The Protectors set up strong camps on the banks of the river, shattering the wishful thinking of the tyrants; And the decisive charge of the cavalry led by He Qiukou allowed the local tyrant to fully appreciate the combat power of the Protector Army.

Yuan Tao, the king of heaven, had to transfer thousands of elite troops who had set up ambushes along both sides of the river, which delayed time.

However, some expected hostility is the real reason why Yuan Tao, the king of heaven, was shaken:

Cavalry of the Protector Army appeared in the town of Mumen. According to the Horse Exploration Express, this cavalry force was about 100 people. After arriving at Mumen Town, they did not stay long, and then divided into two routes: one headed towards Baishan; The other is coming towards the Monsanto Stone Arch Bridge.

The stone bridge of the Enyang River is an important place for the local tyrants to block reinforcements, and of course they will focus on fortification. In this way, contacts between the two sides are inevitable.

But at this time, Yuan Tao did not convene the generals to discuss the matter as usual, he was only recruited by the general Wang Huaiyu, and the two discussed secretly for a quarter of an hour. Soon, the minions around Yuan Tao ran to the generals and waved the flag of the Chinese army:

All armies are attacking together, and there is no advance or retreat! Those who leave without an order will be killed!

But the local thug is wishful thinking, ignoring both the opponent's temperament and his own shortcomings. Before the attack of the thugs began, they were hit on the head again.

……

The short and fat tiger squeezed into the crowd of people on the official road, running out of breath. Two sturdy minions, one left and one right, ran forward with his arms between their arms.

The ordinary minions under the Earth Tiger don't have such treatment. After running for several miles, I was already tired and rolled my eyes and foamed at the mouth. These local thugs under the Dicheng Tiger had poor physical fitness and could not eat enough for a long time, so they withdrew from the original ambush position on the west bank of the Ba River and rushed to the east bank of the Enyang River. Another forced march, a big plate of tigers is so virtuous, how good can the grassroots minions below be?

As a big plate, the ground tiger was originally a horse. But he hid in the mountains for two months, and everything was eaten up by his unfed belly, including his poor old horse.

Dicheng Tiger turned out to be a trusted general under Wang Youjin, the king of food, and led more than 6,000 people to garrison Sanhechang in the Battle of Yuxi to confront Liu Zhenfan's reinforcements. Yuxi was defeated, Wang Youjin disappeared, and Dichenghu had no choice but to lead his men to flee to the mountains north of Bazhou with Yuan Tao, the king of the heavens.

Bai Jiaolong, the king of the heaven-shaking sky, who was also defeated in the fishing creek field, occupied Yuan Tao's old nest Guan cottage in Bashan. Yuan Tao hurriedly took people back to the fire. Before leaving, for the sake of the love of the brothers of the righteous army, they divided some supplies for the tigers.

It's just that there are many people and many mouths, and that bit of rice and grain will be gone in a few days.

So Diluhu had no choice but to hide in the ravine with the remaining 10,000 brothers from a few large plates to eat chaff vegetables, and from time to time to have a boiled human meat as a big meal.

But you can't just have something to eat.

There is no salt, and the human feet are raked, the hands are soft, and the cramps are cold sweating.

In desperation, the rebels sacrificed the old method when the mountain people were short of salt: scrape the old toilet soil and boil water to drink.

In this way, more than 10,000 people survived and 2,000 died. There are only about 5,000 of the 6,000 men and horses left.

I couldn't stand it anymore, and these rebels collectively sent a message to Yuan Tao, saying that the ghost place of Sichuan was no longer staying, and Lao Tzu was going north to southern Shaanxi.

As a result, what they were waiting for was not Yuan Tao's reply, but Yuan Tao himself.

Half a month ago, Yuan Tao finally returned from Guanshanzhai with more than 1,000 people, and proudly announced that he would take his brothers with him

We do a big deal.

This big ticket is just ahead.

Yuan Tao's people came to report that they had surrounded the Shu army, and they were waiting for the 5,000 people to rush together.

At this time, all parts of the tiger's body are relying on inertia to carry out anaerobic exercise, and there is no ability to identify the flaws and loopholes in this news:

The rebels who participated in the ambush this time were 13,400, excluding the 5,000 under Dibaohu himself and the more than 1,000 people guarding the stone bridge, and the rest was no less than seven or eight thousand.

Isn't it enough to deal with more than 1,000 people in the Protector Army, and seven or eight thousand people will be pressed together, and they will have to wait until the 5,000 people who are half dead arrive before they can do it?

However, something more unfortunate than long-distance running is just around the corner.

A sharp bamboo whistle sounded ahead, and hundreds of soldiers of the Protector Army wearing iron armor suddenly appeared on the hillside on the left front side of the official road like ghosts. They quickly formed a team and formed a horizontal team with a length of more than 100 steps.

Then there was another bamboo whistle, and a row of fires in front of the tiger's eyes. The crowd of people who were running suddenly slammed into a slam and then there was a natural scream.

Cheng Weiguo was not born to be a peaceful master. Taking advantage of the enemy's intention to attack, he boldly withdrew three companies from the position, and with the help of the screen of the cavalry, and also under the cover of undulating terrain and weeds and shrubs, he ambushed the west side of the official road under the enemy's eyelids.

The men and horses of the Tiger withdrew from the ambush area along the river and rushed to the area, and as soon as they arrived, they were beaten fatly.

Of course, Cheng Weiguo dared to carry out a short-range attack in front of the formation, and he had an advantage in equipment.

That was his twentieth battalion, the second fully armed battalion of the Protector Army after the guard battalion. And the twentieth battalion is a little different from the guard battalion:

The guard battalion was redressed in phases and batches, and the 20th battalion was redressed as a whole at one time.

……

The production capacity of firearms lagged behind the expansion of the size of the army, and it showed itself after the year-end war.

In Luodu Town, three new battalions were reorganized, and due to the shortage of firearms, the new battalions and the old battalions began to compete for limited resources.

Shu Guoping, chief of the General Staff, had to personally preside over the distribution of equipment and the adjustment of the establishment, and finally came to an egalitarianism to suppress the contradictions. Regardless of the new battalion or the old battalion, each battalion has a company of firearms. As for the tiger squat cannon, there are even more of them.

Problems are exposed early, and sometimes it's a good thing.

Miss Luo made a big deal about it. The slogan "All for the front, all for victory" turned into a call to action from the Firearms Bureau.

The efficiency of the mobilization system of the Shu Palace, the tradition of copycats, the amount of capital investment, and the ability of technological innovation played a role at this time.

LACKING RAW MATERIALS, IRON STUPAS, BUDDHA STATUES, AND CHUANGS WERE TURNED INTO MOLTEN IRON;

The tube was built into a bottleneck, and soon a manpower forging machine was developed;

There were not enough machine tools, so the carpenters in Chengdu stopped working on furniture and switched to producing standard accessories;

There was a shortage of manpower, so Wang Zhuang quickly transferred more than 1,000 households to do odd jobs and rough work.

Located in the northwest corner of Chengdu, the Military Bureau of the Sichuan Government, which was originally subordinate to the Sichuan Government, was also merged into the Firearms Bureau of the Shu Wangfu in the wave of becoming bigger and stronger.

Over the years, the Bureau of War has made a name for itself for producing low-quality weapons. But after belonging to the Shu Palace, those lifeless craftsmen were stimulated by the strong silver banknotes, as if they had eaten a big tonic pill, working for six to seven hours a day, and people stopped working, and the whole family of three generations of ancestors plus eight poles of relatives together.

By the beginning of March, the Sichuan Firearms Bureau, which had completed the integration, had been able to produce 50 guns per day. The production capacity of the new Tiger Squat Cannon and the Seven-Pound Cannon depends entirely on the supply of raw materials.

After test-firing the Protector Army's musket, an old craftsman surnamed Hou of the War Bureau made a bold suggestion for improving the ammunition used.

He believes that the advantages of the Protector Army's guns are large caliber, powerful and powerful, and there are two kinds of ammunition, the only son and the shotgun, and they have good adaptability to the battlefield.

But there are drawbacks. When firing the only son, the recoil is too strong, the range is insufficient, and the long-range accuracy is too poor, and it is not as good as the excellent long-barreled bird gun used by the official army; When firing shotguns, the weight of each small lead is too light, and the lethality against lightly armored enemies is insufficient.

Therefore, Hou Laojianghu suggested that the shape of the only son be modified, the weight of the only son should be reduced, the range should be increased, and the recoil should be reduced; The number of leads in a shotgun has been changed from eight to six, and the total weight is still one or two or six coins, while the weight of a single lead is increased, and the armor-piercing power is more reliable. In this way, the only son can shoot from a distance, and the shotgun can be used against close enemies, both near and far.

In addition, Hou Laojianghu also suggested that the hollowed-out pine should be used instead of the hollowed-out pine stock of the shotgun, and the multi-layer felt of gluing and compacting should be used instead, so as to reduce the ineffective weight, prevent the wooden butt from injuring friendly troops after being discharged, and reduce the production cost and increase the production speed.

After seeking approval from the Firearms Bureau, they immediately carried out research and experiments, and finally adopted the idea of Hou Lao's craftsman, and also gave him a dazzling reward of silver.

The new only son was still made of lead, in the shape of a hollow thick cup, with a pointed end, a deeper concave inside, and a twill on the tail, and its weight was reduced to one or two or three cents (Note 1), and it was filled with granular gunpowder one or two or three cents.

The only son has three annular grooves in the middle and rear to hold his breath. The production method of the only son still uses the method of cold forging, which is stamped out of a steel mold made of two lobes with a soft lead column. However, the mold is more precise, as long as it is the only child punched out of the mold (Note 2), the diameter is almost identical, so the shooting accuracy of the firearm is greatly improved.

The improvement of the production efficiency of firearms and the large-scale production of new ammunition have given Zhu Pingjin more confidence. He discarded the old method of changing uniforms on a company-by-company basis and changed it to a battalion-based unit as a whole.

Dai Dongbi's Changpingshan Heroic Battalion (3rd Battalion), Cheng Weiguo's 20th Battalion, and Chen Youfu's 9th Regiment 33rd Battalion became the first batch of overall reloading troops. But the first use of new ammunition in actual combat was preempted by Cheng Weiguo.

Note 1: One tael, three cents, five cents, about fifty grams. The weight of the bullet in the Ming Dynasty was only about ten grams, and the lethality of the armored soldiers in actual combat was obviously insufficient. Braided elite soldiers can run rampant on the battlefield unscrupulously wearing two or even three layers of heavy armor, which is directly related to the lack of lethality of the Ming army's bird guns.

Note 2: As the saying goes: "poured out of a mold" is to describe multiple people or objects that look almost identical. In the machining process, reusable die casting or forging have this feature.

Individual web moderators or landlords believe that in the era when there were no vernier calipers and micrometers, it was impossible for machining to achieve the accuracy of "less than one millimeter". For this kind of student-like innocence, the craftsmen of the great country with vicissitudes of life and dark fingers will laugh. Therefore, Hibiki thinks that it is necessary to go to the mountains and go to the countryside. As long as they sweat and work in the workshop for three days, the students understand everything: damn X! That's how this thing came out!

In the future, when I have time, Hibiki will write another work related to it. I won't be verbose here.

.。 m.