In March 1666, at the shooting range of the Taiping military base on the outskirts of Kiev, Hong Tiancheng, dressed in bright yellow ornate civilian clothes, was playing with a rifle in his hand that looked similar in appearance to an ordinary flintlock smoothbore gun.

This is the Minnie rifle that ushered in the era of large-scale rifled guns in the history of the earth!

The rifling of muskets was invented by Europeans as early as the 16th century, and it is well known that rifling can be contained in the chamber of the gun, which will increase the rotational power of the bullet, so as to achieve the purpose of enhancing aiming and effective range.

However, in the early rifled guns, due to the rifling in the chamber, it was difficult for the front-loading bullet to maintain the chamber of the gun, and the power was greatly reduced. In order to achieve good breath-holding, rifled gun bullets are often made of the same caliber as the gun or even slightly larger, so it is extremely difficult to load. It is often necessary to hammer the ejector lever to propel the bullet into place, which often results in a more dangerous rifle rupture. When the bullet is advanced to the position of the medicine room, it is often deformed due to rough operation, and the killing effect cannot be achieved.

This defect makes the rifled gun was invented as early as the 16th century, but it has never been as popular as the use of smoothbore guns......

Knowing the appearance of the Mini rifle, it broke this convention!

Because the bullet of the Mini rifle is completely different from the lead bullet commonly used in smoothbore guns!

The Mini rifle uses the cylindrical shell lead bullet invented by Mini.

Since this bullet is slightly smaller than the caliber of the rifle, it solves the embarrassing situation of the old rifle's frontloading bullet that cannot be stuffed into the barrel or clogs the barrel due to the large bullet. Mini bullets can be easily pushed into the chamber with a ram lever. Thus significantly increasing the rate of fire. The bullet is threaded around the body to match the rifling, and the middle of the thread is stuffed with animal oil. The bottom of the bullet uses a cork material. When fired, gunpowder gases hit the cork, and the cork was hit by an instantaneous impact, and then the bullet was violently propped up. Because the bullet is stretched, the bullet itself can be relied on to complete the sealing of the chamber at the moment of firing without leaking gunpowder gases and causing the kinetic energy of the bullet to be lost. In this way, the problem of sealing the chamber of the old front-loading gun was solved, and the rate of fire, firing range and safety of the gun were greatly enhanced (a good seal did not easily lead to the residue of gunpowder residue blocking the barrel and causing the chamber to explode).

Hong Tiancheng's standard Mini rifle from the Total War System is equipped with a safety lock to prevent misfire, the whole gun weighs 4.8 kg, the caliber is 17.8 mm, each bullet weighs 32.4 grams, the killing distance can reach 918 meters, and accurate hits can be guaranteed within 550 meters!

The factor that limits the killing distance of the bullet is no longer a matter of bullet kinetic energy, but the limitation of human sight distance, after a distance of more than 400 meters, the human target becomes extremely small in the soldier's field of vision, and it is difficult to aim, so the actual engagement distance of the Mini rifle is only about 400 to 500 meters.

Of course, the kind of person who is born with good eyesight can hit the enemy at a greater distance, and theoretically, the human body at a distance of nearly a thousand meters can be killed.

This shows how powerful Minnie's bullets are!

Since the installation of the Mini rifle, the rifle engagement distance in human history has remained at the level of more than 400 meters, until a large number of sights were developed later, extending the human naked eye sight distance, which greatly extended the combat distance.

However, for Hong Tiancheng, the effective range of more than 500 meters is enough for him to dominate the European continent!

"With an effective firing range of four or five hundred meters, I'm afraid that the enemy's artillery will be shrouded in the range of our army's firepower, and once the war starts, the anti-Han alliance formed by the French and the Spanish weak chickens will definitely reap a surprise, haha."

Hong Tiancheng looked at the dozens of Heavenly King Guards on the shooting range, banging and shooting with live ammunition, looking at the target data hundreds of meters away, and said in a good mood.

When the anti-Han alliance was transporting troops and food to prepare for a large-scale offensive, Hong Tiancheng was not idle, and after determining the huge advantage of the Mini rifle, Hong Tiancheng's military disadvantage would no longer be a problem!

"Now that we have 5 full-fledged Heavenly Kings Guards divisions equipped with Mini rifles, the remaining three short-formed Heavenly Kings Guards divisions that are still using flintlock muskets after the war do not need to be used as field troops, and the first Heavenly Kings Guards Division was reorganized into a Hungarian infantry division, and the main task was to defend the Kingdom of Hungary.

The next day, the King's Guards Division was reorganized into the Czechoslovak Infantry Division, whose main task was to defend the Kingdom of Czechoslovakia.

On the third day, the King's Guards Division was reorganized into a German infantry division, and its main task was to defend the occupied areas of our army in the German Confederation.

These 5 divisions of the Heavenly King's Guards Army, which were equipped with Mini rifles, were organized into the new main field divisions of the Heavenly Kingdom, the 1st to 5th Field Infantry Divisions.

The more than 5,000 elite grenadiers of the Taiping Army stationed in East Prussia were reorganized into the Warsaw Guard Independent Regiment, which was responsible for the defense of East Prussia, Lithuania, and Poland. ”

There are no local guerrillas in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and there is no worry about foreign invasion, so Hong Tiancheng only retains more than 5,000 regular troops of the Taiping Army system to garrison, of course, in addition to the main battle corps of the Taiping Army adapted in Hong Tiancheng's mouth, there are also a large number of local security regiments and Han Association Army auxiliaries, and the Taiping Army stationed in the local area is mainly to prevent foreign enemies from invading and suppressing popular uprisings.

The Kingdom of Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the occupied areas of the German Confederation border foreign countries, so more troops are needed to defend them, and the local garrison troops changed by the three divisions of the Taiping Army's Heavenly King Guards can probably have about 30,000 people, which is enough to ensure the fruits of Hong Tiancheng's victory.

As for the new 5 Minnie Rifle King Guards, they will be used as the main force of the field to deal with the next battle.

The strength of the German Infantry Division, the Czechoslovak Infantry Division, and the Hungarian Infantry Division was not fixed, and for the needs of the upcoming war, the German Infantry Division had the largest number of troops, the Czechoslovak Infantry Division had the least strength because it only bordered the Kingdom of Austria, and the Hungarian Infantry Division was in the middle, and once the war began, the three would support each other, because the three infantry divisions had established a unified command of the operational staff.

Hong Tiancheng, who came from later generations, had already imperceptibly pulled some advanced combat systems in later generations into the Taiping Army system, but Hong Tiancheng didn't want the enemy to learn from it, so he kept a low profile.

Obviously, compared with the Taiping Army's unrelenting and endless advanced weaponry and equipment, the inconspicuous system of the operational staff did not attract the attention of the European continent.

After the start of the war, the three reorganized Taiping armies will also become a powerful logistical support for the five main divisions and regiments to maintain the security of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's foreign wars.