Chapter 044 The key to restricting the development of firearms
Cheng Shijie faced the most intuitive problem. He was just a guard who had just been promoted to the fourth rank by Sun Yuanhua. Moreover, this garrison has not been reviewed by the imperial staff. In fact, his job is still an ordinary fifth-grade Qianhu official.
In the late Ming Dynasty, a strange dynasty with nobles and lowly military officials, even a third-rank general had no say in front of a gentry with no official position, let alone a fifth-rank Qianhu.
Cheng Shijie smiled bitterly and said: "I am just a small Qianhu, and I speak lightly... If I were the commander of the Dengzhou Guard and could control an army of tens of thousands, there would still be a slight possibility."
"My lord is so wrong!"
Song Kangnian said seriously: "My lord thinks highly of Jin Yousheng, but he also underestimates yourself!"
Song Kangnian was a charlatan sorcerer with a lot of experience in the charlatan. The swords Cheng Shijie brought over were all magical weapons. This showed that Cheng Shijie had a channel that he didn't know about. This channel could continuously send magical weapons. .
What's this?
This is Cheng Shijie’s resource.
Secondly, Cheng Shijie also owns those valuable crystal ornaments and exquisite mechanisms (music boxes) that can emit music, which also illustrates the problem.
Cheng Shijie has a group of skilled craftsmen who can provide him with a steady stream of financial support. Although things are rare and valuable, the problem is that although Dengzhou is not small, compared to the 188 prefectures in the 13 provinces of the two capitals of the Ming Dynasty, Dengzhou Prefecture is only one of them.
This means that once operated properly, these crystals can be converted into a large amount of money and food. In this era, money and food are soldiers and power.
Seeing Cheng Shijie's hesitation, Song Kangnian continued: "Jin Yousheng is not the Emperor of the Han Dynasty, not the Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, and certainly not Liu Jinu. Although he understands the general situation, considers the overall situation, knows how to advance and retreat, and understands gains and losses, however, he cannot be in a corner of his mind. Overall, his long-cherished wish in life is nothing more than to continue the wealth and power of the Jin family. In his heart, he does not have the ambition to enrich the country and strengthen the army, let alone the sufferings of the people in the world. He has no interest in doing such things as conferring military merit on land, let alone I don’t have the guts to do it. But my lord is different.”
Cheng Shijie smiled bitterly: "What's the difference?"
"My lord is the Dengzhou Guard Zuo Qianhu, but he is deeply concerned about the sufferings of the military households of Qianhu. For this reason, the lord did not hesitate to work for relief, and in a very short period of time, he won the hearts of the tens of thousands of people in Zuo Qianhu."
Song Kangnian continued: "The lord recruited young men and killed his predecessor, Qianhu Gaowang. This shows that the lord has the ability to make decisions. He used the method of recruiting young men to submit their names and advanced and retreated together with the soldiers. This has the ability to control people. , promoted Shen Mingyu and Zhang Yu to junior positions, and both of them were generals. This is a sign of knowing people. Now you are promoting military merit and conferring land... My lord, you have a simple and honest nature, and you regard the people as human beings, not just dogs! This is You are so kind-hearted, not to mention warriors, even among the scholar-bureaucrats, there are few who can match it. Now that you are training in Ninghai, I have high hopes for you. I really hope that one day you can hold up a hat for the common people of Shandong and the people of the world. An umbrella of protection from the wind and rain..."
Cheng Shijie knew about the historical Song Xiance, the little dwarf in front of him. Some people said that he was a liar. When he surrendered to Li Zicheng in Henan, he offered the "Eighteen Sons Master Artifact" and publicized the rise of the Li family, winning over Li Zicheng. Trusted by him, he was appointed as military adviser. Apart from trying to predict the good and bad luck of Li Zicheng's servants before the war, he never had any meaningful military concerns.
Some people say that he is a wizard, with unparalleled talents and wisdom, but he failed to choose a good monarch to assist him. He was one of the few people in the Dashun army who could keep a clear mind. After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, he, like Li Yan, was very worried about the corruption of Dashun. He repeatedly made suggestions, but received no response from Li Zicheng. He was very smart and used his heresy to impress Li Zicheng. He used the celestial phenomena to warn Li Zicheng, saying: "The celestial phenomena are tragic and the sun is lightless. The sentence should be suspended urgently." Finally, he was adopted by Li Zicheng, and many people were saved. After Li Yan was killed, Song Xiance believed that Li Zicheng was not the wise master he should assist. He became increasingly alienated from Niu Jinxing and others, and returned to the world to manage his old business, but disappeared.
However, it was not until he came into contact with Song Xiance that he discovered that he was actually a scholar who cared about the world. Although he was not accepted by the scholars because of his short stature and ugly appearance, he was indeed a scholar and regarded the world as his One's own ambition. If you can rise to the top, you should be a good prime minister and a famous minister in the central government, and you should be the parents of Li Shu in the corner. He is a scholar. In the troubled times of the late Ming Dynasty, when talents were withering and thousands of horses were in silence, he could be called a national scholar.
After an open and frank in-depth exchange with Cheng Shijie, Song Kangnian officially changed his name to Song Xiance, served as an aide to Cheng Shijie, and was personally responsible for money, food, teaching, and farming.
Now Cheng Shijie's family background is too thin, Zhang Ruyi is just a person who doesn't even have the reputation of being a scholar, and the others are either illiterate or powerful martial artists.
And Song Xiance is definitely the only talent that Cheng Shijie can use.
As Ning Haijun's garrison, Cheng Shijie still has a lot to do. First of all, the city of Zuo Qianhusuo is too small. If Ning Haijun is placed in Ninghai City where there are plenty of veterans, these young men will be easily infected. Bad habits.
Ninghai City, the original Dengzhou Weizuo Qianhu Office, can be said to have all kinds of weird things. Wang Jing, the official of Baihu, is a gambler. He carries two sets of dice with him and often invites people to gamble. The last time Qin Wu led more than 4,000 people to attack Zuo Qianhu, Wang Jing was responsible for guarding the West City, but West City was not the main attack direction. This guy actually blocked the city wall directly. It is said that because he was optimistic about Cheng Shijie, he made a full thousand and sixty-six dollars. More than a hundred copper coins.
Among the ten people in Wang Jing's household, nine are addicted to gambling. And Shen Changhe, this one is even more weird. He likes to peek at widows taking baths, even those in their fifties and sixties. But he just looked at it and never dared to use force. Even if he was discovered and beaten all over his head, he would not dare to fight back.
But he is such a weirdo. In the last battle to defend the city, he was stabbed nine times and was decapitated five times. He was slashed with an iron knife until it curled. In the end, he hugged a bandit and bit off one of his ears.
After much deliberation, Cheng Shijie decided to place the training site on the Purple Mountain, more than thirty miles southeast of Ning Haijun, where there is the ruins of Donghua Palace from the Jin Dynasty.
Ning Haijun arrived at Purple Mountain with more than 2,500 people. There was nothing here. The first thing was to build barracks, 2,500 soldiers, and more than 1,000 craftsmen.
It took almost a month to find that stone and wood could be obtained locally in Zijin Mountain, which also greatly increased the progress of the project.
However, just after the barracks were repaired, Shen Mingyu and Zhang Yu joined hands to find Cheng Shijie. During this period, Cheng Shijie drilled a total of sixty pressurized water wells for the Zijinshan Ning Naval Camp.
These hand-pressed water wells were not brought over by Cheng Shijie from later generations, but he told these craftsmen the principles of pressurized water wells, and the skilled craftsmen built these wells.
With the emergence of pressurized water wells, this new way of collecting water quickly gained everyone's recognition. Craftsmen said that they should set up a water well factory to specifically build this kind of pressurized water wells.
"Meet the general!"
Cheng Shijie's official appointment was announced half a month ago. The imperial court agreed to Sun Yuanhua's suggestion and agreed to establish the Ning Navy and confer Cheng Shijie on the fourth rank of General Mingwei. Now Cheng Shijie can be regarded as a general.
Cheng Shijie was a little curious: "Why are you so weird today?"
Shen Mingyu said: "There are some things that should have been talked about a long time ago, but the general has been busy during this time, so we have to slow down for a while. Now that everything is on track, it is time to talk about it."
Zhang Yu said: "To be honest, General, we are here to talk to you about the army."
Matters involving the army would only be major events, so Cheng Shijie naturally did not dare to neglect them. "What's wrong with the troops?"
Political power comes from the barrel of a gun, and those 2,500 Ning navy soldiers are his greatest asset. If something goes wrong... it will be troublesome to ask.
Shen Mingyu smiled bitterly and said: "General, you seem to have left us soldiers aside. The soldiers are quite dissatisfied and say..."
Cheng Shijie sighed and said: "There is no way around this. You guys came just in time. Let's gather all the officers together and hold a meeting to discuss the development of Ning Haijun!"
The development and construction of the army is a very important issue. Cheng Shijie also wants to equip his army with an AKM. It is best to add rocket launchers at the squad level, and then equip an artillery battalion and a tank battalion...
The problem is, this is not realistic.
Cheng Shijie doesn't have this ability, let alone an automatic rifle. He can't even handle one. This cheating time travel has too many restrictions. The first is the weight. The supplies that can be carried can only be carried by his physical strength. The limit has increased from more than fifty kilograms at the beginning to more than seventy kilograms now.
It was okay to return to the later world from the late Ming Dynasty. He could go back to any place where there were no people. But when he returned to the late Ming Dynasty from the later world, he could only go back to his dilapidated house on the second floor.
As the officers arrived at the meeting venue, this was the newly built Ning Haijun Military Headquarters. It was not large in area. The hall had about five open halls and was almost 200 square meters. When the meeting was held, the fifty sentry commanders under his command were summoned, and the ten commanders were not present. question.
Cheng Shijie took chalk and wrote on the blackboard in the conference hall: "What kind of army do you want!"
The officers looked at each other, wondering what Cheng Shijie meant.
In the end, Cheng Shijie got straight to the point: "What do you want to develop Ning Haijun into?"
Zhang Yu subconsciously raised his hand and said: "Report!"
"speak!"
"The better the equipment, the better!"
Cheng Shijie looked at the officers and said, "Are there any more?"
Shen Mingyu raised his hand and said: "Report!"
"speak!"
Shen Mingyu smiled bitterly and said: "We have a well-equipped army, but this is too difficult, too difficult! The Qi army once swept across the coastal Japanese pirates and Mongolian Tatars without a single defeat, but such a powerful force is only funded by money. A battalion of soldiers At least it costs tens of thousands of taels of silver, how can we have so much money now!"
"this is the key of the problem!"
Cheng Shijie said: "We don't have much money now. We can support more than 20,000 mouths. The money we seized from Qin Wu has been spent at a huge amount. Let's discuss what kind of equipment we should equip the troops with!"
Shen Mingyu said: "But Qi Jiajun owns one-third of the firearms. Qi Jiajun's firearms are unparalleled in the world!"
Zhang Yu retorted: "There is no need for firecrackers. If a row of guns passes by and a dozen or so guns explode, it will hurt morale too much. What's more, we don't have many firecrackers, only dozens. If we make firecrackers, one It requires more than ten taels of silver. We need to equip at least 800 firecrackers to have a firepower advantage to a certain extent. We also need to keep two hundred spares. A thousand firecrackers require at least seventeen or eight thousand taels of silver. .With all this money, we might as well build a crossbow machine!"
"Crossbow!"
"yes!"
"Crossbows are cheaper than fire guns! The silver used to make one fire gun can be used to build three crossbow machines. If one fire gun tries to shoot against three crossbow machines, it will be shot to tears!"
Only then did Cheng Shijie understand why the development of firearms in the Ming Dynasty did not quickly eliminate cold weapons like the Western style. The real factor restricting the development of firearms was cost performance.
Taking the Ming Dynasty border army's standard crossbow as an example, the Shansang Crossbow can shoot 200 steps, and the Formation-breaking Crossbow can shoot 220 steps. The longest-range fire blunderbuss in this era is the bird blunderbuss, which can only shoot 100 yards. , and there is no rifling. If the lead bullet wants to hit the target, it depends on fate.
At that moment, Cheng Shijie was moved.
Instead of equipping it with immature firecrackers, it is better to equip it with a crossbow.
PS: I'm very sorry. Lao Cheng was in bad health today. He felt terribly uncomfortable and had a splitting headache. I wrote this chapter intermittently for at least a day. Please comment, even one word, to support Lao Cheng.
