I am Da Song

Chapter 348 Convicted by Heaven
When the Su Mansion was shaken by the emperor's will, the emperor also received his most trusted confidant in the palace, Yue Fei, the Deputy Privy Envoy of the Great Song Dynasty.

This important national general who almost determined all the military victories of the Song Dynasty really deserves all the praises of the Song Dynasty.

Since the fierce battle between Yue Fei and the Jin army, Zhao Huan has not seen this pillar of the sky for two years.

So he and his wife Zhao Jin'er were specially entertained.

Zhao Jin'er is the 27th sister of the royal family, the most famous concubine in the Song Dynasty, and Yue Fei are on par with Yue Fei, they can be called the fairy couple of the Song Dynasty.

Since the marriage, Zhao Jin'er has given birth to a son and a daughter for Yue Fei, and has taken good care of Yue Fei's previous children, Yue Yun and Yue Lei.

After the banquet, the queen entertained Zhao Jin'er and Yue Fei's four children to play in the palace, while Zhao Huan took Yue Fei out of the palace and headed straight to the imperial armory.

On the way, Zhao Huan finally talked about important national affairs with Yue Fei, and asked: "I have read the battle report of the fierce battle between Qing and the Jin Kingdom's left army. The fight was very exciting. They fought fiercely and defeated [-] enemies, beheading several times." Counting in the tens of thousands, it can be called a majestic mountain and river."

Yue Fei said humbly: "It all depends on the officers and men putting their lives to good use. It's just that the left army of the Jin army was defeated, but the leader of the bandits, Wanyan Loushi, led thousands of elite cavalry to break through from the direction of the Xixia king. This man His art of war and bravery are top-notch in the world, if he does not die, he will eventually be a disaster for our court."

Zhao Huan nodded, and said: "The chieftain Jin led Qingqi to leave. It has always been a place that I can hardly guard against. Don't worry too much. There are countries that have enemies with Jurchen in all directions. It is clear where he can escape."

"Is it Uighur Gaochang?" Yue Fei asked.

"That's right, it's Uighur Gaochang. This country has reached the point where it must be destroyed."

Yue Fei was surprised and asked: "How did Gao Chang get offended by the sky? He even provoked the wrath of the officials."

Zhao Huan took out a stack of imperial banknotes and handed them to Yue Fei, and asked, "Your Majesty, take a look at what's wrong with the imperial banknotes."

Yue Fei looked at it carefully for a long time, then replied: "I can't see it."

Zhao Huan said solemnly: "That's right, I just can't see it. There is no difference in layout, number, printing and imperial banknotes. The only difference lies in the craftsmanship of the paper. Compared with the paper quality of the imperial banknotes issued by the third division The currency will be a little rough, especially with a lot of grass marks on the back."

Yue Fei took out a piece of imperial banknote from his bosom, and carefully compared it. Sure enough, both sides of the imperial banknote in his hand were smooth, and he couldn't tell the positive from the negative at all.

The imperial banknotes handed over by the officials are smooth and delicate on the front, and slightly rough on the reverse.

"This is counterfeit money!?" Yue Fei asked in shock.

Zhao Huan nodded. This kind of thing happens to every currency in the popular world. Compared with the super-dollar incident in later generations, the counterfeit currency is more super-dollar than the real one.

The currency counterfeiting experienced by the Song Dynasty was relatively low-level, and the coinage technology outside the Central Plains was obviously too backward, so that it was directly detected by the bank staff.

"The country uses Goryeo paper for printing banknotes. This paper is made of cotton and cocoons. It is as white as silk and as tough as silk. It is used for writing and has cute ink. Only the royal workshop in Tokyo City is allowed to make this paper. Out of Tokyo , The folks have not even come into contact with this kind of craft."

"Even if you want to imitate this kind of paper, it is a difficult problem for the people to overcome. Therefore, it must be the government of the enemy country that can counterfeit imperial banknotes."

"The Imperial City Division has confirmed that this counterfeit currency comes from along the Silk Road."

Although there are many countries along the Silk Road, Yue Fei was immediately convinced that this country must be Gaochang.

First of all, Xixia has been deeply involved in war recently. The Xixia king took his subjects and hid at the foot of the plateau.

And to the west of Gaochang, there are a large number of nomadic tribes west of the Heihan Kingdom. How do they know what papermaking is?

What's more, the banknotes have to be printed the same as the Central Plains.

Many crafts on imperial banknotes require highly skilled craftsmen to engrave and print.

This kind of craftsman cannot be cultivated by nomadic tribes at all.

Therefore, only Gaochang Uighurs can imitate the banknotes of the Great Song Emperor.

And this country has not surrendered to the Central Plains so far.

Due to many factors, Gaochang naturally became a thorn in Song's side and a thorn in his flesh.

After the country conquered the Kingdom of Jin, its flags and drums died down, so it naturally turned its attention to him.

The carriage arrived at the Imperial Arsenal, Zhao Huan and Yue Fei, surrounded by a large number of guards, went straight to the deepest part of the armory.

It has to be said that the Great Song Dynasty is full of talents, and each organization of the Third Military Weapons Department has a treasure of our company.

It is Shen Kuo's descendant Shen Dan who is in charge of the imperial armory.

Zhao Huan had met this talented young man at the beginning, when he was still a grassroots person in charge of gunpowder production.

But a few years have passed, and now he is in charge of the entire Imperial Arsenal.

With such a large span, it is obvious that he has unparalleled outstanding contributions.

Seeing Zhao Huan, Shen Dan immediately cupped his hands and saluted: "I pay my respects to the official family, best wishes to you."

"No courtesy. No need to be too polite, just take me and Yue Xianggong to see the most outstanding achievements of the Yuqian Armament Institute."

The pressure of competition among the three divisions of military weapons is extremely high, such as the god arm bow and strong crossbow are the strengths of bow and crossbow manufacturers.

Nanbei Workshop is good at large-scale machine production. Cold-forged armor and low-temperature Japanese swords are their most outstanding outputs.

However, the Imperial Weapons Institute was forced by these two colleagues and almost fell into a desperate situation. If they did not want to be held accountable by the court, they had to find another way.So desperately research gunpowder.

It is under such circumstances that palm thunder, rockets, and vans have become popular throughout the army.

However, it is obvious that these three items alone cannot maintain the dominant position of the Imperial Arms Institute, because as long as the other two are willing, they can copy it at any time.

So in the depths of the Imperial Weapons Station, Shen Dan directly displayed the biggest weapon of our company.

Cast bronze cannons!

Even if Zhao Huan did not promote this technology, with the Song Dynasty's tradition of focusing on weapon research and development, artillery could be developed by 1163 at the latest.

Under the promotion of Zhao Huan, the artillery came out 30 years ahead of schedule.

And unlike the cannons that can only shoot two hundred paces in history, today's cannons use the most suitable copper casting technology, and each cannon is made of glittering copper coins.

It can be said that the cannon in front of me was nearly eight feet long, propelled by two wheels, and shone with bronze light. A single cannon was worth millions of dollars.

Shen Dan introduced to Zhao Huan: "The cast bronze cannon of the official family weighs a thousand catties, has a caliber of three inches, and a range of two thousand steps. The medicine is 12 taels per catty, and the bullets are three catties and eight taels. In the center, shoot through a hundred shards, and the sound moves for nine days."

Three-inch caliber guns, that is, 95mm caliber cannons.

This caliber is already not small, as long as the barrel can be stabilized, the gunpowder will not explode when the gunpowder is ignited, and the solid shell can be thrown out through the power of gunpowder, it will be successful.

Obviously, the biggest advantage of the copper casting process is that it is not easy to explode the chamber, and its technical maturity even exceeds that of the European cast iron guns in the eighteenth century.

The only disadvantage is that this cannon is really too expensive, the price of a cast copper cannon is at least ten times that of a cast iron cannon.

Except for Song Dynasty, no country can afford it.

This is tantamount to the use of unparalleled financial resources by Song Dynasty to forcibly use copper cannons to smash out a European iron cannon with the level of artillery that only existed in the [-]th century.

(End of this chapter)