My XX deal with Sister Nero

"Okay, little brother, tell your sister what the gift is?" Nero bent down slightly, looked at Tony, and asked with a smile.

Hearing Nero's question, Ola, who had been prepared, took two steps forward at Tony's signal and handed the thick object wrapped in red cloth to Tony. After taking it, Tony slowly lifted the red cloth, revealing the shiny black iron pipe inside.

"What is this?" Nero was a little stunned when looking at this short and thick hollow iron pipe, not knowing what it was.

"Sister, this thing is called a hand cannon. It is a great thing that I thought of when I was in Britain. It can be equipped to the troops to enhance their combat effectiveness." Tony smiled proudly and said with pride.

"Hand cannon?" Although it was the first time he saw this thing, Nero subconsciously chose to believe Tony's words.

Whether it was the previously improved iron smelting technology or the invented stirrup, they both enhanced the Roman army's combat capability as Tony said. The same should be true for the hand cannon this time, right?

PS1: I finally remembered what I forgot yesterday! Yesterday's second chapter was the 28th extra chapter, I forgot to mention this!

PS2: It's really scary that no one joins the group, emmmm, when the group reaches a certain number of people, I will post some photos in the group, don't think too much, I don't dress up as a woman, at most I will post photos of my sister and my younger sister.

That’s right, I not only have an older sister, but also a younger sister!

Chapter 79 Beast! This is your sister! (Additional update 29)

As the first hot weapon, the hand cannon can improve the combat effectiveness of the Roman army, but it can't improve it much. However, Tony plans to use Nero's help to develop two other new weapons.

Matchlock guns and cannons.

In Tony's opinion, the hand cannon is actually a rather awkward existence. If the caliber is reduced, it is a matchlock gun, and if the caliber is enlarged, it is a cannon that can be used for siege. The hand cannon can be completely replaced by a single-soldier crossbow.

But then again, within the Roman Empire, troops were equipped with large crossbows, but not standard individual crossbows.

Tony once asked Mary about this question, and Mary's answer was that individual crossbows did appear briefly, but because of their short range and low power, the Roman army soon abandoned such weapons and switched to bows and spears as long-range weapons.

Tony knew that a single-soldier crossbow had a short range, but he was not convinced by its low power. You know, in the Eastern Han Empire, a single-soldier crossbow could penetrate armor within twenty steps!

So Tony thought that either there was something wrong with the crossbow string, or there might be something else wrong.

"But how do I use this thing?" Nero held the hand cannon and looked at it over and over again, and asked curiously.

"Sister, when you are free, let's find a more open place and I will teach you about this." Tony said with a chuckle.

"Okay." Nero handed the hand cannon to Mary nonchalantly, and then said, "Didn't you say there were two gifts? What about the other one?"

Tony smiled and said, "There is another gift that I cannot bring. I can only say that the Kingdom of Iceni has a mineral called black ore. This mineral can be used to make fire like charcoal, but the temperature of the flame produced is much higher than that of charcoal. And the most important thing is that if this flame is used to smelt iron, the quality of the weapons will be better!"

"Really?" Nero's eyes lit up and he asked in disbelief.

"Really!" Tony nodded vigorously and said.

"Okay, when I have time, I will ask the Iceni Kingdom to give me some black ore for testing." Nero said after hesitating for a moment.

"No problem. The gifts brought by the Iceni Kingdom this time should include black ore. After all, I happened to visit the Iceni Kingdom before I came back, and I also reminded them in words." Tony paused and changed the subject: "On the way here, I heard that my sister has started to carry out reforms in some imperial provinces? Is she planning to take action against the Senate?"

As mentioned before, the Roman Empire was mainly divided into three factions in the administrative field. One was the local power faction headed by the local governor, which could almost be said to be a neutral faction. The remaining two factions were the Senate faction and the Emperor faction.

After Tony left, Nero began a series of actions against the Senate.

To put it simply, while enhancing the glory of the senators, he began to weaken the overall strength of the Senate faction. Although the senators were united in fighting against the emperor, there were as many as three hundred senators in the Senate. In this era of underdeveloped communications, it was inevitable that there would be loopholes in the transmission of intelligence. Moreover, Nero had just taken action and the scale was not large, so the senators in the Senate were not too alert.

At present, Nero is conducting experiments in his own direct territory to reform local government agencies. If the experiment is successful, Nero's next plan will naturally be to use this experiment as a blueprint to reform the imperial government, abolish the Senate system, and let the Roman Empire officially enter the era of centralization.

"Yes, I am indeed conducting experiments in the field. You are quite careful, little guy. You actually discovered this. But I plan to take the opportunity to test the Royal Guards on my birthday tomorrow." Nero said with a smile.

"Test the Royal Guards?" Tony couldn't help but frown deeply when he heard these words.

The three major forces in Rome are the emperor, the Senate and the Praetorian Guard.

Since Octavian became "Augustus", the heads of the Julian dynasty constantly tried to weaken the power of the Senate. By the time of Nero, the Senate was basically in name only. The only thing worth fearing was the Senate's private armed forces.

Let me put it this way, if the Senate was really forced to rebel, no one in the provinces managed by the Senate would respond. At most, their direct guards would cause some minor losses to the city of Rome.

So although Nero took his time to do things carefully, in essence, he was not afraid of the Senate's counterattack at all.

But the Guards were different.

Back then, Augustus founded the Praetorian Guard with the original purpose of ensuring that his descendants would have a brave and capable force directly under their control. In the beginning, Augustus was far-sighted and worried that his descendants would not be able to rule the Praetorian Guard after his death, so he made a special rule that except for three infantry battalions and a small number of cavalry who were allowed to be stationed around the palace to protect the emperor on weekdays, most of the other Praetorian Guards would be stationed in several villages near Rome. This not only effectively prevented the Praetorian Guards from rebelling in a concentrated manner, but also ensured that there would be enough troops to rescue Rome when it was attacked.

However, after Octavian's death, his successor Tiberius did not understand the decrees left by his stepfather Octavian. Under the instigation of the then commander of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus, he built a Praetorian Guard base camp near the city of Rome to concentrate the Praetorian Guard. From this time on, the daggers in the hands of the Praetorian Guard officially posed a direct threat to the imperial power of the Roman Empire.

However, whether it was the period of Tiberius or the later period of Caligula, the Praetorian Guards were still under the control of the emperor. Although every emperor until Nero's accession to the throne had to give the Praetorian Guards a certain degree of "emperor bounty" to win over the Praetorian Guards and ensure their loyalty, but at least, as long as the emperor did not actively provoke disputes, they did not dare to be too presumptuous. Unlike the period of civil strife among the four emperors after Nero's death, the Praetorian Guards even dared to openly assassinate the emperor for money.

Of course, it was precisely because the Praetorian Guard had such a bad reputation that later emperors suppressed it again and again. First, Vespasian of the Flavian Dynasty reduced the number of Praetorian Guards. Then, Severus of the Severan Dynasty disbanded the original Praetorian Guard and re-established a new one. Then, during the reign of Tetrarch, Diocletian weakened the Praetorian Guard court and disbanded some of the Praetorian Guards. After that, Maximian led the Praetorian Guards to attack the African rebels, greatly weakening the power of the Praetorian Guards. Finally, Constantine I of the Constantine Dynasty completely disbanded the Praetorian Guards and destroyed the Praetorian Guard headquarters in Rome.

And now, under Tony's instigation, Nero decided to take action against the Guards in advance!

"Then sister, what are you going to do?" At this time, Tony's expression began to become serious. He knew that if he was not careful, it would likely provoke a counterattack from the Royal Guards!

Seeing Tony's nervous look, Nero smiled and said, "Okay, don't worry. I just want to test the Guards. I didn't say I would attack them right away."

"That's good." Tony breathed a sigh of relief, as long as they didn't take action against the Praetorian Guards right away. After all, neither Nero nor Tony had the capital to deal with the Praetorian Guards in Rome.

"I plan to have your guard officially separated from the Praetorian Guard and become your private armed force at tomorrow's birthday party. Then I plan to separate my guard from the Praetorian Guard and form a new palace guard to expel the Praetorian Guard from the palace first. In this way, even if the Praetorian Guard really rebels, I can still rely on the palace to hold on for a while and wait for rescue from other legions." Nero said with a smile.

Tony touched his chin and frowned, "Is it possible to ask the Royal Guards to abandon the palace?"

Tony's guess is not unreasonable.

The Praetorian Guard was responsible for, firstly, the security of the city of Rome and its surrounding areas, and secondly, and most importantly, the security of the Imperial Palace.

Nero was a woman. When she first ascended the throne, she used the excuse that she was a woman and the Praetorian Guards were all men to disband the original First Battalion. All the personnel were dispersed into the other nine battalions. The vacant First Battalion was replaced by an "Inner Guard" composed entirely of girls.

At least at this time, the palace was nominally still managed by the Imperial Guard.

Now, Nero's plan is to separate the "Inner Guard" and form an independent palace guard to be responsible for protecting the imperial palace. Will the Praetorian Guard really agree to such a move?

"So, this is a test. Whether they agree or not, they should know that the palace is no longer their territory!" Looking at Tony's worried eyes, Nero smiled and touched his head and said.

"But sister, what if the Guards don't agree?" Tony frowned and asked hesitantly.

Although the Praetorian Guards had actually lost control of the palace a long time ago, the palace was still under the jurisdiction of the Praetorian Guards in name. Everyone had still kept this fig leaf and had not thrown it away. Now Nero was planning to throw away the fig leaf. What if the Praetorian Guards really became desperate?

"If you disagree... we'll talk about it later. Anyway, the formation of the internal guard team cannot be completed in one or two days. Let's solve tomorrow's matter first." At this point, Nero patted his forehead lightly and said, "I almost forgot, didn't you want to show me the power of this hand cannon? How about this, I'm free today, why don't we try it in this yard."

"In the yard?" Tony was slightly stunned at first, but soon shook his head and said, "No, this thing makes a lot of noise. If we do it in the yard, it will cause unnecessary trouble. How about this, sister, your inner guards should be absolutely loyal, right? Otherwise... let's go outside the city? The area outside the city is wide, I can find a small forest that is not noticed by the guards to try out my new thing. Sister, when I want to mass-produce this weapon, you have to help me prepare the raw materials!"

"That's no problem." Nero patted his chest with a proud look on his face.

"Uh..." Tony took a deep breath as he watched Nero's constantly shaking breasts. A voice in his head kept reminding him.

"Beast! This is your sister, what do you want to do? You should know that the German barbarians now do not provide any orthopedic services! Put away your beastly thoughts!"

"Ahem." Tony coughed lightly, scratched his head and said to Nero: "Then let's go."

PS: I will be outside almost all day tomorrow, so I guess there will be no more updates. I will try to come back early to update in the evening. And I have to go back to my hometown the day after tomorrow, so I guess there will only be one chapter updated. These two days happen to be after next Monday, so I should think about the new bounty for next month.

Chapter 80 New Weapons

The Roman Guard was the most elite force in the entire Roman Empire. It consisted of ten infantry battalions and twenty-four cavalry squadrons, a total of 720 infantry and cavalry. Among them, the first battalion, the so-called Interior Guard, was selected and formed by Nero himself, so these one thousand people were only in name only and belonged to the Guard, but in fact, they were an army absolutely loyal to His Majesty the Emperor.

As for Tony's guards... they were the same as the inner guards, only in name only they belonged to the Royal Guards. In fact, Tony's guards, the 48 cavalrymen, did not occupy any troop establishment of the Royal Guards.

In the afternoon, Nero, his inner guard, and Tony came to a small woods on the outskirts of Rome.

The hand cannon, in the original course of history, was first invented by the Chinese in the 12th century. It had a simple structure and belonged to the matchlock series. To be honest, this weapon had no lethality on the battlefield. The most direct role of the hand cannon in combat was to use the huge noise and smoke when fired to scare the enemy. As for whether the ammunition fired could hit the enemy... haha, it depended on fate.

But Tony was not stupid. He knew that if a gunner wanted to hit the enemy, he still needed basic operation training. But now he couldn't train a qualified gunner in a short time. What should he do? He couldn't let this gunner with sunset red marksmanship hold a hand cannon that relied on chance to hit the enemy to fight the enemy, right?

In order to solve this problem, Tony decided to work on the shells.

That’s right, shotgun.

Tony certainly didn't know how to make shotgun shells for modern rifles. He was not a qualified military fan, nor had he worked in an arsenal. But he was familiar with history and knew that during the Age of Discovery, the navies of European countries had a kind of shotgun shell called grapeshot. This thing had no technical difficulty at all and could be copied directly.

"Hey, whoosh." Tony almost smashed his foot when he took the hand cannon from Ola. He didn't expect that this thing was much heavier than expected.

"Be careful." Seeing Tony holding the hand cannon with some effort, Nero shouted subconsciously.

"Do you see that tree not far ahead? Just watch it, sister!" After taking a look at the tree as thick as a human body about fifty steps ahead, Tony took a bag of small iron balls in a special small net bag from the guard next to him and stuffed it directly into the muzzle of the gun.

"Sister, pay attention!" Tony said as he tried his best to aim the muzzle of the cannon at the big tree by feeling. Then he took the torch that had been prepared long ago from another guard next to him and lit the fuse at the tail of the hand cannon.

"boom!"

The loud noise and fire from the muzzle scared the surrounding guards and Nero. Affected by the recoil of the hand cannon, Tony sat down on the ground and threw the hand cannon aside.

"Is your brother okay?" Seeing Tony fall, Nero took two steps forward nervously, intending to help Tony, who was sitting on the ground, up.

"I'm fine, just my butt hurts a little." Tony stood up and rubbed his butt, then looked at the big tree that he had used as a target before.

"This..." Following Tony's gaze towards the big tree not far away, Nero's face was full of shock. She didn't expect that this so-called hand cannon would be so powerful!

Full of holes!

Although the big tree in front of him was still standing, its body was already riddled with holes like a sieve. Nero could imagine that if a human stood here, his fate would probably not be much better than that of the tree, right?

"It seems that I am lucky." Tony breathed a sigh of relief as he looked at the big tree full of holes.

Tony himself was a very skilled shooter. In his previous life, when he was playing GTA5, it took an average of three shots from a tank to kill an enemy. The hand cannon was a well-known hit-or-miss cannon. Whether it could hit the target depended entirely on luck. Tony was very worried just now. It would be embarrassing if he missed the target with one shot...

But fortunately, after all, I was prepared beforehand and aimed slightly based on my feeling, so it was reasonable that this shot hit the target.

"Is this the power of the hand cannon?" Tony's guards and Nero's inner guards are all truly elite, but they couldn't help but feel a little agitated when faced with this weapon that was completely beyond their understanding. Coupled with the strong flames and thunderous sounds, and through the awed eyes of these soldiers, Tony knew that he was probably like the god of thunder in their eyes.

"But this operation is quite troublesome." As a qualified superior, Nero quickly regained her composure after a short period of shock. She looked at the bullet holes on the tree and spoke slowly.

"There is gain and loss, this is an old saying in the far east. Compared with bows and arrows, the range of hand cannons is not far, and the operation is also very complicated. However, how long does it take to train a qualified archer? And to train a cannoneer... three days is enough!"

"Three days?" Nero was a little surprised. You know, a qualified archer needs at least three years of training, but a gunner who operates a hand cannon only needs three days?

Besides, the current Roman Empire did not attach much importance to archers. The range of Roman archers was generally only about two hundred steps. The emergence of hand cannons, in a sense, could completely make up for the lack of long-range combat capabilities of the Roman army.

"Brother, is the production process of your hand cannon complicated?" Nero thought about it and finally asked uncertainly.

"The process of making a hand cannon is not complicated, but I don't have some of the things here." Tony said after a moment of silence.

"No? What do you mean?" Nero asked in surprise.

From Nero's reaction, Tony knew that Nero had a strong interest in this epoch-making weapon, the hand cannon.

However, Tony had never thought of equipping his troops with weapons such as hand cannons.

Although the hand cannon is simple to make and easy to use, it can have a certain degree of lethality when facing the Goths or Germanic peoples. After all, the iron tools in Europe at this time were still sponge iron. Even the powerful Roman Empire was like this, so other European barbarians would probably be even worse.

So whether it was the Goths or the Germans, they did not have sufficient armor to protect themselves, so they could only rely on the gods, believing that the gods would protect them, and then they started to fight shirtless, howling like Xu Chu.

After the original cannonballs were changed into shotgun shells, the hand cannon, which was not very powerful to begin with, is now even less powerful. At a distance, the shotgun shells may not even be able to penetrate leather armor, but when facing the European barbarians who rely on faith for defense, they will definitely wipe out a large area.

Far away.

Although the hit rate of the hand cannon has been improved to a certain extent, the best way to show lethality is still to fight in large groups and use a line-up shooting mode similar to the three-stage attack to attack the opponent. Such an attack mode requires a large number of troops. As for Tony's men, there are less than eighty people. Even if all of them are equipped with hand cannons, the lethality is not great.

Moreover, the enemies that the Roman Empire will face in the future will not only be European barbarians such as the Goths and Germans, but also the well-equipped Parthians in the East.

Faced with the Parthians' sophisticated armor, Tony's version of the hand cannon probably wouldn't even be able to break the armor.

The Roman Empire will not be at war with the Parthian Empire for the time being, so the enemies the Roman Empire faces at present are mainly those barbarians, and things like hand cannons are more than enough.

According to Tony's idea, the emergence of the hand cannon should attract Nero's attention. At that time, he could use this technology to make Nero support the development of the gunpowder manufacturing bureau. After using the huge national strength of the Roman Empire to solve the problems of iron and saltpeter, Tony could boldly develop large-caliber muzzle-loading cannons or relatively more complicated matchlock guns.

And while developing these things, you can also make a couple of thunder bombs for fun.

Of course, having ideas is a good thing, but whether you can realize them is another matter.

After all, this book isn’t a serious time-travel farming novel, right?

Ahem, it seems I said something wrong.

On the way back to the palace, Nero was still immersed in the tremendous power of the hand cannon. As an emperor, and as an emperor who had fought on the front lines, she naturally understood how much impact this new weapon would have on future wars once it was put into service.

But... there was one thing Nero couldn't understand. She could understand that this new weapon required a large amount of tempered steel, but why did this lovely brother... need feces?

What does he want these things for?

In fact, Tony needs a large amount of human and animal feces for a very simple reason. He needs to make saltpeter. As we all know, the three major elements of gunpowder are sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter. The first two can be quickly obtained in the Roman Empire, but saltpeter is different. The main production areas of saltpeter are India and the Eastern Han Empire. If you want to obtain saltpeter from these two places, you can only confront the Parthian Empire head-on first.

But if the Roman Empire could confront the Parthian Empire head-on, then what was the need for gunpowder?

It is impossible to obtain saltpeter from India and the Eastern Han Dynasty through the Parthian Empire, nor is it possible to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Chile to mine saltpeter. The only way is to do it yourself.

When Tony was studying in his previous life, his chemistry grades were not very good. He didn't know anything about ion exchange and double decomposition. On the way back to Rome from Britain, Tony thought hard for many days and finally remembered that he had read in some book that the most commonly used method of making saltpeter in Europe during the Renaissance was to use human and animal feces as the main raw material to make saltpeter. However, this method was very time-consuming in the early stage.

Before completing the process of making saltpeter from feces, Tony thought he should get something else to serve as a temporary substitute, such as... the English longbow and crossbow.

Today's Roman Empire archers still use hunting bows. Compared with the later English longbow, the difference in bow material and size has resulted in the later English longbow having a much greater range and power than today's Roman hunting bow. If the Roman hunting bow is replaced, Tony believes that with just a little training, the Roman archers' combat effectiveness should be stronger.

As for the crossbow... Although the Roman Empire had weapons of mass destruction such as the crossbow at that time, the crossbow had never been developed. Although the structure of the crossbow was a bit complicated, coincidentally, Tony had seen the production process of the Zhuge Crossbow in "X into Science" when he was in junior high school in his previous life. Although Tony could not replicate the Zhuge Crossbow by memory, at least he still remembered how to make the trigger, so it was not a problem for him to make an ordinary crossbow.

I just arrived at my brother's house. I was uploading a chapter under the interference of my nephews and nieces. I don't have time to check for typos or anything. Just take a look at this chapter. I'll go home tomorrow and revise it slowly. Bye!