After the conclusion of the court meeting on 15 February, the emperor first convened the cabinet ministers to discuss at the Cultural Hall in the afternoon of the same day, and listened to the preparatory arrangements for the Enke examination in the first year of Chongzhen at the end of March, as well as the progress of the Deling project and the situation of disaster relief in various places, and of course, the appointment and dismissal of some officials, including the investigation and trial of the cases involving King Fu and King De. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 Info There is nothing he can do but urge the six cabinet ministries to speed up the process.

After discussing the matter with the cabinet, the emperor personally went to the Wuying Hall to discuss military affairs with the Minister of Military Aircraft and the military officers and senators of the Military Aircraft Department. Nowadays, after the successful firing of cement concrete, various prefabricated building parts made of cement concrete have also been put into use, coupled with the warmer weather, the land has thawed, and the progress of various projects has been suddenly accelerated.

But even so, if it was to be put into use during March, it still seemed unprepared, so Emperor Chongzhen, at the suggestion of Sun Chengzong, Mao Yuanyi, Sun Yuanhua and others, postponed the date of the opening of the lecture hall to after May.

At the same time, the time for recruiting new troops in the Zhuozhou battalion had to be postponed to after April, because first, the Zhuozhou battalion had not yet been built, and second, spring ploughing in March was the top priority for the reclamation of barren tuntian fields in various places around Zhili. Therefore, the matter of recruiting new troops can only wait until the end of the ploughing season in March. Emperor Chongzhen naturally could only agree to this.

The martial arts examination is also being prepared in an orderly manner, and it is expected to be held in Beijing in June and July.

In addition, the brothers Sun Heding and Sun Hedou, who were sent out to purchase Western muskets and artillery, also sent back news to the Military Aircraft Department. It is said that the Portuguese cannon foundry in Entrenchment Ao, which had purchased a batch of muskets and artillery, including 200 new Western muskets, each with 100 taels of silver, and 20 new Hongyi cannons, each weighing 1,200 catties, required 1,200 taels of silver, and spent a total of 44,000 taels of silver.

Moreover, with the efforts of the Western missionary Luo Ruwang, he also hired a group of Western-style gunners, mainly Portuguese, with 200 musketeers, and 10 gun technicians, each of whom was paid 10 taels of silver per month, and 20 taels per person had been paid in advance before departure, and so on.

There were two retired Portuguese gunners, one named Gokaus Teixeira and the other Antonio de Capo, and most of these musketeers were retired soldiers who had participated in the Portuguese War of Independence.

Now Portugal and Spain in Western Europe have reached a compromise, and Portugal's war of independence has entered a relatively low ebb, so a large number of retired soldiers have gone to the East in search of opportunities to make a fortune.

Among the artisan technicians hired by the Sun brothers from the Portuguese gun foundry in Trench Jing O, there was also a Chinese-speaking gun technician named Joe Rodriguez, because he had lived in Trench Ao for the longest time, so he could speak Chinese and had no problem communicating with both sides, so he quickly became the leader of this group of people and the interpreter of both sides.

Today, Sun Heding has led some of the Jinyi guards to escort the purchased Western muskets and artillery in advance, as well as Western gunners and gun technicians such as Gao Kaus Teixeira, Antonio de Capo, and Joe Rodriguez, who are traveling north by land and water.

Under the protection of the remaining Jinyi guards, Sun Hedou continued to stay in Trench Jing Ao with Luo Ruwang, waiting for the delivery of another batch of Western muskets and artillery, and took the opportunity to visit several Portuguese cannon foundries in Trench Jing Ao, hoping to learn and master the craftsmanship of Western artillery casting.

Now the Emperor Chongzhen from later generations certainly knows that since the end of the 16th century, the Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch and other Western European countries have entered an era of frenzied colonialism, occupying vast colonies in South America and Southeast Asia, and are now wandering around the South China Sea.

During this period, in order to compete with Spain and the Netherlands for colonies, Portugal, which was weaker, set up several gun factories on the spot after occupying Macao, which was used to solve the problem of supplying guns and guns to the East colonies, and in the twenties of the seventeenth century, the Portuguese foundry in Macao had become one of the best foundries in the world at that time, and it was second to none in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

However, Emperor Chongzhen also knew that the artillery casting in this era was very difficult, and even in Europe, the method adopted was still the mud fan cannon casting method.

Because the iron fan casting method was invented by the Chinese in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Opium War broke out, British warships attacked all the way north along the southeast coast. A large number of coastal forts need to be established in various coastal areas, so there is an urgent need for various artillery, and at that time, a clay fan could only be used once, and the production of the clay fan was particularly time-consuming and laborious. At that time, Gong Zhenlin, an official who supervised the casting of cannons in the Zhejiang Gun and Artillery Bureau, under the repeated urging of Shangguan, had a whimsical idea to try the iron fan casting cannon successfully, and wrote the book "Iron Model Casting Cannon Diagram", since then a pair of iron fan can be used indefinitely, greatly speeding up the speed of casting cannons. It was not until the advent of the iron fan casting method that the cost of artillery casting in the world was greatly reduced.

But the advent of the Iron Fan Casting Cannon Method was, after all, two hundred years later. Therefore, Sun Heding and others spent a high price to buy muskets and artillery, and in this era, there is no way to do it.

In addition to listening to the progress of such matters, Emperor Chongzhen also urged Sun Chengzong and Li Banghua to select and train the governor of the Zhili Governor's Mansion and the mining camp of Zunhua Baiye City before the new army of the Zhuozhou battalion was recruited, and instructed Sun Yuanhua to speed up the progress of the gun factory, and instructed Wu Weiying to make the Lifan Yuan operate normally as soon as possible, and then take people out of Beijing to the border town where the field was scheduled to be opened, and inspect and promote the opening of the border market.

Just when the cabinet and the military aircraft department were busy under the supervision of the emperor, Gao Shiming led the Tianjin Navy fleet to finally reach the destination and met the famous Dongjiang Mao Shuai.

This is the first time that Gao Shiming has left Beijing on a business trip after entering the palace for many years, and it is the first time in his life that he has crossed the sea by boat to an island that sounds very far away - Phi Dao.

Phi Island is located in the open sea of the Liaodong Peninsula, but far away from the Liaodong Peninsula, far away from the Shandong Peninsula, compared with the Ming Dynasty, it is closer to the Korean Peninsula, and is located on the side of the Korean Peninsula at the mouth of the Yalu River, the specific location is between Uiju and Pyongyang in North Korea Dozens of miles away from the sea in the south of the land, composed of a group of islands of different sizes, the largest of which was called Phi Island at the time, and in later generations of North Korea was called Bodymi Island.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Korea was still a loyal subject state of the Ming Dynasty, and most of the people living on both sides of the Yalu River were Han refugees who fled from Liaodong. In particular, Tieshan, which broke into the sea and was not far from Phi Dao, was the center of the Liaodong refugees fleeing to North Korea.