There are two categories after bombs, and the first category is guns.

In the eyes of Gao Shishi, a later person, guns and cannons are completely different categories, but in the eyes of the Ming people, they are not, muskets and artillery belong to the same category in their eyes, but the size is different.

Gao pragmatic didn't bother to dwell on this kind of problem, anyway, in his plan, the gun is a gun, the cannon is a cannon, the demarcation is obvious, and they develop separately.

In 1453, the Ottoman Turks captured the once impregnable city of Constantinople in just 40 days, ending the millennial rule of the Byzantine Empire. At that moment, for the first time, Europeans were directly shocked by the "god of war", and from then on they began to have a great interest in artillery, and finally developed it, and combined it with seafaring technology, opening the way to world colonization.

In fact, anyone who can play chess knows that there is a cannon on the Chinese chess board that can shoot across the mountain, which is a very powerful killer. However, if you pay attention, you will find that most of the cannons in chess are next to the stone characters. Because the ancient "cannon" is composed of the words "stone" and "bag". According to the analysis of the principle of Chinese hieroglyphs, the early character "cannon" symbolizes a stone-throwing machine that uses a bag to hold a stone and use the principle of a lever to throw the stone to kill or wound enemy soldiers.

In those distant times, this long-range weapon could be used when fighting at a distance, or for siege purposes. Specifically, it is to install a lever on a wooden frame, put a large stone on one end of the lever, and at the other end is pulled by many "gunners" with ropes, accumulate a certain amount of elastic force, and throw the stone into the distance to attack the enemy.

"Throw" and "cannon" have similar pronunciations and similar meanings, so the stone thrower is the distant ancestor of the modern cannon. However, due to the fact that it was a projectile fired at that time, it was called "cannon" by the ancients at the beginning, and later gunpowder was invented, and people switched to using gunpowder to launch iron projectiles, so there was a "cannon" next to the word fire.

Before the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's righteous army was the army with the highest rate of firearms equipment at that time, and after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the development of firearms has never stopped, and its status and proportion in the army have been rising. In the Yongle period, the Ming Dynasty even had a formal artillery establishment, which belonged to the later famous "Three Battalions" of the Shenji Battalion.

In the beginning, the main task of the Shenji Battalion was to train the officers and men of the Beijing Guard and the officers and soldiers of the "accompanying escort horse team", using all kinds of firearms and other firearms, in fact, it was more like an artillery training center.

Later, as the importance of the Shenji Battalion became more and more assaulted, it took on the function of "internal defense of the Beijing division and external preparation for war". Become a strategic mobile force under the direct control of the emperor. Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, attached great importance to this military organization specializing in guns and artillery, not only equipped the most advanced guns and artillery of the Ming Dynasty to the Shenji Battalion, but also introduced some foreign artillery from the Western "barbarians" to the Shenji Battalion, and imitated them while training.

At that time, the Shenji Battalion was a large battalion, with the left outpost, the left sentry, the middle army, the right sentry, the right outpost and 5,000 battalions, of which only the 5,000 battalions had 5,000 good horses. In general, it is equivalent to a guard regiment that later generations are accustomed to, and the emperor appoints a close eunuch or noble to serve as the highest commander of the corps, that is, the admiral.

After the formation of the Shenji Battalion, in addition to training a large number of musketeers and artillerymen for other troops, they often accompanied Ming Chengzu Zhu Di to fight and gallop on the battlefield. During the battle, the Shenji Battalion, with its dense firepower superiority, killed and wounded a large number of enemy troops, thus establishing meritorious service for the victory.

Later, the proportion of firearms allocated by the border army and local troops also gradually increased, especially during the Jiajing period when the Japanese invaded the coast on a large scale, the development of firearms was further improved, and the Qi family army recruited and established by Qi Jiguang was more respected for the application of firearms.

Of course, Qi Jiajun is a combination of hot and cold weapons and all-round development of the army, Qi Jiguang, with his outstanding military ability, fully considered the degree of development of firearms, and then matched with cold weapons, with the development level of this era and the actual situation of the Ming army to carry out the optimal ratio.

However, Qi Jiguang saw the development of firearms very clearly, he believed that the development of cold weapons has been close to stagnation so far, and people's combat ability itself has a limit, if the future military development can still make great progress, it must only come from the development of firearms, so Qi Jiguang is very concerned about the development of firearms, and even personally participated in the research and development, innovation, and correction of various firearms.

In addition to having a lot of pioneering achievements in mine weapons, Qi Jiguang in history also made great achievements in the development of artillery, and he personally created five models of Franc machine guns for Qi's army. Among them, the No. 123 large Franc aircraft were used for the defense of naval guns and castles (similar to pillboxes), the No. 4 medium Franc aircraft accompanied the army's mobile operations, and the No. 5 small Franc aircraft was equipped with individual soldiers. According to the account in Mao Yuanyi's military records, in principle, the relationship between the weight of the ammunition and the change of charge was determined based on the size of the caliber of the artillery, which was a manifestation of the improvement of the design and manufacturing level of artillery in the middle of the Ming Dynasty.

After all, the development of artillery in history, in addition to distinguishing by howitzers and cannons, is mainly distinguished by different calibers, and the auxiliary standards are bullet weight and charge.

Since Gao Pragmatic began to do "target planning" as early as a few years ago, when he had just crossed over, and he also clearly had a plan to enter the military industry, of course, he would not let go of artillery manufacturing. However, after all, artillery is an extraordinary militaristic heavy weapon, and he can't get it in kind at the moment, and he himself needs to form a circular development chain of "feeding new industries with the profits of old industries" in various industries in the future, so he must ensure his technological superiority in the future in artillery production, and it is impossible to leak too many production technology elements in advance.

This is very contradictory, because Qi Jiguang's application of artillery is not a big problem in terms of general thinking, except for the high pragmatism of the giant artillery defending the city, he has always thought that there is a problem, and the other ideas are basically in line with his cognition. As a result, Gao Pragmatic's original plan to only guide the artillery configuration and use ideas was defeated and bankrupt in advance by Qi Jiguang's genius foresight.

After Gao pragmatically struggled for a while, he decided to improve the strength of the artillery under Qi Jiguang from another aspect.

"Qi Dudu." Gao pragmatic looked very sincere and said: "I can't help too much with the manufacture of artillery at the moment, I hope you can understand this." ”

Qi Jiguang said with a smile: "Gao Shishu just doesn't say it, Qi also knows, after all, this kind of thing in artillery manufacturing still depends on the craftsmanship of craftsmen, and we people at most ask or mention them from other aspects, but where will we really do it?" It's like watching people compete in martial arts, and the people who watch it are relaxed, judging their tastes, as if they are martial arts masters, if they really make a move, they will be knocked down by someone with a punch. ”

Gao Shishi laughed: "I didn't mean that - I mean, although I can't help with the artillery manufacturing itself, I can help a little from the other side." ”