1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 538 "Sniper Rifle"

December 1645, 4, Batavia.

Under the amazed eyes of the Dutch, Ding Yanfeng, the representative of the Qi State in Batavia, drove out of the city gate in a carriage and headed for the pier.There were two Qi State armed merchant ships docked there. After loading the purchased goods in the warehouse near the pier, they slowly sailed out of the port with a group of people.

Hanzhou people What does this mean?Even the representatives stationed in Batavia have been withdrawn. Could it be that they don't want to communicate with the Dutch East India Company to deal with the Holenberg crisis?

The Hanzhou people will not start to prepare to use force to remove Hollenburg, right?

"No, they will not choose to use force!" Rear Admiral Grigoris Kopet, commander of the Batavia Navy, said firmly: "They want to use this clumsy method to force us to make the biggest concession. They cannot After investing huge resources in interfering with the situation in the Ming Dynasty, there is still room to fall into a new war with us. They don't have this strength!"

"Although the Hanzhou people do not have the strength to launch another war, they can continue to send a large number of weapons to the Kingdom of Banten, Mataran, and Gowa. They are also re-arming the Portuguese in Makassar. In addition Recently, warnings have been sent from Kupang and Oecussi on Timor Island that the local natives have attacked some of our commercial stations in the inland area. Among them, there must be the secret drive of the Hanzhou people." Senior Commercial Counselor Fred Upton said heavily.

"The Hanzhou people are using the excuse of us to break the peace agreement first, and continue to provoke various incidents in the East Indies. In addition, our supply ships have so far been unable to enter Hollenburg to provide them with the necessary material input .Maybe there will be a stalemate for a few more months. Without the need for the Hanzhou people to do anything, Hollenburg may be trapped and killed due to lack of supplies. As for the outbreak of the crisis, our East India Company has I don't need to go into details about the economic loss caused by the disruption."

"I think it is necessary for us to take decisive measures against Hanzhou, threaten them with war, and ask them to stop funding those local states and local forces that have conflicts with our East India Company." Major General Grigoris Kopet said sharply: "If they still don't make concessions to us, then take advantage of the opportunity when their forces are dispersed, and launch a war against Hanzhou!"

"Major General Copet, the Hanzhou people certainly dispersed some of their forces because they wanted to interfere in the Ming Dynasty. But why didn't our East India Company want to deal with Nicholas, and also dispersed a lot of maritime armed forces?" Upton said faintly He said: "If we rashly launch a war against Hanzhou, do you think they will join forces with Nicholas to deal with our East India Company?"

Governor Cornelis van der Lin's heart was shocked when he heard the words, yes, a few years ago, when the war between Hanzhou and the Dutch East India Company broke out, they had united to attack the Dutch maritime trade together The ship, Nicholas, took advantage of the situation and seized two strongholds in Formosa at that time, making the East India Company completely lose its foothold along the coast of the Ming Dynasty.

Today, because of a Hohlenburg with little economic value, we may have another war with Hanzhou, and we may even fall into a situation where Nicholas and Hanzhou jointly attack the East India Company. Is it a big loss?

Our East India Company came all the way to the Far East to colonize the East Indies, and to obtain commercial benefits and earn a lot of wealth.Instead of falling into endless disputes with the local forces here just for a little emotional dispute.The former governor, Mr. Daiman, was recalled to the mainland of Europe to take up an insignificant position because the East India Company was involved in too many local power disputes, which caused damage to the company's commercial interests.

"Mr. Upton, you immediately organize business negotiators to go to Hanzhou to discuss the sale of Hollenburg with them." Governor Delin raised his hands and pressed down, indicating that Major General Kopet does not need to make any further suggestions, " In addition, we'd better negotiate with the Hanzhou people on the previous conflicts between our East India Company and them, in order to achieve a result that satisfies both parties. During the negotiation, please stop the Hanzhou people The arms trade of these states."

"Obey, Governor!" Upton solemnly replied: "I will do my best to avoid another war between our East India Company and Hanzhou, and return to the previous friendly business relationship."

Rear Admiral Copet had a sullen and unwilling expression on his face. Our Federal Republic has a great and powerful navy. It defeated the mighty Spanish Navy several times in a row, destroyed their Armada, and defended the Republic's maritime interests from infringement.Today, in the East Indies region, in order to avoid the loss of commercial interests, they voluntarily surrendered to an "indigenous force".This seriously hurt a naval officer's self-esteem.

However, this is the decision of the Governor of the East India Company in Batavia. It is a decision based entirely on commercial interests. As the guardian and vassal of commercial interests, Major General Kopet can only suppress all dissatisfaction and resentment. , to obey the command.
-
April 1645, 4, Hanzhou, Montenegro Barracks.

"Touch!" With the sound of a gunshot, Qi Tian felt a strong recoil from his shoulder, and a lead bullet, pushed by the huge gunpowder, instantly gained huge kinetic energy, ejected from the muzzle of the gun, and flew towards 200 meters away. A wooden target many meters away.

"It hit!" Shi Guanghan, the head of the guard beside him, put down his binoculars and said to Qi Tian in surprise, "Your Majesty, this gun can really accurately hit a target 200 meters away!"

"Try another 250 meters, or a longer distance." Qi Tian said with a smile, and then handed the musket in his hand to Shi Guanghan.

"Your Majesty, are you satisfied with this gun?" Wan Asi, a gunsmith from the Black Mountain Gun Factory, asked respectfully.

"Well, I'm pretty satisfied." Qi Tian nodded and said, "It's much better than the one made last month, at least in terms of accuracy and stability. ... How about the cost? Can mass production be possible? ?”

"Back to the king, this gun is estimated to cost between 70 and [-] Hanzhou silver dollars." Wan Asi said, "Because it needs to drill holes in the entire cast iron cylinder and pull out the rifling, it will cost a lot of money." Less effort. Although there is a hydraulic boring machine to drive the drill pipe, there are still defective products or incomplete rifling in the processing process, so that the barrel is scrapped a lot. As for mass production, the villain feels that this kind of firearm Some of the components have not yet been finalized, and I am afraid it will take a while to polish and test."

The cost is too expensive, almost equivalent to 80 taels of silver.We must know that it cost only two taels of silver to make a bird's beak gun (that is, a matchlock gun) during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. It is the front-loading smoothbore flintlock gun currently used in Qi State, and each cost does not exceed 15 taels of silver.The problem is that the muskets at this time are still consumables, and after three or five battles, they will basically be damaged or even scrapped.

"If that's the case, let's continue the experiment. However, when the immigrant fleet sails to Daming in June and July, we must first build [-] or [-] guns, so that we can bring them to Daming for actual combat testing."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Twenty or thirty new muskets seem to be useless in Daming," said Qi Dalu who was following behind.

"Don't underestimate this kind of musket." Qi Tian said, "If all of our army of Qi is equipped with this kind of rifled gun, it means that we can extend the enemy's front line to 400 meters. At this distance, Unless the enemy's artillery can reach us, neither muskets nor bows and arrows can basically pose any threat to our army."

The new muskets tested in the Montenegro military camp today are completely different from the muzzle-loading flintlocks produced in the past. After more than two years of continuous trial production, the practical rifled guns have only recently begun to appear.

Historically, the earliest rifled gun appeared in Augsburg, Germany in 1498.Of course, the process of rifling was very complicated for the processing technology at that time, and the high price made it impossible for him to be used as a military standard weapon.Moreover, the metallurgical technology was not good at that time, and there was no standard for quality control.

On the other hand, at that time, the battle was still dominated by arrays, and the propellant was also black powder, and the smoke was very large after the fight.After such a large group of people fired guns one by one, they didn't even know what they were shooting. They just fired in the general direction of the enemy. Accuracy is really not that important in a pile of smoke.In addition, the projectiles at that time were loaded from the muzzle. It was laborious to insert the projectiles of the rifled guns from the front, and the rate of fire was slow. Moreover, the rifling was easily blocked by dirty black powder, causing the projectiles to get stuck inside or even explode the chamber.

So at that time, the rifled gun was either a hunting toy for the nobles, or a food guy for the hunters, and it was rare in the military field.Let me make another digression here. Didn’t Europeans like to fight with guns at that time? Some nobles would use rifled guns to cheat because they were accurate.So everyone banned this thing later, and it had to be checked by a notary before the duel.

However, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the German region began to gradually have a group of elite light infantry called hunters.They tend to operate on a small scale and are good at reconnaissance, harassment, and sniping.And they are often composed of hunters, and the guns in their hands are also rifled guns.

Until the beginning of the 19th century, all countries realized the advantages of rifled guns, and more or less added some to their troops.The usage is the same as that of the German Jaeger, and it is only used as an elite guerrilla soldier.Such as British Baker, Brunswick rifle and so on.Rifled guns are used as large-scale equipment for infantry, but it is necessary to wait until the invention and improvement of Minie bullets and Minie rifles.

Today, under Qi Tian's prompting, the gunsmiths of the Heishan Gun Factory began to trial-produce rifled guns two years ago, and the template they manufactured was based on the later Minie rifles.

The projectile is naturally a Minie bullet of round-headed cylindrical shell lead bullet. This bullet is slightly smaller than the caliber of the rifle, which can solve the problem that the bullet cannot be inserted into the barrel or the barrel is blocked due to the bullet being too large when the rifled gun is loaded in the front. embarrassing situation.Minie bullets can be easily pushed into the barrel with a push rod.This greatly increases the rate of fire.The bullet is threaded around the body to match the rifling, and the middle of the thread is stuffed with animal oil.The bottom of the bullet uses cork material.When shooting, the gunpowder gas impacts the cork, and the cork suddenly expands the bullet after being impacted for a moment.Since the bullet is stretched, the bullet itself can be relied on to complete the sealing of the chamber at the moment of firing without leaking the gunpowder gas and causing the kinetic energy of the bullet to be lost.This solves the chamber sealing problem of the old-style front-loading guns, and greatly enhances the fire rate, range and safety of the firearm (good airtightness is not easy to cause gunpowder slag residue, and blocking the barrel causes the chamber to explode).

"Then is there a name for this musket?" Qi Dalu asked.

"The shooting range is long, and the target is stable and accurate." Qi Tian looked at his bodyguard Shi Guanghan holding a musket and aiming at a target 300 meters away, "So, this gun can be called a sniper gun .”

(End of this chapter)