Chapter two hundred and sixty seventh minister wants to shoot
After hearing Li Xuan's talk about firing a cannon, Butcher Chen seemed extremely excited. A big old man walked around the cannon like a child, watching the craftsmen who came with the cannon adjust the angle of the cannon.
From time to time, they asked a lot of random questions: "I said, why did you lower the muzzle of the cannon so low? Wouldn't it hit the ground when you hit it? You should raise the muzzle of the cannon a little higher, so that you can hit it."
The Ming army on the opposite side!"
"Your cannonballs are really heavy. Can such a big lump of iron really hit so far?"
"Don't bury your heads in the sand and do it on your own. You can also teach me how to fire a cannon, Old Chen. Hey, here, I told you to let me do it, but why did you just put the cannonball in it!"
Butcher Chen was talking nonsense around the craftsmen, which made several other generals want to cover their faces. After all, you, Butcher Chen, are also the senior generals of the new army of the Tang Dynasty, the most powerful general of the Tang Dynasty who made countless Ming armies famous and fearful.
, why is this so childish like a child?
And are you the only one curious?
We are also curious, okay, but can we mess around just because we are curious? No, we didn’t see that we all maintained our identities and watched quietly from the side. At most, we stretched our necks to see more.
Be more careful, but there is no one like you who just walks up and messes around.
The craftsmen spent a lot of time adjusting the angle of the cannon and then loading the cannon and shells.
At this time, one of the leading craftsmen walked up to Li Xuan and said respectfully: "Your Majesty, everything is ready!"
Li Xuan nodded slightly: "Thank you for your hard work, Master Wang!"
The craftsman surnamed Wang immediately said: "No hard work, no hard work, this is the job of the young people!"
Li Xuan said: "I have to trouble you to stay here for a few days. I will find someone to come and learn how to fuck with you!"
In the current Tang Dynasty, although there is a paper establishment of an artillery team, this paper establishment is really a paper establishment, which does not even have an artillery unit.
Now that this artillery is available, even if this artillery is just a test artillery, Li Xuan plans to rely on this artillery to build up the artillery team's frame.
However, playing with artillery is a technical job. How to aim, how much gunpowder to load, and how to maintain it in daily life are all technical jobs, especially aiming.
Li Xuan couldn't just find someone to shoot this artillery accurately. The selected artillerymen had to receive special training, and who else knew the performance of this artillery better than the craftsmen who personally built it?
, how to operate?
The craftsman surnamed Wang also said at this time: "Your Majesty, don't worry, the young ones will try their best to teach them!"
After chatting for a while, Li Xuancai turned back to look at which artillery piece, and then said: "Since everything is ready, let's fire it!"
As soon as Li Xuan finished speaking, Butcher Chen ran out again: "Your Majesty, can you let me fire the cannon?"
Li Xuan smiled: "Why not!"
This is all aimed, the shells and propellants have been loaded, and all that needs to be done next is to light the fuse. Since Butcher Chen is willing, let him go!
Anyway, this cannon has been tested many times in Huangzhushan, and there is not much danger of the barrel exploding. Of course, this cannot be said to be without any danger of exploding the barrel. If Butcher Chen encountered it when he fired the cannon,
If it explodes, he can only blame himself for being unlucky.
As for Li Xuan himself, he would never touch such a dangerous thing. The quality of artillery these days is worrying. Even artillery made of fine copper cannot be much better due to the processing level of this era.
Therefore, Li Xuan himself hid far away, and even brought Fang Dongquan and Wang Shanxu with him to avoid a bomb explosion, so he brought all the high-ranking generals of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty for collective reimbursement.
But Butcher Chen obviously didn't care about this. He held the torch under the guidance of the craftsmen, then looked back at Li Xuan and the others, showed a grin, and then lit the match with the torch.
After the match rope was lit, it quickly ignited the gunpowder in the barrel. Instantly, a loud noise came from the fort, which shook the ears of Li Xuan and others not far away.
As the loud noise sounded, a cloud of white smoke mixed with fire also rose from the muzzle. However, Li Xuan and the others did not focus on the artillery itself at this time, but turned their sights to the other side of the river.
In his sight, a small black dot quickly crossed the sky and then flew towards the other side of the river.
If you look at it with the naked eye, you will have the illusion that the cannonballs are flying very slowly, but this is just an illusion.
In fact, the cannonball flew across the river at an extremely fast speed and landed in a thin curve among the many rafts built by the Ming army on the river beach.
Immediately afterwards, they saw the cannonball, like a giant, breaking through the obstacles of many rafts and running towards the end. Wood chips flew everywhere in its path, and one of them rolled dozens of meters before it stopped.
Looking back at the rafts, I saw that a whole row of them had been smashed to pieces.
These rafts were originally made temporarily and could not be too strong. When hit by solid iron ball bullets, the joints broke, and sawdust flew everywhere.
The Ming army on the other side of the river didn't know what happened. After hearing the loud noise, many people ran out to see, but the new Tang Dynasty army only fired one shot. After firing one shot, they had no intention of continuing the experiment.
Avoid too much exposure.
Therefore, the Ming soldiers didn't understand much for a while. However, a few people saw the gun smoke from the muzzle on the other side of the river and guessed that it might be a big gun used by the puppet Tang rebels. However, it was not easy to judge for a while.
Although these Ming troops also had artillery, they did not have artillery that could shoot such a long distance. The two they had were bowl-mouth cannons, weighing only a hundred kilograms.
Of course, the Ming army also has relatively large artillery. For example, the Fo Lang machine gun imitated by the Ming army in recent decades is made of copper. The light one is 150 kilograms, and the heavy one is 300 kilograms.
He even tinkered with a thousand-pound Folang machine gun himself.
However, these Folan cannons were regarded as military-state weapons by the Ming army, and most of them were equipped to the northern frontier army and the coastal Ming army. Naturally, remote inland areas like Xingquan Prefecture did not have such "military-state weapons."
In addition, a very critical point is that at this time, most of the artillery of the Ming army, including the Folang machine gun, were used to fire shotguns. Moreover, the Folang machine gun was a rear-mounted letter cannon, and its sealing performance was so poor that it could
Desperate because the range is very short.
This also created a very interesting situation, that is, the Fucheng Ming army on the opposite side had never seen artillery that could shoot five or six hundred meters away while maintaining its hit rate and power. It was natural that it was confused for a while.
If it were the Ming army from the coast, especially the Ming navy, they would be able to tell at a glance that these pseudo-Tang rebels were firing solid iron bullets, and they were also long cannons.
However, these ignorant Fucheng Ming soldiers were unable to react for a moment after seeing their raft being destroyed inexplicably.
But at this time, the puppet Tang rebel army stopped firing, and they had no way to confirm the truth through the second bombardment of the puppet Tang rebel army.
At the same time, on the fort across the river, a group of senior generals from the New Army of the Tang Dynasty were extremely excited.
"Okay!" After running away, the gunpowder smoke from the muzzle had not dissipated. Wang Shanxu, who was beside Li Xuan, couldn't help shouting: "With this sharp weapon, our army's chance of winning this battle can be increased by 30%!"
"This artillery is really powerful. If there are dozens or hundreds of them, no matter how many Ming troops come, they can't hit it!" Fang Dongquan on the side couldn't help but exclaimed.
At this time, Zeng Ziwen also said: "Congratulations to your majesty, congratulations to your majesty for obtaining this magical weapon. With such a military weapon as the Italian cannon, our Tang Dynasty will be able to sweep across the nine states in just a few days!"
Listening to their words, Li Xuan calmly lowered his hands slightly: "It's just a small cannon, don't make a fuss!"
Pretending, this is definitely showing off!
When people around him looked at Li Xuan's appearance, they all had to give a thumbs up. When it comes to showing off, His Majesty is still awesome!
But not to mention, although Li Xuan usually pretends to be cool a lot, this time he is definitely not pretending. After taking care of the artillery tanks, aircraft carriers of later generations, and looking at this antique-like forward-loading smoothbore gun in front of him, Li Xuan
I really can’t bring myself to show off.
What he wants is not this solitary artillery piece. What he wants is dozens or even hundreds of artillery pieces. Although the artillery piece in front of him will be of some help to the upcoming war, it will also play a vital role.
It does not play a decisive role.
To really stop the enemy from crossing the river, he has to rely on the more than a thousand people under his command, especially the more than two hundred musketeers.
Butcher Chen, who was firing the cannon over there, came over with excitement and said to Li Xuan: "Your Majesty, Chen wants to have a cannon fire!"
Li Xuan was a little puzzled. Didn't he just shoot? Could it be that Butcher Chen felt that he was not satisfied with the one shot and wanted to shoot again? This is not possible. The gunpowder and cannonballs are precious and cannot be played around with.
The New Army of the Tang Dynasty did not have comprehensive sources of sulfur, saltpeter or even iron tools. Whether it was gunpowder or the iron balls used as cannonballs, they were important strategic materials and could not be used indiscriminately.
Besides, if you fire more cannons, no matter how stupid the Ming army is, they will know how to take precautions. When the Ming army crosses the river, they may come up with some countermeasures.
Therefore, it was impossible for Li Xuan to let Butcher Chen continue to fire this cannon.
Butcher Chen may have seen the confusion on Li Xuan's face, so he immediately explained: "Your Majesty, I have requested to serve in the artillery team. With this artillery, I will definitely live up to the reputation of Italian artillery!"
After hearing this, Li Xuan finally realized. It turns out that you, Butcher Chen, want to change jobs. Should you become an artilleryman instead of a sword and shield soldier?
Li Xuan was a little speechless about this, and even couldn't figure it out. Let's not say that you, Butcher Chen, don't know how to read or how to use artillery. Let's just say that you are brave and don't fight in close combat. Is it appropriate to hide behind and fire cannons?