Hong Tao has always had no love for the army, and it has been several years since the founding of the country, in addition to getting some police, the largest land armed force in the Jinhe Empire is more than 300 marines. Even if the army was forced to form, it was pocket-sized, with the same number as the Marines, both of which were three hundred.

He did not know how to train the army himself, so he could only borrow a few officers from Swan's father as instructors, and then set up an army school in Mayi Harbor, where hundreds of young people over the age of 15 who could use Chinese proficiently were sent from mainland and overseas territories to train and study.

In fact, everyone misunderstood Hong Tao, it was not that he didn't like the army, but he thought that there was no need to get an army that cost money and food and had no use, he was a pragmatist, and he was not very interested in all useless things.

The starting point of this army is relatively high, and it is not so much an army as an officer training base. These children not only learn horseback riding, cavalry warfare, and infantry warfare, but also cartography, wilderness survival, and the use, maintenance, and tactics of new weapons.

If the empire encounters an unprecedented security crisis and needs a larger army to go to the battlefield, as long as it has these hundreds of officers, it can quickly expand ten or a hundred times on the basis of these officers. If the supply of troops, equipment, and weapons can keep up, tens of thousands of regular troops can be exploded in half a year to a year.

Since its birth, the army of the Golden River Empire has been completely different from the army of any country in the world at present, mainly in the types of weapons used. This is inevitable, with Hong Tao, the maverick prime minister, the Imperial Army is destined to be a pioneer of the times. The structure of the army he built was unusually simple, with only two large arms, one called musketeers and the other called artillery.

Instead of using spears, musketeers were to be armed with front-loading flintlock muskets. The artillery is well understood, those deck guns weighing hundreds of pounds have been modified. After reducing the weight, the gun carriage, large wheels, and steel axles were loaded, and the horses were drawn to march with the cavalry troops. In the field, it is not difficult to operate, the horses are unloaded, the gun carriage is fixed in the dirt with legs, and then it can be loaded and fired. Flowering bullets, solid bullets, and shotguns can all be used.

Why use a smoothbore gun instead of a straight line-bore gun? Didn't Imperial Metal have already developed rifled guns? This is Hong Tao's cunning side. He wants to squeeze out the oil and water of every invention, and it is painful to overstep the level of suppression. But it's wasteful. Just like playing cards, the opponent has a pair of nines, and it is enough to use a pair of tens, and there is no need to use a pair of aces, let alone throw the bomb.

There is also an advantage to doing this, not military, but economic. No business in the world can compare with the huge profits of arms trading, and I have worked hard for half a year, whether it is sugar extraction or winemaking. The final harvest was not enough to catch up with the few rifles that a few workers had built in a few days.

Some of the buyers of arms sales are not only the Southern Song Dynasty and Mongolia in the world, but also the Japanese archipelago, the Indian Peninsula, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe are all good dumping grounds. Even the expansion of the empire in the port of Kalamba and Cape Town required the use of land forces to solve the problem. Equip your own army to fight others, train soldiers to get acquainted with this hot weapon, and by the way, advertise new weapons. When the effects of the new weapon are shown, and someone looks at it with hot eyes, it can be made in large quantities. Sell to countries that need it.

If you don't have the money to buy it, I'll use the rifle as a loan to lend it to you first. That's righteous. Of course, the loan needs to be repaid, and it's okay if you can't afford to give gold and silver, there are always some mines and specialties in your country. That's it!

What? Neither do you have ...... No way! Is there still a need for your country to exist? If you want nothing and a fart, follow the boss and I'll mess around. You will plant whatever you are asked to plant, you will dig whatever you are asked to dig, and you will hit whoever you are asked to fight. As long as you are obedient, the loan is considered assistance, and you don't have to pay it back, have you ever seen such a righteous person?

"Old Wen. I have to trouble you to go to Lin'an and ask Zheng Xiang if you need a new weapon. This is a rifle that the Imperial Army has just been equipped with, and if we are interested, we can send a team of land forces to conduct a live-fire exercise on the Jianghan defense line, and use the local Mongol army as the target of the exercise, so that they can see the effect with their own eyes. If it's easy to use and then buy it, if it's not easy to use, I'll act in vain, and the loss will be borne by the empire. "I have good things, and the first thing Hong Tao thinks of is the Southern Song Dynasty, so Wen Nan was found.

"Why did Your Majesty suddenly become generous this time, the artillery was covered so tightly, but the rifle took the initiative to send it to the door?" Wen Nan was a little vague about Hong Tao's sudden change, every time Hong Tao took the initiative to send benefits to others, maybe he was digging a pit.

"Hey, that's just like I used to be very detached. Cement is such a money-making thing, I said to give it, and I didn't ask them for a penny. The war horses in the Nanning Military Horse Farm were all sold to the imperial court at the price of Guangma, and I never cared about it. The Shilu Mine Imperial Court said that I didn't stop the shares, and now it means that I am opening a mine for them, and I have to transport the ore to Qiongzhou, so that I can get half of it, did I say anything? The empire and the Great Song Dynasty are like brothers who have separated from each other, and they can be a little contradictory in private, but when it comes to dealing with outsiders, they must be the same in their thinking. The Mongol Empire was defeated at sea and wounded, but the northern territory was still in their hands, so didn't the imperial court want to take it back? With this weapon of mine, coupled with appropriate tactics, a little training for a year can form a strong combat effectiveness, and the Northern Expedition is not a dream! As a descendant of the Han people, I certainly hope to see my hometown return to the hands of the Han people in my lifetime, and it would be better if I could go up and walk around in person. Hong Tao's words are reasonable, the front expounds his great selflessness, and the back is accompanied by the root of this kind of thinking, which is very moving.

"Then it's better to let Qi Zu send a few craftsmen in the past and directly teach the Great Song Dynasty to produce their own products...... It's a pity that the audience is Wen Nan, a foreign minister who has been fooled by Hong Tao for many years, and in the face of Hong Tao's impassionedness, Wen Nan basically has no reaction.

“…… Lao Wen, your position must be firm, are you an official of the Great Song Dynasty or an official of the Empire, why do you always help the Great Song Dynasty speak? Hong Tao was choked badly, and Wen Nan was very keen to grasp the key to this matter, that is, money! These guns were sold to the Great Song Dynasty, but not to the Great Song Dynasty. Since it is a sale, it is a sale, so don't say it so sadly.

"I don't have to understand His Majesty's instructions thoroughly before I can grasp the balance. How does this stuff work? Can you teach me first, or show Zheng Xiang and them. Wen Nan saw that Hong Tao was about to be annoyed and angry, so he immediately changed his smiling face, and it was very unwise to go against his top boss.

"Don't! Don't, if you don't try, maybe people will still want to buy it, and you won't be able to sell a single one if you try it. This thing is powerful in that it is powerful and easy to operate, but it also has big drawbacks, and the accuracy is not very high. Just like the cannon on a battleship, it needs a lot of people to use it together, and it depends on density to make up for accuracy. If you go to demonstrate by yourself and you can't get anything, will people still buy it? This is just for you as a sample, let them see it, and let the accompanying army officers talk about professional problems. Your task is to convince Zheng Xiang to allow our army to conduct a small-scale combat exercise on the Jianghan defense line, so that they can see for themselves the effect of using it. As long as the battle is won, they must buy it. Hong Tao knows the performance of the front-loading smoothbore gun very well, so it is impossible for Wen Nan, who has never let go of the gun, to be conspicuous in the Southern Song Dynasty court.

This kind of gun came out much earlier than the rifled gun, and at that time Qi Zu's flintlock device had not yet been made, and it had to be ignited with an arquebus. Due to the lack of suitable steel to make the barrel, its weight was a bit large at that time, a one-meter-five long smoothbore gun weighed about 20 catties, and ordinary people could not hold it flat at all, and had to put a wooden stick under it as a support. Moreover, its range is not too far, more than 100 meters, and if you want to hit 50 percent, you have to close the distance to forty or fifty meters. Coupled with the trouble of reloading, slow rate of fire, fear of rain and wet weather, it is not as effective as a large recurve crossbow.

But with the advent of open-hearth steel and flintlock devices, the spring of smoothbore guns came. With better steel and the right tool steel, the barrel became thinner and thinner, with greater precision. After being loaded with buckshot wrapped in whaleskin, the firing range can reach 300 meters, and the hit rate can be achieved at a distance of more than 100 meters, which exceeds all current flat-fire weapons.

The same smoothbore gun now weighs less than ten pounds, and ordinary people can shoot it after a short period of training, throwing away the bracket. And with a flintlock device and a fixed charge pack, the rate of fire of this gun can also reach two rounds a minute. 20 mm lead bullets can tear through any armor from a distance of 100 meters, and even if it can't penetrate, it can injure a person wearing armor, and it is more powerful than all current ranged weapons.

The main advantages of flintlock pistols are not limited to power, rate of fire and range, but also ease of grasp and manufacturing cost. A musketeer only needs about ten days of training to become proficient in operating a flintlock smoothbore gun, and with a reasonable reloading procedure, the rate of fire can easily be achieved with four rounds a minute. It takes less than two hours to make a flintlock smoothbore gun in the Imperial Metal Group, which is mass-produced on an assembly line and in accordance with standardization, with a simple hydraulic drilling machine, boring machine, forging hammer and heat treatment process, if you start working at full strength, you can make more than ten finished products in a day.

(To be continued.) )