Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

In the Imperial Household, Xu Sen, who had been waiting for news, was immediately excited when he learned that the emperor had allowed the development of new caliber ammunition and asked the Equipment Department to organize a bidding:
"It's a big deal!"

"My revolver musket will be equipped by the army."

Wang Chengen, who was investing next to him, smiled and said:

"Congratulations to Xugong for achieving his wish."

"I wonder if your revolver musket can make it to the war next year?"

Xu Sen laughed and said to Wang Chengen:
"The revolver cavalry musket is a revolver hand musket that is lengthened and equipped with more powerful bullets."

"If the pistol bullets were not too weak and the rifle bullets were not too powerful, it would have been settled long ago."

"Now that the Emperor has allowed the development of new ammunition, it will be finalized soon."

"Within a month, this musket will be fully finalized and put into production."

Xu Sen spoke with confidence, hoping that the musket he designed would shine in next year's war and let the world know his reputation.

Wang Chengen smiled with satisfaction and said to Xu Sen:
"If you have any difficulties, please feel free to ask."

"The Emperor has ordered that all weapons that will be used on a large scale next year must be finalized and put into production this year."

"If it is not finalized this year, it can only be used in small batches next year to avoid sudden changes that will make the front line uncomfortable."

"You need to hurry up and finalize the revolver musket and put it into use!"

"We must also speed up production. It would be best if we could produce enough muskets for a battalion this year and equip a battalion."

A battalion has at least 3,000 men, and some have up to 6,000. Even without accounting for losses, Xu Sen will produce at least 3,000 muskets this year.

Xu Sen said confidently:

"The trial battalion has been found. It is 5,000 cavalry transferred from Liaodong."

"They learned that there would be a major war in Liaodong next year, and asked the emperor to send them out."

"The Emperor has allowed the Beijing Army to dispatch 10,000 men, including them."

These 5,000 cavalrymen were transferred from Liaodong in the name of exercises when Zhu Youjian was worried about the instability of the capital when the capital's garrison was restructured at the beginning of the year.

Later, the Beijing Camp was restructured and the Five Army Camp was formed by transferring troops from the provinces under the jurisdiction of the Five Army Military Governor's Office. These 5,000 cavalrymen were retained by the Five Army Camp and became the main force of the Left Army Camp under the jurisdiction of the Left Army Governor's Office.

This troop was the standard camp of the Liaodong commander-in-chief, and was the elite force drawn from various Liaodong armies in the previous defense against Ligdan Khan.

Sun Chengzong was going to launch a major war next year, so he naturally requested to transfer his own troops back. These five thousand men also actively requested to fight, and finally got Zhu Youjian's consent.

In the next year's Liaodong campaign, the Beijing Camp will dispatch 10,000 people. In addition to these 5,000 cavalry, there are 3,000 people drawn from the Shenji Camp by Cao Wenzhao, and 2,000 people selected from the Beijing Guards and the Shenshu Camp.

The reason why Xu Sen designed the cavalry gun was that some Liaodong cavalrymen bought the revolver hand gun he designed, but felt that it was not powerful enough, so they asked him to design a more powerful fire gun.

Therefore, he was confident that the 5,000 cavalry equipment from the Left Army Camp could be taken to Liaodong for use, and would shine next year.

Wang Chengen listened to Xu Sen's explanation and was even more satisfied with this craftsman who could design weapons and was also good at dancing. He said:

"Then call the general of the Liaodong Cavalry over and settle this matter as soon as possible."

"We heard that they will return to Liaodong this year, so you must hurry up and produce."

"It's October now, and there's not much time left."

Xu Sen was stunned when he heard this. He didn't expect the matter to be so urgent.

This made him a little confused:

"Wasn't Liaodong open to navigation after March?"

"Why do you have to go there in the middle of winter?"

"Even if we go to Liaodong now, we can't send troops!"

Obviously, as the person who designed the weapons, he also understood the situation in Liaodong.

We know that the Liaodong army will attack next year, and navigation is a necessary condition.

Otherwise, the logistics of an army of 50,000 would require tens of thousands of people to transport them on land, and the imperial court would not allow Liaodong to dispatch so many troops.

This is not the case at sea. The ships built by the Ming Dynasty in recent years are fully capable of meeting the logistics needs of an army of 50,000. Moreover, it is the navy that is being mobilized, and Liaodong still has 50,000 troops.

Wang Chengen didn't know the truth about this either. He just heard about it and said:
"Don't worry about when they send out the troops, but you have to finish making the revolver muskets before this year."

"Otherwise these people may not have time to change their uniforms and refuse to accept your weapons."

Xu Sen was a little nervous now and said:

"Time is really tight."

"Even if I finalize the revolver musket this month, producing 5,000 of them is still an impossible task."

“It will take another three months to complete it.”

Wang Chengen said dissatisfiedly:
"Can't you prepare in advance?"

"Get all the parts for the musket ready."

Xu Sen explained to him:
"The stock, hammer, and trigger can be prepared in advance."

"But the barrel and cylinder have to wait until the bullets are ready."

"Also, this type of 10mm barrel has never been produced before, so the workers may not be familiar with it."

"Even if its barrel is shorter, producing a thousand barrels a month is considered fast."

"It will take five months to produce 5,000."

"And we need to use all the craftsmen in the Armory Bureau who produce weapons."

This statement made Wang Chengen frown. He thought of the emperor's dissatisfaction when he reported the production of rifled muskets to him last year.

The situation then was similar to that of today, with manufacturing difficulties and insufficient supplies for military use.

In the end, the emperor chose to use both rifled and smoothbore muskets, and raised funds to build the Tongzhou Arsenal and Zhuolu Arsenal to specialize in the production of weapons.

So he said to Xu Sen:

"Can we only use rifled barrels?"

"Can't we use a smoothbore gun?"

Xu Sen smiled bitterly and said:
"The connection between the cylinder and the barrel of the revolver will leak, affecting its range."

"Now we have to use rifled gun barrels to reach a range of 100 meters."

"If we switch to a smoothbore, it will probably drop to fifty meters."

"That's really too close. It's only slightly stronger than the three-barreled gun."

Upon hearing this, Wang Chengen made the decision:
"As long as it's stronger than the three-barreled gun, it's fine. Let's use it to replace the three-barreled gun first."

"You ask the craftsmen to hurry up and rifle the gun barrels, grind down the worn-out gun barrels, and produce smoothbore muskets."

"We will produce as much as we can, and we will talk about meeting the demand first."

"Not all of those 5,000 cavalry are for combat. They can be used as auxiliary forces and equipped with smoothbore muskets." "Then hurry up to produce and send more rifled muskets over."

Xu Sen thought deeply after hearing this, knowing that the most important thing now was to occupy a position. Otherwise, if the Liaodong cavalry were equipped with other fire guns, his revolver cavalry gun would not be equipped.

So he agreed with Wang Chengen's method, and immediately led people to experiment, trying to decide on the revolver musket and bullets as soon as possible.

With their efforts day and night, the revolver musket and its matching ammunition were soon finalized before November.

Xu Sen finally adopted a 10.0mm caliber, believing that this caliber had sufficient lethality, and could also avoid the size of the cylinder being too large and reduce the weight of the revolver musket.

Lu Xiang also agreed with this caliber, believing that as long as the lethality was sufficient, the smaller the better.

In fact, based on the tests conducted within the Equipment Academy these days, he believed that a rifle bullet with a lethality of 9.5 mm would be enough.

However, this caliber is too close to 9mm, and officials from the Equipment Department probably won’t agree.

So he also decided to use ten millimeters and design a flangeless fixed bullet of this caliber.

Because the emperor required the caliber of the new ammunition to be between 10 and 40 mm, and mm was within this range, the officials of the Equipment Department agreed even though they felt that it was not much different from the mm ammunition. The X ammunition designed by Xu Sen and others was adopted as a new standard ammunition for the army.

But they disagreed with another 10X25 ammunition designed by Xu Sen:
"There's not much difference between this 10X25 bullet and the 9X30 bullet!"

"9X30 is already sufficient for hand cannons, there is no need to add a new 10X25 bullet."

Xu Sen explained to them:

"This is ammunition designed to use the scrapped barrels of 10mm cavalry rifles."

"It is less powerful, and the barrel it uses is half the length of a cavalry musket."

"The hand cannon made in this way can be used in conjunction with the cavalry cannon."

"It is slightly more powerful than the three-barreled gun, but its ammunition capacity is twice that of the three-barreled gun, and it can fire six bullets in a row."

"This way, when the cavalry's muskets are used up, they can use them to fight in close combat with the enemy."

As he said this, he asked the Liaodong cavalrymen who came to cooperate with the test to demonstrate it. After pressing the hammer with one hand to rotate the cylinder and pulling the trigger with the other hand to fire the bullets of the cavalry gun, the cavalryman faced the target getting closer and closer, and did not rush to reload, but pulled out a hand gun from his waist and fired six bullets in the same posture.

If twelve rounds of ammunition are fired in succession like this, even if the accuracy is not high immediately, several of them will hit the target.

Upon seeing this, the official from the Equipment Department nodded and finally stopped raising any objections.

Seeing this, Xu Sen breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that he had finally gotten away with it.

In fact, his purpose in designing this hand cannon bullet was not to add auxiliary equipment to the cavalry, but to produce 5,000 of them as quickly as possible.

He designed this hand cannon according to Wang Chengen's suggestion to replace the three-barreled cannon. He planned to first gain a position in the army and then gradually improve it.

Of course, if more were produced, they could also be distributed to cavalrymen with muskets as auxiliary weapons. I think the wealthy cavalrymen would not refuse this.

At this time, Xu Sen had no idea that this bullet he designed temporarily would become popular in the army for a long time.

Although its power is similar to that of 9X30, and the recoil is slightly greater, because the mm bullet is easier to kill the enemy after hitting it, soldiers generally prefer to use this hand cannon bullet.

9X30手铳弹的地位，在军中被10X25取代。锦衣卫和民间则用得比较多，直到后来无烟火药出现后，才逐渐被9X20无凸缘手铳弹取代。
-
After the revolver cavalry gun and hand cannon were finalized, they were quickly put into production.

Zhu Youjian also tried these two types of muskets and thought they were good equipment.

However, he was not satisfied with the fact that pressing the hammer to turn the wheel, and said to Xu Sen who was beside him:

"The current revolver musket requires you to press the hammer to rotate the cylinder before you can pull the trigger to fire. It can be said to be single-action, which is not convenient to use."

“We need to invent a double-action mechanism that can drive the cylinder when the trigger is pulled, and fire the bullet when the trigger is pulled all the way.”

"This is how you can use a revolver to fire quickly, or even hold a pistol with both hands."

"If the double-action structure is successfully developed, I will give you a hereditary title."

As the origin of the two terms single-action and double-action, the distinction between single-action and double-action revolvers is very obvious.

Single-action revolvers can only fire by pressing the hammer and then pulling the trigger, and the trigger can only complete one action. The cowboys in western movies put their muskets against their waists and frantically press the hammer to fire rapidly because they use single-action revolvers.

The trigger of a double-action revolver needs to complete two actions: rotating the revolver and firing the bullet, so it is called double-action.

This is also the most common revolver in later generations. Most of the .38 revolvers in film and television dramas are double-action revolvers.

Zhu Youjian had this impression and was of course not satisfied with the single-acting wheel. However, he did not know the structure of the double-acting wheel, so he had to ask Xu Sen and others to develop it.

Hearing that he had the opportunity to be conferred a title, Xu Sen said excitedly:
"Thank you, Your Majesty!"

"I will do my best to develop a double-action wheel."

Zhu Youjian nodded, encouraged him a few more times, and then said:

"You have put a lot of effort into developing these two types of military muskets."

"You will be one of the candidates for this year's Yuanshi."

"But the revolver musket can only reach the power of the current cavalry musket, which is the limit."

"It's a bit difficult to make a revolver rifle again, right?"

Xu Sen was a little embarrassed and lowered his head and said:

"I now understand why the emperor asked Engineer Lu to develop a rotary-locked rear-pull musket."

"The revolver musket has reached the limit of its power."

"Lengthening the barrel won't improve the performance much. If you increase the charge, the leak will only get worse."

"I can't find a better way to solve the leakage problem."

Zhu Youjian also couldn't solve it, and he knew that later generations couldn't solve it completely either. So he said to Xu Sen:

"This type of cavalry rifle can be further optimized by adding a double-action structure in the future as a special equipment."

"But if you continue to develop it, it will have no future. You are capable of more than this, and you shouldn't be stuck in this dead end of the wheel structure."

"I have several firearms design ideas here. You can try them out and see which one you can realize."

"In my opinion, the lever structure seems to be more suitable for cavalry."

He ordered people to take out the drawings of lever-type, pump-type and other types of muskets that he had drawn, and Zhu Youjian explained in detail the concepts of these types of muskets.

Xu Sen was dazzled by what he heard, wondering how the emperor could come up with so many structures.

With his knowledge, he could see that these two structures were no less powerful than the wheel structure, or even the lever structure, and could be compared to the rotating pullback structure.

At least when placed on a horse, it is more suitable, and you only need to pull the trigger ring to complete the loading.

Compared to a rotary-locked bolt-action musket, it has a smaller operating range and an actual rate of fire that is faster.

Of course, it also has its disadvantages. Because you have to pull the trigger ring down, it is inconvenient to shoot while lying on the ground. In this respect, it is not as good as a bolt-action musket.

If this problem can be solved, it can compete with the bolt-action musket when selecting rifles.

Xu Sen looked at the appearance drawings of these muskets greedily and wrote down the operating methods described by the emperor verbatim.

After returning, he made an appearance model with wood and organized people to start research and development.

With the joint efforts of him, Lü Xiang and others, the firearms design of the Ming Dynasty began to flourish. (End of this chapter)