Zhu Youlang nodded, indicating that he understood.

Zhu Youlang attached great importance to the ordnance and weapons he had obtained, and instructed Yousi to concentrate them in storage, and after the army returned to Changsha to recuperate, he would distribute them to various camps as needed.

Of course, iron armor, leather armor, war horses, artillery, and bird guns, these militaristic weapons must be given priority to the imperial camp pro-army, especially the loyal army of Li Dingguo's department, this time in order to intercept the 5,000 and 8 banner soldiers, the men and horses were seriously damaged, and three out of ten were removed, and they paid a high price.

So it has to be rewarded!

In addition to appeasing the hearts of his troops with condolences, promotions and rewards, Zhu Youlang also planned to distribute half of the captured iron armor, leather armor and war horses to the remaining loyal army officers and soldiers as a reward for their meritorious deeds, which not only enhanced the strength of his department, but also enhanced the strength of the imperial camp.

The remaining iron armor, leather armor and war horses were distributed to the other battalion leaders as needed, and the cavalry team with serious losses such as Jiao Lian's department, Wu Jihe's department, Hao Shaoqi's department, etc., also received a little more.

The thousands of well-made bird guns and dozens of artillery pieces of all sizes Zhu Youlang unceremoniously planned to arm them all to the imperial camp Jiao Lian, Wu Jihe's Huben Town and Yulin Town, and increase the firepower of the two towns' imperial camps.

The three troops of Gongsheng Camp, Huben Town, and Yulin Town were led out by Zhu Youlang from Wuzhou, and followed him through dozens of bloody battles, and he was his most staunch supporter, and his department had the highest loyalty, which can be described as the descendant of the lineage.

In the past two years, Zhu Youlang has witnessed them grow from weak to strong little by little, they are equivalent to the "Shenji Battalion" in the three major battalions of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Youlang intends to eventually build them into a modern pure firearms army, and become an elite with one as ten!

With the addition of these firearms, armor, and war horses, the overall combat power of the imperial camp will be on a higher level!

After a battle, the strength of the imperial camp did not decrease but increased, so Zhu Youlang was not excited. But he was only excited for a moment, and his eyes dimmed again.

It was already the middle of the 17th century, and many countries in Western Europe were already equipped with better flintlock pistols, and the original firearm of the arquebus was eliminated by Western European countries as early as the 16th century.

But so far, whether it is the Eight Banners and Green Battalion of the Manchu Dynasty, or the loyal battalion of the Ming Dynasty, the local box battalion, and even the Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu departments in the imperial camp are still mainly cold weapons, and even the arquebus can be regarded as the top weapon, what a sad thing!

What is even more tragic is that in the original historical script, from 1644 after the Manchurian Tatars entered the customs until the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period at the end of the Qing Dynasty, for more than 200 years, the Qing army, whether it was the Eight Banners or the Green Battalion, has always used arquebuses, and has never considered switching to more advanced flintlock guns, while Western European countries have already replaced firearms for several generations in more than 200 years.

Could this be because the Tartar Emperor did not know about the flintlock pistol, a firearm that appeared in the mid-sixteenth century? Or is it really not aware of the importance of muskets?

Definitely!

Several emperors in the early Qing Dynasty did not regard muskets as weapons for the weak, on the contrary, they always regarded firearms as heavy weapons of the military.

Seriously speaking, although the Manchurian Tartars started with cavalry shooting, but in the end they relied on firearms to make a fortune, when the old slave Nurhachi was killed by the Ming army's Hongyi cannon, the Manchurian Tartars began to attach importance to firearms, after Huang Taiji ascended the throne, he paid more attention to firearms, and tried every possible way to imitate them.

Later, after Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming, and Shang Kexi surrendered to Huangtaiji, the Manchurian Tartars had elite firearms troops.

Later, Huang Taiji established an elite firearms unit called "Wuzhen Hachao" in the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty by his cronies and subordinates of Gushan Ezhen Jinli, which translates into Chinese as "heavy soldiers", referring to a large number of shotguns and artillery.

After the Qing army entered the customs, the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners were restructured, and the Tartar Emperor imitated the military system of the Beijing camp of the Ming Dynasty to establish two pure firearms troops, the "firearms battalion" and the "Shenji battalion".

During the Kangxi period, the Qing army fought against Tsarist Russia in Yaksa, and against Geldan in the northwest, often used ten times or even dozens of times the strength to fight against them with flintlock pistols, but they often suffered heavy defeats and suffered enough from flintlock pistols. Therefore, Kangxi's understanding of the power of this firearm is the same as that of the Hongyi cannon back then, and his understanding penetrates into the bone marrow. Later, Qianlong's southern expedition to Burma also planted a big heel on the more advanced flintlock pistol, but even so, he still did not improve the musket.

Dai Zi, a firearms expert in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, imitated the "mother and son cannon" that was claimed to be only made by the Belgians at that time, and invented the world's earliest machine gun "Lianzhu Firegun", also known as the Twenty-eight Lianzhu Firecracker, his shape is very similar to that of a pipa, and he can shoot 28 bullets in a row, and the firepower is very powerful. When he paid tribute to Kangxi, Kangxi praised him on the surface, secretly put the fire gun in the cabinet, and strictly ordered him not to rebuild. Kangxi was still not at ease, and then found a reason to exile him to one of the most desolate places at that time - Liaodong.

Several emperors in the early Qing Dynasty once collected all kinds of firearms in their palaces, including the most advanced rifled guns at that time - rifles! But it has never been popularized in the army.

It was because the Tartar Emperor understood the power of firearms too well that he resolutely curbed its development. If you indulge in the development of firearms, you will face a very terrifying reality, that is, with a gun in hand, a woman, child, old and weak can kill a warrior of the Eight Banners!

As for why they didn't ban the bird gun, maybe it was because the bird gun was popularized as early as the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and it was very unrealistic to want to ban it after the founding of the Manchurian Tartars, but fortunately, the bird gun had too many defects, and the power was not much stronger than the bow and arrow, and it was not a big threat to them, so it was not banned.

At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the pure Manchurian Eight Banners were only fifty or sixty thousand, even if the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty were added, the Eight Banners of Mongolia were still only one million, and the Han people could drown them with a mouthful of spit, and the more advanced the weapons in the hands of the Han people, the more dangerous they were Manchurian, which the Tartar Emperor knew very well.

In order to ban this threat from the root, on the one hand, they strictly prohibited the spread of firearms, and on the other hand, they did not even equip the Eight Banners with more advanced firearms, paralyzing the Han people, thinking that the Manchus and Hans were one. Not only that, in the selection of generals, almost all of them were cold-weaponized, and no matter how good they were in the use of firearms, they could not become generals, thus systematically inhibiting the further development of firearms and firearms tactics.

Under the layers of constraints, the Tartar Emperor was still not at ease, and he still hyped up the uselessness of firearms and the invincibility of cavalry and archery in the army, and wanted to ignore the Han generals in the green camp from the military ideology.