In the end, the Qiongzhou army and the Wu army reached an agreement, according to the agreement, the Qiongzhou army and the Wu army were divided into two routes, the Wu army sent troops from Nanyang to attack Henan, and the Qiongzhou army went to capture Huai'an and Xuzhou and attack Shandong. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

In terms of munitions, the Nanyang Company provided Wu Sangui with 20,000 flintlock pistols and 200 rifled guns, more than 300 artillery pieces, including 64-pounder mortars, and a batch of flowering shells and new howitzers. Of course, the artillery provided by Wang Xinyu to Wu Sangui was the old front-loading smoothbore gun that he was ready to eliminate, and his own army was preparing to replace it with the new ultimate front-loading smoothbore gun.

The new ultimate front-loading smoothbore gun, in addition to a variety of howitzers, there are also new cannons and long-barreled cannons. Because of the improvement of smelting technology, the walls of the barrel of the new cannon have become thinner, the weight has been reduced, and transportation has become very convenient. Another long-barreled cannon with an elongated barrel also appeared in the artillery team of the Qiongzhou Army.

The new long-barreled cannon is a siege cannon that fires twelve-pound shells, this kind of cannon weighs 3,200 catties, and the length of the barrel reaches 18 times the caliber. Because the barrel is lengthened, the shell can get a higher acceleration in the barrel, so that the muzzle velocity of the cannonball is increased, and the natural power is greater. Of course, when the barrel is lengthened, the bore pressure will also increase, so this cannon cannot fire flowering shells, but the solid shells fired by this cannon are very destructive to the city walls.

To attack the city wall, you need to first use solid cannonballs to smash the bricks on the periphery of the city wall, so as to fire flowering cannonballs to bombard the exposed rammed earth, so as to achieve the effect of blowing up the city wall.

Because the fuse of the flowering shell in this year was cut by the gunner himself, there is no guarantee that the shell will explode at the moment it hits the ground, and it is possible that the explosion will be early or late. If you attack the city wall, you tend to leave the fuse a little longer. If you don't break the bricks outside the city wall, you just use the flowering cannonball to beckon, and it is likely that the cannonball will explode after it is bounced off, so it will not have a destructive effect on the city wall.

Use solid cannonballs to destroy the bricks first, exposing the rammed earth inside, and then bombarding them with flowering cannonballs, which can drill into the rammed earth and explode, thus destroying the city walls.

As for the mortar, there is not much room for improvement, it's just that the newly produced mortar is lighter. The future development is the production of mortars. It's just that in order to create a mortar, you first need to solve the problem of shell processing, each wing needs to be exactly the same, and if there is a deviation, the accuracy of the shell will decrease. In addition, there is the closed air loop on the shell, and the firing mechanism at the tail of the shell, which have yet to be solved.

Before the advent of mortars, mortars were an indispensable weapon.

Wang Xinyu sold the old-fashioned artillery he had produced to Wu Sangui, and his army was equipped with new artillery. At present, front-loading smoothbore guns have reached the limit, and in the future, rear-loading rifled guns are the development trend.

In addition to providing Wu Sangui with artillery, Wang Xinyu also generously provided Wu Sangui with thirty beams and a swarm of bee fire vans. This weapon was a weapon of great destruction against cavalry, and it was also the only weapon that could completely block the footsteps of cavalry before firearms evolved to the age of rifled guns.

In addition to its own 20 rockets, each of the swarming cars was equipped with another 100 rockets, for a total of 3,600 rockets. However, the price of a swarm of bee fire vans and rockets provided by Wang Xinyu to Wu Sangui is naturally not cheap, a rocket costs 200 taels of silver, and these 30 swarm of bee fire vans and 3,600 rockets are sold for 800,000 taels of silver, which can be said to be a ruthless profit.

Five years ago, when a swarm of bee cars first came out, the cost of a rocket was indeed as high as 150 taels of silver, but now with the development of technology, with the development of industrialization and the birth of the assembly line, the cost of a rocket has actually dropped to less than 50 taels of silver, and these rockets are still filled with new explosives.

For Wu Sangui, he was very happy to get this batch of bee fire vans. He had long known that the Qiongzhou army had a weapon that was extremely powerful and could destroy the cavalry in pieces, but he couldn't imitate it. Now that he has obtained a batch of these weapons, Wu Sangui is of course satisfied.

"This is the most powerful weapon against the Tartar cavalry! This weapon cannot be used lightly! Only when the Tartar cavalry appears, set up an ambush position, bring in the Tartar cavalry, and then destroy it with this weapon! Wu Sangui pointed to a swarm of bee fire vans that had just been transported.

After the Qiongzhou army captured Xiangyang, only the auxiliary soldiers and Minzhuang were left in Xiangyang, and a group of retired veterans were sent to Xiangyang, and the main force immediately went down the river, preparing to go to Nanjing for rest and recuperation, and then launched the Jianghuai Campaign.

It was also at this time that Jiangpu County, on the north bank of Nanjing, suddenly became very lively, and boatloads of Ming soldiers crossed the Yangtze River and came to this riverside county.

The Ming army that crossed the river first built a strong city defense fortification in Jiangpu, although the north bank of Nanjing was already under the control of the Ming army at this time, but the Qing army in Jiangbei had not yet been cleared, and the Ming army did not dare to take it lightly, so it was still necessary to build a city defense, so as not to come to the Qing army to sneak attack and lose the county.

The Ming army that arrived later was a Ming army called the railway soldiers.

After more than 50,000 railway soldiers crossed the river, they began to devote themselves to intense construction projects. First of all, the railway soldiers should select the line, and after selecting the line, they will dig trenches on both sides of the line, and the excavated soil will fill the earthwork in the middle, and pile up the roadbed of a railway line. The excavated trenches just formed a protective fortification to block the Qing army, and combined with the fortress fortifications built on both sides of the railway line, the deer barricades and wooden fences pulled up outside the trenches formed a line of defense.

Zeng Shirong and Yu Zhenxing also came to Jiangbei to join the ranks of building railway lines. Both of them were already officers at this time, and in addition to taking the lead when boosting morale, generally speaking, they did not need to work with hoes and pickaxes themselves, as long as they gave technical guidance to the soldiers, conveyed orders, and arranged logistics and supplies.

Looking at the railway soldiers working in full swing, Yu Zhenxing chatted with Zeng Shirong for a few words.

Yu Zhenxing said: "Last month's military salary was issued in treasure money, not silver, I thought that the soldiers would quit, but I didn't expect the brothers to be in full swing. ”

"Although the treasure notes issued were from the Nanyang Bank, this kind of treasure money was more like a silver note, and you could go directly to the bank to exchange it for white flowers, so the brothers had nothing to say. What's more, our food is so good, if they still have any complaints, it really can't be said. Zeng Shirong replied.

"Brother, do you think the imperial court will completely replace silver with treasure money in the future?" Yu Zhenxing asked a little uneasily.

"Maybe it's possible!" Zeng Shirong said.