Nanming: I can build wonders

Chapter 287 How to recover Yingtian Mansion?

There was no big explosion as imagined. Although everyone was a little disappointed, they were still full of confidence. Since the emperor said that it would be no problem to do so, the nitrocellulose would definitely be produced as scheduled.

"It may be that the cotton is not pure enough, so it needs to be thoroughly washed to remove the oil."

Back at the gunpowder factory, Zhu Kezang first thought of this problem.

Huang Luzhuang suggested: "Your Majesty, when I was young, I saw the butcher's laundry, and in order to get rid of the oily smell, I would add some alkali to the water."

"You can give it a try." Zhu Kezang immediately remembered that alkali and oil will undergo saponification reaction and precipitate, high school chemistry knowledge.

He continued to instruct: "In addition, nitric acid should also pay attention to removing impurities. The temperature and time of nitrification have to be tried repeatedly to find the most suitable ratio."

"Weichen will do it now."

The 27-year-old Huang Luzhuang made his debut.

Picking up the battle report sent from the front, Zhu Kezang was very relieved. Huang Qing's Holy Ming Allied Forces on the West Front were preparing to attack Sichuan, while Guards [-], [-], [-], [-], and [-] on the East Front led the Ming Defense Forces. Occupied the territory south of the Yangtze River except Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the offensive was like a tide!

The sixth town was trained by Qian Yan in Macau.

Soon, Pan Aqiang, Wang Xianwu, Qin Zhiguo and others wrote a letter requesting to attack Yingtianfu, that is, Nanjing, the former capital of Ming Dynasty, but Zhu Kezang was not in a hurry because the city wall of Yingtianfu was too strong.

Yingtianfu's Ming City Wall, as the most solid city defense system in the cold weapon era, has not been able to pose a direct threat for a long time after the appearance of artillery, due to the height and thickness of the wall and many other factors.

Even Xin Daming, who has fierce firepower, has to be wary, why?

The city wall of Yingtianfu was first built in 1366 A.D., and it took 28 years to complete. From the inside to the outside, it consists of four layers of city walls: the palace city, the imperial city, the capital city and the outer city city. The city wall of the capital city has 13 gates. There are 2 gates, 13616 crenels, and 200 nest shops. It is a masterpiece of ancient Chinese military defense facilities and city wall construction technology.

When Zhu Yuanzhang built this city wall, he wanted to build the strongest city wall in the world. Most of the city walls in the past were mixed with mud and sand, but Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang didn't want to do this. He planned to build them all with bricks. You need 3.5 million bricks.

If someone wants to profit from it, the quality of the bricks will be poor, and such a city wall will not work. These bricks are basically shipped from Jiangxi, Anhui and other places, and they are all made of high-quality clay and some White porcelain clay, fired, is very strong.

However, such a large fortification not only requires a lot of people, but also a lot of bricks to be fired. In order to avoid the tofu dregs project, Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't sleep for days and nights, thinking about how to solve this problem. Thinking of who burned each brick, whose name was engraved on it.

So he ordered that not only the producer's name, but also the craftsman who fired the bricks be on the bricks. Their basic information is also on the bricks. Once the quality is found to be unqualified, we can find out whose fault it is.

In the 28 years since the city wall was built, more than one million soldiers and civilians from nearly 5 units including Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei and other provinces, prefectures and counties, and more than 200 units have undertaken and organized manpower to make blanks and burn them. City bricks, the fired city bricks were uniformly transported to Nanjing for the construction of city walls.

The prefectures, prefectures, and counties under the jurisdiction of these provinces can be seen everywhere in the busy scene of people taking soil to make bricks, and there are scenes of dense brick kilns burning bricks with billowing smoke.

Countless brick-burning men were dressed in ragged clothes and sweating profusely, rushing to burn bricks day and night.

The names of states, prefectures, counties, and officials are engraved on each piece of city bricks, and some are engraved with the names of the village chief, head, and small organizations and brick burners.

Zhu Kezang, who has always been a prodigal, would not dare to build such a huge project!
Therefore, although the city wall of Nanjing City was built in the [-]th century, its defensive power cannot be pierced by most artillery!
This is the reason why the Ming City Wall has survived hundreds of years of wind and rain.

During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom War, the city was breached twice, all of which were to dig tunnels under the city wall and fill them with explosives, blasting a gap in the city wall and entering the city.

Especially in the last time, in order to take down the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the troops of the Qing Dynasty failed to knock down the Ming city wall even though they used a considerable amount of artillery bombardment at the same place. This is a clear proof of the strong defense of the Yingtianfu city wall.

Zhu Kezang thought, this Ming city wall of Yingtian Mansion is a spectacle, right?

Absolutely!

It means that the BUFF is estimated to be average, and it is useless to increase defense or something.

Because Xin Da Ming is full of offensive nature, the best defense is to attack, only Xin Da Ming can attack other countries, it would be too embarrassing for people to beat Ying Tianfu.

After thinking about it for a while, Zhu Kezang wrote down his instructions: No hurry, I will personally march.

Rubbing his temples, Zhu Kezang just put down his pen when he heard a loud noise not far away, which made his eardrums hurt, and the broken tiles on his head were like rain.

Zhu Kezang Teng stood up. Recently, Huang Luzhuang and others had been experimenting with nitrocellulose, and there was a sound from time to time, but this time it was obviously different, and the sound was several times louder than before.

In order to instruct them to produce reliable nitrocellulose as soon as possible, Zhu Kezang even set up a "temporary office" nearby to guide them at any time while working.

He hurried to the test explosion site which was only one mile away from the temporary office.

Behind the bunker next to the test explosion point, Huang Luzhuang's face was dusty. Seeing that the Son of Heaven was coming, he immediately shouted proudly: "Your Majesty, it's done! It's done!"

Zhu Kezang was also overjoyed when he heard the words.

During this period of time, he successively designed drying barrels to prevent "over-nitration", and transferred dozens of meat grinders from Daming Meat Factory to crush cotton, and finally produced qualified nitrocellulose.

But then I encountered the problem of the humidity of the nitrocellulose. If it is too dry, it will explode if it is moved a little, and if it is too wet, it cannot be ignited at all.

After seven or eight days of trial and error, two craftsmen were seriously injured.

And the simple word "become" just now finally declared that Daming had the explosives he could use.

Zhu Kezang looked around in relief, "Everyone has worked hard!"

He asked Huang Luzhuang again, "How much nitrocellulose is there now?"

"Back to the emperor, there are more than 80 catties in total." The latter added, "However, two hundred catties of fuming nitric acid have been prepared, and more than one hundred catties of broken cotton."

Zhu Kezang nodded and said: "Okay, step up the nitrification immediately, mix the prepared ones with wine and water according to the ratio just tested, and report to me after making three hundred catties of nitrocellulose. Here it is!"

He remembered that the earliest nitrocellulose was two to three times as powerful as black powder, while the detonation velocity of modern smokeless nitrocellulose was as high as 6000 meters per second, more than 12 times that of the best black powder.

Although the nitrocellulose produced by Huangluzhuang is not comparable to modern smokeless nitrocellulose, it is at least four to five times as powerful as black powder!
Three hundred catties of Daming nitrocellulose should be more than enough to blow up the city walls of Yingtianfu.

The most troublesome part of making nitrocellulose is the preparation of raw materials. As long as the cotton and nitric acid are done, the nitration process only takes ten to twenty minutes.

Huang Luzhuang solemnly cupped his hands and said, "My minister guarantees that the work will be completed within three days!"

(End of this chapter)