Soon after the shelling stopped, Jiao Muhua quickly gathered his men and horses, and Bai Liyan asked people to return to the camp to measure the number and landing point of the projectiles.

It was roughly found that there were more than 270 projectiles, but in fact there should be more than 350, and the nearest one was measured to fall on the shore, and the farthest one was 320 paces away from the shore and hit the center line of the camp. This means that the maximum firing range of the Jinxuedi artillery is one and a half miles, and the others are generally only one mile, and there are even cases where they fall into the water.

The projectiles vary in size, the big ones are seventeen or eighteen catties, and they shoot the farthest, the small ones are six or seven catties, and there are thirteen or fourteen catties, all of which are pig iron projectiles, not copper or lead pellets.

"My lord, it's only been less than half an hour, Jin Xuedi people have thrown more than 4,000 catties of iron, if this is a day and night, there will be no 100,000 catties of iron balls on the head of our army, my Xianguo ten years ago, I am afraid that it will not produce 100,000 catties of iron a year." Jiang Jie said angrily that the feeling of being oppressed by the enemy's lead for the first time made him a little uneasy.

Bai Liyan looked at the projectile on the ground, his face was solemn, and he thought of more at this time.

"Don't panic, that's all they can do. We'll have it in the future, and we'll shoot farther than they do. Go, send people to send orders to all the armies and battalions along the coast, not to take half a step back, and to dig trenches and cat's ear holes on the spot to avoid shelling. The veteran soldiers of the Xian army chose a place with a wide field of vision to build field fortifications along the coast, and the trick of the Jin Xuedi people could not frighten the general. ”

"No!"

Bailiyan was not worried about the danger of artillery, at least until the appearance of charge fragmentation shells, grenade shotguns, and explosive shells, the power of solid projectiles was limited to blunt weapon killing, and did not have substantial large-scale explosion radius killing. What worries Bai Liyan is the extent to which the firearms of the princes' alliance have been developed over the past few years.

In the afternoon of the same day, the Jinxuedi carried out a second shelling, which lasted longer, and pushed the artillery directly to the shore, with a total of 46 guns of three calibers, large and small, which could be clearly seen almost with the naked eye across the river.

The loader was very quick with the loading of the kits, which greatly reduced the preparation time, and the Jinshedi used the gun cart, a bulky wooden cart made entirely of solid wood, on which the cannon was inserted diagonally and pulled by a unicorn.

The largest caliber is four or five thousand catties, or bronze cannons, and the small ones are also 13,500 catties, and the heavy artillery needs to lay wooden planks when it is towed, otherwise it will fall into the soft mud of the tidal flats and be unable to move.

If the filling technique of the medicine package is enough to make the artillery team of the Jinxuedi people look like the artillery of the seventeenth century, then the filling of the chamber has a bit of the technical skills of the eighteenth century.

Regardless of whether the breech gun or the breech gun, the middle and late loading appeared, both with a rag or paper, with a pestle after the gunpowder and projectiles were sent into the chamber in order, and the rifle was blocked with strips of cloth. At first, because the firearm was moving or when the projectile fell when the gun was fired downward, the chamber was blocked with a flexible object to prevent the projectile from falling.

Later, the development of technology has further recognized the filling of the gunpowder, that is, the better the tightness of the compression kinetic energy generated by the deflagration of gunpowder, the greater the stored kinetic energy.

Jin Xuedi people use cannons to fire at a higher level than the muzzle, there is no possibility of projectiles falling at all, obviously the filling and medicine packaging filling technology, not from the actual combat, but imported technology, the source can only be the Central Plains.

The only thing that made Bai Liyan feel fortunate was that after observing for a long time, he did not find the cannon lug, and the entire cannon had a light rod throughout the body, lying directly in the gun carriage. [Note 1]

The lugs are the external structures used to hold the gun to the frame, and the cast gun is left in the gun body by casting it in one piece, and before the appearance of the gun lugs, the gun had to be transported in a bulky sports car.

After the appearance of the lugs, the guns became lighter, mounted on solid wood or semi-metal gun carriages. It wasn't until the development of metal cutting technology in the middle and later periods that the blast lugs were machined and thus fitted to wheels. At the same time, the improvement of the barrel material of the breech gun further reduced the weight of the gun, and the gun began to enter the era of light traction of mules and horses.

Although the structure of the lug is simple, the casting process is demanding.

Since the metal fluidity and casting temperature determine the final molding quality of the casting, the appearance of the gun lug also increases the casting defects of the gun lug, resulting in the direct scrapping of the gun.

Therefore, after the Jin Xuedi people found that they could not keep the cannon lugs, they cast qualified artillery, and categorically gave up copying the cannon lugs of the Changsun Kingdom and simply used the light pole cannon.

In addition, the copper cannon was eventually replaced by the iron cannon, which is the inevitable result of the maturity of a series of systematic technical systems such as steelmaking, metallurgy, materials, forging, heat treatment, cutting, etc.

Although the early copper cannon was safer than the iron cannon and the technical threshold was low, the disadvantages were also quite obvious.

If the breech gun does not have basic accuracy, the copper cannon after the heat can be fired and ignored, because there is no need to consider the accuracy at all.

In addition, gunpowder ablates copper more severely than iron, and after the advent of industrial steelmaking, the rarity of copper determines that copper is much more expensive than iron. But before the breakthrough of systemic technology, copper cannons existed for a long time, and even in the mid-nineteenth century, copper cannons were still widespread.

Two shellings a day made Mooney very satisfied, and even a little more confident that the current situation would be turned around. That night, Mooney hosted a banquet in the camp for Lodgenaka, the master in charge of cannon casting, which was the first time that Mooney had been entertained so freely since the battle with Bailiyan:

"Master Lodgenaca, I'll toast you again!"

"Thank you, Your Excellency, I've drunk too much, I'm afraid that if I get drunk, I will miss Your Excellency's military affairs tomorrow." Lodge Aka excused himself, already full of wine.

"Okay, let's not drink it." Mooney put down his glass and continued: "Master Lodgenaca, can this earth-shattering fire be built more, there are only forty-six statues, which is too few. The northerners put as many as four or five hundred large mouths of earth-shaking fires in Qianyue Mountain, and tens of thousands of small-mouthed earth-shaking fires, and His Majesty was defeated repeatedly in this sky-shaking fire. If our army can be equipped with hundreds or thousands of statues, why not set foot in the north. ”

Mooney was in high spirits, but Lodgenaka looked embarrassed, twisted his long snow-white beard, and sighed:

"Alas...... To tell you the truth, these forty-six large and small earth-shaking fires are also the best products selected from the two hundred earth-shaking fires, and the others are defective products that cannot be used. Since last year, five batches of 500 statues have been imitated one after another, and in the end only 126 statues were obtained, except for all the 46 statues of the general, the remaining 80 statues were transported to the front line. Due to the astonishing number of defects, the cost of one Heaven-shattering Fire is extremely expensive, and one hundred and twenty-six statues are still the funds urgently allocated by His Majesty. If we continue to manufacture, we may not be able to sustain our finances. ”

After the Moon God King Brenduo captured the cannon, due to the inconvenience of artillery transportation, the imitation task of the cannon was handed over to the nearby Posong Provincial College, and the famous craftsmen and masters were selected from the local area to work together to tackle the problem. Due to various reasons such as the technical span, the imitation artillery is inferior to the Central Plains Cannon in terms of range and material, and the scrap rate is extremely high. 500 bronze cannons have been cast successively, and only a quarter of the qualified products are qualified, and the cost remains high.

In fact, the larger the caliber of the cast gun, the higher the scrap rate, affected by the casting technology and the cooling of the artillery, there are a large number of invisible stresses and defects inside the casting, before the appearance of the forging cannon body, the quality of the cast cannon is very low, and the copper cannon has strong fluidity in the molten state of copper, and the yield is better than that of the iron cannon and the iron cannon.

Mooney was not happy to learn that he could not continue to expand production, but he still maintained his due demeanor, and his inner emotions were never reflected on his face, but comforted Lodgenaca:

"What Master Lodgenaka said is that I have also heard that the price of such an iron cannon made by the northerners is extremely expensive, and there must be a lot of defective products. But I don't know if there is any progress in the research of black fire powder? ”

"Oh, your Excellency, rest assured. According to the research of other masters, it has been successfully trial-produced, and the black fire powder used this time is made by the academy, and the power is equivalent to the black fire powder used by the Central Plains people. ”

"But I captured some black fire powder from the rebels, compared with the black fire powder used by our army, it is the same catty, and the power is very different, does the master know why?"

"This ...... If that's the case, maybe it's a different recipe. ”

The Jinxuedi people used coal instead of charcoal to prepare gunpowder. Of course, the basic components of coal and charcoal are carbon atoms, the difference is that the coal of Jinxuedi people is not of high quality and contains more impurities other than carbon, while charcoal and coke have higher carbon purity, and when the carbon density is higher, the power of instantaneous deflagration is higher.

In addition, Changsun Guo used a sulfur, dinitrous and three carbon formula, and Jin Xuedi people used a formula of one sulfur, one nitrate and two carbons and impurities, the former was used as a propellant, not an explosive, and the power was obviously slightly greater, but there was almost no problem, and the formula of one sulfur, two carbons and three nitrates used by Baili Yan, Mooney found that Baili Yan's gunpowder was the most powerful after comparison. [Note 2]

But something is better than nothing, and Mooney eventually accepted Lodgenaca's explanation, believing that one day he would be able to surpass the Central Plains, surpass Bailiyan, and create a more powerful weapon.

After the shelling ceased for one night after the shelling, the shelling resumed again the next morning, and after two shelling yesterday's shellings, the density of shells dropped by the shelling this morning increased markedly, and the artillery position was pushed forward by more than 10 steps. Bai Liyan immediately understood that yesterday's two test launches were a calibration of the firing boundary.

The shelling continued, and at the same time, five trebuchets and one stone sprecorn machine showed their hideous faces, and the shells flew whizzing with stones and crashing into the camp.

"General, Jin Xuedi is crossing the river, the offensive is too fierce, the morale of the new annexed army is frustrated and cannot go up, if it goes on like this, Jin Xuedi will be able to land in the afternoon."

Jiao Muhua said quickly, his forehead was already sweating profusely, Bai Liyan was also anxious, the improvised stone artillery vehicles of the coalition army could not reach the artillery positions on the east coast, and most of them were destroyed by an artillery bombardment in the early morning.

The new annex army is like a headless fly, all in disarray, scurrying around, and there is no power to parry. It is even conceivable that the first time the Jinxuedi people were attacked by the artillery of the Central Plains Army, most of them were also in the same embarrassment.

After thinking calmly for a moment, Bai Liyan immediately decided:

"Retreat a mile and a half to the west!"

"No!"

……

"Jiang Jie!"

"The subordinates are here!"

"Quickly send someone to send an order to Sikong Nan, and quickly dispatch 20,000 cavalry to come."

"No!"

The best time to counter-land is to wipe out the infantry at the beachhead of the landing, and Bailiyan will give up enough distance from the beachhead to facilitate the maneuver of the cavalry, and then the cavalry will be able to drive the landing infantry back into the water in a wave, unless Mooney dares to force the landing at the cost of casualties and smash projectiles on the heads of his own men while forcing the landing.

[Note 1] Although the lug is only an inconspicuous small structure for casting breech guns, its role and technical requirements are very high. The appearance of the cannon lug made the artillery towed from a wooden cart to a wheel frame traction, which facilitated maneuvering and transfer deployment. However, there are certain requirements for casting technology, because the casting of the lugs will bring casting defects, resulting in the scrapping of the artillery.

[Note 2] The problem of the composition of black powder, as mentioned before, gunpowder generally refers to propellant, explosives generally refers to high explosives, gunpowder can be used as explosives, but the full dose of explosives is not suitable for use as gunpowder. As for black powder, increasing the content of nitrate, you can increase the oxidant, high nitrate black powder is more suitable for explosives, and low nitrate black powder is more suitable for propellant charges, because the combustion is not sufficient. However, in fact, because the kinetic energy of black powder is small, it is not a big problem to have more nitrate and less nitrate, as long as it is not overloaded.