On July 28, the twelfth year of Shunzhi, he was in the palace.

Fu Lin looked at the several Western bird guns presented by the military department Shangshu Kadahun, and was a little excited.

Yesterday, Wang Yuele of Anjun and Ka Dahun, the secretary of the Ministry of War, presented these things to the imperial court, and said that it was the idea of his second son Xuanye. The boy asked the two of them to elaborate on the history of the Western bird.

Before the Ming Dynasty, the fire gun developed by itself did not have a crosshair and a light door, and later the Westerners invented this kind of bird gun, and it was transmitted to China through the Japanese during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. Compared with the hand-held firecrackers used in the early Ming Dynasty, the bird's guns have a longer body tube, a smaller caliber, and fire round lead bullets of the same caliber, with a longer range and stronger firepower; The front sight and the door were added, and the ignition of the hand was changed to the firing of the bolt, and the handle of the gun was changed from a straight wooden handle inserted in the tail of the gun to a curved wooden support for the barrel, and when holding the gun to shoot, it was changed from holding the gun back to holding the gun body in front of one hand and holding the handle in the back of the other hand, which could hold the gun stably for aiming, and the shooting accuracy was high. And because its bolt is shaped like a bird's beak, it is called "bird's beak gun", or this firearm can hit high-flying birds, and it is called "bird gun". In Europa, it's called "arquebus". [1]

For these Western bird guns used by the Rakshasas, Xiao Xuanye actually admired them, and he must have Yue Le and Ka Dahun report to the emperor in detail about their so-called "advanced" points - the bird guns used by our Qing Dynasty are made by imitating the early Western bird guns in the Ming Dynasty, and should be regarded as the old-style "arquebus", which is to use fire to fold the fire rope, and use [fingers] to press the fire rope to ignite the ignition gunpowder, and continue to ignite the propellant.

But what should the Western bird guns captured by Humar this time be called "tinder arquebuses". According to Xuan Ye, these foreigners are actually a generation more advanced than the arquebuses of the Qing Dynasty? Outrageous!

In fact, Fu Lin didn't know that when Hongyi said this to Yue Le in the Anjun Palace, he was really heartbroken, but he didn't put all the responsibility for China's firearms finally falling behind the Shijie level to the Qing Dynasty like those who knew little about history in later generations.

With the development of jishu, the problem of the need for a fire fold to ignite directly was satisfactorily solved, and the craftsmen in Western Europe added a small torch driven by the trigger at the back of the gun, which burned all the time during the battle, and when it was necessary to shoot, the trigger was pulled to make the small torch move forward, touching the fire rope inserted in front, and the small torch was kneaded with a cloth soaked in castor oil, and the fire burning on it was not easy to extinguish. In this way, the arquebusier does not have to re-fire after a failed shot, and the range is much easier. This new type of trigger-fired arquebus, with a caliber of 15 to 20 mm, a tube diameter ratio of 40 to 45 mm, and a maximum range of 60 to 80 meters, was introduced to Japan in 1543.

According to the History of the Ming Dynasty, the "trigger-fire arquebus" was introduced to China in the early 15th century, more than 100 years before Japan. However, 180 years later, at the end of the 16th century, in 1585, when Taiko Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent troops to Korea after basically unifying all of Japan, he was surprised to find that the Chinese army under the command of Li Rusong, a general sent by the Ming Dynasty to aid Korea to resist Japan, was still not fully equipped with the new "trigger-fire arquebus", more of which were old-fashioned "bird's beak guns", and there were no large-scale formed troops that specialized in the use of new arquebuses. Compared with the invading Japanese army, the infantry of the Ming army was at a great disadvantage in firepower. Therefore, Toyotomi Hideyoshi despised the Ming army who came to the aid of Korea.

After that, Japan no longer "must be harmonious in words, courteous in courtesy, without suspicion, and not suspicious" (Emperor Dahua of Japan warned his envoy during the Tang Dynasty of China, known as "Dongyi looks soft"), and from then on Japan is no longer "supple and submissive" to China. Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered the Japanese army to attack Li with a new musket, due to the great disparity between the advantages and disadvantages of the weapons, Li Rusong's troops were defeated by the Japanese army under the city of Pyongyang many times, until the end of the war, the Ming army still failed to defeat the Japanese army in the land battle, but relied on the "turtle boat" of the Korean naval division armed with trigger-fire arquebuses to annihilate most of the Japanese naval division, forcing Toyotomi Hideyoshi to order the withdrawal of troops. This explains that when attacking Humar Castle, the Weishenme dignified Qing Dynasty Ningguta Zhangjing Shaer Huda had to send hundreds of shotguns to North Korea, because the North Korea had already been equipped with "trigger-fired arquebuses" in the last years of the Ming Dynasty!

Almost at the same time, some remnants of the Zhuhou who had been defeated in the Japanese Civil War invaded the southeastern coastal provinces of China with such "trigger-fire arquebuses", and the local coastal garrisons of the Ming Dynasty were difficult to resist. Japan's new muskets made the swords of the Chinese Ming Dynasty army unable to parry, which was also one of the main reasons why the "woes" of the Ming Dynasty were difficult to end. At that time, the Ming army still could not wake up from the inferiority of weapons, and when the generals of the Ming army summed up the reasons for the defeat, they still attributed the defeat to the "defeat of the Japanese sword", and went to study the Japanese sword and the book of the Japanese sword, rather than to popularize the new musket. The final victory of aiding Korea and resisting Japanese aggression has exacerbated this situation. It can be said that it was the "battle victory" of the Battle of Wanli Korea that made the Ming Dynasty forget to learn the lesson of "failure of tactical equipment".

In fact, until the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, China's top musket jishu has been ahead of Japan for 50 years, especially the first to develop a kind of later generations of "flintlock pistol", which shoots with a wooden butt against the shoulder, the diameter of the reduced barrel accuracy is good and the weight is light, the pre-loaded ammunition in the separate medicine room, the rate of fire of the lighter bolt is very fast, very advanced, and Europe only had such a musket in the late 18th century.

But until the fall of the Ming Dynasty sixty years later, the Chinese Ming Dynasty government army only had a small number of "Shenji Battalion", which only symbolically used trigger-fired arquebuses, but did not use them on a large scale in a military sense, so that Wu Sangui would also have no intention of defending at Shanhaiguan, which was conducive to the defense of the musketeers (the liliang of the Ming bow was smaller than the Qing bow, and the range was not as good as the Qing bow, so that the Qing cavalry was heavy on armor and could shoot to the top of the city with a hard bow, but it was difficult for the Ming soldiers to shoot the Qing army). The Qing army, which was fierce in cavalry, easily defeated the Ming army. (Although the main tactical intent of the "Shenji Battalion" of the Ming Dynasty was to defend the city, not to fight on the plains, only in a large city like Beijing was equipped with musket troops in the role of honor guards). Just because it was not used in real combat, Shijie historians have not recognized that this weapon was invented by China at that time......

The Ming Dynasty did not pay enough attention to the new trigger-type perquebus, let alone the early Qing Dynasty who "won the world with bows and horses"! During the Battle of Salhu, the Western Route Army of the Ming Army saw the Eight Banners Army of Nu ~ Erhachi coming to attack on the Salhu Mountain, and ordered each team to form a camp and wait in line. When the Houjin army advanced to the bottom of the mountain, it immediately ordered artillery bombardment. The battle curtain was opened, the rain and snow suddenly stopped, and heavy fog fell from the sky, filling the valley, and the line of sight was not clear, and it was difficult to distinguish between the enemy and us within a few minutes. The Ming army was frightened, and everyone panicked, so they lit pine branches as torches. This happened to completely expose himself to the Jin army. The Jin army took advantage of its firelight and used bows and arrows, and the arrows did not miss a shot, and each shot was sure to hit. Although the Ming army had a fire that was easy to ignite the musket, because it was difficult to find the target in the bright place, not only did it fail to hurt the enemy, but it suffered a big loss. In addition, black gunpowder is afraid of moisture, which is inconvenient to use in rain and snow. The battle of Sarhu happened to be sunny after the rain, and when the humidity was at its highest, it was impossible to shoot without drying it over fire. Therefore, the Eight Banners Army became more and more courageous, approaching step by step, attacking the Ming camp, and capturing the Salhu Mountain camp in one fell swoop. During the Battle of Salhu, the flaws of the old arquebus were exposed. As for the later Qing Dynasty, because it was a horseback ethnic group, in order to maintain the Manchurian archery of archery and horseback, it always resisted firearms intentionally or unintentionally.

In the official history, in the Kangxi period, the Qing army's use of new arquebuses was still so unbearable - in the two standard siege battles such as the "Yaksa War" in 1685 and 1686, the Qing army failed to use muskets, so that the Russian musketeers believed that they had the advantage of this infantry weapon, and could fight with one as ten. Zuihou, the Qing army relied on long-range artillery superior firepower to win. Ironically, when the Qing army presented the Russian trigger-fire arquebus samples captured in the "Yaksa War" to the Kangxi Emperor, the Kangxi Emperor forbade the Qing army to use this new musket on the grounds that he should not interrupt the traditional bow and arrow spear granted by his predecessors.

It is precisely because he is familiar with this suffocating history of arquebuses in the Ming and Qing dynasties that Hongyi uncharacteristically took the initiative to "teach" the emperor Fulin through Yue Le and others, and made it clear that his persistence could attract his attention.

But in Fulin's eyes, even if these Western things are a little better, they are not a rare thing. Firearms, that's all it takes!

Since outside Longxing Pass, as the son of Emperor Huang Taiji of Rongma, he is no stranger to firearms, but the great training of "riding and shooting to secure the world" makes him more or less unwilling, or not too daring to pay too much attention to these foreign things. After all, the firearms of the Ming Dynasty are also very powerful, but Taizu Taizong exterminated the former Ming army several times, and every time the Ming army put firearms at the forefront, after blindly shooting indiscriminately, was it not flattened by the whirlwind of the Eight Banners Iron Cavalry? But after Ming Andali came back, he always said that this Western firearm was powerful, as if the cavalry who was swept by the wind and clouds might as well be a foot soldier who could only stand and put a gun? The military department also had some discussions, saying that firearms were usable, otherwise they would not have ordered North Korea to send shotguns three times and twice. Didn't the Qing Dynasty also have bird guns and bird guns? Although before entering the customs, the weapons and equipment of the Eight Banners were mainly bows and arrows, spears, ? [piàn] knives [2] and rattan cards are the mainstay, and the number of shotguns is small, and the shotguns are only attached to the archery infantry.

However, in the fifth year of Shunzhi, Dolgon still formed a formed shotgun corps on the basis of the Qing army's forward battalion, stipulating the forward military system, with half of the people learning shotguns, "each soldier is issued a shotgun", and the basic striker is set up as a captain, and the shotgun striker is set up as a chief. But after several major battles in the past few years, didn't the Eight Banners of the Qing Dynasty rely on cavalry and archery to defeat Nanming again and again? I didn't see much of a shotgunner. Naturally, it is also a fact that the number of shotguns is small and the guns are not new, and it is also said that they are mainly used in the defense of Gyeonggi, otherwise this time the military department will talk about the battle of Humar?

But Xuan Ye said that the arquebus must be of great use, but in his opinion, even this "trigger-fire arquebus" is not the most usable firearm! According to the current development of Western firearms technology, muskets will be continuously improved in two aspects: one is firing, and the other is projectiles and gun powder. According to the second son, the West invented a method of "tinder ignition" a few decades ago (late 16th century). It is to put a "tinder" or a short arquebus in a small tube, and the gunner only ignites the tinder when the gun is in use, so as not to expose the target at night because the gun carries a lit arquebus. In fact, in the Ming Dynasty, there was already a kind of musket that used flint to ignite the ignition[3], and it was not even afraid of wind and rain. This flint firing musket has also appeared in the West now, but it is not mature and durable, so it is not equipped with armies. And those projectiles and gunpowders, now Western warlocks are also in full swing to study, and they have to surpass my Qing Dynasty to give up!

Xuan Ye's even more sensational statement is that according to the performance of the Rakshasa shotguns that have been seized now, it is predicted that the firearms of the Western feudal clans will be more "advanced" in the future, and if the Qing Dynasty does not prepare early, I am afraid that it will be controlled by others in the future!

Sure enough, as Hongyi expected, these few words greatly stimulated the ambition and self-esteem of Fulin's "young son of heaven"! Since the dead can have it, I should have it even more in the Qing Dynasty! Since I want to have it, it must be the first in the world!

Thinking of this, Fu Lin finally made up his mind: Aren't you Xuanye going to do some kind of martial arts in the "Thousand Miles of Pine Forest" where the northeast of Zhili is located? I didn't want to pay attention to these foolish gossip about arquebuses, but when I thought of Dorobele Xuanye's "Battle of Humar", I thought that this time it would be "auspicious from the sky" again, and I could let you give it a try. I can give you the person you want......

"Master, the Minister of the Interior is here!" Wu Liangfu carefully reminded Fu Lin, who was staring at the long and short shotguns and meditating, but now he was really frightened by several twists and turns, and even feared that the emperor, who had always been favored by him, would suddenly grab the handcuff and give himself a shot!

"Good! Let him in! Fu Lin no longer dwelled on the few shotguns on the imperial case, turned around and faced the door of the palace, waiting to be seen.

"Minister of the Minion, Aobai, I respectfully invite the emperor to be saintly!" A loud greeting through the clouds and cracking stones, deafening and deafening, made the mood haode Fulin very useful, enjoying the echoes in the main hall of the palace, the emperor actually came to personally support this Manchurian strong man!

[1] The main characteristics of the bird gun are first of all that the front end of the gun tube is equipped with a crosshair, and the rear part is equipped with a light door to form an aiming device; The second is the design of a curved gun stock, the launcher can put the side of the face close to the gun stock to aim and shoot; Again, the gun tube is relatively long, the ratio of length to caliber is about 50:1~70:1, the slender gun tube makes the gunpowder fully burned in the chamber, produces a large thrust, and the muzzle velocity of the projectile after the chamber is larger, and obtains a low extension trajectory and a longer range; Zuihou is different from the ignition, using the fire rope as the fire source, pulling the trigger to ignite, not only the fire source is not easy to extinguish, but also improves the firing speed and enhances the killing power.

[2] Sharp sharpening knife.

[3] Despite the shortcomings of one kind or another, arquebuses were armed in the army for quite some time. The wars and conflicts it has experienced are innumerable, and countless more people have been killed. In China, arquebuses were used until the end of the 19th century, and they were used for a long time, not because China could not make flintlock pistols (which had been invented at the end of the Ming Dynasty), but because with the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty did not pay much attention to firearms, and did not develop much. When Western capitalism, driven by the Industrial Revolution, waged a war of plundering against the ancient East, these ancient firearms were no longer able to resist until they became semi-colonies of the capitalist countries, which proved an eternal truth - backwardness means that if you are backward, you will be beaten.