Li Xiao arranged the Tang army's soldiers and horses in the southwest in advance, which can be described as taking precautions for a rainy day, and the effect is excellent.

Sure enough, as Li Xiao expected, after Li Xiao's policy of changing the land and returning it to the river was promulgated, there were a total of more than 20 Tusi rebellions in the four provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Sichuan.

Among them, there were more than ten local big Tusi who had the most soldiers and horses, the most extensive territory, and had always disobeyed the Tang army, and almost all of them rebelled. A third of the small and medium-sized Tusi, who had originally maintained neutrality with the Tang Army and demanded that they be reclaimed within a year, rebelled. As for Xiao Tusi, who had a good relationship with the Tang Army and did not receive the order to change the land and return to the stream, the rebels did not have a family.

If it was when the Great Western Kingdom had not been destroyed, and there were still many remnants of the Ming army in the southwest, Li Xiao's measures to change the land and return to the river would not have been so drastic, but now, the southwest region has been completely pacified, and Dashun in the north has signed a peace agreement with himself. Li Xiao, who has an absolutely superior force, of course, must seize the opportunity to wipe them out.

Li Xiao immediately ordered that the soldiers and horses of the Tang army, who had already been prepared, should be dispatched immediately to exterminate the rebellious major Tusi forces.

After all, among the four provinces, the most powerful Tusi has only more than 3,000 troops, and the rest are mostly more than 1,000 people, and their equipment and weapons are also very primitive and rudimentary. Therefore, for the Tang Army, which has strong troops, elite equipment and a large number of artillery to help, this poor Tusi soldiers and horses are really not enough to stuff their teeth.

At the same time, Li Xiao also demanded that after eliminating the rebellious Tusi soldiers and horses, all his troops should be removed from the mountainous areas where they were stationed, and all of them should be distributed overseas, and then scattered and resettled in various places to completely eliminate their remnants. The land in the sky was received by the Han people of the four provinces, thus completely changing the ethnic composition of the local area and achieving long-term peace and stability.

Soon, good news came from all over the southwest like snowflakes, and the Tusi soldiers and horses from all over the country, in the face of the Tang army's advance, almost collapsed at the touch of a button, and begged to surrender one after another.

And even if there were some brave people who wanted to defend the cottage, their rudimentary precautions were vulnerable under the heavy artillery bombardment of the Tang army, and they were all quickly wiped out.

Therefore, Li Xiao, who has frequently received good news about these rebellions of Tusi, has not taken it to heart at all, and now he is focusing on a new thing in this era.

This is the Mini bullet that made a big splash in the crossing.

The historical Mini bullet was designed to solve the embarrassment that the accuracy and rate of fire of the front-loading rifled gun could not coexist. In the nineteenth century, around 1849, this problem, which had plagued the manufacture of breech guns for hundreds of years, was solved by a clever French captain Mini in a very simple way - this is the Mini round.

The so-called Mini bullet is actually a kind of expanded bottom pointed bullet. His bullet diameter is also smaller than the barrel, and perhaps even smaller than a round bullet, so that it is easy to reload and can be easily stuffed into the barrel without jamming.

The bottom of the Mini bullet is not round or flat, but leaves a conical or cup-shaped hole at the bottom of the bullet when casting, and the edge of this hole is a relatively thin lead skin. When black powder is poured into it, when the Mini bullet is pushed into the chamber, the cup-shaped hole in the bottom of the bullet will naturally cover the gunpowder.

When the rifle fires, the black powder expands rapidly, and before the bullet is advanced, it will first open the lead skin of the bottom of the mini bullet, and the bottom of the expanded mini will automatically close the barrel and bite the rifling, forcing the bullet to rotate.

That is to say, the emergence of Mini bullets solves the problem that it is difficult to reload front-loading rifled guns and the range accuracy of smoothbore guns is too low, and perfectly combines the two advantages of front-loading guns and rifled guns in the front-loading era. Front-loading guns that use Mini rounds have a normal level of rate of fire, but at the same time have the range, accuracy, and power of rifled guns.

Such improvements made the prestige and effect of the rifle surpass the artillery of the time and became the decisive weapon on the battlefield at that time. And what Li Xiao likes the most is this range - up to 300~500 yards, and the highest range is about 450 meters, which can be converted into more than 600 steps.

Until the Napoleonic period, the smoothbore artillery of that era had an accurate range of only 300 yards. In other words, infantry using Mini bullets, although they will still be severely killed by artillery when forming a dense phalanx, can get close to killing artillery within range when they are disbanded into small straggler formations. This characteristic led to a dramatic transformation in the design of the artillery, and rifled guns began to appear, and after the Crimean War and the American Civil War, smoothbore guns were kicked out of the battlefield in one fell swoop, so that rifled guns completely replaced smoothbore guns.

In fact, the power of Mini bullets is more than that. The result of its emergence was a direct force to completely dissolve the dense phalanx of infantry and dense linear formations of the Napoleonic era.

Of course, it is just to disband the phalanx, and the straggler firing line still has to be retained, after all, this is only a front-loading gun, which must be reloaded standing and loaded, and there is only about 3 firing rates per minute, and the essence of queuing for shooting has not changed, but the lethality and killing range have increased greatly.

Before 1850 in the middle of the 19th century, whether it was the Napoleonic era, or the Gustavus era, or the Spanish phalanx era, even if European countries knew that the cannon killed and injured the dense queue was amazing, because the range of the flintlock pistol was too short, they still had to obediently line up in a phalanx to be shot. Such tactics have lasted for more than 300 years since the invention of the arquebus.

But when the Mini bullet appeared, the rifle range was increased to 500 yards in one fell swoop, which was an increase of 5~10 times. Dense phalanxes immediately become pointless - you don't have to wait for enemy artillery to bombard you in such a phalanx, and the infantry can slaughter you completely with long-range fire from Minnie rounds.

It was the appearance of the Mini bullet that made the infantry phalanx, which had stretched for 2,000 years since ancient Greece, completely withdraw from the battlefield.

Mini bullets aren't very famous, though. Because he showed up too late. The middle of the 19th century coincided with the era of great technological development. At the same time, such things as breech firing guns appeared, so the brilliance of the Mini bullet was quickly obscured.

But for now, it's the best weapon available: because the Mini is so good, it doesn't even need a machine because it requires less technology than rifling.

Generally, the casting of fire bolts is made of an iron mold and poured into molten lead to cast into a lead bullet. The mold is small enough to carry around in your pocket. Generally, the infantry is directly distributed with one of these molds and a few catties of lead, so that when the infantry is camped for dinner, they use the campfire to melt the lead to cast the bullets for the next day.

Of course, it is also feasible to make and distribute lead bullets on a large scale in peacetime, but because the lead is relatively soft, it is easy to be deformed due to collisions when placed and marched, and it is generally customary for soldiers to cast temporarily before the war.

And the Mini bullet is just changing the shape of the iron mold inside. Therefore, there is no technical level at all. And just this simple action can increase the effective range by nearly 4 to 5 times.

In fact, it's not just about increasing the range. He also increased his power and reduced the amount of gunpowder.

The reason for this is simple, when the gunpowder leaves a lot of space for the round bullets, a lot of gunpowder leaks out and is wasted, rather than being used to push the bullets. The expanded bottom of the Mini bullet can completely seal the chamber and greatly improve the utilization rate of gunpowder. As a result, gunpowder can be filled with less and have the same or even higher power.

The less gunpowder is loaded, the chamber pressure is naturally reduced, so that the new barrel can be made thinner, and at the same time, the recoil is also reduced, which is more conducive to aiming. In addition, because the Mini bullet is a sharp bullet or a long bullet, it can be made more massive than a round bullet under the same caliber. This means that while maintaining the mass and power of the warhead, the caliber can be reduced, and the barrel can be shortened while maintaining the magnification. In addition to reducing the weight of the barrel, this can also increase the penetration of the bullet to achieve a better and better killing effect.

However, Mini bullets don't necessarily need to be as heavy or heavier than round bullets. Because of the advantages of sealing and rifling, he has a higher muzzle velocity, power and range. In other words, large calibers are no longer needed, and the barrel caliber, bullet weight, and gunpowder loading can be reduced while maintaining a larger range and stronger power. And the rifle and bullets are lighter, which means that the infantry load is greatly reduced.

As for actual tactical performance, not to mention. According to the test of the Tang Army's existing flintlock Lumi gun, when its effective range is rapidly increased from 120 to 400 to 450 steps, the number of shots can be increased by nearly four times even if the muzzle velocity of the shot remains unchanged. And this means that the flintlock and dense guns that the Tang army is using now can have greater lethality and more shots, and can also have a more disparity in the possibility of confrontation, especially when fighting against cavalry.

Because for cavalry, the so-called battlefield charge is generally not all the way to the end. Given the need to maintain horsepower in order for the cavalry to get the most out of its impact, the European cavalry of the Napoleonic period generally began to prepare for the charge (unsheathed and small steps) at a distance of 200 to 300 yards from the enemy, at a brisk pace at 150 yards from the enemy, and at 50 yards when they actually began to charge at full speed. In the East, due to the relatively small size of Mongolian horses, although they have high endurance, their charging speed is relatively low, so they generally start to prepare for the charge within 50 zhang/150 meters.

And if a rifled gun with a mini bullet is used, then when fighting against the Qing cavalry, the infantry can fire at the Qing cavalry before it is ready.

And if the Clearings start charging at full speed from a distance of 500 meters, they will consume a lot of horsepower. Mongolian horses are relatively small, and cavalry needs to wear armor, so the charging distance has a great impact on the horse's physical strength. Therefore, if the new long-range rifle using Mini bullets was put into battle, it would greatly reduce the combat effectiveness of the Qing cavalry.

During the siege, the Mini rifle can even suppress the city head outside the city with crossbow machines and artillery, greatly reducing the difficulty of the siege. What's more, the armor-piercing power of Mini bullets far exceeds that of traditional round bullets. Even with a general in heavy armor, there was no way to block his shot within a hundred paces. As a result, it will be more difficult for the enemy to defend the city, and the defenders will be easier to destroy.

Therefore, after getting the news that the Ordnance Institute had developed the Mini bullet, Li Xiao was very happy and rewarded the relevant designers.

Because, its appearance can be perfectly matched with the Suifa Lumi Gun that is now equipped with a large number of Tang Army, and its range and power have been greatly improved, but it does not need to be re-equipped on a large scale, which is really a very timely and efficient new invention.

Li Xiao immediately ordered that the ordnance factory should make every effort to produce similar lead bullet castings, and then distribute them to various military towns to replace the existing lead bullet castings.

Originally, Li Xiao also wanted to be like later generations, to produce rifled guns while the iron was hot, and even invent more powerful yellow explosives to replace black powder, but considering that such work is too advanced, it is difficult to achieve the current processing accuracy and production methods. Therefore, it can only be done for the time being.

However, he still provided his own ideas to the designers of ordnance, and asked them to continue to explore at any cost and cost, hoping that in the future years, these inventions far beyond this era could be produced.

Just when Li Xiao was making every effort to supervise the production of Mini bombs, Li Guotai and Zhu Cixuan, who had quietly sneaked back from Myanmar, and a group of four people, finally came to the Sino-Burmese border after nearly a month of arduous trekking.

Seeing the Myanmar pass in front of him, Li Guotai showed a rare smile on his tired face.

It's not easy, a group of people pretending to be monks, sleeping in the open air, avoiding the avenue and taking the path, several times almost exposed, but also several times by the poisonous snake attack, fortunately the group of people take care of each other and act carefully, finally after going through hardships, came to the Burma pass to China.

Among them, Zhu Cixuan, who was only eight years old at the time, was the most difficult and difficult, but his seemingly docile and honest personality also had a strong and brave side.

Along the way, although his feet were covered with large blood blisters and ulcerated sores, this stoic child did not slow down his walking speed, and followed Li Guotai eastward in silence. This point made Li Guotai and others look at it with admiration.

Li Guotai and the others, outside the pass, hurriedly finished eating rations with the other three people, and after resting for a while, they mustered up the courage and walked slowly towards the Burmese Pass.

At this time, the Burmese Pass, because of the fighting in China, so there are very few customs clearance personnel, and only one or two people occasionally pass through the customs for half a day, and the Burmese soldiers guarding the pass are also lazy and lazy, looking bored.

As the leader, Li Guotai wanted to wait until a large number of people cleared the customs before going with them, but he never waited for a suitable companion along the way. Seeing that the sky was about to get dark, in order to prevent the Burmese soldiers from closing the gate, they had to lead only three people and risk heading towards the pass.

As he expected, as soon as they approached the pass, the Burmese soldier who was sitting against the wall and napping slightly immediately woke up, he rubbed his eyes, and shouted at Li Guotai and the others: "Stop! You four monks, where did you come from? Why do you have to go out of the country? ”

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