"Okay, let's have dinner. Zhang Zhaohua was too lazy to deal with Yongping anymore, and directly ordered the banquet to be held, but Yongping said: "Why didn't the eldest brother come to your birthday banquet today?"

"He's busy," Zhang Zhaohua said, "The state affairs are heavy, and you don't know it." ”

Yongping said: "The state affairs are heavy, there is always time to eat, or the eldest brother doesn't want to come, how did I hear that the eldest brother has been staying in the front hall for several days?"

Zhang Zhaohua said: "The emperor is on the northern expedition, and there is often an emergency military situation sent at night, and it is cheaper to deal with it in the front hall." ”

These people only knew that the two people in the East Palace were in a cold war, but they didn't know the specific reason, and they couldn't guess it at all, Yongping stabbed a few words, and Zhang Zhaohua didn't let go, a meal was really uncomfortable for the people at this table.

In the evening, the people in the inner government arranged an excerpt play, Zhang Zhaohua listened to two performances casually, and saw that Fan Hong, the eunuch who did not follow Brother Chun'er to Beijing, came over, and said: "Niangniang, the emperor's eldest grandson has given you a congratulatory gift, please take a look." ”

Zhang Zhaohua followed people out of Chengtianmen, stood on the tower of Hongwu Gate, looked at it from afar, and saw the Qinhuai River in the distance, dozens of small boats, shuttling back and forth, and the people on both sides of the bank who watched the lanterns seemed to know that Zhang Zhaohua had climbed the city tower, and they all shouted together: "Congratulations to Niangniang Qianqiu——"

According to Fan Hong, as early as when the palace was built, there was surplus wood, and the emperor's eldest grandson asked people to build a flower boat according to the Jianghuai painting boat, which was sent from the canal, and the imperial supervisor also had a few zhang high lantern sheds in the Shangyuan Festival this year, put the lantern shed on it, arranged various lanterns on it, burned tens of thousands of lamps, and placed them on the Qinhuai River.

"Da Lang really has a heart," Zhang Zhaohua felt relieved at this time that he could still rely on his son: "But I can't break the bank anymore." ”

The emperor's northern expedition lasted for a year, and during this year, the machinery of the state was also running non-stop, after a period of ups and downs, and in the long time behind, it was almost calm, and Gao Chi reprinted the "Yongle Canon" , because after the completion of the ceremony, although the emperor once wanted to print, but because of the huge project did not take place, now Gao Chi re-recorded the ceremony, with 378 calligraphers, each person copied and copied three pieces of paper every day, fifty lines per paper, three crosses, from the seventh year of Yongle July, until the end of the eighth year of Yongle, only one third was completed.

Zhang Zhaohua thus came up with the desire to establish a national library, because of such a huge volume, she knew that most of the later generations were scattered, lost in the long river of history, and were not well used - and the reason why the emperor repaired the book at the beginning was nothing more than to boast about future generations, and the great canon was repaired, and it was also a high pavilion of existence, and people like Gao Chi who devoted themselves to learning only took one or two books a day, such an all-encompassing encyclopedia, only as a book for the emperor's house, and the resource monopoly was like this, which was too wasteful.

If these transcriptions were to be made public to all officials and scholars who had gone to Beijing to study, and a centralized and perfect system of reading and borrowing books had been established, it would have a far-reaching effect on the development of people's wisdom - but now that all the craftsmen are concentrated in Beijing, this idea cannot be implemented if it wants to, but Zhang Zhaohua always remembers that her idea always has to be realized.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Zhang Fuping crossed the Lu, and obtained the magic machine gun method from Jiaozhi, which used raw and cooked red copper, and the size varied, the large one used the car, and the second and the small one used the frame, the pile, and the support. The big is good for defense, and the small is good for war. Use it as appropriate, as a marching weapon. This kind of artillery carriage is quite easy to use, the emperor specially ordered Tan Guang, the deputy general of the Shenji Battalion, to Nanjing to summon, and the edict from Kaiping to Huailai, Xuanfu, Wanquan, Xinghe and the top of the mountain, all set up five artillery mounts.

Zhang Fu brought a person who was extremely proficient in firearms from Jiaozhi, his name was Li Cheng, formerly known as Li Yuancheng, after the founding of the Hu Dynasty, he was changed to Hu Yuancheng, the eldest son of the Vietnamese magnate and the monarch of the Hu Dynasty, Hu Ji Chen, was captured by the Ming army, because he was good at weapons, not only avoided death, but even served in the Ministry of Industry of the imperial court.

For more than three years, Li Cheng's Chinese language was quite fluent, and he even showed Zhang Zhaohua some self-developed firearms, that is, in addition to artillery, fire milling, fire thistle, large and small muskets, large and small iron cannons, Shenji arrows and other firearms, he himself on the basis of "a swarm of bees", made a large rocket weapon, which not only has a large size, but also has the prototype of a multi-stage rocket, called "fire dragon out of the water".

This thing is made of coarse bamboo as the projectile body, and the head of the wooden carved dragon is mounted on the head, under the dragon head, on both sides of the dragon's tail, each of which is equipped with a powder keg weighing half a catty, and the four rocket fuses are gathered together, and connected with the rocket fuse in the belly of the fire dragon. Four feet, ignite the four powder cartridges installed on the dragon's body, this is the first stage of the rocket, it can push the fire dragon to fly two or three miles away, and when the first stage of the rocket is burned, it will automatically ignite the rocket in the dragon's belly, this is the second stage of the rocket, at this time, several rockets are shot from the dragon's mouth, directly to the target, causing the enemy ship to burn down, and in fact this weapon can be used on land and water.

In fact, the emperor's ability to make the Shenji Battalion one of the three major battalions itself shows the importance he attaches to firearms, and the application of firearms has now played a central role. If the Song Dynasty is the embryonic stage of firearms, then this is the era of great development, and the application of firearms in China on the battlefield, the proportion of firearms accounts for 10%.

"You have returned from the Emperor's Northern Expedition," Zhang Zhaohua asked, "How much advantage can firearms play on the battlefield?"

"If you want to cooperate properly, you can face the most elite Mongolian cavalry," Tan Guang told her: "The Southern Song Dynasty Wu Jie invented the stacking formation method, which was used on the battlefield, and if you want to give full play to our army's advantages in firearms, you need the cooperation of cavalry, cavalry archers, and sword soldiers, which can not only make up for the shortcomings of cavalry shooting, but also the range and power of guns and cannons can be blocked by manpower, and you can restrain the enemy to the death." ”

Because the early development of firearms is still in its infancy, the firing efficiency, accuracy, And there is still a large gap between reliability and battlefield requirements, and the reloading procedure after firing once is very complicated, especially in the face of the cavalry-based Mongolian army, often before the loading of the enemy has been killed, and the firearms unit at this time has almost no resistance once it falls into close combat, so in addition to relying on the use of firearms to kill and injure the enemy in the battle, the cooperation with other arms is also particularly important.

Because Mu Ying, the Duke of Qianguo, was feeling that the gunpowder loading speed was too slow when using firearms against rebel elephants and other beast troops, he invented a tactical shooting method called three-stage shooting - specifically by three people in a group, first by the front musketeer to shoot, and then retreat to the rear of the team to concentrate on loading ammunition, and the second soldier stepped forward to fire. The trio alternated between reloading and firing, tripling the efficiency of the arquebus, which would have taken a minute or more to shoot at a time. The emperor improved it and used it to deal with the more mobile Mongol cavalry, first by the soldiers equipped with firearms to shoot the enemy cavalry, after the shot immediately retreated to the flank of the army, then the cavalry of the five battalions and three thousand battalions continued to carry out a second blow against the enemy cavalry, and then the infantry cavalry of the five battalions cooperated to annihilate the enemy's main force, this method was very lethal to the cavalry, and the combat effect was very ideal.

This is the emperor's method of fighting in the north, this time the emperor defeated Benjamin in the difficult river, Benjamin only rode westward with seven horses, and the emperor did not let go of the initiator Arutai, until he chased back to Qujin, and was defeated again.

Zhang Zhaohua not only ordered the Central Ordnance Bureau to equip each infantry cavalry of the Shenji battalion with firearms, but also specially allocated them 3,600 thunderbolt cannons, 9,000 kilograms of combined medicine, 900,000 pieces of lead weighing eight coins, 200 Dalian bead cannons, 675 kilograms of combined medicine, 400 handguns for artillery self-defense, and 160 field heavy artillery guns.

Because he saw that Zeng Gongliang of the Song Dynasty wrote "General Essentials of the Martial Arts", which summarized the firearms at that time and divided them into more than ten types, Zhang Zhaohua ordered Tan Guang to divide the firearms owned by the National Dynasty, which can be roughly divided into three categories: incendiary firearms, explosive firearms and firing firearms, with about two or three hundred kinds. At the same time, there is gunpowder, which can be roughly divided into two categories: pure gunpowder formulas composed of nitrate, sulfur and charcoal, and poisonous fire and divine fire formulas with other components - Zhang Zhaohua thinks this can be classified as chemical weapons. As a result, the Ministry of War and the Shenji Battalion began to compile books such as "Illustrated Weapons of Weapons" and "Atlas of Firearms", which recorded in detail the production methods and maps of firearms equipped with firearms in the Ming army, as well as the establishment and tactics of firearms units.

Because the Shenji Battalion has a drill every once in a while, called "Returning to Xi", Zhang Zhaohua specially summoned a group of people from the Ministry of War to observe, and when he came back, he wrote some theories of firearms according to Zhang Zhaohua's instructions, but she felt that it was not deep enough, so she simply ordered the Shu Jishi who was assigned to the Hanlin Academy in the sixth year of Yongle to go to the Sixth Department early, which also sent twice as many people to the Ministry of War as in previous years, and these Shu Jishi were quickly rushed to the Shenji Camp to help compile the diagram and refine the theory.

Zhang Zhaohua didn't know anything about weapons, she didn't even know that firearms at this time, China was ahead of the West - she always had an irrepressible sense of urgency, afraid that at this time the West's firearms had reached the point of being more advanced than China, after all, Zheng He's first time to the West, did not arrive farther, did not let her see how the firearms of countries such as Francois at this time were, she had to order the Ordnance Bureau to carry out research and development that consumed financial and material resources, until more than 20 years later, there was the appearance of arquebuses.