choke element

Chapter 1033: Puzzled (Part )

Huge roars rang out one after another, and even the soldiers guarding the city walls were stunned. Even some veteran soldiers who had seen the power of gunpowder weapons were still stunned at this moment.

More people didn't know what was happening for a moment and could only stare at the metal cylindrical object that made the loud noise as if they were staring at a ghost.

These objects are arranged in a row, large and small, in several specifications.

Some were less than the thickness of a wrist and could be lifted and moved by four or five people. At this moment, they were being lifted up at an angle, making it inconvenient to fill them with ammunition. Some were as thick as a bowl, with their tails pressed against earth and rocks. Seven or eight people had to hold them down with bags of earth to prevent them from bouncing back. Some were particularly huge, and it took a lot of effort to lift them to the top of the city wall. As a result, cracks appeared on the metal casing after a loud noise, and the high-temperature gas inside escaped, scalding the hands and faces of the people nearby.

These are the cannons that Guo Zhongyuan collected from the city. Moreover, every one of them is a privately cast contraband. It is a little troublesome to use, but it is not a big deal.

The army of the Great Zhou Dynasty had already used a large number of throwing gunpowder weapons a few years ago. Although there had been no wars in the following years, the promotion of gunpowder weapons in the army had not stopped, and Guo Zhongyuan attached great importance to it. However, the gunpowder weapons belonging to the army were concentrated in the research of Daxing Prefecture and Tianjin Prefecture in the north, and the manufacturing factories were also strictly controlled and not located in the Central Plains. The ones collected by Guo Zhongyuan were actually the products of cooperation between local wealthy merchants in Kaifeng and a group of sea merchants.

It has to be said that compared with the stability of the agricultural regime, within a dynasty like the Great Zhou with a complex base, all kinds of strange and bizarre things happened continuously, which could be described as a riot of demons.

For example, with the development of commerce, more and more forces participated in maritime trade, but the sea was by no means a place ruled by the king. After landing, many armed sailors under the maritime merchants were suppressed by the military force and dared not disobey the law. When they arrived at the sea, they were tempted by huge profits and immediately became bold and unscrupulous. Even though the Zhou Dynasty and the Song Dynasty had military fleets to suppress them, the conflict of killing and robbing was difficult to curb. Therefore, each family was secretly trying to add weapons to the ships in addition to the normal equipment.

At first, this arms race was limited to the private recruitment of Korean armed sailors and Japanese wandering samurai. Later, the devil outsmarted the enemy, and all parties continued to invest huge sums of money and upgrade their military strength. In a very short period of time, they were able to upgrade their weapons to sophisticated weapons and even equip them with gunpowder weapons.

The pioneers in this regard were the sea merchants of the Southern Song Dynasty. They probably bribed someone in the army to steal a weapon called a fire lance and quickly replicated it on a large scale.

The fire gun uses a giant bamboo tube with a bullet hole inside. After the flames are extinguished, the bullet hole will emit a sound like a cannon, and the range is more than 200 steps. Although it is not very accurate, it is very useful for killing people and burning sails, and it can always gain an advantage before hand-to-hand combat.

Moreover, Song Dynasty merchants traveled across the southern seas, and it was convenient for them to go to the ports of Song to replenish gunpowder or bamboo tubes and nests. For a time, the fleet of this merchant company was arrogant and took advantage of many things. However, how many people were watching the hundreds of millions of Guan of maritime trade! Anyone who suffered a little loss would feel heartbroken and had to turn the situation around. How could they keep taking advantage?

In the following short period of more than a year, the musket was used more and more widely, and its shape was modified several times by various companies, becoming more and more powerful and with a longer range. Finally, a confidential blueprint from the capital of the Great Zhou Dynasty was leaked for some reason, and the sea merchants found that a brand new world beyond everyone's imagination appeared before their eyes.

They began to privately cast cannons.

Cannons were still in the experimental stage in Daxing Prefecture, Zhongdu. It was said that many people opposed the use of the weapon due to its huge cost, and it was only pushed forward by a certain important figure in the court.

There was no precedent for the merchants to secretly forge cannons. Such powerful weapons required extremely high manufacturing technology, and the supply of copper and iron and even the coordination of facilities required for production could not be wrong at all.

This kind of thing is naturally against the law, so it cannot be placed in Shandong. Shandong is where the Dinghai Army started. Placing it there is equivalent to placing it under the eyes of the court. If something goes wrong, ten heads will not be enough to chop off. For the same reason, the factory cannot be placed near Zhongdu.

It was even more impossible to place it in the Southern Song Dynasty. Everyone invested huge resources and a huge amount of money in order to overwhelm all competitors including the Song people at sea. If the factory was placed in the Song Dynasty and the results were stolen by the Song people, wouldn’t everyone be a fool?

After excluding all other places, the area around Kaifeng, which was extremely prosperous and had a large number of handicraftsmen, became the only suitable choice.

Especially in the past six months, officials from all over the Central Plains have been purged one after another, which inevitably left a gap in local management, and the behavior of maritime merchants has become more and more unscrupulous.

They even secretly intercepted the output of a copper mine and used it in casting. Fortunately, the copper production of the Great Zhou Dynasty increased rapidly, and there were inevitably some management oversights, so the trickle of water they intercepted was not discovered.

In recent months, several groups of sailors from Shandong have traveled to Kaifeng under the pretext of inspecting ships. How could Kaifeng be a place that could build ships? Not to mention seagoing ships. In fact, they came to inspect artillery.

Because various forces covered this up tightly, the Great Zhou intelligence agency, which was known to be all-pervasive, received news but had no hard evidence, and Guo Zhongyuan, who was left in Nanjing, was also unaware of it.

Unfortunately, all the cover-up arrangements were completely wasted when the Mongolian army invaded. Before the danger came, the manager in charge of the factory reacted quickly, hurriedly packed up the personnel and materials set up in a secret place, and went to Kaifeng for refuge. It happened that the soldiers and civilians in Kaifeng were in a panic, and Guo Zhongyuan put a lot of effort into sorting things out.

In order to prevent spies and spy, and to explore the potential for war, they really dared not be careless. The privately cast artillery that fled to the city had no chance to escape at this time, and they were gathered together in no time.

The managers, craftsmen, laborers and the like who were involved were trembling with fear, thinking they were going to lose their heads, but they never expected that Guo Zhongyuan was about to gather all the forces he could mobilize, giving them the opportunity to redeem themselves for their crimes.

Considering that they would be installed on ships for naval warfare in the future, the specifications of these guns were generally small. Also, due to the limitation of technology and materials, which were far from the final reliable finalization, the range of the guns varied, and the power varied.

When we arrested this gang the other day, we found that there were a lot of cannon barrels, but they had almost thrown away all the gunpowder. There was also a chief craftsman who confessed in tears that his family had secretly taken advantage of the manufacturing process, and that the materials used in several cannons were not good enough, and they were completely used to fool the boss. Once filled with gunpowder and used in the battlefield, the barrel wall would explode at any time.

It was really a nest of snakes and rats, with the leaders following suit and everything else in a mess. The situation at that time almost made Guo Zhongyuan laugh out of anger.

But it doesn't matter, this is enough.

No matter how crude it was, it was a weapon created in a brand new environment. Its power far exceeded the throwing weapons that were used before, and it was enough to launch a one-sided massacre against the Mongolian cavalry.

Of course, the range of artillery has its limits. Tuolei and others who were far away from the city could not reach it. So the first to bear the brunt of the misfortune were the Mongolian light cavalry who had been patrolling for a long time under the city.

The simultaneous appearance of Han troops from several directions made the light cavalry very alert. They gathered the scattered troops in advance, ready to respond to Tolui's orders at any time or intercept and kill the defenders leaving the city.

When the artillery roared, the Mongolian cavalry looked up. These Mongolians had been in battle for a long time, and some of them knew the power of Zhou's firearms. They immediately shouted and reminded people to dodge. However, most of the cavalry did not react. They looked up into the air, but did not see the trajectory in the air. How could they dodge?
The next moment, large and small shells fell, with dozens of impact points scattered over a range of miles.

When a shell landed, it hit a cavalryman in the chest. People around him could almost hear the "bang" sound, and then saw a cloud of fine blood mist explode.

Under the blood mist, the cavalryman's torso was completely gone, leaving only his waist and legs still sitting upright on the saddle. Tubs of gray-red and green internal organs were gushing out from the gap in the hips and continuing to flow down the warhorse's front legs.

The shell continued to fly and hit another cavalryman's leg. The whole leg immediately turned into splattered flesh and blood. The cavalryman was sitting on a fat Mongolian horse, and the horse also fell to the ground with a bang. The horse's torso was almost broken in two, and almost all the exposed bones were shattered.

After hitting two targets in succession, the speed of the shells dropped significantly. The people around them could only vaguely see a black shadow passing through the air. The black shadow bounced twice on the hard winter ground, smashing the head of a cavalryman and the legs of two horses, and then slowly stopped rolling, hissing with white smoke.

The shells were made of iron or stone, suitable for smashing the decks of ships, and were more powerful than human beings. The fight was very fierce, but the casualties were not shocking. Dozens of shells rolled over within a few miles, but only thirty cavalrymen were killed by the shells. If the giant crossbows on the top of the city were used instead of artillery, the casualties would be similar.

But this excessive power and almost impossible-to-avoid nature were a bit too scary for the Mongols who were encountering artillery for the first time.

This is different from the iron cannon.

The Mongols were born conquerors, and the Mongolian army was also a very professional army. After suffering losses in the early battles with the Dinghai Navy, the Mongols made many analyses of the iron cannon and shared many experiences in dealing with it. They now knew that as long as they saw the arc of the throw, they could predict the landing point in advance.

The Mongols on horseback could just pull the reins and run away from the explosion range of the iron cannon...which wasn't that big anyway.

In other words, the Mongolian army relied on its superior war skills to keep the threat of iron cannons under control. It was just a common trouble in war.

But what about this weapon that can smash whatever it hits into pieces?

Even if the skin of a person killed by a cannonball is burnt, he still looks like a human being. How should we deal with the fate of being smashed into pulp?

Thirty dead bodies are just thirty balls of flesh! How can the others defend themselves? How can they hide?
Or is it that there is no way to defend or dodge? All you can do is endure it?

How come the Han people have new things again? Where did they come from?

Many Mongolian cavalrymen were dumbfounded, staring at the dead and wounded, not knowing what to do for a moment.

The other places where the shells fell were also in chaos. Even though the shells were of different weights, they were all incredibly powerful within a range of three or four hundred steps. Almost everything that blocked their path was shattered.

"Huh, huh..."

A Mongolian cavalryman, his body and face covered in blood and flesh, was holding his horse's neck and panting. His companion, who had been walking side by side with him, had been torn into pieces, with only an arm holding a long sword left. But he had no time to admire his own luck, and only panted and panted, as if he would faint at any time.

Many more people hesitated, not knowing whether to disperse or retreat. Even the best warriors would hesitate when faced with weapons they had never seen before, not to mention that the power of artillery was so terrible that it completely exceeded the Mongols' understanding.

This is not the war they are used to! Even if their courage and experience are ten or a hundred times greater than that of the Han people, they cannot cope with this situation!
At this time, the city gate suddenly opened, and the Kaifeng defenders marched out of the city in a resounding line.

(End of this chapter)