Sure enough, professional people should be allowed to do professional things. More than twenty days after Cao sent someone to deliver the letter, a Tajik man with a red and white gauze on his head came to Polu Prefecture and successfully took over the bomb.
Cotton is a high-tech technology.
After some contact, Zhang Zhao was surprised to find that he had already come into contact with the Cao family, the mother clan known as the Han Ritian race.
Because they were actually people from the former Shupantuo country, the Tang Dynasty also established a very famous Congling Shouchu in the land of Shupantuo.
The maternal clan of the Cao family is the descendant of King Pei Xing of Xupantuo who was forced to surrender to Tibet.
At the same time, Zhang Zhao was surrounded by Pei Shengyuan, the eagle-training warrior recommended to him by the Khotan Pei governor. The brothers Pei Tongyuan were actually distant relatives of the Cao family. In terms of seniority, the Cao family was also the cousin of the Pei family brothers.
And the identity of the bearded governor Pei became clear. He was the heir of Pei Lengleng, the king of Shule at that time.
However, after Shule was captured by the Tibetans, his group did not withdraw to Qiuci with the Anxi army, but went south to Khotan.
Although Khotan was also controlled by Tibet at that time, under the protection of the Yuchi family, they settled down smoothly.
Later, he went to the territory of the Xupantuo Kingdom and lived together with the descendants of Xupantuo King Pei Xing.
From then on, both sides abandoned the original Serb surname and only used the Han surname Pei to express the unity of the two ethnic groups.
However, Governor Pei also brought unfortunate news to Zhang Zhao. The descendants of Luo Tijie, the last guard of Congling in the Tang Dynasty, and the sergeants who guarded the city, as well as the Shule garrison envoys Lu Yang and Qiuci who went to join them.
The descendants of Wang Baihuan were captured by the Karakhanids sixty years ago. A small number of them escaped, but most of them were taken captive and disappeared.
Zhang Zhao let out a long sigh, and it was not that he was missing. Lu Sanlang, a descendant of the Lu family, had become a traitor and betrayed the secret of Zhongzhenku!
Now, the only Anxi army that can still be found is the Zheng family, the Yang family and the Xue family of King Bukhanna. I hope the castle they are holding on to is not found by the Karakhanids.
With mixed feelings, Zhang Zhao brought Man Xiong and Dunzhu, the two generals, to the brand-new cotton processing factory.
A thick, tight and somewhat hard cotton mattress was brought to Zhang Zhao's eyes. This was the somewhat incomplete golden finger that Zhang Zhao opened.
In fact, it is similar to the cotton mattresses of later generations, except that it is harder. The biggest difference is in cost.
"Your Majesty, this cotton mattress has been cut according to your requirements. I tried it myself and found that it can indeed make the kind of cotton clothes you mentioned.
It’s really warm. I never thought cotton could be used for other purposes besides weaving folding fabrics!”
Ms. Cao's face was filled with excitement and she seemed to have stepped out of the shadows.
Zhang Zhao also knew the source of the shadow in her heart, that is, Saktu's youngest son Ahmed, who was captured with her and whom she had raised for more than a year, had died of illness at the beginning of the year.
As for whether this death was really due to illness? Only God knows.
Anyway, since the city of Shule was destroyed, Cao had never seen Ahmed again until she learned about his death.
"This cotton mattress must not be cheap!" Zhang Zhao touched the cotton mattress, picked it up and shook it before asking.
Mrs. Cao nodded, "Yes! It's just too labor-intensive. The manpower it takes to weave such a cotton mattress can be made into three pieces of folded cloth."
Laminated cloth is what later generations called Gaochang white cotton cloth. At this time, the poorer quality was called laminated cloth, and the better quality was called fine silk cloth.
At this time in Hexi, a small landowner with 120 acres of land under the rule of the Guiyi Army had a year's tax payment of almost a piece of fine cloth.
One piece of fine cotton cloth can be exchanged for two and a half pieces of cloth. In other words, the time and labor cost spent in making this six or seven kilograms of cotton mattress can almost pay taxes on fifty acres of dry land.
Expensive! It’s so expensive! But it’s worth it.
Because cloth armor, that is, cotton armor, has unparalleled advantages over the current Tang-style armor.
The word "cloth armor" sounds like it means cloth armor or something, and its defensive power must be very poor. In other words, many people think that cloth armor is used to defend against muskets and may not be useful against cold weapons.
First of all, this thing is not cloth armor, but made of fine cotton cloth, repeatedly beaten cotton, and lined with large pieces of fine iron armor leaves.
In other words, on the surface it looks like a cotton-padded jacket, but inside it is actually an armor coat lined with hard iron armor.
The defensive power may be weaker than the one-piece plate armor of the European Middle Ages, but it is definitely not worse than the Tang-style armor.
Secondly, it is nonsense to defend against muskets. First of all, cloth armor is not very effective in defending against muskets, unless it is a crappy gun made by the government in the late Ming Dynasty.
Even if a fireproof gun is finally made, think about it, how much kinetic energy does a gun have? How much is a bow and arrow? If it can prevent a firegun, it will not be a piece of cake to prevent a bow and arrow.
Regardless of the era of hot or cold weapons, the greatest casualties occur in long-range strikes. If this armor can protect against bows and arrows, it is good armor.
Let’s talk about weight. For Tang-style armor, no matter how much you lose weight, if you want to achieve full-body defense, the weight will be at least sixty pounds.
As for the cloth-faced armor, take a Qing Dynasty armor collected by the Jinzhou City Museum as an example.
The residual weight of the helmet is 1.875 kilograms, the residual weight of the clothes is 13.025 kilograms, and the total weight is 14.9 kilograms, which is about 30 kilograms. This is a large-area armor that protects the arms, armpits, and torso.
The reason for this phenomenon lies in the difference of the nail leaves. For cloth-covered armor, copper nails and cotton can be used to fix the nail leaves. In this way, the nail leaves can be made larger, and the weight can be reduced while increasing the defense.
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As for armor, small and dense armor leaves must be connected in series with ropes and stacked on top of each other to form a regional defense capability.
Historically, cloth armor in the Qing Dynasty generally had less than 600 armor leaves, while piercing the armor usually required at least two thousand pieces. The rope just to pierce the armor leaves would cost several kilograms.
Compared to pierced armor, cloth-faced armor weighs twice as much. This is definitely a leapfrog development. A stupid guy like Barbarian Bear can still run while wearing 60 pounds of pierced-faced armor.
, then you can’t take off yet.
At critical moments, he can even wear two layers of cloth armor. With such protection, Zhang Zhao believes that even if a bone hits him, the damage will be halved.
From the perspective of saving money, although cotton is a bit expensive at this time, it will definitely become cheaper and cheaper with the continuous updating of cotton species and technology. To make nails, more than two thousand small nail leaves must be made and smelted.
The construction cost is extremely high.
The production aspect is similar. The method of using copper nails and cotton to fix the nail leaves is simpler and saves countless times than pinning nails.
You need to know that to make armor, you need to punch two holes in the armor leaves, and then use beef tendon mixed with rope to tie them tightly one by one.
There are more than 2,000 nail leaves! It takes more than 4,000 just to make the horseshoe-shaped holes, and they have to be threaded slowly. The manpower consumption is simply terrifying.
In terms of maintenance, once the armor is damaged, even a few nail leaves need to be repaired to ensure protection.
It would be okay if the armor-piercing leaf uses a rope mixed with beef tendon, which is much stronger. However, if you only use red rope, it will be troublesome. It is easy for the rope to break, and it often needs to be repaired.
And what about cloth armor? This thing is similar to patching tattered clothes. You can just mend whatever is broken, which is quite trouble-free.
Finally, the advantage of cloth armor comes from actual combat on the battlefield. In this era of battles, the winner cannot be determined quickly.
The kind of scene where both sides charge forward with howls and the winner can be decided within a few hours does not exist, at least in a decisive battle between elite troops, it does not exist.
Under normal circumstances, even if there are three or four fierce battles in a day, the core soldiers in the army need to constantly put on armor and then take it off, and then put it on and take it off again throughout the day.
This kind of battle can last for two or three days, until one party has no strength to hold on, and then the defeat begins.
Not to mention the battle with the grassland peoples. Most of the grassland peoples were light cavalry. Most of the time, their fighting methods were to besiege and constantly intimidate. They would only attack after the Han army's physical strength was exhausted.
This also resulted in the Central Plains' mounted heavy infantry often needing to take off their armor to conserve their physical strength when fighting against prairie cavalry. Otherwise, no one would be able to withstand the armor for long if they were wearing fifty or sixty kilograms of armor.
Generally speaking, in the war at this time, armor was worn and removed very frequently, and the wrap-style wearing of infantry armor, which mainly consisted of armor, was very troublesome. Whether it was putting on or taking off, auxiliary soldiers were needed to help.
The speed is also slow.
Many times in history, a soldier took off his armor to rest, but the enemy cavalry on the grassland suddenly attacked. In the panic, the soldier had no time to put on the armor or did not put on the armor completely. In the end, he was defeated directly in his single clothes.
But the cloth armor is different. This thing is actually a cotton-padded jacket lined with fine iron sheets. Whether you put it on or take it off, you can do it by yourself. If you don’t come, I will take it off. If you come, I will take it off in a minute or two at most.
The armor is complete and there are no bugs at all.
And this is not only practical when fighting in formation, it is also very convenient when marching. When encountering a surprise attack, it can be completed in one or two minutes by donning armor, which is enough to greatly reduce the losses caused by a surprise attack.
At the same time, it is also useful when chasing the enemy. For the enemy who is defeated but not dispersed, the heavy armored horse infantry wearing cloth armor can completely remove their armor and chase them. If they catch up, they can put on their armor and fight.
If the opponent is running with armor on, he will definitely not be able to outrun you, and will be entangled to death. If the opponent wants to run faster, then the only choice is to throw away the armor and take off the armor, huh! That's easy, just chase after the butt and slaughter.
In addition to these, cloth armor has one last advantage, which is that it is especially suitable for use when the weather turns cold.
Because the cloth armor used a lot of cotton, it greatly enhanced the warmth retention. The late Ming Dynasty was the Little Ice Age and the weather was cold, so the Qing army equipped with a large number of cloth armor could march in the severe cold.
The same goes for this era. The end of the Tang Dynasty was also an ice age when the temperature dropped. With cloth armor that had excellent thermal insulation effect, Zhang Zhao could deliberately choose to fight the enemy in late autumn or winter.
Wearing warm cloth armor while wearing iron armor that can freeze people to death, I'm afraid there will be many battles. As long as everyone lines up and confront each other for an hour, the balance of victory and defeat will begin to tilt.
With so many benefits, not to mention that a cotton mattress is worth three pieces of folded cloth, even if it is worth three pieces of fine cloth, Zhang Zhao still has to make cloth armor.
Moreover, cotton mattresses are expensive because of the labor cost, not the value.
Haha! Who is King Zhang? A feudal lord in a feudal society! Does he care about labor? He captured so many prisoners and so on.