Thirty-two-year-old Tang Dong walked on the way home, humming a minor tune of "The Legend of the West Chamber" in his mouth. Tang Dong is now a new employee of the glass workshop, with a monthly salary of three taels. He used to work in a soap workshop, but he was recruited into the soap workshop in December the year before when the soap workshop was expanded. Unexpectedly, after more than a year, the manager Li Yousheng said that he was honest and recommended him to go to the glass workshop to do things.

In early March, nine thieves came out of the glass workshop to steal the technology of the city lord. The lord of the city killed nine thieves, and made up nine men from the soap workshop and the salt factory to the glass workshop, and paid three or two months a month. Tang Dong was one of the nine lucky ones, and what he did in the glass workshop was to add a powder to the liquid glass. It's as simple as pouring the powder from outside the kiln while the molten glass is still hot. Tang Dong didn't even know what that powder was, and of course he didn't want to know.

Aside from the fact that the working environment is a bit hot, there are no drawbacks to this errand. However, compared to the monthly money of three taels, it is not a problem to be a little hot. Three or two months of money is enough for Tang Dong's family to live a good life. As soon as Tang Dong walked to the mouth of the alley, the three children who were playing in the alley rushed up and shouted, "Daddy is back!" ”

"Daddy!"

Tang Dong's family used to be poor and married late, and now his eldest daughter is only seven years old. At this time, the eldest daughter was holding Tang Dong's legs, and the two younger sons circled around Tang Dong, calling their father constantly, making Tang Dong's face full of joy. The days when children can eat and play happily are just comforting to people's hearts. Tang Dong took out a few pieces of champion candy from his arms and handed them to his eldest daughter, and said with a smile: "Give you candy to eat!" ”

The eldest daughter clapped her hands happily, and then took the champion candy. When the two younger brothers saw that their sister had candy in their hands, they immediately stopped and looked at their sister with a blank eye. My sister thought about it, counted the number of sugars in one, two, three, and four places, and said happily, "Three pieces per person!" She took three pieces to the younger brother and three more to the second brother, and then she grabbed the candy happily, and was not in a hurry to eat it, as if she was enjoying the happiness of having sugar in her hands.

Tang Dong saw his daughter's well-behaved appearance, and he was overjoyed, and hugged his daughter up. He walked into the house with his daughter in his arms, and saw the boss of the Xie family, who shared a house with him, learning to read there. Boss Xie held a brush without ink and repeatedly copied the calligraphy given by the teacher at the private school. Tang Dong stood next to him and looked at it, didn't understand what it was, and said with a smile: "Boss Xie, what kind of word did you write?" Boss Xie said: "What I wrote is the word 'righteousness'!" You don't understand, do you? ”

Tang Dong touched his face and said, "What are you doing here?" Boss Xie said, "Didn't you pay attention? Half of the supervisors promoted by the city lord are literate, and once they are literate, it will be very different in front of the city lord! Tang Dong chirped: "You still want to be a supervisor?" Don't look in the mirror either? Boss Xie snorted, ignored Tang Dong, lowered his head and continued to practice calligraphy.

Tang Dong put his daughter down, reconciled with the boss and said: "Boss Xie, I have made up my mind when I do things today, I want to take out a loan to buy a house, and I am afraid that I will not share a house with you in the future!" Boss Xie said: "Look, look at you proudly, you have only been working in the glass workshop for a few days, and you can't look down on the rented house, you want to buy a house!" Three or two months of money, isn't it great? Boss Xie raised his head and said disdainfully: "I remember when you first came to this house the year before last!" A torn jacket? I don't believe you if you're not a beggar! ”

Boss Xie glanced at Tang Dong's eldest daughter again, and said, "At that time, you three children were yellow and thin, and they were skinny!" It's as if it's going to break if you touch it. It's only been a little over a year, and they've grown into chubby girls one by one! "At that time, what did your woman call you, call you Tang Dayan!" Now I know how to call you 'the master'! This man is getting really fast! ”

Tang Dong said with a smile: "Thanks to the good errand given by the city lord!" Boss Xie laughed and said: "You said that your woman knows that you are going to buy a house, is she happy to have her own house or is she worried that the money is not enough to spend?" The two were talking, and Tang Dong's daughter-in-law, who was spinning upstairs, heard it. She ran out and shouted in surprise: "Master, are you going to buy a house?" We're going to have our own cottage? Tang Dong glanced at the boss and smiled.

After making reading glasses, Yang Peng is going to make telescopes again. Telescopes are a must-have item for marching and fighting, and they can gain insight and grasp opportunities from miles away, and of course they are products that need to be manufactured first. Yang Peng has learned about Keplerian telescopes, which have a very simple structure, just a combination of two convex lenses and two total reflection prisms, which can magnify distant images dozens of times.

This kind of simple telescope is enough for Yang Peng's current needs. On April 3 of the first year of Xianping, Yang Peng found jade grinding craftsmen and asked them to grind out an 80 mm diameter convex lens objective and a 30 mm diameter convex lens eyepiece according to Yang Peng's drawings, and grind two total reflection prisms. After the lens was polished, Yang Peng measured the focal length of the two lenses, and asked a coppersmith to make a copper cylinder that was large in the front and small in the back, and folded in the middle, and loaded the objective, prism and eyepiece according to Yang Peng's drawings.

After it was done, Yang Peng raised the telescope to the city wall to take a look, and found that the telescope was completed, and he saw a small scene in the distance. Yang Peng estimated that although the Kepler telescope has a simple structure, it has a magnification of at least 25 times. In this era, the telescope had just been invented, and the value was expensive, and the Great Song Dynasty did not know what the telescope was, and the telescope did not have a unified Chinese name. Yang Peng simply called it a telescope.

With binoculars, the scout's job is easy to do. Later, the scout stood at a high place and scanned with a telescope, and could monitor movements within a dozen miles. The need to rush to the vicinity of the enemy and engage the enemy's scouts in hand-to-hand combat is relatively reduced. In fact, Yang Peng's soldier fighting ability is not strong, hand-to-hand combat is much worse than the Khitan scouts, and even the bandits' scouts are stronger than Yang Peng's scout fighting ability. Once a fight broke out, Yang Peng's scouts were often unable to get close to the enemy troops.

Telescopes can alleviate this problem to a great extent. Not only that, but the crossbowmen can also benefit from this telescope. With a telescope, the crossbowman shooting correction work is much more accurate. In the future, the corrector will be able to stand on a high place and see clearly the landing point of the machine crossbow arrows a few miles away. Of course, with this telescope, the general can also better observe the battlefield situation, which is of great benefit.

The market for reading glasses has not yet opened, and there are few sales. Yang Peng asked the jade craftsmen who sharpened the lenses to stop the production of reading glasses, make telescopes together, and make a few more for the scouts and artillerymen. The telescope was of high military value, and Yang Peng decided not to sell it to the outside world and only equip his own troops. If a friendly force needs it, you can send a few as gifts when the situation allows.

When Zhang Xiang heard that his brother had made a telescope that could see in the distance, he immediately rushed over from the barracks and snatched one. After getting the telescope, Zhang Xiang climbed to the top floor of the North City Tower and looked around the outer city of Tianjing City for a while, very excited. The first batch of twelve telescopes, Yang Peng was equipped with Cheng Shijie and other senior officers, and the others were given to the scouts and crossbowmen of the Xuanfeng Regiment.

On April 7 of the first year of Xianping, the first batch casting of eighteen machine crossbows has been installed on the arrow platform in the north of the city. Yang Peng handed over a telescope to the crossbow commander who was responsible for correcting the landing point of the artillery, and asked him to experiment with using the telescope to correct the angle of the crossbow.

The crossbow captain grabbed the telescope and looked at it for a long time, with excitement on his face, as if he had discovered a new continent. After the crossbow commander familiarized himself with the telescope, the test firing began. The crossbow archers operated the crossbows, measured the elevation angle with a gauge, a ruler, and a moment of moment, and fired them at a large circle painted with lime a mile away. The effective range of the standard machine crossbow is one and a half miles, which means that it can achieve effective shooting effect on specific targets within 750 meters, and the arrow path is basically a straight line. Using a standard machine crossbow to shoot at a target that is a mile away will reduce the effectiveness and accuracy of the shot. But if the target is big enough, you can still hit it by adjusting the angle.

A mile away, it was impossible to see the landing point of the arrow with the naked eye, and it was not even clear whether the crossbow arrow had landed in the circle. But Yang Peng looked at it with a telescope, but he saw it clearly, and the crossbow arrow fell twenty meters to the left of the lime circle and crashed into a piece of reed grass. Yang Peng took off the telescope, and sure enough, he heard the crossbow shouting: "Eighteen steps to the left!" ”

The crossbowmen went up to drag the crossbow and relocated the bolts in the middle of the crossbow's slot. Based on the observation of the crossbow chief, the crossbowmen readjusted the angle of the crossbow with moments and fired again. The crossbow fired again, and with a whoosh, the crossbow arrow drew an arc in the air and flew towards a white circle a mile away. In the end, the crossbow bolt smashed headlong into the lime circle with a diameter of thirty meters, smashed out a piece of dirt, and bounced forward.

The crossbow commander excitedly shouted, "Hit the target!" The crossbowmen jumped to their feet and high-fived each other. Being able to hit a target from a mile away is still something that crossbowmen are very proud of.

The demand for reading glasses is still slowly fermenting. People who buy glasses use glasses in front of others, which gradually leads to more buyers. Xie Jindao stood in front of the Gao family optical store, a little hesitant. Xie Jindao is a student, that is, a showman. He took the exam for many years, when he was twenty-eight years old, when his parents were still there, and the family raised him as a scholar. But this year, Xiucai is not worth much, he has been a Xiucai in vain, and he has been busy all his life. Now he has sent away his dead parents and relied on teaching in the Wang family school to make a living. At the end of the year, the students only gave more than 20 taels.

Although more than twenty taels should be enough for him, Xie Jindao is good at the things in the cup, he is addicted to alcohol, and every time he has a few dollars in his hand, he has to buy wine to live, so he can't save a few dollars all year round. That is, greedy for a cup of good wine, Xie Jindao still hasn't married a wife at the age of forty-eight, and he is still single. In the past few years, Xie Jindao feels that his health is getting worse and worse. First of all, the legs and feet are not flexible, there is nothing to do when walking twenty miles of mountain roads before, and now from Wangjiazhuang to Cangzhou City ten miles of flat roads can not walk, and the road has to rest twice. Secondly, my hands began to tremble, and I didn't know why I was shaking, and I didn't stop shaking without resting on anything.

Could it be that you drank too much? But these are small things, and the most troublesome thing is that his glasses are starting to wear out. As a reader, getting old glasses is a big problem. I can't read books clearly, I can't write well, and worst of all, I can't teach well. Xie Jindao couldn't read the article written by the student clearly, and squinted his eyes from a distance, at least three of the ten words were guessed, and only in combination with the context could he guess what the student wrote. How does this work? If this continues, Xie Jindao will be dismissed by the head of the Wang family.

Without the work of this gentleman, Xie Jindao would starve to death. He is a talented person, but he doesn't want to starve to death in Cangzhou City in his forties.

Xie Jindao met Mr. Wang Family's bookkeeper a few days ago, and saw that Mr. Bookkeeper was wearing two pieces of glass on his nose and was doing accounts there. Xie Jindao asked him, are your glasses not old? The bookkeeper proudly pointed to the glass on his nose and said, "Just these two pieces of glass, ten taels of silver!" Xie Jindao didn't understand at the time, and asked, "What is so expensive!" The bookkeeper said, "This is called glasses, which is used to treat presbyopia, and I bought it for ten taels of silver, and when I put it on, I can see the words clearly." ”

Only then did Xie Jindao know that there was such a thing in the world that could cure presbyopia. He tried Mr. Ledger's glasses, but it didn't work, and Mr. Ledger said that everyone's glasses were different, and he had to go to the store to get them. Xie Jindao didn't doubt the effect of these glasses, after all, it cost ten taels of silver, and he could earn so much silver without effect? He asked the bookkeeper about the location of the Gao family's shop, and then walked here.

But when he got here, he was a little reluctant. Ten taels of silver, enough to buy five jars of Bianjing wine - he has been reluctant to drink Bianjing wine in the past few years. In the past few years, the bundles sent by his students have been thin, and he has bought some Tiancangzhou local wine to live.

But if you don't cure this presbyopia, let alone drink, you won't have to eat. Xie Jindao sighed and walked into the Gao family glasses store with ten taels of silver. There were a few people in the store, and in addition to himself, there were two customers auditioning. As soon as Xie Jindao entered the store, a small servant greeted him and said with a smile: "Old man, your surname, are you here to cure presbyopia?" ”

Xie Jindao straightened his clothes and said, "The old man's surname is Xie, and he is a student. The little guy suddenly realized, and immediately said respectfully: "It turned out to be Xie Xianggong, how many years has Xie Xianggong been presbyopia?" Xie Jindao was still hurting ten taels of silver, and said angrily: "It's been two years, and the old flowers are so old that the students' articles can't be read clearly." ”

The little guy said wait a minute, then went to the back and took out a box of glasses, took out a pair and put it on Xie Jindao, and said, "Xie Xianggong, what do you think of these two hundred degrees?" ”

As soon as the glasses were put on, Xie Jindao squinted his eyes and looked at the book "Spring and Autumn" on the table, flipped through it, and sure enough, he found that he could see the words on it clearly. Xie Jindao's eyes narrowed helplessly, and secretly said that these ten taels of silver must be spent!

Five jars of Bianjing wine, all of a sudden, there was no more. Xie Jindao said in a rough voice: "See clearly!" The little guy didn't let go of Xie Jindao, and handed over a pair of glasses to replace the pair on Xie Jindao's nose, and said, "Xie Xianggong will try this two hundred and twenty-five degrees again!" Xie Jindao flipped through the book of "Spring and Autumn" again, and said, "It's clearer!" ”

The little guy got Xie Jindao a pair of 250 degrees, put it on and tried the effect, and found that it was not as good as 225 degrees. Then the little guy said, "That's this pair of two hundred and twenty-five degrees!" Xie Jindao was not surprised by the effect of these glasses, these ten taels of silver must have such an effect, otherwise he could make so much silver? But he was distressed again, and he got up for ten taels of silver. Xie Jindao looked at the shopkeeper of the optical store sitting inside, and saw that he was looking at himself expectantly, and couldn't help but snort coldly - these profit-seeking businessmen really eat people without spitting out bones, and two pieces of glass cost ten taels of silver!

Xie Jindao slapped ten taels of silver on the table with a snap, and said coldly: "The silver is here, you can put it away!" The little guy walked in with the silver, weighed the silver with a scale, and then said with a smile: "Xie Xianggong, we still have a box for you, you wait." The little guy walked in and took out a rectangular box, handed it to Xie Jindao, and said, "This is a box dedicated to storing glasses, Xie Xianggong, you can take it!" ”

Xie Jindao breathed a sigh of relief when he thought that now that he had cured his presbyopia, Mr. Clanxue's errand was saved. However, thinking that he had spent a full ten taels of silver, which was enough for five jars of Bianjing wine, Xie Jindao couldn't help but snort heavily.

Profit-seeking businessmen! I don't understand the teachings of saints! With a wave of his hand, he took the glasses case, and Xie Jindao walked away with his glasses.

The rifle workshop now produces 500 rifles a month, and by early April, Yang Peng had 8,200 flintlock rifles to equip his troops.

The 2,000 veterans of the Election Regiment have their own special rifles, train with their own rifles every day, and maintain their own rifles. The rifles of the soldiers of the Broken Regiment have not yet been fully produced, so they can only train with rifles in turns. On weekdays, the soldiers of the Broken Regiment carry wooden sticks to simulate a rifle training queue. More than 1,000 rifles were placed on the shooting range for the soldiers of the Broken Regiment, who took turns to practice target shooting. The soldiers of the Broken Regiment shot 12 shots twice a week, and each of them fired 300 shots in three months.

Musketeers have the advantage of being quick to form an army compared to traditional warriors. The soldiers of the Broken Regiment, who fired 300 rounds of ammunition, were basically able to hit a humanoid target 200 meters away when they hit the target, and they could become an army after a few months of training. Flintlock rifles have the trouble of hanging lead: after the rifling of the lead bullet and the rifle is rubbed for a long time, the lead on the edge of the bullet will adsorb on the rifling and cause the rifling to fail. Therefore, after each rifle has been fired for 200 rounds, it must be taken to the rifle workshop to clean up the lead, and the gunsmiths can use a drawing bed to pull out the lead attached to the rifling.

Fortunately, the lead is soft, and it is quick to clean the hanging lead with a steel broach, and the gunsmiths can clean twenty rifles a day.

The flintlock rifle uses softer lead bullet, and the life of the barrel is about 5,000 rounds. Only the first batch of 125 rifles, which fired more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition at the time of the extermination of the mountain, were scrapped. There are few scrapped guns, and the number of rifles currently available is increasing at a rate of two hundred per month. In less than a month, all the soldiers of the Broken Regiment will be able to have their own rifles.

However, for Yang Peng, such a production speed is still too slow. Taking precautions, Yang Peng sent people to various prefectures and counties to recruit craftsmen and ordinary blacksmiths.

The people sent out by Yang Peng were led by Zhan Jinguo. This time, Yang Peng gave each of the gunsmith apprentices recruited by the Jin Kingdom two taels a month, and then ten taels of moving expenses per person, so that they could rent a villa built by Yang Peng in Tianjing New Town. After being an apprentice for a period of time, he was rewarded with seven silver coins for each rifle produced. The high salary given by Yang Peng attracted a lot of artisan households, and the recruiters basically attracted all the artisan households near Cangzhou to the job fair site every time they went to a place, and the scene was very enthusiastic. The recruiters walked six prefectures and counties to complete Yang Peng's recruitment target. If Yang Peng hadn't emphasized the need for interviews and asked the officials to recruit only honest craftsmen, I am afraid that more than 1,000 craftsmen from the six prefectures and counties would have poured into Tianjing New Town.

In the end, Yang Peng ushered in more than 80 gunsmiths who could make flint hair and more than 210 blacksmiths, a total of 300 people, and asked all these blacksmiths to move to Tianjing New City to be gunsmith apprentices

Of course, in order to keep it secret, Yang Peng did not tell the secret of rifling to the new gunsmith apprentices. The apprentice gunsmiths only learned to make smoothbore flintlock pistols with thicker walls, and after completing various inspections according to the rules, they handed over the finished smoothbore pistols to the old gunsmiths to draw rifling. By concentrating the rifling drawing work on the old gunsmith, Yang Peng's secrecy work will be much easier.

The accuracy of the manual era cannot be guaranteed, and there are always some differences in the caliber of the guns made by different gunsmiths, but this does not affect the operation of the broaching machine rifling. Yang Peng's broaching machine is very flexible, if the chamber is one millimeter wider, you only need to put an extra layer of thick paper under the broach to raise the broach, and vice versa.

Yang Peng gave the old gunsmith an average of four taels a month, and the secrecy requirements for them were also very strict. Yang Peng personally told these gunsmiths that if anyone leaked the secret of rifling to the outside, the leaker would be shot directly. The ruthless gunsmiths of the castle lord knew that nine thieves of the glass workshop had been killed by the castle lord. No one wants to abandon the good life of Tianjing New City and risk their lives to sell the secret of rifling.

The new apprentices did not participate in the drawing of rifling, did not involve the secrecy of flintlock rifles, and naturally did not earn as much as the old gunsmiths. After the new 200 gunsmiths were recruited, they were paid two taels a month during the apprenticeship, and after they finished their studies, they made rifles without rifling, and they were rewarded with one tael for each rifling they made. Of course, three of the two silver bonuses were given to the craftsman's master, and only seven were to the apprentice. But in any case, the monthly income of 227 Qian is also very considerable.

You must know that Li Zhi also includes three meals a day for gunsmiths and apprentices. Among these new apprentices, the craftsman began to learn to make smoothbore flintlock pistols when he arrived in Tianjing New Town, and a month later began to produce rifles without rifling on his own. The blacksmiths, who could not do it, did not immediately begin to learn how to make flintlock pistols when they arrived in Tianjing New Town, but were organized to make bayonets for the existing flintlock rifles.

Yang Peng had to equip the musketeers with bayonets. Yang Peng's troops only had musketeers in the infantry, and there were no pikemen or sword and shield soldiers to protect the musketeers, and once they made close contact, they relied on the musketeers in hand-to-hand combat. Previously, Yang Peng equipped each musketeer with a long knife, but it was obvious that the long knife was not lethal to the cavalry, which was not conducive to the musketeers to maintain their morale in the face of cavalry. Yang Peng decided to follow the example of the spear and add a detachable bayonet to the flintlock rifle as a cold weapon for musketeers.

The bayonet designed by Yang Peng has a blade fifty centimeters long, with the blade below, and serrations engraved on the back of the knife. The bayonet can be stabbed or slashed, and once it penetrates into the enemy's body, the serrated teeth will tear the flesh and skin, making it extremely difficult for the wound to heal. There was also a handle behind the blade of the bayonet, twenty centimeters long, which allowed the bayonet to be used as a one-handed short knife out of the rifle.

The bayonet was mounted on a wooden holder under the barrel. The wooden holder of the rifle was attached to an iron rod with concave and convex teeth, and a hole was made in the tail of the handle of the bayonet, which was designed to match the iron rod. When loading the bayonet, the hole in the bottom of the bayonet is inserted into the iron rod on the wooden support, and after the end is put on the bottom, it is rotated 90 degrees, and then pressed down and turned 90 degrees again, and the bayonet is fixed on the rifle. Later, when the infantry or cavalry armed with long weapons rushed towards the musketeers, the musketeers loaded their bayonets after shooting. With bayonets, the musketeers had long weapons that could be used against the enemy's infantry, and even cavalry could be used to challenge them, which was of great significance for raising the morale of the musketeers.

In order to make bayonets, Yang Peng bought thousands of catties of iron from the ironware merchants in Tiancang Prefecture City and provided them to the blacksmiths. More than 200 apprentice gunsmiths did not learn to make guns, but built stoves to make tools in the newly opened blacksmith workshop area in the south of the city, and beat them day and night to make bayonets for the soldiers of the Elective Regiment and the Breaking Regiment.

If you want to know what happens next, let's see the next breakdown.