When Li Ming's team arrived near Zhengzhou, the infantry of the Qing army encountered more than 2,000 infantry, and more than 500 cavalry, all of which were cold weapons, and more than 6,000 musketeers of three regiments fired their guns towards the dense infantry, and people kept falling, Li Ming held a musket and a cavalry, and the cavalry who walked was defeated and retreated, and their morale was low, and soon these infantry were defeated by Li Ming's musket team, most of the men and horses retreated, and the position left hundreds of corpses and fled, and the team quickly left the road after cleaning the battlefield, and fought more than a dozen battles large and small, Although the soldiers lack combat experience, it can be regarded as touching the battlefield, 15 days later, Li Ming's team arrived at the periphery of Chongqing, immediately entered the territory of Yunnan, and the Qing soldiers behind also followed, this road is full of hardships, and then we have to face a big war, facing the heavy encirclement and suppression of the Qing army, Li Ming then led the musket team into the mountains to repair, the nearby village heard that the rebels continue to join the Boxer Rebellion, Li Ming is also in the back of the mountain secretly established a military factory, he personally drew and designed bullets, long guns, short guns, now the musket power is not enough, Li Ming directly upgraded and modified the Qing army's musket into a rear-loading gun, the drawings came out, Brother Liu spent money to find someone to find a craftsman to do, and everyone worked together to finally get the first rear-loading gun on the drawings, and the old Liu Tou as an engineer, Liu Tou was quite experienced in the firearms battalion during the Ming Dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang, and when it came to the Ming Dynasty firearms, I had to praise Zhu Yuanzhang's strategic vision was quite high, and Zhu Yuanzhang's understanding and manufacturing of firearms during the period was not much different from Europe, because Zheng He went to the West to actively open up to the outside world. So the Ming Dynasty was no stranger to Europe's understanding. It is precisely because of Zhu Yuanzhang's emphasis on firearms that the manufacture and use of firearms during the Hongwu period in the early Ming Dynasty was in an absolute leading position in the field of weapons in the world at that time. An important individual weapon of the Ming army - the three-eyed gun

As early as 1363, during the Battle of Poyang Lake, Zhu Yuanzhang's army used a lot of firecrackers and torches. Firearms, a thing invented by the Chinese, were thoroughly equipped into the army, although the power of firearms was quite limited, but the Ming Dynasty firearms developed rapidly, including the magic gun, the big general iron cannon, the second general iron cannon, the big general copper cannon, the small general copper cannon, the god gun, the big bronze Buddha machine, the god cannon, the flying cannon, the copper gun, the iron gun, the horse franc machine, the divine arrow, the iron Xuanfeng cannon, the tassel cannon, the iron Buddha machine, the iron three cannons, the bowl mouth cannon, the small god cannon, the iron tribulus terrestris, the new equipment is the Nine Dragon Pan Gun, the Iron Whip Gun, the Rocket Gun Gun, the Mother and Child Cannon, and the Red Cannon, rockets, etc.

Zhao Shizhen, a firearms expert in the Ming Dynasty, invented the electric switch

There are three main categories of firearms in the Ming Dynasty from their classification:

The first type is the firecracker and the bird's gun, which are lit by hand. Its shape and caliber are small, generally filled with lead bullets and iron bullets and other things, the range of ten to three hundred steps, by the breech, the medicine chamber and the tail hammer three parts, can be called the number one firearm in the Ming Dynasty.

In the thirteenth year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang formulated the proportion of weapons equipped with weapons in the national guard army, "100 households, 10 guns, 20 swords, 30 bows and arrows, and 40 guns", and the army's armament rate in the early Ming Dynasty reached 10%.

Copper guns made by the "Baoyuan Bureau".

The earliest Ming Dynasty fire gun found today is a copper gun made by the "Baoyuan Bureau" in the fifth year of Ming Taizu Hongwu. The length is 44.2 cm, the diameter is 2.2 cm, and the weight is 2 catties and 12 taels. The earliest fire gun came out of the Yuan Dynasty, decades earlier than the West, and the fire gun was the most commonly used in the Ming Dynasty.

The most commonly used firearm in Qi Jiguang's army - the tiger squat cannon

During the Yongle period, the Ming Dynasty set up the "Shenji Battalion", which was second to none in China and even in the world at that time. The Shenji Battalion is one of the three major battalions of the Beijing Army founded by Yongle in the Ming Dynasty of China, and it is also the earliest firearms unit in China. 1,000 horses; artillery 400 people; A total of 5,000 officers and soldiers. Armament with firearms: 3,600 boom guns; 9,000 pounds of combined medicine; 900,000 lead weights; Dalian Pearls and Arrows 200; 675 kg of combined medication; 400 bars; 160 generals.

Ming Dynasty firearms - the Great General Cannon

The second category is artillery with a large caliber and shape that is fired on a mount. As early as the Yuan Dynasty, the army was equipped with metal guns that fired iron projectiles with a caliber of more than 20 mm, thus giving birth to the earliest artillery in China.

In the Ming Dynasty, Qiu wrote the "University Yanyi Supplement", which recorded: "Today's system, with copper or iron as a tool, such as a cylinder, in the real medicine, and with a stone to plug its mouth, bypass a line, with fire", "also known as it, also known as the gun".

Most of the barrels are filled with stones, lead, iron, etc., commonly known as "solid bullets", and a few are loaded with explosive pellets, the advantages are that the barrel is long, the pipe wall is thick, the caliber is large, and the firing range is generally hundreds of steps to two or three miles away. During the Jiajing period, Qi Jiguang founded the Che Cavalry Battalion in Jizhen Town, Northern Xinjiang: there were more than 3,100 officers and soldiers in the Che Battalion, 256 Franc machine guns, and 8 generals; Each battalion has 128 chariots, each chariot is equipped with 2 Franc machines, 4 bird guns, 4 rocketeers, and an average of one artillery per 12 soldiers. The cavalry battalion has about 2,700 officers and men, and is equipped with 60 tiger squat guns. It is mainly used for fortification and siege, and is also used in field, water and naval battles. Obviously, the reason why artillery was developed in the Ming Dynasty was because of its large-scale use and large-scale technology imported from the West, which has been in a constant stream.

Various artillery pieces of the Ming Dynasty

The explosive "**" of the third type of Ming Dynasty was already quite developed. According to a large number of historical facts, China is the first country in the world to invent and use "**".

"Ming History Chronicle: King Yan Raised Troops" records that during the battle of Baigou River in the second year of Jianwen, "firearms were hidden in the ground, and people and horses encountered them, and they were rotten". The early ** structure is relatively simple, mostly stone shells, built-in**, sealed and buried in the ground after inserting the fuse, when the enemy approaches, the fuse ignites and detonates**. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the thunder shells were mostly cast in iron, and the fuses were also improved. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, all kinds of ** came out one after another.

Stones from the Ming Dynasty**

Specifically, there are two categories: one is **, with a wide variety, including dozens of stone mines, ceramic mines, pig iron mines, etc.; The other category is **, which has weapons such as underwater mines, underwater dragon king cannons and mixed river dragons.

The above three types of weapons and equipment can be seen that in order to consolidate the border defense and resist the invasion of foreign peoples, the rulers of the Ming Dynasty attached great importance to the country's armament, and paid special attention to firearms and firearms. At the bottom of such history, the first and highest artillery of the Ming Dynasty developed rapidly, and the early Ming Dynasty was at its peak. A relatively complete record of the Ming Dynasty's historical books on the first variety, such as "Fire Dragon Artifact Formation", "Wu Compilation", "Military Record", "Wu Bei Zhi", "Fire Dragon Sutra", "Western Law Divine Machine", "Fire Attack Essentials", others such as "Ji Xiao Xinshu", "City Guard Strategy" and so on.

Pig Iron Thunder during the Ming Dynasty **

The development of history is also inevitable in chance. The decline of the ancient Chinese military has never been only the backwardness of technology, but also the corrupt system behind it and the arrogance of the people in their hearts.

The founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty - Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty

History of the Ming Dynasty. "Bing Four" "Xuande five years, Tan Guang, the chief military officer of the Xuanfu: "Shen Gong, the country is important, in the border fort, the amount is given to strengthen the army, do not give it lightly." "In the sixth year of orthodoxy, the border generals Huang Zhen and Yang Hongli were placed in Xuanfu Dushi. The emperor made firearms externally, fearing that the transmission of habits would leak and stop it. "Ming Huidian. Firearms "Seven years of orthodoxy, Miyun played a large number of discussions, and halved to give" "Jingtai five years ordered the garrison officers everywhere to adopt miscellaneous wooden sharp arrows ** drills, in close guards, not to leak the French style. Violators will be punished severely. ”

The Ming Dynasty was established by Zhu Yuanzhang and lasted for more than 300 years, and after the Ming Dynasty became the ancestor due to various reasons of the leadership, the prosperity of the era turned sharply, and the rulers affected their rule due to the leakage of firearms technology, and had a negative attitude towards the army's firearms.

From the 16th to the 17th century, the firearms technology of Europeans had caught up behind, and its forging technology, production efficiency, and lethality had surpassed that of the Ming Dynasty of the same era. The Ming Dynasty became farther and farther away from the world's advanced level, withdrew from the world's advanced ranks and gradually declined