The Rise of the European Emperor

Most of the Portuguese artillery captured by Wang Hong were rescued and salvaged by water ghosts from the burned shipwreck. Moreover, most of them are small guns of two or three pounders. Although the power is not great, it is just suitable for land warfare.

The Wang Gongxun uprising army in the Fujiang area only defended against danger, and it was precisely that they were most afraid of sharp weapons such as artillery. Moreover, there are quite a few 12-pound guns and 6-pound guns on Portuguese warships, which are more suitable for tackling tough situations.

Chen Jin got these more than 300 cannons, not to mention using them to defeat the enemy, just the sound of the cannons when they are fired can scare a person to death. In addition, the 1,800 matchlock guns were enough for Chen Jin to send out a powerful musket formation, which would definitely suppress Wang Gongxun's rebel army.

After making this decision, Liang Chu and Yang Yiqing suddenly began to tout the role of artillery, thinking that artillery is a super weapon to defeat the enemy. Moreover, the deeds of Humen Fort repelling the Portuguese warships were also greatly appreciated by Liang Chu and Yang Yiqing.

Many ministers in the court seem to have been greeted in advance, so they strongly agree with the two opinions. Then, the ministers of the Manchu Dynasty began to discuss the establishment of forts in various key ports along the southeast coast.

Zhengde opened his mouth, but finally said nothing. In fact, the whole rhythm was deviated by Liang Chu, Yang Yiqing and others. Originally, Zhengde still wanted to build a few warships. As a result, Liang Chu and Yang Yiqing and other court officials completely ignored the warships and so on. To the issue of the deployment of forts in various places...

Zhengde really wanted to intervene, but for many years he mainly thought about how to deal with Mongolia in the north, and he didn't understand naval warfare, so he couldn't intervene. Moreover, what the ministers said is also very reasonable. The southeast coast is an important place for taxation and must be strictly protected.

As for the eunuchs in the court, they control the inner eight bureaus, which involve the casting of artillery. However, it does not involve shipbuilding. Therefore, when they heard that the ministers were going to cast artillery on a large scale, these eunuchs were already smiling. Because, on the casting artillery, they can do their best to reap a lot of benefits.

But for shipbuilding or something, these eunuchs don't care. Because the shipyards are generally located in the southeast coast or the Yangtze River area, which is beyond the reach of the eunuchs in the palace, and they have nothing to do with them.

Moreover, if you spend a lot of money to build a ship, there will be less funds for casting cannons...

Therefore, at this time, Zhengde himself could not intervene because he did not understand, and the eunuchs under Zhengde also supported casting guns because of their interests, but not shipbuilding.

In this way, both the civil official group and the eunuch party group support the repair of more forts, and do not support any shipbuilding. Zhengde's idea of ​​building a fleet was also extinguished.

And Jiang Bin and Qian Ning are not the favorites of eunuchs,

I want to follow Masanori. After all, the benefits of casting cannons in the inner eight bureaus are not their turn, that is the domain of the eunuchs.

But the problem is, Qian Ning was born in Jinyiwei, so he doesn't know anything about the Navy. And Jiang Bin was an officer in the frontier army, and he was more familiar with frontier affairs on land, but he didn't know anything about sea affairs.

Therefore, the two of them didn't bother about casting cannons or building ships, but focused on encouraging Zhengde to fight in the frontier area so that he could lead them to gain military merit.

A few days later, the brokers sent by Kong Tai also found several eunuchs and offered them bribes. Then, Zhang Yong and Gu Dayong waited for the eunuchs, and they had nothing to say. No one opened their eyes to mention shipbuilding. The most important thing for them now is how to divide up the benefits of casting cannons. After all, casting a cannon requires a lot of copper, and it is still very profitable to work on it.

Then, throughout the Ming Dynasty, a consensus was formed on "repairing forts to ensure coastal defense safety". The civil official group is purely because of the Confucian guiding ideology of "conserving the mean" and prefers defense to offense. And the eunuch party, purely because of the interests of casting cannons, also strongly supports the construction of forts.

Under the guidance of this idea, forts were added at the Pearl River Estuary outside Guangzhou. Quanzhou, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou and other important coastal towns have also made plans to build forts. In addition, there are also plans to build forts on Chongming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze River and on the shores on both sides. Even Dagukou, the "Gateway of the Capital", has a plan to build a "Taku Fort". In short, the entire Ming Dynasty began to repair forts frantically, three hundred years earlier than the Qing Dynasty began to build forts in the 19th century.

Moreover, unlike in the Opium War, when the Opium War began, the cannons of the Qing Dynasty had actually fallen behind. Because the artillery of the Qing Dynasty was still a smoothbore gun, and the ratio and purity of gunpowder were not as good as others. Although the caliber is large, the range is not as good as the British artillery. And in the Second Opium War, Britain even came up with a rifled cannon - the Armstrong Cannon, which completely crushed the forts of the Qing Dynasty.

In addition, the design of the Qing army's fort was unreasonable, and the ammunition depot was located on the surface, which was extremely dangerous. When the Eight-Power Allied Forces attacked the Dagukou Fort, in fact, the Krupp cannons of the Dagukou Fort were not at a disadvantage in the artillery battle. However, the ammunition depots of the North and South Forts were hit by enemy ships, causing the explosion, and they were helplessly defeated. .

The fort designed by Marin obviously has no such defects. In the turret designed by Marin, not only the turret has a "roof" to prevent the parabola of the enemy's shells from hitting the soldiers in the turret, but also the ammunition depot is strictly required to be located underground.

Of course, the shells of this era were separated from the ammunition. And the heaviest one should be the iron ball bounce. In order to prevent the gunner from expending too much physical energy when carrying the iron ball, the ammunition depot designed by Marin is divided into a gunpowder depot and an iron ball depot.

Among them, the gunpowder depot is strictly located underground, and all gunpowder is sealed and packaged with moisture-proof oil paper and piled up in the underground gunpowder depot. When the war started, the soldiers in charge of the transportation took bags of bags from the ground forts. It feels like holding bags of salt...

The iron ball warehouse where the iron ball shells are located is located on the surface, parallel to the fort, and can be transported by a small cart, which is very convenient.

Under such a scientific and reasonable design, there will be no such ridiculous things that fail helplessly because the ammunition depot is hit.

...

In fact, apart from the difference that the Ming Dynasty used stone to build the forts and the Beihai State used reinforced concrete, the difference between the Ming Dynasty forts and the Beihai State's forts is basically not big.

Of course, this only difference is also very critical. As a result, the forts of the Beihai State could not be destroyed by shelling at all, and the forts of the Ming Dynasty still had a small chance of being destroyed by shelling.

However, in this era, I am afraid that no other country can use artillery to destroy the solid stone forts of the Ming Dynasty. After all, the artillery technology of various countries is still very general, and the power is not great. Unless a giant cannon like the 68-pound cannon of the Beihai State is successfully developed, the fortress of the Daming Stone Fortress can be blasted.

When he helped the Ming Dynasty build the fort, Hadover, a craftsman from Beihai Kingdom, also gave him all his money under the instruction of Kong Tai. At that time, among the craftsmen who repaired the fort in Guangzhou, there were master craftsmen sent by the Ministry of Industry.

Liang Chu directly summoned Lu Youcai, a master craftsman who participated in the repair of the fort and received Hadover's guidance, to the Hall of Supreme Harmony to introduce the design idea of ​​the fort.

These design ideas, even civil servants who don't know how to do it, will nod frequently after hearing it, and think it makes sense.

And Emperor Zhengde, a military-loving emperor, also appreciated the design ideas of the fort.

Since then, "building fortresses to protect coastal defense" has become a basic national policy of Ming Dynasty. Moreover, for a long time, because there was no way to break through the fort, it actually restrained the Portuguese warships and Japanese pirate boats, and achieved good results...