Outside the three-mile telegraph office outside the Tianjin Acropolis, the servants in the distance led the donkeys and waited for two rows, and the surrounding people went up to Xiucai, small officials, down to the pawn and peddlers, and the gate was surrounded by three layers inside and three layers outside the early morning, which was impassable.

Those with status are closer to the gate, and those without status are farther away from the gate, but their movements and demeanors are the same, tiptoeing and staring at the closed door, staring intently.

Suddenly, a gong sounded, the door of the telegraph office slowly opened, and five Tianjin guards led their horses out and galloped towards the Tianjin Acropolis.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in early June, the second phase of Beiyang will go to Asia!"

In the year after the completion of the first Beijing-Tianjin telegraph, the double-line telegraph route from Jizhen in the north to Hangzhou in the south along the canal was built and put into use under the auspices of Zhang Juzheng, the first assistant of the empire, and telegraph offices were set up in all provinces, prefectures and counties along the way.

The so-called double line does not refer to the sending of newspapers back and forth, but the front-line officials and the first-line people, but the temporary technical means are not enough for the people to use the telegraph to transmit family letters between the north and the south, but every ten years the Beijing division produces a newspaper of major events in the world, which is divided into one main, secondary, and four civil ways to be printed and posted by the county telegraph bureaus.

Nowadays, the gentry and officials of the counties along the canal have developed the habit of getting up early in the morning every Wednesday every month to listen to the headline of the telegram.

However, today's topic is not interesting to the people of Tianjin - they have long known the news of the second phase of the Beiyang expedition, and many people who do not read the topic themselves ran to the door of the telegraph office and waited because they went to Beiyang to see the battleship set sail.

"How fresh?"

This is far less interesting than the Japanese king Ashikaga Yoshiaki in early May to pay tribute in Beijing or Altan Khan in late April to pay tribute.

The old and young masters waved their hands, and those who rode donkeys rode donkeys, those who rode horses, and those who rode in cars, flocked to Beiyang.

In the printed Minbao, there is also a story about the palace under the headline of this issue, saying that the Wanli Emperor could not bear the military and civilians of the second phase of Beiyang to go on the expedition, and originally wanted to see them off in person, but he couldn't send them off because of the wind and cold, and even wept for it.

It's all bullshit.

Wan Li Ye is not sick, every morning he runs eight miles in the Forbidden City with a knife on his back, and he is very healthy, stronger than a calf.

It is even more nonsense to say that he is sad and weeping, he just wants to take a boat in Bohai to have a good time, and by the way, he will give himself a few days off, but now it is different from the past, God is back in middle age, can he be released out of the palace to play?

That is, Chen Mu is not in the court, otherwise after reading today's newspaper, he would have to get the propaganda department for the Ming Dynasty.

The sound of horses' hooves whistling in the distance disturbed the people who rushed to Beiyang to watch the fleet set out, and the four horsemen stepped through the muddy streets at the beginning of the rainy season with their big cards held high, and the people hurriedly avoided and looked forward to the direction of Tianjin Wei to the west.

They seem to have gotten used to the fact that the evasion token is not reserved for county officials.

Sure enough, it didn't take long for the sound of horses' hooves and galloping intensified, and hundreds of horse infantry marched in a row, and the Han generals led by Le Ma raised their whips sideways, holding high the banner of the horse character and trampling through the Mongolian horse team of Tumochuan Baixu.

Exotic warriors from the north of the Great Wall of the Nine Frontiers wore heavy armor on their shoulders, and it was known that they were the elite armoured cavalry of Altan Khan, and the Mongol infantry marched along with the spare horses and wheelbarrows of the armored cavalry, on which were held bundles of quiver arrows.

The people recognized that the Han general was Ma Ran, a young general who had been showing his face in Tianjin recently, and he had a prominent family background, his father Ma Dong was known to the governor with his family merits, and his ancestor Ma Fang was even more powerful and shocked Emperor Jiajing of Mobei as the bravest general in the world, but it was a little embarrassing to appear in Tianjin with troops at this time.

The Ming army that was ready to go to the East had been assembled two months earlier, and the warriors of the 2,400 No. 3 battalion of the Emperor had already arrived in Beiyang, and the Mongolian horse team had become frequent visitors on the official road from Zhenbao to Tianjin.

This armored cavalry unit is obviously out of date.

Bang bang!

A few clangs rang out from the Beiyang campus, piercing the silence of the early morning.

Ye Mengxiong, the director of the Beiyang Branch of the Ministry of War, carried a gun that looked very different from the past weapons three times in a row, and handed it to the soldier on his side, the smoke in front of him gradually dissipated, he squinted his eyes and looked at the wooden target in the distance, and some soldiers ran over to look at the target, waved his hand and made a gesture, and then he nodded with satisfaction.

The gun is shaped like a combination of the three-eyed gun and the old Nanyang flintlock bird gun, called the three-eyed bird gun, the full name is the three-eyed riding gun made by Xuanfu in the fifth year of Wanli, and the wooden gun holder of the new Nanyang flintlock bird gun is not used, and the curved wooden handle is still used, but the slight arc of the handle makes the shape more exquisite.

The three guns are connected as a whole, and they can rotate clockwise near the flintlock machine, and the circlip pops out at each firing position, so it can be fired three times in a row.

In the research and development, according to the latest data of the Guangzhou Jiangwutang Research Institute five years ago, the gun tube is longer than the previous three-eyed gun, but due to the weight trade-off, the most powerful and accurate 3 feet 8 inches is not selected, and the 2 foot 4 inch gun tube is used, and the overall weight is between the non-supporting flint bird gun and the Nanyang made with the flint bird gun.

Dedicated to cavalry, the optimal firing range is fifty paces.

The three-eyed cavalry came out at the end of the fifth year of Wanli, and the first 100 poles were sent to Jizhen, Beiyang, the Ministry of War, and the Forbidden City, and were greatly praised, and the seven craftsmen who participated in the design, and a Jinshi from the Ordnance Bureau Research and the chief officer of the Xuanfu Ordnance Bureau were all rewarded by the new military department Shangshu Wang Chonggu, and the emperor nominated them for the next year's Wanli Science and Technology Award.

In the second phase of the Beiyang army, which is about to depart, there are three hundred Beiyang cavalry equipped with three-eyed cavalry, and at the same time, there are three hundred three-eyed cavalry and supporting tools in the carrying baggage.

At present, there are no troops such as Jizhen and Jingying.

These three-eyed riding guns in Beiyang were purchased from Xuanfu by Ye Mengxiong, and the supporting fee was 2,400 taels of silver.

There are pros and cons to everything, the three-eyed cavalry is well-made, the shooting is coherent, and the power is strong, but it also has disadvantages, which is not conducive to the whole army's installation, first of all, the cost is high, and the internal transfer of the military department also requires three taels of silver, and the silver two is good to say, the key is that its structure makes the charge complicated, and the cavalry wants to load it on the horse, it must use another loader made by the Xuanfu Ordnance Bureau, and the size of the lead shot is different from the bird gun.

The Ming Army's existing bird guns are divided into two specifications: three-money bullets and nine-money bullets, and the two-money bullets used by the three-eyed riding guns are also designed to reduce weight.

For a short period of time, it was difficult to arm a large number of troops with this weapon, but at least for the time being, it seemed that this weapon was very popular with the generals of northern Xinjiang, and the wealthy generals were happy to spend a lot of money to buy equipment for elite families.

Ye Mengxiong waved his hand and said to the mule and horse convoy parked in the school yard: "Load!" ”

He re-inspected the last batch of ordnance, and the guns, ammunition, and medicine were all correct. He raised his eyes and looked at the port, and let out a long sigh of relief—he finally lived up to Chen Mu's trust.

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