Far away in Europe, the Second Anglo-Dutch War was about to enter a decisive battle, which would be a naval battle on a grand scale, a decisive battle between European battleships. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

It was also during this period that a large-scale water war in the East would also kick off, that is, the Dongting Lake Water Battle.

The Lingqu, Guangxi has entered the precipitation season, and the water level of the Lingqu, which has just been completed, has risen sharply. On the road on both sides of the Ling Canal, countless people are pulling the ropes, and the warships flying the flag of the Ming Army are slowly passing through the Ling Canal. Because of the completion of the Ling Canal, the Ming army's 200 warships could pass through the Ling Canal smoothly, many of which were captured in Burma or purchased from the British and Portuguese.

"Xiangye, the Lingqu has been opened for shipping, and our army and sailors have entered the Xiangjiang River and recovered Yuezhou Dongting is just around the corner!" Ma Xiong said respectfully to Guo Zhiqi.

After all, Guo Zhiqi is still the first assistant of the Ming Dynasty, and he is the highest-ranking official of the Ming Dynasty on the Ming side.

Guo Zhiqi stroked his beard and sighed: "Miracle! What a miracle! But in just over half a year, such a huge project has been completed! It's amazing! Ma Junmen, you have made the first contribution to this matter! ”

"Thank you for the compliment!" Ma Xiong replied respectfully.

The number of warships passing through the river was innumerable, one after the other, head to tail, standing in the middle, with neither the head nor the tail in sight.

Guo Zhiqi sighed: "There are more than 300 big ships, including more than 100 giant ships in Taixi, and when they arrive in Hengzhou, there are more than 100 vehicles and ships, plus more than 2,000 small ships, our army has a big advantage in this battle!" ”

Ma Xiong replied: "Xiangye, but Shi Lang, the commander of the Tartar Naval Division, is in Yuezhou, and we still can't be underestimated!" ”

"Shi Lang is indeed a strong enemy! It's a pity that after the old country's surname is master, when it comes to the level of water warfare, it is really incompetent! However, the old man believes that it is strength that determines the outcome of the victory! Our army has such strength, Shi Lang Xiaoer will definitely be the head! Guo Ziqi looked at the powerful fleet and was full of confidence in his heart.

The Ming army had more than 2,600 large and small warships, and the killer of them was vehicles and ships.

In today's flood season, after several heavy rains, the water level of the Ling Canal rises, allowing large ships to pass through, which is a very beneficial aspect for the Ming army.

Some time ago, because of the heavy rain in the sky, the Qing army once took advantage of the rain to attack Changsha, thinking that the Ming army's firearms could not be used when it rained, and wanted to take advantage of a small advantage.

Who knew that many fortresses had been built on the city wall of Changsha, and the Ming army could hide in the fortresses and shoot arrows; A canopy was also erected on top of the fort to shelter the gun emplacements from the wind and rain. As a result, the Qing army's tentative offensive ended in failure, losing more than 1,000 people in vain, and fleeing back to Yuezhou in disarray.

Guo Zhiqi and Ma Xiong took a warship, entered the Xiangjiang River along the Ling Canal, and then went down the river to Hengzhou.

The boat docked at the dock just now, and before Guo Ziqi got off the boat, he saw Liu Guoxuan with a few personal soldiers to greet him.

"Xiangye! Ma Junmen! Liu Guoxuan stepped forward and arched his hand.

Guo Zhiqi asked: "Liu Junmen, Shi Lang is a big trouble for our army, and now this thief is sitting in Yuezhou, I don't know what chance Liu Junmen has of winning against Shi Lang's dog thief?" ”

Liu Guoxuan replied: "Back to Xiangye, although the last general is not talented, strength determines everything!" The strength of our army is far better than that of Tartar, although Shi Lang is a good general, but in the face of absolute strength, the last general believes that Shi Lang is powerless to return to the sky! As long as the general does not overstep too much, this battle will be won! Therefore, the end will be against Shi Lang, the victory or defeat will be three seven, the end will be seven, and Shi Lang will be three. Those three points are just Shi Lang's familiarity with the hydrological situation, which may create a little trouble for the general! But there are cars and ships, you can ignore the current and wind direction, advance and retreat freely, and you will win the battle at the end! ”

"Good!" Guo Zhiqi nodded, "Let's go, take the official to see the car and boat!" ”

"Xiangye, please!"

The group walked to the gate of the heavily guarded water village, Guo Zhiqi looked around the wall, and saw that the outer walls of the water village were all pasted with mud, which was tightly covered, and he couldn't see the situation inside clearly. Walking into the water village, he found that the water village is located in a lake bay on the side of the Xiangjiang River, a waterway leads to the Xiangjiang River, and the surrounding area of the lake is blocked by a wall, which can prevent the Qing army spies from spying on the military situation.

On the wharf in the water village, there are large and small vehicles and ships moored neatly.

The Ming army built a total of 156 vehicles and ships, in addition to 36 large vehicles and ships of 150 tons, and also built 120 small vehicles and ships.

The large ship was built of oak dismantled from the Dutch warship, with a sturdy structure and 14 guns, a total of two pairs of paddlewheel drive, the paddlewheel was protected by a thick wooden cover on the outside, which could prevent the paddlewheel from being damaged by the Qing army and causing the ship to lose power.

Guo Zhiqi, led by Liu Guoxuan, embarked on a large car and ship made of oak. The length of this ship is more than nine zhang, and the width is more than one zhang.

"Why are there so few guns on this ship?" Guo Zhiqi asked.

Liu Guoxuan replied: "In the water battle, the distance is far away, and it is difficult for the artillery to hit the target, and the two guns on the upper level are shot at a long distance, with a long barrel, smooth breech, and high accuracy, and the weight of that kind of cannon is too heavy and the cost is also high, so it doesn't need a lot." The main firepower relied on the short-barreled guns of the lower deck. ”

Walking into the lower artillery deck, Guo Zhiqi saw the Ming gunners standing neatly on the gun position, each gunner was full of energy, and his face was engraved with pride, and it could be seen that these gunners were veterans of a hundred battles.

"They're all elite soldiers!" Guo Zhiqi sighed.

Liu Guoxuan arched his hand and replied: "Back to Xiangye, they are all veterans who have followed the last general for many years, and they have fought with the Tartars many times under the command of the old country's surnamed Ye, and every time there is a water battle, the Tartars have not been able to get a little bargain!" ”

Guo Zhiqi carefully looked at these short-barreled Karen guns, only to see that the barrel length of these guns was relatively short, but the caliber was very large, and the guns were placed on a sturdy wooden four-wheeled gun mount, but the gun wheels were made of iron, stuck on the slide rail, the end of the slide rail was cocked, and there was a strong blocking device, which could block the artillery from retreating due to recoil after firing.

"After firing the gun, the gun will be returned, the gunners will load the shell, and as soon as they pull this handle, the gun can automatically reset along the slide, which can make the firing speed much higher, and there is no need to use people to reset." Liu Guoxuan pointed to the reset device of this cannon and introduced.

Guo Zhiqi can also be regarded as having seen Wang Xinyu's Western warship, so he touched his beard and nodded: "The cannon of this car and ship is the same as the giant ship artillery of the Taixi people!" It's all very convenient! ”

As they spoke, they walked to the lower power compartment of the ship.

In the power cabin, located on the lower level of the gun deck, there are three rows of seats with backrests, the seats are made of wood and covered with soft cushions. There is a pair of footrests underneath each seat. However, Guo Zhiqi could not see the structure inside the pedals, and could only see a row of pedals connected together by a pipe.

Liu Guoxuan pointed to the wooden pipe connecting the pedals and said, "The most complex device of the car and ship is in this. As he spoke, he opened the lid of the plank.

Guo Zhiqi glanced inside, only to see that under each pair of pedals inside, there are gears connected with a worm, the worm is a device that turns the longitudinal rotation into a transverse rotation, in fact, the worm has been invented in the Great Song Dynasty, and at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhang Shicheng's righteous army also knew how to manufacture worm transmission devices. However, after the Ming Dynasty, because of the sea ban, the shipbuilding technology of the Ming Dynasty has been regressing, the vehicles and ships have been lost, and the worm transmission device has also been lost.

The disadvantage of the Ming Dynasty is that it inherited the bad things of the Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty! The Song Dynasty attached great importance to craftsmen, collected commercial taxes and did not learn, but learned to emphasize literature and light martial arts! The Yuan Dynasty's emphasis on force and commerce did not go to school, but instead of learning the household registration system of the Yuan Dynasty, what kind of military households and artisan households were created.

Moreover, these systems also stipulate that the ancestral system cannot be modified!

Although the military strength of the Song Dynasty was very bad, at least the Song Dynasty also had economic reforms! Of course, there were reforms in the Ming Dynasty, and Zhang Juzheng once reformed, but as soon as Zhang Juzheng died, he died and died.

In fact, it is related to Zhu Yuanzhang's starting point being too low, Zhu Yuanzhang, who does not have much culture, was fooled by civil officials, and formulated the national policy of the Son of Heaven and scholars to rule the world together. However, at the beginning, the military generals and nobles still had a lot of real power, and later because of the change in the civil fort, the civil officials took the opportunity to take away the real power of the generals and nobles, and the power of the ministers exceeded that of the emperor!

Anyway, the country is not civilian, they can toss as much as they like, and the key is to get benefits for themselves, the big deal is that the country collapses, and it is nothing to change an emperor. Therefore, as soon as the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, civil officials surrendered one after another.

Throughout the Ming Dynasty, only Zhengde, Wanli, Tianqi and Chongzhen have fought against the civil official group. However, Zhengde accidentally fell into the water and died, in fact, he should have been plotted by civil officials; Wanli was so made that he did not dare to go to court, and finally died in misery; As for the apocalypse, it also fell into the water and later died; Chongzhen is even more miserable.

It seems that when the emperor of the Ming Dynasty has to learn to swim! There were two emperors who fell overboard!

From these, it can be seen that Zhengde and Tianqi must have been plotted by the civil official group!

Because the civil official group is strong, everything is inferior, only the reading is high, and the craftsman is the most lowly industry, so many of the techniques of the Song Dynasty have been lost, and the firearms introduced at the end of the Ming Dynasty and their own firearms are of serious unreliable quality in the future, because of the corruption of civil officials, and the craftsmen are motivated. When the Ming army fought against the Houjin army, those bird guns were not so much used to kill people as to explode suicide.

Fortunately, the current civilian-official clique was either killed, or basically defected to the Manchu Qing and became Wang Xinyu's enemies, and was able to deal with them on the battlefield. Otherwise, with his ability to fight politically, if he travels to the Wanli, Tianqi or Chongzhen periods, he will definitely die in the hands of civil officials.

At present, of course, Wang Xinyu can't make a technologically advanced involute worm, which has the highest efficiency, but the involute worm requires a very high level of technology, and it is not lost to the difficulty of making a steam engine, so he uses Archimedes worm.

Archimedes worm transmission efficiency is higher than the ordinary cylindrical worm of the Song Dynasty, the processing difficulty is not too complicated, more than 2,000 years ago ancient Greece can get out of the things, for the current Wang Xinyu is not difficult at all, and the transmission efficiency of this worm can reach eighty, which is twice as high as the transmission efficiency of the ordinary cylindrical worm made by the craftsmen of the Song Dynasty.

In fact, the transmission efficiency of ordinary cylindrical worms can also be improved, but because the worm of the Song Dynasty was made of wood, the wood gears were easy to wear, and the transmission efficiency of the vehicle and ship was seriously reduced after a period of use.

In order to solve these problems, Wang Xinyu used iron worms and iron gears, and added whale oil as lubricating oil to improve the transmission efficiency.

Liu Guoxuan opened the gearbox of the transmission device connected to the paddle wheel again: "Xiangye, this is the core of the ship, and in this box are gears, relying on gears to drive the paddle wheel." ”

A young man standing on the side also explained to Guo Zhiqi: "Xiangye, these gears are made of iron, unlike wooden, they will age and the gears will fall off, so this kind of car and ship can be used for a long time." However, we also have a kind of car and boat, which is a small car and boat, and in order to save costs, we use wood gears that are easier to machine. ”

This teenager is Xu Zhengming, although he is very young, but Xu Zhengming is an expert in gear machinery! In real history, the flying car he built was driven by a gear worm to drive the propeller to rotate, so that the flying car could fly.

On the other side of the dock, there are 120 small cars and boats. In order to save costs, these small vehicles and ships use ordinary wood, which is the wood dismantled from some old ships of the Ming army, which is obviously not as good as oak. In addition to this, the transmission of the chariot and ship was also made of wood, not iron.

In the future, large vehicles and ships can be converted into steam engine paddle steamers, while small vehicles and ships are actually items for short-term use, and those ships can be retired after the Dongting Lake and Yangtze River water battles.

The reason why paddle steamers were built first after the advent of the steam engine is because the propeller waterproofing technology of propeller ships still needs some time to achieve, and the development of science and technology is not so fast.

The small vessel had a displacement of about fifty tons, and in the cabin twenty-eight sailors were responsible for the operation of the pedal boat, and the guns were mounted on the deck, with one rotating six-pounder gun at the head and stern, and four two-hundred-pound guns on each of the two sides in the middle. There are female walls on both sides of the deck, which can prevent the opponent's bows and arrows and birds. There were fourteen gunners, twenty-eight sailors, two at the helm, one captain and one lieutenant, and twenty archers.

"The small chariots and ships are nimble, especially with twenty archers on board, and can fire rockets to stop the Tartars' fire. The use of small vehicles and large vehicles and ships to coordinate with each other is the main force of our army's offensive. Liu Guoxuan introduced.

"We also have more than two thousand small boats, which can fight hand-to-hand combat, and can also serve as fire attack ships. In addition, we also have a kind of latest type of pole mineboat, which is driven by Japanese people. Zhang Yukun, who was standing on the side, added.

The pole mineboat is an upgraded version of the Japanese kamikaze attack boat. The sailors of the kamikaze attack boats basically went and never returned, but most of the sailors of the pole minecraft could still come back. (To be continued.) )