Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 226 The Meeting of Senior Relatives ([-])
The two major categories after bombs, the first category is guns.

In the eyes of Gao Yushi, a latecomer, guns and cannons are two completely different categories, but in the eyes of wise people, this is not the case. To them, muskets and artillery belong to the same category, but the size is different.

Gao Pragmatism doesn't bother to worry about this kind of problem. Anyway, in his plan, guns are guns, and cannons are cannons. There are clear boundaries and each develops independently.

In 1453 AD, the Ottoman Turks captured the once indestructible Constantinople in just 40 days, ending the thousand-year rule of the Byzantine Empire in one fell swoop.At that moment, the Europeans were directly shocked by the "God of War" for the first time. From then on, they began to have a great interest in artillery, and eventually developed it to cooperate with navigation technology to open the way to world colonization.

In fact, anyone who can play chess knows that there is a cannon on the Chinese chess board that can shoot across mountains.However, if you pay attention, you will find that most of the cannons in chess are next to the stone characters.Because the ancient "pao" is composed of the characters "stone" and "package".According to the analysis of the principles of Chinese pictographs, the early Chinese character "Pao" symbolized a stone throwing machine that used the principle of leverage to throw stones around the stones to kill and injure enemy soldiers.

In that distant era, this long-range weapon could be used if the distance was relatively long during war, or for siege.Specifically, a lever is installed on a wooden frame, a large stone is placed at one end of the lever, and the other end is pulled by many "gunners" with ropes to accumulate a certain amount of elasticity, and throw the stone far away to attack the enemy.

"Throwing" and "cannon" have similar pronunciations and similar meanings, so trebuchets are the distant ancestors of modern cannons.But because the projectiles fired were stones at that time, the ancients called it "cannon" at first. Later, gunpowder was invented, and people used gunpowder to launch iron projectiles, so there was "cannon" next to the word "fire".

Before the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's rebel army was the army with the highest rate of firearms at that time. After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the development of firearms never stopped, and its status and proportion in the army has been rising.In the Yongle period, Daming even had a formal artillery establishment, which belonged to the later famous "Three Great Battalions" Shenji Battalion.

In the beginning, the main task of the Shenji Battalion was to train the officers and men of the Beijing Guards and the "guard cavalry officers" to use various firecrackers and other firearms. In reality, it was more like an artillery training center.

Later, with the increasing importance of the Shenji Battalion, it took on the function of "guarding the capital inside and preparing for war outside".Become a strategic mobile force under the direct control of the emperor.Ming Chengzu Zhu Di attached great importance to this military organization specializing in firearms. He not only equipped the Shenji Battalion with the most advanced firecrackers and artillery of the Ming Dynasty at that time, but also imported some foreign artillery from the Western "barbarians" to distribute them to the Shenji Battalion. Training while imitating.

At that time, Shenji Camp was a big camp, with Zuo Shao, Zuo Ye, Zhongjun, You Ye, You Shao and Wuqian Battalion under its jurisdiction, of which only the 5000 Battalion had [-] good horses.Generally speaking, it is equivalent to a regiment of guards that people in later generations are accustomed to. The emperor appoints a trusted eunuch or noble to serve as the highest officer of the regiment, that is, the admiral.

After the establishment of the Shenji Battalion, in addition to training a large number of gunners and artillerymen for other troops, they often went out to fight with Ming Chengzu Zhu Di and galloped on the battlefield.During the battle, the Shenji Battalion, with its dense firepower advantage, killed and wounded a large number of enemy troops, thus establishing meritorious service for the victory.

Later, the proportion of firearms allocated by frontier troops and local troops also gradually increased, especially during the Jiajing period when Japanese pirates invaded the coast, the development of firearms was further improved, and the Qi Family Army recruited by Qi Jiguang was more respectful of the application of firearms .

Of course, the Qi family army is a unit that combines hot and cold weapons and develops in an all-round way. Qi Jiguang, with his outstanding military talent, fully considered the development of firearms, and then cooperated with cold weapons. The situation was optimally matched.

However, Qi Jiguang is very clear about the development of firearms. He believes that the development of cold weapons has come to a standstill so far, and human combat ability itself has its limits. If greater progress can be made in future military development, it must be It can only come from the development of firearms, so Qi Jiguang is very concerned about the development of firearms, and even personally participates in the research and development, innovation, modification, etc. of various firearms.

In history, Qi Jiguang not only made many pioneering achievements in landmine weapons, but also made great achievements in the development of artillery. He personally built five types of Flang machine guns for the Qi family army.Among them, the No. [-], [-], and [-] large Frang machines were used for the defense of naval guns and castles (similar to bunkers), the No. [-] medium-sized Frang machines accompanied the army in mobile operations, and the No. [-] small Fro Lang machines were used by individual soldiers.According to the records in Mao Yuanyi's military records, at that time, in principle, the size of the artillery caliber was used as the base to determine the relationship between the weight of the shell and the change of the charge, which was a manifestation of the improvement in the design and manufacture of artillery in the middle of the Ming Dynasty.

This idea is highly recognized by Gao Pragmatic. After all, in the development of artillery in history, in addition to distinguishing by shooting methods such as howitzers and cannons, it is mainly distinguished by different calibers, and the auxiliary standards are bullet weight and charge.

Since Gao Pragmatism started doing "goal planning" a few years ago when he just crossed, and there is also a clear plan to enter the military industry, of course he will not let go of artillery manufacturing.However, artillery is an extraordinary military weapon after all, and he can't produce real ones right now. In addition, he himself needs to form a circular development chain of "nurturing new industries with the profits of old industries" in the future, so the production of artillery In this area, he must guarantee the technological advantages in the future, and it is impossible to disclose too many elements of production technology in advance.

This is very contradictory, because Qi Jiguang's application of artillery is not a big problem in terms of general thinking. Except for the high-practical idea of ​​​​garrison defense, which has always been regarded as a problem, other ideas basically conform to his cognition.Therefore, Gao Yushi originally planned to guide the artillery configuration and use of ideas, but was defeated and bankrupted by Qi Jiguang's genius foresight in advance.

After struggling for a while, Gao Wushi decided to improve the strength of Qi Jiguang's artillery from another aspect.

"Captain Qi." Gao Wushi looked very sincere and said: "I can't help much with the manufacture of artillery right now. I hope you can understand this."

Qi Jiguang smiled and said: "Gao Shidu doesn't say anything, Qi also knows it. After all, the manufacture of artillery still depends on the craftsman's craftsmanship. At most, we people just ask or give them advice from other aspects. Really How can you do it? It’s like watching a martial arts competition. The people who watch it are relaxed and judgmental, as if you are a master of martial arts.

Gao Yushi laughed, "That's not what I mean—I mean, although I can't help the artillery manufacturing itself right now, I can help in another way."

(End of this chapter)