Although they can use trenches and fortresses to resist stubbornly, but when the pseudo-Tang thief army is also digging trenches and then killing from the trenches, they don't have much way to intercept them!

Cannonball? It's useless, most of them will only leave a mark on the ground!

Bullets, again, are of little use!

The most effective thing is the grenade!

It's a pity that the Ming army has never been equipped with many grenades, because this thing needs to consume too much gunpowder!

The Ming army was not like the Tang Army, which could continuously obtain a large amount of sulfur, saltpeter and other materials from overseas, and as long as there was money, gunpowder could be supplied almost unlimited.

But on the side of the Ming army, money can't buy it!

Saltpeter is pretty good, and the key sulfur is hard to get in large quantities!

Therefore, the gunpowder in the hands of the Ming army is still relatively precious, and the propellant used as a musket and artillery is not enough, so there is a surplus for large-scale manufacturing of grenades.

The same goes for heavy short-barreled howitzers!

Heavy short-barreled howitzers, in fact, have no technical content, and the craftsmen under Zhang Yue's hands are not dry, they can even make a nine-pound bronze cannon, not to mention the stupid big one of the heavy short-barreled howitzer, and the shell has no technical content, it can't be a hollow iron shell, which is filled with gunpowder, basically just a large grenade!

But the superintendent has tried to build a few doors, and now it is placed on the Hanyang side!

And then it stopped!

Why?

Can't afford it!

Forty-eight pounds of howitzers, just by hearing the name, you know, this thing needs to consume a lot of gunpowder, a lot of propellant, and a lot of charge for shells, as soon as this kind of artillery is fired, it is directly equivalent to throwing out a large piece of silver.

Therefore, it's not that the Ming army can't make these big guys, but because they can't afford to use them!

However, the Datang Army did not have such scruples, their military spending was much more than that of the Ming Army, although they did not dare to say that they were open, but it was still possible to ensure the ammunition consumption of the front-line combat troops.

What's more, the industrial production adopted by the Tang Dynasty also made the cost of various ordnance much lower than that of the Ming army!

For example, artillery, now, an iron-cast artillery on the side of the Tang Dynasty is very cheap!

Five-pound field artillery, the factory price is only more than two hundred taels, two-pound shotgun is cheaper, only sixty taels, three-pound shotgun is about eighty taels!

The price of bronze artillery is more expensive, but the cost price of the current main nine-pound bronze field cannon is only more than 500 taels!

The cost of all kinds of artillery in the Ming army will basically rise by 50 percent or even double on this basis!

In fact, the price of the artillery itself is not too expensive, because simply compared to the price of equipment, the price of many equipment is not cheap, for example, the assault battalion soldiers in the Datang Army are equipped, and the whole body plate armor forged from steel costs forty taels of silver for a complete set!

In the case of military horses, take Mongolian horses as an example.

The price of the second-class horses, horses, and horses of ordinary officers is about fifteen taels of silver.

The horses used by the artillery have higher requirements for horses, and the basic price needs to be twenty taels of silver.

The passenger horses used by the cavalry were the most demanding and the most expensive, basically more than twenty-five taels of silver.

As for the Central Asian horses of the First Lancer Regiment, it is impossible to specifically measure the value, because in order to arm the First Lancer Regiment, the Tang Army has spent more than 50,000 taels of silver on the introduction of Central Asian horses, and on average, each horse needs more than 100 taels of silver, but in fact, even if these Central Asian horses are tall and strong, the actual value is definitely not worth it, but there is no way, who let the Tang Dynasty not have these tall horses, it can only be imported from the Western Regions for thousands of miles, and the price needs to be very normal.

The stainless steel waist knives equipped by the soldiers of the assault battalion cost two taels of silver, and the ordinary waist knives of slightly worse quality worn by ordinary soldiers also cost one tael of silver.

The riding knife used by a cavalry is more expensive, the blade and even the handle of the blade are made of stainless steel, such a riding knife, a sword costs more than three taels of silver!

And this, that is, the cost of industrial production on the side of the Tang Dynasty, if it is placed on the side of the Ming Dynasty, not to mention whether they can equip so many weapons made of pure steel, even if they can, the price is not a few taels of silver, at least several times!

And the flintlock pistol is now stable at about five taels of silver!

The above-mentioned equipment, don't look at a lot of only a few taels or dozens of taels of silver, which seems to be very little, but in fact it is not cheap.

But although the price of these equipment is not cheap, it is still cheap compared to various consumption!

For example, in order to make a nine-pound field gun fight on the battlefield, it needs to be equipped with at least twelve horses, as well as a dozen artillery pieces, and a large amount of ammunition needs to be consumed.

The cost of maintaining the artillery, as well as the cost of combat, is higher than the cost of itself!

So if you do the math, you will know why the cost of the firearms unit is so much higher than that of the cold weapons unit!

It's not that weapons are expensive, it's that they're expensive to use!

To maintain an artillery regiment, it is simply impossible to do it without tens of thousands of taels of silver in a year, and when fighting, an artillery regiment can casually shoot shells worth tens of thousands of taels of silver!

This is tens of thousands of taels of silver, not a few taels of silver, which shows how much the firearms unit spends!

In these years, in many factories under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises of the Tang Dynasty, the workers worked tirelessly and tirelessly to get about one tael of silver a month, while the peasants worked tirelessly and tirelessly for a year, saving money and frugality, and in the end they could not accumulate one or two taels of silver.

At this time, the poor people want to save money to buy a few taels of land per acre, and they want the whole family to save money and spend many years of hard work, and there can be no accidents on the way!

Otherwise, why do you think the peasants under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, especially the landless or landless peasants, would be so supportive of the Tang Dynasty, because the Tang Dynasty issued a 'rent-for-purchase order' allowing them to buy official land and pay the land rent in installments.

Why do so many children from poor families enthusiastically join the army, every time the local recruitment station starts a year's recruitment work, countless poor children will enthusiastically sign up!

Why? Good treatment is one thing, and another very important thing is that you can divide the land when you join the army!

Today, the Tang Dynasty has issued military merit fields to more than 80,000 soldiers, all of whom have met the conditions, including serving for many years and performing outstandingly.

Moreover, everyone knows that the policy of joining the army and dividing the land cannot be sustained forever, because every year there are people joining the army, and the official land will eventually be divided.

If you want to divide the field, you can only do it in the early days from the dragon!

In fact, the Tang Dynasty did this, and for the soldiers who divided the fields, they all divided the fields in the name of Conglong, not in a specific system.

Every year, the qualified soldiers are divided into fields, which is a special order issued by Li Xuan, and it is a special gift in the name of rewarding the heroes of Conglong!

And after the reunification of the country, will this gift continue? Not likely!

However, they didn't know that Li Xuan planned to continue to play this policy, but in the future, the land divided by the military industry will not be the land in China, because it will definitely be divided long ago at that time, and he plans to obtain land abroad as a military merit field.

Southeast Asia has a lot of fertile soil!

There are countless lands in the north and Central Asia, even if it is barren, but the area is large, the quantity is enough, and it may only be given a few acres in the mainland, but in Siberia and ghost places, Li Xuan dares to directly give hundreds or even thousands of acres!

And then there are Australia, the Americas, Africa, India, there are so many terra nullius in this world!

At least Li Xuan felt that before he occupied the world, he should not worry about having no land to distribute to the soldiers!

But Li Xuan didn't say it, and he hadn't started doing it yet, outsiders didn't know, now many people are thinking, seeing that the Tang Dynasty is about to completely unify China, and want to fight for the dragon's merit and obtain the military merit field, there is only one last wave of opportunities left.

Therefore, when Xuanping recruited troops in the autumn of the sixth year, almost the entire area under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, the proportion of young and strong people who signed up to join the army far exceeded that of previous years, and it also exceeded the spring recruitment of Xuanping in the sixth year.

Zhengtai County, Xingquan Prefecture, a remote county with a population of less than 100,000, has more than 8,000 people in the army, more than half of whom are serving in the Guards.

This ratio is quite terrifying, because it means that almost every young man in the family is serving in the army!

In recent years, the first choice of almost all young people in the newly grown young generation is to join the army!

Of course, there are different ways to join the army, and the children of the landlords and gentry generally apply for the martial arts academy or the naval academy, and their goal is naturally to become an officer.

And ordinary children sign up for the army directly!

The same situation is happening in several other counties of Heungcheon Province!

Because in addition to the various original preferential treatment for serving in the army, Xingquan Mansion, as the land of Longxing, has additional preferential treatment for local children when they join the army, and this preferential treatment does not mean other aspects, but refers to the fact that once they join the army, and if they are willing, they can enter the Guards to serve!

And the treatment of the Guards is much better than that of the army and navy!

Of course, the main reason is because: almost all of the senior military generals in Datang today are from Xingquan Mansion!

At present, all the generals at the rank of lieutenant general in the military, Hao Bonian, Li Chunjing, Fang Xitong, Chen Keqiao, Lei Wan, Bao Yifen of the navy, and other individuals in the army, these famous generals in the army are all from Xingquan Mansion, and there is no exception!

And this also allows the children of Xingquan Mansion to join the army with an advantage that others do not have!

What are the advantages?

Because they and these high-ranking generals are all related to each other, even if they are not close relatives, they can definitely be related to distant relatives, even if they are not distant relatives, but they can always find relationships such as in-laws, fellow villagers, and even the same village.