Team after team of Huang Taiji's pro-army Ge Bush Xianchao Hazema rushed by, fat horses, these fierce and savage soldiers were all iron-clad and black-tasseled, with strong bows and arrows behind their backs. With a long knife hanging from his waist and a spear and halberd in his hand, all of them are neat and majestic. Their horses' hooves rumbled against the ground. It's like a torrent rolling in.

Ge Bush Xianchao Ha Battalion, is the most elite and brave warrior among the anti-thieves in Liaodong, and each Niu Lu can only choose two people. can be regarded as Huang Taiji's top heart, and only he, the emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty, has the right to use this army and horses. With the arrival of Ge Bush Xianchao's battalion, on the bank of the Hunhe River, near the official road from Shenyang out of the city, Baoyi Ahha, and the idle people had already been driven far away, and the cavalry came with a guard of honor, only daring to kneel on the ground far away and not dare to raise their heads.

After a group of Ge Bush Xianchao battalions rushed over, finally, the brigade's honor guard appeared. This time, he went out to the suburbs to read, and he put out the pomp and etiquette in the pomp and etiquette that he learned from the ceremony system of the Daming Society.

Not counting the Ge Bush Xianchao Ha soldiers who were the pioneers at the front, there were thousands of honor guards alone, all kinds of chariots, and all kinds of drum music. Then all kinds of five-color golden dragon flags, wind flags, rain flags, and Suzhou flags are over. There are countless group fans, yellow fans, square fans, peacock fans and so on. Then there are yellow covers, purple mushroom covers, cuihua covers, and yellow covers of Nine Dragon cranks, which look like huge mushrooms. What else is the golden chair, the golden bottle, the golden plate, the golden spittoon and so on. After these things are gone, there is a mighty saber minister and a ceremonial sword guard.

In the middle of the guard of honor, the five-color canopy of Huang Taiji appeared.

It is two feet high. Fang Yuan is also close to two zhang on the purple umbrella cover, embroidered with all kinds of lotus, Ganoderma lucidum, chrysanthemum, plum blossom flowers, countless silver wind chimes hanging on the umbrella cover, blown by the autumn wind, beautiful and pleasant bells ring from time to time.

Under the umbrella, Huang Taiji sat firmly on his love horse, squinting his eyes and not knowing what he was thinking. Compared to a few months in the spring, he was a little fatter at this time.

Under the brocade robe and cloak, a set of polished and maintained Nanban armor is as smooth as new, which sets off the majesty of this big fat man of more than 200 catties. There is no stupidity or stupidity.

In March. Dolgon handed over all the looted people, weapons and goods, and Zheng Zhihu and Shanxi merchants traded a large amount of grain with them near Ningyuan City, so that the Manchu Eight Banners survived the spring famine, although the price of grain was still twenty or thirty taels of silver and one stone. But at the very least. Compared with last year and the year before last, forty or fifty taels and one stone could not buy food. Or you can only buy a lot of rough and strong stuffed with countless sand, gravel, rat droppings, and bird droppings. If you have silver, you can buy food, and there will be no starvation everywhere in Liaodong.

After the autumn, from the Jinzhou front line and Xuanda everywhere. Shanxi merchants also helped transport hundreds of thousands of stone grains and rice, most of which were resold by military leaders from all over the country from their own military rations.

The theft and sale of military rations in military towns around the country is something that Hong Chengchou should be in charge of, and he Huang Taiji only has to buy food for the silver.

As long as the silver is enough, the officers of the Ming Kingdom dare to sell the ancestral tablets! This is the unanimous consensus of the Eight Banners.

The treasury was stocked with enough food for the Eight Banners to survive the winter, and Huang Taiji had the idea to go to this weapons workshop to see how his subordinates made firecrackers and how effective the firecrackers were. His next target was the more than 100,000 Ming army commanded by Hong Chengchou, the Jiliao Governor who claimed to have tens of thousands of firearms. How can you confront the Ming army if your own firearms are not good enough?

In front of the ordnance workshop, a vacant land with a radius of no less than 1,000 acres was carefully rammed into a test artillery field made of three-layer clay mixed with lime and fine sand, Ma Guangyuan, Ding Qiming, Chen Banda, Wang Tianxiang and others knelt neatly dressed and waited for Huang Taiji's car. Not far behind them, ten twelve-pounder guns and two thousand musketeers lined up in a neat array waiting for his review.

Seeing Huang Taiji riding on the Arab horse captured by Dolgon from a distance, Ma Guangyuan immediately led everyone to tear their throats and shout long live, Huang Taiji asked them to get up, and ordered Chen Banda to lead in front, he wanted to see the scene of the cannon casting, and said: "How about the cannon casting and the fire gun?" ”

In the past few months, Chen Banda's spirit has changed a lot. The unkempt appearance of the past has a new look, a cotton cloth is used as a watch, and the robe with the black fox skin inside is cut very well, and the scalp that is shaved a little blue looks very energetic.

Although Chen Banda can be regarded as a genius-level figure in military production such as casting artillery and making firearms, he is much sluggish in terms of the way of being an official and the hearts of the people in the world, and he didn't see the eyes of Ma Guangyuan and Ding Qiming that were almost on fire, so he just held Huang Taiji's horse reins and explained to him all the way.

"Back to the emperor, if the iron material is sufficient, thirty imitation Hongmaoyi twelve-pound cannons can be cast within the year. Its cannon is 4,000 catties each, 5 catties of medicine, 10 catties of iron, loaded on the gun cart, it will be able to attack and destroy the fortified city, strengthen the prestige of our country, and be sharper than the Tiancong year's 'God bless the general'! ”

"As for the firecracker system, although there is a lack of skilled craftsmen, and for many years, the craftsmen are all fighting for themselves, and they are quite unfamiliar with the current method.

After listening to Chen Banda's words, and looking at the dozens of waterwheels that kept rotating along the bank of the Hunhe River to push the stone mill, and drilled the pipes day and night, Huang Taiji was also quite satisfied.

However, as a king, he must have the power of the unforeseen in order to make the following minions happy and sincere to do things with fear.

He snorted in his mouth, expressing some dissatisfaction, which made Ma Guangyuan and the others who followed closely behind secretly happy. "The cannon cast during the Tiancong period weighs 5,000 catties, 8 catties of medicine, and 8 catties of iron. However, I have heard that the same artillery, the same cannon, why is the cannon made by the Nanban much lighter, and the most suitable for marching and attacking the city? ”

Huang Taiji's words are also to the point, and he is quite expert. Artillery, in addition to power, must also consider mobility, the kind of magic cannon that is placed on the head of the city, which is claimed to be able to erode ten miles with one cannon, is not what he wants. What he wanted was artillery that could accompany the soldiers and horses of the Eight Banners to march like a storm. Whether it is a siege or a field battle, it requires extremely mobile artillery.

"Back to the emperor, the ministers and others were puzzled about this matter, the same Hongyi cannon, the cannon, and the medicine are the same, but why the Nanban system is much lighter than my Daqing. I don't know what kind of material this generation used to forge cannons. ”

At this time, the whole world cast artillery, nothing more than these two materials. One is the use of copper. The second is the use of iron. While the countries of the European continent used to cast their cannons in copper, the English had to use iron to cast their cannons because of the lack of copper ore on the islands.

China is also a country lacking copper resources. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as minting coins with copper. Copper is expensive. Cast iron cannons must be used as a last resort. In order to prevent the bore, it was necessary to thicken the gun body, so that the gun body was very heavy, as was the case with the Hongyi 12-pounder gun. The cannon weighed 4,000 catties. It's very cumbersome and hard to walk. But. Compared with the Hongyi six-pounder cannon used in some Ming troops, there are actually three thousand catties, which is already a lot of progress. Although it is still not conducive to fighting with the army.

"According to the ministers and other princes and soldiers who conquered the Ming Kingdom in the south, it seems that the cannons used in the Southern Barbarian Army are made of the so-called nine-turn steel, and there are still many such artillery in the Ming army that confronted our Qing soldiers in Jinzhou. The minister planned to send someone to spy on one or two, in order to get a glimpse of the secret of cannon casting. Ma Guangyuan finally found an opportunity to speak behind Huang Taiji's buttocks, and couldn't wait to attribute the credit to his own name.

"The ministers also planned to buy some nine-turn steel to cast artillery, but for some reason, this thing became extremely brittle after smelting, and I don't know how Nanban cast it. And the price of nine turns of steel is high and rare, and the minister intends to try to cast wrought iron. ”

The 10 twelve-pounder guns lined up in front of the test range were made of wrought iron. Although in the hearts of everyone, wrought iron cannot be used for casting, but Chen Banda and others have cleverly adopted the process of building.

The iron bars are melted and gradually rotated into a circle. The cannon cast with wrought iron is much lighter than the cannon body cast with pig iron, but how much iron can be saved is not something that Chen Banda dares to test at this time, but these guns with thin barrels and wide breeches in front of them are shining with bursts of blue light, which looks very lovable. This kind of wrought iron cannon is extremely smooth in the chamber, which makes the shell reload very fast. And there is no worry of exploding, and the loaded shells can also be very large. Unlike artillery made of cast iron, there are many honeycomb astringencies inside, which are difficult to shovel and grind, and the shells are slow to fire.

Patting the sturdy gun body gun mount, looking at the wide vehicle used to tow the artillery forward, and measuring the caliber of the muzzle with his hand, Huang Taiji was very satisfied. Turning to Chen Banda and the others, he asked, "With such an artillery, can the cannon be universally used?" The caliber of this kind of cannon is relatively consistent, what means are used to cast it? ”

This time, Chen Banda did not steal the limelight from Ding Qiming, and let the former deputy general of the Beijing camp of the Ming Dynasty, who was captured by Huang Taiji and others on the military array, come out and play the right role.

"In the past, craftsmen's workshops used the method of lost wax to cast cannons, and if the weather was hot, the wax material was not easy to condense, and it was often limited by the season. The method of easy mud casting of Chen Si, the cannon mud fan can be dried in April, and the mold mud can be beaten away, which is not limited by the weather. ”

Nowadays, it seems that this clay model method is very primitive and backward, but you must know that in Europe, from the 16th century until the Opium War, artillery casting was made by the clay model integral mold casting method, or the lost wax method. Only after the Opium War, after the emergence of boring machine lathes and other machinery, lathe cutting casting method was adopted. Therefore, Gong Zhenlin's iron mold casting method, which is admired by many people, can be regarded as very advanced.

Huang Taiji knocked on the cannon barrel and made a crisp sound, but it was not from wrought iron. If you look closely, the gun body is presented with two layers, inside and outside. The inner layer is made of wrought iron, but the outer layer is made of pig iron!

"Your Majesty is wise! This kind of casting method is exactly what Chen Beiyu proposed! ”

The technique used by Chen Banda is the double-layer casting method widely used in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the internal use of wrought iron, the use of wrought iron with low hardness but high toughness, the outside is the use of cast iron, optimistic is the advantage of high hardness but brittleness of cast iron, the combination of the two has become the situation of inner toughness and outer rigidity of the barrel, which greatly improves the mechanical properties of the iron cannon. With the same wall thickness and the same material, the tube can withstand more pressure.

In addition, it also greatly improves the utilization rate of the outer cylinder metal and improves the limit of the elasticity of the body tube, which has great benefits for the artillery charge and firing range. However, there is always a good and a bad in everything. That is, the cost is high and the process is complex.

I heard Chen Banda, Ma Guangyuan, Ding Qiming and others finish talking. Huang Taiji didn't say much, but ordered them to test fire the ten Hongyi 12-pounder cannons that had been released.

Chen Ban was in great spirits, and was about to order the craftsmen in the armory workshop who were responsible for testing the artillery to prepare. However, the gunners of the Wuzhen Chaoha battalion were in accordance with Huang Taiji's order, and they were ready to start shooting. Seeing this scene, they couldn't help but feel the same hatred for the enemy again, although they couldn't get used to this Chen Banda who rose overnight from their hearts, but this guy had a bit of ignorance about the world, except for casting artillery to make firecrackers, it seemed that his IQ for other things was very low, and it was not a problem to think about it. But Kong Youde of the Wuzhen Chaoha Battalion is different.

But. Fortunately, these cannons were carefully cast by Chen Banda and others. After the test of gunpowder explosion, there was no damage to the gun body or the explosion of the muzzle. It has nothing to do with us and other cannon makers! It can only be said that you are not skilled! ”

The gunners stuffed a shell weighing ten pounds into the chamber. The cannon commander used his moment to measure the hundreds of straw man targets listed in the distance. After a slight estimate of the distance, the gunners were told to smash the shell into the firing position and insert the fuse through the ignition. He checked the muzzle elevation angle again, and aimed the gun at the imaginary Ming army formation.

"Fire!"

Kong Youde, who was named the king of Zhongshun after defecting from Dengzhou, personally waved the order flag and gave the order to shoot at these old gunners he brought out from Dengzhou. The gunners waved the torches in their hands and lit the fuse, only to hear a "boom", and the entire artillery body was pushed back quickly by the huge recoil.

If it was usual, the recoil should at least push the cannon that was simply placed in a wheeled gun carriage and had not built a gun emplacement, at least more than a foot back, but Huang Taiji was pleasantly surprised to find that the cannon only retreated from the barrel, and the squeaky and dumb groaning of a certain metal device on the gun carriage was compressed, but it never retreated so much.

The cannonballs quickly fell in people's field of vision into the hundreds of straw man formations, knocking those straw men to the ground and quickly igniting the fire.

The gunners of the guns did not bother to express their novelty at this scene, and quickly pushed the guns back into place. A gunner dipped the wool ejector in the water and then used it to clean the chamber to ensure that there were no sparks in the chamber, and the gunner ordered a gunner to block the gun's fire door with his thumb to prevent the explosion of gunpowder caused by the burning particles left over from the previous shot, and then smashed the gunpowder and shells back into the firing position, leading everyone to prepare for shooting.

Two rounds of twenty shells razed the Ming army formation composed of hundreds of straw men to the ground. In everyone's sight, only puffs of green smoke and occasional flames swept up by the autumn wind were left.

"Good!"

The Qing army officials who lined up to watch the bronze grade mountain according to their respective grades also let out a cheer like thunder. If such artillery fire is used to bombard the Ming army in the field, I am afraid that the Ming army will have already collapsed, at least hundreds of people, and I am afraid that thousands of people will run away and even lose their shoes.

"Chen Banda, what is this?" Duoduo stepped forward, touched the slightly hot muzzle, and pointed to the metal device connected to the gun carriage at the end of the barrel with some curiosity.

"Prince Huiyu, this thing is called a spring." Chen Banda respectfully saluted Duoduo.

"Spring? What's the use of this thing? ”

"Speaking of this, the ministers have to thank the prince a lot!"

In the process of imitating flintlocks, after using the original spectroscopic method to test the size standards of the fired guns, Chen Banda and others had a headache because of the spring.

Therefore, in addition to ordering the craftsmen to work around the clock to develop, Ma Guangyuan and others mobilized their personal connections to find dozens of Ming officers and soldiers captured in the south from the two white flags and the blue flag of Jierharang.

On one side is a generous coin, and on the other side is whip torture. These former Ming officers and soldiers who had come into contact with the firearms of the Nanyue army or had dealings with the Nanyue army searched for dry intestines one after another, and contributed the fragments of knowledge about the various firearms of the Nanyue army in their memories about the equipment of the Ming army.

"It turns out that the Southern Barbarian Army has sharp artillery, and this thing called a spring is also a meritorious man!"

Although he knew the huge role of this spring on the gun, Ma Guangyuan was helpless. For a while, I could only keep figuring out and copying.

Without nine turns of steel, Chen Banda and others could only use brass and wrought iron for trial production. The copper wire was used to make the springs used in the firebolts, and the wrought iron bars were used to make shock-absorbing springs for artillery.

Although it has gradually been figured out that whether it is copper wire or iron bar, just burn it red and soften, and then evenly coil and wrap it around the stone pillar to get a decent spring, this force, which is also a term we are familiar with: what kind of elasticity coefficient should be controlled, is a difficult problem.

However, compared with the Ming army, the Qing army's investment in the military industry can be said to be bloodless. Moreover, Chen Banda and others are only constantly conducting small-scale experiments, and the consumption is not very much.

After months of contemplation, day and night, the ministers finally made a spring, which was used to make a cannon. Don't forget to dig wells, these minions are captured by the prince when he enters the customs, don't the ministers want to thank the prince? ”

Looking at Ma Guangyuan's smug face, Duoduo couldn't wait to pick up the horsewhip and greet him with his stinky face, but Huang Taiji was on the side, but he didn't dare to make a mistake.

"In the future, if you enter the customs and arrest the Han barbarians, you must ask this king Haosheng clearly, what he is doing, what will he do! Anyone who can forge cannons, make guns, or any kind of craft, shall not be let go of this king!" That night, in the palace of Prince Yu, dozens of Niu Lu Zhangjing knelt in the palatial hall, their bodies covered with whip marks.

After watching the ten twelve-pounder guns fire two rounds, the earth-shattering salvo made Huang Taiji quite satisfied.

"Prince Rui, you told me that day that the Southern Barbarian Army's tactics of war were nothing more than artillery bombardment, and then the fire guns stepped forward and the platoon guns fired a volley?"

"Back to the emperor, when the minions fought against the Southern Barbarian Army, the Southern Barbarian Army was like this. After two rounds of volleys from the whole army's gunners, taking advantage of the slight confusion of our army, they stabbed like a forest with their guns. ”

Dolgon is not as sharp as his younger brother Dordor, and he has all the feelings on his face, but he is unusually respectful and bends down to echo Huang Taiji.

"Respectfully to the king, I made a decree on the same day, ordering you to drill the soldiers according to the Southern Barbarian warfare described by Prince Rui, and you will demonstrate it to me and all the banner lords and princes today!"

Kong Youde's 2,000 firearms had already been lined up, and many of these people were his old acquaintances in the Liaodong Ming Army or people with some incense roots. These people were dressed like the Manchurian banners, except that they were armed with firearms, swords hanging from their waists, and their bodies were draped in uninlaid iron cotton armor.

The gunpowder in his hand is a flintlock gun carefully made by the ordnance workshop in recent months, although the gunpowder used is not made with copper oxide from Nanzhong, but it is also carefully made granular gunpowder.

The caliber of the fire gun is basically the same, fifty steps can also break the iron armor, and a hundred steps are also very lethal to the unarmored soldiers. (To be continued......)

PS: The Qing army also began to develop its own military industry on a large scale and organize specialized firearms troops, what kind of impact will this have on the balance of power between the Ming and Qing dynasties and the pig's feet in the future?