On this trip to Zunhua, the Portuguese envoy Svera was destined to be shocked to the point of stupidity, he was just shocked beyond words by the team outside Zunhua City to greet the holy car, and he was shocked again when he saw Zunhua City: "Oh, the cake buyer, this, this, this, this is a big city with more than one million people!" ”

A big city with more than one million people, in modern times, it is an ordinary small city, but that era is different, at that time, there are less than ten big cities in the world with more than one million people, Schwila is also well-informed, but he has seen a million big cities, including Zunhua, there are only three in total, a Jinling, a capital, and one is this Zunhua City, all of which are Ming cities!

Why did he see at a glance that Zunhua City was a big city with a million people, in fact, it was very simple, because he was still two or three miles away from the city wall, and he could see the city wall, but at such a distance, he couldn't see the bends on both sides of the city wall, which means that the city wall on this side is at least more than ten miles long, and it is not a big city of millions of people.

Entering the city wall, he was shocked again, not because there is still the old city wall of Zunhua City, the capital is also divided into inner and outer cities, and even there is an imperial city in the inner city, and there is also a Forbidden City in the imperial city, so the two-story city wall does not surprise him, what surprises him is that there are neat military camps between the inner city and the outer city! How many troops do you have to live in to fill it!

Count Svera was already shocked a little demented today, Zhu Cijiong didn't stimulate him anymore, he didn't say anything all night, and the next morning, Zhu Cijiong took a group of entourages and generals, as well as Zheng Chenggong and Shi Weila, to the city gate tower at the north gate of the outer city of Zunhua, ready to review the army's drills.

Participating in the review were Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong Army and Shi Kefa's Second Legion of the Praetorian Guard, a total of 200,000 horses, and the formation and array movement at the beginning, there is nothing to say, as long as you line up in a phalanx and walk for an hour or two every day, you can basically practice neatly and neatly in a month.

Zhu Cijiong looked at the array drill indifferently and didn't make any comments. At this time, Shi Weila began to mutter, I heard that these armies are dealing with rebels, according to European standards, the rebels are only tens of thousands at most, so many troops must be easily wiped out in the past, such a winning battle, but he can send his army of hundreds of people to help, show it, in order to win the favor of His Majesty the Ming Emperor.

With so many army arrays that couldn't finish for a while, he couldn't help but want to show his desire, ran to Zhu Cijiong and asked cautiously: "Your Majesty, I heard that your army is preparing to fight the rebels, I don't know how many rebels there are in the Ming Dynasty, do you need the cooperation of Weichen's subordinates?" ”

When Zhu Cijiong heard this, he asked curiously, "How many men do you have?" ”

Schvera said with a little pride: "I have three or four hundred men under my command, all of them elite musketeers. ”

Zhu Cijiong almost couldn't hold back his laughter when he heard this, three or four hundred people, go and Hou Jin, you are joking with me! He resisted the urge to laugh, and said truthfully: "Then forget it, although there are not many rebels in the north of the Ming Dynasty, there are three or four hundred thousand, and your three or four hundred people will not make any difference." ”

Three or four hundred thousand! Schweila's frightened face changed, what are you kidding, is three or four hundred thousand still called a rebel? The strongest country on the European continent has only three or four hundred thousand troops!

He wiped the cold sweat on his head and obediently retreated, as for sending troops to help, he didn't dare to think about it, his three or four hundred people were not enough to use as cannon fodder.

The next step is the joint drill of infantry artillery, this time Zhu Cijiong was going to bring 800 cannons in the Liaodong Reconquest, and several legions in Liaodong could not transport the cannons over because of the ice and snow blocking the road, so he simply allocated all the 800 cannons to the Tianxiong Army and the First Army of the Praetorian Guard.

It was only the first month of the year, and more than 200 cannons had been made, so the scene was not very spectacular, which did not surprise Schvera.

At the beginning, the drill was fixed-point shelling, that is, marking some circles with lime at random within a distance of a few hundred steps, and then the artillery shelled one by one, this was mainly to practice accuracy, seeing that the shells fell in a circle about two meters in diameter, Zhu Cijiong finally nodded with satisfaction. And at this time, Schvera was shocked again, why could the shells fired by the same artillery hit the circles with different distances and directions? And the adjustment of the artillery is quite fast, basically one shot every two minutes!

He really can't understand this, because the artillery at that time did not have an angle and direction adjustment system, and it was not impossible to adjust the firing distance and direction, so he had to manually push the base of the gun, and he had to put something under the barrel, and the experienced gunner could achieve the accuracy he saw just now, but the adjustment time was definitely more than five minutes, which was like the Ming artillery, and even the adjustment belt was only fired in two minutes!

He really wanted to borrow Zheng Chenggong's telescope to see what was going on, but he was afraid that His Majesty the Emperor would be unhappy, this was likely to be a military secret of the Ming Empire, and he didn't dare to investigate it casually.

In fact, Zhu Cijiong didn't feel anything great about the angle and azimuth adjustment system, you must know that the artillery of later generations can be adjusted, the worst ones are equipped with hand-cranked wheels, and there are very fine scales, as long as there are parameters for shooting Zhuyuan, just grab the wheel and shake it a few times, which is very convenient. The high-end ones are even more incredible, they are all automatically adjusted with servo motors, as long as the parameters are inputted, the barrel can be automatically adjusted in place!

In Schwila's hesitation, the exercise continued, and the next step was a combined attack of infantry and artillery, in a similar way to Zhu Cijiong's military parade in Victory Square, with a pile of wooden models placed opposite, first a burst of artillery fire, and then a wave of flintlock muskets.

Seeing the continuous barrage, Shi Vera couldn't stand still, he ran to Zhu Cijiong and asked in surprise: "Your Majesty, how can the rate of fire of this musket be so fast?" How could it be, neither the Dutch nor the British muskets were so fast! ”

Zhu Cijiong said calmly: "Let's look at the drill first, and we'll talk about it when the drill is over." ”

When Schvera heard this, he had no choice but to retreat, and the exercise continued.

But the next drill scared even Zhu Cijiong, what are you doing? On one side were a hundred cannons and thousands of spearmen, and on the other side were tens of thousands of cavalry! These shells and bullets don't have long eyes, and if you really use cavalry to charge, it's not a heavy casualty!

Seeing that the two sides were assembling and there was a great tendency to attack each other, Zhu Cijiong couldn't sit still, he stood up suddenly, and shouted: "Lu Xiangsheng, what are you doing?" This is not a real battlefield, and many people will die if you arrange it like this! ”

When Lu Xiangsheng on the side heard this, he hurriedly ran to Zhu Cijiong and saluted respectfully: "Your Majesty, the cannonballs and bullets are specially made, and they can't kill people." ”

Zhu Cijiong asked in surprise: "Special, what's the difference?" ”

Lu Xiangsheng continued to reply: "Your Majesty, the cannonballs are all egg-sized stone bullets, and the bullets are hollow, so they can't kill people at all. ”

Nima, can't you just die? Zhu Cijiong said angrily: "That's not good, if you're not careful, you will be seriously injured or even disabled, if you do this, how many people do you have to reduce at a time, do you practice like this?" ”

Lu Xiangsheng continued to explain: "The emperor can rest assured that the cavalry and war horses are wearing new double-layer armor and are also equipped with new shields, which will not be seriously injured, at most scratch a little skin." ”

Only then did Zhu Cijiong remember that he had already begun to manufacture new armor and shields a few years ago, which was also part of the military reform.

The new armor is actually a combination of soft armor and chain mail, before there was no punch and plate rolling machine, the manufacture of chain mail is very cumbersome, to forge the iron into a thin piece of pig iron, the difficulty can be imagined. With the punch and the rolling machine is not the same, first roll some thin steel plates, and then use the punch to punch, that speed, a day a punch can punch out thousands of pieces of chain mail armor, and thin and light strength is higher than pig iron sheets. The latter thing is even simpler, there are already two small holes in the nail piece, and then make a few rows of holes in the soft armor of cooked cowhide and sew the nail piece directly on, these ordinary civilians can do it.

The new shield is simpler, just take a thin steel plate and punch some fried scoop-style shells, and then insert a thicker wooden board inside, which is light and strong, and it is not difficult to wave it with one hand.

Thinking of the performance of these shields and armor, Zhu Cijiong finally breathed a sigh of relief, he waved his hand and sat down, signaling the exercise to continue.

Lu Xiangsheng raised his hand, the guards on the city wall waved the command flag, and the 10,000 cavalry below began to charge in a neat formation, and just rushed to about five hundred steps away from the musketeers.

The horseman immediately brought his head close to the horse's neck, and then raised his shield to protect the head of the man and the head of the horse.

After a chaotic sound of "clanging", sure enough, no one fell off their horses, but more than half of the cavalry began to take the initiative to slow down and withdraw from the battlefield. It turned out that the stone bullet was also smeared with red paint, this was a drill, if there was a key on the body that was hit by the stone bullet, you had to take the initiative to withdraw from the battlefield, indicating that you had died.

The remaining half of the centaurs just rushed to a distance of about two hundred paces from the spearmen, and the flintlock guns fired, which was not easy to block, if the front was blocked with a shield, then nothing could be seen, and if they rushed blindly, they didn't know where they would rush, so there were constantly people who were shot in the face, the nose was blue and the face was swollen, it was light, and there were a lot of people with broken heads and bleeding, and slowly most of the cavalry automatically slowed down and withdrew from the battlefield.

The musketeers retreated in waves, and when the cavalry rushed to the front row only about fifty paces, all the musketeers stood up at the same time, quickly loaded their bayonets and rushed forward, and at this time the cavalry was only a few hundred men, and they were soon surrounded by musketeers, of course, they would not really stab with bayonets, and at this point, the exercise was over.

Zhu Cijiong stood up again and said with satisfaction: "Well, very good, judging from the effect of the exercise, the Tianxiong Army can win the battle against the 100,000 Jiannu cavalry alone, continue to work hard, I hope that you can truly defeat the 100,000 Jiannu iron cavalry on the battlefield." ”

Lu Xiangsheng replied confidently and firmly: "Thank the emperor for his praise, and Weichen will live up to the emperor's trust." ”