This problem has not been solved until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and even from the perspective of empty salaries, it has intensified. This directly led to a lot of miscalculations of the strength of the Ming army, that is, in real circumstances, the Ming army did not have so many people at all, and on the battlefield, the Ming army did not have a numerical advantage at all.

In order to maintain the interests of the vast territory and the vast vassals, as well as to maintain internal stability, a large number of Ming troops defended and fought everywhere, and at each point, in many cases, it may be fighting more with less.

The second problem is the further decline in the level of armament, from the original two-thirds of the level of firearms, to the Yingzong period, only half is left, and this is still sent to the Luchuan battlefield, may be the level of armament of the most elite troops of the Ming army.

Jiang Yugang once thought that if two-thirds of the early Ming Dynasty was a more reasonable level of firearms, then with the passage of time, the level of firearms was constantly improving, and in the Yingzong period, the proportion of troops equipped with firearms should rise, why not rise but fall?

In fact, the answer is not difficult to understand, or because Yingzong did not solve the negative impact of Xuanzong's strategic choice, the organization and armament of the Ming army further deteriorated, a large number of deserters appeared in the guard, the number of troops was seriously insufficient, and the corresponding level of armament was also declining.

The Ming army during the Yingzong period is no longer that great army, and there is no point in tangling up who is right and who is wrong, because even if Jiang Yugang travels to this era, it is already the fourteenth year of Ming Yingzong's orthodoxy, and he still has no ability to change the earlier past, so he can only hope for the future.

And because Jiang Yugang knew the later history, he knew that in the two hundred years of the later Ming Dynasty, the level of the Ming army was still declining. It is difficult for Jiang Yugang to directly obtain the actual firearms allocation rate and firearms usage in the army on the battlefield at that time, after all, these things have a lot to do with the persons in charge of various firearms manufacturing workshops and the army, and there are very few specific direct data in the history books.

However, he can record the deployment of weapons in the history books to reverse the deployment and use of firearms at that time from the side. This is not a specific figure for a particular army, but it is an average of a battlefield, and it has a higher degree of objectivity, not influenced by individual generals and army leaders.

When Jiang Yufu went to understand the military strength of the Ming Dynasty during this period before crossing over, it was from this perspective that he studied the level of firearms. And from the level of firearms, we can also find all kinds of data that prove the level of the Ming army.

The data he mainly queried was to capture an angle: the number of weapons that the Ming army transferred to the battlefield in a certain period of time. As the war progressed over a long period of time, new weapons were often assigned to soldiers who were newly sent to the battlefield.

And if the transportation time of the number of weapons transferred to the battlefield is extended to the scale of an era, these weapons are used to equip the soldiers of this entire era, that is, the average level of armament of the soldiers of this era.

After Jiang Yugang investigated from this perspective, there were two main data: first: from the forty-sixth year of Wanli to the first year of the Apocalypse, the weapons transported by the Ming Dynasty to the battlefield in Liaodong; Second, during the Liaodong War, the Ming Dynasty transported weapons to the battlefield in Liaodong.

The combination of these two points is almost the average weapon use of Ming soldiers on the battlefield in Liaodong during the entire Liaodong War.

Jiang Yugang summarized and analyzed the combination of these two data, and the result was quite amazing, that is, on the battlefield of Liaodong, the Ming army was equipped with less than 10,000 birds. If you take into account all the guns and firearms, the soldiers outside the artillery can use about 50,000 muskets, combined with the number of Ming troops in the Battle of Songjin, about 130,000, and the number of muskets may not be counted, the firearms accumulated in the previous era of Wanli, the final Ming army's firearms equipping rate may still be maintained at a state of 50%.

On the surface, it seems that there has not been much change, neither progress nor too much regression. But first of all, after more than 100 years of development, the basic firearms level of the troops has not made any progress, and it may even be that they have not advanced but retreated, which is an infuriating regression.

Although this era is still largely the era of arquebuses, it has not fully entered the era of flintlock pistols. The large-scale armament of flintlock pistols was not until the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Ming Dynasty had fallen, so there was no particularly major change in technology.

But although there is no big change, there are still a lot of small progress, with the difference in technology between arquebuses, there is also a generation gap between advanced arquebuses and backward arquebuses, with the progress of arquebus technology, the army's demand for arquebuses is also increasing.

The stagnation of the Ming army's equipment level is a kind of relative backwardness in one aspect, and it did not embrace the progress of technology as soon as possible and in a timely manner, and then improve its own equipment level and change its posture, but has stayed at the initial level, which is a reason why the Ming Dynasty army developed to the end and its strength was still weak.

Another reason is the detailed equipment of firearms, and it is also because of this overall backward thinking that there are also big problems in the details of firearms equipment. However, it can also be said that the military neglect of the Ming Dynasty led to great problems in the use of firearms.

There are two main aspects to this problem: the first is the selection of firearms.

From the use of firearms on the battlefield in Liaodong, it can be clearly seen that the main firearms used in the Ming Dynasty were firearms other than bird guns, such as three-eyed firearms, and the ratio of bird guns to other firearms other than bird guns was one to four, or even more, to the point of one to five.

If we look at the firearms in specific units, we can see that only 10 percent of the soldiers are fighting with birds, and the rest of the soldiers are using other firearms or even cold weapons.

Here, the reason why we want to list the bird guns for analysis is actually very simple, the bird guns are the most advanced arquebuses, compared with the traditional arquebuses, there are the most mature arquebus period firearms technology and technology.

The corresponding actual characteristics obtained should be shown in terms of accuracy and power, which is to truly enlarge the range of combat to a distance of about 100 meters in the medium and long-distance combat, which is the first sign before entering the new era of weapons, soldiers no longer need to fight in close quarters, and the real tragic battle is achieved in a long-distance situation, using the most powerful and effective weapon: the musket.

Compared with the bird gun, other firearms have to be said to be a relatively backward weapon, if the bird gun is to touch the future firearms era, rifle and land combat era of the threshold, then other firearms are not even touched the threshold.

In particular, all kinds of muskets, Jiang Yugang believes that strictly speaking, it is just an exploration of the application of gunpowder technology by the original gunsmiths, and their finished products, all kinds of muskets, in the final analysis, are just some ancient gunpowder laboratories, or unrealistic crafts and experiments in the workshop, which are not enough to be applied to the real battles in the firearms era.

In an era when all kinds of cold weapons were completely used, these crafts and experimental products, with the advantage of range and ease of use, may still retain a place in a strategic sense. But in the era when firearms were really used in large quantities, there were not enough firearms other than birds.

Some people have analyzed the advantages of the Three-Eyed Gun, in terms of rate of fire and ease of use, it is more suitable for battles in the northern theater, especially between cavalry. And there are two huge problems with this analysis itself.

First of all, is the Three-Eyed Gun really superior to the Bird's Gun? This most basic judgment is inherently problematic. In terms of range, accuracy and power, the bird gun has obvious advantages over the three-eyed gun, so in terms of rate of fire and ease of use, does the three-eyed gun really have any advantages over the bird gun that are enough to produce qualitative changes?

Jiang Yugang was very suspicious of this, as far as he himself saw on the Luchuan battlefield, the use of the old-style firecracker itself was quite cumbersome, even if the bird's gun without the use of fixed-loading ammunition may be more complicated, but in the final analysis, it is only the level of fifty steps and a hundred steps.

And the so-called gap in rate of fire and ease of use is not so much the resistance of the soldiers themselves. The war in the north of the Ming Dynasty experienced many difficulties, of course, there are many reasons, and the ineffectiveness of the generals from command to training is naturally one of the important reasons.

The process of using the bird gun is complicated, but the three-eyed fire gun is equally complicated, and the choice of soldiers is not so much because of the effect of actual combat, but because of the reverse extrapolation of the actual combat effect. That is, because the use of the Bird Gun is too complicated, and its performance on the battlefield is not as good as the Three-Eyed Firegun, so the Three-Eyed Firegun is chosen.

And in this logic, there is a serious problem, that is, there is no necessary relationship between the complexity of the use of bird guns and the performance on the battlefield. Because the bird is two-sided, on the one hand, it is complex to use, and on the other hand, it also has excellent ability. The key to truly mitigating the negative impact of complex use and maximizing its excellent ability on the battlefield lies in rigorous training and the excellent organizational ability of generals.

This is also the reason why Qi Jiguang, a famous general of a generation, and many military scholars in the Ming Dynasty admired the bird gun so much: compared with the three-eyed fire gun, and other firearms that are essentially relatively backward firearms with fire gate guns, the bird gun has a higher upper limit, and this upper limit can be achieved through strict training and the command and organization ability of the generals.

To put it simply, the bird itself is strong, but the people who use it are not strong enough. Of course, this is related to many objective factors, such as improper selection of personnel, instability of the strategic environment, and so on, but the result is disastrous, that is, the substantial backwardness of firearms technology.

Perhaps on the surface, the firearms technology of the Ming Dynasty still barely kept up with the world average, because the flintlock pistol, which was not used on a large scale in the Ming Dynasty, only began to be popularized around the world in the middle of the seventeenth century, that is, after the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

But in fact, the Ming Dynasty in the arquebus, there are serious problems, although the mature arquebus technology has been mastered, but the army is really large-scale installation, or the old backward musket, the bird gun may be less than 10 percent in fact.

It's a dramatic technological backwardness, a joke played by God on the world. From Jiang Yugang's point of view, this kind of backward technology is simply absurd, as if there is a voice from heaven saying that the firearms technology of the Ming Dynasty should be backward.

Then the Ming army appeared in response to this voice, which can be called ridiculous, that is, although it is not backward in firearms technology, it can achieve the effect of backwardness through the actual equipment of firearms.

The second question is to investigate why on the northern battlefield, soldiers felt that firearms such as three-eyed guns were superior to bird guns, so they were equipped with more.