Chapter 293 Beacon Tower and Signal Tower

Zhao Yun controlled himself and tried not to look at his master who was hitting Zhang Fei's head.

He knelt beside him and sighed softly with the military advisor:

"What a similarity between the Tang and Han dynasties."

Kong Ming nodded silently to Zhao Yun's sigh.

After all, there was only a difference of more than 400 years.

And if governing a country is normal, it is natural to refer to successful cases.

The martial arts of the Tang Dynasty may have been learned from the chaotic times, but the civil governance should naturally learn more from the Han Dynasty.

However, thinking of the familiar cause of decline, Kong Ming could not help but sigh:

It is not necessary to learn so similarly...

"Zilong, do you know anyone who is good at raising horses in the north?"

Zhao Yun shook his head honestly:

"General Gongsun does have horse officials under his command, but most of them have nothing to do with the conservation and breeding mentioned in later generations."

"Their job is only to take care of horses and treat livestock diseases."

Kong Ming knocked his head and laughed:

"I forgot that General Gongsun chose horses based on coat color."

But whether it is General Gongsun who can only choose white horses from a group of horses.

Or Emperor Li Tang who can leave 700,000 horses for his son.

They can only envy.

Yun Chang obtained thousands of good horses in the Battle of Xiangfan, and now they are all treated as treasures.

Yide is still waiting for Han Sui and Ma Chao to send the agreed first batch of horses.

The two together are less than 10,000 horses, compared with the number of 700,000, they can only look up to it.

…

Li Shimin stood up suddenly in Ganlu Hall:

"How many horses did you get after defeating the Turks?"

Fang Xuanling just recalled briefly and said:

"More than 70,000 horses entered the horse farm."

Of course, the number of horses of the Eastern Turks was more than this, but since they wanted to rule the other side, they naturally had to be more merciful and could not rob all their things.

So the final number of spoils was just this.

Li Shimin made a brief calculation and was very pleased in the end:

"I didn't expect that my Tang would have such a great talent!"

"Put this breeding theory into a book, and I will personally write to Zhang Wansui tomorrow."

As he said this, Li Shimin also specially mentioned:

"Old friend Jingde, it is a blessing to be able to leave a name in history because of your talent!"

Yuchi Jingde's mood became more complicated.

If he hadn't been mentioned, he would have really forgotten this person.

Ten years ago, when Song Jingang was defeated, Yuchi Jingde surrendered to Your Majesty together with Zhang Wansui.

He relied on his bravery to shine, but what about Zhang Wansui? He was never mentioned in the battles and awards.

Later, I heard that he volunteered to raise horses. I thought that the two of them, who were both under Song Jingang, were drifting apart. I didn't expect that...

This taciturn young general laid the foundation for a prosperous era with his own hands.

After giving advice to Yuchi Jingde, Li Shimin also felt a little complicated when he saw the four words "a wise ruler for half his life".

Judging from the number of horses alone, the prosperous era of Taixuan was not as continuous as imagined before.

It was more like the prince inherited the foundation of Zhenguan, but it was very wasteful. In the end, Xuanzong took over a Tang Dynasty with half the national strength.

The result...

"Of all things here, the easiest is to win in the battle."

This was the sigh of the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty.

Several generals who surrendered to Li Shimin after the defeat in Ganlu Palace nodded:

Anyway, you won, you can say whatever you want.

Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui knew why Li Shimin sighed twice, looked at each other tacitly, and thought of each other's sons.

They all nodded silently:

Who said it wasn't?

Yan Liben couldn't help but feel a little angry.

If he could enter the government directly, he would not bother to enter the government with his skills.

Although I think painting is good now, why can't I stand the expressions of these people?

It was only a moment of sighing, and Li Shimin, who loved good horses, immediately fell into fantasy with great interest:

"If we conquer the Western Regions, I wonder if Zhang Wansui can raise hundreds of thousands of sweat-blood horses for me?"

Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui also sighed, and they still had to write down what they should do:

"We must ask the Ministry of Civil Affairs about the matter."

"Or should we ask the Sinong Temple directly?"

"The Sinong Temple is better."

The two nodded and wrote it down.

[During the reign of Emperor Gaozong, one of the consequences of the corruption of horse politics was that the troops lost their ability to respond quickly.

It was still the battle of Pei Xingjian with 300,000 troops. The number of Tang troops was several times that of the Turks, but they still fought hard. One of the reasons was that there were not enough cavalry.

Later, because Prime Minister Pei Yan distorted the facts, the two leaders were beheaded in Chang'an. As a result, the Turks and the Tang Dynasty were completely at odds, just as Pei Xingjian had guessed.

The Turks raided and plundered from one direction to another year after year, and they bet that the Tang army could not react.

Later, more than 20 years after Li Zhi's death, Tang General Zhang Renyuan could not stand playing hide-and-seek like this, so he brought out the Han Dynasty's beacon system again and made more scientific improvements, thus giving birth to the suspended attic-style beacon tower.

This beacon tower can be regarded as a small house built on a small earth tower, just like our water tower today, but it can only be climbed up and down by rope ladders, so that even if it is attacked, the beacon soldiers left on top can cut off the rope ladder and then light a fire to send a signal.

Zhang Renyuan also improved the signal of the beacon, requiring the beacon towers to signal each other in the early morning and at night, raising one fire for peace; raising two fires for warning; raising three fires for smoke and dust; and burning firewood cages for thieves.

Zhang Renyuan built 1,800 beacon towers within a radius of 300 miles. Only then did Shuofang finally find peace. The Turks dared not cross the border, and Shuofang even laid off tens of thousands of soldiers, saving expenses.

Relying on beacons, a signal can be transmitted from Liaodong to the Western Regions in just one night. Beacons can be regarded as one of the best means before the radio era...

For example, during the Napoleonic era in France, some people incorporated cryptography methods based on the beacon system's ideas and built a communication tower that was considered very advanced at the time.

It is still similar to a beacon tower, with a signal tower built every five kilometers.

This type of signal tower does not burn a flame, but has a T-shaped beam built on it, with a cantilever at each end that can be pulled by a rope.

Each cantilever has seven angles, and the beam can also swing at two angles, so the signal tower can theoretically display 98 different patterns.

Its working principle is similar to that of a beacon tower. It only needs to observe the shape of a nearby tower, and then communicate the pattern to the next communication tower.

The person sending the message does not need to know the content of the message. After the message reaches the destination, a communicator will decipher the content by comparing it with the code book.

The advantage of this kind of signal tower is that the messenger does not need to know the content of the message, he only needs to follow the instructions.

The biggest advantage is of course the propagation speed. Theoretically, a signal can travel a thousand kilometers in twenty minutes.

This device was quickly improved. For example, the tall tower built in Austria used electric lights, similar to Morse code to communicate at night.

Later, someone had an idea and incorporated a telescope that only required glass, so that the distance between the two signal towers could be farther, saving costs.

However, the telegraph was soon invented, and this type of signal tower was quickly eliminated. 】

Kong Ming couldn't help but sigh again at the wonderful ideas of later generations.

What was said to be a codebook reflected on the light screen made Liu Bei dizzy, but Kong Ming and Fazheng quickly figured out the clue.

Kong Ming was a little unsure:

"It seems to be derived from arithmetic..."

Fa Zhengze is fascinated by the content it depicts:

"Even if you can transmit orders thousands of miles in one hour, you are still powerful."

Even Zhang Fei's expression became more cautious:

"If a beacon is used as a signal, it can only be used at night, which is very inconvenient. If it is used to burn smoke during the day, it will cost a lot of money and it is easy to send a warning by mistake. It only needs to be changed..."

As a leader, Zhang Fei feels this most clearly.

On the battlefield, they are worried about signal confusion and unchanged transmission, so they can only rely on burning smoke to transmit the simplest possible signal.

For example, the simplest attack, retreat, victory, failure, etc.

But if they can be five hundred miles apart and can accurately convey "Fan Jiang, please run a hundred miles north, then run fifty miles west, and make a sneak attack on the enemy's rear", then the effect will be completely different.

"It's just that these words seem to be quite simple to convey."

Fazheng studied it and was a little scratched his head.

Kong Ming didn't care much about this. The writing was different, so there was no need to completely imitate his predecessors.

The example given by the light curtain was clear, so he quickly understood that there were only two important things in this set of communications: secret words that both the sender and the receiver understood, and various combinations of symbols.

Even without this T-shaped rocker, the same effect can be achieved with multi-color flags.

More importantly, after Kong Ming did some research, it seemed that short-distance communication was more useful using this secret language.

And Kong Ming soon discovered a new name: "Telescope? Glass?"

On the light screen was a simple sketch of a little man, holding a cylinder in front of his eyes and pointing it at a tiny signal tower in the distance.

“Only clear glass!”

In Chengdu's glass workshops, the glass that can be fired today still has obvious impurities, but some of it can barely be seen through.

When Kong Ming was playing around in his spare time, he also discovered that when looking through glass, what he saw would be obviously deformed.

In this regard, he originally planned to go to Hanzhong after winter to cut ice to replace transparent glass and study it.

Unexpectedly, he had seen something similar now, so Kong Ming realized it almost quickly:

"Installed in a tube... depending on the convexity and concavity, will there be different effects?"

"According to what he said, it seems that he can see things in the distance?"

Kong Ming suddenly felt itchy, wishing that it would snow heavily in Hanzhong tomorrow, so he immediately went over to get ice to try.