As one of the four great inventions of our country, gunpowder was used in actual artillery combat soon after it came out. In the battles at the end of the Tang Dynasty, the ring-shaped gunpowder bag was used as a lethal firearm to show its prominence on the battlefield.

Of course, the so-called artillery in the Song Dynasty was not the tubular artillery of later generations, but was actually similar to today's explosive packs, which were thrown by human stone throwers (cannons).

The earliest surviving artillery in the world is a bronze cannon from the Tangut Kingdom (1038-1227), founded by the Dangxiang clan in northwest China. By the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, that is, the era of the heroes of Liangshan, due to the application of actual combat, some arms experts had a better understanding of the properties of black powder, and they packed black powder into paper tubes and made it into an incendiary weapon: "flying fire".

Because a powder wire is installed in the "flying fire", igniting the powder line can ignite the gunpowder and cause the paper tube to explode. If this "flying fire" is projectile into the enemy's battle formation with a stone thrower (gun), the power generated by the explosion of gunpowder will cause great damage to the enemy. Because after this firearm is fired, it is accompanied by the sound of explosions flying in the air, and the so-called "ghosts and spirits are sad where the smoke and clouds disperse", and "thunder and thunder gallop in the sky" are like thunderbolts exploding in the clear sky, so they were also called "thunderbolts" at that time.

Later, when the soldiers of the Southern Song Dynasty fought against the Jin soldiers, they used this firearm to kill and burn a large number of enemies. In the famous Yue Fei's "Tiefu Map", there is the credit for the use of "Thunderbolt Cannon". Liu Qi, a famous anti-gold general, once had a poem:

"A thunderbolt was like a thunderbolt, and thousands of waves agitated the fish and dragon. The sound of piercing clouds and cracking stones is gone, but the evil is driven away and the righteousness is returned. ”

At the head of the city, Ling Zhen was also in a good mood when he watched the officers and soldiers being hit by their own artillery.

"You're looking at these stone bullets, this is an ordinary solid one, this is a thunderbolt bullet, this is a sub-mother bullet, the sub-mother bullet is a large number of small broken stones tied together with a bamboo cage, and there is a name called Rain of Flowers when they are launched."

"Finally, look at this, this is today's finale, the biggest cannon today, few people in the whole Song Dynasty will do it, the seven-tip wind and fire cannon."

Ling Zhen held the cannon rack, his eyes full of tenderness, as if the cannon was his own child.

However, these seven cannons are majestic enough, they can have three zhang high, and the length of the seven cannon poles is almost two zhang seven or eight at the top, one end is long and one is short, and each cannon tip has the thickness of the bowl mouth. There are also dozens of thick ropes attached to the short side, which are obviously used to pull and charge the cannon.

Wang Lun has roughly read the "General Essentials of the Martial Arts" sent by Uncle Zhang, which contains the record of these seven cannons, but the production method is not very detailed, as for the casting skills, it is just rough, obviously it is a craftsman like Ling Zhen who left a private interest.

The Liangshan Flamethrowers shouted and began to pull the rope, there were more than 180 people, shouting the trumpet and pulling the rope back like a tug-of-war, and one of the Flamethrowers seemed to be the competent artillery operator, controlling the artillery in front of him, and monitoring the bending of the cannon tip at the same time. Interestingly, the trumpet has been replaced with a new good song.

"The ...... of the great river," the leader shouted, "O flow eastward." "Everyone answered." The stars in the sky ......"

"Join Beidou." I don't know if it was spontaneous by Minions or arranged by Ling Zhen.

Wang Lun regretted a little that he had passed on this song to Lehe.

Ling Zhen also introduced: "These five wind and fire cannons can fire up to sixty catties of stone bullets, and now in order to achieve the longest shot, only the smallest stone bullets are used. ”

It seemed that it was not easy to fire the artillery, and more than 180 people wasted their strength for a while, and the main gunner shouted that there was a shout, and I saw that the five cannon tips were bent like a full bow and full of strength, and the cannon hand swung away with a knife to cut off the rope that held the other section of the cannon pin.

I only heard the sound of the wind, the five cannon tips hung with the sound of the wind, bounced up violently, flipped in the opposite direction, and the leather pocket containing the stone bullets in mid-air took off the sliding hook, opened, and a two-pound large pebble crossed a curve, and flew out with a "buzz". Due to inertia, the cannon tip below turned over and smashed on the ground on the other side, and with a bang, even the ground felt like it was shaking.

Immediately there was chaos in the ranks of the officers and soldiers below, and the soldiers walked everywhere.

Hu Yanzhuo watched the city for a long time, and also knew that Liangshan was now strong and strong, and his morale was strong, and he could not win easily. It is also the power of artillery, which makes people unguardable.

"General Shan Tinggui led his soldiers to extinguish the fire, Peng Qi led people to be careful of the sneak attack of Liangshan, and everyone slowly retreated......"

Seeing that nothing could be done, Hu Yanzhuo planned to temporarily withdraw from the army and preserve his strength.

The Liangshan Flying Flames looked at the position of the first cannon and began to adjust the position of their artillery frames, some people adjusted the angle, and some moved the position of the cannon.

At this time, Wang Lun asked Ling Zhen: "How is this accurate, and what is the mystery?" ”

Ling Zhen said: "The artillery bullet is light, the distance of the rope is large, the hair is far, the specific artillery is different, can only rely on experience, so the skilled artillery is the most rare, that is, I am also familiar with the launch of seven or eight of the cannons." ”

Wang Lun knew that this was the reason for the poor accuracy of the trebuchet, until the Ming Dynasty used red-coated cannons in later generations, there was still such a problem, there was no accurate data for firing, it was completely based on experience, and it often happened that some soldiers had red eyes, and filled too much gunpowder in order to fight far for power, and the result was a blow up.

In fact, the Portuguese who taught artillery also had such a problem, but they made a scale for each type of red-coated cannon through statistics, which were a reasonable conversion of the amount of ammunition, the amount of artillery shells and the firing distance, but although the Portuguese also provided this scale to the Ming Dynasty, they did not tell the soldiers what it was used for, and as a result, the performance of the cannon was reduced, and it is not clear what impact this had on the history of the last years of the Ming Dynasty.

Although it could not be compared to the scene of 10,000 artillery guns firing at the same time in modern warfare, it was also like a huge thunderbolt, and rocks were flying sideways, and some of the shells were still carrying fire, marking a trail of smoke in the air.

Zhu Biao and Dong Ping over there were miserable, they were taken care of. Although there were not many shells, they were all big rocks, and they would die next to each other, and there was a cry of dad and mom in the camp.

This was the first time that the heroes of Liangshan faced the powerful power of the hot weapons of modern warfare. But, unfortunately,

After Ling Zhen was later captured by Liang Shanbo and returned to Shun, his skills were not further developed, and thus became popular. Therefore, the "thunderstorm" has actually become a stuffy cannon.

Ling Zhen's seat was actually ranked fifty-second after the "Golden Leopard" Yang Lin. Later, during the conquest of Fangla, when conquering many lofty mountains and dangerous passes, Ling Zhen's artillery could not show its might, resulting in the lives of many heroes of Liangshan in vain.

The reason for this tragedy lies in the somewhat conservative peasant mentality of the subjective understanding of sophisticated weapons.

In Wang Lun's mind, it may be that in the era of cold weapons, those heroes who were born as peasants paid more attention to their personal strength and bravery, rather than the content of science and technology in battle. For example, in those scripts, the battle scenes are mostly composed of one-on-one duels between military generals.

The skills and abilities of one or a few people often determine the outcome of a big battle. Or it is to use the art of war and fight in formation.

In fact, this kind of battle pattern with strong heroism can only happen in romance. Imagine that if people like Ling Zhen were to be in the limelight, then the war in China would really turn into a bloody massacre, and thus lack a wonderful artistic effect.