It was the fifth day of the first lunar month in the ninth year of Chongzhen.
Those who have good news say that the sky above Ji'an Mansion is shrouded in purple clouds, and a black dragon is seen in the north, followed by five-color clouds. It is night, but a red light rushes out of the General Military Mansion, the sound of tigers roaring and dragons roaring is endless, and the weeping willows on the riverside all sprout new branches...
…
Okay, without going into too much detail, Fei Rulan gave birth to a son successfully.
In the two prefectures and thirteen counties, the officials and the people rejoiced. They were really happy that the Lord had an heir, and the cause of rebellion became more stable.
Of course, there were also countless gentry who cursed and expected Zhao Han's son to die young.
But it seems that God is celebrating. The weather has been smooth this spring, with two spring rains falling early, and finally there is no spring drought like in previous years.
Just after the Lantern Festival, the sky suddenly became sunny, and Zhao Han took his child for a walk in the garden.
The guard came in and announced: "In the main town, Sgong Song wants to see you."
"Please!" Zhao Han returned the child to the nanny.
As for Fei Rulan, she was having her confinement in the house. At first, the doors and windows were closed tightly, saying that the wind could not blow in. Zhao Han had people put up window screens and forcefully opened the windows for ventilation.
Song Yingxing walked in quickly, followed by a subordinate, holding a brand-new gun.
Zhao Han said happily: "The gun is made?"
Song Yingxing raised his hand and said, "Thirty of them have been made. Last year, many blacksmiths were making waist knives and spearheads. This year, we will recruit some to hammer the blunderbuss bodies. At least 500 bird blunderbuss can be made in a year."
"It's still too little." Zhao Han said.
"We can only train apprentices slowly, as long as there are more craftsmen." Song Yingxing said.
Zhao Han thought for a while and said: "Cotton armor and iron pieces can be made by private iron factories, and official craftsmen will do their best to make firearms."
Although Song Yingxing is in charge of the Department of Public Works, he mainly devotes his energy to making gunpowder and gunpowder. He has lived in Fenyi and Xinyu counties for a long time. Tian Younian has been transferred to the deputy position of the Department of Public Works. The day-to-day affairs of the Department of Public Works are handled by Tian Younian.
Hosting.
Now, Zhao Han has three weapons.
One is located on the outskirts of Ji'an Prefecture and mainly produces spears, bows and arrows, leather armor, and wooden shields.
One is located in Fenyi County Iron Factory, which mainly produces waist knives, gun heads and arrowheads.
An iron factory located in Xinyu County, which mainly produces cotton armor, could not make iron chain mail because Song Yingxing did not know the wrought iron drawing technology.
Zhao Han did not occupy all the iron mines, and allowed the local gentry to continue to operate their mines and iron works. In order to centralize the blacksmiths to make firecrackers, some simple tasks can be contracted to private iron works. Especially
There is no technical difficulty at all in making the iron piece of cotton armor.
In the past few months, the company has made more than 300 sets of cotton armor.
Cotton armor can protect against hacking and bows and arrows, but it has limited effectiveness against stabbings, and it is impossible to protect against firecrackers. That thing is actually a set of cotton-padded clothes with iron plates embedded on the surface, making it much lighter than traditional armor.
At the same time, Tian Younian also gave suggestions and recruited bamboo craftsmen to make helmets.
This kind of bamboo woven helmet can prevent arrows and knives from being cut. Although the effect is limited, it is low-cost and very fast to make. If you want the price to be defensive, you can also weave a few pieces of iron into it when making it.
Zhao Han took the fire gun and said with a smile: "Let's go, follow me to the school grounds outside the city."
Observing while walking, this gun is nearly one meter long. The gun tube is thin at the front and thick at the back, and it also has a trigger. Pulling the trigger can move the ramie rope.
Zhao Han pulled the trigger a few times and understood its working principle.
Ramie rope can burn slowly, and its function is similar to that of incense. With this device, the matchlock gun does not need to be specially ignited, and the gunpowder can be ignited by pulling the trigger.
This kind of gun should actually be called Malacca matchlock gun.
Zhao Han asked curiously: "How is the barrel of the gun made?"
Song Yingxing explained: "First make the iron trusses, then wrap them with red-hot steel and beat them continuously. After many times of joining, the tubes can be formed. Then, a four-sided steel cone is penetrated into the tube and rotated to grind, so that the tube wall becomes
If it is as smooth as a mirror, the medicine will be released without any obstruction."
As he gradually approached the school grounds, Zhao Han couldn't help but ask: "Isn't it easy to explode?"
Song Yingxing could only say: "Sooner or later, the blunderbuss will explode, but the blunderbuss I made will definitely be hundreds of times better than the court's. First of all, it is better to make a furnace fire with charcoal than with stone charcoal. Secondly, the blunderbuss tube
They are all made of steel, not wrought iron. Of course, if too much medicine is put in, the chamber may still explode."
Song Yingxing didn't know how to make Suzhou steel, but he knew the Guangnan steel-filling method, which was the kind of tungsten steel produced in Foshan.
"That's so troublesome," Zhao Han said. "Without long-term training, it will be difficult for the soldiers to get the correct dosage of medicine. Can you first determine the appropriate dosage and then wrap it in an oil paper shell, which can prevent moisture and getting wet at ordinary times. When fighting, the soldiers
Hold the paper shell in your hand, tear it open with your teeth, and then fill the shell with the medicine in the gun?"
"This method is wonderful!" Song Yingxing said happily.
Walking to the gate of the school ground, Song Yingxing asked again: "There is another kind of shotgun in the main town. Do you need to build it?"
"Is a shotgun different from a cannon?" Zhao Han didn't understand.
Song Yingxing explained: "The shotgun is shaped like a spear and requires two people to control it. The shotgun will be exhausted after a hundred steps (the longest range), but the shotgun can shoot more than two hundred steps."
Zhao Han finally figured it out. The shotgun was the pistol used during the Opium War. The barrel of that thing was taller than a human being.
"No need," Zhao Han ordered, "just build a bird gun. The bird gun is too difficult to operate."
Song Yingxing added: "There is another kind of enemy with ten thousand people, which is a weapon for defending the city."
Zhao Han asked: "What is the enemy of ten thousand people?"
Song Yingxing described in detail: "A hollow mud mass dried in the shade is stuffed with gunpowder, poisoned fire, sacred fire and the like. After the gunpowder is applied, a wooden frame is used to surround the outside, or wooden barrels are used to mold clay. When the enemy attacks the city,
Light the fuse and throw it under the city walls, and the enemy troops will be in trouble."
Poison fire means adding arsenic, cinnabar, feces, silver embroidery (the residue of refining silver ore) and other substances to gunpowder.
Divine fire means adding cinnabar, realgar, orpiment, borax, magnetic powder, chili powder and other substances to gunpowder.
By the way, many strange firearms were invented in the Ming Dynasty. Even when Zhu Di was in trouble, landmines had already appeared. Zhu Di's Yan army almost collapsed when they stepped on the mines, and they didn't know how those landmines were detonated.
Zhao Han understood immediately that this thing was a large grenade.
However, the outer shell is made of mud. To prevent the mud from breaking, wooden strips are used to hold it in place.
It would be even more insane to put it in a wooden barrel. It can no longer be called a hand grenade, but a bomb as big as a barrel.
It certainly can't be thrown far and can only be used to defend the city.
Zhao Han asked: "Can we use ceramics to make shells? There is a lot of white soil in the mountains under my control, so we can bake ceramics. We can make some small ones that can be used by tens of thousands of enemies. They can also be thrown in the field. The fragments of the ceramic explosion can also kill and injure the enemy."
"This method is feasible." Song Yingxing nodded.
I wonder if the European missionaries saw the grenadiers using ceramic bombs and thought that Zhao Han was wasting his resources.
How expensive is porcelain in Europe?
When they arrived at the military camp, the officers immediately came to see him, and Zhao Han asked them to go drill the army immediately.
When he arrived at the shooting range where archers were trained, Zhao Han opened the gunpowder bag and found that it contained granular black powder. He couldn't help but ask: "Why is this powder black granular?"
"The gunpowder used in guns and cannons is all of this kind." Song Yingxing replied.
Black granular gunpowder was born in the late Tang Dynasty and was created by Taoist priests in alchemy.
But the real large-scale use in actual combat began in the Yuan Dynasty. The Yuan Dynasty bronze cannons unearthed in Wuwei in later generations contained granular gunpowder. Mines unearthed in Hohhot in the late Yuan and Ming dynasties also found residual granular black powder.
Zhao Han became more and more surprised and asked: "Is this the gunpowder produced by the imperial court?"
Song Yingxing sighed: "Many of the gunpowder distributed by the imperial court to officers and soldiers cannot be used. The generals have to pay for the gunpowder themselves."
According to Xu Guangqi's account, due to the poor quality of the gunpowder and the shoddy manufacture of blunderbuss, the Ming Army's musketry units sometimes could not even penetrate Tatar heavy armor.
Zhao Shixin, the governor of Beijing Camp, also said: "The gunpowder made by cunning craftsmen was shoddy and shoddy. The generals in the army received the gunpowder and sold it at a low price to buy good medicine."
Are the craftsmen really cunning?
No!
Officials deduct the cost of making gunpowder in various ways. No matter how good the craftsman is, it is difficult for a skilled woman to make a meal without rice.
The Ming Dynasty was really not a country with poor technology, but a complete corruption of officialdom.
Zhao Han retreated fifty steps away, asked Song Yingxing how to load ammunition, and then aimed at the target in front of him.
"boom!"
The smoke has cleared, and the target remains the same.
I don’t know where the projectile went.
The onlookers were a little embarrassed and embarrassed to laugh.
Song Yingxing said: "It is normal for people who are new to shooting guns to miss the target."
Reloading the ammunition, Zhao Han moved forward with a smile, walked to a distance of thirty steps, pulled the trigger again and fired the gun.
"boom!"
This time he actually hit the edge of the target.
Everyone shouted that he was a great shot, and Song Yingxing was also surprised and said: "You can hit the target with the second shot. The general is very talented."
Shit fired the second bullet. Before Zhao Han traveled through time, he was considered a shooting expert in the company, and he was fed with countless ammunition.
However, Zhao Han was quite surprised that a smoothbore gun like the Bird Cannon could achieve such accuracy.
Mainly due to the long barrel, almost one meter.
Of course, the firecrackers presented by Song Yingxing are strictly crafted high-quality products. If we increase manpower and increase production, no matter how strict the quality control is, the overall quality will decline a lot.
This kind of blunderbuss still requires firing volleys, and it is difficult to achieve results by shooting separately.
Zhao Han smiled and said: "This gun is pretty good, and it will be mine from now on."
Among the senior generals in the army today, the ones with the strictest rules and the best discipline are undoubtedly the troops trained by Li Zheng.
Zhao Han decided to let Li Zhengheng lead the firearms camp. For the time being, there were only a few dozen firearms, but in another year there would be hundreds.
"Is there still a shortage of gunpowder raw materials?" Zhao Han asked.
Song Yingxing replied: "The saltpeter must be purchased from Ningdu County, and there is no shortage of other raw materials."
Ningdu County is adjacent to the southeast of Yongfeng County. Merchants selling saltpeter can transport their goods to Xingguo County via a small road and along the Gan River to Ji'an.
There is also a more convenient route, which is to transport by water all the way to Ganzhou, and then from Ganzhou to Ji'an.
However, the Ganzhou side is very tightly guarded and is not allowed to transport strategic materials such as saltpeter.
Zhao Han warned: "Work hard to build fire blunderbuss. Craftsmen who do well and quickly can be promoted and rewarded for reuse. If there are craftsmen who can improve the craftsmanship, they will also be rewarded greatly!"