After selecting Zhao Bo and Li Bin, two energetic and ambitious young people, as the heads of the intelligence department, the intelligence department in Jiaozhou has undergone earth-shaking changes in just a few days. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

First of all, take the Military Intelligence Department as an example, since Zhao Bo was promoted to the director of the Military Intelligence Department, Zhao Bo borrowed 1,000 soldiers from Liu Fan that afternoon. With these soldiers as the backing, Zhao Bo immediately began a purge, and the first unlucky ones were Wang Yong's henchmen. The so-called once a son of heaven and a courtier, Wang Yong went to work and Zhao Bo took office, of course he would not leave Wang Yong's subordinates to control various key departments.

After a bloody storm, Zhao Bo reasoned all the people who disobeyed him, and then installed his own henchmen. After taking power, Zhao Bo began to reorganize the Military Intelligence Department, and in addition to setting up a headquarters in Jiaozhou, the new Military Intelligence Department also set up branch divisions in each province. In order to open up the situation as soon as possible and complete the tasks assigned by Liu Fan, Zhao Bo gave the director of the branch department great autonomy. In addition to the core members, who must be dispatched by the headquarters, the station manager of the sub-division has the right to recruit peripheral members independently.

After the reorganization, the Military Intelligence Department ushered in a period of rapid development. Liu Fan can even foresee that in the future, the Military Intelligence Department will take Jiaozhou as the core and quickly radiate to the entire Ming Dynasty, even outside the Guan.

Compared with Zhao Bo's wanton publicity, the edge is exposed. The internal logistics department in charge of Li Bin is much more gentle. At the same time that Zhao Bo drastically reformed the Military Intelligence Department, Li Bin also led people to quietly go back and forth between military academies and political academies to secretly absorb personnel. Without anyone noticing, it quietly grew and grew.

Li Bin's approach is undoubtedly relatively smart, and the military academy and the political school can be said to be the cradle of Liu Fan's cultivation of talents from both military and political circles. The graduates of these two schools will enter all the key departments under the rule of the Broken Army in the future. Once they graduate, it also means that the tentacles of the Internal Service Division will extend to various departments with these trainees. Perhaps in the future, as long as there is a broken army, there will be spies from the Internal Service Division.

The two internal and external intelligence departments are gradually on the right track and developing rapidly, with these two sharp swords in hand, Liu Fan does not have to worry about the whole and be constrained by the hidden dangers inside. In the next few days, Liu Fan, who was in a good mood, took his "royal secretary" Liu Bing'er to inspect the arsenal.

Since the last pirate attack, most of the arsenal has been transferred by Sun Yuanhua to the north of Shihe City. Now only the ironworks and gunpowder factories outside the city are the factories that are inconvenient to develop in the city.

Under the guidance of Sun Yuanhua, Liu Fan and the others came to the north of the city where the arsenal was located. Before entering the arsenal, Liu Fan heard the sound of iron hammering and the loud shouts of the workers. Walking slowly into the gate of the arsenal, Liu Fan was immediately attracted by the busy scene in front of him. Liu Fan looked around, and there were workers coming and going everywhere, and piles of iron were piled up in the open space like small iron mountains. There were even a few cannons in the open space in the distance, and Liu Fan could see at a glance that this was the most powerful six-pounder cannon of the Broken Army.

Stroking the cold cannon body, Liu Fan couldn't help but ask, "Senior brother, how is the output of the arsenal now?" To such a six-pounder gun, how many can be produced in January? ”

Looking at Liu Fan's eager gaze, Sun Yuanhua smiled proudly and said, "After more than two years of uninterrupted investment, the current Shihe Arsenal has become the largest firearms production base in Shandong. The arsenal itself has almost five thousand workers and scientists of all kinds. If you count the small downstream workshops that serve the arsenal, then the arsenal has as many as 10,000 workers. The number of people has expanded, and the corresponding production has steadily increased. Now the arsenal in front of you can produce 100 three-eyed guns and more than 50 arquebuses per day. If the artillery is produced at full capacity, it can produce about 100 tiger squat cannons, 30 three-pounder cannons, and more than a dozen six-pounder cannons per month! ”

Liu Fan was disappointed when he heard this, and said dissatisfiedly, "Senior brother, how can 10,000 workers produce this amount of output in a month?" You know, I invest nearly 50,000 taels of silver in the arsenal every month! ”

Sun Yuanhua's eyes widened, and he said angrily, "Is this still less?" You know, this arsenal has more than three times the output of the one I built in Dengzhou! Are you still not satisfied? Jimin, do you know how to cast cannons? ”

Seeing that Sun Yuanhua seemed to be angry, Liu Fan couldn't help but shrink his neck and whispered, "I don't seem to understand!" ”

Sun Yuanhua snorted, and reprimanded dissatisfiedly, "If you don't understand, don't talk nonsense, you give a lot of money." But we've got a lot of use here. Iron ore, saltpeter, willow, which does not cost money? And then there's the Cold Weapon Foundry, which eats most of the iron ore it buys every month. It's not easy for my firearms factory to produce so many muskets and artillery, and you're still not satisfied! ”

"Senior brother, let's not talk about this for now, this time I came mainly to see the production of the arsenal. Why don't you show me around the cannon casting workshop first? Let's wait until we've finished reading the rest of the things and then discuss them, shall we? ”

Seeing that Sun Yuanhua was getting more and more angry, Liu Fan didn't dare to let him continue to talk, and hurriedly led the topic to the casting cannon. Liu Fan's method really worked, and as soon as he heard that Liu Fan wanted to see how to cast the cannon, Sun Yuanhua immediately became interested, and he couldn't help but pull Liu Fan and walked to the room in front of him.

As soon as he walked into the workshop, Sun Yuanhua introduced Liu Fan with great interest, "Jimin, look, this is our workshop for casting cannons." Casting cannons is a technical job, which seems simple but is actually very exquisite. The first step in casting a cannon is here, molding! According to the traditional method, the first thing to do is to use very dry nanmu or fir wood, and make a gun mold according to the style of the cannon body. There are too few of these two kinds of wood in Shandong, so I replaced them with the more common jujube wood and locust wood. Jujube wood and locust wood are very dense and durable, and can be reused many times when used for molding. The only drawback is that the wood is too hard, and it takes too much time for workers to make molds. Sun Yuanhua explained as he pointed to a few workers who were busy brushing mud on the gun mold.

"The second step is to place the gun mold and the mold core. The third step is the refining ingredients. The fourth step is copper (iron) pouring. The refined copper (iron) is put into a pre-brick-shaped copper pouring furnace, and then the copper (iron) is catalyzed into juice with a high fire, and then copper (iron) is gradually added. When the copper (iron) juice is all cleared, like oil and water, and there is a golden flower and green flame on it, the copper (iron) juice is drawn out, and it is gradually put into the mold, and when the wooden mold is filled, even if the casting is completed. The fifth step is to start the heart. Within 3 days of casting, shake the mold center loose; On the 5th day, take out the mold core; On the 8th day, the soil was dug up, the cannon was put down, the two ends were raised more than 2 feet high, the mud on the mold was removed, and the cannon body was cast. The sixth step is to look at the chamber. It is to use a certain method to check whether the inside of the chamber is smooth, and the smooth inside of the chamber is a good cannon. The seventh step is to flush the mouth, after the cannon is cast, the muzzle is uneven, and the muzzle must be flushed to make the muzzle neat and smooth. The eighth step is the chambering. The knife was slashed into the muzzle of the gun, and the inside of the gun was extremely smooth. The ninth step is to drill the fire gate. The proper placement of the cannon is related to the use of artillery. Therefore, according to the size of the inner chamber, close to the bottom of the gun, use a pure steel rough drill, dipped in oil to drill the fire door, the fire door must be parallel to the bottom of the gun, it is appropriate. The artillery body is all processed, and finally installed on the gun carriage, which is finally completed! ”

After watching all the cannon casting processes, Liu Fan understood why Sun Yuanhua said that twenty or thirty cannons a month was too much. Because in this era when there are no lathes, casting cannons is too troublesome. Just a three-pound cannon has nine major processes and more than a dozen small processes, and the production cycle is as long as 20 days. (To be continued.) )