After hearing Lu Hu's report, Li Zhi, who was sitting on the throne, turned pale.
Looking at Li Zhi's face, Lu Hu's voice became softer and softer, and finally turned into talking to himself. Even Li Zhi couldn't hear clearly what he was saying.
Li Zhi frowned and shouted loudly: "Lu Hu, be louder!"
Lu Hu was startled by Li Zhi's words. He raised his hands and said, "Your Majesty, the hull of the European fleet is too thick. Our cannons cannot break through the thick hull, but their cannons can penetrate mine."
Armor... In this way, our ironclad ships cannot defeat the combined fleet of the Red Hair and the British."
Li Zhi stood up angrily and walked a few steps back and forth on the high platform in front of the throne.
The original deadlock with the Jiangbei Army in Huai'an had already made Li Zhi very angry. Li Zhi was rushing back to Fanjiazhuang these days to think of countermeasures, hoping to come up with new weapons to break the Jiangbei Army's trench defense. Unexpectedly, the Dutch and British jumped again.
came out.
Li Zhi did not expect that his initiative to attack the Jiangbei Army would actually lead to the Anglo-Dutch fleet. He was just fighting a civil war, but he would lead to nearly forty European battleships.
Li Zhi has not developed much of the navy in recent years, because the three northeastern provinces and Henan are vast and sparsely populated, with insufficient population and excess land, and there is no need or impulse to expand overseas. Moreover, the navy is extremely money-burning. Currently, Li Zhi has fifty ships
The steamship and twelve ironclad ships consume approximately 1.5 million taels of silver per year.
Without special necessity, Li Zhi was unwilling to expand the size of the navy.
However, although Li Zhi did not look for trouble, trouble did come to Li Zhi.
Just like the rapid expansion of Germany in World War I and World War II caused gang fights all over the world, because of Li Zhi's rapid expansion in recent years, he has become a public enemy of various nearby forces. At the same time, the enemies have realized that they are no match for them alone.
More and more, they began to cling to each other. As soon as the war started, all forces came up to beat Li Zhi.
Lu Hu's face turned pale and he stammered: "Your Majesty... Your Majesty, the Dutch's plan is very vicious... If our fleet cannot break through the European combined fleet, the 20,000 people in Osaka will
The Huben Army and the 5,000 Osaka garrison can only open the city and surrender. By then, we will only have 80,000 Huben Army in one town and six provinces. The hundreds of thousands of shogunate troops will then march north to attack Korea. I am afraid we will not have the extra troops to stop them.
You can live in it.”
"When the time comes when the North and the South are in trouble, it is possible that all of Korea will be occupied by the Japanese..."
"Lu Hu! Don't panic!" Li Zhi stopped, took a breath and said: "A bunch of shameless little guys think they can defeat us by joining together. They will definitely make their fleet come back without any chance!"
Lu Hu breathed a sigh of relief when he heard that Li Zhi was full of confidence.
For Lu Hu, as long as the prince has confidence, he has nothing to fear. Lu Hu said happily: "The prince is wise. As long as the prince is here, the British, red-haired and Japanese pirates will definitely be under the power of the prince."
Turn into ashes!"
Li Zhi looked at Lu Hu and said, "Lu Hu, follow me to the artillery factory to have a look."
Li Zhi left the palace with Lu Hu and rode to the Fanjiazhuang Arsenal. After entering the arsenal, Li Zhi went straight to the artillery factory and found Cao Yu, the general manager of the artillery factory.
Cao Yu was the artilleryman captured by Li Zhi during the seventh year of Chongzhen when he was annihilating the bandits. Over the years, he followed Li Zhi and not only obtained a legal status, but also rose through the ranks and became the general manager of an increasingly large artillery factory.
The artillery factory is also called an advanced casting factory. The current scale is not large. There are forty-eight casting workshops with about a thousand people, which can produce forty-eight guns at the same time. For various factories in Fanjiazhuang that often employ thousands of people, this scale is
It's small. But compared to other forces in this era, the scale of this artillery factory is quite large.
The iron-core copper body cannons produced by Cao Yu surpassed the level of artillery in this era, and the products have begun to be sold to the Beijing New Army, making a lot of profits.
However, most of the time, the artillery production line of the gun foundry is idle. Because the more powerful the cannon is, the heavier it is and is not suitable for the army. At the same time, the navy has no demand. Before a powerful enemy appeared on the sea, Li Zhi
There is no need to spend huge amounts of brass to cast expensive heavy cannons.
Most of the foundry craftsmen in the high-end foundry are doing the same thing as the first and second ordinary foundries in Fanjiazhuang - casting water trucks, water pipes and other civilian products.
Therefore, the main work of senior craftsmen such as Cao Yu in recent years has been to trial-produce new cannons. Li Zhi even asked Cao Yu and others to experiment with casting steel cannons using the internal mold water-cooling method, and they have also gained some valuable experience.
But Li Zhi came to the factory this time to see the muzzle-loading rifled cannon.
Like the Minie rifle, the front-loading rifled gun was also a short-lived product in the history of human warfare. It was first installed in actual combat troops during the American Civil War. However, within a short period of time after the appearance of the front-loading rifled gun, the breech-loading rifled gun was also a short-lived product.
Rifled guns have dominated the battlefield, so this type of artillery has a low status in the history of war.
Many people don't even know that there is such artillery as front-loading rifled guns. When it comes to rifled guns, many people's first reaction is breech-loading guns.
However, the accuracy requirements of the breech-loading rifled cannon are higher than those of the breech-loading rifle. With Li Zhi's current machine tool level, it is still not possible to produce a qualified breech-loading artillery. For Li Zhi now, the front-loading rifled cannon is simple, crude and easy to mount.
The product is also a powerful enough product.
Cao Yu took Li Zhi and Lu Hu through the workshop of the foundry and walked to the warehouse.
The warehouse was very large, with all kinds of artillery on display, ranging from small to large, all covered with black cloth. Lu Hu saw a dozen large cannons in a warehouse also covered by black cloth. Apparently, the current
The artillery factory can produce large-caliber smoothbore cannons.
However, those large-caliber smoothbore guns have extremely high requirements on the ship's recoil tolerance, and were not Li Zhi's target. Li Zhi walked to the innermost warehouse, walked up to a twenty-four-pounder, and lifted the
The black cloth covering it.
A rifled gun with rifling carved into the barrel appeared in front of Lu Hu.
Different from ordinary artillery, the breech of this cannon is very thick. It does not thin linearly from the breech to the muzzle, but at a geometric multiple speed. This makes the cannon look very rounded.
Lu Hu approached the muzzle of the cannon and looked at it, and said in surprise: "Your Majesty, this cannon is engraved with rifling, does it have stronger armor-piercing ability?"
Li Zhi smiled and waved to Cao Yu.
Cao Yu walked to another warehouse and took out a conical cannonball weighing more than 20 kilograms.
The front of the cannonball is made of steel and has a pointed warhead, which looks extremely impactful. The fuse of the cannonball is on the side, and like the round explosive projectile, propellant is used to ignite the fuse. The tail of the cannonball is a lead bullet.
Holder, stuck on the tail of the steel warhead.
Lu Hu looked at the tail of the artillery shell and found that the lead holder at the tail had the same dent as the Minie bullet. Apparently, the reason why this kind of artillery shell can engage with the rifling is the same as the Minie bullet.
Li Zhi said: "Push one out and go to the school field to see how strong the armor-breaking ability of this new cannon is. Can it penetrate a red-haired battleship?"
