Daqin Engineering Corps

This is why Shen Bing said that the Yuezhi army is still controlled by the noble forces.

Due to the needs of the situation, Shen Bing could not use drastic means to eradicate and replace these nobles, but to protect their interests for the time being... To overthrow the rule of the nobles, in fact, they must gradually disintegrate from within.

As soon as Shen Bing came in, Qiu Jiu and Xiu Mi hurriedly stood up to greet him:

"I don't know that the great general is coming, but this king is far away to welcome me!"

Since Qiu just hired an interpreter to wait on him at any time, so Shen Bing could understand.

Shen Bing returned the gift and said:

"Shen Bing has nothing important to do here, he just wants to ask the king for some blacksmiths."

"Your Majesty knows that our army has lost a lot of equipment after several battles."

"Although our army has blacksmiths accompanying the army, it is a drop in the bucket, so..."

But Qiu quickly replied:

"It's natural. If the general is in need, I will help you with all my strength."

"Don't say it's just asking for a few, it's okay to hand over all of them to the general."

Then Qiu asked again:

"The General's remarks mean that the Huns are about to attack again?"

At this time, Qiu Jiu was said to be the great king of the Yuezhi, but his authority was only to manage internal affairs and trade with the Central Plains, and he knew nothing about military aspects such as intelligence investigation.

Shen Bing nodded slightly and said:

"Shen Bing just got the news that the Huns have occupied Gushi and Loulan."

Qiu Jiu was taken aback, but he still didn't believe it:

"Is this true?"

"The aunt had already surrendered to the Huns, why did the Huns take it?"

Shen Bing replied helplessly:

"I don't kill Boren, but Boren died because of me."

"The Xiongnu should be worried that our army will gain a foothold in the west, so they act first to be strong!"

Qiu Jiu is a veteran who has fought for many years. He understood what Shen Bing said, and then his eyes turned angry, and he cursed:

"The Huns are really deceiving people!"

"The Western Regions have tolerated it time and time again, but they never thought that they would still be unable to escape the fate of destroying the country!"

Then he turned around and said:

"So, how does the general plan to deal with the enemy?"

"The Yue clan and the Qin State are allies, and the Yue clan will fully assist in this battle!"

Shen Bing cupped his hands gratefully and said:

"Thank you, Your Majesty, for your kindness."

"However, Gushi and Loulan are only tens of thousands of Xiongnu, so don't bother your majesty!"

Qiu just nodded:

"In this way, it will be hard for the general."

"This king believes that with the talents of a great general, he will surely be able to win the battle and restore peace to the Western Regions!"

This seems to be a very normal conversation, but there is an undercurrent surging in it.

Qiu Jiu didn't care about the peace of the Western Regions, he was just eager to get back the military power.

But how could Shen Bing be so stupid as to believe what he said, and just understate a few words before perfunctory.

As for the military power of the Yuezhi Army, it was actually in the hands of Li Jian, Wang Ben's deputy.

Shen Bing sent Li Jian to the Yuezhi Army as an instructor in the name of the two armies fighting together.

And it's not just Li Jian, he is leading a teaching group of 500 people.

As soon as these instructors were installed, they would serve as deputies among noble officers at all levels of the Yuezhi Army.

Shen Bing confessed to Li Jian and his colleagues:

"If you want to truly control and command the Yuezhi Army, you must regard the Qin Army as its soldiers, understand?"

Of course, Li Jianguang understood the truth of this after reading military books, so he explained to his subordinates and took the post with his subordinates.

The so-called instructors were those trained by the Qin army in the Yuezhi army.

Soldiers are usually used to the command of the instructor, if the instructor treats them as human beings and the noble officers treat them as slaves... When there is a conflict, it is conceivable whose command the soldiers are more willing to obey.

These are still secondary, and there are several advantages to doing so, such as promoting the communication between the Yuezhi and the Qin army, so that they understand that people do not have to be slaves and are not born inferior, so they have the heart to resist noble officers.

The other is that the instructors have a certain right to be promoted: whoever is outstanding in the training can be promoted to be the head of the corps, the head of the army, or even the head of the village or the hundred generals.

The Yuezhi nobles didn't pay attention to these low-level military officers. If they wanted to be five hundred masters or two or five hundred masters and above.

The problem is that……

If these low-level military officers are all appointed and dismissed by instructors, then they will naturally have a grateful heart for being appreciated. At that time, they would be more willing to listen to their instructors or nobles who are invincible?

The Yuezhi army is a slave, and the Qin army is a free man who can be promoted and rewarded with military merits.

So the Yuezhi Army would rather choose the former or the latter?

So by doing this, Shen Bing is actually slowly hollowing it out from the grassroots.

It is conceivable that before long, the Yuezhi army will be firmly controlled by Shen Bing and even assimilated into the Qin army. At that time, Qiu will not be able to take back the military power even if he wants to.

Chapter 4 Eleven Iron Core Bronze Cannon

In ancient times, making guns was technically easier than making guns.

The reason is that the artillery can use thick copper and iron piles to make it less easy to blow up the chamber, while the musket needs to be carried by a single soldier, so it requires light weight. This determines that the barrel should not be too thick, so the chamber is often exploded.

As a result, when making a gun, it is necessary to first cast a whole iron rod and then slowly drill it with a steel drill. It often takes a worker several months to drill a qualified gun barrel.

Artillery is not so troublesome.

The most primitive artillery is to directly use clay to make the cannon mold embryo, then pour copper water into it, take out the metal tube after cooling, and then use copper hoops or iron hoops to hoop around the gun barrel and the medicine chamber in circles.

Of course, the artillery that Shen Bing wants to make will not be so primitive...

This primitive artillery also has the problem of bombing.

Shen Bing asked the blacksmith to cast the cannon into two layers, the inner layer was made of iron, and new iron was used.

At present, there is no new iron in Shazhou, but this is not a big problem. Shen Bing directly allocated several iron smelting workshops of Yueshi to Qin Jun, including the craftsmen in the workshops.

Then the blast furnace is knocked down and the water truck is made.

As for coal, it is not necessary.

In fact, using coal to smelt iron does not improve the quality of iron, but reduces costs through mass production.

At this time, Shen Bing didn't use much iron to make cannons, and carbon could completely solve it.

The person in charge of these iron smelting workshops is a Qin man named Ming.

In fact, I don't know if he is considered a Qin person.

Like Liqing, he was captured by the Yuezhi in his parents' generation, so he grew up in the Yuezhi since he was a child, and his living habits are the same as those of the Yuezhi people.

Because Ming could speak the Central Plains dialect, King Yuezhi put him in charge of the blacksmiths from the Central Plains.

Ming got close to Shen Bing immediately:

"I don't know where the great general is from?"

"The subordinate's parents are from Xianyang, and they came here because they were robbed of doing business with the Yue family."

"My subordinates yearn for Qin State wholeheartedly, but they cannot escape. Today, the general's coming here can be regarded as a fulfillment for the subordinates!"

Shen Bing was noncommittal.

Because he knew that if this Ming Zai Yuezhi could get into the position in charge of Yuezhi's iron smelting, it would be deeply trusted by the Yuezhi.

If he is deeply trusted by the Yueshi, he must have expressed his loyalty to the Yueshi King in various forms. At this time, he said that he is wholeheartedly yearning for the Great Qin... so it is not very credible.

But Shen Bing didn't care about that.

Because Shen Bing had already confessed to Wang Ben, all the blacksmiths and their families who were included in the Qin army's supervision also moved in together, and they were not allowed to leave the camp for half a step under the strict supervision of the Qin army.

Shen Bing didn't dare to be sloppy about this point, because just the new iron technology is a big deal, and if you add artillery technology, it's still a big deal?

Now that Ming has been watched, Shen Bing doesn't care whether his statement of "one-heartedly yearning for Great Qin" is true or not.

Shen Bing handed the sketch of the artillery to Ming and said:

"Is there any difficulty in casting this kind of copper cannon?"

After seeing it, Ming answered with confidence:

"It's not difficult, it's not difficult! The subordinates will immediately make it for the general!"

It's really not difficult, it is a copper pipe in the final analysis.

To be precise, it is the outer copper pipe and the inner iron pipe, but it is necessary to leave a fire door in the medicine room for ignition.

Shen Bing asked:

"How long will it take to make?"

Ming calculated and replied:

"If you want to cast new iron from a new furnace, it may take a month to make it!"

Shen Bing nodded:

"Make twenty doors, and make projectiles out of new iron!"

Ming responded and withdrew.

This iron-cored bronze cannon is something unique to the Qing Dynasty.

It's just that the cannons of the Qing Dynasty used the whole iron pillar to drill out of the cannon bore like making guns.

The guns produced in this way are stronger and more accurate, but the disadvantage is that they are extremely time-consuming.

Shen Bing didn't need such precision and lifespan at this time, so he used the casting method for rapid prototyping.

The disadvantage of casting is that it is easy to explode the chamber, and the iron core and copper jacket can reduce the risk of explosion to a considerable extent... When the two are combined, you can get a cannon that can be produced quickly and has good performance.

The reason why the iron core copper coat can reduce the risk of bombing is related to the expansion of the artillery when it is heated.

If the gun body is all made of copper or iron, there is such a problem: the gun barrel is heated unevenly, and the heat always spreads from the inside to the outside after firing.

If the barrel is divided into an inner wall and an outer wall, the inner wall will always be heated more than the outer wall.

As a result, the inner wall expands more when heated, forming a kind of tension, which forcibly stretches the outer wall apart.

If you want to analyze it seriously, there is also the problem of different arc lengths under the same angle between the inner and outer walls:

The inner wall is close to the center of the circle. As long as the length is slightly expanded by a little heat, the outer wall needs to expand several times in length to adapt to it.

The result is that after firing a few shells, many cracks that cannot be seen by the naked eye will appear on the outer wall. "It exploded with a bang.

This cannot be solved by simply stacking copper and iron. Even if more copper and iron are piled up to make the barrel thicker, the uneven force on the inner and outer walls will be more serious.

The modern way to solve this problem is to use the "single wall self-tightening" technology.

To put it simply, once the inner wall is produced, it will be in a more compact and denser state than the outer wall, and its thermal expansion will just match the expansion of the outer wall, so it is not easy to explode the chamber.

This technology is simple to say, but in modern times, few countries in the world can master it. Japan has to import tank barrels from Germany because it does not have this technology.

Even so, Japan can still boast that every time it produces a tank, it calls it "No. [-] in Asia"...

The reason why the iron-core copper cannon is not easy to explode:

One is that iron itself has better toughness and tension, and is not as brittle and easy to break as bronze.

More importantly, the expansion system of iron and copper is different.