Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 344 The Rise of Rifled Cannons
When the cannons sounded, the cavalry led by Arutai were less than 550 steps away from the trench, with only about [-] steps left.

The effective range of the new front-loaded rifled gun made in the first year of Qianxi is exactly 550 steps!
One step in the Ming Dynasty was equivalent to 1.3 to 1.5 meters in later generations. That is, the minimum effective range of this new type of fire gun was about 700 meters!
Under normal circumstances, the ancient cavalry could travel up to about 170 miles a day, which was already considered the limit.

The limit of the light cavalry is about three hundred miles per day. Excluding rest time, based on ten hours of travel per day, the light cavalry's maximum speed is about thirty miles per hour, which is equivalent to that of a bicycle.

Therefore, after the first batch of more than 600 firecrackers finished firing, they quickly stepped aside, and then the second batch of more than 600 firecrackers immediately took over. They raised the firecrackers and pulled the trigger, and the second batch was quickly completed. The batch opened fire.

When the third batch of more than 600 gunmen stepped in and the second batch of gunmen ducked aside, the first batch of more than 600 gunmen had already finished loading gunpowder and bullets.

And so on and on!
In just 2 minutes, the Ming army had completed three rounds of volleys.

Although the hit rate of the flintlock gun is not high, its effect of disemboweling limbs is very gratifying. Therefore, in order to make up for the lack of shooting accuracy, the Ming army in the Yongle era used dense horizontal formation tactics to shoot out a wall of bullets - commonly known as "Line up to be shot."

The theoretical rate of fire of smoothbore muskets is four rounds per minute, but at a distance of [-] steps from the cavalry, hand-to-hand combat usually begins after the third shot.

In this case, if you switch to a rifled gun, there will be no time to fire the second shot.

This is because the reloading speed of the front-loaded rifled gun is too slow!

Historically, due to the influence of technical level and thinking, it was not until the early 20s that the Mini bullet, which could make up for the shortcomings of rifled guns, was invented.

But Zhu Gaoxu is a time traveler. He does not lack ideas, but only lacks technology and the craftsmen who can turn his ideas into reality.

Fortunately, he was the prince of the Ming Dynasty before, and he ascended the throne as the emperor of the Ming Dynasty two years ago. As a result, the scale of Mo Qiaosi has been further expanded, and custom-made paper shell bullets have also been successfully launched.

As a result, the loading speed of the new front-loaded rifled gun made in the first year of Qianxi was further improved, and it was able to fire one bullet per minute.

In order to make up for the lack of fire rate, the artillerymen of the three armies of the Beijing camp have mastered the three-stage shooting tactics.

In this way, the cavalry led by Arutai fell off their horses one by one under the intensive rain-like fire of the Ming army's artillery.

Each salvo fired by the Ming army, more than 600 high-speed bullets, would directly take the lives of at least 100 Tatar cavalry, and at the same time cause more than 100 Tatar cavalry to lose their combat capabilities.

Seeing more and more cavalry falling around him, Arutai felt a little dazed.

He never expected that the range of the Ming army's firearms today would be twice as high as it was during the Yongle period!
In the battle between Zhu Di and Arutai, the range of the fire blunderbuss used by the Shenji Battalion was only more than two hundred steps, but now it has reached an astonishing more than five hundred steps!
However, he was keenly aware that the shooting speed of the Ming army's new gunfire was more than twice as slow as that of the Yongle period.

He believed that as long as he speeded up the charge, he could lead the cavalry to rush into the trench before the new round of cavalry shooting by the Ming army, and chop off the head of the Ming army's gunner with a scimitar.

However, the dense bullets not only claimed the lives of a large number of Tatar cavalry, but also became an obstacle to the cavalry behind them after they were turned upside down, so that the overall speed of the cavalry led by Arutai also slowed down.

After another 2 minutes, the Ming army once again completed three rounds of volleys.

At this time, the number of Tatar cavalry had dropped by more than a thousand!
Arutai led the remaining more than 2000 cavalry and finally rushed sixty steps in front of the trench position where Zhu Neng was holding firm.

However, Arutai was lucky enough to escape the hail of bullets just now, but his horses were not as lucky as him.

The war horse stepped into the trap with its front hooves and violently threw Arutai off its back.

At the same time, there were more than [-] Tatar cavalrymen who were thrown away by their horses like Arutai.

Those Tatar cavalry who escaped the first horse trap continued to rush forward. Seeing that they were only thirty steps away from the Ming army's gunners, their horses stumbled and fell into the Ming army's larger horse trap. among.

Just when Arutai got up from the ground and shouted loudly for the surrounding cavalry to gather, the Ming army on the opposite side had already charged them. "kill!"

Zhu Neng wore soft raw silk armor on the inside and a layer of chain mail on the outside. Holding a thick-backed long machete in his hand, he rode a war horse, bypassing trenches and obstacles, and headed straight for Alutai.

In the distance, a Tatar cavalry just got up and saw Zhu Neng riding towards Arutai. He quickly picked up the sharp arrow he had just dropped, aimed at Zhu Neng, raised his bow and shot.

Everything happened in a few breaths. Zhu Neng was unable to dodge and was hit in the left shoulder by a sharp arrow.

However, he gritted his teeth, waved the machete in his hand, cut off the arrows, and continued to kill Arutai.

The reason why he performed like this was that in addition to the chain armor blocking most of the impact of the arrows, there was another important reason, that is, he was wearing a soft raw silk armor.

This kind of raw silk soft armor is essentially a silk garment made of raw silk and woven using extremely fine techniques.

No matter it is an ordinary arrow, or the stone bullets, small lead bullets, or small iron bullets fired from ordinary fire guns, it is difficult to penetrate this kind of silk clothing. The arrows or bullets will only be absorbed into the flesh and blood along with the silk clothing.

After the war, military doctors only had to pull out the silk to remove arrowheads or bullets from wounds.

It is said that this special silk garment first appeared during the Genghis Khan period, which greatly reduced the mortality rate of the Mongolian army in war and greatly increased the chance of recovery of wounded soldiers of the Mongolian army.

Of course Zhu Gaoxu will not give up using this special silk clothing.

As early as the late Hongwu period, when he was controlling military affairs in the north, he had already found craftsmen to make this kind of raw silk clothing.

However, raw silk clothes at that time were not perfect yet.

After Zhu Di succeeded to the throne and became the prince, Mo Qiaosi's craftsmen continued to improve, and the raw silk soft armor of great use was produced.

Unfortunately, the production process of this kind of raw silk soft armor embedded with gold wire is very complicated. The cost of manpower, material resources and time is very high, and it is also quite troublesome to save.

Because raw silk has poor light resistance, it will easily become brittle and yellow when exposed to sunlight, and its strength will decrease. If it is exposed to the sun for more than [-] hours, its strength will lose about half.

This results in a finished raw silk soft nail having a service life of less than two years.

Therefore, apart from Zhu Gaoxu, there are only a dozen senior generals including Zhu Neng who are qualified to wear raw silk soft armor.

The other civil and military personnel who accompanied him were all wearing ordinary raw silk clothes, not raw silk soft armor.

"Grand Master, the weapons of the Ming army are too powerful, and our side suffered heavy casualties!"

After two Tatar warriors protected Arutai on the left and right, the warrior on the left said.

"Grand Master, I am willing to serve as queen for you!"

The soldier on the right said eagerly.

Arutai pushed those two men away, held the scimitar tightly in his hand, looked at Zhu Neng who was about to run, and shouted loudly: "I haven't lost yet!"

(End of this chapter)