At the end of November, Zhu Cihong arrived at the Taiping Mansion, and as soon as he entered the Taiping Mansion, he received information from the Jinyi Wei and the Guang cadres.

The intelligence only briefly introduced the process of this naval battle, and mainly wrote a few articles of the treaty.

Zhu Cihong was a little surprised, he always felt that the intersection between China and Britain was during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and the British envoy Macartney came to the Qing Dynasty to discuss trade with Qianlong.

Then came the First Opium War, which also began in Humen, Guangdong, and the history is really peculiar........

Also two hundred years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Ming Dynasty faced Japan's attack on Korea and fought a naval battle with Japan, the Ming Dynasty won the Battle of Luliang, but the Qing Dynasty lost the First Sino-Japanese Battlefield; Also facing the British in Humen, Guangdong, the Ming Dynasty won again, but the Manchus lost very badly........

The naval battle that took place in Guangzhou Bay in the Ming Dynasty surprised Zhu Cihong, especially the British warships, but he didn't expect that Europe's power at sea was already so strong.

I remember that the last time Daming and the Netherlands fought a sea battle, it was only five years ago, this frequency is too fast, if it is fought a few more times, it will also have a huge impact on Daming's finances.

Daming and Portugal fought, fought with the Netherlands, and now fought with the United Kingdom, although every time the equipment is at a disadvantage, but every time it wins, in fact, it can't afford to lose, if it loses, the country is opened, and the late Qing Dynasty has a virtue, and the backbone has been broken by later generations.

From Jinyiwei's intelligence, Zhu Cihong clearly felt that the Ming officials did not attach importance to this naval battle, and regarded it as an expulsion of pirates, without the slightest sense of crisis.

Others don't pay attention to it, Zhu Cihong can't afford not to pay attention to it, as a traverser, he is very pressured, and he is the only one who has a long-term sense of responsibility.

Since the establishment of the Chaohu Water Division by Zhu Yuanzhang, Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, the Daming Naval Division has experienced the Battle of Crossing the River to take Jinling, the Poyang Lake Water Battle to destroy Chen Youliang, the Battle of Tuen Mun in the Zhengde period to beat the Portuguese, the Battle of Xicaowan in the Jiajing period to beat the Portuguese again, the Battle of Luliang in the Wanli period to annihilate the Japanese fleet, the Battle of Liuluo Bay in the Chongzhen period to beat the Dutch, the current Ming Ying Naval Battle, and later Zheng Chenggong to recover Taiwan.

Nearly three hundred years after the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Sailor has never suffered a defeat, even if it has been weakened since the orthodox years, and the Jiajing period has fallen to the bottom, but the Ming Sailor still fought a few beautiful battles at the lowest trough.

This glory, Zhu Cihong will not let it be interrupted because of the weakening of the Ming Dynasty, let alone wait for him to take over the Ming Dynasty in the future, let the Ming Sailor be aggrieved by the external fight.

Zhu Cihong decided to speed up the process, consolidate his own power, completely control Jiangnan as soon as possible, and develop the sailors.

The development of the naval division was necessary, not only to face the maritime powers of the West in the future, but also to deal with the Manchus.

Zhu Cihong had already received the news that in the first half of this year, the Qing generals Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming, and Shang Kexi attacked Phi Dao, and the deputy general Jin Riguan led the soldiers to fight fiercely with the Qing soldiers for seven days and nights, and finally Phi Dao fell, and Jin Riguan and others were all killed in battle.

The surrender of Korea and the fall of Phi Dao basically wiped out the Ming Dynasty's maritime power in the north, and the Manchus no longer had any worries.

The reason why the Manchus fought so Korea and Phi Dao was because they had almost no warships, and they were worried that the backyard would be copied by the Ming Dynasty from the sea.

After entering the Taiping Mansion, Zhu Cihong first inspected the Jiangnan Ordnance Bureau, and after half a year of development, the scale of the Ordnance General Bureau expanded more and more, and Wu Zhong spent a lot of money to bring in a large number of firearms craftsmen from all over the country.

The manufacture of firearms in the Ming Dynasty was prosperous, and there were ordnance bureaus in various places, especially in Beijing, Tianjin, and Jiangnan, and even the people were densely covered with all kinds of firearms workshops, and there were tens of thousands of craftsmen.

Similar to the craftsmen in the army, many craftsmen had a very hard life, and after seeing the recruitment conditions of Wu Gonggong, the eunuch of the Taiping Mansion, craftsmen from all over the south of the Yangtze River flocked to the country, scrambling to eat.

When Wu Zhongzheng was worried about whether to cut some of the craftsmen because of the number of craftsmen, Zhu Cihong happened to arrive, and after understanding the situation, Zhu Cihong asked him to set up another artillery factory, specializing in the production of large-caliber artillery, with a minimum of eighteen pounds.

In this cannibalistic age, caliber is truth!

The warships of the Netherlands and other Western maritime powers were already equipped with more than twenty-four-pound guns, and the eighteen-pounder guns were a bit too small for their main warships, so Zhu Cihong naturally did not want to let the Ming fall behind.

As for manufacturing, the advantages of the traverser were revealed, and Zhu Cihong taught Sun Heding the iron mold casting cannon method invented by Gong Zhenlin in the Qing Dynasty.

At present, the traditional casting process uses clay molds, that is, water and mud to make molds, and then Fan Jin pours casting, layer by layer. The mud mold must be dried thoroughly, otherwise although the exterior is dry, the inside is moist, once it encounters metal molt, the moisture is self-generated, and the cast cannon has a honeycomb, and the barrel is easy to explode and hurt people when cast.

It takes about a month for the mud film to dry, and it takes two or three months to meet the rainy and cold weather on a cloudy day, and a clay mold can only cast one cannon, and then it is discarded and can no longer be used.

The iron mold casting method is different, it is based on iron as the mold, compared with the traditional mud mold casting gun, the process is more simple and easy, saves a lot of mold raw materials to reduce production costs, and is not limited by climatic conditions, the manufacturing cycle is also greatly shortened, the most important thing is to solve the problem of honeycomb, avoid the occurrence of explosion, and greatly improve the quality of artillery casting.

Sun Heding is a professional, he understands it as soon as he hears it, he can't help but praise: "Its method is simple, its use is the most convenient, one work reaps the benefits of hundreds of workers, one cannon saves dozens of times the capital, twice the result with half the effort, the use of infinite, the guide track of the public theory, and the method of the ages, His Royal Highness is really a god and a man!" ”

After speaking, Sun Heding also bowed to Zhu Cihong seriously, and Zhu Cihong was a little embarrassed.

In fact, Zhu Cihong thought of the iron mold method because he recently received a piece of information from Liaodong, which said that several traitors in the Qing Dynasty had developed a new cannon casting method called the lost wax method, and were vigorously manufacturing artillery.

It is said that the artillery cast in that way of casting the cannon has been tested and its performance has surpassed that of Western artillery, which attracted the attention of the person in charge of the Liaodong Jinyi Guard, and it was decided to pass on this important information to the crown prince.

Zhu Cihong finally told Wu Zhong and Sun Heding that this method of casting cannons must be kept secret, and a strict confidentiality system should be established in the cannon factory.

Military secrets have always been the core secrets of a country, especially the current iron mold casting method, which is ahead of the world for more than 200 years, even in Europe, until the Opium War 200 years later, the clay model integral mold casting method and the lost wax method have been used.

That is to say, it now takes one to three months for Europe and the Manchus to cast an early batch of artillery, and it cannot be cast for many times of the year, and the success rate is not high, and the pass rate of a hundred guns is only two or three percent.

The Ming Dynasty used the iron mold method to cast a batch of artillery in less than a month, and it was not limited by the season, and the pass rate of casting artillery could also be as high as fifty percent.

Zhu Cihong firmly believes that as long as the method of casting cannons is not leaked, it will not be long before the number of artillery in the Ming Dynasty will throw off the Manchus and Europe!

Zhu Cihong let Wu Zhong personally manage the new artillery factory, carefully selected hundreds of innocent craftsmen from the General Bureau of Ordnance to work in the artillery factory, and asked Li Tingbiao to transfer a brocade guard to examine and supervise the craftsmen in the factory to prevent leakage of secrets.