Zhang Wanbang was shooting at the shooting range when he received the news from Quanli on Luyuan Ridge outside the city requesting to enter the city.
Target shooting is one of his recent hobbies. In addition to the military changes that many generals are gradually deeply aware of-that is, the trend of comprehensive firearms in the military, there is also an important reason because the Jinghua Ordnance Industry Group A small number of experimental weapons were provided during the war to test their actual combat performance.
Zhang Wanbang is one of the top representative generals in the Gao family's musket formation. The weapon he is most interested in is the new generation of standard infantry muskets: code-named Wanli Type 3 flintlock rifle, or Wanli Type 3 for short.
It has been more than 20 years since the Wanli Type 3 debuted compared to the Wanli Type 2. It took such a long time for a new generation of standard muskets to be launched. What are the improvements of the new muskets? It is with this enthusiasm that Zhang Wanbang has been practicing high-intensity target shooting recently to experience it personally.
As a general whose greatest achievements came from the musket array, Zhang Wanbang's understanding of muskets was absolutely outstanding in this era, and he was also very aware of the problems with muskets, the main weapon.
It was not Zhang Wanbang's turn to comment on the problems that existed before Wanli II came out, but someone once summed it up perfectly. Qi Jiguang clearly pointed out in "Military Training Records":
"Firearms are my specialty, but firearms have their own setbacks. For example, if there is a battalion of three thousand soldiers, each battalion is filled with firearms, but only three thousand rods. At that time, four camps must be deployed, and each side can only have six hundred rods. What's the situation? The camp was definitely not that large, and we did not dare to use all 600 rods at once, so we thought about how to continue. We were divided into five classes, each with less than 100 rods.
When facing battle, life and death are only in front of us. Everyone has a yellow face and a dry mouth, and is panicked and has trembling hands. Some people put the lead in first or forgot to put the lead in. Their mouths are crooked and different in size. The lead does not fit the mouth and is also pointed and slanted. There are different sizes. Some are temporarily unable to fit into the mouth, some are only in the mouth, some are large and small, and flow out when the mouth is released. Some are unable to get the medicine in by twisting the thread, and twist it with a finger to spit, and some are extinguishing the fire line. None of these can be released, and there are already twenty rods.
There are more than forty rods that can be released at an inaccurate height and cannot be burned when moistened. The winner is only over twenty strokes. There were hits in his legs and horse's legs, which were not fatal, and he could not be beaten to death. Among them, only a dozen people died due to his fatal injuries.
The enemy is charging at me with thousands of people. How can I kill more than ten people and make them run away? But now, before you and I go out and see the enemy, we are already considered defeated. "
What are the main problems Qi Jiguang pointed out here? First of all, the fully armed troops can only form a square formation when encountering the enemy. Otherwise, they will have to worry about being outflanked by the enemy. However, the number of muskets that can be allocated to each side is too small, and they dare not fire them all at once. , otherwise the firepower will be interrupted, and once it is broken in - he was guiding the training of troops in the Beijing Camp at the time, imagining that the enemy was the Mongolian cavalry - the entire army will be completely annihilated.
This issue is almost the "firepower density" issue that Gao Jinggong emphasized most in the firearms reform. Firepower density refers to the number of ammunition fired with a certain number of weapons in a certain period of time. The greater the number of ammunition fired, the greater the firepower density, and vice versa.
However, here we need to look at other reasons why Qi Jiguang believed that the firepower density of the Ming Army's weaponized troops was seriously insufficient at that time, that is, the loading problem.
Qi Jiguang said that soldiers are usually very nervous before the battle. At this time, the projectiles (the lead he mentioned) and the muzzle of the gun are of different sizes and crooked, so the soldiers often cannot load the gunpowder, or cannot load it in place, and The loaded projectiles were not tied tightly, and once the muzzle drooped, they could still flow out along the barrel, or the fuse was not installed properly after loading, causing the fire to be extinguished, etc.
Although these situations may sound like accidents, they are actually very common in actual combat and seriously affect operations. On this basis, coupled with the poor shooting skills of the musketeers, or the fact that although they hit the enemy but failed to hit the vital point, etc., the actual combat effectiveness of the purely firearm-based troops at that time was very worrying.
The emergence of Wanli II has brought a qualitative leap in solving the above problems. It uses a flintlock firing method, which directly eliminates a series of problems in loading the fuse (i.e. the matchlock of the matchlock). The use of paper shell fixed charges greatly reduces the difficulty of charging and greatly improves the success of charging. rate and pass rate, and improved the loading speed.
It can be said that even if the level of Jinghua Wanli II is pushed forward for another hundred years, it will not be outdated at all. However, this is not the reason why Gao Pragmatic has delayed for twenty years without "guiding" a new generation of rifles.
The reason why it has been delayed for so long is not actually a problem with Gao Pragmatic's guiding ideology for the next generation of rifles, but a problem with "standardization", an issue he has always emphasized. Or in other words, some things just need a certain amount of time to settle.
What's up? Cultivate a new generation of advanced craftsmen with new thinking patterns. These craftsmen must not only be able to understand the techniques of their predecessors, but also be proficient in the use of new weights and measures.
What are new weights and measures? It's the meters, decimeters, centimeters, and millimeters that Gao pragmatic has always wanted to develop, because he feels that it is difficult to achieve high-precision standardization using Ming's current standards.
It is obviously very difficult to build a new set of weights and measures, especially when it is not convenient for him to reform this problem from the national level. Therefore, he needs the Jinghua Craftsman School to train batches of new students so that these students can be used in the subsequent This new type of weights and measures was widely promoted in the work until it formed an actual standard in the military industry system.
What is the sales standard of a first-class enterprise? This is it.
If you want to make the best weapon, learn from me! Come on, come on, let’s take this set of standards and learn them. Once we’ve mastered them, we can continue the discussion.
So, what is the improvement of Wanli 3-style now compared to Wanli 2-style? The biggest advantage is to continue to strengthen "standardization".
The Wanli III Type, which adopts the latest unified standard, has higher standards for the processing accuracy of each component. Moreover, this time it not only strictly stipulates the standards for the firearm itself, but also imposes requirements on the production of projectiles.
The Wanli III style no longer allows the use of various "homemade lead", that is, homemade projectiles, but requires the full use of standard projectiles produced by Jinghua itself or authorized to ensure that they will not appear too large or too small, or even crooked and rubbish. Projectiles cause various launch malfunction situations.
The same goes for gunpowder. On the premise of continuing to use paper shell fixed charges, the Wanli III Type is required to only use gunpowder produced by Jinghua or authorized by Jinghua.
These gunpowders are packed in paper shells, but one of the leading technologies is the "paper shell". Hey, wasn’t the Wanli II model previously just a custom-made paper case? How come this paper case also has advanced technology?
The answer is, because this time the paper shell of the Wanli III type used nitrocellulose paper, which is no longer the ordinary paper before.
What's the difference? To put it simply, the previous ordinary paper shells needed to be cleaned after each shot. Otherwise, the slowly burning paper residue remaining in the gun chamber would directly ignite the next bullet, and may even cause casualties to the user.
However, nitrified paper is different. It - well, it also needs to clear the chamber, but it doesn't have to be cleaned every time. Instead, it can be done after several rounds.
Although this progress may not seem big, in actual combat, this progress is actually very large. Because on the current East Asian field battlefield, after several rounds of volleys from the Ming army's gun formations, the chance that the opponent has not collapsed is actually very low - if it still hasn't collapsed, then you can clear the chamber and fight again. ah!
Of course, when playing with paper-shell fixed charges, the front-end technology is gunpowder granulation technology. However, this problem has actually been almost solved in the Wanli II era, but there has been some slight progress this time. The progress is that the average size of the granules has been adjusted again, and the manufacturing process has also improved, making the difference in particle size smaller - that is, each small particle of gunpowder has become more "about the same size".
Not every advancement in science and technology can show cross-era performance. Many advances are accumulated, and the same is true for the progress of Wanli 3-style compared to Wanli 2-style.
Based on the battlefield performance of Wanli Type II over the years, the general reaction of the military in various towns is that the range is far enough and the accuracy is not much, but the lethality is slightly insufficient.
Therefore, when it comes to Wanli Type 3, it prefers large caliber and low muzzle velocity compared to Wanli Type 2, which means that its long-distance shooting accuracy will decrease, but its power will increase a lot (including gunpowder efficiency). The reason for the improvement), and the decrease in accuracy is still within the acceptable range - besides, the military does not play sniping, and the accuracy is definitely enough for volleyball.
During this period, Zhang Wanbang not only practiced target shooting repeatedly by himself, but also conducted target shooting training with the entire army, and obtained quite good data. He believed that if these data were submitted, they would be taken seriously, and he might even be rewarded with a batch of new muskets for his merits. - This is one of the reasons why he is so enthusiastic.
After receiving Quan Li's request to enter the city, Zhang Wanbang was not in a hurry. He came out of the shooting range, took the face towel from the servant and wiped his sweat. He turned around and ordered his followers: "The training at the shooting range remains unchanged. Each department takes turns. For target shooting training, the firearms were tested by erecting a human-shaped wooden sign five feet high and two feet wide at eighty paces, and seven out of ten shots were successful."
After a pause, he added: "As for rewards and punishments, if you hit one out of three bullets, you will get a flat reward; if you hit two bullets, you will get a reward of one silver point; if you hit three bullets, you will get a five-point bonus.
If he misses once, he will be beaten with three sticks; if he misses twice, he will be beaten with six sticks; if he misses three times, he will be beaten with nine sticks; if he misses five times, he will be beaten with forty sticks and retired. Those who are unwilling to hit will be fined five cents for one time, one point for two times, and one and a half points for three times. "
The confidants clasped their fists solemnly: "Yes, join the army." Zhang Wanbang was actually a guerrilla general with the rank of general, but his subordinates naturally wanted to call him a senior officer, so they called him "joined the army."
"What did you just say that Quan Li is going to do? Is he going to the city?" Zhang Wanbang walked to his seat and sat down. He grabbed the letter sent by Quan Li and read it. At this time, there was no such thing as Korean characters. This stuff was naturally all in Chinese, so he seemed to have no problem with it.
Not long after reading the letter, Zhang Wanbang laughed a few times inexplicably, and a close confidant asked: "Why is Shen Rong laughing?"
Zhang Wanbang's snort turned into a sneer, and he shook his head and said: "This guy wants to play a trick of pretending to be ignorant and concealing the truth. Little does he know that Lord Marquis has already told me, and Admiral Ma also repeatedly told me that no matter what happens, during my defense of the city, Everyone must adhere to one unshakable principle:
Only our Great Tomorrow Soldiers can be stationed in Hanyang City. The rest, whether they are the Korean Army, the Jurchen Army or other rebel armies, can only be left to me to wait outside the city!
Quan Li wants to enter Hanyang? Yes, of course, let him attack the city. I will wait here, sir. I want to see how much he, the marshal of North Korea, weighs! "
The confidant who sent the message was speechless and said with a smile: "Shenrong, North Korea is also a loyal vassal after all, and Quan Li is the marshal of North Korea. Is this reply... slightly inappropriate? How about we change the explanation?"
Zhang Wanbang leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, hummed again, and said reluctantly: "You mean to give them some face, right? Hey, let me tell you, face is such a thing I earned it all.
Look at Dong Zongrong, he was also a veteran of the Ming Dynasty in the past, and he had much more military exploits than a junior like me. But this time he made such a big mistake when he went to fight Xianxing, and he lost a lot of money in the battle. Thousands of people!
Let me think about it. Isn't this the biggest loss suffered by the generals in a single battle in the battle commanded by the Marquis? So you see, Dong Zongrong himself was anxious. After less than five days of rest, the entire army hurriedly sent out troops to pursue Nabeshima Katsushige again, and Quan Li, a Korean, actually dared to disobey his order - this was because of the attack If you can't do it, you really lose face. "
Zhang Wanbang is a general of Xuanda, and he actually has a good relationship with Dong Yiyuan. The two families are still related by marriage, and they even call him Dong Shishu when they meet in private. However, he has such a personality that he really dares to say something.
The confidant Ding smiled apologetically and said, "I think it was just an accident. Quan Li can't be compared with Dong Zongrong. Don't you think so, Shenrong?"
"That's true." Zhang Wanbang snorted softly and said, "I have learned about Quan Li's achievements, but he just defended a Japanese attack in a small mountain town with difficult terrain. The main reason was that he took advantage of the terrain. , the Japanese pirates had a large army but could not use it.
In addition, the Japanese pirates could not figure out the movements of our heavenly soldiers, and for fear that they were attacking us, our magic soldiers suddenly descended from the sky to rescue Quan Li, and then we immediately withdrew after the attack was thwarted.
After all, Quan Li got an advantage in that battle, so when the Japanese pirates retreated, he was too busy to pack up and leave? If you are really capable, then you just stay in Xingzhou Mountain City and wait for the Japanese pirates to come again. Why don't you dare? With such terrain conditions, if it were me, as long as the supplies were enough, I could stay there and wait for the Japanese pirates to come and die. "
The servants laughed. This time it was not flattery, but they all felt that what Zhang Wanbang said was the truth. The characteristic of their Zhang family army is that they are particularly good at defending. This is true for positional battles and the same for city defense battles - no, it should be said that they are even less afraid.
Especially since they had received intelligence before being transferred to North Korea, they knew that the Japanese pirates were better than muskets and shorter than artillery. Bird guns are useful in field battles and in city defense, but they are somewhat lacking in siege.
According to the new ideas instilled in the high-pragmatic military reform, what is most needed for siege is artillery. The more powerful the better, not only is it effective to collapse the city wall and directly break the city, but even the sound of thousands of artillery guns to scare the enemy is a powerful weapon in itself.
Continuous large-caliber heavy artillery bombardment can severely damage the morale of the enemy. In severe cases, it can cause the enemy's morale to collapse and collapse without a fight. They will even panic when they hear that they are going to fight with the Ming army in the future - Governor Konishi is actually now It kind of means that.
Zhang Wanbang waved his hand at this time and said: "Tell Quan Li that this general has been ordered to defend the city, and the military order he received is not to allow any army other than the Ming army to enter Hanyang. He wants to go to the city to meet the King of Joseon and it will be easier for him. Going into the city alone is...
Forget it, I am a very kind-hearted person, so I was accommodating to him and allowed him to bring up to ten servants with him. Just tell him so. Oh, by the way, I will notify all departments on their rotation to cancel their rotation and stay ready for war at any time. "
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