Song Gexing

Chapter 232 Firearms of the Song Dynasty

Zhao Fang was not there when Li Yuluo gave birth a few years ago, but came in a hurry after the child was born. When asked why, he knew that he was summoning a Seljuk.

Concubine Yu directly grabbed Zhao Fang's ears and cursed him. How could it be that he was present when the previous concubines gave birth to their children, but he was not present when Li Yuluo gave birth to their children.

Either don't come at all, if you do come you have to have a bowl of water. Besides, Li Yuluo was chosen by Queen Cao and Mrs. Yu, so it's not like they looked down upon her two choices.

Zhao Fang was helpless. What can you do if my mother is being unreasonable? He really didn't mean it. Li Yuluo suddenly gave birth half a month prematurely. No one expected it.

It happened that it was the first time the Seljuks arrived in the Song Dynasty. Others didn't know it, but he knew the importance of Seljuks.

The Seljuq Empire was another unified dynasty after the Arab Empire. While the Tang Dynasty was declining, the Arab Empire in Central and Western Asia was also struggling to disintegrate.

Just like the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, heroes competed until the rise of the Seljuk Empire. Five or six years ago, the Seljuk Empire occupied the Khorasan region, marking the official entry of this empire into its heyday.

The emergence of a unified region also meant that the Song Dynasty could earn more profits from it. How could Zhao Fang not worry about it.

In fact, the Silk Road in the Western Regions has never been cut off, it just changed from trading with the Central Plains to trading with the Liao Kingdom.

Xixia was a transit point. Xixia was destroyed by the Song Dynasty last year. Naturally, they couldn't hide it from those Western Region merchants, and the news soon spread back to the countries in the Western Regions.

After receiving this news, the Seljuk Empire sent envoys to discuss the trade route. Zhao Fang gave them a high-level reception and summoned them personally.

The people of the Song Dynasty did not know about the Seljuk Empire, they only knew about Persia and the Black-clad Food, but Zhao Fang was a well-connected person. When he communicated with the envoys, they made the other party's hair stand up in shock.

The emperor of the Song Dynasty actually knew him so well. He even knew that they were descendants of the Oghuz branch.

The Oghuz are the largest tribal alliance among the Western Turks and believe in Tengri, the Mongolians' heaven of immortality.

After the demise of the Western Turks, the Oghuz established a Yehu state, and Seljuk was the name of one of the chiefs. This group later rebelled and moved to live a nomadic life near the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea.

He converted to Islam, and after growing stronger, he invaded the Arab region. The name of the empire came from the chief Seljuk.

More than ten years later, they would defeat the Byzantine Empire and monopolize the entire Central and Western Asia. Later, they would be replaced by Khorezm, but Khorezm did not become strong for long.

Because this idiot actually killed the Mongolian envoy, which aroused the anger of Temujin, who originally did not want to continue to the west, and his country was destroyed and the whole of Europe was implicated.

"Sister Pan'er, we have agreed! After this is completed, I will take you to play. This time, the ministers agreed."

Hearing what Zhao Fang said, the two women curiously stopped whispering, turned to look at him and said, "What did you promise? Are the officials going out?"

"Yes! I have agreed to go to Nanjing next month."

"Nanjing! Are the officials going to worship Taizu Taizong?"

The two women said almost in unison, their eyes widening in surprise.

Zhao Fang smiled and said: "I didn't go there specifically to offer sacrifices, but to inspect the firearms manufacturing factory. Xiao Yao reported that the craftsmen invented a thunderbolt, a throwing bomb." The wisdom of the ancients has always been online, but no one went there. It was just a matter of piercing the window paper. After Zhao Fang came up with the Crouching Tiger Cannon, he was taken seriously by the court ministers and started formal research on firearms.

Originally, firearms in the Song Dynasty were invented by someone, presented to the court, and then manufactured by the court designated people.

But after Tiger Crouching Cannon, Zhao Zhen began to gather some craftsmen to research new technologies together with talents who like to specialize in new technologies.

In particular, the research on the ratio of gunpowder and sugar proposed by Zhao Fang gave Zhao Zhen a taste of the power of new technology and made many scholars feel the wonder of physics.

This is actually a chemical reaction, but the ancients didn't know what chemistry was, so they lumped it all into physics. This is not a new term, the principle of all things is just physics.

In particular, Taoist priests were the most obsessed with these physics. The Northern Song Dynasty was the most prosperous period of Taoism, and Taoist priests were basically literate.

Unlike monks, a qualified Taoist priest needs to learn too much knowledge, it should be said that he is more knowledgeable than the students of Taixue.

It's just that their focus is not on the Four Books and Five Classics, but on miscellaneous studies. Among the monks, only the eminent monks and great sages need to learn a lot of knowledge, and the rest of the dawdling as long as they can recite Amitabha.

This is not the case for Taoist priests. Every time they advance, they have to take an assessment, which is no less difficult than the imperial examination. Therefore, the number of purple-robed Taoist priests in each era is almost rare, with no more than ten in the country.

Among the talents summoned by Zhao Zhen, there were many Taoist priests. These people concentrated in Yingtian Mansion, Nanjing, to study gunpowder and firearms. The thunderbolts reported by Yao Lin this time were actually grenades.

The Chinese are the first people in the world to use firearms. Later generations were deliberately belittled and deceived by the West, thinking that the Chinese who invented gunpowder could only use gunpowder to make firecrackers.

This is actually Westerners smearing Chinese people as mentally retarded, but those who have broken backbones in later generations really think this is the case, so they worship Western civilization and are willing to be lickers.

The backwardness was caused by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, not the Han Dynasty. All Han Dynasties attached great importance to the development of science and technology. Landmines actually appeared in the Song Dynasty.

Among the cultural relics unearthed in later generations are iron shell mines from the Northern Song Dynasty and porcelain mines from the Jin Kingdom. The landmines made by the Jin Kingdom were made by the Han people in the north.

It can actually be seen from this that the Manchus are not the Jurchens, but the more barbaric Tungus people, because the Jurchens were already good at learning the advanced technologies of the Han during the Southern Song Dynasty, while the Manchus were resistant to new technologies.

The emergence of Zhao Fang advanced landmines by decades, and even created lightweight throwing firearms such as grenades. This was due to the increased power of gunpowder, otherwise it would not have been successful.

The explosive power of black powder is too small. It is possible to make landmines and water mines because they do not need to be thrown. They can be made larger, but grenades need to be thrown. They are too big and cannot be thrown far away. If they are too small, they have no power at all.

Now, those in the Firearms Supervision Bureau have mixed more powerful gunpowder based on Zhao Fang's invention, and have successfully formulated a perfect ratio with three-quarters of the nitrate content.

This is the best ratio of black powder that can be achieved. Firearms are already equipped with fixed bullets. However, the shortcomings of black powder cannot be solved, that is, the problems of smoke and carbon deposition.

This problem cannot be solved in this era. If the chemical foundation is not enough, it is impossible to experiment with smokeless gunpowder. Whether it is nitrocellulose or nitroglycerin, chemical experiments are required to obtain it.

Although nitric acid was produced by the Arabs in the eighth century, it could not be mass-produced. It was extremely unstable and could not be preserved in this era, so it was better not to think about new gunpowder.

Moreover, the quality of steel is not enough to support the production of large quantities of firearms, so Zhao Fang has no hope for muskets. Weapons that cannot be popularized are not worth wasting time.

(End of this chapter)