Take the arsenal to Da Ming

Chapter 325 Hot Air Balloon

In July 1649, Ainengqi led an army of 7 to the north and appeared outside Irkutsk.

Ainengqi found a tribe member who could speak Raksha language in the Bili Yati tribe, wrote a letter in Raksha language, and sent someone to the city.

The main content of the letter was to order the Cossacks to release all the plundered Mongol population and to compensate the Baliyats for all losses suffered.

Faced with such a request from the Ming army, Eriksha flatly refused without hesitation.

Since the other party rejected their reasonable request, there was nothing to talk about, and Ainengqi directly ordered to attack the city.

More than 20 red cannons bombarded the city of Irkutsk violently. The Cossacks relied on the city to hold out, and the Ming army carried out several sieges without success.

Because the city of Irkutsk also has a lot of artillery, and the Cossacks also have more firearms, and they rely on the geographical advantage, even if the Ming army has a huge force advantage, it is difficult to break through the city easily.

The more this is the case, the more Erikesha will not be able to hold on, because he knows that only by holding on to the city can he restrain the advantages of the Ming army.

With [-] troops in the city and enough supplies, it won't be a problem to persist for a few months.

As for the Ming army, it was more difficult for tens of thousands of people to persist outside the city for several months.

After all, the daily material consumption of the Ming army is a huge number, and it is more difficult to supply in the sparsely populated north, and the transportation from the Ming Dynasty is also very far away, which is a very large consumption.

Ai Nengqi naturally understood this, as did Tangning and the staff in the rear.

Therefore, the reinforcements sent by Tangning prepared their next move. First of all, German artillery was indispensable. The army had two 88mm anti-aircraft guns and four howitzers, two of which were 105mm and two were 150mm.

But the German artillery is too precious, so the Ming army does not want to put it into use prematurely unless it is a last resort.

After several sieges, Ainengqi knew that if he did not use some extraordinary means and continued to forcibly attack the city, if he wanted to take down the city in a short time, the casualties would be very high.

And this was just a city. With the order of the King of Light, Tangning, his purpose was obviously not just to capture this city.

In the rear position of the Ming army, more than a dozen soldiers were manipulating around a hanging basket woven with rattan. There were still ropes tied to the surrounding frame of the hanging basket, and a huge piece of wood was attached to the other end of the rope. unknown cloth.

Under the manipulation of the soldiers of the Ming army, the big piece of cloth actually swelled slowly, and then floated up, forming a big hemisphere.

A Ming army stretched a long torch to the top of a large iron basin directly below the hemisphere, and with a bang, the large iron basin ignited a raging flame.

As the flames burned more and more intensely, the big hemisphere, which was still a little wrinkled, suddenly became solid. If the lower corners of the big cloth were not tied with ropes, it would probably fly directly into the sky.

That's right, this game is actually a hot air balloon invented by Sun Yunqiu, a genius boy from Chaozhou College. It is to send such a big ball made of cloth to the sky through the hot air burned by flames.

Of course, Sun Yunqiu was able to invent hot air balloons, although he was a genius, but it was also indispensable for the bright king Tangning's advice.

When King Guangming was doing the hemispheric experiment in Chaozhou Prefecture, he talked about some common phenomena in life. The principle of hot air balloons comes from the flying ash or paper scraps on the burning wood.

Explain that burning wood produces a force, and the greater the force, the bigger the thing will rise.

The King of Light also talked about the concept of hot air balloons in his lectures at Chaozhou College.

On this basis, Sun Yunqiu finally invented the hot air balloon after repeated experiments and several years of hard work.

Sun Yunqiu invented two kinds of hot air balloons, one was made of paper, and the other was made of a never-before-seen fabric provided by King Guangming Tangning.

The hot air balloon made of paper is inferior to the latter one in terms of flying speed, height, safety and other aspects.

However, the amount of fabric provided by the King of Light is not very large, so hot air balloons cannot be produced in large quantities, and the production cost is also much higher.

So for this Northern Expedition, Tangning provided Ai Nengqi with ten hot air balloons, two of which were made of special fabrics, and the other eight were made of paper bags.

This special cloth, of course, he took out from the arsenal, is nylon cloth.

As for the combustion used in hot air balloons, it uses kerosene, which is actually oil. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, there was the world's first oil well in Sichuan.

After Li Dingguo led the Western Army to surrender to Ming Dynasty, Tang Ning sent people to develop and utilize the oil well, and now it is used as a hot air balloon for burning.

In order to ensure success under the watchful eyes of the army, the first hot air balloon that rose was a nylon cloth hot air balloon.

The three trained soldiers immediately got into the gondola, and after confirming that they were ready, the soldiers next to them let go of the fixed ropes.

The hot air balloon rose slowly, and the Ming soldiers who saw this scene for the first time were shocked.

"Go to the sky, really go to the sky, people can really go to the sky, the King of Light is really amazing..."

"It's amazing. One day I can sit on it and have a look in the sky. It would be great."

The soldiers talked a lot, including the Manchurian soldiers, Mongolian soldiers and Han soldiers, all of them were in awe of the King of Light, and they became more and more convinced in their hearts. They firmly believed that as long as they had the King of Light Tangning behind them, no matter how strong the city was, they would not be able to stop the Great Tomorrow Army. pace.

Under the control of the soldiers in the hanging basket, the hot air balloon flew towards the city of Irkutsk a few miles away according to the direction of the wind.

The defenders of Irkutsk City have also been paying attention to the movements of the Ming army. A strange thing suddenly flew up from the Ming army's position, which immediately attracted their attention.

When they observed carefully with the binoculars, their faces were suddenly pale with shock: "There are people up there, there are people up there, Ming people can fly to the sky. They, they are flying towards us."

This miraculous scene immediately caused an uproar, and the defenders reported it to Eriksha immediately.

Eriksha came to the top of the city in a hurry, and picked up the binoculars to look into the distance, and sure enough, he saw people above, and they were looking down with the binoculars. Eriksha was so shocked that he couldn't speak.

Not long after, the hot air balloon floated over the city of Irkutsk, and many residents and defenders in the city could see it when they looked up. They heard that there were Ming people on it, which immediately caused a huge panic.

At this moment, many people saw a black thing falling from above, and they couldn't help but stare intently.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and the thing exploded suddenly when it was as high as a three-story building from the ground. It immediately caused panic and screams, and the residents fled in all directions, leaving the area one after another.

And under the explosion in that area, more than a dozen people lay on the ground screaming, and a few lay motionless on the ground, with a large amount of blood dripping from their bodies, apparently dead.

"Ming people are demons, demons who can fly into the sky, they can fly to our heads and throw cannonballs."

"We can't defeat them, we can't defeat the devil..."

The Raksha people, who were still confident in sticking to the city of Irkutsk, suddenly fell into a huge daze and panic.

(End of this chapter)