Last time, I said that after Zhu Youzhen, the emperor of Chongzhen, and his brother Zhu Youxiao watched the training and shooting of "recruits," they felt that they should immediately improve the "firearms" to equip the army.

"Xu Aiqing, I have decided to eliminate all the 'firearms' that were too close in range and have little lethality in the past, and transfer all the remaining funds and resources to you to study the 'new firearms', so that you can work hard! You have to arm the entire 'Divine Machine Battalion' as soon as possible! Rest assured, money is not an issue! ”

"The old minister bows to the emperor!" Xu Guangqi prostrate on the ground and choked up: "If the emperor is willing to give the old minister a million taels of silver to turnover, he will definitely be able to renovate the 'firearms' of the entire 'Shenji Battalion' within a year!" If he can add another million taels of silver, Weichen guarantees that the emperor will make the 'Nine Border Town' solid within two years! ”

"Haha, if I give you 3 million taels of silver, how long will it take to destroy Houjin and Beiyuan?" ———— "uh...... Three years! Three years is enough! Hey. ”

"Old man? Are you getting more and more able to toss? Take care of yourself! Money will be a lot! ———— "Old minister, thank God!" ”

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the firearm was composed of three parts: "breech", "medicine chamber" and "tail", which were usually divided into "handguns", "warships" used by individual soldiers, and "bowl-mouthed guns", "bowl-mouth guns" and "multi-tube guns" used by individual soldiers. These firebolts are not very powerful, and they don't have a long range, just slightly stronger than crossbows.

Among them, the "handcuff" is light and dexterous, the body is slender, the breech is cylindrical, the projectile is placed inside, the "medicine room" is spherical and bulging, the wall of the chamber has a "fire door", which can be placed for the "fire line" ignition, the tail is hollow, and a wooden handle can be installed to facilitate the launcher's hand. Note that the "handcuffs" of the Ming Dynasty army were not the "masturbations" of later generations.

"Bowl mouth gun" is named because of the shape of the gun, the basic structure is similar to the "handgun", the shape is short and thick, can accommodate more projectiles, so it is also called "Baizhu gun". The "tail hammer" (tail part) of the "bowl mouth gun" is wide, and the gun body can be fixed to the wooden frame when firing, and the firing angle can be changed by adjusting the wooden block under the pad.

When the "firebolt" is launched, the gunpowder is first loaded into the medicine chamber from the mouth of the gun, and then the "horse" made of wood is stuffed into the "horse" to seal the gas, and then the solid projectiles such as stone bullets and iron bullets are loaded into the "breech", and the "fire rope" is ignited through the "fire door" to ignite the "black powder" in the "medicine room", and when the "gunpowder" burns violently, a large amount of high-temperature gas is generated, so that its volume expands rapidly and produces a huge thrust, and the "horse" and the projectile of the "breech" can be pushed out of the chamber.

Depending on the type, the range of the "firebolt" ranges from tens to hundreds of steps, and its lethality is huge compared to that of cold weapons. Of course, the "Firebolt" also has obvious drawbacks such as time-consuming reloading and low shooting accuracy. However, for the defending troops, it is still very effective to use "firearms" to repel the enemy.

In the eighth year of Yongle (1410), when the Ming army was on an expedition to "Jiaozhi", that is, northern Vietnam, Ming Chengzu also set up a special gun unit in the "Beijing Army" - "Shenji Battalion". This unit was fully equipped with all of these "firearms" and played a huge role in the conquest of Annam.

As the successor of the past and the future, Zhu Di, the ancestor of Ming Cheng, who inherited Zhu Yuanzhang's career, no matter how he obtained the throne, whether it was "Qing Jun's side" or "usurpation", as the fourth son of Zhu Yuanzhang's many children, Zhu Di did not disappoint his father, because his Chinese rule and martial arts in his life were prominent.

Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, fulfilling the "hard spirit" of the Ming Dynasty - "the Son of Heaven guards the country, and the king dies in Sheji", and Emperor Chongzhen was forced by Li Zicheng to rather hang himself on the crooked neck tree in Meishan than surrender. Huangsha wore gold armor in a hundred battles, and conquered Mobei five times; Botong Tiandi, he also issued an edict to compile the "Yongle Canon".

At the same time, Zhu Di actively promoted "Zheng He to go to the West", prompted all countries to come to the dynasty, created a navigation record, and achieved the prosperity of the Yongle Dynasty.

As a prosperous emperor and military strategist, Zhu Di's most valuable legacy to future generations is the innovation of tactics and tactics, as the wise man said: "Zhu Di deserves to be called the 'generation of war gods' in military history who has changed from the classical era to modern times." Among them, the first is the creation of the "Shenji Battalion".

The "Shenji Battalion" was the earliest independent "firearms unit" of the Ming Army. According to the "History of the Ming Dynasty", it is recorded: "To the Ming Dynasty Chengzu level the toe, get the god machine gun method, and set up the god machine camp to practice." "Regarding the time when the Shenji Battalion was established, under normal circumstances, most people believe that it will be earlier than Zhu Di's first expedition to Mongolia in the eighth year of Yongle.

According to the records of the "Daming Huidian", the "Shenji Battalion" is composed of five armies: "Middle Army", "Left Column", "Right Column", "Left Post" and "Right Guard". The "Chinese Army" is composed of four divisions, and the rest are composed of three divisions each. The "battalion officers and commanders" of the "Shenji Battalion", the "Central Army" and the "camp officers" of the left and right sides and the left and right posts were all appointed by the military department at the request of the imperial court, and were selected from the "duke", "marquis", "uncle", "governor", and "commander", or the emperor appointed "ministers", that is, "eunuchs" (eunuchs) to serve concurrently.

In the "Shenji Battalion," there are also special "Gun Supervision Ministers" who are officials in charge of guns and artillery, and "Shenji Firearms" such as "Shenji Firearms" in charge of the "Shenji Battalion," such as "Divine Guns," "Quick Guns," "One-Eyed Guns," "Hand Guns," "Zhankou Cannons," "Wankou Cannons," "General Cannons," "Single-Flying Divine Rockets," and "Shenji Arrows." "Bowl mouth cannon" is "100 beads".

This independent artillery unit has made the use of firearms more professional. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming army defending the border in the north was increasingly on the defensive, and in the face of the Mongolian and Houjin nomads with strong field capabilities, the use of firearms enhanced the combat capability of the Ming army, and to a certain extent made up for the obvious lack of the Ming army's field capabilities, after all, most of the Ming Dynasty troops were infantry from all over the country, and the number of cavalry was not much.

The "artillery" of the early Ming Dynasty was generally cast in copper, and some were cast in pig iron. During the Wanli Dynasty, the minister Ye Mengxiong presided over the invention of the "forging iron cannon". The barrel of the forged gun is straight, there are multiple hoops on the surface, the medicine chamber is bulging or not, the tail end of the gun is flat, and some guns have lugs.

In the Jiajing period, the Ming Dynasty obtained the Franc machine cannon from the Portuguese who came to China, and gradually mastered its production method, so that the level of firearms and equipment of the Ming army was improved again. "History of the Ming Dynasty" records that the Franc cannon: "Copper is for it, five or six feet long, and the big one is heavy and heavy." The small one is one hundred and fifty pounds...... Put five pieces of storage medicine in the abdomen, and send it to more than 100 zhang. This shows that the firing range of the "Furlong machine" firearm at this time can reach 300 paces, and the power is relatively strong.

The advantage of this type of artillery is that ammunition is pre-stored in the sub-gun, which does not have to be temporarily reloaded, which can speed up the firing. The disadvantage of the "Franco" artillery is that it has a short barrel, and compared with the Hongyi cannon, it cannot have a long firing range, and it has the highest hit rate at six or seven hundred meters, and it has more combat power than the native firearms of the Ming Dynasty.

In the twelfth year of Zhengde of the Ming Dynasty (1517), a convoy of four sailing ships sent the first Portuguese envoy to the Ming Dynasty, Pires, to Guangzhou. At the time of the port, according to European practice, the commander of the Portuguese fleet, Fernand, ordered the flag-raising and firing of cannons, which was mistaken for a troublemaker.

After some painstaking explanations, the suspicions of the Ming officials gradually subsided, but the disturbing Portuguese artillery attracted special attention from the Ming side. Gu Yingxiang, a Guangdong official who witnessed the incident, once wrote in an article: "During the Zhengde period, he was appointed as the judge of Guangdong, and Wang Xuan, the deputy envoy of the sea patrol at the time, went to Beijing to take charge of the sea lane. There are three boats to the provincial capital, and three guns are released, and the city is shocked. "That's what the Portuguese are talking about.

This shocking European artillery, because of the name "Portugal" at the time, was pronounced "Franc Machine" in Cantonese. Therefore, the artillery on the Portuguese ships was also called "Franc machine" by the people of Guangdong at that time, which was popular in Europe at that time in the early "rear-loading gun", and it was also the most common "smoothbore gun".

The structure of the "Furlong cannon" is different from that of the later "Red Cannon" ("Hongyi Cannon"), because the "Fran cannon" is a "rear-loading smoothbore cannon", and the whole cannon consists of three parts, namely the "barrel", the open "belly" and the "sub-cannon". The so-called "sub-cannon" is actually a "cannonball" that was mass-produced in later generations.

Five years later, in August 1522, five Portuguese ships were defeated by the Ming army and captured two ships and more than 20 Franc cannons outside the mouth of the Pearl River. The officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were deeply impressed by the mighty firepower of the "Buddha Lang Machine", and the local authorities in Guangdong immediately sent a message to Emperor Jiajing, requesting that "the Buddha Lang Machine be awarded to all sides to create imperial captives." The imperial court allowed it. As a result, the Ming Dynasty government began to copy a large number of "Franco" artillery.

After that, the "Ordnance Bureau" of the Ministry of Industry manufactured 32 bronze guns of the "Franc machine", each weighing about 300 pounds and equipped with 4 sub-guns. 32 imitation of the Franc machine bronze gun, sent to the Ming army to try, in the Franc machine into the Ming Dynasty shortly after, the Ming court has regarded it as a weapon to resist the enemy, the imitation of the "Franc machine" then with a very fast equipping the northern Ming army and coastal army. It played a major role in the Ming Dynasty's defense against nomadic invasions and Japanese pirate invasions.

With the introduction of advanced "Franc machine guns", "Hongyi cannons", and "arquebuses", the traditional "fire guns" of the Ming army have no longer become the protagonists of firearms in the war. This time, Xu Guangqi trained the recruits, and planned to use the advanced concepts of the Europeans to create high-power advanced firearms to arm the Ming army.

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