Chen Mu missed Lin Afeng too much at this time.

Although there has been no definite news of Lin Afeng for several years, he knows that Lin Afeng is returning to his old business in the Arabian Sea area, doing his old job of angering the surrounding countries.

Although the Oriental Military Government has a large number of elite Beiyang troops who have nothing to do and become militia instructors, the Beiyang Army is not a good hand at sabotage, not to mention that it is different from their thinking - the Beiyang Army is a force with noble goals.

Each of them firmly believes that what they do can make every ordinary person in the Ming Dynasty live a better life, and can also make all the people in the world who are oppressed by the feudal lords of the world live better.

What they firmly believe in is right, but the problem is that their commander Chen Mu is not noble, so he can only guarantee the first half of the sentence.

He just wants Europe to be destroyed by war.

In this way, whether it is the process of war or the process of reconstruction, the Ming Dynasty can draw enough nourishment from it to become stronger and richer, and lay the foundation for the general trend of the world for hundreds of years to come.

But now, Chen Mu's immediate priority is to wait for the twenty-two cannons of Dutch merchant Lamb to arrive in Changsheng County.

In November last year, Li Dan rescued Lamb in the Caribbean, sank two French pirate ships, and seized 22 guns in the merchant ship, but Li Dan did not kill Lamb and his crew, but only seized the ship and harvest in Puerto Rico.

In addition, the clippers were sent to land from the damp and rainy abandoned fishing port of Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico, and two fast horses were half-borrowed and half-captured from the Spanish team stationed there, and all the way through Mexico City to deliver the news to the Toyo military government.

Chen Mu's response was very simple, let Li Dan continue to detain people in Puerto Rico, but it was a difficult task to send people to transport twenty-two artillery pieces to Changsheng County.

Artillery is not like ordinary cargo or soldiers, unless it is a wrought iron Franc machine of the European type, it cannot be moved by manpower.

In Europe of this era, the Franc machine was called 'Culverin', which is a transliteration of 'Culverin', which means simply a long-barreled cannon, which is similar to the meaning of cannon, and the 'a' of cannon is also the meaning of a pipe.

Later, the reason why people used the transliteration of howitzer and cannon was probably because the pipe cannon was too ugly.

In later history, the Hongyi cannon obtained and copied by the Ming Dynasty can also be called Kofilin or Canon, but in this era, except for the Netherlands, no one in Europe would make such heavy artillery, which is why the average weight of Spanish ship-borne artillery in the Anglo-Spanish naval battle in history was 17 pounds, while the average pound of British ship-borne artillery was 7 pounds, because the British only had Franc machines on ships in this historical period.

Chen Mu wanted to take a look at the practice of Dutch artillery, in addition to the stone cannon, he wanted to see what the heavy artillery looked like.

When it comes to the Netherlands, everyone will think of the term 'sea coachman', a small country that inherited the past in a short period of time, sandwiched between Spain and England, two maritime hegemons, for a hundred years and once ruled the world's seas, Chen Mu had a great interest in the Dutch people in this period.

His interest in the Netherlands intensified when he heard that the merchant named Lamb had preferred to flee all the way to the pirate chase rather than use the brand-new artillery in the warehouse.

For Chen Mu, to understand a place, first look at their ships, and then look at their guns, ships and cannons are the most intuitive benchmarks to measure a country's industrial capacity or national strength.

Lamb's merchant ship has a general understanding through Li Dan's letter Chen Mu, it is indeed an ordinary merchant ship, but because it is a merchant ship of this era, it is too special.

There is no artillery battery, the hull is very thin, it only carries cargo and does not carry armament, and the ship is very fast, just like Li Dan's evaluation of this kind of ship: 'If you want money, you don't want to die'.

Of course, its cost is still much more expensive than that of a fortune ship, but by the standards of European merchant ships, the cost of such a ship is probably only half of that of ordinary merchant ships, and if you include the cost of armament, it is less than half.

The rest is up to the artillery cast in the Netherlands.

But it's a bit harder.

There are two roads from the Gulf of Mexico to Changsheng, the official road through Mexico City is easy to walk but not safe, and the road to Panama through the Kirinwei mountain road to Panama for loading and transportation to Changsheng is safe, but not easy to walk.

If he took the latter road, Chen Mu would probably not be able to see the artillery he wanted to see until he saw the Beiyang III Banner Army arrive on the shore.

Just think about it, the horse-drawn people dragged the road dug out of the high mountains, and it was wet and rainy, to be honest, Chen Mu didn't want anyone to walk on that road if it was possible.

Taking the route of Mexico City, you have to guard against the Spaniards snatching the artillery, and if you are really robbed, you will blame the pirates or aborigines, Chen Mu has no other means to punish the Spaniards except to go to war, but he doesn't want to go to war.

Then the only way to turn to the Spaniards for help was to turn to them.

A letter was sent to Mexico City, and Yang Tingxiang came forward to negotiate with the Duke of Alva with the letter, and finally asked Spain to send a company of 300 infantry and Yang Tingxiang's 300 banner army to guard the artillery all the way west.

Even so, the artillery still walked on the road for two months before it was sent to the Mingxi border, and then it took another half a month to reach Chen Mu's eyes, along with the artillery there were more than 200 screaming Spanish donkeys.

The Spaniards got a lot of donkeys in the New World and dressed them in nice little clothes to improve the logistics of the army.

When taking over the area west of Mexico City, the Ming army had already taken over a lot of donkeys from the Spaniards who had not had time to evacuate, and now Chen Mu had no intention of returning these more than 200 donkeys to the Duke of Alva.

He liked these little donkeys dressed in red, red, blue, and blue.

The roaring sound of artillery exploded on the northern slopes of Changsheng County, and Chen Mu said to the front-line flag army who was holding the donkey and didn't know how to reply: "You take twenty-five silk horses back to Alva, for those plain colors without any bright and dark lines, one donkey is counted as two thousand tongbao, I think this price is very fair, just say I need these donkeys." ”

As soon as he finished explaining this matter, Zhao Shizhen came over with a young craftsman from the Ordnance Bureau and said to Chen Mu: "Dashuai, the twenty-two artillery pieces are all land artillery, the smallest one is a little more than three catties, and the largest one is nearly fourteen catties. ”

Zhao Shizhen turned his head to look at the craftsman, and then said to Chen Mu: "This is the gunsmith of the Changsheng Ordnance Bureau Artillery Armor Factory, I can't see any difference between the artillery and our cast iron cannon, but he said that it is different from General Zhenshuo's manufacturing method." ”

Chen Mu looked at the somewhat restrained cannon casting craftsman behind Zhao Shizhen, and the huge sound of artillery firing one after another in the distance was a little deafening, and he asked, "What's the difference?" ”

He knocked on it, thinking that the cannon was not cast in one piece, but only a layer of iron was poured on the outside, and no one knew whether it was copper inside, and if he wanted to know how it was made inside, he had to blow it up first...... The Banner Army is measuring the parameters of the artillery. ”

Zhao Shizhen looked at Chen Mu and asked in a low voice, "Dashuai, why don't you pick two cannons to test their durability?" ”

Chen Mu hugged his arms in his chest and nodded for a moment, looked at the artillery test site in the distance, and said, "Build three thick walls, let the artillery be careful, and keep fighting!" ”