Emperor Ming Fengyunlu

Volume 5: Lying on the salary and tasting the guts

Chapter 2 The Tiger and Wolf Nirvana Became an Army

Section 7 Will be the Division

Zhangjiawan Village is still brightly lit and lively at night, and most of the craftsmen are working hard to create all kinds of weapons. Liu Yunwei watched for a while accompanied by Yuan Mingxuan, and then said: "Lord Yuan, it is too hard for the craftsmen to work overtime like this, and we must ensure that everyone can eat well and get full wages; Every three days there is meat and every five days there is wine, and you must not be disadvantaged. ”

Yuan Mingxuan said with a smile: "Haha, don't worry, little general, here in the general, the best food is these craftsmen." In terms of food and use, these craftsmen are much better than the soldiers stationed here. The craftsmen of the general division are very motivated, you must know that even the craftsmen of the military department are not as good as our treatment here. ”

Liu Yunwei nodded with satisfaction.

Then, Yuan Mingxuan led Liu Yunwei to a workshop in the firearms workshop and said: "Little General, this is a place dedicated to drilling firearms pipes, and the firecrackers are also the most critical part of a firecracker, which is directly related to the quality of firearms. ”

Liu Yunwei casually picked up a gun tube that had been drilled, looked at it carefully, and found that the gun pipe was originally an iron rod cast from fine iron, which was artificially drilled into a gun tube. Amazed, Liu Yunwei asked, "How long does it take to drill a gun?" ”

Yuan Mingxuan said: "It will take twenty days to drill a gun pipe at the earliest, this is still a skilled craftsman dug by Mr. Xu from the capital, if the rest of the craftsmen come to do it, it will even take thirty or forty days to drill a gun pipe, and there will be a high probability that the gun pipe will be broken." ”

Liu Yunwei frowned when he heard this, and asked again: "Then how many bird guns can our firearms workshop build in a month?" Are they all self-generated firearms? ”

Yuan Mingxuan made a slight calculation and said: "There are more than 120 craftsmen and apprentices in the firearms workshop, of which there are 80 craftsmen who are responsible for drilling the pipes, and they can build about 100 bird guns at most a month, all of which are self-generated firearms, which is already the limit. ”

"No! It's too slow. At this rate, if you want to equip the army with Qi Bird Guns, when will it take? Liu Yunwei said directly.

"There's no way around that, after all, it takes a lot of time to make a pipe."

Liu Yunwei thought for a while and said: "I saw in "Ji Xiao's New Book" that in order to popularize bird guns on a large scale in the Qi family's army, Qi Shaobao used to use iron pieces to directly roll them into a gun tube, and then use iron hoops to tighten them. Why don't we take this approach? ”

Yuan Mingxuan shook his head and said, "I have also heard this method talk about by craftsmen, but this method has two very obvious flaws, that is, the service life of the gun pipe is very short, and it will explode; Secondly, the range of the bird gun created in this way will also be shortened a lot. At that time, the enemy that Qi Shaobao faced was the Japanese on the southeast coast, and the Japanese did not have any decent firearms and bows and arrows, so the bird guns made in this way could fully meet the needs of the war; But later, when Qi Shaobao went north to Jizhou to guard, he very decisively abandoned this kind of bird gun made out of the hurry, and replaced it with refined bird guns. ”

Liu Yunwei nodded, and asked again, "Is there any way to shorten the construction time of the gun pipe?" Of course, the premise is that the quality must be guaranteed. ”

At this time, Yuan Mingxuan looked at a middle-aged craftsman next to him and said, "Master Lu, let's talk about it." ”

Master Lu was a little nervous, saluted Liu Yunwei, and said, "The villain has seen Zongzhen. ”

"No need to be polite. Master Lu, I don't know much about this firecracker, so I don't know if there is a way to speed up the speed of building the firecracker? After all, the army is anxiously waiting for the bird to change its costume. Liu Yunwei said with a pleasant face.

Master Lu said with great certainty: "Yes! When the villain was in the capital, the three major battalions were equipped with a lot of excellent firearms such as bird guns, Miru guns, and thunder guns, and even had a lot of stocks in the treasury of the military department. That's because the craftsmen of the military department generally use animal-powered drill floors to build guns, which is much faster than manpower, and can ensure that the situation of drilling the guns will not happen at all, and two or three guns can be built in about a day. ”

Liu Yunwei was overjoyed when he heard this, and said: "Can you build two or three guns in a day or so? If we get a few thousand drill pads, won't we be able to redress the army in less than a month? Can Master Lu build a drill floor? ”

Master Lu shook his head and said, "If you go back to the main town, the drill floor villain has only seen it, and he won't build it." And as far as the villain knows, this thing is only available in the capital. ”

Liu Yunwei said: "That's it? Okay, tomorrow I will write a letter to Huang Shang, asking the military department to allocate a batch of drill pads, and another batch of firecrackers for us. ”

Then, Liu Yunwei asked about some other information, and followed Yuan Mingxuan to the workshop where the artillery was cast. After Liu Yunwei walked into the workshop, he saw more than a dozen cannon bodies wrapped in mud, and a group of craftsmen were still busy working next to a few furnaces.

Liu Yunwei walked up to him and took a closer look, and saw that the soil that wrapped the cannon body was still a little wet, so he asked, "Lord Yuan, does this cannon body have to wait until it is completely dry?" ”

"Yes." Yuan Mingxuan said: "You have to wait until it is completely dry, otherwise the cannon body will be full of pockmarked eyes, and it will be very easy to explode." ”

Liu Yunwei nodded, and asked again: "Then how many cannons can we cast in a month?" ”

"Until now, none of them have been built."

Liu Yunwei was stunned when he heard this, and asked, "Is it so difficult to build artillery?" Haven't built one yet? ”

"It's not all because it's hard to make." Yuan Mingxuan explained: "Because the artillery is cast in batches, the first batch of artillery we cast is the one in front of the little general, and it has not yet been completed. In addition, the casting of artillery also depends on the weather, the weather is fine, the temperature is high, you can rely on the sun exposure to dry it, so that the quality of the cast artillery is the best; If it is more troublesome on a rainy day, then these molds can only be moved to the house and dried by fire, so that the probability of success of the cannon will be several percent lower. ”

"And how many cannons did we cast in the first batch? How many doors are you sure to cast? ”

Yuan Mingxuan said: "The first batch is a total of seventeen big Buddha cannons, conservatively speaking, it is certain that they will be cast into three or four. ”

"So little!" Liu Yunwei exclaimed.

Yuan Mingxuan said: "Little general, this artillery is the country's important weapon, the probability of success is already a master in 12 out of 10, if it can reach 23 out of 10, it can be called a national hand." ”

Liu Yunwei was slightly disappointed after listening to it, and said: "It seems that there will be one more item in the letter to Huang Shangshu written tomorrow, and I will ask the military department to allocate a batch of artillery to come over." ”

Yuan Mingxuan laughed when he heard this, and said: "Little general, I think Huang Shangshu will be angry with you sooner or later, you are clearly a bandit, and you want to come over with any good things." ”

Liu Yunwei also smiled and said, "I want to pay it back, haha." ”

The two of them walked as they talked, first looked at the situation of the armor workshop, and saw that the number of armors of all kinds was still considerable, and they could provide 1,100 collars of cotton armor and 980 collars of armor for the army every month. However, for the huge number of Hanwei soldiers, this output is still on the small side.

After coming out of the armor workshop, Liu Yunwei asked Yuan Mingxuan, "Lord Yuan, how is the output of the Bing Battle Workshop and the Zi Medicine Workshop?" ”

Yuan Mingxuan said: "The war workshop is okay, it can provide the army with 300 large shields, 2,000 heavy spears, 2,000 battle knives, 500 horse cutting knives, and about 1,000 spears and halberds for the rest every month; However, the production of horse lances is relatively small, and it can only build about 100 strokes a month at most. ”

Compared with the firearms workshop and the armor workshop, Liu Yunwei is still quite satisfied with the output of the soldiers' workshop, but it still can't meet the needs of the army.

Yuan Mingxuan continued: "As for the sub-medicine workshop, it can produce more than 2,000 catties of gunpowder and more than 800 catties of gunpowder per month, all of which are made according to the methods recorded in the "New Book of Ji Xiao", and they are all gunpowder like crushed carbon slag. (It is granular gunpowder, Qi Jiguang took the lead in equipping the whole army of the Qi family army with granular gunpowder, which greatly increased the firepower of the Qi family's army; Qi Jiguang's move came decades before the West was equipped with granular gunpowder. In addition, the sub-medicine workshop can also produce 2,000 earth-shattering thunderbolts per month. ”

Liu Yunwei nodded and said: "It seems that the output of the Ziyao Workshop is the only one that can meet the needs of the army, and the rest of the firearms workshop, the soldier workshop, and the armor workshop must expand production!" Lord Yuan, I will send someone to the capital tomorrow to recruit craftsmen, of course, you can also go to other places to recruit, in two months, I will at least double the output of the division! ”

Yuan Mingxuan frowned and thought for a while, and said: "It's not so easy to recruit a large number of craftsmen, after all, there won't be many skilled craftsmen, we can also consider recruiting more apprentices, so that we can also increase a certain output; Over time, these apprentices will grow into a large number of skilled craftsmen. ”

"Yes, Lord Yuan will just look at it." Liu Yunwei said: "From today onwards, if I need silver, I will give as much as I want; If I need people, I can send people to recruit, and even directly transfer a battalion of soldiers to support; If I need supplies or raw materials, I will try to provide them in any possible way. However, I only have one request, in two months, I will see the production of the division doubled, and in a year at most, our Hanwei army will be completely redressed! ”