Yang Fan got out of bed with endless nostalgia in the morning. He said that Wenrou Township is the Tomb of Heroes, which is true at all.
Under such circumstances, getting up early is impossible without great perseverance. But there are a lot of things waiting for me today, so I really can’t sleep in.
Tuck Lin Yueru and Tu Shanyue into bed. Under the service of Sister Xiangyi, I got dressed and had a simple breakfast. Yang Fan set off.
Today he is going to inspect the Qianhu Station in Hexi Province.
Although it was said that the army he formed there was for the imperial court and was used to fend off the imperial court, it was not regarded as his main force.
However, they will also have to go to the battlefield in the future. If they are not trained well, they will be driven to the battlefield to fight against the Jian slaves, Mongols, and rogue bandits. Just let them die.
So you still need to train quickly.
Yang Fan and his party of more than 300 cavalry and more than 100 carriages marched toward the cement-built earthen fortress.
Along the way, Yang Fan kept thinking about whether this army should focus on cold weapons or hot weapons.
If the main focus is on thermal weapons, the court's gunpowder cannot be complimented, and it will cost more to make your own gunpowder. There is really no need. Yang Fan's idea for this army is to spend as little money as possible.
In the end, it was decided to focus on cold weapons.
In the future, the enemies this army will face will mainly be slaves, Mongols, and rogue bandits.
These three forces have different characteristics. The strongest one is Jiannu. If you want to use cold weapons to deal with Jiannu, you must be equipped with heavy armor.
Otherwise, you will definitely not be able to defeat Jiannu.
Although the Jiannu were far less wealthy than the Ming Dynasty, the wealth of the Ming Dynasty was monopolized by officials. It is difficult for ordinary people to maintain their lives.
However, taxes directly fall on the common people, and the taxes cannot be collected. As a result, the finance cannot make ends meet. Now all kinds of expenditures are in arrears, for a year or two in the long term or a few months in the short term.
Although the Jiannu were poor, they spent all their money on equipment so that they could use the equipment to rob more wealth. For them, weapons and armor were just for the taking, and were more precious than their eyeballs. .
Jiannu had been fighting wild beasts and savages in the mountains since he was a child. Moreover, he had been eating meat for a long time due to hunting, so his general physical fitness far exceeded that of Han farmers who lacked protein.
The fighting experience is even worse. Many people don't dare to kill chickens, let alone go into battle to kill people.
The most terrible thing is the archery skills of Jiannu, which they have learned from shooting silver foxes, rats and rabbits since childhood. They are good at using various light and heavy arrows, including armor-piercing heavy arrows and projectile light arrows.
Moreover, Jiannu is very courageous and often waits for more than ten meters before releasing his arrow.
The heavy one-meter-two arrows hit the opponent's eyes. Even if they were shot at the inferior armor made by the Ming army due to layers of corruption and embezzlement by the eunuchs in charge and officials at all levels, they would penetrate directly.
Yang Fan had fought with Jiannu before and knew how powerful the opponent's bows and arrows were, so if he wanted to fight Jiannu in hand-to-hand combat, he had to be able to crush them in terms of equipment.
Yang Fan thought about it and the only way was to equip plate armor.
When an armor made of connected armor pieces is hit by an arrow, one piece of armor will bear the force, or at most several adjacent pieces of armor that are connected together with the armor silk ribbon will bear the force.
In this way, because the force-bearing area is small, the destructive power of the arrow is large.
The shape of the plate armor is that the entire metal plate is a large piece of metal, which is stressed as a whole, and the shape is arc-shaped. The arc-shaped and semi-circular shapes enhance the structural strength and can also form a ricochet effect.
The plate armor protects the whole body, with basically no gaps except for the eyes, and all movement depends on various hinges and shafts. Even for the blunt injuries caused by being hit by heavy weapons, plate armor is much stronger than pierced armor worn directly on the body.
Because the surface of the plate armor is curved, it does not directly contact the skin. Therefore, when struck with an axe, mace, or flail, they will not directly act on the human body. Only severe deformation will cause injury.
From the material of the security door, we can know that modern three-millimeter steel plates cannot be cut with an axe, let alone the cold weapons of this era. On the head, Yang Fan directly put an explosion-proof helmet on the face. Put down the plexiglass mask. Under the bulletproof glass, the muskets and arrows of this era are useless and cannot penetrate.
The only drawback is that it is too heavy. If it were three millimeters thick, it would basically be immune to all weapons of this era, but the weight would probably reach 35 kilograms.
A person cannot walk very far wearing such heavy armor. The Ming Dynasty is not like Europe, where there are many small countries. The Ming Dynasty had a vast territory, and the mobility of the army was particularly important.
There are two solutions. One is to abandon stainless steel and use aluminum alloy as material. The strength of modern aluminum alloy is several times that of steel, but the weight is only one-third.
Historically, before mature smelting technology for aluminum was developed, armor was eliminated by thermal weapons. So we haven’t seen the appearance of aluminum alloy armor.
Another method is to use modern metal exoskeleton technology to prevent the weight of the armor from falling on the human body. Instead, the armor and metal exoskeleton are integrated into the design, so that the armor itself supports its own weight.
After repeated consideration, Yang Fan finally adopted the second method, because as long as he had the design drawings, he could produce it in Daming. Yang Fan would not miss any opportunity to improve the industrial capabilities here.
With the release of water from the diversion channel, Yang Fan's water conservancy forging hammer has begun to be installed. In the future, the high-performance steel smelted in the open hearth will be transformed into various weapons, armor, tools, agricultural tools, and iron nails under the efficient production of the water conservancy forging hammer. and other industrial products.
In the future, we are also preparing to develop the textile industry with water-driven machines.
Through Fatty Wu, Yang Fan found an expert who specialized in designing metal exoskeletons in a state-owned enterprise. Currently, Yang Fan paid a research grant, and this expert led three doctoral students and a dozen undergraduates to do research and trial production. After the design drawings are released and the prototype is successfully trial-produced, Yang Fan is ready to mass-produce it with water-powered forging hammers at the dam.
It was more than thirty kilometers and took a full hour to ride on horseback.
Yang Fan rode his horse across a hill and saw the completed cement and earth building from a distance.
The earth building is extremely huge. From a modern perspective, it is equivalent to the size of a stadium, but in this era, it is very shocking to look at.
The bluestones collected from the mountains are combined with concrete to build the bottom, and the top is made of blue bricks and cement mortar.
The whole thing looks like a huge gear, with the outer horse surface covered all over, just like the teeth of the gears.
It looked ugly and ferocious.
On the watchtower at the top, the soldiers noticed the approach of the large group of cavalry and immediately began to sound the gong to call the police.
Listening to the sound of gongs in the distance, Yang Fan nodded. He was alert and alert. It seemed that the training during this period was not in vain.
On the tower, an officer wearing Qianhu costumes was carefully observing the cavalry coming from a distance. This officer was recently transferred from the Ministry of War. His name is Zhou Yuji.
He was just a small person, a member of the Jinzhou Guards. He practiced martial arts since he was a child and was good at riding and shooting. Ever since he joined the Ming Army, he would charge forward in every battle and kill the enemy bravely, slowly growing from a soldier to an officer.
Zhang Fengyi, the Minister of War of the Chongzhen Dynasty, once visited Liaodong and discovered Zhou Yuji, a warrior, and took him with him as his servant from then on.
Later, he followed Zhang Fengyi to the capital as an official, and transferred Zhou Yuji to him as a sixth-grade military attache in the Ministry of War.
But Zhou Yuji didn't want to live a life of retirement in the Ministry of War. He was more eager to lead troops on the front line.
As a result, when the emperor transferred a large number of officers to Zunhua to establish the Hexi Guard Qianhu Station, Zhou Yuji was tempted. He had naturally seen the eliteness of Yang Fan's army in Beijing.
This time Yang Tongzhi formed a new army. He yearned for it very much and took the initiative to apply to come to Zunhua.
Zhang Fengyi also knew that his thoughts were not in the official document, so he agreed. He was promoted to one level and came to Zunhua as a Qianhu official to lead a Qianhu office alone.
Zhou Yuji is a native of Liaodong. He was born in 1600 and is only 28 years old this year. He has been hunting in the mountains and forests since he was a child and has a keen eye.
He saw that the cavalry in the distance was very elite. The horses were all majestic and taller than the Mongolian horses. They were carrying vertical striped flags that read "Jinyi Guards Command Qianshi", "Zunhua Guards Command Tongzhi" and "Hexi Guarding the officials who control Qianhu."
"Quick, put down your bow and arrows. This is Lord Yang coming. Quickly notify all the adults in Chengli to prepare to welcome him." Zhou Yuji shouted quickly.
Suddenly there was a rush on the city wall. As whistles sounded one after another, soldiers from each thousand households rushed out of their homes and lined up in the square in the middle of the earthen buildings.
The officers restrained the troops nervously, beating and kicking them, telling them to quickly stand in line. He shouted, Master Yang is here.
These officers were frightened by Yang Fan's military stick.
