is completely worth mentioning. Things like civilian goods are completely uncompetitive, just military supplies. In fact, calculating the cost, and looking at the price of second-hand goods in France, it is really better to buy it than to make it.

Since industry cannot make money, it can only rely on agriculture. That is, exporting food. But the problem is that French food is everywhere in the international market today.

Over the years, there has been a strange phenomenon in the international market, that is, the prices of whatever the French buy will increase; the prices of whatever the French sell will decrease. Now the French are preparing for war, which has brought about the consequence that all the things related to the war are increasing. In order to buy these crucial things, the Russians have to export more food. Fortunately, the weather is good this year and Ukraine has a bumper harvest. However, the French have also gained a bumper harvest this year... and then in order to raise enough money, the Ukrainians starved...

However, although the Ukrainians were hungry, the Russians finally completed the corresponding preparations. So after France declared war on Britain, the Russians immediately began to start military exercises on the border between Russia and Turkey. After a day of exercise, the Russians found the Turks and said to them: "A soldier was missing during the exercise. We suspected that he was kidnapped by your people. So we asked to search and search in your barracks!"

Such unreasonable and totally shameless request was of course rejected by the Turks without hesitation, and then the Russians shelled the Turkish military camps, and then... the war between the Russians and the Turks broke out again.

In response, France expressed that it hoped that both sides would remain restrained and not destroy the rare stability and unity of Europe. However, the French are also busy fighting with the British and have no time to care about them for the time being. Of course, if you don’t have time to control them, you still have to do business. Because the prices of weapons and ammunition are high now.

Therefore, although the French army had many cannons, the shells equipped were quite limited, and there was no way to do so. Anyway, the Irish were cheaper than shells.

However, hard attacks are still not the first choice for the French. First of all, the morale of the British in the city must be hit.

Generally speaking, the morale of the enemy troops in the besieged city is not easy to maintain. But if there is a way out, it will be different.

Therefore, to reduce the morale of the defenders in the city, the best way is to threaten their retreat first.

The 280mm gun uses 40 times the caliber, uses fire cotton to launch medicine, and has an exaggerated maximum elevation angle of 45 degrees, so the range is quite long. From the predetermined artillery position, it can directly strike the port in Dublin. Therefore, the French plan is to first use a few shells to strike the port berth. Although it is impossible to block the port with just one cannon. However, as long as the port can be attacked, it can greatly damage the morale of the defenders. If one or two ships can be sunk by chance, it would be even better.

So early that morning, at dawn, the French military positions became busy.

The first thing is to observe the weather, especially the wind direction. The weather is good this day, the sky is clear, cloudless, and the wind is not strong. There are only one to two-level winds near the surface. In higher places, the wind may be stronger, but it is still a good weather for emitting observation balloons.

A huge hot air balloon rose from the French position. Then the barrel of the 280mm cannon was slowly lifted up and pointed to the sky.

"First shot, test shot!" Commander Colonel Hill gave the order, a 280 shell flew out of a long barrel. The shell drew a parabola and then fell in the direction of the port.

The shells roared like a train that whistled the whistle, passing over Dublin, and then plunged into Dublin's port.

Because they were worried that the accidental attack on the city would cause casualties to the Irish people, the shot was a little remote. To be honest, the French did not really care about the lives of the Irish people. Otherwise, they would not have sold shells to the Russians and Turks in order to make money, so that the shells were not enough.

However, it is one thing that doesn't care how much the Irish were beaten to death by the British. The French themselves could not beat the Irish to death without hitting the Irish to death.

The shells fell into the sea, about four or five hundred meters away from the dock. The people on the balloon used flags to transmit the landing information back to the ground. At this time, the artillery on the ground had lowered the barrels and prepared to reload the shells.

The loading of the 280mm gun is at a fixed angle, so every time you shoot, the barrel must be shaken back to the fixed loading angle. This of course greatly reduces the loading speed. However, Joseph and his team made this gun, which was originally intended to be a big-tail wolf, so in order to save money, they even adopted the back-up mode. In this way, the firing rate of this gun is naturally extremely low.

It took ten minutes before the cannon fired a second shell into the port area of ​​Dublin again. This time the shell fell directly into the port and fell between two cargo ships with mooring rules.

The shells exploded in the water, and the huge water pressure suddenly tore a large hole on both sides of the two not-solid merchant ships. Then, because there were no personnel on the merchant ships who were used to deal with this situation, the two ships sank quickly. One shell sank the two ships. Although neither of them were very large ships, it would definitely put huge pressure on the defenders.

However, the luck of the subsequent shelling was not so good. After that, ten more shells were fired, but these shells never achieved such great results. Only one shell hit the pier and broke it into two sections. The other shells basically failed to hit any important targets.

However, just as the French expected, the port was shelled. Although the losses were not particularly large, it still had a significant impact on the psychology of British soldiers. Many people, especially the rich people who remained in Dublin, were worried about their safety. So these people left Dublin and returned to England. The Governor of Norfolk knew that once these people left, the soldiers would doubt whether Britain really planned to keep here. In this way, their morale naturally dropped a lot.
Chapter completed!