The fact that Jia Baoyu broke into the queen's temporary residence quickly spread throughout the world, and everyone was talking about it.
But Jia Ke seemed not to take this matter to heart anymore, and Jia Baoyu seemed to have resumed her original life of singing and dancing.
But everyone in the royal family knew that from that day on, Jia Baoyu could never step foot into the palace again.
Even when summoned by the Empress Dowager and the Queen Mother, Jia Baoyu could not pass the city gate.
Because of this incident, the Queen Mother became furious and even had several quarrels with the Supreme Emperor Jia Zheng.
But Jia Zheng ignored this matter, because Jia Zheng knew that Jia Baoyu had gone too far in this matter. If Jia Ke was not given a chance to vent, Jia Ke would become angry when the time came.
It can't be dealt with anymore.
Regarding this matter, Jia's mother did not plead to Jia Baoyu, but often complained to his personal maid Yuanyang: the affection between flesh and blood among the emperor's family was too cold.
In Jia Baoyu's Prince Fu's Mansion, because Princess Lin Daiyu had a bad health last time, she was never pregnant. However, Jia Baoyu's concubine Xiren was detected to be pregnant by the imperial doctor soon after, and finally gave birth to a baby for Jia Baoyu.
The son's name is Jia Gui.
As a result, Lin Daiyu was so angry that she became seriously ill, and her health became even worse.
And time passed slowly in this trivial matter. Three years passed in a flash, and it was the fifth year of Kangshun.
In the past three years, the foundation of the Yan Dynasty has become more stable, especially among the people. Because Jia Ke changed the way of collecting taxes, the people's lives can finally take a breather.
Although the landlords and wealthy people paid more taxes than before, it did not harm their roots. Therefore, although there were some complaints, because Jia Ke was so powerful, they swallowed their anger.
Another one is the commercial tax in the world. In recent years, due to the increasing number of merchants traveling through the world, the commercial tax collected by the imperial court has also increased.
In the fifth year of Kangshun's reign, the imperial court had already received 40 million taels in commercial taxes. Adding in other salt and iron taxes, as well as agricultural taxes from all over the world, the imperial court's annual income reached 75 million taels. Such an income
It's simply unprecedented.
Due to the rich tax revenue of the imperial court, various construction projects in the world are also in full swing.
Jia Ke's first project to benefit the people was six straight roads with three horizontal and three vertical sections. In ancient times, it could be said that such a large project would waste people and money if it was not performed properly.
When Qin Shihuang built a straight road, he recruited many civilians, and in the end the people were filled with resentment. If Qin Shihuang hadn't been too majestic, the Qin court would have been in danger of overthrowing it.
This time Jia Ke also learned his lesson, and instead of forcibly expropriating civilians, he gathered all the criminals in the world and used them to build roads.
When there were not enough candidates left, Jia Ke recruited poor farmers from all over the world who were short of land. During the period of work, all their meals were provided by the court, and they were given three hundred cash as wages every month.
Therefore, many poor farmers in the world regard this matter as a huge good job, because they can still have enough to eat on the construction site, plus they still have 300 coins a month to supplement their family income, so they are naturally followers.
Gather.
Therefore, despite the efforts of the past few years, although all roads have not been built, in places where roads have been built, commercial circulation has become much faster than before, making it easier for people to go out.
Another one is that Jia Ke began to tighten the rights of the chieftains in the southwest.
Each of these chieftains were local emperors. Although Jia Ke wanted to quickly deprive these people of their power, he was afraid of changes in the southwest, so he always adopted a policy of relaxation.
First, they sent people to redeem the slaves in the hands of these people, and then they bribed these people and the people who led the troops under their command, so that the efforts of these chieftains could be slowly dispersed. The third was to send scholars to the places where these chieftains lived, so that the natives under these chieftains could
They open up to wisdom.
Under the leadership of Jia Ke and Guan Ke, these chieftains' control over the local area became weaker and weaker, while the county magistrates sent by Jia Ke became more and more powerful.
In one case, Jia Ke did not give up on the research and development of firearms during these three years.
The imperial court's tax revenue has increased significantly in recent years, and Jia Ke's investment in firearms research has also become even larger.
This firearms research is not just about finding some iron and drilling a hole in the middle to make the barrel.
One of the most important items is the steel used for the barrel.
Jia Ke came from modern times, but he didn't know the formula of these special steels, and he also knew that the gun barrel couldn't be made of ordinary steel.
Therefore, in addition to the development of various machinery for machining, a large part of these investments is to explore the materials used for steel pipes.
As we all know, there is no shortcut in materials science. We can only experiment and refine again and again.
After nearly a year of experiments, Jia Ke's firearms factory barely mastered the formula of an alloy.
This formula is much harder than the ancient wrought iron and the steel refined by the court, and it is also very flexible. Jia Ke named this steel No. 1 steel.
The recipe for this recipe was classified as a secret by Jia Ke and was kept strictly confidential. Only one or two people in the entire firearms factory knew about it.
After No. 1 was just refined, another big problem faced the firearms workshop, and that was large-scale refining.
There were no steel-making furnaces in ancient times, so large-scale refining was simply a fantasy.
After Jia Ke learned about the difficulties of the factory, he came to the firearms factory in Xishan in person, and then studied it carefully with the old craftsmen. Finally, Jia Ke drew a simple diagram according to the style of a modern earthen blast furnace, and then gave it to these old craftsmen to let them know.
They continued their research based on this sketch.
These old craftsmen have also been skilled craftsmen for several generations. After getting Jia Ke's sketches and sufficient funds, they experimented with three types of soil blast furnaces at once, and then slowly improved them, and after nearly seven or eight months
It took a while to experiment with a blast furnace that could meet the requirements for refining gun rods.
After all these obstacles are solved, it is time to drill holes in the steel pipe. This is the most important step in making a musket.
Don't look at it as just drilling a hole in a steel pipe. The difficulty involved is beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
In ancient times, you can imagine that in order for the barrel to have the same width from front to back, the holes in it could not be tilted at all.
In the Ming Dynasty, most of the gun barrels made were rolled out of iron sheets, then beaten with wooden sticks and stacked. Although this solved the problem of making gun barrels, the quality of the produced gun barrels was really poor.
Sometimes as long as a shot is fired, the barrel will explode immediately.
This is why during the Ming Dynasty, the firearms troops were defeated by the Qing Dynasty's cavalry who used cold weapons.
Jia Ke naturally did not want such a situation to occur, so Jia Ke did not take any shortcuts, but used the most difficult method, which was to make large-scale machine tools.
This machine tool is said to be simple, just a drilling machine, but there are a lot of troubles involved in making it.
Jia Ke used the wooden machine tools used to make woodware in ancient times to imitate them, and then changed all the wooden components into ironware.
Although the simple machine tool made in this way seemed to be usable, when I tested the cutter head on the machine tool, I could barely drill a white mark on the No. 1 steel pipe.
Jia Ke is really a bit numb now. Has all the hard work in the past few years been wasted?
In the future, the only option is to refine tool steel again, and now Jia Ke's knowledge is completely useless.
Next, Jia Ke offered a huge bounty at the firearms factory. Anyone who could develop tool steel would be immediately rewarded with a thousand taels of silver and promoted to the third level.
There is a saying that a big reward must lead to a brave man. Jia Ke offered this big reward and immediately inspired countless old craftsmen in the factory who thought they were capable.
So after nearly half a year of research, we finally developed a tool steel that can process No. 1 steel.
Jia Ke was overjoyed when he found out, and finally gnawed off the last bone.
Next, with the help of the man-made machine tools made by Jia Ke and the new tool steel, the gun barrels were completed one by one with high quality and quantity.
The next step is to install the trial-produced flintlock gun according to the flintlock gun drawings that were designed three years ago.
As a result, the flintlock gun produced had another trouble, that is, the ignition device was unreliable.
Flintlock guns basically use the flint on the hammer to strike to create sparks that ignite the gunpowder.
However, this hammer cannot guarantee that sparks will be generated at any time with every impact, and the sparks generated cannot guarantee that the gunpowder can be excited.
If such a large-scale gun malfunction occurred during a war, the war would not be able to continue.
Finally, improvements were made to increase the striking area of the hammer, and to add a fire curtain above the spinal cord and gunpowder to reduce the impact of natural wind on gunpowder and sparks.
After improvements, this flintlock gun can be used. After the improved flintlock gun, every 20 shots, only one failed to fire.
This kind of error rate is already available on the battlefield.
After Jia Ke got the flintlock gun and completed it, he went to the factory to conduct experiments in person.
After testing, it was found that this flintlock gun had a lifespan of one thousand rounds, which in Jia Ke's opinion was quite remarkable.
Jia Ke opened his mouth lightly and named the newly completed flintlock gun - Type 04 flintlock gun.
The next step is to start mass production and equip the troops.
Although Jia Ke has the equipment, the number of machine tools is not large, and each machine tool can only process 2 to 3 gun barrels per day.
And Jia Ke only has a dozen machine tools. At this rate, if he wants to equip his troops, it will be the year of the monkey and the month of the horse.
So in the following days, Jia Ke ordered people to make more than 100 machine tools, all of which were lined up in a row to make gun barrels.
It can process three to four hundred gun barrels a day, and about 10,000 Type 04 flintlock guns can be produced every month.
Only now can Jia Ke feel at ease. The efforts he has made in the past three years have finally been in vain. If he persists for another year and a half, it won't take much. As long as there are 100,000 troops equipped with flintlock rifles, Jia Ke will be sure to sweep across the mainland.