The Eagle of Eastern Europe

After a brief reunion, Peter returned to Constanta. He ordered Constantine to gather all the soldiers for training and to compensate them by exempting them from taxes for half a year.

As for artillery and muskets, Shafqat reported to Peter that the fastest they could make would be one a month.

After the family arrived in Dobroga, Peter arranged for them to establish a cannon-casting workshop by a small river in the south. Even, in order to facilitate his use of water power, Peter specially recruited some male laborers to build a dam on the upper reaches of the creek to raise the water level so that his cannon casting workshop could use water power.

Peter can also understand, after all, the output of cannons is no better than others, let alone cast iron cannons. Heavy artillery casting is inherently difficult. This problem was not solved until the American Civil War by an officer named Rodman. This is the so-called "Rodman cannon casting method."

As for iron smelting technology, European iron smelting technology was still relatively backward at this time. They all used shaft furnaces to smelt iron. The smelting temperature of the shaft furnace was still below the liquefaction temperature of pig iron, so in principle it was still smelting iron from one piece. However, the shaft furnace has a settling process and a slag discharge function, so the smelting quality has been greatly improved compared to before. However, since the shaft furnace does not have a tap hole (it is not liquid, of course it cannot come out by itself), so after smelting is completed, the flame must be turned off, and then the furnace body must be disassembled to obtain iron, which is not efficient.

Peter had a new blast furnace built. This blast furnace is actually also called a stirring furnace. By using wrought iron rods or steel rods to stir, the carbon in the pig iron is burned, and finally wrought iron is obtained.

At the same time, the secret book obtained from the mysterious East introduced a thing that can increase the temperature of iron-making, a blower.

In ancient Egypt, local goldsmiths used blowpipes with pottery nozzles, while the Incas in South America sometimes used 8 to 12 copper pipes to blow at the same time. Later, the windbag made of animal skins was invented.

Although there are blowers in Europe, they are sparsely distributed. Coupled with backward iron smelting technology, production has not been able to increase. Peter installed a blower for each blast furnace, powered by water. Greatly improve work efficiency. In order to create slag and remove sulfur and phosphorus, Peter also sent a ship to Constantinople to purchase quicklime, a slag-making agent.

This is different from the Pudelin stirring method popular in England in the 18th century, but rather a combination of the Pudelin stirring method and the Honzmann crucible method. The reason why the low-cost Pudelin method is not used is because the temperature of the stirring method is low, only 1400 degrees, and the quality of the steel produced is only better than pig iron, not as good as open-hearth steel. However, this also has some disadvantages. The main thing is that it consumes a lot of fuel. In order to obtain high-quality steel, Peter extended the refining time from 6 to 8 hours to 10 hours. Even though it was a waste of fuel, he didn't care. Because this is the steel used for casting cannons, and nothing can be done carelessly.

As for muskets, musket craftsmen are easier to recruit than artillery craftsmen. In places such as Transylvania and Italy, chambers of commerce have recruited more than 20 musket craftsmen. Peter also offered them a high price and they came to Constanta.

The current European musket is called a fire door gun. It has a launch tube (i.e. barrel) made of cast copper or wrought iron. There is a fire door at the lower end of the launch tube, which is used to ignite the gunpowder. The end of the launch tube is connected with a gun called " A stick or spear with a "rudder stock" that makes it easier for the shooter to hold, aim, and control. Firing a fire door gun generally requires two people. When firing, black powder is loaded from the muzzle of the gun, and then pellets such as stone bullets, iron bullets, copper bullets or lead bullets are inserted, and then red-hot metal wire or charcoal is used to ignite the fire door. of gunpowder to eject the projectile.

During launch, two launchers are responsible for aiming and ignition respectively. However, it is very inconvenient for two people to use a fire door gun. The shooters said this about the fire door gun: "A single person needs two pairs of eyes and three hands to operate the fire door gun!"

Peter asked people to improve the musket, and announced that if there was a big improvement, he would directly give 2,000 gold coins.

Under heavy rewards, there must be brave men. A musket maker reworks the ignition mechanism of a portal gun. A groove is made on the outside or upper part of the gun butt, and a snake-shaped rod is installed in the groove. One end of the rod is fixed, and the other end constitutes the trigger, which can be rotated, and a clip holds a slow-burning match rope soaked in potassium nitrate. . There is a gunpowder disk installed at the rear end of the barrel. When firing, the trigger is pulled, the machine head is pressed down, the burning match rope enters the gunpowder disk, ignites the gunpowder, and the projectile or arrowhead is ejected. The butt of the gun was also improved and a handguard was added so that the musket could be fired over the shoulder.

Unexpectedly, with Peter's heavy reward, the matchlock gun came out early. The rope can be ignited after being soaked in salt solution. After pressing the metal hook into the fire door, the soldier can hold the gun with one or both hands, keeping his eyes on the target.

Peter was overjoyed and not only rewarded the craftsman, but also asked him to make a large number of them. In order to recruit enough workers, their wages are about half higher than usual.

Such wages certainly attracted the civilians of Dobroga. Most of the immigrants were willing to work for wages, and there were a small number of slaves.

Okay, the matter of armaments and soldiers has been settled. The next thing should be cultural matters.

Now that we already know about papermaking and letterpress printing, let those people get started quickly.

No guidance? Just do whatever the lord tells you to do, so much nonsense.

Use metal to create letter squares, then combine them with ink and cover them with paper, and that's it.

The raw material metals are composed of lead, antimony, and tin. Since lead accounts for the majority, it is also called lead movable type. In order to print continuously, two iron plates were used, one for brushing and the other for typesetting, and the two plates were used alternately. After printing, use fire to bake the agent, shake it gently with your hand, and the movable type can fall off the iron plate, and then put it back into the original wooden grid according to the rhyme, so that it can be used again next time.

With the printing press, of course the first thing to be printed was the Bible. This is a must-read for religion, and printing it will definitely spread it widely.