Thirty-two-year-old Tang Dong was walking home, humming the tune of "The Romance of the West Chamber". Tang Dong is now a new employee in the glass workshop, earning three taels a month. He originally worked in a soap workshop, but he was recruited into the soap workshop when it was expanding in December of the year before last. Unexpectedly, after working for more than a year, the manager Li Yousheng said that he was honest and recommended him to work in the glass workshop.
In early March, nine thieves came out of the glass workshop to steal the technology of the city lord. The city lord killed nine thieves and hired nine people from the soap workshop and salt factory to the glass workshop, earning three to two months a month. Tang Dong is one of these nine lucky people. What he does in the glass workshop is to add a powder to the glass liquid. This is very simple, just pour the powder in from outside the kiln while the molten glass is still hot. Tang Dong didn't even know what the powder was, and of course he didn't want to know.
There are no downsides to this job except that the working environment is a bit hot. But compared to the monthly salary of three taels, being a little hot is not a problem at all. Three or two months' money is enough for Tang Dong's family to live a good life. As soon as Tang Dong reached the entrance of the alley, three children who were playing in the alley rushed up and shouted: "Daddy is back!"
"Daddy!"
Tang Dong's family used to be poor and he got married late. Now his eldest daughter is only seven years old. At this time, the eldest daughter was holding Tang Dong's legs, and the two younger sons were spinning around Tang Dong, calling daddy constantly, making Tang Dong's face full of joy. It is a day when all the girls here are well fed and can play happily, which makes people feel comfortable. Tang Dong took out a few pieces of Number One Candy from his arms and handed them to his eldest daughter, smiling and saying, "Here are the candies for you!"
The eldest daughter clapped her hands happily before taking the number one candy. When the two brothers saw that their sister had candy in her hand, they immediately stopped and looked at her longingly. The sister thought for a while, counted the number of candies one, two, three, and four times, and said happily: "Three yuan for each person!" She gave three yuan to the younger brother, and three more to the second brother, and then He happily grabbed the candy and was not in a hurry to eat it. He seemed to be enjoying the happiness of having candy in his hand.
Tang Dong felt happy when he saw his daughter's well-behaved appearance and picked her up. He walked into the house with his daughter in his arms and saw the head of the Jie family, Mr. Xie, who shared a house with him, learning calligraphy there. Boss Xie took a brush without ink and copied repeatedly on the copybook given by the private school teacher. Tang Dong stood aside and looked at it. He didn't understand what the word was. He smiled and said, "Boss Xie, what word did you write?" Boss Xie said, "I wrote the word 'righteousness'! Can't you see?" Do you understand?"
Tang Dong touched his face and said, "Why are you learning this?" Boss Xie said, "Have you not noticed? Half of the supervisors promoted by the city lord are literate. Once they are literate, it will be very different in front of the city lord!" Tang Dong He spat: "You still want to be a supervisor? Don't you want to look in the mirror?" Boss Jie laughed, ignored Tang Dong, lowered his head and continued to practice calligraphy.
Tang Dong put his daughter down and said to Boss Xie, "Boss Xie, I made up my mind when I was working today. I want a loan to buy a house. I'm afraid I won't be able to share a house with you in the future!" Boss Xie spat: "Look, look. I'm so proud of you. I've only been working in the glass workshop for a few days, but I don't like the rented house anymore. I want to buy a house! Isn't it a big deal for three or two months?" Boss Jie raised his head and said disdainfully: "Remember what you just did the year before last? When you came to this house! How shabby was your coat? I don’t even believe you if you say you’re not a beggar!”
Boss Jie glanced at Tang Dong's eldest daughter again and said: "At that time, your three children were sallow, skinny, and skinny! It seemed like they were going to be broken at the slightest touch. It has only been more than a year, and all of them have grown into chubby little ones. You're a girl!" "What did your women call you back then? They called you Tang Dayan! Now I know how to call you 'the boss'! This guy has changed so fast!"
Tang Dong laughed and said: "It's all thanks to the good job given by the city lord!" Mr. Jie laughed and said: "You said that your woman knows that you want to buy a house. Is she happy to have her own house or is she worried that she doesn't have enough money to spend?" The two were talking. Tang Dong's wife, who was spinning upstairs, heard it. She ran out and shouted in surprise: "Master, are you going to buy a house? Are we going to have our own small villa?" Tang Dong glanced at the boss and smiled.
After making reading glasses, Yang Peng started making telescopes again. Telescopes are a must-have item for marching and fighting. They can see things miles away and grasp opportunities. Of course, they are products that need to be manufactured first. Yang Peng has learned about Kepler telescopes. The structure of this telescope is very simple. It is just a combination of two convex lenses and two total reflection prisms. It can magnify distant objects dozens of times.
This simple telescope is enough for Yang Peng's current needs. On April 3rd of the first year of Xianping, Yang Peng hired jade polishing craftsmen and asked them to grind an 80 mm diameter convex lens objective lens and a 30 mm diameter convex lens eyepiece according to Yang Peng's drawings, and then grind two total reflection lenses. prism. After the lenses were ground, Yang Peng measured the focal lengths of the two lenses. He hired a coppersmith to make a copper tube with a larger front and smaller back, with a fold in the middle. He installed the objective lens, prism and eyepiece according to Yang Peng's drawings. Got in.
After it was done, Yang Peng raised the telescope to the city wall and took a look. He found that the telescope was completed and he could see the small scenery in the distance. Yang Peng estimated that although the Kepler telescope has a simple structure, it has a magnification of at least twenty-five times. In this era, telescopes had just been invented and were expensive. Even the Song Dynasty did not know what a telescope was. Telescopes did not have a unified Chinese name. Yang Peng simply called it a telescope.
With a telescope, the scout's job becomes easier. From now on, the scouts will stand at a high place and scan with binoculars, and they can monitor the movements within more than ten miles. The need to rush to the enemy's vicinity and engage in melee combat with the enemy's scouts is relatively reduced. In fact, Yang Peng's soldiers are not very strong in fighting ability, and their close combat ability is much worse than that of the Khitan scouts. Even the bandits' scouts have better fighting ability than Yang Peng's scouts. Once a fight breaks out, Yang Peng's scouts are often unable to approach the enemy troops.
Having a telescope can alleviate this problem to a great extent. Not only that, crossbowmen can also benefit from this telescope. With the telescope, the crossbowmen's shooting correction work is much more accurate. From now on, when the correction soldiers stand at a high place, they can clearly see the impact point of the crossbow arrows several miles away. Of course, with this telescope, the general can better observe the battlefield situation, which is of great benefit.
The market for reading glasses has not yet opened, and sales are very few. Yang Peng asked the jade craftsmen who were grinding lenses to stop making reading glasses and make telescopes together, and make more for the scouts and artillerymen. This telescope had high military value, so Yang Peng decided not to sell it to outsiders and only equip his own troops. If friendly forces need it, you can send a few out as gifts when circumstances permit.
When Zhang Xiang heard that his brother had made a telescope that could see far away, he immediately rushed over from the military camp and snatched one away. After getting the telescope, Zhang Xiang climbed to the top floor of the North Tower and looked around at the outer city of Tianjing City, very excited. The first batch of twelve telescopes was given by Yang Peng to senior officers such as Cheng Shijie, while the others were given to the scouts and crossbowmen of the Selection Regiment.
On April 7, the first year of Xianping, the first batch of Shibamen crossbows was installed on the arrow platform in the north of the city. Yang Peng handed a telescope to the crossbow commander who was responsible for correcting the impact point of the artillery, and asked him to test using the telescope to correct the crossbow angle.
The crossbow commander held the telescope and looked at it for a long time, with a look of excitement on his face, as if he had discovered a new world. After the crossbow commander became familiar with the telescope, the test firing began. The machine crossbowmen operated the machine crossbows, measured the elevation angle with musket gauges, musket rulers and moment scales, and fired towards a large circle painted with lime one mile away. The effective range of a standard crossbow is one and a half miles, which means that it can achieve effective shooting results against specific targets within 750 meters. The arrow path is basically a straight line. Using a standard crossbow to hit a target one mile away is a projectile shot, and the shooting effect and accuracy will be reduced. But if the target is big enough, you can still hit it by adjusting the angle.
A mile away, it was no longer clear with the naked eye where the arrow landed, and it was even unclear whether the crossbow arrow landed in the circle. But Yang Peng looked with a telescope and saw clearly that the crossbow arrow landed twenty meters away to the left of the large lime circle and crashed into a patch of reeds. Yang Peng took off his telescope, and sure enough he heard the crossbow commander shout loudly: "Eighteen steps to the left!"
The crossbowmen went up to drag the crossbow frame and relocated the crossbow arrows in the middle of the arrow slot of the crossbow. According to the crossbow commander's observation, the crossbowmen readjusted the angle of the crossbow and fired again. The crossbow fired again, and with a whooshing sound, the crossbow arrows drew an arc in the air and flew towards the white circle one mile away. Finally, the crossbow arrow smashed into the large lime circle with a diameter of 30 meters, smashing out a piece of dirt, and then bounced forward.
The crossbow commander shouted excitedly: "Hit the target!" The crossbowmen jumped up and high-fived each other. Being able to hit the target a mile away still makes the crossbowmen very proud.
The demand for reading glasses is still slowly growing. People who bought glasses used them in front of others, gradually attracting more buyers. Xie Jindao stood in front of Gaojia Optical Shop, hesitant. Xie Jindao was a scholar, that is, a scholar. He took the exam for many years and passed the exam when he was 28 years old. At that time, his parents were still alive and the family raised him as a scholar. But scholars are not worth much these days. He has been busy all his life to become a scholar in vain. Now he has sent away his deceased parents and earns a living by teaching at the Wang Family School. After a busy year, the students gave me no more than twenty taels for repair.
Although more than twenty taels should have been enough for him, Xie Jindao was fond of drinking and was addicted to alcohol. Every time he had a few dollars on hand, he would buy wine to live by, so he could not save much money throughout the year. That is to say, Xie Jindao is greedy for drink and wine. At the age of forty-eight, Xie Jindao still has no wife and is still single. In the past few years, Xie Jindao felt that his health was getting worse and worse. First of all, my legs and feet are no longer flexible. I used to have no problem walking the twenty-mile mountain road, but now I can’t walk the ten-mile flat road from Wangjiazhuang to Cangzhou City. I have to rest twice on the way. Secondly, my hands started to tremble. I don’t know why, they were shaking so much that they kept shaking unless I put them on something.
Could it be that he drank too much? But these are small things. The most troublesome thing is that his glasses are starting to get old. As a scholar, presbyopia is a big problem. I can't read clearly, I can't write well, and the worst thing is that I can't teach well. Xie Jindao couldn't see clearly the article written by the student. He held it up from a distance and squinted at it. At least three of the ten words had to be guessed. Only by combining the context can he guess what the student wrote. How does this work? If this continues, Xie Jindao will be fired by the head of the Wang family.
Without the work of this clan scholar, Xie Jindao would starve to death. He is a great scholar, but he does not want to starve to death in Cangzhou City in his forties.
Xie Jindao met the accountant of the Wang family a few days ago and saw the accountant wearing two pieces of glass on his nose and doing accounts there. Xie Jindao asked him, "Don't you have presbyopic glasses?" The accounting man proudly pointed to the piece of glass on his nose and said, "Just these two pieces of glass, ten taels of silver!" Xie Jindao didn't understand at the time and asked, "What is so expensive!" said the accounting Mr. : "These are called glasses. They are specially designed to treat presbyopia. I bought them for ten taels of silver. If you put them on, you can read clearly."
Only then did Xie Jindao know that there was such a thing in the world that could cure presbyopia. He tried the accountant's glasses, but it had no effect. The accountant said that everyone's glasses were different and he had to go to the store to get them fitted. Xie Jindao did not doubt the effectiveness of these glasses. After all, they cost ten taels of silver. How could he earn so much silver if they were not effective? He and the accounting clerk inquired about the location of the Gao family's store and walked here.
But when he got here, he was a little reluctant to let go. Ten taels of silver is enough to buy five jars of Bianjing wine - he has been reluctant to drink Bianjing wine in recent years. In recent years, the gifts given by his students have been meager, so he just buys some local wine from Tiancangzhou to live by.
But if this presbyopia is not cured, let alone drinking, I will not be able to eat. Xie Jindao sighed and walked into Gaojia Optical Shop with ten taels of silver in his pocket. There were several people in the store, and besides myself, there were two customers auditioning. As soon as Xie Jindao entered the store, a boy came up to him and said with a smile: "Sir, what's your surname? Are you here to treat presbyopia?"
Xie Jindao straightened his clothes and said, "My surname is Xie, and I am a student." The boy suddenly realized, and immediately said with great respect, "It turns out to be Mr. Xie. How many years has Mr. Xie been presbyopic?" Xie Jindao was still there. Feeling pain in his heart, he said angrily: "It's been two years, I'm so old that I can't read the student's articles clearly."
The boy said wait a moment, then went to the back and took out a box of glasses, took out a pair and put it on Xie Jindao, and said, "Ms. Xie, what do you think of these 200 degrees?"
As soon as he put on the glasses, Xie Jindao squinted at the "Spring and Autumn" on the table, flipped through it, and found that he could clearly read the words on it. Xie Jindao narrowed his eyes helplessly, secretly thinking that these ten taels of silver would definitely be spent!
Five jars of Bianjing wine were gone in a flash. Xie Jindao said in a rough voice: "See clearly!" The boy did not let go of Xie Jindao, handed over another pair of glasses to replace the ones on Xie Jindao's nose, and said: "Xie Xianggong, try again Try these two hundred and twenty-five degrees!" Xie Jindao flipped through the "Spring and Autumn" again, and said in shock: "It's clearer!"
The boy got another 250-degree pair for Xie Jindao. He put it on and tried the effect, but found that it was not as good as the 225-degree one. The boy then said: "Then this pair is 225 degrees!" Xie Jindao was not surprised by the effect of these glasses. The thing sold for ten taels of silver must have such an effect, otherwise it can Earn so much money? He actually felt sorry for the ten taels of silver again. Xie Jindao looked at the shopkeeper of the optical shop who was sitting inside, and saw that he was looking at him expectantly. He couldn't help snorting - these profit-seeking businessmen are really cannibals, and two pieces of glass cost ten taels. silver!
Xie Jindao slapped the ten taels of silver on the table and said coldly: "The silver is here, please put it away!" The boy walked in with the silver, weighed it with a scale, and then smiled He said, "Ms. Xie, we have a box for you, please wait." The boy walked in and took out a rectangular box, handed it to Xie Jindao, and said, "This is a box specially used to store glasses, thank you Sir, you’ve got it ready!”
Xie Jindao breathed a sigh of relief when he thought that now that he had cured his presbyopia, his job as a clan scholar could be saved. However, when he thought about spending a full ten taels of silver, which was enough money for five jars of Bianjing wine, Xie Jindao couldn't help but snorted heavily.
Profit-seeking merchants! I don’t understand the teachings of saints! Taking the glasses case with a wave of his hand, Xie Jindao walked away wearing his glasses.
The rifle workshop can now produce 500 rifles per month. By early April, Yang Peng had 8,200 flintlock rifles equipped with his troops.
The two thousand veterans of the Selection Corps have their own special rifles. They train with their own rifles every day and maintain their own rifles. The rifles of the Polu regiment soldiers have not been fully produced yet, so they can only take turns using the rifles for training. On weekdays, soldiers of the Polu Regiment carry wooden sticks to simulate rifle training queues. During target practice, more than a thousand rifles were placed on the shooting range, exclusively for use by the Polu regiment soldiers who took turns to practice target practice. The soldiers of the Polu Regiment shot targets twice a week, shooting twelve rounds each time. In three months, each man shot 300 times.
Musketeers have the advantage of forming an army quickly compared to traditional warriors. The soldiers of the Polu Regiment fired 300 rounds of ammunition, and they could basically hit the human-shaped target 200 meters away reliably during target practice. After a few more months of training, they would be able to become an army. Flintlock rifles have the trouble of lead hanging: after the lead bullets rub against the rifling of the rifle for a long time, the lead on the edge of the bullet will be adsorbed on the rifling, causing the rifling to fail. Therefore, after each rifle has been fired for two hundred rounds, it must be taken to the rifle workshop to clean the lead, and the gunsmiths can use a drawing machine to pull out the lead attached to the rifling.
Fortunately, lead is relatively soft and can be quickly cleaned with a steel broach. Gunsmiths can clean twenty rifles a day.
Flintlock rifles use softer lead bullets, and the life of the barrel is about 5,000 rounds. The soldiers of the Selective Regiment did less target shooting after they became an army, and most of the rifles have not reached the end of their service life. Only the first batch of 125 rifles dispatched during the annihilation of Shankong had more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and were scrapped. Few guns are scrapped, and the number of usable rifles is still increasing at a rate of 200 per month. In less than a month, all the soldiers of the Polu Regiment will have their own rifles.
However, for Yang Peng, this production speed is still too slow. To prepare for a rainy day, Yang Peng sent people to various prefectures and counties to recruit craftsmen and ordinary blacksmiths.
The people sent out by Yang Peng were led by Zhan Jin. This time, for the gunsmith apprentices recruited by Zhanjin Kingdom, Yang Peng gave each of them twenty taels of monthly money and ten taels of moving expenses, allowing them to rent a villa built by Yang Peng in Tianjing New City. After working as an apprentice for a period of time, you will be rewarded with seven coins of silver for every rifle produced. The high salary offered by Yang Peng attracted many craftsmen. Every time the recruitment officials went, they basically attracted all the craftsmen near Cangzhou to the job fair, and the scene was very lively. The recruiters completed Yang Peng's recruitment target after visiting six prefectures and counties. If Yang Peng hadn't emphasized the need for interviews and asked officials to recruit only honest craftsmen, more than a thousand craftsmen from six prefectures and counties would have flooded into Tianjing New City.
In the end, Yang Peng ushered in more than 80 gunsmiths who could make flintlocks and more than 210 blacksmiths, a total of 300 people, and asked these blacksmiths to move to Tianjing New City to become gunsmith apprentices.
Of course, in order to keep it secret, Yang Peng did not tell the new gunsmith apprentices the secret of the rifling. The gunsmith apprentices only learn to make smoothbore flintlock guns with thicker tube walls. After completing various inspections in accordance with the rules, the finished muskets are handed over to the experienced gunsmiths for rifling. If the rifling drawing work is concentrated on the old gunsmith, Yang Peng's confidentiality work will be much easier.
Accuracy cannot be guaranteed in the manual era. Guns handmade by different gunsmiths always have some differences in caliber, but this does not affect the rifling operation of the broaching machine. The broaching machine designed by Yang Peng is very flexible. If the gun bore is one millimeter wider, you only need to put an extra layer of thick paper under the broaching knife of the broaching machine to raise the broaching knife, and vice versa.
Yang Peng gave the old gunsmiths an average monthly salary of four taels, and the confidentiality requirements for them were also very strict. Yang Peng personally told these gunsmiths that if anyone leaks the secret of rifling to the outside, the leaker will be shot directly. The city lord's ruthless gunsmiths all knew that the nine glass workshop thieves had been killed by the city lord. No one is willing to abandon the good life of Tianjing New City and risk their lives to betray the secret of Rifling.
The new apprentices are not involved in drawing the rifling, nor are they involved in the secret work of the flintlock rifle, so their income is naturally no better than that of the old gunsmiths. After two hundred new gunsmiths are recruited, they will be paid 2 taels per month during the apprenticeship. After completing the apprenticeship, they will make unrifled rifles and receive a bonus of 1 tael for each rifle they make. Of course, of the two taels of silver bonus, three coins were given to the master craftsman, and only seven coins went to the apprentice. But no matter what, the monthly income of twenty-two-seven yuan is quite considerable.
You must know that Li Zhi also provided three meals a day for the gunsmiths and apprentices. Among these new apprentices, the craftsmen began to learn to make smoothbore flintlock rifles when they arrived in Tianjing New City, and a month later began to independently produce unrifled rifles. The blacksmiths who did not know how to make did not immediately start learning to make flintlock rifles after arriving in Tianjing New City. Instead, they were organized to make bayonets for existing flintlock rifles.
Yang Peng wanted to equip the musketeers with bayonets. The infantry in Yang Peng's army only had musketeers, and there were no pikemen or sword and shield soldiers to protect the musketeers. Once in close combat, they relied on the musketeers for hand-to-hand combat. Previously, Yang Peng equipped each musketeer with a long knife, but obviously the long knife was not lethal to the cavalry, which was not conducive to the musketeers maintaining morale when facing the cavalry. Yang Peng decided to follow the example of the long gun and add a detachable bayonet to the flintlock rifle as a cold weapon for the musketeers.
The bayonet designed by Yang Peng has a blade length of fifty centimeters, the blade is downward, and the back of the blade is engraved with serrations. The bayonet can stab or cut. Once it penetrates the enemy's body, the saw teeth will tear the flesh, making the wound extremely difficult to heal. There is also a handle behind the bayonet blade, which is twenty centimeters long, allowing the bayonet to be detached from the rifle and used as a one-handed short knife.
The bayonet is mounted on a wooden stock under the barrel. An iron rod with concave and convex teeth is mounted on the rifle stock, and a hole is made at the end of the bayonet handle, with embedded holes designed to match the iron rod. When installing the bayonet, insert the hole at the bottom of the bayonet into the iron rod on the wooden support. After inserting it to the bottom, rotate it 90 degrees. Then press it down and rotate it 90 degrees again. The bayonet will be fixed on the rifle. In the future, when infantry or cavalry armed with long weapons rush towards the musketeers, the musketeers will fix their bayonets after shooting. With the bayonet, the musketeers had a long weapon that could fight enemy infantry and even challenge the cavalry, which was of great significance to improving the morale of the musketeers.
In order to make bayonets, Yang Peng bought several thousand kilograms of iron from the iron merchants in Tiancangzhou City and provided it to the blacksmiths. More than two hundred apprentice gunsmiths did not learn to make guns. Instead, they set up furnaces and made tools in the newly opened blacksmith workshop area in the south of the city. They hammered day and night to make bayonets for the soldiers of the Selection and Polu Regiments.
If you want to know what happens next, let’s look at the breakdown in the next chapter.
