"Brother Huang, what gift did you bring me?" Crown Prince Zhu Cihong asked happily when he saw Liu Jun. Although he is the prince of a country, he is only eleven years old this year, a prince raised in a deep palace. Usually when I am with those teachers, I am always subject to many constraints, but when I am with Liu Jun, I never ask him to do this or that, but I can always tell him some interesting stories outside the palace, and even bring some good gifts every time.

Last time, Liu Jun gave him a clairvoyant mirror, and he was very happy.

"I have brought two gifts for Your Highness." Liu Jun stepped forward with a smile, after Chongzhen accepted Liu Jun as his righteous son, he deliberately asked the prince and the two kings of Yongding and the two princesses to call Liu Jun the royal brother, and several princes and princesses were also called from this, maybe Liu Jun was young, maybe Liu Jun was born with less awe of imperial power, which made both the prince and several princes and princesses very close to him.

Liu Jun's gift to the crown prince was a globe and a model of a galleon, which were actually decorations in the captain's room that he had captured the Batavia, and the model ship was the Batavia.

"What is this?" The prince looked at the globe, which was originally marked with Dutch on the surface, and Liu Jun asked the craftsman to change a table map, which was re-marked with Chinese characters.

"This is called the globe, this is the planet where we are, you see, this place next to the sea is our Ming Dynasty, his east is the sea, the north is the Mongolian Plateau, the northeast is Jianyu, and then the east of this peninsula is Korea, and then this archipelago is Japan, and these islands in the south are the countries of the South Seas, the Europeans call it the East Indies and also called the spice islands, rich in spices and so named."

"Where is Europe?"

"Europe is on the far side of our west, where it is Europe, and there are many countries. The Holy Roman Empire, France, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, England, etc., further west is the ocean, which is the Atlantic Ocean, and further west, where is the New World, and then across the continent. It's another ocean, that is, the Pacific Ocean, floating across the ocean, and then to the southeast of our Ming Dynasty. Liu Jun pointed to the globe, then turned it slightly, turned around, and arrived at Daming again.

The concept of the earth was not uncommon in the West at this time, but in China, with the arrival of missionaries. This knowledge is also accepted by many Chinese people.

"We live on a big ball? But why don't we fall? "No one has ever told the prince about these geography and astronomy, and even since ancient times, astronomy has belonged to a royal doctrine, which is forbidden for ordinary people to study, and private study of astronomy is a crime for violating it.

"Because of gravity, it's like if you jump up and then end up on the ground. The Earth will have a gravitational pull to attract us. ”

"Is the earth really round?"

"Of course. This has been proven for a long time. If one day you go to the beach, you will find out. When a ship appears on the sea, the first thing we see is the sail at the very top, and then as it gets closer we see a part of the mast. Liu Jun smiled and popularized science to the crown prince.

Empress Zhang and Empress Zhou, as well as the two concubines Yuan and Tian, all sat on the side and laughed.

The two kings of Yongding were younger, and they were more interested in the model of the galleon that Liu Jun gave to the prince, but the two children also knew about it. The crown prince's things, they can't grab them casually, so they can only look at Liu Jun with a blank look.

"I've got a gift for you too."

Liu Jun's gift to the two princes was a set of terracotta figurines of soldiers, each with hundreds of soldiers, accompanied by a miniature battlefield. It's a battle. King Yong's set is to attack the Four Grass Sea Fort, and the one that sets the king is to capture the Red Embedded City.

The soldiers are all painted pottery, vivid, very beautiful, there are those who ride horses, those who carry guns, and those who hold swords and push cannons, and there are also city fortress flags and so on. The two princes immediately liked it, and they hurriedly began to put up their soldiers.

The crown prince fiddled with the globe for a while, and then began to look at the model again.

"Is there really such a big ship?"

"The flagship of the Beiyang Naval Division led by me is this ship, which usually carries 1,000 sailors and soldiers, and if it fights, it can carry more than 1,000 people, and the fastest speed can reach 60 miles per hour, and it can carry 3.65 million catties."

"Isn't that faster than a horse?"

"Yes, at sea it can run forty miles a day and night, and if the wind is favorable, it can be faster, but a horse can't run twelve hours a day."

"How tall is this ship?"

"The mainmast in the middle is twenty-one feet high!"

"Twenty-one? Isn't it higher than my father's Qianqing Palace? ”

The Qianqing Palace is only more than seven zhang high, so it is naturally higher than it.

Liu Jun also brought gifts to several queen concubines, perfumes from Europe, beautiful glass bottles containing various fragrances of perfumes, gently unscrewed and suddenly a fragrance came to the face. Several queen concubines tried it, and they all liked it very much.

The two princesses were given cloth sewn dolls, each of which contained several, from a Chinese girl with a traditional Ming dress and hairstyle, to a European white girl with red hair and blonde hair, and a few puppets with dogs and kittens.

Although the two princesses are older than the two kings of Yongding, they are no longer reserved when they see these puppet dolls, and they are happily holding the dolls and laughing.

"What kind of good gift did Ciye give you, which made you so happy." Chongzhen strode into the hall from the outside and said with a smile.

The princes and princesses immediately proudly showed the emperor the newly arrived gifts, Chongzhen looked at them, they were all very innovative but not luxurious and valuable, so he didn't say anything.

"Let the Imperial Dining Room pass the food."

During the meal, Liu Jun also gave Chongzhen a gift.

"Your Majesty, this is the debt raised by the sale of bonds in the first half of this year, a total of 10 million silver dollars, this is a certificate of deposit. Now the silver is in the bank vault of the Sihai Bank in the capital, and His Majesty can send someone to take the deposit receipt to withdraw the silver at any time, and silver dollar coupons and silver dollars are acceptable. ”

"Oh, another ten million silver dollars sold?" Chongzhen excitedly took the deposit slip and carefully read it several times before putting it away. "Jiye, you've worked the one hand, you have to train and fight, and on the other hand, you have to help raise funds. I don't even know what to say. ”

"Your Majesty, this is what I should do as a courtier, and now that the country is still in difficulty, the monarchs and ministers of the court must go all out to tide over this difficulty. After a few years, recuperate and recuperate. Naturally, the world is peaceful, and the bonds issued at that time can also be repaid. ”

Chongzhen sighed, "There is no way to do it, I have hundreds of millions of people and enjoy thousands of miles of rivers and mountains, but I have to borrow." ”

Empress Zhou said on the side, "Your Majesty, don't sigh, if it weren't for Ciye, Your Majesty wouldn't be able to borrow money even if he wanted to." ”

"yes, yes. If it weren't for the succession, I wouldn't have anywhere to borrow. Only Jikarma can relieve me of this dilemma. ”

Liu Jun hurriedly said, "It's just the duty of the courtiers, and when His Majesty talked about the artillery to his sons and daughters today, I thought about it later, and I felt that I currently have the guns on the battleship in my hand, and the situation is not bad." Therefore, it was intended to put the artillery that had been originally equipped in the army. First draw most of them and send them to Ning Jin to increase their firepower. ”

"Erchen plans to transfer 500 tiger squat cannons and 300 captive cannons. In addition, there are 100 300-jin franc machines, 50 500-jin franc machines, plus 20 thousand-pound franc machines, and 10 3,000-pound red-coated cannons to be sent to Ningjin. ”

The Hydra now has a new type of artillery, and a new type of cannon foundry, and the artillery fire is quite abundant. Now there is no shortage of artillery for the Hydra. What is missing is a complete artillery system that standardizes the artillery it has.

Try to standardize the many models of guns of different sizes and simplify them to a few models. In this way, the efficiency of the artillery can be increased, and only a few standard models of shells need to be manufactured and transported.

Nowadays, the artillery system of the Hydra has been grouped into four categories: field artillery, siege artillery, naval artillery and coastal defense artillery. The field artillery tried to retain only the three standards of 4 pounder.8.12. There are two standards of siege artillery 12 and 24, plus 6-inch grenades for field battles and 8-inch grenades, 8, 10, and 12 standard mortars for siege guns, which are already as simplified as possible.

Other types of artillery have been placed in the city and shore defenses as much as possible, and the same model has been grouped together as much as possible.

Through this standardization, the artillery fire of the Hydra is now much better prepared and much more efficient. In addition, with the special artillery unit, it turned out that a large number of tiger squats and captured these artillery pieces in the army were useless.

Those cannons are too weak in terms of range and lethality, and they are more troublesome to carry. Before the armory workshop has reported to Liu Jun, developed several new types of howitzers, lighter weight, four pounds, eight pounds, twelve pounds three new howitzers, compared with the original howitzer is much lighter, four pounds of light howitzers are only 55 pounds, eight pounds of 110 pounds, twelve pounds of only 170 pounds, the most important thing is that this light howitzer can be disassembled, the twelve pounds of light howitzers can be transported away by at most three mules, and you can also bring three boxes of shells, you can go over mountains and mountains, although the power is weaker than ordinary howitzers, weaker than the howitzer.

However, the support firepower of the original light infantry such as Tiger Squat, Exterminator and Franc Machine is much more powerful. This new type of cannon has been named by Liu Jun as an infantry grenade, also known as a mountain grenade, and is specially used as a light support firepower attached to the flag level of the department.

New guns are already beginning to be mass-cast and produced, so the old guns such as Tiger Squat that were originally in the army will not be useful at all. The emperor and the cabinet ministers had already set their sights on Liu Jun's artillery, and since Liu Jun didn't want to hand over those new artillery pieces to the imperial court and send them to Liaodong, he finally thought about it, so he had to send these obsolete old light artillery to Liaodong.

By the way, a few more old-style Hongyi, which were both heavy but not powerful, were also sent to Liaodong, which could be regarded as blocking the outstretched hand of the imperial court.

Although they are all fallen artillery that some nine-headed birds can't look down on, even the small cannon like Tiger Squat can't be called a cannon in the nine-headed bird. But the number of thousands of cannons still made Chongzhen very happy.

However, Liu Jun did not give it away in vain, and the next day he negotiated with the Ministry of Industry, and the more than 1,000 cannons were handed over to the imperial court, and the Ministry of Industry pulled out a large number of copper and iron materials and a large number of sulfur saltpeter and other materials to Liu Jun. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for your support, after the publication, the scale of everything, and the number of AK12008, thank you!