Daming: I asked you to hang yourself, but I didn’t ask you to rebuild the Ming Dynasty

Last month, before the New Year was over, Li Zicheng led his troops out of Juyongguan in northern Shanxi and headed straight for the capital.

Liu Fangliang led the rest of the peasant army out of Niangzi Pass.

The two sides joined forces and headed north to attack Beijing.

Baoding Governor Eunuch Fang Zhenghua, with Chongzhen's last few thousand soldiers and horses, blocked Liu Fangliang for half a month with an absolutely inferior small force.

Historically, Baoding City fell after it was opened by the traitor Li Jiantai.

After the city gate was opened, the Baoding defenders preferred death to surrender, and in the end almost all of them died in battle.

And Baoding City was also massacred...

At this time, the capital had been abandoned by Zhu Youjian. On the northern land, the Chuang army was completely free, with only Baoding remaining as its opponent!

In other words, the battle in Baoding was more dangerous than in history!

But—Zhu Youjian must rescue these people in Baoding!

This is the last warrior loyal to Ming Dynasty!

This is the last tragedy of the Chongzhen Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty!

How tragic was the Battle of Baoding?

The general killed his whole family to show his ambition, and took two thousand newly recruited soldiers to station in a small county outside the city to act as a cornerstone. In the end, all of them died in the battle.

The Jinshi Zhang family donated all their family assets to help recruit the army. In the end, all four brothers died on the battlefield, and the last remaining one fell into a well and died after seeing the whole family, women, children, old and young, serving the country loyally.

All the Ming troops brought by the governor-general eunuch Fang Zhenghua were killed in the battle. The great eunuchs who supervised the battle personally killed them on horseback. Finally, they all died on the city wall...

This is a majestic city that even the emperor of the Qing Dynasty decades later had to erect a monument to record!

This time, unlike the capital, you can use a hot air balloon to escape.

This is a tough battle with a huge disparity between the enemy and ourselves!

but!

These heroes, Zhu Youjian will save them!

……

The Ming army had summoned all the blacksmiths in the city together, and even demolished a huge street and turned them all into blacksmith shops.

Fortunately, the blacksmith at this time did not need many household items, just a stove, a sledgehammer, and an anvil, which were easy to arrange.

As for the quenching thing, it is well water.

Because well water basically has a constant temperature in spring, summer, autumn and winter.

When blacksmiths make weapons, in order to increase their toughness, they usually cover one side with yellow mud, then heat the iron again and put it into cold well water to quench.

After one side of the ironware is covered with yellow mud, the degree of tempering is not so obvious because the cooling rate is lower than the other side where the temperature drops sharply.

Therefore, after quenching, one side of the iron tool is made of hard steel, while the side covered with yellow mud is made of wrought iron.

The weapon made in this way has the sharpness of fine steel, which can easily cut through the enemy's body, and the toughness of wrought iron, which can block the damage caused by cutting bones.

Blacksmiths have already figured out these little tricks.

Swords, guns, swords and sticks were readily available to the blacksmiths of Yanzhao—

There is no other reason than that the men here are too martial.

Cangzhou is also a famous hometown of martial arts in the country.

They were used to fighting with weapons, so practice made perfect.

They thought they could pick up any weapon at their fingertips, but they were stunned when they saw the emperor's drawings.

What Zhu Youjian had people forge was very strange!

These are iron buckets rolled up by iron sheets. They are slightly smaller than a bucket and much larger than a human head.

Just like making a wooden barrel, it also has a bottom.

Then use four iron barrels of slightly different sizes, overlap them, heat them red, and forge them together again.

It looks exactly like a wooden barrel.

It's just a lot thicker...

After pondering for a while, the craftsmen understood.

This is a very simple job.

Although few people are willing to make iron buckets, blacksmiths are not new to it either.

The only difficulty is that the emperor has much higher requirements for the inner wall of the bucket, which must be as smooth as a mirror...

Although these requirements were strange, they did not trouble the Ming Dynasty blacksmiths.

Just like grinding a blunderbuss, just polish it once!

It's not difficult.

It's even easier to grind than a blunderbuss whose hole is only as thick as your thumb!

……

Customization in the Ming Dynasty: Every three months, craftsmen all over the world will send a group of people to go north to the capital and take turns to serve in the Ordnance Bureau and the Military War Bureau to make weapons for the army.

After the Jiajing Dynasty, wars became more frequent and corruption in the Ministry of Works became more and more serious.

Therefore, in addition to the War Bureau under the control of the inner court, the Ordnance Bureau has essentially been reduced to a prototype weapons manufacturing site.

Specific firearms manufacturing has been distributed to various health stations and military towns.

The localities asked the Ministry of Industry for money, and hired craftsmen, and the military towns made their own weapons.

The firearms produced were generally under the unified control of dispatched eunuchs.

This is also the reason why the quality of border weapons during this period was better than that produced by the Central Ministry of Industry.

And this model has undoubtedly damaged the interests of civil servants!

Therefore, at the end of the Wanli Dynasty and the Tianqi Dynasty, civil servants expanded the scale of the Arms Bureau under the Ministry of Industry and regained most of the qualifications of the border troops to manufacture weapons.

After all, how much money can you spend to build a gun?

If you build [-] rods, not everyone will have meat to eat!

There is a very famous incident during this period. A certain general received a helmet with a shiny paint finish.

But it breaks into pieces when squeezed by hand!

In the end, the warrior was shot through the head with an arrow by Hou Jinbing and died...

The corruption of civil servants was so serious that it eventually led to a tragedy——

Apocalypse explosion!

……

In this context, craftsmen who could make firearms in the Ming Dynasty were almost everywhere.

Craftsmen can even make bird guns that are accurate enough to kill birds, as well as Rumi guns, which are called the farthest and most poisonous weapons in the Military Preparation Chronicle.

……

In real history, it was not until Yongzheng banned martial arts and no longer allowed craftsmen to make firearms that the craftsmen in the north gradually lost the method of making firearms.

However, until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, in remote mountainous areas such as Guangdong and Guangxi, there were still remains of muskets in every village and even every home.

This also proves that after the mid-Qing Dynasty, there were still local craftsmen who could make muskets!

How common are these firearms?

Even around 2000, when Guangxi was fighting for water, they would use muskets and cannons to bombard them.

The manufacturing methods of these muskets came from the Ming Dynasty.

……

When Wang Chengen saw that His Majesty was turning over an iron bucket, he asked tentatively:

"Your Majesty, is this the heartless cannon you are talking about?"

"Ha ha!"

Zhu Youjian chuckled: "It's not that, this is a smaller version."

Heartless gun

To put it bluntly, this thing is a seized iron oil barrel, saw off the lid, drill a hole in the tail, extend the lead, fill it with gunpowder and compact it, and put a hardwood board that fits the inner wall to prevent the gunpowder from igniting the explosive bag. .

The explosive packets are then shaped into a round shape and compacted on a wooden board.

Essentially similar to a mortar.