Liu Chengzong’s requirements for the arsenal, in my opinion, are technically not difficult to achieve.
Whether it was the swarm of swarms and fire-fighting chariots that were popular in the early years, or the individual launcher rockets improved by Zhao Shizhen during the Wanli period, or the special rockets that emit smoke and set fire, they have all developed greatly during this period.
Complete.
As for the performance of this weapon on the battlefield, the 200,000 Japanese who landed on the Korean Peninsula during the Wanli Period had a very good user experience.
But there are big problems in manufacturing.
The arsenal of the Marshal's Mansion has military manufacturing capabilities in almost all categories of this era, except for rockets.
So I received the order and went back to ponder it for two days. Then I went to Xincheng to ask Liu Chengzong for instructions: "Commander, can you ask General Cao to help with the staff?"
Liu Chengzong thought to himself, if Shicheng and I hadn't brought it up, he would have forgotten that Cao Yao knew about these things. He immediately nodded and summoned Cao Yao into the government office to discuss the matter.
Cao Yao arrived quickly after hearing the summons. He was wearing a big leather robe and looked like a wealthy landlord. Before he entered the west building, a voice came in: "What does the commander want from me?"
After entering the door, I bowed to Liu Chengzong first. I looked up and saw Master Cheng and I were also at the Yamen, and said hello: "Master Cheng is also here."
Liu Chengzong first asked him to sit down: "This is not a military meeting. Brother, sit down casually. What are you doing at home these days?"
Cao Yao smiled and sat down: "I'll accompany my aunt."
It's not that Liu Shizi wants to make things easier, it's just that he gave Cao Yao a day off. He had just agreed to two months' leave, and in the blink of an eye he was about to send someone to the arsenal, so he had to say something else first.
But he didn't expect that Cao Yao happened to come to see him for something. He rubbed his hands and asked, "Commander, I originally wanted to come over. Didn't the transportation company request a ban on alcohol on the day of the military meeting? I have an idea."
Liu Chengzong smiled when he saw his look and asked: "What's wrong, you bought all the wine in Xining in the past two days?"
He is not in a hurry to issue a ban on alcohol. It is easy to issue any law, but if the law is unreasonable and unreasonable, then he is looking for people to disobey the order.
Even if there is a ban on alcohol, it will have to wait until after the New Year before banning it again. If Chengyun brought this matter up at the military meeting, the generals would naturally seize the opportunity to send their families to Hehuang to buy alcohol.
"Ha!"
Cao Yao laughed, turned around and said: "Forget it, there are so many people buying it, it's my turn. I won't buy it. When they buy it back, I'll go find them and ask for it."
Liu Chengzong smiled and nodded: "Brother, there has been no change at all. Please give me any suggestions."
"I think wine cannot be banned. It's enough to ban wine. And to ban wine, it doesn't have to be banned in the entire territory. It's just the river and Huang Valley." After Cao Yao said this, he looked at Liu Chengzong and added: "Milk wine does not require food." Liu Chengzong said: "But the milk wine is not enough for the army, let alone the people of Hehuang."
The Marshal's Mansion has two non-business departments in Qinghai Lake. One is the Navy Yamen in charge of shipbuilding and shipping, which has developed a side business of pickling fish for sailors on Sunday; the other is Yuanmasi Temple on Longju Island, where Cui Cong developed Mudo Brewery.
Side business.
The entire coast of Qinghai Lake is covered with pastures. Goat milk, cow milk, mare milk, and camel milk are all used to make wine. Because of different purposes, there are two main types of wine produced.
One is because there are too many livestock near Qinghai Lake and fresh milk cannot be stored and transported, so Cui Cong used the ancient impact brewing method to ask herdsmen to brew the milk into low-alcohol wine and then fill and seal it.
However, this low-alcohol milk wine had to be transported by boat and truck after it was brewed, and transported to seven field camps near the new city for distribution to soldiers. The sergeants drank it as a drink quickly, otherwise it would go bad if left for a month or two.
Another way to protect yourself from the cold is to distill the brewed low-alcohol milk wine multiple times to make high-alcohol shochu. Because the nutrients that easily cause deterioration are basically gone during the multiple distillations, it is more durable for storage. p>
The shochu brewed on Longju Island is usually distributed to the garrison in Nanshan Fort and other places in units of 100 households for cold protection, emergency relief and medical use.
When Cao Yao heard Liu Chengzong's words, he said seriously: "Because of this, I think this is a good opportunity for the chieftains of Kangning Prefecture to build roads. It is prohibited to make wine in Xining and make wine in Kangning."
"Road construction in Kangning?"
Liu Chengzong pondered for a moment and felt that this matter was ambiguous, that is, he was capable, so he asked: "Brother, what do you think? Please elaborate."
"Prefect Yang has long wanted to build a road in Kangning, but the chieftains are unwilling. Come to think of it, the chieftains can't rely on the fact that the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. If a smooth road can be built with four horses running parallel, there will be no chieftains." p>
Cao Yao spread his hands and said: "Kangning is poor, but it has been cultivated for several years and has a lot of fields. The local area is more than self-sufficient. It has abundant water and vapor and is not afraid of drought. It is a good place for wine making."
"If Xining bans wine making, the price of wine will rise a bit. Yesterday I heard Zhang Wu say that the lowest price of shochu has risen to 16 cents. At this price, leaving aside the markup, Kangning Winemaking will also be profitable."<
/p>
Let the chieftains build a good road out?
Liu Chengzong felt that if we think about it this way, brewing and selling liquor may not be profitable for the Marshal's Mansion and can only be used as a strategy to maintain stability after the ban on brewing. However, if this can make Xikang Road more convenient, the benefits will be great.
.
In terms of money, Xikang Road can transport cashmere, and the woven cashmere clothes can be sold back to Kangning and Wuzang; but in terms of strategy, Jinchuan and other chieftains who have built a bunch of watchtowers are self-defeating.
"Yes, you can give it a try. This is not a strategy that can be successful in a short time, but the drought is not something that will end in a short time."
Liu Chengzong nodded slowly and wrote down this moment. Then he smiled at Cao Yao and said, "Brother, you are very smart. Others are in a hurry to buy wine from Xining. Did you plan to ask Gama to transport wine to you from Kangning from the beginning?
?"
When Cao Yao was told the central issue, he nodded and just smiled.
He was different from Liu Chengzong. Even when he came out of Yuhe Fort, he could even sell a jug of wine to Liu Shishi. Drinking was a habit that was difficult for him to give up.
In fact, Cao Yao had a strong resistance to the alcohol prohibition in his heart, but he had just returned from Kangning Mansion and did not want to contradict Liu Chengzong over these things, so he thought about asking Ga Ma and Monk Wang to send him some wine from Kangning Mansion.
Later I thought of making wine in Kangning and selling it to Xining, so that the chieftains could make some money in exchange for building roads for the Marshal's Mansion.
Liu Chengzong also knew that Cao Yao liked drinking.
Not only do we know that he likes to drink, but we also know that he is a heavy drinker and picks his feet. When he is drunk, he will think of his brothers who died in Saarhu. While crying, he will make a small grave and pay homage to the man who saved his life in Saarhu.
Liu Yujie.
You still don’t admit it when you’re sober, with a look on your face like “I’m not, I’m not without you, don’t talk nonsense.”
Liu Chengzong waved his hand, looked at Cao Yao with bright eyes, and said with a smile: "Rather than letting the chieftains of Kangning build roads, I think the solution to the drinking problem is to win over Gansu. The wine in Gansu will be enough for you to drink."
"Gansu is difficult to capture." Cao Yao was very cautious about this topic: "To be honest, I am in Kangning, and I know best what impact the army will have on the army if it loses its horses and artillery and changes from a heavy army to a light army."
He waved his hand and said: "That bastard surnamed Hong built a fortress in Gulang Gorge. It is obvious that he wants to lure us over the mountain. If we climb over, we will fall into his trap. He will use the light army to fight the heavy army. If the three rounds of artillery are blocked, we will be finished.
”
Morale is a weight. The same soldiers, with different equipment, will display different morale when fighting against the same enemy.
Both the enemy and us have artillery, so they can be like He Huchen's Ningxia soldiers in the battle at Huanglong Mountain, shooting to the death with artillery. This is because people have expectations of victory and can win with all their efforts.
The enemy has cannons but I don’t have cannons. Just like in the early confrontation with Li Bei, they collapsed one after another. This is still a fight with more people. But if you don’t have cannons, but you have armor and horses, then you can still fight, but this is not the case.
You have to pay attention to working hard. People's expectations for victory are very low, and their will to persist in fighting is also not too high.
Fighting over the Qilian Mountains meant that not only did they not have artillery, but they also did not have armor or horses. The only difference between them and the peasant army in the early years was their skills, willpower and physical strength - these things are not worth mentioning in front of the sheets of steel projectiles.<
/p>
Cao Yao knew very well that the Ming army was an army that specialized in dealing with light soldiers, especially in Gansu and Ningxia. These two defense zones had always dealt with the Mongols, with the Franconian machine that specialized in killing and killing people, and the people who attacked them with anti-Japanese artillery.
It’s gone.
"Yes!"
Liu Chengzong agreed very much with Cao Yao's view. He said: "This is why I asked my brother to come over. I want to design a rocket to replace artillery, and I need my brother's help as a consultant."
"Rocket?"
Cao Yao nodded slowly, thought for a moment and then said slowly: "Replacing artillery with rockets is a good idea, but you must have horses and some armor."
After talking about the prerequisites, he shook his head and said: "The power of rockets lies in the chaotic formation of hundreds or even thousands. It is easy to deal with the soldiers from the southwest or the Japanese who have never seen the formation of Malaysia. However, there are many reckless men in Guanxi. If I
If the army crosses the mountain with a light force, they will not form a formation."
"Only a reckless man can deal with a reckless man. Before he forms a formation, charge him with cavalry for a while, then force him to form a formation, and then use rockets to attack the enemy."
When Cao Yao talked about the rise, he danced unconsciously: "Even so, there is still the risk of a cavalry duel, but as long as you win one battle and plunder their armor and cannons, the subsequent battles will be fought... If
If you can bring armor and war horses to the other side of the mountain, you can try rockets."
Snap!
Liu Chengzong applauded and said: "Brother, you are right. Zijin Liang has organized the Three Tribulations Society in Gansu in recent years, and it has done quite well. He can help us get thousands of war horses, thousands of armors, and three
Thousands of camels."
Cao Yao's eyes lit up: "The official army has three horses and seven steps. A full battalion with 900 cavalry is good, but the risk is still very high. It must be fought quickly."
After that, he looked at Master Chengwo and said: "Master, there is nothing difficult to make a rocket. The only thing is that the medicine needs to be compacted, the hole for the medicine wire needs to be drilled straight, the lead wire needs to be braided with three strands, and 37 scoops of standard rocket charge are used.
The support needs to be hammered 3,700 times. If the pressure is firm and the drill is straight, the fire will be ejected in a straight direction and the rocket will fly straight and accurately."
Cao Yao said with a silly smile: "I didn't expect that we could all afford rockets."
Rockets are not cheap. On the contrary, as a one-time use weapon, they are extremely time-consuming and require high manufacturing requirements compared to other weapons, and are less cost-effective.
Its manufacturing requirements are high, not in terms of craftsmanship, but in terms of cost, because this thing is not like a gun. Guns have multiple uses, so it is relatively difficult to cut corners. It requires comprehensive attention from all aspects of manufacturing, supervision, and use.
There will be no tracing.
Rockets are entirely dependent on appropriation. Each appropriation can cost one cent of silver, five cents of silver per rocket, or even one cent of silver per rocket.
If you want to verify its merits, you can only type it out.
Therefore, the Ordnance Bureau of Shaanxi Province no longer makes rockets very much. If they do, they don't have that much money. If they force craftsmen to make them, the products they make will not achieve the desired effect, and it will be wasted.
"To make rockets, you need to use paper, gunpowder, paper money, loess, drill bits, slide barrels, and vertical drilling machines. You need to prepare more drill bits. Drilling the powder line will make the drill bit hot. When I was in the firearms camp, I often heard people
Talk about the craftsman changing the drill bit and drilling and exploding the cartridge."
Cao Yao reminded Shichengwo emphatically, opened his hand and said: "If you drill five rocket launchers, you have to change the drill bit."
Liu Chengzong saw that he was speaking eloquently, so he quickly asked: "Can your brother make a rocket with a blooming warhead?"
"Blooming warhead?"
Cao Yao was stunned for a moment, shook his head and said: "The blooming bullet needs to be loaded with rear powder and cannot fly far, and the cost is too high. I really don't know this, but after thinking about it, the blooming bullet is just the same. It's always possible to try more.
Make something more appropriate."
"I do know how to use the medicine after arson. It is actually four small cartridges. They are installed in front of the cartridges backwards. The leads are connected to the front cartridges. A small amount of horizontal medicine is put in it, so that it breaks through the paper and sprays fire in all directions."<
/p>
As he spoke, he said with a smile: "This is easy to use. It can set the camp on fire, and hit the military formation to hide all over the place."
"As long as you have this in hand, the military formation can carry two more rounds of artillery. If there are enough, thousands or hundreds of them can be thrown over, enough to disrupt their military formation, and maybe even blow up their gunpowder, and the cavalry army can rush over and kill them.
Can break the formation."
After Cao Yao finished saying what Liu Chengzong wanted him to say, he paused, the smile on his face slowly disappeared, and asked: "Do you really want to take the risk and meet them at the northern foot of Qilian?" p>
"Brother, you still feel something is wrong?"
"It's not that I want others' ambitions to destroy my prestige, it's just that this man surnamed Hong is clearly trying to lure the enemy, that is, to lure us and others to cross the mountain lightly to fight with them. If he dares to do this, he must have something to rely on, just in case the army goes there to face the Seven or Eight
A battalion besieged...it’s hard to say."
Cao Yao let out a long sigh: "Actually, I think that since he is playing tricks and putting on such a posture, there is no point in us playing tricks on him. We might as well be big fools."
"We stationed heavy troops and used heavy artillery to fight him in the Zhuanglang Valley. When the enemy came from Songshan, we destroyed the Songshan army. If there was a castle, we used heavy artillery to knock down the battlements. The Gulang Gorge is difficult to walk, and we cannot station a large army.
, they can’t even gather a large army.”
"We attack and they defend. If we defend for a long time, we will lose. Anyway, it will take half a year before the drought comes. Half a year is enough to break through the Gulang Gorge. With the heavy troops of the commander-in-chief, we can take Liangzhou just around the corner."
After that, he changed the topic: "Even if we can't break through, we won't suffer too much loss."
When Liu Chengzong heard this, he couldn't help but smile on his face: "Brother, you think so too? Then if Xie Erhu leads the Mongolian cavalry to appear in Gulang Gorge, the man named Hong will think that the main force of our army is not in Gulang Gorge; Zhang Tianlin appears again in Qilian
At Beilu, if you use rockets to win a battle, people named Hong will definitely think that those who climb over the Qilian Mountains are the main force of our army, right?"
Cao Yao was stunned: "What does this mean? Where do you want to fight from?"
"Xie Erhu was restraining Gulangxia, Zhang Tianlin was disrupting the northern foot of Qilian, and the defense on the north side of the Great Wall was lax, where the wind and sand were strong. The leader of the Chahar Camp, Guitu Taiji, knew the location of the river outside Gansu, and asked him to lure Yang Yao to the
If the sand crosses the wall, Gansu will surely be in chaos."
"If Wang Ziyong can help me switch to the city, I want to go to Jiayuguan."
Liu Chengzong leaned back in his chair, raised his hand and tapped his knuckles twice on the table: "I want to walk from Jiayuguan to Shanhaiguan."