Zhu Shuren's rebellion and return is easy to say, but in fact, the time it takes, counting all kinds of things, also takes up several months.

King Fu was poked in late May, and the official flag was pulled and the King of Jingjiang on the Liangguang side responded, in early and mid-June respectively.

Although the time for Zhu Shuren to directly carry out military strikes was not long, it took a month to march south from Huguang and dispatch the army. In the Liangguang region, even if it is a horse race, it will take a month to turn around the state capital involved in the rebellion, and it will take a month to march back to the army.

Therefore, even if Zhu Shuren made a little advance and prepared for the war in advance to start going south, it was already late July when the battle was finally completed, and it was already more than half of August when he finally returned to Wuchang. If the troops were to be redeployed to the front line in Xinyang and Xiangyang, it would be almost the end of August.

After all, the troop movement of 100,000 people is no faster than a simple journey in a light car, and a trip of seventy or eighty miles a day is considered fast. In addition, the rebellion of King Jingjiang occurred in the summer, and the two Guangxi were very hot,

This battle was not very difficult militarily, but there were many temporary attritions caused by the epidemic in the troops. Thousands of seriously ill soldiers of the returning troops had to rest in bed for more than a month, and patients with mild tropical diseases had to rest for 10 and a half days before they could regain their combat effectiveness.

Lin Lin finally came down, and Zhu Shuren could only ensure that all the troops participating in the battle were fully deployed at the end of August and completely restored their combat effectiveness in September, so the time left for him was really not much.

Fortunately, there is no need to mobilize more than half of Zhu Shuren's troops in this battle, and there are still many troops that can be rotated and repaired.

In terms of internal affairs, Zhu Shuren has not been idle since he returned to his governor's jurisdiction at the end of March, and has always taken advantage of the window period after Chongzhen's death to further consolidate farming and expand the scope of climbing technology.

From March to August, coupled with the construction last winter and this spring, Fang Yizhi, Song Yingxing, and others also achieved quite a lot of results in Wuchang, improving several new weapons and production technology, and they could be regarded as preparing for the upcoming all-out war.

The artillery technology of the Zhu Shuren camp has been relatively developed before, because in the war against the thieves, these cannons can also be used, and they can also be used to capture fortified cities, so Zhu Shuren has been unremittingly lighting the artillery technology tree since he started two or three years ago and just became the governor of Wuchang.

The Hongyi cannon of the Zhu Shuren camp was basically produced to the extent that it first imitated the most advanced level in the West during the same period (originally based on the original Dutch guns on the two Dutch Galen gunboats burned and captured by the Zheng Jiashui Division in the Battle of Liuluo Bay in 1633), and replaced them with high-quality materials smelted by the Daye Iron Mine and the improved new iron-making blast furnace and preheated air steel-making furnace produced by the Iron Works.

Since then, it has been gradually improved, but there has been no qualitative change, except that the tonnage range and power of these indicators have gradually increased slightly, and then efforts have been made to create the first generation of flowering shells that pre-ignite the fuse before firing.

In the past ten months, the new progress in artillery science and technology is mainly reflected in the fact that the pre-lit fuse of the flowering shell has been improved to a certain extent, the reliability has been further improved, and the dud rate and the explosion rate have been reduced.

In contrast, the indicator of the dud rate caused by the original fuze is relatively easy to reduce in subsequent research and development efforts.

The explosion rate is more complicated, because this indicator is related to the speed of the action when firing the gun, whether the operation is out of shape, and many complex battlefield factors.

As long as the artillery still uses a timing fuse, it will explode directly in the barrel of the cannon due to various unexpected battlefield delays, resulting in the shell being exploded directly in the barrel before it has been fired.

Song Yingxing thought about this problem for a long time to no avail, but in the end, Fang Yizhi, who was more strategic in thinking, helped him open up his ideas, and felt that he should develop a simple artillery with shorter firing steps and less likely to be accidentally interrupted, so as to specifically adapt to the flowering shell.

Of course, even if the new cannon is developed, the existing Hongyi cannon will be allowed to continue to use flowering shells, but the efficiency and reliability will be slightly worse.

And the final product of this idea, in fact, is nothing more than the old mortar that has long been suitable for the original flowering shell, re-improved, cast with new materials, the pipe wall is thicker, but the pipe diameter should be thicker and shorter, and the chamber pressure should be reduced.

To put it bluntly, it is to get a large heavy siege mortar, completely abandon accuracy, and there is no way to aim and shoot, so you can only shoot slowly at a fixed target.

Compared with artillery technology, which has been progressing slowly, the Zhu Shuren Army has made quite new achievements in musket technology in the past ten months-

As mentioned earlier, in the four years since Zhu Shuren took charge of the army, the early musket technology has always focused on shotgun trolls, and then he has brought the indicators of low chamber pressure, short range and high rate of fire to the extreme, and has successively made paper bullet shells/wax bullet shells fixed trolls, rear troll-mounted double-barreled trolls, and revolver trolls......

The reason why he focused on trolls back then was also because Zhu Shuren knew his enemy positioning very well. In the first three years of his promotion to power, he did not fight with the Tartars at all, and specialized in killing thieves. And the thief troops are generally unarmoured, at least the armor and stomach are not good enough, and as long as some lead beads and iron slag are dense enough, they can beat Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng of the Fifth Battalion of the Left Wing to cry and cry for their fathers and mothers.

Therefore, a few years ago, Zhu Shuren only needed to pursue the firepower density of the musket, and almost did not consider the range and armor penetration rate.

However, since last winter, Zhu Shuren has also realized that the opponent is about to change, so in the past ten months, he has not invested any more heavily in troll technology, and just let it develop naturally.

Most of the musket scientific research funds and resources have been invested in the traditional flintlock pistol with high bore pressure and closed tail in the front. As for the base of research and development, it is naturally further improved from the traditional Lumi gun and turtledove gun that launch single-headed bombs.

The reason why the focus of the science and technology tree is so inclined is also because Zhu Shuren understands his enemy - what he is about to face is a murderous Tartar, and the Qing army is by no means a poorly equipped nomadic cavalry as many Xiaobai Wen said, by the time Chongzhen died, the Qing army's iron cotton armor penetration rate was extremely high, and almost everyone in the Eight Banners cavalry had heavy armor.

Historically, the number of Hongyi cannons in the Qing army was also the largest among all forces in the world, and now this time and space has become less numerous than the Zhu Shuren army because of the butterfly effect of the Zhu Shuren.

Therefore, it is impossible to expect the small lead beads and iron slag trolls who specialize in slaughtering unarmored and light armor to show their might. To deal with the cavalry of the Qing army, it is necessary to emphasize the single-shot armor-piercing damage and range of the projectile, and return to the old path of the traditional front-loading high-bore flintlock pistol.

Fortunately, Zhu Shuren has a broad vision, although this technology tree has not been much before, but at least he will not repeat it behind closed doors, with the most advanced similar weapons of the same era as the base, continue to polish up,

Coupled with the latest and most sophisticated steel materials of Daye Iron Works, coupled with a little modern standardized thinking, Fang Yizhi and Song Yingxing worked hard for more than half a year to roughly create a firearm similar to the level of the 18th-century French Charleville series of front-loading flintlock pistols -

Don't think how tall these weapons are, as long as the material technology is improved, the degree of standardization is improved, and then the money and resources are thrown, and the development of the Charleville rifle based on the flintlock pistol of the 1630s is not a difficult thing.

Historically, the Frenchman's Charleville rifle series (some transliterations called Xavier, a thing, this series has been used until the early Napoleonic Wars), it is also a very classic, the first was born in 1717, and later generations called the 1717 model, which is 80 years ahead of the most advanced musket in the West at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Before the advent of industrial songs, eighty years was not a long time at all, and scientific and technological progress was not obvious.

However, the 1717 Charleville has not yet achieved standardized thinking, and all firearms cannot be accurately unified in size and caliber. The real standardization was already an improved version of the second edition in 1728.

Zhu Shuren has modern thinking, of course, he attaches great importance to standardization and logistics simplification, and he has laid a good foundation in the past few years at Daye Iron Works, so the first version made by Fang Yizhi has comprehensively surpassed the level of the French 1728 Charleville.

In addition, the musket accessories technology accumulated by the Zhu Shuren Army in the years of developing trolls can be seamlessly transplanted to new front-loading rifles, such as bayonets.

Historically, the French still used bayonets inserted into the barrel of the 1728 Charleville, but the Zhu Shuren Army switched to the ferrule bayonet a few years ago, which could ensure that the bayonet did not affect the continued shooting. The French, however, had to suffer in the Seven Years' War in Europe in 1756-1763 before they switched to the bayonet.

In addition, the French front-loading musket has always been to press the gunpowder barrel through the strip, with the buckle style fixed below the barrel, each time after the gunpowder is pressed, the last time to put the strip back from the two fixed holes under the barrel, the next loading has to be pulled out, than the sword into the sheath and out of the sheath, in the panic is easy to aim inaccurate stabbing hand.

On Zhu Shuren's side, because of the better elastic steel, Fang Yizhi directly designed a card slot-type through bar retainer, which directly put a card into the card slot after use, which can save three or four seconds more than the small hole fixing time, and can also be regarded as speeding up the loading.

In general, before the advent of the new war, Daye Arsenal finally created a new flintlock pistol with a comprehensive level between the performance of the Charleville 1728 and 1763 models, and the steel used in it was even better than the French 1763 model, and the small structural optimization such as the barrel through the bar was also better than that of the Charleville 1763.

Perhaps when this new weapon is put on the battlefield on a large scale, after being tested in actual combat, and summing up experience, Zhu Shuren's army will be able to create a rifle that surpasses Charleville's 1763 model in all aspects, so that his musketeers will completely reach the level of science and technology at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars.

With standardized, epoch-making new weapons, naturally can no longer use the original bird gun Lu Mi gun turtle dove and other miscellaneous brand names, Zhu Shuren directly named this new rifle Wuchang Zao, of course, in the mouth of more soldiers who were first issued to the new rifle, they prefer to call this weapon "national surname made".

In the process of developing these weapons, there was a small batch trial production, performance testing, and run-in use tactics, so the first batch was put into production before Zhu Shuren sent troops south in May.

At that time, the output was very small, only one or two hundred pieces were made every month, and they were optimized while building, and when Zhu Shuren came back in August and settled down the troops, it had been produced for about four months, and "Wuchang Made" had a cumulative stock of about 2,000 rods.

Compared with the military production capacity of Wuchang Mansion, which Zhu Shuren has operated for three years, the rate of hundreds per month is really slow, because when the original Lu Mi gun and the improved bird gun were made, the local military factory could already reach a rate of more than 2,000 per month, and this year it is said that the speed should be increased to 3,000 per month, even if it is a rear-loading double-barreled gun, it can also have more than 1,000 guns per month.

Therefore, according to this potential curve to continue to excavate, Zhu Shuren believes that after that, Daye Arsenal will soon be able to reach the rate of more than 1,000 per month of new Wuchang manufacturing, and it can even expand to 2,000 next year.

If it is calculated by the end of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Zhu Shuren will be able to take out about 5,000 poles of Wuchang, and by next year, that is, the end of the first year of Zhu Changzhu's succession, the total amount of Wuchang will exceed 20,000 rods.

As long as he is given time to continue farming, focus on the rich lands of the south to develop his military strength, and accumulate enough strength to push back.

For the current Ming Dynasty regime, as long as it holds the same line of defense as the Southern Song Dynasty in history, the Qing people themselves will gradually collapse.

】

Because the northern finances of the late Ming Dynasty have always been unable to make ends meet, even without Chongzhen's looting, the northern economy could not sustain itself by relying on continuous natural disasters and thieves killing and destroying.

Historically, the Qing Dynasty did not achieve a balance in the north until eight years after Shunzhi (not counting the city of Beijing, the city of Beijing still had to rely on the financial transportation of the south, but it was just that in addition to the capital, other provinces could support themselves)

Even if Chongzhen struggled a little less before he died and died a little more happily, it would be impossible for the Qing people to achieve self-sufficiency before five or six years of Shunzhi, and their only hope was to quickly go south to grab the areas with surplus grain, and if they couldn't grab it, they would have to blow themselves up.

For Zhu Shuren, if he withstands the first few waves, the enemy will become weaker and weaker in the back.