Daming Military Empire

Chapter 134
During this trip to Zunhua, the Portuguese special envoy Shivela was destined to be shocked to the point of stupidity. He had just been shocked to the point of being speechless by the team outside Zunhua City to greet the holy driver. When he saw Zunhua City, he was shocked again: " Oh, cake shoppers, this, this, this is another big city with more than a million people!"

A big city with more than one million people is just an ordinary small city in modern times, but it was different in that era. At that time, there were less than ten big cities with more than one million people in the world. Vera is well-informed, but he has seen only three cities with millions of people including Zunhua, one Jinling, one capital city, and one is this Zunhua city, all of which belonged to Ming Dynasty. City!

Why did he see at a glance that Zunhua City is a big city with millions of people? It's actually very simple, because he can see the city wall two or three miles away from the city wall, but at such a long distance, he can't see both sides of the city wall This means that the city wall on this side is at least more than ten miles long, so what is that if it is not a big city with a million people?

He was shocked again when he entered the city wall. It was not because there was the old city wall of Zunhua City inside. The capital city was also divided into inner city and outer city. The layers of city walls didn't surprise him. What surprised him was that there were neat military camps between the inner city and the outer city!How many troops would it take to fill it up!
Earl Shivira was already stunned by the shock today, and Zhu Cijiong didn't provoke him any more. He had nothing to say all night. In the early morning of the next day, Zhu Cijiong took a group of entourages and generals, Zheng Chenggong, and Shi Wei* to go to the compliance office. The city gate tower at the north gate of the outer city of Huacheng is ready to review the military drills.

Participating in the review were Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong Army and Shi Kefa's Second Guards Corps, with a total of 20 horses. At first, they were formed and moved. There is nothing to say about this, as long as they line up in a square formation and walk for an hour or two every day. It can be practiced neatly in a month or so.

Zhu Cijiong watched the array drill calmly, and didn't make any comments.At this time, Shivela began to mutter in his heart. He heard that these troops were dealing with the rebels. According to European standards, the rebels were tens of thousands of people at most. Such a large number of troops must have been easily wiped out in the past. Such a battle is sure to win Instead, he could send hundreds of troops under his command to help out and show off, so as to win the favor of His Majesty the Ming Emperor.

With so many troops, he couldn't finish it all at once, and he couldn't bear the desire to show off, so he ran up to Zhu Cijiong and asked cautiously, "Your Majesty, I heard that your troops are preparing to fight the rebels. I don't know how much Ming's rebels are doing." How many troops are there, do you need the cooperation of the subordinates?"

Upon hearing this, Zhu Cijiong asked curiously, "How many people do you have under your command?"

Shi Weila said a little proudly: "I have three to four hundred people under my command, all of whom are elite musketeers."

Zhu Cijiong almost couldn't hold back his laughter when he heard the words, three to 400 people, go to follow Jin Gan, you are making an international joke with me!He suppressed the urge to laugh, and said truthfully: "Forget it then. Although there are not many rebels in the northern part of the Ming Dynasty, there are still 40 to 400. Your [-] people will not be of much use."

Three 40!Shivela's face changed with fright, what are you kidding, three or four million is still called a rebel?The strongest country in continental Europe has only 40 million troops!

He wiped the cold sweat off his brow, and retreated obediently. As for sending troops to help, he didn't even dare to think about it. His three or four hundred people were not enough to use as cannon fodder.

The next step is the joint infantry drill. Zhu Cijiong is going to bring [-] cannons with him in the recovery battle of Liaodong. The regiments in Liaodong are unable to transport the cannons because of ice and snow roads, so he simply rationed all the [-] cannons. The Tianxiong Army and the First Army of the Imperial Guard were defeated.

It is only the first month of the month, and more than 200 cannons have been produced, so the scene is not very spectacular, which did not surprise Shi Weila.

At the beginning, the drill was fixed-point bombardment, that is, some circles were randomly marked with lime within a distance of several hundred steps, and then the artillerymen fired one by one. In the circle, Zhu Cijiong finally nodded in satisfaction.At this time, Shivela was surprised again. It was obviously the shells fired by the same artillery, so why did they hit the circles with different distances and directions?And the adjustment speed of the artillery is quite fast, basically every 2 minutes!
He really couldn't understand this, because the artillery at that time didn't have an angle and direction adjustment system. It was not impossible to adjust the range and direction. It was necessary to manually push the base of the artillery and place something under the barrel. Experienced The gunner can achieve the accuracy he saw just now, but the adjustment time is definitely more than 5 minutes, unlike Daming's artillery, it only takes 2 minutes to fire the adjustment belt!
He really wanted to use Zheng Chenggong's telescope to see what was going on, but he was afraid that His Majesty the Emperor would be unhappy. This might be a military secret of the Ming Empire, so he didn't dare to investigate it casually.

In fact, Zhu Cijiong didn't feel that there was anything special about the angle and azimuth adjustment system. You must know that the artillery of later generations can be adjusted. The worst ones are equipped with hand-operated wheels and very fine scales. There are parameters for shooting various elements, just grab the wheel and shake it a few times, which is very convenient.The high-end ones are even more incredible, they are all automatically adjusted with servo motors, as long as the parameters are input, the barrel can be automatically adjusted in place!
Under Shivela's hesitation, the exercise continued, and the next step was a joint infantry strike, which was similar to Zhu Cijiong's military parade in Victory Square. The gun shoots in waves.

Seeing the continuous barrage of bullets, Shivela couldn't stand anymore. He ran to Zhu Cijiong and asked in amazement: "Your Majesty, how can the fire rate of this musket be so fast? How is it possible that the muskets of the Dutch and the British Not so fast!"

Zhu Cijiong said calmly: "Let's watch the exercise first, and we'll talk about this after the exercise is over."

Upon hearing this, Shivela had no choice but to retreat, and the exercise continued.

But the next exercise scared even Zhu Cijiong, what are you doing?On one side are a hundred cannons and thousands of spearmen, and on the other side are tens of thousands of cavalry!These cannonballs and bullets don't have eyes. If you really use cavalry to charge, it won't cause heavy casualties!

Seeing that the two sides were gathering and there was a tendency to attack each other, Zhu Cijiong couldn't sit still. He stood up abruptly and shouted: "Lu Xiangsheng, what are you doing? This is not a real battlefield. If you arrange it like this, many people will die. of!"

Lu Xiangsheng who was on the side heard the words, hurried to Zhu Cijiong, and respectfully saluted: "My Majesty, the shells and bullets are specially made, and they cannot kill anyone."

Zhu Cijiong asked in amazement: "Specially made, what's the difference?"

Lu Xiangsheng continued to reply: "My Majesty, the shells are all stone shells the size of eggs, and the bullets are also hollow, so they can't kill anyone at all."

Nima, is it okay if you can’t be beaten to death? Zhu Cijiong said angrily: "That's not okay. If you are not careful, you will be seriously injured or even disabled. If you do this, how much will you have to reduce at a time? Do you practice like this?"

Lu Xiangsheng continued to explain: "Don't worry, the emperor, the cavalry and horses are all wearing new double-layer armor, and are also equipped with new shields. They will not be seriously injured, and at most they will be scratched."

It was only then that Zhu Cijiong remembered that the manufacture of new armor and shields had already begun years ago, which was also part of the military reform.

The new type of armor is actually a combination of soft armor and chain mail. Before there were no punches and rolling machines, the manufacture of chain mail was very cumbersome. Iron blocks had to be forged into thin pieces of pig iron. The difficulty can be imagined.With a punching machine and a plate rolling machine, it is different. First roll some thin steel plates, and then punch them with a punching machine. At that speed, one punching machine can punch out thousands of pieces of chain mail every day, and they are thin and light. The strength is also higher than that of pig iron sheet.The latter thing is even simpler. There are two small holes in the nail plate, and then a few rows of holes are drilled in the soft cooked cowhide armor to sew the armor plate on. These ordinary civilians can do it.

The new type of shield is simpler, just use a thin steel plate to punch some fried shells, and then insert a thicker wooden board inside. It is light and strong, and it does not take much effort to swing it with one hand.

Thinking of the performance of these shields and armors, Zhu Cijiong finally breathed a sigh of relief. He waved his hand and sat down, signaling for the exercise to continue.

Lu Xiangsheng then raised his hand, and the guards on the city wall waved the command flag, and the [-] cavalry lined up in a neat formation below began to charge. Just after they rushed to about [-] steps away from the Musketeers, there was a burst of artillery fire. There was a roar, and the shotgun shrouded like a dark cloud.

The cavalry immediately put his head close to the horse's neck, and then raised his shield to cover the human head and the top of the horse's head.

After a flurry of "ding ding dong dong", no one fell off their horses, but more than half of the cavalry began to slow down actively and retreated from the battlefield. If you look closely, they all have a lot of red paint on their bodies.It turned out that the stone bullets were covered with red paint. This was an exercise. If any key on the body was hit by the stone bullets, they had to withdraw from the battlefield voluntarily, indicating that they had died in battle.

The remaining half of the troops had just rushed to a distance of about [-] steps from the pikemen, and the flintlocks fired, and it was difficult to block them now. If the front was completely blocked with shields, then nothing could be seen. If you charge head-on, you don't know where you will go, so people are constantly being shot in the face, with bruises and swollen faces, which is considered light, and there are many people with broken heads and bleeding. Slowly, most of the cavalry automatically slowed down and left the battlefield. .

Rows of musketeers retreated in waves, and when the cavalry rushed to the front row only about fifty steps away, all musketeers stood up at the same time, quickly loaded bayonets and rushed forward, and at this time only the cavalry remained There were hundreds of people, and they were soon surrounded by musketeers. Of course, they would not actually stab them with bayonets. At this point, the exercise was over.

Zhu Cijiong stood up again, and said with satisfaction: "Well, very good. Judging from the effect of the exercise, the Tianxiong Army alone can win the battle against a hundred thousand slave cavalry. Keep working hard. I hope you can do well on the battlefield." A real victory over one hundred thousand slave cavalry."

Lu Xiangsheng replied confidently and resolutely: "Thank you for your praise, this humble minister will definitely live up to your trust."

(End of this chapter)