Generally speaking, when people discuss technology, it is easy to see which technology performs best.
However, in practice, people may not favor the technology with the best performance, and ultimately choose the technology that suits them best.
The same is true for manufacturing artillery. As far as the red barbarian cannon is concerned, cast copper has better performance and can be fired eight hundred times without breaking. Cast iron cannon is not that good. It weighs 20 to 30% heavier for the same caliber and is not that durable. The design only requires it to be played six hundred times.
However, people who manufacture artillery often do not consider usage issues, but focus more on cost. The cost of twelve cast copper cannons and sixty cast iron cannons is the same, so it is obvious which one to choose.
Liu Chengzong was a special case. Before the Southern Expedition, there was a lack of iron mountains within the control area, but there were countless Buddha statues waiting to be transformed into bronze cannons. It was not that he wanted to use cast copper cannons, but that he had little iron ore, so he could only Use cast copper cannon.
But now this problem no longer exists. Xining Prefecture has discovered many minerals around Qinghai Lake. Gold, silver, copper, iron, tin and lead are not scarce, and weapons can be made using normal logic.
The iron-in-copper wrapping proposed by Shi Chengmei is a composite technology using forged iron barrel and cast copper shell. The forged iron chamber has higher strength and toughness, and the cast copper shell utilizes the self-tightening properties of liquid copper solidification. While increasing strength and toughness, it is slightly lighter than copper and iron castings.
In fact, this manufacturing method is not necessarily superior to cast cannons in terms of strength. Its biggest advantage is that it is easy to control.
Control costs and material strength.
Forged cannons are not uncommon. Whether it is the small Franco machine cannon captured in the early days or the Ye Gong Shengun created by Ye Mengxiong, they are all forged from iron. The gun body has high strength, but they are all small-caliber artillery.
The forging of iron is very easy in the world. As long as you can make knives and forge armor, you can roll iron into a gun, roll out a larger iron shell to make a cannon bore, and then punch out iron rings to cover the cannon bore. It's a Franco cannon.
When it comes to casting large bronze and iron wares, ancient China had unparalleled technological accumulation and could even cast steel cannons as early as the Hongwu Year.
But it is difficult to control. Pig iron, steel and wrought iron are not separated. However, the carbon content above 2% is called pig iron, and the carbon content below 0.2% is called wrought iron. The carbon content between pig iron and wrought iron is called steel. .
In this era, craftsmen have been able to increase the carbon content during the refining process, and they can also reduce the carbon content during the refining process, but no more, no less, just that much... it is still not easy to achieve in ironmaking.
Because there is no method to completely liquefy steel in the world, even in the Central Plains, it can only form a semi-solid liquid. But if the steel cannot be completely liquefied, there is no way to achieve precise control in steelmaking.
So under most conditions, when smelting a furnace of iron, people can only guarantee whether the product is pig iron or wrought iron, but no one can be sure whether or how much steel is in it.
It is for this reason that I chose iron lining and copper coating to make mortars. Liu Chengzong requested a cannon with a large caliber and short barrel. It might be very easy to replace it with other cannon makers. After all, in the early years, bowl-mouthed cannons were used. That's the shape.
But I can't do it as a teacher. He only knows how to make red barbarian cannons and has no experience in making other cannons.
Moreover, the city was under siege at this time. In order to ensure success, he decided to first make a cannonball according to Liu Chengzong's caliber requirements, then forge the barrel according to this cannonball, and finally pour copper shells layer by layer outside the iron core.
On the evening of the third day of the siege, when the moat was about to be filled with a bridge, Chuoktu Taiji finally couldn't hold it any longer and sent more than a thousand cavalry soldiers to rush out from the south gate in an attempt to launch a night attack on the besieging army. As a result, they ran into Zhang Tianlin's training cavalry headquarters. , had no choice but to retreat.
It is difficult for any army to maintain organization during a night attack. When the golden drum flag has no effect, the night attack can only be carried out separately. Therefore, in fact, this tactic is a last resort due to the asymmetry of strength. A fatal move.
Chuoktu Taiji was in such an embarrassing position. He could not defeat him in a frontal battle, and the siege of several days was limited to being suppressed and beaten with inferior weapons. The morale of the various tribes was extremely low, and they could only rely on night attacks to boost morale.
In fact, it's just trying your luck, relying on the darkness to bring the enemy to the same level as yourself, and see if you can beat him.
As a result, he also bumped into Zhang Tianlin's patrol.
Liu Chengzong was prepared, so he called it a night attack. The attack on the army failed, and morale was even lower.
Soon a large hollow iron bullet with a diameter of five inches was cast by the craftsmen using the clay mold casting method. After getting Liu Chengzong's permission, I instructed the craftsmen to forge the barrel, cut the wooden tube and wooden horse, and dry it according to this caliber. gunpowder.
Liu Chengzong was holding a large hollow iron ball in the handsome tent, pouring the gunpowder inside little by little on the table, and swallowed involuntarily.
This sloppily cast cannonball weighs eight kilograms and twelve taels. It has been roughly polished and the irregular burrs on the surface have disappeared. It can hold four kilograms of gunpowder, but it feels scary just to hold it in your hand.
It was actually a round iron bottle used to hold gunpowder. Liu Chengzong put the cannonball aside, picked up a five-inch long cork, and looked inside. Through the small hole in the middle of the cork, he could see the bottom. There is light coming in from the side.
This cork, which is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, is the cannonball message tube. A tightly fitting gunpowder strip must be inserted into it. The gunpowder strip is made in the same way as granular gunpowder. The only difference is that the powdered gunpowder is not made into granules but into long strips.
The gunpowder made by this method has an average burning speed and is five inches long. It takes about fifteen seconds from ignition to explosion.
In fact, based on the experience of projecting explosive shells such as flying cannons, cylindrical explosive shells are most effective because they will not spin in the barrel and cause accidents. However, Liu Chengzong wanted to maximize the power of the blast, so he chose the spherical shape.
Liu Chengzong was holding the cannonball and laughing while looking at it. Suddenly he slapped his head: "Bring me the pen and ink!"
In the commander's tent, Fan Sanlang hurriedly handed over his pen and sharpened the ink vigorously. Within a moment, Liu Chengzong drew dense lines on the cannonballs.
"Commander, this is..."
Liu Chengzong frowned and thought: "When it explodes, it will explode into two and three petals. When casting the cannonball, cast more grooves. If other places are thicker and these lines are thin, it will crack first from the places with lines, and there will be more fragments." , horse through man cave.”
What he said was serious, but in fact Liu Chengzong was not sure whether it was easy to use or not.
He just asked the teacher to try it. Anyway, if it doesn't work, there will be no loss. At least he can be sure that the four kilograms of charge will definitely explode the shell.
Even if only two petals could be exploded, it would be in line with Liu Chengzong's original intention. If two petals hit the catapult, four kilograms of gunpowder blasting at close range would be no less than a small cannon blast.
The cannonball, which had been enchanted by Liu Chengzong's brush, was quickly sent to the craftsmen's station, where the craftsmen further made molds with prefabricated fragments.
The next two days were quiet, with no more artillery fire from the siege party, and the catapults in the city also stopped after throwing thousands of mud bombs. There was a rare calm outside Bajiao City.
However, in the city, Chuoktu Taiji did not sit still and wait for death. He was just waiting for the opportunity for Liu Chengzong to relax.
Although he suffered a lot in the early stages of the siege on the moat and the morale of the soldiers was low, Chuoktu Taiji was not discouraged. On the contrary, he was quite happy.
The herdsmen in the city have been busy picking up cannonballs for the past two days. They picked up more than 600 iron bullets that fell into the city, all of which were seven-pound bullets. Outside the city, there were even more two-pound iron cannonballs, more than 900.
When he was beaten outside Gansu, the Gansu general soldiers only hit him so many times.
So Chuoktu Taiji felt that Liu Chengzong was running out of artillery shells, so he hurriedly wrote a letter on the seventh day of September and asked people to shoot out of the city.
This letter was quickly delivered to Liu Chengzong. He opened it and read it. It probably meant that Chuck Rabbit felt that he had no shells and no gunpowder. Is it possible that you, Liu Shishi, are richer than Gansu's general soldier? They advised him to accept it as soon as he could, instead of negotiating peace and letting him lead his army back to Subei, swearing that he would never come to Qinghai again in his life.
Liu Chengzong was very happy by this letter. Not to mention the peace talks and letting him go back to Subei, Liu Chengzong didn't know who could mobilize more gunpowder supplies between himself and the Gansu General Army based on this armament alone.
But he knew that the Gansu General Soldiers used this amount of ammunition to fight Chuck Rabbit. It must be that the Chuck Rabbit was only worth this amount of ammunition in the field, and it was definitely not that the Gansu General Soldiers only had this amount of ammunition.
There are two types of saltpeter that can be used to make gunpowder. Potassium saltpeter is found everywhere in the northwest, and sodium saltpeter is found in the Gobi Desert from Xining to the Flame Mountains.
Liu Chengzong also knew that there was a place called Chile on the other side of the sea. The desert there was specialized in producing sodium saltpeter, so that the name of sodium saltpeter was Chilean saltpeter, and the place with the largest reserve of saltpeter in Chile was called... Turpan.
This man seemed to be crazy, he actually dared to laugh at his gunpowder in the northwest.
Of course, most people only know that there are a lot of gunpowder raw materials in the northwest, but they don’t know that there are so many gunpowder raw materials reserves in the northwest.
Liu Chengzong would not tell anyone about this, but the envoy of the Khan of Turpan was left beside him. He still thinks that the specialties of his hometown are melons and beautiful women.
Liu Chengzong felt that melons and beauties were good, at least until that piece of land fell into his hands, and they were definitely much better than gunpowder as a specialty.
With this happy mood, Liu Chengzong wrote a Chinese letter of thanks to Chuoktu Taiji, inviting him to leave the city and surrender, and promised that as long as the Khalkha soldiers laid down their weapons and surrendered, no one would be killed.
He handed the letter to the guard and searched around the army. It was easy to find people who could speak Mongolian, but not many could write Mongolian characters, and even fewer could translate the thank-you letter from beginning to end. I had no choice but to send someone to call Xie Erhu.
In fact, Xie Erhu had asked for battle many times, but was rejected by Liu Chengzong every time.
He had no intention of letting his Mongolian soldiers participate in the war, so Xie Erhu had no choice but to herd sheep behind and look for suitable pastures.
As soon as he heard the commander's move, Xie Erhu came galloping with three horses in succession, and asked: "Commander, do you want me to beat up these Khalkha bandits?"
Liu Chengzong stared at him when he heard this. You, Xie Erhu, are known as desert bandits. Liu Guoneng has heard about your reputation from Shi Li. How dare you call others bandits?
Before he could speak, Xie Erhu could tell that he was not calling him here for the purpose of fighting, so he said, "Commander, let me go. I've long wanted to beat them up!"
"Have a grudge?"
"Yes!" Xie Erhu said with an aggrieved face: "The nobles under Chuo Ketu robbed my pasture and my Jinsha River. If they hadn't..."
Xie Erhu was quite angry at first, but after talking about it, he couldn't help but smile and said: "Actually, it's good to go east."
Of course, the Xining pickles that Ma Ke picked for him were only secondary. The more practical benefit was to follow Liu Chengzong on his southern expedition and earn more than he had in the past ten years robbing travelers in the desert.
When Liu Chengzong heard that it turned out to be this, he had old grievances, so he didn't say anything more. He raised his hand and handed the letter over and said: "You can copy five hundred copies of the letter of surrender to Chuoktu Taiji, and use cannon to fire it in later." Go to the city."
Xie Erhu took the letter, his nose was neither a nose nor an eye, he lowered his head and muttered reluctantly: "Surrender? Let them reincarnate!"
Liu Chengzong didn't hear clearly and asked, "What are you mumbling about?"
"It's okay, I, I said, isn't it the Double Ninth Festival? How will the commander spend it?"
Liu Chengzong thought to himself that this was definitely not what this guy just said, but this sentence was very successful in diverting attention, and he couldn't help but ask: "You also celebrate the Double Ninth Festival?"
Xie Erhu shook his head like a rattle, carefully observed Liu Chengzong's expression, and then said: "We are no good, but we all know that the ninth day of September is the Double Ninth Festival."
How did he know about the Double Ninth Festival?
Every September on the ninth day of the lunar month, the northern and southern frontier troops in Suzhou are on holiday and their guard is empty, and the people climb high to worship their ancestors. No one is at home. If you find the right opportunity to do it, you can get several big pots back. The mutton stew is damn delicious.
However, he did not dare to tell Liu Chengzong about this matter. Erhu very cunningly believed that it would be good for him to maintain the image of a Mongolian leader who likes pickles in front of the Marshal.
Maybe in the future, when the commander is happy, because he likes pickles, he will be given a place where he can grow vegetables to serve as toast.
The Chen Toast restaurant in Xining is very good. It's so comfortable. You can wake up every day and worry about "I'm so poor" and "How can I get money quickly?"
As a small nomadic leader in Huaidan, he has not lived to that level at all.
Xie Erhu was sitting in the commander's tent writing a letter, absentmindedly thinking that in the future he would be able to seal off a large piece of pasture land and a field so that he could farm and graze both. After writing a few sentences, he suddenly remembered something and raised his head and said: "Commander, I Knowing that Han'er will celebrate the Double Ninth Festival on the ninth day of September, will Taiji in Bajiao City also know?"
Liu Chengzong was stunned when asked: "What do you mean?"
"We have to be on guard. Don't let the army go up the mountain to worship their ancestors and ask him to snatch all the horses when they come back."
Liu Chengzong slowly shook his head: "No, I mean, he knows that the Han people celebrate the Double Ninth Festival, but we can't."
In the past few years, the Lion Army did not have the conditions to celebrate festivals. Many festivals were either marching or fighting, and they had no chance to celebrate them. Nowadays, only a few festivals such as the New Year and Qingming Festival are still maintained.
However, Liu Chengzong thought for a while and asked Xie Erhu: "Erhu, are you talking about the possibility that Chuoketu saw my army going up the mountain and knew that we were going to worship our ancestors? He thought that our defenses were lax and took the opportunity to attack?"
Xie Erhu nodded, this was too possible, and then he asked doubtfully: "Isn't it true that the commander-in-chief can't defeat the Chongyang Festival?"
"If Chuck Rabbit needs it."
Liu Chengzong took a few steps in the handsome tent, nodded secretly and said, "I can celebrate the Double Ninth Festival."
