readx;??? In a sense, the Wanli Korean War was not so much a confrontation between the Eastern firearms system as a stage for a more alternative and mixed firearms war between the East and the West. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

In some respects, whether it was the Ming army or the Japanese army at that time, many of the types of firearms used were shadows of the more mainstream Western firearms at that time.

For example, the Japanese army's iron cannon is a Japanese version of the Portuguese arquebus that was originally introduced to Japan.

......

There is an interesting view in later generations, that is, in many ways, in the Wanli Korean War, the relatively ancient oriental firearms system was in fact outdated, and advanced Western-style firearms equipment gradually became the focus of equipment in the two countries.

It's just that this view is no match for the development trend of history.

Because the two countries that could have developed their own characteristic firearms systems have successively abandoned the research and development of more advanced firearms.

This situation has to be said to be a kind of irony.

...................................................... Dividing Line................................................

Later generations have a view that the Wanli Korean War was a stage for the display of firearms by the three warring parties......

In the practice of warfare in the Ming Dynasty, the Ming army gradually ceased to be the main condition for victory, and began to rely more on weapons, with the advantage of firearms to win the victory over the northern nomads, as the so-called "firearms for profit, as fast as thunder, as fast as lightning", the Ming Dynasty people at that time proudly declared that "China's long skills are nothing more than firearms." ”

In the Ming army, the most eye-catching is the imported "Buddha Lang machine". In the early 16th century, more advanced Western European firearms began to be introduced to China, which played a positive role in promoting the development of firearms in the Ming Dynasty. In August 1522, 5 Portuguese ships provoked Canton and were defeated by the Ming army, and 2 ships and more than 20 Franc cannons were captured by the Ming army. The Franc cannon was the most advanced firearm in the world at that time, and the Franc machine was the name of Portugal in the Ming Dynasty, and its artillery was later called the Franc machine. The best thing about its cannon is that the denominator and sub-gun, which is loaded with gunpowder and bullets, are put into the mother gun chamber and fired, which avoids the explosion of the gun chamber in direct contact with gunpowder and bullets. Factor Guns are single, so you can fire one sub-Gun and replace it with another. A few sub-guns can be quickly replaced, and a huge lethality of "bullets falling like rain and being invincible" can be formed. The mother gun of the Franc cannon is not only sturdy and sturdy, but also equipped with a crosshair, which greatly improves the accuracy of shooting. The heavy Buddha Lang used by the Ming army into the dynasty is called the "Great General Cannon" with a length of 1.4 meters, a caliber of 110 mm, a weight of 1050 catties, 3 gamete cannons per piece, fired in turn, "a shot of 500 sons, more than 20 zhang wide, can hole the public", the power is really amazing.

In addition to the foreign goods "Franc machine", the domestic tiger squat cannon is another sharp weapon of the Ming army. This device is named because it resembles a tiger squat, and the cannon is about 36 pounds, which is a small and medium-sized artillery. It was invented and created by Qi Jiguang, a famous anti-Japanese general in the Ming Dynasty. The so-called "tiger squat" is equipped with iron claws and iron stumbling at both the muzzle and tail of the gun, and can be nailed to the ground with large iron nails to prevent the gunner from being injured by the recoil caused by firing the gun. This cannon is lighter and more agile than the Franc machine, and can fire hundreds of small projectiles at a time, which can effectively kill and injure the enemy who is attacking intensively. It is precisely because the tiger squat cannon still has its superiority compared with Western firearms and competes for domestic products, so it occupies a certain position in the Ming military firearms equipment in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and is still used until the Qing Dynasty.

At the same time, the proportion of firearms in the individual equipment of the Ming army was also very high. The Ming army aiding Korea was divided into the southern army and the northern army. The Southern Army mainly used bird guns (imitation of a kind of arquebus from Western Europe), Qi Jiguang believed: "Among all weapons, bird guns are the first." A bird gun hand carries a bird gun, 200 lead (bullets), 4 catties of gunpowder, and 3 fire ropes. A fully staffed infantry battalion of the Yugoslav Army has 2,700 men, and 1,080 are bird-dead, accounting for 40% of the total establishment. As for the Northern Army, it used domestically produced three-eyed guns. Legend has it that Emperor Chongzhen also held a three-eyed gun as a self-defense weapon after Li Zicheng's peasant rebel army broke through the inner city of Beijing, which shows its status in the firearms of the Ming Dynasty. According to the saying of the contemporaries, "the bird should be in the south but not in the north, and the three-eyed gun should be in the north but not in the south." "The bird must be hand-held, and the wind will blow the medicine away, so it is not suitable for the cold and windy north. The three-eyed gun is made of three iron single guns, which are formed in the shape of a zigzag, with a protruding outer edge at the mouth of the gun, and an iron hoop to reinforce the body, and the three guns share a medicine chamber, so the gunpowder will be fired in a salvo or continuous after being ignited with a fire rope. The effective firing range is about 34 steps, and after the ammunition is fired, it can also "hold this gun to replace the stick" to hit the enemy, which is very suitable for the northern army, especially the cavalry.

......

When the Ming army entered the dynasty, it was the autumn of the critical survival of the Li dynasty in Korea. Although the Li Dynasty army was also equipped with a small number of firearms imitating the "Celestial Empire", such as the Tiger Squat Cannon, the soldiers were still more willing to practice bows and arrows. Even the two classes of nobles as the ruling class have used archery as a means of cultivating virtue and entertainment, and the famous minister Liu Chenglong once lamented: "I only use bows and arrows in my ** affairs, and I have not been able to practice other skills." ”

As a result, after the end of the battle, the army of the Li Dynasty, which had been at peace for a long time, became vulnerable and retreated. So much so that the "Heavenly Soldiers" (the honorific name given to the Ming Dynasty army in Korea at that time) became the protagonist on the battlefield from the first day they crossed the Yalu River, and as for the Li Dynasty Army as the host, it was completely reduced to an inconspicuous supporting role - of course, in today's historical film and television dramas filmed in South Korea, the Li Dynasty army will always be the main force in this war against the Japanese.

Contrary to the land battle, the performance of the Li Dynasty army at sea was remarkable, and in the naval battles of Xianshan Island, Mingliang and Luliang, the Li Dynasty naval army showed good combat effectiveness. Even Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the supreme leader of the enemy army, was surprised by this, and lamented that "the Koreans fought a great land war in the water." There is no doubt that the combat effectiveness of the Li Dynasty naval army came from the golden combination of the genius general Yi Sunsin and the new warship "Turtle Boat", and the firearms equipped with the Turtle Boat were the magic weapon for defeating the enemy.

The turtle boat has three decks. The artillery is placed on the top layer, the archers are placed on the middle level, and the sailors are deployed on the bottom layer. The main weapons of the turtle ship are five different caliber cannons: "Heaven", "Earth", "Xuan", "Yellow", and "Sheng". The largest of these guns weighed 300 kilograms and had a caliber of 140 millimeters, capable of hitting 13 kilograms of solid iron bullets several miles away. What's more, the "Tian" artillery can also fire a kind of North Korea's original "Great General Arrow", which is a huge wooden sword similar to today's rockets, 3.6 meters long, 77 mm in diameter, and three iron tail wings about one meter long are attached to the back of the wooden sword, and the arrow is also wrapped in iron, with a range of 500 meters. The lethality of this "bolt" in the open field is very limited, and the accuracy is not as good as that of bows and arrows and arquebuses, and it is like a chicken rib for the army. However, the navy was different, most of the ships at that time were wooden, and the speed of movement on the water was also slow, once the arrow hit the wooden keel of the warship, it could often be smashed into pieces, if the arrow was on fire, the enemy ship could not escape the end of being burned and sunk by the rocket, and the lethality was self-evident.

......

In contrast, the history of the Japanese army, which was an opponent on the battlefield of the Ming army, was not very recent. Although the Yuan army's iron cannon (a kind of catapult, not strictly "firearm") had impressed the Japanese during the Yuan Dynasty's war against Japan as early as the 13th century, until the "Warring States Period" in the 16th century, Japan's warfare pattern remained stagnant at the level of 200 years ago: first the main attacking force launched a "Ming Di" to signal the beginning of the attack, then a warrior rode forward to challenge, and then a large group followed up and killed. The samurai are good at fighting in a "one-horse fight", that is, heads-up, and the samurai come forward one by one to report to their homes and challenge the opponent's generals of the same level. After the defeat of a small number of samurai who were the core of the army, the entire army was scattered, and often a "joint battle" of tens of thousands of people was lost, and the casualties were only a hundred.

That changed in 1543, when three Portuguese sailed to Ningbo, China, where the ship was blown to Tanegashima in southern Kyushu. The arquebuses they carried "emitted electric light when fired, the sound was like thunder, and those who heard it covered their ears, the silver mountain could be broken, and the iron wall could be opened", which shocked the Japanese who witnessed it, and Tanegashima Tokiyao, the owner of Tanegashima Island, bought two arquebuses at a price of 2,000 taels of gold each, and this weapon called "iron cannon" was introduced to Japan from then on.

Initially, the Japanese could only buy muskets from Europeans at high prices, and in the "Nanban trade" with the Europeans, firearms were one of the most sought-after commodities, and the rival Japanese daimyo often competed with each other for the best and most abundant iron cannons. But soon the Japanese mastered the technology and began to produce iron cannons on their own, and their performance was even blue. The European musket had many limitations, but after intensive research by the Japanese, they were able to find a solution in a very short time. When it rained, they covered the guns with boxes coated with waterproof paint to prevent the arquebuses and gunpowder from getting wet. At the same time, the Japanese have been working on optimizing the rough parts of European muskets, such as improving the coil springs of musket parts, to make them more suitable for firing. It is said that they also invented a new type of arquebus, which could be ignited even in the rain, which was not available in Europe at the time.

As a breech-loading arquebus, the iron cannon is 80-185 cm long and weighs 1.5-5 kg. There is a metal hook on the gun, one end of the hook is fixed on the gun, and can rotate around the axis, the other end is clamped with a burning arquebus, when the soldier fires, the metal hook is pushed into the fire door by hand, so that the fire rope ignites the gunpowder, and then pushes the projectile in the gun chamber out. Its damage is stronger than that of bows and arrows at the time. The bow and arrow used in actual combat have a killing distance of 80 meters and a real killing distance of 40 meters, compared to this, the arquebus has a killing distance of 200 meters and a real killing distance of 50 meters. As a result, iron cannons quickly gained popularity in Japan, and by the end of the 16th century, Japan had become the largest musket manufacturer in East Asia.

Infantry teams made up of muskets were able to train non-samurai peasants into soldiers who could fight and even outfight the samurai in a short period of time. Thus, in a very short period of time, the individual heads-up of the mounted samurai was replaced by the confrontation of the ashigaru (infantry) group armed with iron cannons, and it is clear from the Battle of Minato River (1336) in NHK Taigaku drama (1991) and the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) in Aoi Tokugawa Miyo (2000) that the drastic changes that took place in Japan's military organization and warfare due to the introduction of iron cannons are evident. The intensity and bloodiness of the war are no longer the same as in the past.

In the famous Battle of Nagashino in 1575, the army of Oda Nobunaga (with Tokugawa Ieyasu) gathered 3,000 iron gunners, surrounded by a three-tiered wooden fence and numerous pikemen. He divided the iron gunners into three rows, one to load, one to pass, and one to shoot ("three-stage strike"). Before this battle, the Japanese had not arranged such a large musket team, although the opposing Takeda clan also had musketeers, but the number and tactics were not as large as the Oda army. Because Takeda Katsuyori relied too much on traditional cavalry tactics, and the heroic Takeda knights were unable to break Nobunaga's infantry lineup, "when Nobunaga's large musket troops pulled the trigger", the Takeda army suffered tens of thousands of casualties and ended in a crushing defeat.

Military scientist Jeffrey Parker commented on the significance of the battle: "Nobunaga's riflemen defeated Takeda's battle-hardened cavalry in Nagashino with novel tactics. This use of the rifle is a well-documented event in the history of warfare, because even the Europeans have not yet pioneered such a tactic".

......

To some extent, Japan's iron cannon technology, which was unique in East Asia at the time, became a "catalyst" for the aggressive ambitions of its rulers. In addition to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's personal fanatical paranoia, his admiration for the power of firearms and his full trust in his musket unit may have been one of the reasons for the brazen invasion of Korea. Perhaps it is conceivable that if Japan had no muskets and its army was only equipped with cold weapons of its time, would Toyotomi Hideyoshi still be so arrogant?

At the beginning of the war, firearms became the protagonists of the war. Relying on advanced iron artillery, the Japanese army fought from Pusan to Pyongyang in only two months. In the Battle of Pyongyang on July 19, 1592, in order to cover the siege troops, the Japanese army used iron cannons to shoot the Korean defenders on the city wall...... It comes like wind and thunder, and it can't be done." The Japanese army then took Pyongyang lightly.

In a blink of an eye, on February 8 of the following year, the Ming Dynasty's army of aid launched an attack on the Japanese entrenched city of Pyongyang. In this battle, the Japanese army made earthen walls on the city wall, pierced many perforations, looked like a beehive, and used iron cannons to shoot projectiles outward from the perforations, causing many casualties to the Ming army; while the Ming army took advantage of its absolute superiority in heavy firearms to bombard Pyongyang City with artillery such as general artillery (120 guns) and tiger squat guns (20 guns); in the face of real artillery, the iron artillery was like a mantis arm as a car, and there was no power to fight back. In the end, the Japanese army, which suffered heavy losses, lost confidence in the war and took the initiative to withdraw from Pyongyang. In this battle, the superiority of firearms was fully demonstrated, and the firearms of the opposing sides were also differentiated, and the artillery of the Ming army completely overwhelmed the Japanese iron cannon in momentum and won the honor. Volume 35 of the Records of Seonjo (Joseon) records a meaningful question......answer between the Joseon king Yi Hao and his subordinate Li Dexin, who asked: "The sound of the cannon (referring to the iron cannon of the Japanese) is not the same as the artillery of the heavenly soldiers?" Li Dexin replied: "Although the sound of the Japanese is heard from all sides, the cannons of the heavenly soldiers are like a mountain avalanche and the earth cracks, and the mountains are shaken, and they cannot be spoken; the resounding of the heavens and the earth, and the mountains are moving Li Hao exclaimed: "The army is so strong that it can win without a fight!"

At this time, the Ming army and the Japanese army stood on the threshold of the transition from cold weapons to hot weapons almost synchronously with Western European countries. Unfortunately, after the glory of the Korean battlefield, the development of firearms in East Asia came to an abrupt halt. In Korea, the post-war Li Dynasty soon returned to the track of Xiuwen Yanwu, the renewal of armaments was abandoned, and even the manufacturing method of turtle boats was lost; in China, the war in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties stimulated the continued development of firearms, but with the consolidation of the Qing Dynasty's rule, Chinese firearms stagnated in the 17th century, and it was not until the Qianlong period that the proportion of firearms in the Qing army returned to the level of the Ming army in the Renchen period, and in the Opium War, the Qing army was still using artillery that had been proven to be technically inferior to Europe as early as the Battle of Yaksa. In Japan, the last battle in which iron artillery played an important role was the Battle of Shimabara in 1637. Both sides (the Shogunate Army and the Peasant Rebel Army) used a large number of firearms. After this battle, the samurai returned to the old cavalry era, the monks continued to practice their black feather bows and arrows, and the Japanese craftsmen continued to build armor and katana on a daily basis. After 250 years of peace, Japan is still stuck in the arquebus era. Finally, after the mid-19th century, the Qing Empire, the Edo Shogunate, and the Lee Joseon dynasty in East Asia were forcibly knocked open by the European powers that entered the firearms age...... (To be continued.) )