Solovyov in Tsarist Russia 1796.

Chapter 310 No matter which Rome you are in, earthwork is the basic skill

At the Guards headquarters, the spring training plan is being arranged.

Grand Duke Constantine's idea was very simple. Before the alliance against France was formally established, the various infantry regiments of the Guards had to be further trained, and the Guards' strength also had to be expanded.

In addition to recruiting troops from the royal estates to the troops around St. Petersburg and Vyborg, the troops were also organized into militia battalions, which were the prototype of the Finnish Guards Battalion, and would later be expanded into a regiment.

In the future, the Guards will not only consist of the few infantry regiments we see now, but even the garrison forces will be expanded to the size of the current Guards.

Of course, the Tsar was afraid of bombs later, and with the expansion of the army, it was not surprising that anything happened. By 1914, the size of the Guards reached more than one-tenth of the total force. It can be seen that the Tsar was afraid of the people.

It’s not like that yet, after all, he is still the Tsar’s little father.

When Constantine called all the team leaders together, he also wanted to discuss the training outline.

Solovyov didn't want to speak. After all, among the five regiment commanders, he was the only one whose regiment was small and his rank was lower, so he certainly had no say.

Although his abilities are not bad, and he has performed well in combat and training before.

However, after several people had expressed their opinions, Constantine still asked him.

"Your Highness, I think at this time, I should..."

"You have to voice your opinion. We all know you probably have some good ideas."

"I don't think so now, at least not very practical."

To use the British method of squatting, there are really many necessary conditions missing. As for setting up barbed wire and burying mines, it is more practical to just throw grenades around.

"Can you tell me about it? We all know you are an inventor."

Lieutenant General Tolstoy also said this. He is the current commander of the Putin Regiment. As a former officer of the Putin Regiment, this is support for him.

"Well, I've thought about using explosives during sieges. When we were in Italy, we often had to besiege French fortresses. When I saw those fortresses, I always thought that there must be a way to attack them."

Well, what he thought of was blasting. Although this is a traditional skill for the Russian army, it is indeed rare for infantry to do this directly.

"So what are you going to do?"

Lieutenant General Malyutin also asked about this. The commanders of the three Guards Regiments were all generals, and they obviously had some expectations for this young lieutenant colonel.

The commander of the Semenovsky Regiment had no personal conflict with him, and they were all close confidants of the Tsar himself, so there was nothing much to say at this time, and the two senior lieutenant generals also spoke.

"In addition to the new hand grenades, there are also blasting tubes and explosive packs, but their uses are different."

"I knew you were going to cause an explosion, Solovyov."

Constantine knew that this guy used to like setting fires, creating explosions, and digging holes.

"The blasting tube requires an iron tube filled with gunpowder and connected to a fuse to destroy obstacles. Although the structure is simple, I am not sure I can make it well because it depends on Russia's industrial capacity."

Everyone knows that Russia's industrial capacity has been biased since ancient times.

It is relatively backward and cannot even fully supply its own weapons.

However, blasting tubes are still very effective in dealing with possible barbed wire and various obstacles, at least they are easier to insert.

Not everyone can be like the Slavic Superman in a sailor shirt who can do a somersault over the enemy. Most soldiers don’t have this ability, you know?
"But what kind of obstacle are you going to blow up?"

"Count, it is used to destroy the barbed wire and to detonate a section of low-strength obstacles to facilitate the passage of soldiers. Of course, volleys are also needed in the rear to suppress the enemies on the city walls."

In addition, Solovyov still hoped to develop an early machine gun that could provide stable fire suppression, but he found it hard to believe in the reliability of a hand-cranked Gatling gun.

As for what we can come up with, we still have to try. For example, the British Parker machine gun has a firing rate of 10 rounds per minute. We still need to find ways to come up with more advanced weapons.

Just like when Prince August of Prussia saw Solovyov's rifle, he mentioned a Katthoff rifle that King Frederick III of Denmark once owned. The flintlock rifle already had a magazine, and the rifle could even hold 15 rounds of bullets.

Many advanced designs can only achieve their design specifications when technology develops.

Solovyov's own rifle also had this problem.

Moreover, the gun barrel still needs careful maintenance due to the residue of black powder, otherwise the performance of the weapon will decline first, and there will be greater problems in the future.

For example, the Cartthoff rifle requires a specialized gunsmith to perform maintenance on any malfunctions, and ordinary soldiers cannot troubleshoot the problem themselves.

New weapons, as long as they involve firearms, should still have a simple structure and be reliable to maintain in the early stages, and they should be able to fire, rather than having advanced and complex structures.

Even some designers, even if they use traditional structures, their designs are still garbage.

Solovyov thought of the hand-cranked Gatling gun. Indeed, during the blast, in addition to the "organ", some practical weapons were needed to suppress the fire, and volley guns could not guarantee it.

Many of the tactics he thought of could only be used in trenches.

But no party now can support his idea of ​​moving the battlefield into the trenches.

Industrial technology, population technology and combat methods do not support it, so only his Guards Chasseur Regiment can take the lead in putting it into practice.

"We use the tactics of the demolition team, assault team and support team. This method can still be effective when attacking the enemy's strong fortress. Of course, artillery cover is also needed."

But this requires the tactics of light infantry, that is, the Guards Jagdpanzers are now fully equipped and have the conditions to complete this tactical goal, and launch blasting attacks on the walls of some fortresses and important fortifications.

In addition to working on the ground, sometimes tunnels have to be dug.

"I think what you need most are farmers and miners."

"The best ones are soldiers from these two sources, Your Highness. The Jaegers are more suitable for support or assault, but the Demolition Team is different."

"It sounds like you're going to turn the army into a 'circus', Solovyov."

"Yes, Peter Fedorovich, the boundary between line infantry and light infantry is not as clear as it used to be." Malyutin also nodded in agreement.

"Soloviev, since you said it, we have to put it into practice."

"Yes, Your Highness, I think there should be a way to do this."

He had already done this in the Selenge Regiment at the beginning of winter.

As for the target to be blasted, he had also thought about it.

Some sturdy fortresses were built by piling up black powder explosive packs, asking the opponents to ride on "earth planes".

Of course, there were no airplanes yet, and the only thing that could fly was hot air balloons, but they were not that fast.

This kind of explosion also requires a large amount of gunpowder.

However, considering the particle properties of black powder, it really has to be discounted.

As for suppressing weapons, we can now call in the British, who have more advanced industrial technology. Their development before 1850 was also limited.

It was not until the Civil War that Americans invented the hand-cranked Gatling gun and coffee grinder.

If you have climbed the technology tree before, you may see strange sights.

For example, when Americans moved westward, they found large tribes of Indians, with each warrior armed with a rifle, and each tribe had a machine gun.
The script was becoming outrageous, as the Tsar himself also approved of colonial cooperation between the tribes and Russia.

But the machine gun issue cannot be guaranteed now, and fire suppression can only be achieved by the hunters increasing their firing rate.

The result of the on-site explosion made all the group leaders very satisfied, but the noise was too loud, which caused dissatisfaction among the masters who owned the nearby manors.

But seeing what the Guards were here for, they obviously couldn't say anything. After all, these were the Tsar's own guards, and their blasting training was conducted on the land belonging to the Guards.

The building that was blown up was an abandoned villa during the Queen's period, and it covered a large area.

If there is any impact on the surrounding area, it is probably to cause a significant drop in housing prices. It is obviously unlikely that some nouveau riche gentlemen will be able to build houses here and sell them at high prices.

After all, no one would want to live in a place where people often come to fire cannons and set off explosions.

Although it might be safer if we were closer to the Guards.

Throughout the end of February and the beginning of March, the Guards came out of their winter barracks and, except for the troops on duty, came here for training.

The effect was quite satisfactory, at least the basic tactical goal was achieved and the abandoned mansion was almost completely blown up.

But this is only useful during offensive operations, and it takes time to quickly spread the experience to the territories of various military governors.

What is most lacking now is time. During the diplomatic negotiations, Britain and Russia have reached a consensus based on some final differences. They have reached a consensus on opposing their common enemy, Napoleon's France, but the final diplomatic agreement has not yet been determined.

In this way, the British paid money to get Russia and Austria to join the war against France, but the French navy, due to the cowardly performance of its fleet commander, was unable to complete Napoleon's idea and leave a window for the Grand Army of Boulogne-sur-Mer to land on the British mainland.

There would be no other Battle of Stamford Bridge, which determined the fate of Britain for the past few hundred years, and if the French could not land this time, they would turn their attention to the European continent.

Although the war seemed to be some time away, it was not far away for Europeans.

Solovyov also conducted suppressive shooting training for the soldiers of the two hunting battalions through blasting training.

Their performance was quite good. Grand Duke Constantine supported this excuse for shooting training, as did the generals and commanders of the Guards Regiments and the soldiers. At least it showed the current training results of each regiment.

Of course, they also envied the weapons of the Guards Jager Regiment. Many of these Jagers were fed with bullets. With a more accurate rifle, although they could not change the situation on the battlefield, they could still cause huge damage to the enemy.

However, the quantity is limited. Currently, only a small number of them are distributed to the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Guards. Ordinary troops will never see this kind of weapon.

Those officers and sergeants also have to carefully maintain the rifles in their hands to ensure that the rifles do not become firewood sticks.

As for the problems faced in blasting training, Solovyov also discovered them.

These guards are much braver than local troops on the training ground, but there are still many details that need to be corrected.

Having been in St. Petersburg for too long, many troops have to spend more time on duty. He discovered this when he was a battalion commander.

But at that time he was only responsible for the palace guard and the training of the base camp, and the combat subjects were mainly infantry tactics, which did not involve this kind of siege operations.

Considering that the boundaries of the infantry arms are becoming increasingly blurred, there will be a lot for soldiers to do in the future.

Therefore, it is also necessary to start adjusting the adverse effects of serfdom when recruiting soldiers.

When recruiting soldiers in the countryside, the lords would not hand over the strongest serfs, so the army's supply of soldiers could never be guaranteed.

This is also based on the fact that serfdom was prevalent, whether in manors, factories or mines.

It is no wonder that when Pugachev attacked those factories and mines, he received widespread support from the serfs. The era of the Empress was also the period when feudal serfdom was most indulgent towards these large landowners.

Some people are just thinking about the glory of that time, and don’t think about the series of measures taken by the Empress to stabilize these big landowners after Peter III loosened the reins on them and after the coup.

This placed a very heavy burden on Russia, and even the progress of productivity was restricted by backward production relations.

Before Solovyov had walked too far, he saw enterprises that had introduced steam engines. Many of them were government-run or factories built by foreigners, and not just those around Luhansk and St. Petersburg as previously arranged.

Adjustments are still needed, but now that we have to go to war again, everyone's attention is drawn to Europe.

People will pay attention to places with the largest traffic, and some people will try their best to take advantage of the popularity. This is not only true in the Internet age, it was also the same in 1805.

It's not that it's unavoidable, but it's a practice that has been going on since ancient times. Solovyov could also think of such strange things as using ancient methods to reform the system.

There are people in the East and the West who will do it, and he has begun translating military theory content in the internal communications of the Guards, supplemented by case analysis, which has attracted a lot of attention.

(End of this chapter)