choke element

Chapter 775 Thunderbolt

Half a quarter ago, Guo Ning went on a tour to boost morale and approached the rear of the front line.

Zhang Lin was notified from a distance, and trotted over from the car formation, Guo Ning waved his hand, signaling him to continue commanding, don't be distracted.

As the size of the army increases and there are more and more arms, on the one hand, the complexity of coordination and cooperation is getting higher and higher, and on the other hand, the degree of specialization in discovery, use, and command is also getting higher and higher.

Guo Ning feels that he is still young and quick to learn, but as the commander-in-chief of the entire army, he reads more military books and conducts more command drills so that he can control the overall situation.As for some special arms or special ordnance, he occasionally slapped his head when discussing with teachers and students in the military academy, and he had a flash of inspiration, but he didn't need to do subsequent detailed deduction in person.

For example, in front of you, there are three rows of sixty carts.

Since Ge Qingshu discovered a young man named Lu Wusi in northern Xinjiang, Xuande Mansion and Jinshan began to set up large-scale wool spinning factories to produce felt. Because the felt pattern is fine, warm and durable, it soon became a military fabric. important source of income for the government.

In order to transport large quantities of felt into the Central Plains, many merchants responded to the call of the military government and made great efforts to manufacture carts that could carry more load than before.The vehicles in front of them with thick axles, which look solid and abnormal at first glance, are the first batch of improvements. I heard that there are still several big businessmen joining forces to recruit craftsmen to design large vehicles with four wheels and the front wheels can be steered.

Naturally, these carts were not covered with felt. After the thick tarpaulin was removed, what was exposed was a huge machine that had not yet been assembled.Around each cart, there are more than 30 people busy. Firstly, the thick and heavy piles are removed to fix the deck, and then the whole machine is erected from the base.

Compared with when Guo Ning first saw it, this kind of machine is much smaller and its structure has become much simpler.After all, what they were going to throw was no longer a boulder weighing tens of hundreds of catties, but an iron cannon weighing less than twenty catties.

However, sixty counterweight catapults are lined up in a row, and the two or three feet long wood and heavy iron accessories are intertwined. The huge metal winch is rolling, and the huge counterweight wrapped in cowhide is slowly rising. There is a daunting aura.

Strictly speaking, this kind of machinery is the product of the failure of the military academy in Tianjin Prefecture, which frustrated many craftsmen and students.

At that time, what everyone wanted to make was a weapon that could bombard the enemy ship from a long distance and kill the sailors of the enemy ship so that they could plunder later. It was prepared to be used when they turned against the Song Dynasty navy.

Since a long-range attack was needed, everyone subconsciously chose the very mature catapult structure, and found a record in a certain textbook of the military academy, saying that there are big countries in the Western Regions that use anvils or boulders as counterweights to ensure the range. unique means.

It's a pity that a lot of materials were consumed in the end, but the finished product was not suitable for use at all.

The shipbuilding industry of the Ding Navy is far from being able to produce results. Unless the deck of any existing ship is specially modified, it will not be able to withstand the repeated pierce of the counterweight, even if the counterweight has been reduced to two hundred catties. The result is the same.The advantage of stable range brought by the counterweight is not worth mentioning under the conditions of sea waves and changing distances between ships.

What's more troublesome is that the long rope that threw out the iron cannon was entangled with the dense sails on the ship. During a training, it directly caused the iron cannon to roll straight up and down into the cabin, causing one death and six injuries after the explosion.The deceased was still a highly trusted craftsman in the shipyard.

So at this moment, a large number of people in the military academy, including Guo Ning's old acquaintance Ah Duo, were all disgraced, and turned to take the muskets used by the Song people in the Southern Dynasties as a model, and try to figure out a new way.

However, the trial product of this kind of counterweight hair stone machine was eliminated, but it was liked by Zhang Shengzhi, the ordnance department.At the same time, Zhang Lin, who witnessed the power of gunpowder weapons under Yidu City, also became very interested in this object.

Zhang Shengzhi has been in charge of the Ordnance Department for a long time, and has come into contact with a lot of strange and new things.

Although Zhang Lin is not known for his martial arts, he has always had his own small team dealing with various forces, and they have extraordinary talents.He is also very keen to participate in the military academy training organized by Dinghai, trying to make meritorious deeds on the battlefield, so he hit it off with Zhang Shengzhi there.

These two people can use much more resources than ordinary students in the military academy.

As a result, there appeared such troops in the Ding Navy who had been throwing iron cannons with counterweight stone machines.

More than ten days ago, Guo Ning led his troops to advance rapidly, and this team naturally couldn't keep up.But Guo Ning set up camp in Chenliu for a few days, and they chased after him.Because of its ability to attack cities and exert its power in field battles, it was immediately transferred to the front line.

"Duke, the projection calibration has been completed, and I'm going to order it to start."

With a smile on his face, Zhang Lin greeted Guo Ning.

Guo Ning reached out and stroked the green horse's mane, so that this good guy would not get too excited.He smiled and said to Zhang Lin: "Your own conductor, it's none of my business right now, I just want to watch the excitement."

Zhang Lin bowed and stepped back.

He returned to the center of the car formation, boarded the specially heightened command car, and looked down.

Directly below him are the five artillery groups that fired five iron cannons for calibration.At this moment, there are seven or eight big men in each artillery group, sweating, just turning the winch to raise the counterweight.

After confirming that the five artillery groups were ready, Zhang Lin waved the two triangular command flags in his hand.

As the command flag fluttered, next to each catapult machine, there was a seal that the gunner lit the iron cannon with a torch, followed by the sound of dozens of thick leather ropes violently swinging in the air.

In the next instant, sixty iron cannons formed a huge fan in the air and flew out.

The iron cannon is nothing new, and although the weighted stone machine has never been seen before, in the eyes of countless craftsmen in the Central Plains, it is not a thing of ingenuity.The only difficulty with the entire machine is the stability of transporting it with the car and then quickly assembling it.

But the significance of this machine in war cannot be underestimated.

If we say that the war with the Mongolian Qixue army in the north of Sanjiaodian was the first time that the Ding Navy used gunpowder weapons on a large scale to defeat the enemy and win.At this moment, it is the first time that the Ding Navy has the ability to project gunpowder weapons on a large scale.

The iron cannon was soaring in the air. Many knights who had seen the drill covered their ears with their hands, and some experienced ones covered the ears of their horses instead.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The flames were not so conspicuous under the sun, but the thick smoke billowed up in the ranks of the golden army, and the smoke was everywhere, and soon mixed with the blood mist.

Many depressions appeared in the dense queue of the Jin army, which were so shattered that the original limbs, long flying internal organs and screaming people fell from the air one after another, smashing into the depressions. around.

The two armies approached to such an extent that most of the soldiers of the Jin army held up their shields to guard against arrows.But the attack of the iron cannon is not blocked by any shield.Wherever the explosion went, a large number of lives were easily harvested, and the number of wounded was many times that of the dead.

The soldiers of the thirteen captains of Kaifeng Mansion were the army that King Sui placed high hopes on. They had undergone arduous training that the Jurchens had not experienced for a long time, and they went south to the Song Dynasty, and they fought against several times the Song army regardless of the outcome. strong soldiers.

They had indeed suffered heavy losses and were pushed to the brink of extinction, but their generals believed that this situation just aroused the barbarism and ferocity in the Jurchens' bones and made them make a last-ditch effort.

It's a pity that the Jurchens have been pampered for too long, and their wildness is really not as good as the Mongols.They couldn't bear the blow that the Mongolian cowardly Xue army couldn't bear.

The roar and explosion made the last courage of these Jurchens quickly fade away.Many people staggered dizzily on the battlefield by instinct, walked over the dead with broken bones and rotten bodies, walked through the land that looked pink in the sun because of the rapid absorption of blood, and walked through the people who wailed because of pain. wounded.Then they couldn't go any further, they sat down and looked around blankly.

Only less than one-third of the people, with their superior ferocity, were still brandishing their weapons forward.But because the sixty iron cannons covered the front thirty steps of the horizontal formation in a fan shape, these people's movements would always be slower, and they would not be able to reach the front of the two armies fighting in time.

As a result, the Jin army at the forefront was suddenly stretched out.

Jiaguze's cousin Fan Laoseng is the most famous warrior in the Anping Duwei's department, so Jiaguze went to Caiguan to discuss the army, and Fan Laoseng was left to lead the headquarters.

After another relative's Qianhu was killed by Wanyan Congtan, Old Monk Fan was furious, thinking that it was really abominable that a Jurchen noble like Wanyan Congtan didn't take Han'er seriously.

The way he chose to deal with it was the same as that of the fierce generals of the Great Jin Kingdom for a hundred years, that is, to show ten times the ferocity when fighting the enemy, and prove it to the Jurchen.

Before that, he led a few warriors to slam into, forcing a gap in Dinghai's horizontal formation.In order to maintain this gap, he held the broadsword in both hands and waved it like a windmill, pushing away the approaching swordsmen one after another, even cutting off four or five long spears.

But this explosive wild dance could not last long. After dancing for a while, Old Monk Fan felt out of breath, and his vision almost blurred.He quickly shouted: "Come up and help me! Come up and help me!"

A battle on the battlefield is definitely not a matter for one person, and cooperation with each other is more important than anything else. Old Monk Fan dared to take the lead because he had already arranged hundreds of soldiers behind him, who could take turns to attack and cover at any time.

But he yelled twice, but he couldn't wait for the rear team to catch up.It seemed that after the violent roar in the rear, there was no one alive.

Old Seng Fan couldn't hold on any longer, and he inevitably slowed down a little while swinging the broadsword.Immediately, a Dinghai soldier rushed up and slashed his face with a knife.

Fortunately, the edge of the iron helmet has a nose guard that extends downwards. Although it is bloody, it was not seriously injured.

The old monk Fan roared angrily, wanting to speed up the speed of swinging the knife again, and then slowly exited Ding Haijun's queue.

But he was really out of breath, his eyes were not only blurred, but even started to turn red.He squinted subconsciously, only to find that a spear was pointed at his face and stabbed.The point of the gun pierced his eyeballs, pierced his skull from the eye sockets, and then propped up the back of the helmet, possibly piercing the skull.

At the same time that the brain was penetrated, someone leaned over to approach Old Monk Fan under the cover of a shield.The man suddenly squatted up and slashed horizontally with a straight knife, cutting off his right leg completely.

(End of this chapter)