open sea

Chapter 798 Head Question
Outside the three-mile telegraph office outside the Acropolis of Tianjin, servants in the distance led donkeys and carts and waited for two rows. There were scholars, officials, and pawns. .

Those with status are closer to the gate, and those without status are farther away from the gate, but their movements and demeanor are the same, standing on tiptoe and eagerly watching the closed gate without taking their eyes off it.

Suddenly, with the sound of a gong, the gate of the telegraph office was slowly opened, and five Tianjin guards led their horses out, galloping towards Tianjin Acropolis. The voice cried out.

"Everyone, the first ten days of June, the second phase of Beiyang will go to Asia!"

Within a year after the completion of the first Beijing-Tianjin telegraph, the two-wire telegraph route from Jizhen in the north to Hangzhou in the south via the canal and the two Beijings was completed and put into use under the auspices of Zhang Juzheng, the chief assistant of the empire. , prefectures and counties set up telegraph bureaus.

The so-called double-line does not refer to sending and receiving telegrams, but front-line officials and front-line civilians. However, the temporary technical means are not enough for the common people to use telegrams to send family letters between the north and the south. It is just that the capital makes a report of major events in the world every ten days. Newspapers, divided into primary, secondary, and civil, are printed and posted four times by the county telegraph bureaus.

Nowadays, the gentry, officials and people in the counties along the canal have formed the habit of waking up early every month when they have nothing to do to listen to the headlines of the telegram, which is usually a relatively interesting event.

But today’s topic is of no interest to the people of Tianjin—they already knew the news about the second phase of Beiyang’s expedition. Many people who didn’t care about the topic ran to the telegraph office and waited because they went to Beiyang to see the battleship. set sail.

"How fresh?"

This is far less interesting than the Japanese King Ashikaga Yoshiaki's tribute to Beijing in the first ten days of May, or Altan Khan's tribute to Beijing in late April.

Young and old waved their hands, donkeys, donkeys, horses and horses, as well as those who drove on the road, flocked towards Beiyang.

In the printed Minbao, under the headline of this issue, there is something about the palace, saying that Emperor Wanli couldn't bear the soldiers and civilians of the second phase of Beiyang to go to the expedition. cry.

It's all bullshit.

Lord Wanli was not ill. He ran for eight miles in the Forbidden City every morning wearing armor, straddling a knife and carrying a blunderbuss on his back. He was in very good health, stronger than a calf.

It is nonsense to talk about sorrow and tears, he just wanted to take a boat ride in Bohai to enjoy himself, and give himself a few days off, but this is different from the past, the middle-aged god is back, can he be let out of the palace to play?
That is to say, Chen Mu was not in the court, otherwise, after reading today's newspaper, he would have to create a propaganda department for the Ming Dynasty.

The sound of horseshoes roaring in the distance disturbed the common people who were rushing to Beiyang to watch the fleet's expedition. The four riders held up the evasive sign and stepped across the muddy street at the beginning of the rainy season.

They seem to have gotten used to the fact that avoidance tokens are not reserved for magistrates.

Sure enough, it didn't take long before the sound of horseshoes and trampling became more and more intense. Hundreds of horsemen marched in a single file. Boom past.

The exotic warriors from the north of the Nine Sides Great Wall wear heavy armor with bare shoulders. People know that this is the elite armored cavalry under the command of Altan Khan. Put the bundled quiver of arrows.

The common people recognized that Han will be Ma Ran, a young general who has been showing his face around Tianjin recently. He has a prominent family background. He was rated as the most brave general in the world, but it was a bit embarrassing to lead troops to appear in Tianjin at this time.

The Ming army, which was preparing to go to the East, had assembled two months ago. The emperor's recruitment of the warriors of the No. [-] No. [-] Jurchen Battalion had already arrived in Beiyang. A frequent visitor on official roads in Tianjin.

This armored cavalry unit is obviously out of date.

Boom!

There were several bangs from the Beiyang school grounds, piercing the tranquility of the morning.

Ye Mengxiong, the head of the Beiyang Branch of the Ministry of War, held a blunderbuss that looked very different from the military weapons in the past and fired it three times in a row, and handed it to the soldiers beside him to charge the gunpowder. The target, a soldier ran over to look at the target, waved his hand and gestured, and he nodded in satisfaction.

The shape of the blunderbuss resembles the combination of the three-eyed blunderbuss and the old Nanyang flintlock blunderbuss. It is called the three-eyed blunderbuss. The handle still uses a curved wooden handle, but the slight curvature of the handle makes the shape more exquisite.

The three gun barrels are connected into one body, and can rotate clockwise near the flintlock machine, and the spring spring pops out every time the shooting position is reached, so it can be fired three times in a row.

During research and development, according to the latest data from the Guangzhou Jiaowutang Research Institute five years ago, the barrel is longer than the previous three-eye blunderbuss. However, due to the choice of weight, the three-foot-eight-inch blunderbuss with the greatest power and accuracy was not selected, and the two-foot-four-inch blunderbuss was used. tube, the overall weight is between the non-supported flintlock and the Nanyang-made flintlock.

Exclusively for cavalry, the best range is fifty paces.

The three-eyed blunderbuss came out at the end of the fifth year of Wanli. The first [-] rods were sent to Jizhen, Beiyang, the Ministry of War, and the Forbidden City. The chief officers of the Military Weapons Bureau were all rewarded by Wang Chonggu, the new minister of the Ministry of War, and the emperor nominated them for the next year's Wanli Science and Technology Award.

In the second phase of the Beiyang army that is about to leave, there are three hundred Beiyang cavalry equipped with three-eyed cavalry. At the same time, there are [-] three-eyed cavalry and supporting tools in the carrying baggage.

At present, various units such as Jizhen and Jingying have not been listed.

This batch of Beiyang's three-eyed riding guns was purchased from the Xuanfu by Ye Mengxiong's allocation of funds, and the matching fee is 400 taels of silver.

Everything has advantages and disadvantages. The three-eyed blunderbuss is excellent in workmanship, consistent in shooting, and powerful, but it also has disadvantages, which are not conducive to the deployment of the entire army. First of all, it is expensive. To put it bluntly, the key lies in the fact that its structure complicates the charge, and cavalrymen have to use another type of loader made by the Xuanfu Arms Bureau if they want to load it on horseback, and the size of the lead shot is different from that of the bird gun.

The Ming army’s existing bird guns are divided into three-coin bullets and nine-coin bullets. The two-coin bullets used by the three-eyed cavalry gun are also designed to reduce weight.

In a short period of time, it is difficult to arm a large number of troops with this kind of weapon, but at least for now, it seems that this kind of weapon is very popular among northern Xinjiang generals, and wealthy generals are happy to spend a lot of money to equip the elite servants.

Ye Mengxiong waved his hand and said to the mules and horses parked in the school yard: "Ship!"

He re-checked the last batch of ordnance, and found that the guns, ammunition, and ammunition were all correct.He raised his eyes to look at the port, and heaved a long sigh of relief—he finally lived up to Chen Mu's great trust.

　Good afternoon, I slept well and felt comfortable.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)