In the end, practice proved that Sun Yi's idea of testing the night march ability of the three battalions was completely bankrupt under the "troublemaking" of the local people.

When the simple people heard that Tabu couldn't take care of eating, they would lead a large army to help everyone guard the golden ditch, so what should everyone do? Naturally, everyone is helping to protect the Tabu bag.

The steppe farmers and herdsmen who were not good at words automatically followed the ranks after passing by, and they did not need anyone's consent at all, they were considered to have joined the army.

The shepherds with horses roamed on both sides of the procession, and if anyone in the group was slightly behind, they immediately grabbed the soldiers' equipment and rested it on their horses. At the end of the day, many of the soldiers of the third battalion were carrying one-third of their body weight, and they were marching shirtless.

From Jinjindu to Jingoukou's fifteen-mile road, the third battalion took only one hour, completely out of the standard of daytime marching.

Kong Youxing prepared a big old bowl of stewed horse meat and soaking pot helmets for his brothers in Jingoukou Ziqicheng City, and the three battalions started to eat as soon as they arrived, and the soldiers of the three battalions from the battalion commander to the recruits felt very happy.

Sun Yi was full of feelings.

Taking advantage of the time to eat, Sun Yi and Yang Ritian learned about the situation from Kong Youxing, Wen Muzuo, and Niu Li'er. Kong Youxuan reported that no Manchurian soldiers had been found in the valley so far, and Sun Yi was immediately relieved.

Tonight, the lights were dark and there was not even a moonlight, and it was impossible for the Manchurian soldiers to drag dozens of pounds of armor to climb over the mountain in the middle of the night.

Kong Youxing, Wen Muzuo, and Niu Li'er were all a little nervous, and you introduced the battle at the stone gate one by one. Sun Yi didn't expect that the mines that were originally intended to be used to blow up people would be more effective in scaring horses.

Wen Muzuo stammered and asked Sun Yi for some explosives, saying that he had made a few catapults and wanted to make some "heavenly thunder" that could be thrown to protect the village.

Sun Yi suddenly perked up.

After making the explosives, Sun Yi dreamed of having a "bomb" that could be thrown out and exploded.

Sun Yi tried to make a "conscience cannon" with two explosive packs stacked on top of each other, that is, to use the thrust of the dynamite pack below to explode to launch the explosive bag above.

However, Sun Yi found that the current explosives are too sensitive, no matter what container they are in, it is often the explosive package under the "conscienceless cannon" that sounds, and the explosive package on it cannot withstand the huge impact and explodes at the same time, which has no practical value at all.

After the failure of the test of the "unconscionable cannon", Sun Yi gave up the experiment of using "grenadiers" or "mortars" to launch "bombs". There is no need, the current explosives will definitely not withstand such a violent impact.

In the end, even the "hand bomb" that was picked out by his arm was denied by Wang Erniu.

In this era, even the clusters of arrows had to be recycled in wars, and they could only be thrown out a few dozen meters like a grenade, and the damage was limited, and wasting iron with a bang was not a way to get by.

In desperation, Sun Yi could only provide the original explosive package for direct burial or blasting.

But if you can use the catapult to deliver the bomb, because the impact force when throwing is much less than the gunpowder, it will not cause the explosive to explode, and it is silent, smokeless, green and low-carbon, wouldn't it be perfect?

The catapult used in ancient Greece and Rome relied on the torsional force generated by the rope to eject.

The ejection rod is usually upright, the top of the rod is a "spoon" or leather bullet pouch for the projectile, and the lower end of the rod is inserted in a tightly twisted horizontal rope.

When ejecting, the ejection lever is first pulled to a near-horizontal position with a winch, and the projectile is placed in a "spoon" or leather bullet bag. When the winch rope is released, the ejection lever returns to a vertical position to eject the projectile.

This kind of catapult is very similar to a donkey's kick when fired, so it is also called a wild donkey cannon.

There is also a catapult that relies on the elastic force of the bowstring to be ejected, and in addition to firing stone projectiles, it can also fire large arrows and gunpowder bullets. This type of machinery reached its peak during the Song Dynasty in China and was called the bed crossbow or ballista.

In the Southern Song Dynasty's "Guarding the City", it is recorded that a kind of ballista cannon installed on a ship can fire a "thunderbolt cannon": "A thunderbolt cannon is suddenly released in the boat, and it is covered with paper,...... Falling from the sky,...... Its sound is like thunder, the paper cracks and the lime scatters into smoke, and the eyes of the people and horses are squinted, and the characters do not see each other. …… Defeat them! ”

Meng Yuan brought back a counterweight catapult from the Western Regions, called a Huihui cannon or Xiangyang cannon. The lever of this cannon is loaded with a weight at one end and a stone projectile to be fired at the other end. Before firing, the end where the stone projectile is placed is pulled down with a winch, pulley or directly by human power, and the other end with the heavy object is also raised at this time. After placing the stone bullet, let go or cut the rope, let one end of the heavy object fall, and the stone bullet is thrown out of the trend.

This kind of return cannon can throw 200 catties of goods out 300 meters, and the Mongols use it to throw dead men and horses into the attacked city to cause infectious diseases.

Compared with the artillery after the invention of gunpowder, all kinds of catapults had the disadvantages of large size, slow loading, large number of operators, and low efficiency, so they gradually withdrew from the ranks of weapons in the Ming Dynasty.

For example, the famous Song Dynasty Eight Ox Bow, "Wujing General Essentials" recorded: "Three bow bed crossbows, two bows in the front, one bow in the back, also known as the eight ox crossbows in the world." Zhang Shi, where hundreds of people,......。 The second with fifty or seventy people,......。 ”

But the slings that Sun Yi wanted didn't need to be thrown very far, and they could be shot at a longer range than the Manchurian bow; The weight requirements for projectiles are even lower, and a bomb of more than a dozen catties is considered a giant bomb.

Different types of slingers can be placed on city walls, on naval ships, or even in field battles,......, future warfare patterns are about to change completely.

Sun Yi became excited, and talked endlessly with Wen Muzuo about the various combinations of stone throwers and bombs, only to hear Yang Ritian, Li Guang, Kong Youxing and others dumbfounded.

This...... Oh, my God...... Everyone has seen the power of landmines, and when the thunder comes out, who can still be the opponent of the coalition forces?

What shocked Yang Ritian even more was that Sun Yi said that using hollow iron balls of cast iron to make bombs was much more powerful than directly using explosive packs. Moreover, this kind of iron bomb can be detonated with a fuse, or it can be detonated by a violent impact. When an iron bomb is buried in the ground, it is a mine, when it is thrown out with a catapult, when it is rolled down from a mountain, when it is thrown into a river, it is a mine......

Wen Muzuo, on behalf of Erli Bancun, expressed his willingness to provide iron as a raw material for making iron bombs, and Sun Yida was overjoyed. Sun Yi knew that the iron ore in this area had a particularly high sulfur content, and it was scrap iron in later generations. But this kind of scrap iron is hard and brittle, and when it is broken, the edges and corners are sharp, and it is most suitable for casting bomb shells.

The two of them chatted for an hour.

Sun Yi was surprised by Wen Muzuo's understanding of various catapult machinery, and couldn't help asking, "How do you know so clearly?" ”

Wen Mu replied: "I don't dare to tell a lie in front of Tabu Nang. My family originally lived in Wanquan County, Shanxi, and was a famous woodworking family in the local area, and was designated as a craftsman in the early Ming Dynasty. Later, he couldn't bear the exploitation of the imperial court, and fled to the grassland during the Wanli period. There is a book of "Azusa People's Relics" in the family, which records the construction methods of various sizes of woodwork, and draws the general map and the size of the installation position. I read that book and figured it out for myself. ”

Sun Yi clapped his legs again and again, and picked up the baby!

——————

Resources

"Azusa People's Legacy"

"Ziren Legacy", a treatise on wooden machinery in ancient China, after the Tang Dynasty, carpenters were called "Ziren". Written by Xue Jingshi, a native of Wanquan, Shanxi, at the end of the Jin Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, it was printed and published in the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (1261).

"The Legacy of the Azusa People" introduces a variety of wood shapes, structural characteristics and manufacturing methods, according to the use of performance classification and narration, each category first introduces the history, one thing, draws a general map and a sub-map and indicates the size, easy to solve and easy to learn.

In later generations, only the fragments of the "Yongle Canon" remained.

There are only four types of "cars" left; "Door" medium version door, lattice door; In the "textile", there are four kinds of Hua Jizi (i.e., Jacquard Machine), Liji Zi (i.e., vertical loom), Cloth Horizontal Machine (i.e., flat loom) and Luo Jizi (wooden loom specializing in weaving warp twisted fabrics), as well as three kinds of tools used for warping and sizing, such as "Pan Bed", "Warp Brand" and "Drop Basket".