stubborn thief

Chapter 472

Zhenyi guerrilla Tang Mingshi found out that God seemed to be playing a joke on him.

His army took the risk of being bombarded and walked forty steps in front of the enemy with great hardships, thinking that they could defeat the enemy with a large number of light artillery, but the enemy lifted out densely packed eagle guns from behind the mound?
If I had known earlier, he would not have come!
The individual firearm technology tree of the Ming Dynasty has a clear main line, starting from the earliest Huomen blunderbuss, to the bird blunderbuss imitated and installed in the Wanli year in Jiajing, and then to the eagle blunderbuss imitated and directly installed in the first year of Chongzhen.

The development of the fire door gun is relatively long, and the multi-short-barreled fire door three-eye gun and the fast gun with a bayonet have been independently innovated.

The prototype of the bird gun is the Portuguese light matchlock gun, and the Franco machine was imitated together with it. On this basis, Qi Jiguang and Zhao Shizhen as representatives innovated the multi-barreled musket Thunderbolt, the Franco machine type electric gun, The Ottoman-style matchlock Lumi gun was introduced.

Here, Qi Jiguang played the role of improving granule gunpowder and promoting it on a large scale, increasing the power of gunpowder.

After Qi Jiguang, the burning rate of granular gunpowder was slower and more controllable. With the same amount of charge, the barrel pressure at the same time was smaller than that of powdered gunpowder, creating a higher charge and stronger power. possible.

At the same time, the gunpowder charges of Western countries were all half or one-third of the weight of the bullets, and the gunpowder loads of the Ming Dynasty were the same weight as the ammunition.

On this basis, the more refined Lumi gun has the title of the farthest and most poisonous, because it is more finely crafted, and its shape and caliber are no different from the bird gun, the only difference is that its barrel is longer , so it hits farther and is more powerful.

The price is that the price of the bird gun is seven qian to one tael of silver, and the price of the Lumi gun is even higher, one or two taels of silver.

The above is the progress of musket technology up to the Wanli period.

Turtledove gun or eagle gun is a new thing for the Ming army. The biggest difference is that its caliber has changed. This is a synonym for Spanish heavy musket. It was a new thing that was not equipped until the end of the apocalypse and the early years of Chongzhen.

Tang Mingshi's understanding of heavy muskets came from the fact that Chongzhen led troops into the guard in the third year. At that time, Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai, was equipping the new army. Following the Hongyi Pao, he transferred [-] imitation Spanish heavy muskets from Guangdong.

Turtle dove and eagle blunderbuss are two names of a kind of blunderbuss. Eagle blunderbuss comes from Xu Guangqi’s literal translation, and turtledove blunderbuss comes from the free translation of sparrow eagle by Wang Zunde, governor of Guangdong and Guangxi. Soldiers or officials who do not understand Western languages ​​are commonly called large bird blunderbusses.

There is also Xiong Wencan, the governor of Fujian who recruited Zheng Zhilong. He called it the turtledove foot gun, because the turtledove's claws have three toes, and the middle claw is very long, like the fork of a Spanish heavy musket.

In short, these nouns refer to the heavy muskets based on the Spanish heavy muskets, which are mainly different from the smaller caliber bird guns.

At that time, the turtledove blunderbuss had been imitated on a large scale in the capital. As a supplement to the individual firepower of the newly trained army, it was deployed in the army at a ratio of one to five with the bird blunderbuss. The court hoped to use this thing to return to Liao Dynasty.

Although he thought at the time that this kind of large-caliber musket might not be very effective against the Mongols, the main opponents in the Northwest Defense Area, he watched the soldiers practice with the turtledove gun. The huge power brought by its large caliber and large charge made the turtledove gun give Tang Mingshi Impressed.

At that time, Tang Mingshi thought in his heart, if this thing is effective against Hou Jin, then when he came to Ji Liao to take office in the future, the army would have already been equipped on a large scale.

It's a pity that the turtledove blunderbuss failed in the Ming Dynasty. The new army that Sun Yuanhua trained hard became a rebel army in Wuqiao, Jingzhou, Hejian Prefecture because of a chicken. Broken, the first army equipped with a large number of turtledove guns was almost wiped out by its own army, and only ten thousand remnants were left.

Under such origins, in Tang Mingshi's subconscious mind, the eagle gun and the Shandong rebels were equated.

He never expected that he would see rebels using heavy guns in Gansu. The equipment rate of heavy guns seemed to be much higher than that of the Denglai rebels!
However, on the front seventy or eighty steps wide, on the half-person high earth base, there were nearly [-] heavy guns erected on the front alone, and there were obviously two rows of soldiers waiting to fire in bursts behind. Tang Mingshi had no time to distinguish between the heavy guns Putting the guns together, I have already regretted my intestines.

In fact, he is not the most panicked person on the battlefield. The left commander of the Zhenyi You Barracks is called Cao Yingxuan, and he is also a general who has seen eagle guns. He is leading the left wing to push the commander forward. Urge the horse to run to the army.

It's just that before the people arrived, the first round of heavy gun volleys from the Marshal's Army had already arrived.

At the moment when the volley of heavy guns was fired, Tang Mingshi, who was riding on a horse in the Chinese army, only felt puzzled...the gunfire and gunpowder smoke that spewed out was much less than he had imagined. There shouldn't be only this movement of [-] heavy guns.

But the next moment he couldn't help being puzzled, a large lead pellet weighing one or two five cents was sprayed out, making a frightening scream in the air, and sprayed in front of the Zhenyi army in a blink of an eye, bringing the sound of a large piece of wood breaking apart.

Shields and armor were vulnerable in front of this thing. In just an instant, Tang Mingshi saw dozens of soldiers fall to the ground. Unlike the large wails and cries that sounded after being hit by a bird gun, the soldiers who were hit by this thing Most were unable to yell at all.

Mr. Qian Cao Yingxuan jumped into the Chinese army. His mount's head was pierced by a lead bullet. The inertia of the horse's heavy body drove him forward a few steps. The moment Mr. Cao fell down, Mr. Cao rolled and entered. Chinese army.

"General, retreat quickly!"

"Shut up!"

Tang Mingshi said angrily: "Take a step back, I will die without a place to die!"

He knows best that the army is not facing the most dangerous situation at this time, the most dangerous situation is that they start to retreat.

He didn't know the parameters of the Marshal's heavy guns, but the eagle guns could shoot lead bullets two hundred paces away by slightly raising the muzzle. Although there was no accuracy at that distance, his army would face Threat of death, difficult to maintain formation.

This is a simple calculation problem.

To maintain the formation, 200 steps is enough for the enemy to finish three rows of bursts, and they will have to pay close to [-] casualties. Even if the formation does not disperse, the soldiers will not be willing to approach the enemy again and can only retreat.

If you can't maintain the formation, you still have to withstand three rows of bursts of fire, pay more than 150 casualties, lose the protection of the army formation, and be trampled and driven by the enemy cavalry. Once the rout is formed, it will be difficult to gather troops again.

Therefore, Tang Mingshi judged that the best choice at this time was to launch a confrontation with the enemy, relying on the advantage of the rate of fire at close range to suppress the enemy, and try not to let the enemy shoot and affect the enemy's reloading.

They cannot defend against muskets, but they can use offense to weaken the enemy's attack.

His eyes swept over his own army formation, and the Zhenyi army who had endured the first round of shooting was not moved. After he ordered the change of formation, the flags of the three columns were unfurled. The horizontal team fills the gaps between the columns, turning the column into a horizontal formation.

Tang Mingshi did the calculation well, and got the correct answer under the existing conditions.

The problem was that his known conditions were wrong.

There were 40 muskets in the front row of the marshal's army, and the salvo only hit [-] people. Why?

Because Tang Tong led the standard thousand headquarters of the Marshal's Mansion Field Battalion, the minimum staffing was not Shi, but four teams of three in the first battle and two assistants that were very characteristic of the Lion Camp.

In the Lion Camp era, most of the auxiliary soldiers from the peasant army did not have the physical fitness to play a strong bow. They were often equipped with three-eyed blunderbuss and bird blunderbuss. Only soldiers used war bows.

In the field battalion era, the Marshal's Mansion had its own arsenal, which was able to produce firearms on a large scale. After serving for several years, the auxiliary soldiers also had the ability to fight soldiers. Instead, it is a large-caliber firearm.

Because of the self-made firearms of the Marshal's Mansion, one is heavy, the heavy gun is fifteen catties, and the carrying gun is thirty catties.

Therefore, their firearm equipment rate is only [-]%, that is to say, there are only [-] muskets in the entire thousand headquarters, and each is equipped with a carrying gun and three heavy guns.

Three hundred heavy guns form a relatively loose three-row salvo formation, which means that only one hundred heavy guns fire at the same time.

Among the [-] heavy guns that Tang Mingshi saw, [-] of them did not fire at the first time, because the guns were too slow to reload, so they fired in bursts instead of salvos.

After the heavy guns fired in unison, the heavy gunmen in the front row retreated and let the second row of gunmen fill up, only to find that the heavy gunners of the Marshal Army were standing in the cracks, and each heavy gunner was separated by a Raise the gunner.

Because the heavy guns in the Marshal's Mansion are still matchlock guns, it is not safe to form a dense formation, and the flintlock guns are used to carry the guns, not to mention that there is a tripod mounted on the car, which can be well separated in the horizontal formation. Fire the match.

In the process of changing ranks of the heavy gunners, the gunners from left to right fired sequentially, raising the guns one after another, and hitting the huge guns at the enemy's formation through the smoke that would not disperse.

This made it appear that the field marshal's guns were firing indiscriminately just by listening to the sound, as if the soldiers were poorly trained.

But in fact, this is precisely the result of their extremely high level of training, in order to combine volleyball and burst shooting well.

On the other side, the Zhenyi army, which suffered casualties, did not stand still and was beaten. The three-way column quickly expanded into a five-way column, which was wider than the marshal's army, and also formed a three-row deep horizontal team to fight back with muskets.

It has to be said that they are much stronger than the marshal's army in terms of salvo momentum.

The Zhenyi army used long cards to reject horses to form a basic defensive facility. The front row of musketeers used three-eyed guns, and the back row used small-caliber bird guns such as Lumi and Qingdian. Captives bombarded at close range.

Dozens of projectiles from the Pearl Cannon sprayed towards the front of the formation, even through the earth barrier, they could always injure or even kill a few soldiers; The lead bullets hit the earth barrier, easily penetrated the wooden boards, and blasted the earth barrier filled with wet sand to the point of collapse.

In contrast, the eight lion cannons sprayed densely packed lead pellets and iron bullets at close range to one light gun group after another.

Every once in a while, the guns of the two invincible generals of the Zhenyi Army sprayed out [-] guns; the heavy guns in the marshal's army also roared, and fired [-] iron bullets in return for teeth, and the entire artillery group was fired.

The huge firepower of the two sides covered the middle of the battlefield with gunpowder that could not be dispersed. After only a few shots, no one could aim. People could only mechanically repeat the same action again and again, shooting into the smoke, and being broken through The stray bullets of gunpowder hit.

Amid the continuous roar of guns and artillery, the Zhenyi Army's three hundred cavalrymen on the right tried to attack the flank of Tang Tong's army to assist the Chinese army in crushing the enemy, but they did not expect that more than a hundred soldiers on the flank of the Marshal's Army armed with spears and bows Waiting for the battle, not only failed to move the army, but also lost a grown-up.

The Ma Jun just wanted to launch an attack, rather than really daring to charge up. What they were afraid of was not the forest of guns and spears, but the non-stop firing of their own guns alternately.

Those stray bullets almost formed a dense gun line, tightly wrapping the left wing of the Marshal's army, not to mention a trench that could not be crossed by horses.

But the musket line that the Zhenyi cavalry was afraid of seemed to be the same thing to the soldiers of the Marshal Army.

After withstood the first few rounds of shooting, Wai Liangzi suddenly discovered that the firepower composed of three-eyed blunderbuss and bird blunderbuss used by the Ming army continued and never stopped, but the front line of the army array was also covered by gunpowder smoke, and the lead shot at them seemed... as if Fewer and fewer.

He stood up bravely and looked at the battlefield in front of the two armies. The gunshots from the enemy's formation had not abated, but it seemed that because of the cover of gunpowder smoke, the gunners of the Ming army could only shoot by feeling.

Of course, there were still a lot of lead shot towards their front, but there were also a lot of lead shot on the ground, in the sky, and on the left and right sides of the army formation.

However, because the firepower of the marshal's army continued to be weak, they almost fired three rounds of volleys, and then paused for a while.

But they shot very accurately, and even the soldiers aimed consciously during the volley. Except for the gunmen, the soldiers were almost not too nervous.

After all, during burst shooting, the soldiers actually only need to go forward to release a gun, and it is only dangerous when releasing the gun, but because the gunner is always in front of the battle, he is more nervous than the ordinary gunner who uses a heavy gun.

In the uninterrupted gunfire, Wai Liangzi noticed that the enemy's gunfire became more and more sporadic, and the number of muskets fired in each volley seemed to be less and less, and the two invincible generals gradually became silent, and ran back to the center excitedly. Army, to Tang Tongdao: "General, the enemy seems to be out of gunpowder, charge them for a while, and defeat them?"

Unexpectedly, Tang Tong, who was holding a silk shell bag, reacted very calmly. He shook his head and said, "They are lying to you. Keep hitting until they retreat. Don't attack."

Tang Tong was very familiar with this trick, and when they rushed over, the two invincible generals of the Ming army should bombard them.

This is the performance of Qianlu trying to turn the tables when he finds that he has no advantage in shooting.

As he spoke, Tang Tong spread out the silk medicine bag in his hand on the ground, and sprinkled [-] small lead pellets on the plain silk. He pointed to the small lead pellets and said, "Disassemble five shells, and give the scattered pellets The gunner sends it down, and puts three plugs in each time."

Crooked Liangzi was puzzled and said: "Then the weight of the bullet is only two or two or four!"

"It's okay, they're so close, it doesn't affect the range." Tang Tong shook his head and grabbed a handful of loose balls and handed them to Wai Liangzi: "Hit a few more people!"

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)