"Gugu..."
In early June, as all the snow in the Northeast melted, the entire Northeast became completely new under the wash of rolling snow.
The originally bleak mountain forests have become lush and green, and the water level of the Songhua River has also risen a lot due to the spring rain after spring.
While Nanjing was busy making concessions for immigrants, Zhu Gaoxu also led his team to a place.
"Your Highness, everything is inside and all arranged."
As Lin Su's voice appeared, Zhu Gaoxu also raised his head and looked at the building in front of him.
In just a few months, a stone castle made of cement and rocks stood in the mountain forest. All the trees hundreds of steps around the stone castle were cut down, but Zhu Gaoxu didn't care about this and just glanced at the stone castle. Stone castle.
It is not wide, the city walls are only ten feet long, and the east and west are no more than a hundred paces. The number of people it can accommodate is very limited.
Zhu Gaoxu took a closer look at the condition of the city wall. As he expected, the cement produced by the handicraft workshop in Jilin City was very rough, but it was enough for Jilin at the moment.
"Your Highness, this stone castle is one hundred and fifty-seven steps long from east to west and one hundred and twenty-six steps deep from north to south. It is one foot, five feet and four feet high. It has 309 crenellations, two archery gates, and four turrets."
"This fort can be built in two months, mainly due to the efforts of more than a thousand brothers below. Moreover, the cement dries hard quickly, making it easier to work."
Lin Su stepped forward to introduce the cement stone fort to Zhu Gaoxu, and Zhu Gaoxu also looked around the stone fort for a while. After confirming that the strength of the cement was acceptable, he and Lin Su rode into the fort.
After entering the fort, he got off his horse and climbed into the arrow tower of the stone fort. In this arrow tower, which was nearly three feet high from the ground, he could see the entire stone fort.
The area of the stone castle is not large, and the residence inside consists of two rows of wooden houses.
Dozens of families already live in those two rows of wooden houses, and their husbands and fathers are soldiers stationed at the stone fort.
Except for these two rows of wooden houses, in the northeast corner of the city is a huge workshop that occupies a quarter of the space in the fort, and thick smoke is constantly rising at the moment.
"Your Highness, that is the ironworks. Thirty blacksmiths are working there. The iron ore from Bailian Mountain in the south is brought down by horse teams and camels every day and is smelted into iron ingots here."
Lin Su introduced Zhu Gaoxu, and at the same time looked around vaguely, and found that no one was following him, then whispered:
"There is a gunpowder-making yard left in the ironworks, and there are ten iron-smelting masters who specialize in gunpowder."
Gunpowder and firearms were two things that Zhu Gaoxu had to produce. For this reason, Zhu Gaoxu built public toilets in Jilin's urban construction.
To the outside world, he said that centralized management of feces would make it easier to fertilize, but in fact, what he wanted was urine salt.
He didn't keep track of where there were saltpeter mines in the Northeast, so he could only choose this local method.
Compared with saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur are easier for Zhu Gaoxu to obtain.
Needless to say about the former, in this era the Northeast was almost full of dense forests, and there was no need to worry about the source of charcoal.
As for sulfur, the Changbai Mountain volcanic area in Jilin is the best place for Zhu Gaoxu to obtain sulfur.
The Changbai Mountain volcanic area erupted many times in the Ming Dynasty, so Zhu Gaoxu was sure from the beginning that there would be sulfur in the east of Jilin City.
As expected, Lin Su just went to Shanchu Fort and asked the local leader, and soon learned about the location of the volcano closest to Jilin City.
Although the team of twenty draft horses in his hand only went to the east once, they quickly brought back thousands of kilograms of natural sulfur to Zhu Gaoxu.
These thousands of kilograms of natural sulfur are enough for Zhu Gaoxu to use for a long time, because judging from the current progress, Jilin City can only collect more than 700 kilograms of saltpeter every month.
The composition of black gunpowder is 75% potassium nitrate, 10% sulfur, and 15% charcoal. Although Zhu Gaoxu does not know the more advanced gunpowder formula, he can still generally remember the formula of black gunpowder.
According to the current output of soil saltpeter in Jilin City, this stone castle can produce about one thousand kilograms of gunpowder every month.
However, half of the gunpowder will be used for mining, and Zhu Gaoxu does not need to worry.
Liaodong Dusi would ship a batch of gunpowder to him every year. As long as Zhu Gaoxu prohibited soldiers from going to iron mines and coal mines, soldiers who went there once or twice would have no way of knowing how many times the mines were blasted every day.
As for the soldiers guarding the mine, they were also selected by Zhu Gaoxu himself.
His selection was very simple, that is, he selected from the more than 100 people who had brought their families and family with him to the north.
Lao Zhu will definitely let the Jinyiwei follow him northward, but not every Jinyiwei can take his family northward.
In doing so, he could minimize Lao Zhu's knowledge that he was making gunpowder.
But even if Lao Zhu knew about it, Zhu Gaoxu could still mine ores and build roads as a disguise. After all, Lao Zhu only said at the beginning that craftsmen who made firearms could not be needed, but he did not say that he could not make gunpowder.
Even if he was noticed, Zhu Gaoxu estimated that he would at most be reprimanded, or more seriously, he would be sent to the palace to make history.
Thinking of the palace's chief historian, Zhu Gaoxu was also curious as to why Lao Zhu didn't send him the palace's chief historian and subordinate officials.
However, he had too many things to do every day and could not think about these things. At the moment, he was more concerned about other issues in the stone castle.
He continued to scan, and soon a long and narrow white land attracted his attention.
That was the white space he asked Lin Su to leave behind for the convenience of experimenting with firearms in the future.
Zhu Gaoxu could not let outsiders know about making firearms, so he could only design the drawings himself, then let the blacksmith make them in private, and finally sent people to experiment himself.
Muskets and artillery are Zhu Gaoxu's trump card for winning wars as quickly as possible in the future.
For this reason, he had personally discussed firearms-related content with many craftsmen who made firearms as early as when he was in Nanjing. Therefore, how the fire gate guns mainly used in the Ming Dynasty were made and what the manufacturing process was, had actually already been in his hands. Got it in my head.
But really speaking, the fire gate gun does not have much technical content.
From muskets to rifles, human individual tubular firearms basically evolved gradually. However, there were several important watersheds from early simple muskets to later rifles.
The Hongwu bronze gun of the Ming Dynasty is a typical fire door gun. Its structure is relatively simple, just a round tube with a lead hole at the end.
Like the artillery of this era, the Hongwu copper gun only needs to be loaded with black powder, and then the projectiles. The fuse is inserted into the small hole in the back. When used, the fuse is ignited. When the gunpowder is ignited, the front projectile is fired to complete the shooting process.
Its launch speed is very slow, its use is also very inconvenient, and its reloading is very slow. You need to carry fire with you to ignite it, and its power is only lethal within ten steps.
During the same period, many countries were using fire door guns like this. Although some people have been improving them, they essentially still require a manual ignition process.
Because it requires manual ignition, the fire door gun is almost impossible to operate by a single person. Therefore, before Zhu Di established the Shenji Camp, the fire door gun would basically not be used as the main weapon of the army.
If nothing else, it would not be until more than fifty years later that someone would invent the gun butt, fix an ignition device on it, and use the trigger to control the ignition, and then the matchlock gun would come out.
But it came out, and when it comes to real discussion, the improvement process after the invention of the matchlock gun went through half a century. It was not until the end of the fifteenth century that the 7788, which was studied, gradually began to be equipped with the army on a large scale.
Zhu Gaoxu didn't know much about this period. It was enough for him to remember the shape of the matchlock gun he had seen online and in museums and design it.
As long as he can design it and successfully fire it, it will be easier to subsequently improve the flintlock gun.
However, Zhu Gaoxu had no expectations for the flintlock gun, because he remembered that the ignition rate of the flintlock gun was very impressive and was not as stable as the matchlock gun.
It was for this reason that when British missions arrived in the late eighteenth century and introduced flintlock muskets, Qing officials seemed less interested.
Zhu Gaoxu didn't know how the ignition rate of the flintlock gun became stable, so he could only hope that he could develop the matchlock gun first and tide over the difficulties.
There were several problems before him, namely the two technologies required for the matchlock gun.
The matchlock became the starting point of the era of hot weapons, not simply because one person came up with the idea in a whimsical way, but because of several technological breakthroughs in the matchlock era... The first is metallurgical technology.
Advances in metal smelting technology have made metal barrels stronger, and changes in processing technology have made barrels easier to manufacture. The tube walls are thinner and can withstand the force of gunpowder gases without exploding.
Guns are different from artillery. Artillery can ensure strength by increasing the thickness of the barrel, while guns need a certain degree of portability, otherwise they cannot be used.
Advances in metallurgical technology and manufacturing processes have allowed the barrel to be thinner and reduce the overall weight.
Regarding metallurgical technology, Zhu Gaoxu was not worried, because the metallurgical technology of the Ming Dynasty had always been ahead of Europe. Even by the end of the Ming Dynasty, Ming craftsmen could only not catch up with the Europeans in design concepts, but they still maintained the lead in metallurgical technology.
What really worries Zhu Gaoxu is gunpowder technology.
The reason why matchlocks can dominate the battlefield in conjunction with spears is that granular gunpowder is indispensable.
As a mixture, powdered gunpowder is easy to stratify and get damp, and its combustion efficiency is unstable. This also caused the early muskets to be filled with any amount of charge. If you add too little, the bullet will be weak, and if you add too much, it will easily cause the barrel to explode directly.
With the invention of gunpowder granulation technology, the performance of granular gunpowder is more stable and more powerful, which ensures the power of muskets.
Even if it's just basic black powder, once the proportions are correct, it can still kill a soldier wearing heavy armor.
For heavy armor, the musket after the matchlock is completely unsolvable.
Of course, the replacement of cold weapons is gradual, and in addition to technological progress, the more important thing is the progress of tactics.
The Spanish Grand Square can be said to be an important model in the matchlock era where hot weapons replaced cold weapons.
The combination of spearmen and musketeers reduces the risk of musketeers being easily defeated by enemy cavalry, and also enhances the dominance of this combination on the battlefield.
Zhu Gaoxu didn't quite know what the Spanish Grand Square looked like, but he knew what the current Ming army looked like.
When it comes to spears, except for Lao Zhu, no one knows how to train better than Zhu Gaoxu.
It is difficult for spears and muskets to cooperate, because if spears want to successfully resist cavalry, they must form an airtight spear formation, and in this formation, it is difficult for musketeers to have a chance to shoot.
Therefore, what Zhu Gaoxu needed to do was to train the cooperation between the musketeers and the pikemen, use three volleys of guns to fight against the enemy's front vanguard, and then quickly change formations, with the musketeers retreating to the rear and the pikemen on top.
As long as the musketeers can withstand the pressure of twenty steps to shoot, then whether it is the Mongolian cavalry or the Ming army cavalry, their front will be frustrated after three rounds of volleys, and this is the time for the Jilin Guards' spearmen to charge.
This sounds simple, but the mental endurance required of frontline soldiers is extremely demanding.
The Mongolian bows and arrows are very vicious, but with the advent of the heavy armor era, mounted archery has evolved into approaching a face-to-face attack, then turning back to the main formation, accumulating horsepower and then facing the face-to-face attack again.
The method of approaching a face-to-face attack also requires a strong psychological endurance for the cavalry. Under normal standards, it is twenty steps to retreat after a face-to-face attack. Some elites can reach fifteen or even ten steps, but in reality, most Some Mongolian cavalry only dared to attack at a distance of thirty steps, and only the best-equipped ones dared to enter twenty steps.
Zhu Gaoxu is very unlucky. If nothing happens, the Ming cavalry he encounters in the future will all be elite cavalry capable of withstanding more than ten steps.
In addition, the armor-breaking ability of the Huomen Gun in this era was only more than ten steps. Therefore, the Ming Army's fire gunmen could not defeat the organized Mongolian cavalry during the Northern Expedition, and could only attack behind the pikemen.
The fire blunderbuss of the Hongwu period could only deal with the Mongolian cavalry, let alone the Ming army cavalry.
Therefore, Zhu Gaoxu had to bring out his matchlock gun and create a barrage within thirty steps of the army.
The effective range of the matchlock against heavily armored soldiers is very impressive, but it is not so impressive that it cannot defeat the enemy within thirty steps, not to mention that Zhu Gaoxu's requirement is still an extremely demanding twenty steps.
Thinking of this, Zhu Gaoxu glanced towards the city.
There, the soldiers waiting for him were holding long spears measuring four feet each. It was a pity that they did not have matchlocks on their shoulders, otherwise they would be the best "Jingnan Bohai Navy" in Zhu Gaoxu's heart.
"We need to solve the problem of matchlocks and artillery quickly..."
Zhu Gaoxu sighed secretly, then turned to Lin Su and asked, "How is the current output of coal and iron ingots?"
Although Yishiha is the chief steward of Jilin City, Lin Su is responsible for the cavalry and security work in the three factories, and he is also very aware of the conditions in these factories.
Therefore, he did not disappoint Zhu Gaoxu, but said without thinking: "The daily production of iron ingots is more than 200 kilograms, and the daily production of coal is two thousand kilograms."
Two months of reading and writing made Lin Su feel more calm. Seeing this, Zhu Gaoxu also went down the city wall and walked around the fort with him a few times.
He pointed out some deficiencies, and then looked at whether there was enough food in the granary.
After making sure that everything was OK, he called Lin Su and prepared to return to Jilin City.
On their way back, Lin Su and the others were carrying armor plates, helmets and iron pots that they had made over a period of time. Zhu Gaoxu took the account book from the master blacksmith and discovered that they had made more than 80,000 pieces of armor in just half a month. tablets, one hundred and fifty hats, and five hundred iron pots.
These armor pieces were brought back to Jilin City and stored until the winter when they were woven by strong women. At least 150 sets of armor could be made.
After all, the iron smelting field can produce ten sets of armor pieces every day.
At this rate, they will be able to build at least 900 sets of armor by the beginning of September. Although Zhu Gaoxu won't be able to use that many, they are prepared, and there will definitely be a lot of armor damaged after the Autumn Harvest raid on Xiyang Ha. There are also pieces of armor in Jilin City. Good to fix.
After briefly wiping his hands, Zhu Gaoxu took Lin Su and the loaded cavalry back to Jilin City.
The distance from Shibao to Jilin City is not as far as the mine. It is only fifteen miles away and can be reached in about two hours.
Along the way, Zhu Gaoxu admired the Northeastern mountain forests of this era. Almost everywhere, there were trees that could only be hugged by several people.
In the forest, many silly roe deer looked at Zhu Gaoxu and the others stupidly. The soldiers who were on their way didn't mind either, and they drew their bows and arrows one after another.
In just two hours' journey, they harvested two silly roe deer.
After walking out of the woods, the scene suddenly opened up...
On both sides of the dirt road ahead, the once muddy silt has disappeared, replaced by gray-white ditches and patches of rice fields next to the ditches.
These rice fields are filled with japonica rice grown in the south of the Yangtze River, which is also a new product of Jilin City.
In the Ming Dynasty, the yield of japonica rice in the south of the Yangtze River was about three stones per mu, but the maturity cycle was the same as that of later generations of northeastern rice, which was about five months.
In the Northeast at this time, the warm months of the year were only from early May to mid-September, less than four and a half months. Therefore, Zhu Gaoxu was very curious about whether Jiangnan japonica rice could grow, and opened a ten-acre experimental field for this purpose.
In Zhu Gaoxu's view, even if only one acre of rice out of the ten acres has adapted to the Northeastern environment, it is still worthwhile for him.
Rice could be grown in Jilin during the Tang and Song Dynasties. Even if the average temperature in the Ming Dynasty was two degrees lower than that of the Tang and Song Dynasties, it was impossible to say that rice could not be grown at all.
Based on the knowledge he learned from the agricultural unit next door in his previous life, a one-degree drop in average temperature will cause food production to decrease by 10 to 15%, but as long as humans take good care of it, the crops can still survive.
So he wanted to try to see if rice could be grown in Jilin today. Even if not, he didn't believe he couldn't breed cold-resistant varieties.
There is no reason why he can't do things that Japanese and Korean people can do.
The current batch of rice is just his trial sowing. If he can't eat it by mid-September, he will follow the later generations' method of "cultivating seedlings first and then transplanting rice" to plant rice.
He had people open a test field in the city. Although there was no plastic sheet for him to build a greenhouse in this era, the Han people also had similar greenhouse methods.
During the Western Han Dynasty, Taiguanyuan had mastered the technology of using "greenhouses" to cultivate off-season vegetables in winter.
They built a closed "greenhouse" and used "Yunhuo" to raise the indoor temperature continuously throughout the day, cultivating the earliest "greenhouse vegetables" including leeks.
During the Northern Wei Dynasty, this technology was improved, and people began to use the method of burning fires in cellars to raise temperatures for winter off-season vegetable cultivation.
After this technology was passed down to the Tang Dynasty, people used hot spring water to create suitable temperatures to grow various off-season fruits and vegetables.
In the Song Dynasty, in addition to planting off-season vegetables, people also used greenhouses to cultivate off-season flowers. In the Yuan Dynasty, further improvements were made. The Han people began to use the heat generated during the reproduction, decomposition and fermentation of microorganisms in "horse manure" to add heat to the greenhouse. temperature.
Compared with the previous method of "burning fire to heat", the "horse manure warming" method is simpler and easier to implement.
However, no matter which of the above methods, their cost is not low, so Zhu Gaoxu came up with a simple version of the greenhouse seedling method, but this will have to wait until March next year to experiment.
Thinking of this, he got off his horse and went to the rice fields to check the rice situation.
Since it is midsummer, the rice is growing pretty well. The only flaw is that compared with the Jiangnan rice in the same season, they are too small.
"Your Highness, if you look at it this way, I'm afraid it will have to be harvested early before it reaches maturity."
Lin Su has his own land in Nanjing. Although he leases it to others to farm it and collects the rent himself, he can also farm it himself.
Now, in his opinion, the rice in these ten acres of experimental fields looks rather sickly.
"Try it first, and if it doesn't work, try my other methods."
Zhu Gaoxu looked at the ten acres of rice and answered with a frown. Then he reluctantly returned to the dirt road and looked at the surrounding fields.
In the surrounding mature fields, wheat and sorghum are growing well. Although they are not as strong as they were in the Central Plains, they are at least much stronger than the ten acres of rice.
Looking into the distance, Zhu Gaoxu could see that the heat was in full swing under the Fortress Mountain in the distance. Thousands of strong women driving cattle and draft horses were plowing the wasteland and clearing the stones hidden in the wasteland one by one.
Compared with when we arrived, the amount of cultivated land in Jilin City has almost doubled in less than four months.
Perhaps only by witnessing this scene with your own eyes can you truly appreciate the difference between clearing land with animal power and clearing land without animal power.
"Your Highness..."
"Your Highness..."
Zhu Gaoxu rode forward on horseback. The people passing by stopped and bowed to him, and Zhu Gaoxu nodded in response.
The look they looked at him was what Zhu Gaoxu had always wanted to pursue.
He wants to survive and use his knowledge to change everything in Ming Dynasty.
"Your Highness!" From a distance, Yi Shiha came on horseback, followed by two officials.
Yi Shiha held a booklet in his hand, with a smile on his face, obviously coming to tell him the good news.
"What's wrong?" Zhu Gaoxu turned his head and motioned to Lin Su to hurry up and not to worry about him, while he himself stayed where he was.
Lin Su left with the cavalry, and Yi Shiha also came to Zhu Gaoxu and bowed on the horse:
"Your Highness, the pace of land reclamation is faster than we thought, but there are many more stones on the Jilinwei wasteland than we thought."
Yishiha pointed with his finger at the foot of Fortress Mountain in the distance. Zhu Gaoxu looked at it and discovered that there were already piles of stones two or three feet high, covering several acres.
"Those are the stones you asked to leave behind. In addition, more than 200 farm tools in the hands of the people have been damaged, so this slave is here to ask if some of the iron ingots can be retained to make farm tools."
"In addition, Ta Shi from Fotijin City and E Zhen, who is good at leaving the fort, also sent people to ask us at Chen hour and at noon respectively how much grain, tea, and iron pots we plan to bring for business after the autumn harvest."
Although there are still close to four months until winter, winter is really a disaster for fishing and hunting peoples like the Jurchens. If winter is extended for ten days and a half, they will face the risk of running out of food, so they must decide in advance the food that can be traded. Quantity is what they urgently want to know.
In this regard, Zhu Gaoxu had already known the amount in his mind. After all, he asked Yang Bin to go south to buy more than 20,000 shi of grain in order to do the last business of the year before winter.
"Tell them that I have 20,000 stones of grain here that I can sell to them, but how much they can take depends on how much fur and livestock they can offer for trade."
Zhu Gaoxu relied on the Liaodong Dusi and the Ming Dynasty court, and with the scale of Heshan Chubao in Futijin City, it was impossible to do business with him alone for a long time.
The number of livestock and furs Jilin City bought from Futigin City last time was already half of Futigin City's inventory, not to mention being good at leaving the fort.
If they want to continue doing business with Zhu Gaoxu, they must purchase furs and livestock from other Jurchen tribes. This is why Zhu Gaoxu sets the trade after the beginning of spring and before the autumn harvest.
Only by giving them enough time can they have time to prepare the goods needed for the next trade.
"It's a pity that my appetite is more than that..."
Looking at the bustling land reclamation scene in the distance, Zhu Gaoxu's eyes also darkened.
(End of chapter)
