The reason why the Mongol Empire was so strong for a period of time was that it was only good at learning, and its strong execution ability was also its strength. If this matter is put in the Southern Song Dynasty court, you just wait for all parties to fight together, even if the result is pulled out, there will be many obstacles when it is implemented, not only will there be delays, but also stumbling down, anyway, it will not make you comfortable.

However, the Mongol Empire was much better in this regard, and at the behest of the Great Khan, several Mongol nobles followed the emperor's brother Chagatai and led more than 20,000 Mongol descendants to secretly stationed in Jinzhou, Dengzhou and Posu (now Dandong), and registered all the residents of the three places, and did not allow them to move at will, and directly turned them into military control areas. Then Yelu Chucai assisted Chagatai to lead the overall situation, and continuously sent the necessary personnel and material resources to the three places.

For this huge plan, Ögedai Khan specially recruited a large number of craftsmen from the occupied areas of the Western Expedition, and all those who could build ships, cast copper, and cast iron were exempted from slavery and sent to these three places to help build shipyards and cast cannons. In addition, a large number of spies composed of Han people from the north and people from the Jin Dynasty infiltrated the Southern Song Dynasty under various identities, whether they were doing business or other work, they had only one goal, to spy on the details of the manufacture of sea ships and that mysterious weapon.

Thanks to the efforts of many parties, the work that seemed difficult to complete was actually progressing smoothly. Although the construction drawings of the sea ship are very incomplete, the general idea is still clear, and a few spies even obtained several key shipbuilding materials from the Southern Song Dynasty merchants. With these data, it took less than half a year through the efforts of craftsmen of all ethnic groups. The first replica of the Salmon-class cargo ship was built. This made the top of the Mongol Empire a little ecstatic. The nobles who were not very supportive of this plan also changed their minds.

Compared to shipbuilding. The progress of forging cannons is much slower. This weapon is not as well-known to many people as the sea ship, even the high-level of the Song State does not know the details of the cannon casting, and there is no foundry like the Zhenzhou Shipyard to explore, so it can only rely on the oral accounts of some soldiers who have seen this weapon, plus a bunch of shells picked up from the battlefield to analyze what this weapon looks like.

For people who have never seen a cannon and don't have such ideas, it's too difficult to reason backwards purely by the brain. At the beginning, a variety of ideas burst out at the same time, such as the trebuchet structure proposed by the Great Cannibal and the ballista structure proposed by the Trollis Craftsman, but after testing, they were not very reliable. In addition to a serious mismatch in range. The power is also far from the same, and there is no rumbling sound and puffs of white smoke.

In the end, a similar idea was proposed by a craftsman from the Jin Kingdom, who had previously cast large bells for temples and whose own family still owned a fireworks shop. The two of them organically combined the principle of the big bell with the fireworks, and finally made a prototype of a short and thick cannon, and the test shot was successful, and a stone ball was shot a hundred and ten meters away.

With the prototype, the rest of the matter was easy to handle, it was nothing more than a matter of increasing the range and accuracy, so all the craftsmen who knew how to cast were gathered under the two of them. Constant attempts to cast cannons from various materials began. It's a pity that it's not so easy to improve the performance of the gun, and if the charge is too much, the gun body will explode. It took almost a year to toss a fairly good cannon out of bronze, that is, the kind of mortar that Hong Tao saw. It can fire a hollow projectile with a diameter of 20 centimeters to a distance of 500 meters, and if it is replaced by a solid shell, it will only have a range of more than 300 meters, and it cannot be fired horizontally, but can only be fired in a hanging way.

Although it is clearly inferior to the enemy's artillery in terms of performance, the Mongolian top brass has run out of patience and time to continue waiting. The large-scale construction of sea ships, coupled with the consumption of constantly experimenting with cannons, has made the empire's finances a little tight, and if the experiment continues indefinitely, don't wait for more powerful cannons to be built, the empire will have no money to sustain itself. As a result, this mortar became a new weapon for the Mongolian sailors and began to be finalized and mass-produced.

So a bigger disaster happened, the casting yield was too low, less than 30%. That is to say, it took tens of thousands of catties of copper to cast ten cannons, only three of which were usable, and the others were all scrapped. In the face of this situation, the high-level and craftsmen of the entire Mongol Empire had no way, even if they killed their heads, they could not increase the power of half a cent. But the arrows have been wound, and the bow is full, and the strength of firing or not firing is considered to have been used. In desperation, I can only invest more financial resources, make up for the lack of finished product rate with quantity, and work overtime to cast those big guys who are more expensive than money.

For more than three years, the entire Mongol Empire was like a man who committed suicide by cutting his wrists, no matter how much money was withdrawn from various places, he could not stop the blood from slowly draining from the wounds on his wrists, and the treasury was always empty. A shipment of seized goods had just been delivered from the occupied territories in the west, but in the blink of an eye they had become coal, copper, and timber, and there was no chance to cover them up. It caused a lot of complaints from top to bottom of the empire, not only the nobles who stayed in the east were not satisfied, but even the generals of the western expedition were in a hurry, and they robbed for half a day for nothing, leaving nothing behind, and threw them into the sea.

Faced with this situation, Ögedai Khan couldn't help it, although in his plan at least a thousand ships and thousands of cannons would be built before the decisive battle began, but the plan could not catch up with the changes. At the beginning of the budget, the cost of the original ship was slightly higher, and who would have thought that the cost of building it would be higher than one day by day, and it would rise more than two or three times. Coupled with the large consumption of cast artillery, if the Song State was not defeated, the kings and nobles of the Mongol Empire should have rebelled first.

War! In the summer of 1240, as the shipyards and foundries in Jinzhou and Dengzhou were exhausted of raw materials, and they could no longer squeeze out a single squeeze, Ogedai Khan came to Dengzhou in person and issued a ****** for war. With this order, hundreds of large ships with full crews began to assemble from Jinzhou and Posu Province to Dengzhou. Not to mention Dengzhou Port, even the coastal waters of Dengzhou are full of identical ships, even if the flood comes, it will have to jump, and a full 613 imitation salmon-class cargo ships with a displacement of 340 tons are covered with the sea.

Since each ship could only carry three mortars, the carrying capacity of these ships far exceeded that of the Jiaosha-class warships, with an average of more than 200 Mongol soldiers per ship. Moreover, the establishment of the Mongolian naval division is also very peculiar, their sailors are the original army, they are sailors on the sea, and when they get to the place, they put on armor and pick up swords and guns are the army, so that it is not a problem to carry 400 people on each ship.

More than 600 ships, each with 400 men, this is more than 200,000 troops. It doesn't sound like much, but it's actually a lot. These more than 200,000 soldiers were at least 500,000 during the land war, because the number of auxiliaries and civilians among them was very small, and all of them were pure soldiers, and their composition could not be more pure. This is the advantage of sea freight, which not only has a large volume, but also consumes less.

Of course, the Mongolian sailors did not have so many soldiers on board, and the total number of troops going south this time was only 130,000. According to Captain Daishi's suggestion, more than 300 ships were used as troop carriers, and the other 300 ships were combat ships. These ships will set off first, mainly for fighting enemy ships on the surface for supremacy, followed by troop carriers capable of fighting on the surface, which will sweep away the remnants of the enemy's combat power and then choose the right place to send the soldiers ashore.

"Ahha, this is not far from the south, you are old, it is better to be led by Kuo, you sit in Dengzhou and Surrey to plan grain and grass, and after Kuo out lands, it is not too late to go with the ship." Looking at the fleet, which could not be seen on the sea, Ögedai Khan was also a little ambitious. He believed that so many warships would succeed in one fell swoop, and there was no reason to fail, but he was not very worried that his brother Chagatai would personally lead the troops there.

His elder brother has been friendly with him since he was a child, and when he was competing for the Khan throne, it was his brother who came forward to persuade his nephew Guiyu and younger brother Torre to successfully ascend to the Khan throne. If his brother loses something on the front line, even if he wins, it will be a great loss for himself.

"Great Khan, Mongol Erlang has not been afraid of fighting since he was a child, and he is a strong man both on land and on the sea. I have been with these generals for more than three years, and no one else knows them better than I do. When our troops come to Lin'an City, I hope that the Great Khan can lead the army to go in person, and our brothers will capture Lin'an City together, and the Great Khan will be the first to enter the city to persuade others. In the past few years, in order to build these ships and cannons, the empire's money and food have been exhausted, and this war is related to the survival of the empire. "Chagatai is a meticulous and serious man, he knows the current situation in the empire and knows what this battle means.

"That's as Aha wants, but please also pay attention to one person, the enemy's boss, named Hong Tao. If I could have lived, this man would have been a second Sarrihe if he could be used by the Empire. When Wokotai asked his brother to say this, he didn't worry about anything anymore, but he was very interested in Hong Tao as a person, or he was interested in the sea, and he wanted to take Hong Tao, the person who was most familiar with the sea, for his own use.

"I'm afraid it's not easy...... The kings won't agree, and besides, isn't he already emperor? This kind of person is different from Surrey, you better not get into trouble, I don't think he will come, if he does, I will help you deal with him! Chagatai heard that his younger brother wanted to rein in Hong Tao, and his expression became more serious. If Hong Tao is not the emperor, there is still room for negotiation in this matter, but now that he is an emperor, this is essentially different from Yelu Chucai. No emperor would use another emperor with confidence, even if Ogedai Khan wanted to do it, the kings and nobles at the top of the empire would definitely not agree, wouldn't this be making trouble for the country.

(To be continued.) )