The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 4
After noon, the car finally stopped at the outskirts of Tianxing Mansion.

Zhu Linmi had already thought about it carefully on the way. If she wanted to have a generational advantage over the weapons and equipment of the Qing army, the easiest thing to do was to make flintlock guns.

At present, the Qing army is mainly equipped with matchlock guns, while the Ming army is even equipped with a very low rate of matchlock guns.

In this kind of gun, a lit hemp rope is stuck on a curved rod next to the fire door. When the trigger is pulled, the curved rod and the match fall down to ignite the gunpowder and fire lead bullets.

Although the dominant weapon of the era, the arquebus had a series of drawbacks.

The first is that the preparation time before launch is too long.After dozens of operations such as loading gunpowder, loading lead bullets, lighting the match, loading the match, and blowing the match, those who can fire one shot in one minute are all soldiers kings. It is normal for ordinary soldiers to shoot twice in three minutes, or even one shot in two minutes. .

Secondly, the matchlock is very "delicate". For example, it is easy to be affected by moisture, and even a strong wind can blow it out, making it unusable in bad weather.

Soldiers equipped with matchlock guns must keep a distance of at least one meter when shooting, otherwise the sparks flying on the matchlock can easily ignite the gunpowder cans of their comrades.Of course, you can insist on standing in a dense formation, but detonating your own gunpowder will hit morale no less than the enemy killing hundreds of you.

In addition, there are countless small problems such as the smoky eyes from the fire rope, the heavy fire rope that has to be carried on the back in battle, and the burning fire rope at night to expose the target, etc. There are countless.

The flintlock improved the trigger of the matchlock gun, canceled the troublesome matchlock, and fixed a piece of flint on the hammer next to the fire door. After the trigger was pulled, the flint hit the fire sickle, and sparks were fired to ignite the gunpowder.

The advantages of this change are obvious.

First of all, when loading the flintlock, there are no time-consuming operations such as loading the match, blowing on the match, and removing the match, so the rate of fire has increased a lot.You know, the shorter the shooting interval, the more bullets the enemy eats.

The second major advantage of the flintlock is that the flintlock can form a dense formation.

That is, the number of soldiers per row can be doubled.In this way, the firepower density is doubled!You must know that the muskets of this era are all smoothbore guns, and the bullets fired do not rotate, so they are not accurate.Someone once exaggeratedly described that "the possibility of shooting at a person and shooting at the moon is as great as the possibility of hitting the enemy."

Therefore, intensive shooting can also bring a higher hit probability, so doubling the density of soldiers can increase the combat effectiveness by as much as three or four times!It can be seen from this that it is not a problem for a thousand fusiliers to handle two or three thousand arquebus soldiers simply by comparing shooting.

And even if the enemy is fighting hand-to-hand, the bayonets faced by the enemy are more dense.This feature is especially important when fighting cavalry.The cavalry who charged the flintlock infantry phalanx usually suffered great losses, and it was difficult to break through the infantry phalanx.This point was repeatedly verified by Europeans in the eighteenth century with the lives of countless cavalrymen.

It was the equipment of the flintlock that made the European cavalry gradually become a supporting role, and the biggest reliance of the Qing army was their cavalry!
As for problems such as smoked eyes with matchlocks, fear of tides, and exposure of targets at night, the flintlock gun does not exist.

Due to this series of advantages, by the eighteenth century, the flintlock had completely replaced the arquebus.

Zhu Linmei can already foresee that with the use of new tactics, the Ming army equipped with flintlock guns will have a huge advantage when facing the Qing army-the Ming army only has infantry, and it can basically fight against the infantry of the Qing army alone Add cavalry.At that time, the unmanned cavalry on one's own side can teach the Qing army to behave as they like.

The goal of his trip was to get the flintlock gun out.

In front of me is a large building with towering blue brick walls on all sides, the courtyard is filled with smoke, two stone beasts taller than a person are at the door, and eight guards with swords stand on both sides. It is the Fujing Military Bureau.

Xu Tong, the ambassador of the Military Weapons Bureau, was quite surprised when he heard that a handsome young master had arrived.The Ordnance Bureau is under the Ministry of Industry, and the most people who come here are officials from the Ministry of Industry. Could it be the staff of some boss?

He pondered in his heart, and hurriedly brought two followers out to meet him.

At the beginning of the Longwu Dynasty, he, a ninth-rank official, had never seen Chen Wangshizi before, he stepped forward to look him up, and said, "You are?"

Zhu Linmi was about to reveal her identity when she suddenly remembered the sight of her kneeling everywhere in the palace. She couldn't help but frowned, and said, "My surname is Su. I'm here...something."

Seeing that he was not from the Ministry of Industry, Xu Tong immediately became rude, "The Ordnance Bureau does not accept visitors."

As soon as he finished speaking, Qiao Qian calmly stuffed a small piece of silver into his hand.

In the late Ming Dynasty, official corruption was commonplace.Xu Tong weighed his weight secretly, then smiled and said: "Xu Tong, the ambassador of the Military Weapons Bureau, I don't know what's the matter with Mr. Su?"

"I want to build a gun."

Xu Tong coughed dryly, signaled his followers to avoid, and then signaled to Zhu Lin, "Follow me." Xu Tong's followers turned around and left tacitly. Depending on the situation, Ambassador Xu secretly sold firearms not once or twice.

Zhu Linmi took Qiao Qian into the arms bureau, and asked several guards to wait outside the door.

In the workshops of different sizes in the Military Weapons Bureau, there was a constant sound of tinkling and wrought iron, and the craftsmen were busy with their arms bare.

Xu Tong walked all the way to a row of warehouses on the west side, and asked Zhu Linming to wait outside the door.

He unlocked and pushed the door in, took out a chest-high matchlock gun with no craftsman's name engraved on it, and handed it to Zhu Linmi, with a mysterious expression on his face, he said: "The newly-made three-coin bird gun has three coins for each charge and three coins for shooting." Lead bullets can kill tigers and leopards in one blow from a hundred paces away. It only costs eight taels of silver."

Zhu Linming came here intending to make flintlock guns, but this little official actually regarded him as a son who bought guns for hunting, shook his head and said: "I want to order a new gun, not a bird gun."

Xu Tong glanced at him with disdain, and said in a proud tone, "This is the most equipped blunderbuss in the Ming army, and it beat the Qing army to the brim! What new blunderbuss do you want to make? Just this one."

Can the three-money bird gun beat the shit out of the Qing army?As a small moderator of the military forum, Zhu Linmei has read a lot of posts discussing the military equipment of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. She is definitely an expert in this field. How can she be fooled casually?
He weighed the blunderbuss weighing six to seven catties in his hand, looked at the slender muzzle and sneered, "It would be difficult for this blunderbuss to shoot through ordinary cotton armor of the Qing army from thirty paces away, let alone double-armored heavy cavalry. gone."

The cotton armor mentioned here is not an ordinary cotton coat, but a composite armor made of soaking cotton and repeatedly beating it into hard cotton sheets, stacking many of these cotton sheets, and then dropping iron sheets on the inner layer.

This thing was first used by Qi Jiguang to deal with Japanese pirates, and it has an excellent defensive effect on firecrackers, especially light firecrackers.Now the Ming army has less equipment due to lack of money. On the contrary, after the Qing army popularized cotton armor in large numbers, the Ming army has been hanging and beating the Ming army using light firecrackers in field battles.

Xu Tong didn't expect Mr. Su to be so professional, he was stunned for a moment, and wondered if this guy wanted to buy a gun to pierce cotton armor?But as long as he gives the money, it has nothing to do with me.

He whispered again: "I still have Lumi guns here, which are extremely powerful. It's just that the name of the craftsman is engraved on the spot, so you have to wait for a while if you want it."

Zhu Linmi shook her head inwardly. The "extremely powerful" Lumi gun that Xu Tong said was also a light gun. Although it was much stronger than the three-money bird gun, the firepower was still weak. Most importantly, they were all matchlock guns.

(End of this chapter)