Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 350 Fifth Uncle Gaocai (Part [-])
Near the east gate of Xinzheng County, there is a small courtyard with black bricks and black tiles, plain and unpretentious.Although the small courtyard has a three-room system, but the depth is limited, and it does not appear to be rich enough.

The rare bright colors in the whole small courtyard are the few plum blossoms planted scattered in the courtyard. At this time, it coincides with the twelfth lunar month, and the plum blossoms are in full bloom, with sparse shadows and slanting, dark fragrance floating.If there is any fly in the ointment, it is probably missing a snow.

This small courtyard, named Meiyuan, belongs to the highly talented fifth uncle, who is also highly pragmatic.

Gao Cai, courtesy name Deqing, nickname Mei'an.Born in March of the second year of Jiajing, Jiyou Keyayuan in the 28th year of Jiajing—that is, No.2 in the provincial examination.In other words, he is the No.2 Juren in Henan, and it stands to reason that his grades are pretty good.

It's a pity that this is his best result. After that, he also went to take the Jinshi examination three times, but he failed in all of them. At that time, he was not young and didn't dare to waste time, so he took up the vacancy as a candidate and served as the capital of the governor's mansion. After that, he was promoted to the former military governor's mansion, and he was granted the title of Fengzheng doctor.

The former military governor's mansion experienced this official's status in an embarrassing situation.

First, it is a civil servant.It is reasonable to say that civilian officials usually have a higher status, but the problem is the experience of this Dudu Mansion. Its immediate bosses are all military officials. It is conceivable how embarrassing it would be for a civil official to take orders from military generals in an era when the status of civil officials was much higher than that of military generals.

Secondly, the duty of this position is to "handle the cashier of document transfer", in short, it is to handle all kinds of official documents.The status of the Dudu Mansion of the Five Armies has been in decline since Yongle, and a large amount of power that originally belonged to the Dudu Mansion has been occupied by the Ministry of War.

Especially the part of the overlapping jurisdiction of the Ministry of War and the Dudu’s Mansion is basically decided by the Ministry of War. The Ministry and the local governor arranged for it.

Later, the Governor's Mansion barely had a say in the management of military registration and ordnance manufacturing, and even the power of ordnance manufacturing was shared with the Inner Government and the Ministry of War.

It is obvious that Gao Cai will not be very happy to be an official in such a department and such a position.

But Gao Experience is an open-minded person. Since his official career is a foregone conclusion, it is better to develop his personal hobbies, which is worse than worrying about paperwork or doing nothing.

The hobby of high talents and high experience is to study firearms.This hobby was developed after he arrived in the Dudu Mansion: he was in charge of official documents and files, sitting in the office every day with nothing to do, and he could not read other books or do other things, so he had to look through the files to see if he could find them. Come up with something interesting.

After going back and forth, Gao Cai discovered that the development of firearms in Daming was quite interesting, so relying on his advantage of being able to consult any files and files, he began to study it with gusto.

The development of firearms in the Ming Dynasty was based on the foundations of the Song and Yuan dynasties. In the war of unifying the country, Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty "relyed on firearms to win" many times.

But Gao Cai discovered that after entering the Ming Dynasty, the development speed of firearms was greatly accelerated.It not only has an astonishing breakthrough in quality, quantity and production technology, but also absorbs some advanced foreign technologies, which have been widely used in actual combat and achieved remarkable results.

Gao Cai checked the files and found that during the Northern Song Dynasty, hot and cold weapons were used together, but only some flammable and explosive firearms were used in the attack and defense of the city wall, which had little effect on tactics.

In the Yuan Dynasty, the situation was different. The Mongols in the period of a powerful military empire entered the Central Plains, especially Genghis Khan’s Western Expedition and two attacks on Japan. The power of iron artillery can defeat the enemy in the battle of siege.

From the perspective of overall tactics, although the wars of the Yuan Dynasty were still confined to the military model of the past, which was a typical war in the era of cold weapons, there have been obvious improvements in the application of firearms.Not only the use of explosive trebuchets, but also the manufacture of metal tube-shaped firearms, which caused a fundamental change in the army's equipment, strategy, and tactics.

Although Gao Cai does not have the advantage of being a highly pragmatic traveler, he also discovered in his research that the change and development of firearms is achieved through warfare.Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, there have been continuous border conflicts, providing a battlefield for the massive use of firearms, and firearms have also been gradually improved and perfected according to the needs of the war in war after war.

From the day when Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang came to the throne, the conflicts between Ming Dynasty and the "barbarians" on the frontier have been continuous, from the repeated provocations of Oala Yexian to civil engineering changes; There are even more and more figures showing their power without firearms.In these large and small wars, the advantages of firearms in use and their role in decisive victory were gradually revealed, and they were recognized, valued, and accepted by people.

Gao Cai also discovered that from the perspective of the entire Ming army's equipment, the ratio of cold weapons to firearms was also changing, with firearms increasingly replacing cold weapons.The Shenji Battalion established after the introduction of Shenji guns in the early Ming Dynasty became the first pure artillery unit in the country. In the border defense area, magic machine guns were also set up to increase the defense; up to now, there are "[-] Beijing troops, and firearms are almost six of them."

As a result, Gao Cai's interest greatly increased, and he began to seriously study fire starters.No one knows the extent of Gao Cai's research. Even his third brother Gao Gong only knows that his fifth brother is very interested in firearms.

What is even more regrettable is that Gao Cai's health was not very good. In the third year of Longqing, he had to resign on his own initiative and returned to his hometown.Of course, looking at this time point, we can see that there is actually another important reason: Gao Gong was forced to resign at that time. The military registration is chaotic, and there are many vacancies.

Well said, it is true.But the problem is, which guard in Daming at this time is not like this?

Besides, the military registration in the guard is chaotic, and there are many vacancies in the compilation. Could this be caused by his experience in managing official documents and files as a mere talented person?If you have the ability, try a national census to see if those hereditary nobles want to fight you desperately!

Not to mention the Governor's Mansion, even the Ministry of War, and most likely even the cabinet will not be able to handle it!

It's nothing more than the wall falling down and everyone pushing that's all - Gao Gong fell down, how could his brother be safe and sound?That is to say, the high-practical and cheap father Gao Cai was lucky. He was an official in Fengyang, the central capital. He was far away, and he was not in the capital. .

Later, Gao Gong recovered, and after arriving in the capital, Gao Cai also mentioned the importance of firearms in his family letter, hoping that Gao Gong would not ignore it.This is even one of the reasons why Gao Gong did not directly refuse when Gao Wushi later expressed his intention to intervene in the production of firearms and military industry.

(End of this chapter)