stubborn thief

Of course, the Qingdian gun was used to attack the Ming army.

Liu Chengzong's Marshal's Office could not even produce enough heavy bird guns and portable rifles, the standard firearms that had already been equipped.

Although he controlled all the important handicraft centers in the northwest, the equipment gap was always large compared with the ever-expanding army and the momentum of over-expansion in a short period of time.

Therefore, it is even more impossible to waste manpower to create a high-tech individual firearm such as the Qingdian Gun that has not yet been put into service.

Of course, after Liu Chengzong obtained the Qingdian Gun last winter, he did have the idea of ​​adding it to the Gongya's manufacturing sequence, and gave a few of them to my master Chengwo.

The answer was disappointing. It took less than half a year for the Marshal's army's gunmakers to make it work. It took another half a year to improve it. It took at least the tenth year of Chongzhen before it could be put into mass production.

Fortunately, Liu Chengzong was not that stubborn. It was a pleasant surprise for him to get this thing.

This batch of electric guns came from Zhang Tianlin and Bai Guangen. A total of more than a thousand guns were seized. They were all brand new and good items. It was said that the smell of oil on the gun bed was still there when they were received.

But Zhang Tianlin's battle was indeed difficult at that time. The enemy's battalion was alone and deep in Gansu, with neither supplies nor support, and they turned the hinterland of Gansu upside down. It was impossible for Liu Shizi to snatch the spoils from his men.

Even the so-called punishment was just those horses, which were used to appease Taiji whose equipment had been robbed.

Liu Shizi would definitely not ask for such a good thing.

So the Qingdian Gun remained in Zhang Tianlin's hands until he entered Guanzhong last year.

Zhang Tianlin was first promoted to the general of Tongguan, and later reformed the military system to set up a garrison brigade. He then took office as the general of Guannei Road, expanding one large camp into the Guannei Brigade with four battalions under it.

He had a huge gap in his equipment, so when he was adjusting his armaments, he handed in his electric gun as scrap in exchange for newly made heavy guns, rifles and rocket vehicles.

It’s true that the Qingdian Gun is a good thing, otherwise Zhang Tianlin wouldn’t have held it in his hand for more than a year.

But in his hands, this thing is really no different from waste.

This has to do with the history of the Qingdian Gun being born at the wrong time.

The person who created it was Zhao Shizhen, and it was invented before the 25th year of Wanli.

It was during the Wanli Rebellion in Korea, and Zhao Shizhen submitted a memorial to the court, handing over to the court four new types of army firearms that he had imitated, researched, improved, and developed.

The four types of weapons are the Rumi gun, the Western gun, the Qingdian gun and the Thunder gun.

Among them, the Western gun is a light musket used by Western sailors. It has a long barrel, is light and has little gunpowder. The bullet weighs eight fen and is loaded with one qian. The caliber is very small. It can be shot accurately but has little power. It is easy to use for southern infantry to target unarmored enemy forces.

There were many imitations of this thing in the south at that time, and they were all called bird guns. People also used it for hunting because it had a small bullet and used little medicine, and it would not break even small birds.

The Rumi gun was copied from the Ottoman matchlock gun. It has a long barrel and is heavier than Western guns but lighter than Japanese guns, making it convenient for infantry combat.

The Qingdian gun is of the falconet type, used for rapid firing by elite troops on the battlefield, and can fire six rounds at the fastest speed.

The Thunderbolt has five barrels and a shield, and is an alternative upgrade to the Trident.

Zhao Shizhen's Jinqishu had great ambitions, because it was a series of equipment designs for the Firearms Team.

However, Zhang Juzheng was no longer with us in the Ming Dynasty at that time, and Emperor Wanli had lost his enthusiasm for ruling the country himself. Military reform could not be accomplished overnight.

However, it cannot be said to be meaningless. At least it was recorded by the Ministry of Industry, and a batch was manufactured and delivered to the Beijing Army.

On this basis, Zhao Shizhen created a weapon that was simpler to manufacture and had a greater impact on later generations: the three-long gun.

However, compared to the three-long gun, people at that time generally called it a bird gun.

The so-called three strengths refer to the lightness and long range of the Western gun barrel, the speed of the Rummie gun mechanism, and the stability of the firing gate and Japanese gun bed, which combine the advantages of three types of individual muskets.

The most important thing is that this improvement only involves the design of the shape and does not take too much effort.

It became the bird gun during the Chongzhen period.

As for the Thunder Gun and the Qingdian Gun, which had changed their structures, it always depended on the preferences of local governors. Those who were interested in military weapons would build a batch, but they never achieved any real results.

After all, new weapons require special training in supporting tactics, and even supporting weapons such as tank equipment.

Therefore, it was not until the Shandong New Army during the Tianqi period that the army was truly equipped on a large scale.

However, that new army later jumped ship.

The Qingdian Gun is indeed a good weapon with strong targeting capabilities, and its designed enemy targets are the Japanese and the northern barbarians.

What these two opponents have in common is that their armor is very poor.

However, the weapons Zhang Tianlin needs are exactly the opposite. His core weapons are rockets and war horses. He needs to deal with enemies who are still standing after being hit by a round of rockets.

This kind of opponent is either very lucky or has average luck but has thick armor, shields, and chariots.

The former can be dealt with with a saber, while the latter requires a rifle or a heavy gun to be taken down.

The electric gun is not available.

It is essentially a gun-type falconet, and in Liu Chengzong's eyes, it is a very successful modification of the falconet.

Using the iconic mortise and tenon structure of the Portuguese arquebus, the tail of the mother gun does not need to be sealed with screws. Instead, it is fixed to the tube on the gun bed with two pins and two copper rings at the front and back.

Equipped with six five-inch long sub-guns, these things appear to be bullet shells, but in fact they are the real gun barrels that can withstand chamber pressure. Most of the reasons for the high cost are due to them.

There are protruding small mouths in the front and back of the sub-gun as latches. After pre-loading ammunition, the small mouth in the front is stuck into the tube, and the small square mouth in the back is stuck in the latch groove at the tail of the gun bed.

At the same time, there is a square hole at the tail of the sub-gun. An external pin is passed through the gun bed and the sub-gun to fix it on the gun to prevent it from jumping back when shooting.

The two latches and pins of the sub-gun fit perfectly, and a small copper plate with a rear sight is installed on the sub-gun.

This structure was the result of further improvements after Zhao Shizhen presented the newly made gun to the court and discovered that it had a leakage problem.

But this copper plate is not designed to reduce air leakage, but to prevent air leakage from burning the shooter's eyes.

All muskets are deflated to some extent, including the front-loading matchlock and the firing hole of the flintlock.

As long as the gun can be fired and the ammunition can be expelled, the impact of deflation on power...there is a good solution.

It is not about reducing the gap between parts and reducing air leakage at any cost.

At least in the pre-industrial era, the most cost-effective solution to the problem of air leakage in breech-loading guns was to add three grams of gunpowder in the design. The bird gun that fired three-cent bullets also had three cents of gunpowder; and the electric gun that fired two-cent bullets had two and a half cents of gunpowder, so there was no fear of air leakage at all.

Its advantage lies in rapid firing. Its ignition mechanism is neither a flintlock, a matchlock, nor a vent, but a cord that is pre-loaded on the musket together with the ammunition. It is not afraid of bumps and does not need to scatter primer on the spot.

Therefore, it can fire six rounds while other muskets can fire two rounds, and it is easy to load and fire immediately.

As a single-soldier firearm, it has basically no disadvantages except that the two-cent bullet is slightly less powerful.

But what Zhang Tianlin wanted was a heavy weapon, and this light rapid-fire musket obviously could not meet his needs.

After a wave of rockets exploded, the remaining enemy troops had to be hit with precise aim. Instead of shooting with muskets for a long time, it was better for cavalry to rush over and kill them.

If the rocket missed, there was no need for Zhang Tianlin to engage in a shootout. He could just move to a safe place and wait for an opportunity to fire another wave of rockets at him.

This batch of electric guns were of little use to Liu Shizi. There were about a thousand of them in total, which was not enough to be distributed to the entire army. Some of the sub-guns even needed to be rebuilt and replenished.

The Yulin Cavalry had just acquired a batch of Taimengwei specialties before the New Year, and they were all having fun playing with their flintlock pistols and had no intention of changing to spears.

Therefore, Liu Chengzong selected 880 rods and distributed them to the mobile battalions of the 1st and 2nd Field Brigades and the four Han soldier divisions, with 220 rods in each division.

The first time they appeared on the battlefield as weapons of the marshal's army, they made a contribution in the cavalry melee - this thing can shoot farther than a three-barreled gun and faster than an ordinary bird gun, and the key is that the cavalry can change bullets on horseback.

Changed the order of rules for cavalry encounters, like cheating.

In the first battle, both sides deployed a total of four to five hundred cavalrymen. The cavalrymen of Xu Yong's Zuozhen of the Ming army were defeated. Large groups of cavalrymen fell off their horses, ran around, and their mounts became uncontrollable, carrying their masters and fleeing the battlefield.

It wasn't people who were hit, but the cavalrymen of the Marshal's Army, due to aiming problems, were aiming at a large area and fired every shot at the war horses.

A small lead bullet weighing two cents is unlikely to kill a huge warhorse with one shot, but it can make these large animals lose their combat effectiveness.

The Ming cavalry who had lost their horses reacted quickly. They formed small teams in a well-trained manner, used the fallen horses as cover, dragged the wounded soldiers trapped by the fallen horses, and formed a back-to-back formation to defend against the clashing cavalry of the Marshal's army.

But the advantage on the battlefield was clearly not on their side, so that the Ming cavalry who were driven to various places all chose to act in groups. In the end, they simply rode their horses to the infantry formation, dismounted one after another, and lay on the periphery with their horses, forming a small infantry formation of nearly a hundred people.

This is completely different from Zuo Liangyu's plan.

Xu Yong was so furious that he sent another 200 cavalrymen to attack. Before Zuo Liangyu could stop them, the cavalrymen who had been ready to go sped away in a cloud of dust.

However, the cavalry of the Marshal's Army had no intention of continuing the rotation battle.

The Han soldiers holding electric guns gathered together to discuss a few words, and then shouted loudly on the battlefield. Soon people aimed their muskets at the horses outside the Ming army's formation and fired. The Mongolian cavalry also approached in a circle and shot arrows.

There was a burst of musket fire and arrows rained down, wounding and killing most of the war horses.

Then, with a whistle, the Mongolian cavalry used their hook-and-sickle spears to hook up their fallen comrades, and the cavalry retreated calmly to their own army before the enemy cavalry arrived at the battlefield.

On the other side of the battlefield, at Marco's wave of his hand, the other four cavalry units that had been prepared formed a battle formation and, just like the previous change of formation, formed into small teams of four riders each and spread out to meet the enemy cavalry.

The reason why the cavalry retreated to the camp was not complicated and Marco could guess it at a glance.

Their electric guns only have six sub-guns, and they have to reload after firing six rounds. The environment of cavalry combat is difficult to cope with reloading, so naturally they have to find a way to retreat.

Suddenly, a very funny scene appeared on the battlefield.

At the beginning, the Ming army's supporting cavalry marched towards the battlefield aggressively, and the marshal's cavalry withdrew from the battlefield. But when the marshal's supporting cavalry also rushed towards them aggressively, they didn't even care about the dismounted cavalry left on the battlefield, and turned around and retreated to their main camp.

On the contrary, Lieutenant General Zhou Shifeng of the Left Town, who was dispersing his troops in a detour to the northeast, waved his flag and gave orders, sending his 500 cavalrymen to rush towards the battlefield in a mighty manner.

Marco quickly sounded the horn in the formation, calling on the cavalry that had fled out to retreat. Part of Zhou Shifeng's cavalry chased after them and drove them away, while the other part went to rescue friendly forces, trying to save nearly a hundred dismounted cavalry.

As a result, as soon as they came into range, rockets rose up from Ouyang Gun's formation.

Six rockets rose into the air with tail flames trailing behind them, drawing parabolas of varying heights with a whistling sound, quickly crossing the battlefield, and twisting and turning in the second half, hitting the dismounted cavalry phalanx within a radius of 200 steps.

Zhou Shifeng's cavalry were scattered, but a rocket still flew over the heads of five cavalrymen marching in a group. The iron pieces and particles that exploded in the air killed two people on the spot, injured one, and damaged two horses.

The sergeant of this cavalry team was very lucky. The rocket exploded right above his head, and the iron shell of the rocket flew to the ground in front of his eyes. Neither he nor his horse was injured by any of the iron balls, but he was frightened to the point of turning pale and being in shock.

The warhorse was frightened by the explosion and stood up, carrying him twenty steps away. He was still groping back and forth on the horse's back for his cloth mask and helmet, trying to find the non-existent iron hole.

Although the actual results of six rockets may not be as good as those of six gunshots, the attack method of dropping from the sky and the erratic ballistic shooting still caused great psychological shock to this cavalry.

Even Zhou Shifeng's own soldiers, who were two miles away from the explosion site, unconsciously dispersed a little further away.

Just when everyone's attention was attracted by the battlefield, on the embroidered roof of a mansion in a village ten miles to the west.

Liu Chengzong had a stern face and was looking down at the battlefield through a telescope.

The vanguard of the main force of the Corps was still seven miles away. The First Brigade of Tangqi occupied the village fortress on the banks of the Ku Shui River half an hour ago.

In the following half hour, the Tang cavalry continued to spread to the battlefield and gradually engaged in battle with the scouts released by Zuo Liangyu. At the same time, five or six hundred cavalrymen also entered the inside and outside of the civilian fort to serve as guards.

Liu Chengzong brought a small number of guards and entered the village as the third group.

As soon as he entered the village, he did two things.

First, he ordered his followers to take out silver and buy food from the villagers, and hired women to light fires, build stoves, fetch water and chop firewood.

The second thing was to climb up to the tallest embroidered building in the east with a telescope in hand, muttering to himself, "I want to see which fool started a fight with that person!"

Previously, it was Ren Quaner who fired the cannon to lure the enemy, which he could understand. But now the cannon fire over there stopped, and Tangqi reported that he heard crackling gunfire and even saw rockets flying over here, which made Liu Shizi full of doubts.

It doesn't matter at first glance.

Even with a telescope, Liu Shizi could not see who was who on the chaotic battlefield. He could not even tell which of the several camps were the Ming army and which were his own subordinates.

But he could see that there was a camp only five or six miles away from him, with a large white tiger flag hanging inside and a very eye-catching central military curtain.

He lowered the telescope and turned his head.

The Marshals had no such curtain.

"Zhang Yong, five hundred riders, each with two horses, do you dare to rush over and kick down that curtain for me?" (End of this chapter)