The defenders of Liangzhou City witnessed an agricultural revolution.
The local defenders in Liangzhou were very excited when they saw the Marshal's Army carrying out farm work with farm tools. However, Li Hongsi, who had actually fought against the Marshal's Army, was considered an expert and could see the ways of the Marshal's Mansion Expeditionary Force.
In just a few days, the Marshal's Army went from the earliest hoes and manpower sowing to fully equipped with three-legged columbians and animal-powered mechanical sowing. Later, more cattle and donkeys joined, and six-legged columbuses were added. The sowing efficiency was greatly improved. promote.
The two battalions alternated day and night defense at the beginning, plowing a field in three days, and then the Ganzhou Battalion set fire to sow seeds in the early morning. By noon, the whole field was sown, and then withdrew directly to the rear; the Suzhou Battalion that took over directly changed places. In the camp, they started working in the evening and sown wildly around Liangzhou City.
The Liangzhou army was quite happy to see the Marshal's army working in full swing outside the city, but Li Hongsi realized this problem - these farm tools were all newly made.
There are iron share on each leg of the columbine, the three-legged cart pulled by donkeys has three iron share, the six-legged columbine pulled by oxen has six iron share, and Hong Chengchou clearly completed a thorough investigation in Liangzhou within a hundred miles. The strong walls and clear fields created a problem.
The wood needed for the columbine must have been manufactured in Yongchang, Shandan and other places. There are a large number of military craftsmen in those places and a large number of agricultural tools. It is most likely made in Wei and assembled near Liangzhou. The key problem lies in the iron On the plate.
In a few days, the Marshal's Army pulled out hundreds of columbiners near Liangzhou, which meant that they had to cast thousands of iron shareholdings in a short period of time. These iron shareholdings were either cast before Liu Chengzong arrived in Liangzhou. It has been cast in Ganzhou and other places - either Liu Chengzong opened an iron yard near Liangzhou.
The former is nothing to worry about, but the latter means that Liu Chengzong has the ability to cast iron on a large scale very close to Liangzhou City.
As a general who had faced off against the Marshal's Mansion, he had already experienced Liu Chengzong's heavy firepower and knew that in terms of artillery casting technology, there was no barrier between the Ming Army and the Marshal's Army. To some extent, Liu Chengzong's cannon was even better.
The defenders were optimistic about the Marshal's troops farming under the city, but Li Hongsi was only afraid. Liu Chengzong came well prepared and cast heavy artillery on the battlefield.
He was right to be afraid.
While the two battalions of Fengweizhen and Ding Guodong were taking turns farming, Liu Chengzong established a cannon foundry in Fengle Fort, fifty miles away, and opened three material transportation routes.
The farthest line was to deliver iron and copper materials from the Longshoushan Iron Works in Shandan to the front line, and then Liu Chengzong led the craftsmen to supervise the construction of heavy artillery at Fengle Fort.
Designing artillery was an unfamiliar job for Liu Chengzong, but he really didn't have the talent at hand to master the modules. Even if he sent someone to inquire about He Huang's master's qualifications, it would be too late.
The modules I mastered because of my apprenticeship were, first, the module of the thousand-pound cannon taught by Wang Zheng in Sanyuan in my early years, and the second, the module of the lion cannon, which was experimented with Gao Yingxiang in Shanxi.
For heavy artillery weighing more than 1,000 kilograms, even those who have learned from me here don’t know what proportion is appropriate. They can only come up with results through calculations and experiments. This is too slow for Liu Chengzong.
Therefore, he decided to go into battle himself, pulled out a thousand-pound cannon for measurement, and obtained the full module of the cannon.
This work was not difficult. Liu Chengzong had a bronze cannon that was cast strictly according to the model. Once measured, he found that this thing was very rigorous, with all parts in proportion, and the most important thing was the caliber.
Depending on the caliber, the proportions of each part of the gun body can be inferred.
The thickness of the outer diameter of the muzzle is twice the caliber. The thickest parts of the gun body, the fire door and the outside of the chamber, are three times the caliber. The thickness from the chamber to the breech is equal to the caliber. The overall length of the barrel is eighteen times the caliber. times.
It was this time when he personally measured the artillery module that Liu Chengzong discovered that the diameter ratio of the two types of artillery installed in the Marshal's Mansion was actually a bit low for field artillery.
However, Liu Chengzong did not have the habit of changing parameters without understanding the principle. For the newly built siege cannon, he still chose to use a length eighteen times the caliber, but he expanded the caliber and had one cast. A twenty-pound iron cannonball.
Then, according to the diameter of the iron cannon ball, the clearance was increased by three points, and the caliber was set at four and eight inches. Then the various parameters of the cannon were calculated and handed over to the craftsmen to make clay molds and iron molds in preparation for casting the cannon at the same time.
Iron molds also have another name, called iron molds. They can be traced back to the Warring States Period and were used to cast farm tools. Until the Ming Dynasty, most farm tools were cast in this way, including the iron molds used by Liu Chengzong at the foot of Liangzhou City. It's cast like this.
There is only one reason why this technology has not been applied to casting artillery. Farm tools are very cheap consumables and do not require high toughness. Iron castings cool quickly and produce very brittle pig iron, which can fully meet most requirements. The use environment of agricultural tools, iron mold casting can produce a large number of agricultural tools quickly and in large quantities.
Artillery is a completely different thing, it requires toughness very much.
Therefore, as soon as Liu Chengzong proposed to the military craftsmen to cast cannons in iron molds, the craftsmen raised their concerns.
People say that it is not technically difficult, it just requires a little thinking. After all, no one has ever cast such a large thing from an iron mold.
The biggest problem is that if you mold a cannon out of iron, the cannon will explode.
The iron mold itself is not a technology for casting high-quality, high-value, and high-demand items.
The military craftsmen respected the commander Liu Chengzong who was willing to work with them. They also knew that Liu Chengzong valued technology, so they didn't mind telling him more.
They told Liu Chengzong that the quality of the cannons cast by the Marshal's Mansion using clay molds was very good. It was the most common cannon casting technology in the Ming Dynasty. There was also a clay mold lost wax method for cannon casting. The cannons produced were better than simple clay molds, both internally and externally. It's smooth and requires no further repairs, but the lost wax method is best used in the winter.
The quality of the iron cannon cast by these two iron casting techniques far exceeds that of iron molds.
The best cannon-casting technology in the world is in Shanxi, which has crucible steel. Liu Chengzong seized a fake iron goose-wing knife from Bai Yingzi in his early years, which was made by a Shanxi knifemaker.
Liu Chengzong never delved into where the raw material of the knife came from. It was cast from crucible steel. Some of the Hongwu iron cannons made in Shanxi also used this technology to cast steel.
Liu Chengzong wrote down the news, but did not change his mind due to the dissuasion of the craftsmen. It was imperative to cast iron molded cannons, otherwise his army would not have heavy artillery capable of attacking the city wall.
The biggest advantage of iron molds is that they can be produced in large quantities in a short time. This technology is very suitable for casting cannons during wartime. After all, even in the summer, it would take a month to dry the clay molds and put them into use. However, with iron molds, the iron kiln can be built immediately. , put into use repeatedly.
In his opinion, there is no bad technology in this world, only technology that is not used in the right place. Bronze cannons are of good quality, small in size, and more durable. They are very suitable as field cannons. The disadvantage is that they are expensive to build.
The quality of pig iron cannons is poor. To achieve the same quality, they must be heavier and thicker. Therefore, they are very suitable as offensive guns, defensive guns, and even warships.
Iron molds, on the other hand, can increase the advantages of iron cannons from another direction, including production speed.
Since the customer had this request, the craftsmen no longer hesitated. In strict accordance with Liu Chengzong's requirements and parameters, it took only three days to cast the cleanest and most beautiful heavy artillery since the Marshal's Mansion made its own artillery.
The barrel of this cannon is smooth and clean. It does not have the pits and pits that need to be modified like those cast from clay molds. Of course, trachoma and pores are inevitable. This is a problem caused by the casting process itself. Even after four hundred years, the casting will still be Trachoma and stomata are present.
But at the same time, it is also the artillery with the shortest life since the Marshal's Mansion built the artillery. During the three test firings with equal weight ammunition, it exploded into three pieces with a loud noise when the third shot was fired.
Fortunately, it was just a test firing. One gun was broken, but there were no casualties. It was considered a near miss.
The craftsmen accompanying the army were frightened. Liu Chengzong, who recovered from the loud noise, was not angry. He just smiled and waved his hands to the craftsmen and said: "You all strictly followed my requirements. It has nothing to do with you if the cannon explodes. The problem is mine." "
He stared at the big piece of iron that exploded for a long time, and finally slapped his thigh and realized the problem - the thousand-pound cannon in the Marshal's Mansion was made of copper. He used the model of a copper cannon to use it on the iron cannon. , and also used an iron-moulded cannon with poor cast iron quality. If it doesn't explode, who will?
With the experience of this failure, Liu Chengzong quickly changed the design, increased the proportion of modules other than caliber, and changed the diameter to 22 times. At the same time, there were certain differences in the shape design of the medicine chamber and the breech strengthen.
After all, Liu Shizi is a person who accurately knows that there is something in the world called chamber pressure. Regarding the ratio of the blown and newly designed parts, he chose the thickness of all parameters except the caliber to be one to one point. One of them, directly selected the cylindrical shape.
After some strengthening, the weight of this cast-iron cannon, which was over ten feet long and fired twenty kilograms of shells, jumped to five thousand seven hundred kilograms.
This time, the test firing effect was very good. It withstood three test firings of equal-weight ammunition, and achieved a range of 4,200 steps at a high angle of fire, blasting nearly twelve miles with one cannon.
In the test firing at a slightly higher angle of normal use, it also achieved an astonishing range of 1,100 steps, which means the effective range reached three miles.
The cannon is very good, it can be said to be the best cannon Liu Chengzong has ever seen in his life, but he can't move.
With a dead weight of nearly 6,000 kilograms, a gun carriage that is sturdy and resistant to bumps, and a front carriage or auxiliary carriage to load ammunition, what does this monster mean?
This means that this artillery team needs at least eight Hequ horses to pull it. At the same time, the two groups of horse teams rotate, and they also need to prepare spare draft horses after the war horses die. Therefore, the entire artillery team needs to prepare 24 to 32 horses.
According to the popular naming method of artillery today, Liu Chengzong even wanted to name it the mighty general Zhu Shou. As the saying goes, two horses are a chariot, four horses are a four horses, and eight horses are a chariot. It has to use the ancient emperor's travel ceremonial guard.
After the new cannon was cast, Liu Chengzong immediately ordered the camp to break out and head towards the Liangzhou Guards, who were battling wits and courage with the Gansu Second Battalion.
On the seventh night of June, the Liangzhou ghost soldiers, who had been suppressed for a long time, finally discovered that the Marshal's army had sown almost all the surrounding land. They set up camp back outside the west gate, and their work and rest schedules became normal.
Therefore, they decided to go out of the city to kill the marshal's army. At three o'clock in the middle of the night, six hundred ghost soldiers, led by the Zhenyi guerrilla Tang Mingshi, wore the same military uniforms as the Gansu Second Battalion. They drew their helmets and guns, and opened the The west gate of the city gate came out quietly.
It is very difficult for the ghost soldiers to attack, because in the past eight days, the Gansu Second Battalion has set up eight camps in the west of the city, and each camp means that they have to cultivate nearby fields.
Although the army moved their camps after plowing, and all equipment such as tents and wooden forts were taken away, the trenches they dug were never filled.
The ghost soldiers walked very carefully at night. The marshal's army's camps were all five miles away from the city, but they set up many bonfires between two and three miles away to guard against night attacks. The ghost soldiers could only bypass the bonfires.
At the same time, the ghost soldiers could not raise fire, so they had to go around the bonfire with great difficulty, and they could only walk nervously in the dark night for fear of falling into the trench dug by the marshal's army.
Tang Mingshi was a brave and skilled general. He led the ghost soldiers to steal the camp in order to avenge his previous shame. However, his battle with Gao Yingdeng had already made him realize that the Marshal's Army was not that easy to fight, and he acted very cautiously. He found that the Marshal's Army seemed to There was no sentry posted around the camp, which gave him a bad feeling.
Seeing the closed camp close at hand, he felt unwilling to retreat. He thought to himself, what if they were tired of farming?
So he sent two people to sneak into the camp to investigate.
Within a moment, the gate of the camp was opened from the inside out. The two spies ran back and lowered their voices and exclaimed: "General, there is no one in the camp. All the soldiers' armor and mattresses have been taken away from the military tent, but the tea is still warm!"
"this……"
Tang Mingshi thought about it, wondering if this place is haunted? I didn’t see them leaving the camp!
In the field 200 steps outside the camp, Bee Tail Needle stood quietly looking at the dark outline and figures of the camp in the distance, holding the Yan Ling Dao of an officer of the Marshal's Office.
In fact, the surrounding land has not been planted yet. He just wanted to amuse the officers and soldiers, so he set up camp again after finishing his work today.
Bee Tail Needle is now a general of the Ganzhou Battalion, but he was originally a bandit from Shaanxi in the past, and he was not a very good bandit. He followed Li Lao Jackal, and Li Lao Jackal's group of old thieves had one characteristic: they slept day and night. At night, his eyes are as bright as a wolf.
The battle that the Bee Tail Needle fought to become famous following Zhao Fuhuan was also a night battle. Therefore, during the days when the Ganzhou Battalion was farming outside Liangzhou City, he and Ding Guodong took turns, starting farming in the evening and returning at midnight. It can be regarded as a purposeful attempt to train soldiers' ability to operate at night.
They sleep in the back during the day and are active at night.
Looking at the large group of blurry black figures standing outside the camp, Bee Tail Needle chuckled disdainfully and looked around: "Ghost soldier? Let's see who is the ghost soldier."
To his left and right, rows of soldiers squatted behind the field ridges. Three Hongwu general cannons and six Wanli Nantang cannons were lined up, aiming at the dark figure in front of the camp.
Behind the enemy, another group of black shadows was slowly approaching. Lying down in the field between the ghost soldiers and Liangzhou City, they were the soldiers led by his general.
In the silent night, the bee-tail needle raised his hand and shook it above his head. The artilleryman behind the field ridge took out a fire stick and blew it, igniting the fuse on the fire hook. Then the bee-tail needle blew a loud whistle with his hand.
Fire hooks were fired at the fire gates of the artillery. Nine artillery pieces with an average age of one hundred years blasted at the ghost soldiers sent by Liangzhou City. Pieces of loose particles were shot out in the night, frightening the suspicious ghost soldiers. They had to scatter, and the defenders on the city who had been prepared for a long time also fired artillery, trying to wake up the energetic Bee Tail Needle.
This night attack must have failed. Tang Mingshi led the ghost soldiers and ran towards the west gate of Liangzhou City. They were still two or three miles away from the west gate. They had already entered the range where the marshal's army had set up a bonfire outside the city. He kept running with him. The soldiers ran and asked: "General, look, do we have too many soldiers?"
At this time, when he ran to the bonfire area, the surrounding situation became much clearer. Only then did Tang Mingshi realize that there were a lot of people running after him. Not to mention that they had been beaten by cannons, even if they had not been cannoned, they would not have been like this. The number of people, at a rough look, was at least a thousand.
The hairs on Tang Mingshi's neck suddenly stood up because he suddenly realized that he didn't seem to have seen the soldier who just talked to him - boom!
Before he could turn his head, an iron bone hammer hit his helmet. The last sound he heard before passing out was the hoarse voice of the soldier who knocked him out: "There are enemies among us!"
Good evening!
(End of chapter)
