Suddenly they all fled back to Pengshan City. After counting the number of people, they found that although the battle was not very fierce, the losses were very heavy. Only 370 of the 1,000 new auxiliary troops escaped, and only 30 of the 800 civilians returned. Except for a few who died in the shelling, most of them were taken prisoner. For Hudu, these two-legged sheep are just consumables and cannon fodder, and they will die when they die. But only 290 of the 400 cavalry returned, which made his heart bleed. In fact, there were not many Mongolian cavalry who died in the Changqiuzhai artillery. They all died on the way to escape. Yu San led the special battalion and had already ambushed the Mongolian army's escape route. Because of their fast running, the cavalry not only enjoyed the welcome of landmines, but also received a warm welcome from muskets and grenades. On the other hand, when the new auxiliary troops and civilians behind saw the tragic situation in front, they either fled over the mountains and ridges in a detour, or simply surrendered. Not many people died on the way to escape.
After this battle, the Mongolian army did not go to Changqiu Village again to retaliate. The main reason was that it was a psychological shadow. This time, Hudu went to Changqiu Fort with the belief of victory. In his eyes, the Perak Army was still just a group of farmers eating grass seeds, relying only on firearms. Nowadays, a dignified man from the Northern Kingdom not only has artillery, but also has thunder, coupled with unrivaled cavalry and archery, how can he be invincible? It's just that they don't know that the Han people have a proverb: "Comparing people with others will lead to death, and comparing goods with goods will lead to throwing away." Although their artillery is much more powerful than trebuchets and crossbows, in the eyes of the Perak Army, it is a substandard product - the barrel is full of potholes, the bore is rough, and the diameter ratio of the barrel is wrong... Not only are the technical indicators unqualified. , and there are also serious safety risks. In Yu San's view, these weapons of mass destruction that the Mongolian army had worked so hard to build were not as affordable as the horses that were killed by bombs. Horse meat was extremely popular. And these crudely made artillery pieces had only one end in the hands of the Perak Army - to be refurbished for iron-making, and they had to be dragged back to Qiongzhou with great effort.
Another reason why the Mongolian army did not come to retaliate was with the arrival of spring. As if to make up for the drought in winter, as soon as March entered, there were several heavy rains in succession, which confirmed the saying that "a long drought must be followed by a long rain". As the saying goes, "Spring rain is as precious as oil." These few rains were especially true for the Perak Army. They not only solved the drought and ensured the grain harvest, but also caused the Nanhe River, Jinma River and other rivers to surge, and also washed away part of the Mongolian army's troops in Peng. Water barrier in mountain city. Although the current water level and river width are not enough to allow the Pili Army's heavy gunboats to pass, the light gunboats and light escort boats are already able to move freely near Pengshan City. Taking advantage of the rising water level, Le Quan'an sent Xia Dagen to attack the Mongolian navy in Pengshan City at night and burned more than 20 enemy warships. Now the Mongolian army is trying its best to prevent the Perak Army and Navy from going south to Pengshan, and has no intention of attacking Changqiu Village again.
Although the weather was still warm and cold, the brightness of early spring and the good news that followed made Ouyang Xuan feel good. First, the rising river water greatly reduced the number of times the Mongolian army sneaked across the river. The stable environment has set off a new climax in construction activities in the Perak Military Area. The Dayi Arsenal, which Ouyang Xuan is most concerned about, is almost completed. In accordance with the requirements of production while construction, Li Saner and a group of people eat and sleep in the factory every day, which has reached a quarter of the designed production capacity of the arsenal. According to the designed production capacity, if raw materials are sufficient, the Dayi Artillery Factory can produce about 100 light and ultra-light artillery pieces, 40 medium artillery pieces, and 20 heavy artillery pieces each month; the bomb factory can produce 200 landmines per month. , more than a thousand grenades; the musket factory can produce about 300 muskets per month. It should be noted that these firearms are all new products after upgrading. The quality is greatly improved compared to the old products, but they require high technology and are very time-consuming. For example, the barrel is not cast but bored and milled with a machine tool. The machine tool is also used to drill a straight hole in the barrel blank, and then a turning tool is inserted to pull out the rifling bit by bit. Although the original machine tools of the Pili Army are not very efficient and can only barely meet the production requirements, these machine tools will continue to be improved and iteratively upgraded.
Another good news for the military industry is the successful development of telescopes. The production of glass is also relatively simple. It is to heat quartz sand, limestone, feldspar, soda ash, boric acid and other prepared raw materials at high temperature to form a uniform bubble-free glass liquid, and then put the high-temperature burned glass mud into the mold. cool down. In fact, the Pili Army made a lot of glass before, but it was mainly used together with copper wire as firing devices for grenades and landmines, and its optical performance was not high. During this period, after repeated experiments at the institute, high-quality glass was finally produced, and a convex lens was ground according to Ouyang Xuan's instructions to create a telescope. Cao Ergou, the first batch of equipment, and the commander of the reconnaissance battalion Wu Qing and others were full of praise for this equipment, and repeatedly praised Brother Xuan for inventing "clairvoyance".
The good news for the civil industry is the commissioning of caustic soda plants. Hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, caustic soda, and soda ash are the basis of the chemical industry and can synthesize many important chemical raw materials. Before the mass production of caustic soda, the only thing that the Pili Army could mass-produce was sulfuric acid. With the knowledge of Ouyang Xuan University's chemical engineering major, it is not difficult to make the above compounds, but there is a lack of raw materials. For example, caustic soda is very simple. It only requires heating sodium sulfate, charcoal, and limestone in a furnace. After the large-scale mining of Glauber's Salt Mine (sodium sulfate) in Yixing Township on the edge of Wugen Mountain, the commissioning of the caustic soda plant seemed to be a matter of course.
Compared with the above good news, Ouyang Xuange paid more attention to the two seemingly inconspicuous news brought by Lu Dezhi. In Ouyang Xuan's view, this will have a major impact on the future development of the Pili Army. The first news is the preparation of textbooks. When Ouyang Xuan went to give lectures in various places, Yang Xiucai recorded and compiled them into a booklet. Later, Ouyang Xuan wrote teaching materials for various schools such as night schools, county schools, and state schools, but they were not systematic. Based on this situation, Rude organized personnel to reorganize the above content, and combined it with the needs of junior, intermediate and advanced students, and sorted it into five courses: mathematics, physics, chemistry, common sense, and politics. It was approved and checked again by Ouyang Xuan. As a basic subject in scientific research, mathematics, physics and chemistry are very important, and Ouyang Xuan spends the most time in this aspect. As for the general knowledge class, it included medicine, agriculture, astronomy, geography and other subjects. As a science student, Ouyang Xuan did not learn much and could only write down what he knew. As for politics, it focuses on expounding Ouyang Xuan's democratic and fair governance concepts.
The second news is the development of the printing industry. Due to the war, there were not many books under the rule of the Perak Army, and there was a lack of printing equipment. Lu Dezhi then ordered a set of movable type printing equipment to be built. The commonly used characters were made of copper, and the uncommon characters were made of clay. The first set of books printed by this equipment were textbooks directed by Ouyang Xuan. To say that Lu Dezhi really spent a lot of money on the textbook, the paper used for printing is made of wolfberry fiber. This is the paper used to make Jiaozi! Because textbooks are expensive to produce and the knowledge is too advanced, Rude deliberately controlled the number of prints and numbered each book to ensure that these textbooks were sufficient but not easily lost.
