There are two major categories after bombs. The first category is guns.
In the eyes of Gao Pangshi, a later generation, guns and cannons are two completely different categories, but this is not the case in the eyes of Mingren. In their eyes, muskets and artillery belong to the same category, but they are different in size.
Gao Pragmatic is too lazy to bother with this kind of problem. Anyway, in his plan, guns are guns and cannons are cannons. The divisions are clear and they develop separately.
In 1453 AD, the Ottoman Turks captured the once-impregnable Constantinople in just 40 days, ending the thousand-year rule of the Byzantine Empire in one fell swoop. At that moment, Europeans were directly shocked by the "God of War" for the first time. From then on, they began to have a huge interest in artillery, and eventually developed it to cooperate with navigation technology and open up the road to world colonization.
In fact, anyone who knows how to play chess knows that there is a cannon on the Chinese chess board that can shoot from across the mountain. It is a very powerful killer. With it, you can often "shoot the cow from across the mountain" and kill the enemy. However, if you pay attention, you will find that the cannons in chess are mostly next to the stone characters. Because the ancient word "gun" is composed of the characters "stone" and "包". According to the analysis of the principles of Chinese hieroglyphics, the early word "cannon" symbolizes a trebuchet that uses a bag to hold stones and uses the principle of leverage to throw the stones to kill enemy soldiers.
In that distant era, such long-range weapons could be used if the distance was long during a war or to attack a city. Specifically, a lever is installed on a wooden frame. A large stone is placed on one end of the lever, and the other end is pulled by many "gunners" with ropes to accumulate a certain amount of elasticity and throw the stone far away to attack the enemy.
"Throw" and "gun" have similar pronunciations and similar meanings, so the trebuchet is the distant ancestor of modern cannon. But because the projectiles fired at that time were stone projectiles, the ancients called it "cannon" at first. Later, gunpowder was invented, and people switched to using gunpowder to launch iron projectiles, so there was the "cannon" next to the word "fire".
Before the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's rebel army was the army with the highest firearms equipment rate at that time. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the development of firearms has never stopped, and its status and proportion in the army have been rising. By the Yongle period, the Ming Dynasty even had a formal artillery establishment, which was subordinate to the Shenji Battalion of the later famous "Three Battalions".
At the beginning, the main task of the Shenji Battalion was to train the officers and soldiers of the Beijing Guard and the "escort cavalry officers and soldiers" in the use of various firecrackers and other firearms. In reality, it was more like an artillery training center.
Later, as the importance of the Shenji Battalion became increasingly important, it assumed the function of "defending the capital internally and preparing for external battles". Become a strategic mobile force under the direct control of the emperor. Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, attached great importance to this military organization specializing in firearms. He not only equipped the Shenji Battalion with the most advanced muskets and artillery equipment of the Ming Dynasty at that time, but also introduced some foreign artillery from the Western "barbarians" to the Shenji Battalion. Training and copying at the same time.
At that time, Shenji Camp was a large camp, with jurisdiction over Zuoshao, Zuoye, Zhongjun, Youye, Youshao and the Five Thousand Battalion. Only the Five Thousand Battalion had 5,000 good horses. In general, it is equivalent to a Guards regiment that people in later generations are accustomed to. The emperor appoints trusted eunuchs or nobles to serve as the highest officer of the regiment, that is, the admiral.
After the establishment of the Shenji Battalion, in addition to training a large number of gunmen and artillerymen for other troops, they often accompanied Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, on expeditions and galloped on the battlefield. During the battle, the Shenji Battalion used its intensive firepower advantage to kill a large number of enemy troops, thereby establishing meritorious service for victory.
Later, the proportion of firearms deployed by frontier armies and local troops also gradually increased. Especially during the Jiajing period when Japanese pirates invaded the coast, the development of firearms made new progress. The Qi Jiajun recruited and established by Qi Jiguang also respected the application of firearms. .
Of course, the Qi Jiajun is a force that combines hot and cold weapons and is fully developed. Qi Jiguang used his outstanding military talents to fully consider the development of firearms, and then cooperated with cold weapons to achieve the development level of this era and the actual situation of the Ming army. The situation was optimized.
However, Qi Jiguang sees the development of firearms very clearly. He believes that the development of cold weapons has been close to stagnant so far, and human combat ability itself has its limits. If greater progress can be made in military development in the future, it will definitely It can only come from the development of firearms, so Qi Jiguang is very concerned about the development of firearms, and even personally participates in the research and development, innovation, modification, etc. of various firearms.
In history, Qi Jiguang not only made many pioneering achievements in landmine weapons, but also made great achievements in the development of artillery. He personally built five types of Folan cannons for the Qi Army. Among them, the No. 1, 23 and 3 large-sized Folang aircraft are used for the defense of naval guns and castles (similar to bunkers), the No. 4 medium-sized Folan aircraft is used for mobile combat with the army, and the No. 5 small-sized Folan aircraft is used by individual soldiers. According to the records in Mao Yuanyi's Military Preparation Chronicles, at that time, in principle, it was possible to use the size of the artillery caliber as the base to determine the relationship between the bomb weight and the change in the charge. This was a manifestation of the improvement in the design and manufacturing level of artillery in the mid-Ming Dynasty.
This idea is highly recognized by Gao Pragmatic. After all, the development of artillery in history, in addition to being distinguished by shooting methods such as howitzers and cannons, was mainly distinguished by different calibers. The auxiliary criteria were bullet weight and charge.
Since Gao Pragmatic had started doing "goal planning" when he first traveled through time a few years ago, and he also clearly had a plan to enter the military industry, he would certainly not let go of artillery manufacturing. However, after all, artillery is an unusual and important military weapon. He can't produce physical objects at the moment. In addition, he needs his own industries to form a cyclic development chain of "nurturing new industries with the profits of old industries" in the future. Therefore, artillery production In this area, he must ensure future technical advantages and cannot leak too many production technology elements in advance.
This is very contradictory, because Qi Jiguang's application of artillery does not have big problems in terms of general ideas. Except for the defense of the city with giant cannons, which is a highly pragmatic approach that has always been considered problematic, other ideas are basically in line with his understanding. Therefore, Gao Pragmatic's original plan to only guide the artillery configuration and usage ideas was defeated and bankrupted in advance by Qi Jiguang's genius foresight.
After Gao pragmatic struggled for a while, he decided to improve the strength of Qi Jiguang's artillery from another aspect.
"Captain Qi." Gao Pingshi looked very sincere and said: "I can't help you much with the manufacture of artillery at the moment. I hope you can understand this."
Qi Jiguang smiled and said: "Gao Shidu didn't say it, but Qi also knew it. After all, artillery manufacturing still depends on the skills of the craftsmen. The most we can do is make demands or give suggestions to them from other aspects. Really How can you take action? It's like watching someone compete in martial arts. The person watching is relaxed and judgmental, as if he is a master of martial arts. If he really goes up to compete, he will be knocked down by one punch. "
Gao Pragmatic laughed: "That's not what I meant - I mean, although I can't help now with the artillery manufacturing itself, I can provide a little help from another aspect."
