In mid-October, Pang Gang led the military households to start their first autumn harvest in Wanghai Fort. In this year, they cultivated a total of 3,200 acres of wasteland. Since it was the first time to cultivate, the harvest was not very high.
, the wheat harvest this time is about 3,100 shi, so Wanghai Fort’s most urgent food problem has been solved. This result also made Pang Gang, who has been overwhelmed by the food problem these days, finally breathe a sigh of relief.
It turns out that the saying "food is the most important thing for the people" is not just rhetoric.
After the autumn harvest, the weather suddenly turned cold. Pang Gang finally understood what later generations of historians said was the Little Ice Age that happened in the late Ming Dynasty. Pang Gang was a typical southerner who suddenly turned cold.
The weather made him very uncomfortable. His nose was so cold from the cold weather that he wished he could stay at home and warm himself by the fire all day long. But in his heart, he knew that now was definitely not the time for enjoyment, so he forced himself to stay in the same village almost every day.
The army and the army train together.
In Pang Gang's room, the fire in the brazier was burning brightly, and blue flames emerged from the red-hot charcoal, making the whole room as warm as spring.
Pang Gang was sitting on a chair not far from the brazier. He was holding a matchlock gun that was seven feet (two meters) long and weighed about seven or eight kilograms and looked at it in detail. This thing was made of a blunderbuss tube.
It consists of a gun bed, a curved stock, a faucet and a trigger, a fire door, a rail, a front door, a rear door, and an aiming device called the rear sight and the star. Because the gun is shaped like a bird's beak, people in the Ming Dynasty called it
It is a bird gun. There are many types of bird guns, and the one Pang Gang is holding now is the most famous one. The name of this kind of bird gun is called Rumi gun.
The prototype of the Rumi gun is a matchlock gun paid tribute to the Ming Dynasty by the Turkish Rumi Kingdom (Roma Sultanate). It was later improved by the Ming Dynasty inventor Zhao Shizhen as an improved bird gun. It is also a historian of later generations.
It is recognized by military enthusiasts as the best matchlock gun.
The Rumi gun has an astonishing range of one hundred and fifty steps (about two hundred meters). It weighs slightly more than an ordinary matchlock gun because it is basically an all-metal structure. Its characteristics are a double-layer gun tube, a small caliber, and bullets.
The muzzle velocity is extremely high, basically close to that of modern rifles.
"Wu Bei Zhi" says: "Bird guns: only the Lumi gun is the farthest and most poisonous."
This is also the most advanced thermal weapon that Pang Gang can now cash out from the "Encyclopedia of Modern Weapons". Of course, in the thermal weapons chapter of the book, there are more advanced flintlock guns, front-loading rifles and other thermal weapons.
, but the required conditions made Pang Gang scratch his head. To realize these things, iron ore was needed, and tungsten ore was needed in addition to wood.
This made our Pang Gangtong, who wanted to equip flintlock guns on a large scale, dumbfounded. Although he knew that China in later generations would be the country with the largest tungsten ore reserves in the world, Pang Gang vaguely remembered that it seemed that it was first discovered in China some distance away.
The tungsten mine was set somewhere in the 20th century. No one knows what tungsten mine looks like now, and Pang Gang has almost zero knowledge of the ore, so the only hot weapon he can produce currently is a matchlock gun.
.
However, after Pang Gang test-fired the Rumi gun, he was also shocked by its power. The longest range of this Rumi gun is 150 steps, and it can penetrate the Ming army's equipment at 100 steps.
Scale armor and cotton armor are very powerful.
This also made Pang Gang very puzzled as to why the Ming army had such powerful weapons and was defeated again and again against Li Zicheng's bandits and Qing soldiers. Later, when he asked a craftsman who made weapons for advice, he understood that,
By the late Ming Dynasty, the shortcomings of the unreasonable system of treating craftsmen as low-status institutions had been fully exposed. Most of the muskets produced by the Ming Dynasty Ordnance Bureau were substandard and defective products, which often failed when used.
There was an explosion accident, so the Ming army was more willing to trust the swords and guns in their hands, and few troops were willing to use bird guns. Moreover, the manufacturing cost of bird guns was also quite high, especially the Lumi gun in Pang Gang's hand.
, although this kind of Rumi gun has good safety, and has the advantages of small caliber, good air tightness, small warhead driven by gunpowder energy, and strong armor-piercing ability, there are not many craftsmen who make it in the whole Daming Society.
Even those who can make it can only make one at most a month, so it is impossible to promote Lumi gun in the Ming Dynasty.
The old craftsman's words made Pang Gang feel quite happy. Doesn't that mean that the Lumi Gun in his hand is the most advanced firearm in the entire Ming Dynasty?
But despite this, Pang Gang has only been able to cash out 60 sticks so far, and the problem that restricts it is the ore problem. This problem has also been bothering Pang Gang. Although it is written in the book that the cash items are made of iron ore, but in fact
When Pang Gang actually cashed in, he discovered that the thing mentioned in the book was pig iron. One unit of iron ore is one pound of pig iron. This made Pang Gang, who had just hurriedly prepared to cash in with a bunch of ore, almost angry.
Vomiting blood.
The consequence of this discovery was that Pang Gang almost emptied his last copper in order to equip his troops with Rumi guns. Fortunately, several craftsmen in Wanghai Fort could make the lead bullets and gunpowder needed for the Rumi guns themselves, otherwise they would have been unable to fulfill them.
Pang Gang, who was short of ammunition, could only let his soldiers use Rumi guns as fire sticks.
While he was studying the Lumi gun in detail, the guard at the door came in and reported, "Sir Qi, Mr. Wang Qi, Mr. Huang Qi and others are in the hall asking for an audience!"
"Oh, they no longer train soldiers outside to familiarize themselves with the newly issued firearms. What are they doing here?" Pang Gang stood up with some confusion and walked quickly to the hall outside.
The hall of the 100-house residence where Pang Gang lived was made of rough wood and was very simple. In winter, the cold wind would blow in from time to time through the gaps. However, the conditions were limited at this time and naturally we couldn't care so much.
Now Da Zhuang, Wang Zhi, Li Xian, Li Yuan, Hua Yan and others are waiting anxiously in the hall.
As soon as Pang entered the hall, Da Zhuang, who was so impatient, shouted loudly: "My lord, it's bad, Qianri Castle was massacred by a group of thieves a few days ago!"
"What! Butcher!"
"Yes, sir, not a single one of the old, weak, women, and children in the Thousand Suns Castle was spared. It's really miserable."
Pang Gang couldn't help being shocked when he heard that Qianri Fort was a fort under Lingshan Guard, but it was an almost abandoned fort. The walls of the castle were also very low, and there were very few military households living in it.
, there were less than thirty households, and they were led by a general bannerman. Unexpectedly, the village was massacred by bandits just after winter!
The late Ming Dynasty entered the Little Ice Age, and it was indeed a natural disaster. There were so many bandits in various places, and there were several groups of bandits in Qingzhou Prefecture. However, there is a saying that rabbits do not eat the grass beside their nests, and eagles do not eat under their feet.
Although the bandits in Qingzhou often committed crimes such as murder, kidnapping, and robbery, they still had some bottom-line concerns. The massacre of entire villages and entire fortresses like this was really shocking.
Pang Gang suppressed the shock in his heart and said in a deep voice: "What exactly is going on, Da Zhuang, tell me in detail!"
"As you command!"
After Da Zhuang responded, he came up with details. It turns out that there is a place called Canine Tooth Mountain near Qianri Castle. A few years ago, it was occupied by a group of bandits. This group of bandits were mainly local gangsters and some old bandits.
Some soldiers who had been defeated or escaped joined in. The bandit leader was a man named Zhou Youcai. I heard that he was from a military household.
Zhou Youcai led this group of bandits who often committed crimes. They burned, killed and looted in various places all year round. When they arrived in villages, they plundered all the property like locusts. As for kidnapping, ransom, and robbing women, they were commonplace. These people are extremely vicious.
, after Wang Mazi, the bandit leader of Wangjiatun, was killed by Pang Gang a few days ago, the bandits fled in all directions, and more than 200 of them ran to Canine Tooth Mountain to defect to Zhou Youcai.
After Zhou Youcai recruited this group of thieves, he became more and more unscrupulous in his actions, became more and more courageous, and went overboard. Now he actually committed the evil act of massacring Qianri Castle.
The reason was that Zhou Youcai had fallen in love with a beautiful woman a few days ago. Zhou Youcai was moved to find out that this girl was actually the daughter of a general of Qianri Castle. Zhou Youcai casually ordered someone to tell the general to dress up the girl.
Zhou Youcai was so angry that he led more than 500 bandits from the village to go down the mountain overnight and massacred the entire Qianri Fort.
, committed such an unscrupulous thing.
After listening to Da Zhuang's explanation, Pang Gang was so angry that he could hardly speak. He really didn't expect that the bandits here would be so rampant and dare to do such a personal and public outrage!
Even Hua Yan on the side said with red eyes and trembling lips: "For a little wealth, a woman actually wants to massacre an entire castle. She is worse than a beast!"
"Bang!" There was a loud noise, and it turned out to be Pang Gang's punch hitting the table.
At this time, Pang Gang's eyes widened with anger and he shouted loudly: "We must wipe out all these unscrupulous beasts!"
Thank you, じ☉＾Lian Fengchen, for the reward. Congratulations on becoming the first deacon of this book. I also want to thank you, Yan Jin, for the reward and your martial arts evaluation vote. With your support, A Ding is in my heart.