If it weren't for the fear that these cannons would really blow up, so they refused to allow these valuable technical personnel to enter the shooting range, I am afraid that these craftsmen would have to lie on the guns and carefully investigate them.

"Put!" With the order of the gunner.

The gunpowder fuse on the first gun was ignited, and as a puff of white smoke continued to rise, the fuse disappeared at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Bang!" With an earth-shattering bang, dust flew on the shooting range in an instant.

Everyone craned their necks to look.

I saw that the 12-pounder gun on the gun emplacement was there unscathed.

"Hit, hit."

The first to react were the gunners on the emplacements of the other four guns.

They shouted and hit it.

I saw that an earthen wall about a mile away had been blown down.

The earthen wall, which was one foot long and about six feet high, was smashed by a single cannon.

Hearing the gunner's shout, the firearms craftsmen who were leaning on the wall and peeking out also breathed a sigh of relief.

The five guns were forged over the course of two months.

Moreover, the civil and military officials of the Ming Army present are all there, if something really happens, they can't afford it.

Fortunately, the first gun was successfully test-fired.

"Lord Xiao, look." Liu Yu smiled and pointed to the earthen wall in the distance and said.

"Not bad, not bad." Xiao Wu nodded hurriedly.

"This cannon is no weaker than the redcoat cannon." Xiao Wu also nodded frequently in praise

"In the past, we could only buy red-coated artillery from the English, but now we finally don't have to look at the faces of these red-haired ghosts." Xiao Wu said with emotion.

"Now, the Ming court is expanding the iron smelting plant in Laoag and Vigan, and there is more wood in Luzon, so there is no shortage of charcoal, compared to the Qing court using coal smelting, my Luzon Ming court uses charcoal smelting, and its pig iron quality is far better." Huang Youde on the side hurriedly said.

"If the Qing people cast cannons, three or five out of ten will explode, and none of our troops will explode." Huang Youde was also full of confidence, and vouched in front of Xiao Wu on the spot.

"Oh, really?" Xiao Wu also looked at the four cannons not far in front of him with interest.

"Then let's get started." Liu Yu nodded and motioned for Lieutenant Brewster to continue.

The next four guns were also tested one by one.

There was no explosion of the chamber.

The successful test firing of the five artillery pieces made the Ming officers and soldiers present cheer.

In particular, the last two double-layered iron cannons not only successfully test-fired, but also hit the earthen wall more than two miles away, which made the Spanish gunners present also amazed.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of the artillery used by Westerners was bronze.

During the same period, the cast iron cannon technology of the Ming people was far superior to that of the West.

Even at that time, Westerners had to invite Ming artillery technicians to cast iron cannons.

If we do not consider the iron ore problem in China and the use of coal smelting to make the quality of pig iron inferior to that of the West, the Ming Dynasty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not weaker than the West's artillery casting technology, and the real backwardness of China's artillery technology was after the Manchu Qing Dynasty came to China.

Therefore, at this time, the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty cast iron artillery, using the local iron ore of Luzon as the material, and the charcoal burned from the endless firewood of the South Seas as fuel, and the high-quality pig iron and wrought iron cast artillery smelted were naturally not weaker than the Western artillery of today.

Lieutenant Brewster was also shocked, as an artillery officer, he knew the horror of these five guns.

You know, that's enough to destroy any wall of this era.

Brewster even believed that if the Ming pulled these five cannons under the city of Manila, then these five twelve-pounder cannons would be enough to destroy the walls of Manila.

"My Ming Court has such a divine weapon, why worry about the Ming Dynasty." Xiao Wu stood up and looked at the five cannons in the distance, and for a while, he burst into tears.

"If such a sharp weapon is equipped on a naval warship, then it will definitely be able to sweep across the South Seas." The accompanying generals of the Naval Division immediately saw the use of these guns in naval warfare.

At this time, the Ming army had several water divisions and more than 100 warships.

But it has been suffering from the lack of advanced heavy artillery.

Therefore, it was necessary to temporarily adopt smaller-caliber Furlong machine guns, as well as falcon guns, stone cannons.

There are only a few ships equipped with a few red-coated cannons.

But most of these cannons were old goods that the Zheng family had bought from the English.

Originally, the English dismantled from their own armed merchant ship and sold it to the Taiwanese Zheng group.

The artillery was too old, and most of them were corroded by sea salt and rusted in the wind and sun.

And if these new guns are matched with the Ming army Fu ship, it will simply be like a tiger with wings.

Not to mention the pirates off the coast of Luzon, even the Spanish fleet will give you a blow.

"My lord, the test firing of the five cannons has been completed, please review it." Lieutenant Brewster respectfully led the Spanish gunners in front of the five guns.

The artillery of the Ming people shocked these artillerymen, and they couldn't help but admire the Ming in their hearts.

Looking at these copper cannons and iron cannons weighing thousands of kilograms, Liu Yu and others were also extremely shocked.

You know, it's only been a few years since they went south to Luzon.

In just a few years, the Luzon Ming people were able to produce such advanced heavy artillery.

"Please give the cannon a name." Huang Youde hurriedly stepped forward and asked Liu Yu to give the name of the artillery.

Liu Yu thought about it, looked at the Spanish gunners around him, and said with a smile: "Just call it General Zhennan's cannon!"

"General Zhennan, good, good!" After hearing this, the generals applauded.

"Huang Youde, how many such artillery pieces can our army produce now?" Xiao Wu immediately asked.

Huang Youde's face was embarrassed, and he said: "It takes time and effort to cast such artillery, and it took two months for the craftsmen of the firearms division workshop to manufacture these five cannons. ”

"Not to mention manpower, just to talk about material resources." Huang Youde knocked on the body of a cannon.

"If it's an iron-core copper cannon, it needs to consume a lot of copper, and now the mining department is mining copper ore in Luzon, but the price is still very high."

"What if it's an iron cannon?" Xiao Wu asked again.

"Iron cannon?" Huang Youde is up again.

"Didn't you say that the quality of the iron smelted by our army is much higher than that of the Qing court?" Xiao Wu saw that Huang Youde wanted to speak and stopped, and said angrily.

"Back to my lord's words, the quality of pig iron smelted in the Ming Court today is indeed better than when I was in Taiwan before."

"But now iron is needed everywhere, our army's guns need high-quality wrought iron, Ming war knives, and armor also need wrought iron polishing."

"Not to mention that now the Luzon Ming Court has set up county societies, cultivating land everywhere, and there are hundreds of agricultural tools and iron tools needed, and the Luzon Iron Smelting Plant smelts pig iron, and wrought iron cannot be supplied all year round, not to mention, our army still has large and small Franco machine guns and all kinds of other artillery that need to use iron and copper."

Huang Youde's words are also correct, and now there are many places where the Ming court needs to use iron tools.

Whether it is the army's firearms, swords and armor, or the iron tools and agricultural tools needed by farmers to cultivate the fields, iron is inseparable.

As for copper, that's not to mention, it's all a scarce item.

Even the Ming court strictly banned the sale of copper.