Wild North America 1846

Richard was a thief. It was already 1849, and it would take Colt Arms Company two or three years from research and development to mass production of new artillery, just in time for the Crimean War that broke out in 1853.

At that time, you can make a lot of money.

The Crimean War can be said to be a rehearsal for the World War. The fighting was unprecedentedly brutal. Tsarist Russia was on one side, and Britain, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottomans were on the other side. Both sides participated in the war with millions of troops. It was a real fight.

Mountains of corpses, seas of blood, mountains and rivers changing color.

This war has nothing to do with the Tang Kingdom, but it is a good opportunity to make money that should not be missed.

The artillery design ideas that Richard provided to Count Samuel Colt were only a few years ahead of the world's technological frontier.

It won't take long

After the Crimean War broke out, British Lord Armstrong designed and produced an experimental 3-pound breech-loading rifled gun during the Crimean War, that is, in 1854.

The design was successful in both scope and accuracy, and was adopted by the British government in 1858 for large-scale deployment in the navy and army.

The reason why the British government did not immediately field this advanced artillery was because the 3-pound breech-loading rifled gun just developed by Armstrong was only experimental in nature and had neither the ability to mass-produce nor the possibility of producing and equipping larger-caliber artillery.

The smaller the artillery caliber, the lower the bore pressure, the less difficult it is to develop and produce, and vice versa.

You're welcome to say

The production and research and development of large-caliber field guns and naval guns are done on a year-by-year basis, requiring strong technical strength to tackle key problems. They can be said to be important weapons of the country.

The Armstrong gun is the earliest breech-loading rifled gun in the world. It has some advantages that smoothbore guns and front-loading guns do not have:

That is, the cannonball is loaded from the rear, using a vertical wedge-type breech block, which is tightened by a large fastening bolt called an "Armstrong screw".

The artillery is easier and faster to load shells. The inner wall of the barrel is engraved with spiral rifling, and the cone-shaped shells fired can rotate at high speed, making the artillery more accurate and having a longer range than smoothbore guns.

And all this

It is the advanced performance that Richard hopes the Colt cannon has. One step ahead is victory, two steps ahead is nerves.

Adhering to the principle of walking the path of others and leaving others with nowhere to go, Richard awakened the genius weapons designer Samuel Colt without any psychological burden.

After all, this is your own business, you have to take care of it, right?

If history does not change

The British Lord Armstrong relied on the invention of the 3-pound breech-loading rifled artillery in 1854 and developed the world's top Armstrong Company. It is famous for the production of advanced artillery and has been selling well all over the world for more than a hundred years.

Now, he can only stand aside.

Richard had fully planned it. When Colt Arms Company's breech-loading rifled artillery was successfully developed, the Tang Kingdom would immediately place a large order and implement over-purchase.

Whether it is a 6-pounder gun, a 12-pounder gun, a 20-pounder gun, a 30-pounder gun or a 50-pounder gun, all of them have invested heavily in large-scale acquisition and storage. Some are equipped with Coastal Fortress, Phoenix Fortress and Red Rock Valley Fortress, and some are stored in army warehouses.

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When the Crimean War starts, hum...

A huge business opportunity has come. Richard can sell this kind of advanced artillery to the Prussians and the French. I don’t believe that the British will not take the bait, be in a hurry, and don’t generously contribute to the big purchase...

By then, new Colt artillery will flood into the market in large numbers, first making huge profits at high prices, and then slashing prices to occupy the market, cutting off other weapons manufacturers' delusions of producing imitations.

If there is no demand, how about imitating it?

These days, my hands and feet are so slow that I can't even eat hot pieces of dog shit.

These business experiences have nothing to do with Earl Samuel Colt for the time being. He can just tinker with technological inventions.

Many people think that breech-loading guns are more advanced artillery than front-loading guns. In fact, this is a misunderstanding.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, almost all European field artillery was breech-loaded. Unlike modern breech-loading cannons, breech-loading cannons hundreds of years ago used a wedge breech assembly to close the breech, or used a submunition launcher.

, which is also the Frankie gun familiar to the Chinese people, and was once used on a large scale by the Guan Ning cavalry in the Ming Dynasty.

However, due to technical reasons, the leakage problem of gunpowder gas is difficult to solve, resulting in breech-loading artillery having a short range and low power.

As a result, European artillery completely sealed the breech and cast the entire gun into one piece. The front-loading smoothbore gun became popular and quickly dominated the European and Asian battlefields for more than three hundred years from the 16th to the 19th century.

The most obvious difference between a front-loading gun and a breech-loading gun is the breech structure.

The breech of the muzzleloader gun is quite simple. The barrel is cast as one piece without openings. In order to improve the strength of the barrel, the barrel and breech are equipped with several reinforcing hoops. The breech has a cast tail button or shackle for winding.

rope.

Therefore, the tail button or shackle on the breech of the gun is the main feature of the muzzle-loading gun. The muzzle-loading gun equipped by the navy also has a large mount, which is used for the recoil after the gun is fired, and the cycle continues.

Muzzle-loading guns can also be fired mechanically. In order to improve ignition efficiency and combat in bad weather such as rain and snow, at the end of the 19th century, the British invented a flintlock firing machine for firing muzzle-loading guns.

The flintlock firing machine is a type of front-loaded gun fire. It can only be used on the upper part of the breech of the artillery, and cannot be used in the middle of the breech. The principle is the same as that of the flintlock musket. It uses a machine spring to strike the flint to ignite the propellant.

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this age

There are no technical difficulties in developing a breech-loading rifled gun. It is just a piece of window paper that can be broken with a light poke.

The only revolutionary invention of the British Lord Armstrong was the "metal screw breech", coupled with cartridges and rifling, the latter two are no longer new things.

Richard and his party stayed at the Colt Arms Company for a short time. They talked a lot about the design ideas of the breech-loaded rifled artillery. They just had to design the drawings step by step. This triggered Earl Samuel Colt's concern.

Great inspiration, I am scratching my head and can’t sit still.

As soon as the king and his entourage left, Earl Samuel Colt rushed into the laboratory with more than a dozen engineer assistants and began sleepless nights and research and development work...

Colt Arms Company is located in Sidaoling Town. As we continue to go deeper, after passing through Wudaoling Town, our eyes suddenly open up. Farmland is continuous in the hinterland of the huge valley. Tall Dutch-style windmills stand by the river. Irrigation ditches extend to

The foot of the mountain in the distance.

The smoke from each village and town is curling up, creating a scene of prosperous and affluent villages and towns.

Sunshine City is located in the Sunshine Valley Basin, about 33 kilometers away from Sidaoling Town. It is the fifth industrial town in the Tang Dynasty with a population exceeding 100,000. It is famous for its iron ore, coal, cement and cotton textile industries. It is a typical

of industrial towns.

After the group arrived here, they checked into the royal palace.

The Royal Palace in Sunshine City is located on a hill shaded by green trees. It covers an area of ​​only three acres. It is small but exquisitely designed. It is a typical Jiangnan garden-style building with winding paths and corridors surrounding it, giving it a unique charm.

Arriving here after a long journey, Richard, served by a group of palace maids, changed out of his military uniform and put on a light robe, and walked into the warm inner room.

The firewood burned brightly in the fireplace, exuding endless warmth.

Richard walked to the sofa by the fireplace and sat down. Three obedient and beautiful maids gathered around him with light steps, stretching out their white and jade hands to relieve His Majesty the King's fatigue.

One maid was rubbing her shoulders and neck behind the sofa, and the other two maids were kneeling on the left and right beside the legs, stroking the legs and feet of His Majesty the King to relieve the fatigue of riding all the way.

In addition, the palace maids served coffee, exquisite snacks and newspapers for His Majesty to read and enjoy.

Most of these are American newspapers from a week ago, a few are newspapers published by the Tang Kingdom, and some are European newspapers from earlier.

In his free time, Richard reads newspapers every day, keeps abreast of major events in North America and Europe, and watches the ups and downs of the world.

After entering 1849

There is no big news worth noting in North America. If there is any, it is that Mexico has a new president. The last president only came to power at the end of last year. Richard changed his name without even remembering it.

Speaking of presidents, President Polkford of the United States was blessed with great luck. After being shot three times by an assassin, he miraculously recovered after emergency treatment and more than two months of bed rest.

The only consequence was that President Polk became a cripple. A bullet severed the nerve plexus in his left thigh and he had to limp with the help of a cane.

This is just like today's Polk administration, which suffered a huge defeat in last year's midterm elections and is now a broken duck.

Many senior officers in the General Staff Headquarters of the Tang Kingdom have serious doubts about the US military. They believe that the 20,000 US troops stationed at the Hugo Oasis are a smoke bomb and are very likely to launch a surprise attack on the Tang Kingdom and start an undeclared war.

But Richard knew that this was all unfounded worries, and his premonition clearly stated;

The United States is now too overwhelmed to take care of itself and will not be able to launch another large-scale war for at least 3 to 5 years.

The recent relationship between the United States and France has been very tense. The United States defaulted on its huge debt and failed to pay war debts and high interest on time. France seized more than 40 American cargo ships and increased the tax rate on more than 100 products exported to Europe, including textiles.

Use this to put pressure.

After three years of war, the U.S. federal government's backlog of debt exceeded $530 million, 46% of which belonged to French loan sharks alone. In addition, there were some French government loans, which were a huge amount with interest.

With so much money, the U.S. federal government will not be able to pay it off in 20 to 30 years, let alone 20 years.

Moreover, the Polk administration has lost all its prestige and is too busy taking care of itself. It does not hold a majority in either house of Congress, so why is it fighting a war?

After the humiliating peace talks in the foreign war crisis, internal conflicts in the United States have begun to break out. The southern slave states are deeply complaining about the huge war debts and cannot even collect normal federal taxes.

This is undoubtedly a kind of resistance and a strong separatist attitude, indicating that the conflict between the North and the South may break out earlier than the original historical line.