Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1119 Battle of Bagu (Part [-])
Even though Bago City was not transformed into a real bastion-like city within a short period of one month, the newly built several large sharp corners still played the role of a bastion.

Different from the obtuse-angled bastions in the early days in Europe, the newly rebuilt Bago City has been transformed from the original Chinese-style four-corner building to an octagonal one, and the angles formed are the best cross-fire coverage shooting areas.

The Burmese army only dispatched 3000 people. Of course, they could not carry out siege-style operations. They could only attack two of the eight included angles. In this way, two parts were formed, and these two parts would be affected by the left and right sides at the same time. direction of shooting.

One of the characteristics of the Wanli Type [-] musket is the rifling inside the barrel. Although the rifling is shallow and straight, it is completely incomparable with the spiral rifling of later generations, but for now, it still has shooting accuracy far superior to that of contemporary smoothbore guns.Coupled with highly pragmatic knowledge of the best ratio of black powder and the principle of "granule gunpowder", the range of the gun can almost reach the best state under the current technical conditions.

Gao Silian, as a colonist who opened up Huaying with very few troops, is actually very familiar with Wanli's tactics of defending the city with a bastion.

Just like the "Shuishan Fort" that Huang Zhiting visited during the Golden Port military parade, Gao Silian built at least seven or eight large bastions as fortresses in the process of expanding to Huaying. The firepower to the extreme, he is very experienced.

It stands to reason that the enemy can shoot before they enter the angle, and that area is called the "first shooting area" by Gao's army.But the killing effect of shooting at this time is usually not very good, and it is easy to scare away the enemy, so when it is necessary to kill the enemy in a demonstration style, Gao Silian will not choose this tactic of firing immediately.

The second shooting area is the area after the enemy enters the angle.Generally speaking, this area can already form crossfire, but specifically it depends on the size of the city or the big bastion itself. If the city is too large, the second shooting area may not be able to fully cover the firepower , because the range of the gun is still not enough.

As for the third shooting area, that is the corner tip of the included angle. This is the area fully covered by crossfire, which can cause the most powerful attack. When the enemy army arrives here before launching, the enemy army will not only be attacked by a sudden attack They were stunned or even collapsed by powerful firepower, and after they collapsed, they also faced a desperate return journey-they would be beaten all the way back.

The [-] probing troops of the Burmese army lived up to expectations and were stunned. Within the crossfire coverage of the third shooting area, they were hit head-on by the Bago garrison.

The Jingang garrison was enriched until the low-level officers in the Bago garrison personally led the shooting, and loudly reminded the recruits of the shooting steps when shooting, when to reload, when to reload, and when to shoot, When should the barrel be cleaned, when should it be charged again... etc., these experienced officers shouted loudly to prevent the Mon soldiers who were new to firearms from messing around.

Although Gao Silian, who was watching the battle from behind a bunker in the corner of the tower, was a little disappointed with the shooting speed of these new subordinates, and was also very dissatisfied with their shooting accuracy, the success of the tactic itself was unquestionable. After a few rounds of random shooting, they all collapsed.

In fact, the casualties of the Burmese army at this time were not large. The loss of the Burmese army in this angle that Gao Silian could see would not exceed 200 people. The Burmese army lost about 400 people.

According to Gao Pragmatism’s point of view repeatedly emphasized to them, the tactic of "queuing up to shoot" is often compared to discipline, that is, who can withstand the first wave of damage from the confrontation without collapsing, so the first battle line It is also common for the second row to be fully lit sometimes.

Gao Silian understands this tactic, but the Burmese army on the opposite side obviously doesn't understand, not only do they not understand, but also the situation they face is different from the battle line - the two sides are always facing each other, you have a chance to kill me with one shot , I also have a chance to kill you with one shot, life or death depends entirely on luck and shooting speed.

The key reason why the Burmese army began to collapse after losing only this few people was that they had no way to fight back against the enemies in the bastion.With only waist knives, they were not even equipped with bows and arrows, and they had no choice but to raise the crude wooden shields in their hands in vain.

In addition, the progress of erecting the ladder was also directly zeroed, because although the bastion was completed, Gao Silian did not give up the traditional tactics. ".What's more, the shooting port in the angled city wall can also shoot at the Burmese soldiers who are attached to the siege of the opposite city wall.

All in all, a three-dimensional attack has been formed in this area, and the Burmese army is almost in a state of entrapment, unable to advance or retreat if it wants to.

In the end, these unlucky ones had no choice but to forcibly retreat under the crazy fire of the firepower network. When the lucky ones finally escaped and ascended to heaven, they found that there were very few comrades around them.

King Mangyingli, King Mangyingli, the golden white elephant of the Taungoo Dynasty in Burma, looked at the soldiers who fled back in twos and threes with a livid face. The angry "all cut off" stuck in his throat for a long time, and finally swallowed it back.

After all, he also saw the situation just now. If these soldiers continued to stay in the corner of the city wall, there would be no other meaning other than waiting to die. It is the loss of one's own strength.

Captain Reddy came over, his face was not very good-looking, and the words he said were even worse: "Your Majesty, it seems that we are facing very serious troubles, and the situation has exceeded the pre-estimated."

Mang Yingli gritted her teeth, but said nothing with a sullen face——I'm not blind, do you need to say this nonsense?

Fortunately, Captain Reddy didn't just come here to mock his employer, he came with a solution to the problem.

"Your Majesty, I think at this moment, if you don't want to pay a huge price far beyond your imagination to capture this city, then we should consider spending money to solve the problem."

Mang Yingli was stunned for a moment, turned his gaze to Captain Reddy, frowned and asked: "Spend money to solve it? Are you saying to buy the other guard? But we don't even know who the other guard is... Maybe it's Abrabang Humph, this traitor, I wish I could cut him into pieces, and want me to spend money to buy him, that's just a dream!"

"No, no, Your Majesty, when I say spending money, I don't mean buying the defending generals—although this can also be an option." Reddy shrugged, and said: "I mean, spending money to buy some Cannon to attack this city. Your Majesty, as you know, we in Portugal have advanced artillery, and if we can buy two hundred or at least a hundred artillery pieces, it will be of great help in the capture of this city.

And I, Simao Reddy, know the Governor of Malacca and even Goa. I can buy these artillery as soon as possible through my relationship, so that His Majesty can recover this city of great political and economic significance as soon as possible. I hope you will consider this suggestion carefully. "

Mang Yingli sneered when he heard this, and said, "The cannons you sell are too expensive. Even the emperor of the Ming Dynasty couldn't afford a few cannons for 1000 taels of silver."

"Your Majesty misunderstood. The 1000 taels are ship-borne long-heavy guns, and that was the quotation given to officials of the Ming Dynasty in the early years...Of course, if Your Majesty needs, these long-heavy guns can indeed be moved to the shore for use. Through my Relationship, the price can also be much discounted, for example, 800 taels per door, what do you think?"

Mang Yingli still sneered: "But as far as I know, the cost of such a long and heavy cannon is no more than 300 taels of silver."

"Oh... I admit that what you said is true, but you have to consider another point. The cost of transporting these long and heavy guns from mainland Europe to Myanmar is very high, not to mention that we will also give away four base shells, so 800 taels Silver is definitely a friendly price."

If Gao Pragmatic is here, I’m afraid I’m going to laugh out loud, because after a series of standardized production transformations and technological improvements, the price of similar artillery made by Jinghua is far lower than the cost mentioned in Mang Ying’s article: Mang Ying It said "no more than 300 taels", but in fact the cost of Jinghua's similar artillery was only 160 taels.

By the way, the cost of artillery of the same level in the Kingdom of England at this time is about 200 taels per gun after conversion.The reason why Jinghua can make it cheaper is that apart from the iron mold cast cannon, which was used rotten in time-travel novels, the most critical issue is that Kaiping Industrial Zone can provide high-quality and cheap metal.

Different from the bronze cannons used by the fleet, the cannons used by Lu Division are all made of iron from No. [-] to No. [-], because there is no need to worry about the high-humidity and high-salt environment at sea causing the cannons to rust, and Jinghua’s iron and steel smelting capacity is huge. Don't fall into a cost trap.

Even Gao Wuzhen now has some doubts whether it is possible to consider using iron cast artillery directly for the fleet, because Daming is really short of copper, and the cost of this bronze cannon is enough for several iron cannons.It's just that the barrel of the bronze cannon is easy to recycle and recast after its service life expires, while the recycling and recasting of the iron cannon is a bit more troublesome.

The two groups of people at the craftsman school have been quarreling for a while, and neither side can convince the other, and the half-level high-level pragmatists dare not come up with ideas, so they have to put this matter on hold—after all, the British in the original history There are still a lot of naval bronze guns in the Yiyao period.

As for the iron mold cast cannon, Gao Pragmatically thought it was a "major innovation" when he proposed this idea at the beginning. Who knew that he only mentioned it, and the master craftsmen understood it.

It was only later that Gao Yushi realized that some novels were blown too much. In fact, this stuff is not particularly novel in theory.For example, in the Han Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, iron fan molds were unearthed for casting farm tools, but Gong Zhenlin was only used to cast cannons.

So why hasn't anyone done this before?In fact, there are technical difficulties.

The hardware of the iron mold technology is not difficult to obtain. It can be made of cast iron or cast steel. It is nothing more than a load-bearing container. Besides fixing the gun mold, it also has a better heat dissipation effect.

The advantage of the iron mold is that it is easy to integrate. Unlike clay mold casting, which has to wait for time to dry in the shade, a cannon has to wait for a few months after casting, and the iron mold casting cannon can be used directly after a while. These hardware, the level of the Ming Dynasty has been fully realized.

However, the iron mold also has disadvantages. From the perspective of metal casting and metallography, the heat dissipation of the iron mold is too fast, which makes the pig iron liquid have a large degree of supercooling when it is cooled, and the cementite in the molten iron is too late. Precipitation (graphitization is too late) graphite has been solidified, so the cementite in iron mainly exists in the form of iron carbide, which is the so-called white iron.

Of course, due to the high degree of subcooling of the molten iron during the solidification process, the metal crystal particles on the surface are denser, the barrel is smoother, and the airtightness is much better than that of the clay mold.

The real advantage of the iron mold is that it speeds up the production rate, instead of waiting for months like clay mold casting cannons.This is particularly prominent in Gong Zhenlin's iron molds, but iron mold cast guns are very white. Because the cooling rate is too fast, although it is relatively smooth, almost all white iron is produced, resulting in increased brittleness. Artillery performance decreased.

So the result of this is that in order to increase the tensile strength, the quality can only be piled up by quantity, that is, by increasing the wall thickness.

How did Gao Pragmatically solve this problem?Oh, in fact, it can’t be regarded as a highly pragmatic solution. In fact, it was developed by Jinghua Iron and Steel later—the key lies in the blower device that Zhu Zaiyu developed under the prompt of Gao Pragmatic.

This thing is a bit troublesome to explain in detail, but simply speaking, it is similar to the hot blast technology during the American Civil War. The temperature in the blast furnace is high enough, so that the silicon content in the molten iron is high, and the graphitization is more prominent during cooling.

However, this only solves the problem of white iron, which is roughly considered to have evolved to the level of gray iron, but the problem of too fast cooling of iron mold casting guns is not completely solved. It can only be said to be barely usable, and the casting speed has been greatly improved. , I think it is acceptable after comprehensive consideration of high pragmatism.

As for the problem of the cooling speed of the iron mold, Gao Yushi knows the principle of the solution, which is the so-called internal mold water cooling, but this seems to be quite difficult. It has been several years since Jinghua Iron and Steel received his reminder, but basically there is nothing progress.The high-practical person only knows such a superficial theory, and his practical ability is completely zero, so he can only continue to wait.

The problem of buying artillery has reached a deadlock. Mang Yingli can't afford such a large sum of money to buy the expensive artillery of the Portuguese. Captain Reddy left with great regret. Words: "Capturing a large bastion is very difficult even in Europe. Apart from smashing it hard with a large number of artillery, there is almost only a long-term siege. Your Majesty should think about it."

Mang Yingli didn't know if his words were intimidating, but the predicament in front of him was obvious, and it was definitely not the way to continue the strong attack right now, so he had no choice but to order a suspension of the attack and start deploying the siege.

Gao Silian's strategic goal of making the opponent dare not attack by force in the first battle has been achieved.

In fact, he was also a little scared, not because of anything else, but because he had never commanded tens of thousands of people before, and the largest command force was only three to four thousand people, and the bastion he was guarding was not a super-superior city like Bago City. A large "bastion", so he was always worried that if the opponent broke the boat and launched a general attack, whether he would be able to command it.

After all, the establishment of the Bagu garrison itself was an accident, which led to the fact that besides him, only some low-level officers were from the Gao family, and the middle and high-level command system was basically empty.If it is really facing a full-scale battle, who knows if there will be problems everywhere.

So in this way, a situation was formed inside and outside of Bagu City that the wolf was scared by the stick.

Gao Silian looked through the binoculars at the Burmese army who had begun to set up camp, heaved a sigh of relief, then cast his gaze to the east, and thought to himself: I don’t know when the Dutong side will choose to launch a counterattack. Do you fight back directly, or wait for a while until the Burmese army completely relaxes before fighting? ——
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(End of this chapter)