289 strategy, accumulation

In April of the eleventh year of Chongzhen, Li Zixiao was busy inspecting the mines of the White Dragon Army, strengthening the training of recruits of the White Dragon Army, and preparing for the big war in a few months.

When he returned to the White Snake Village after a round, he happened to receive an order from the imperial court, which turned out to be an order for Li Zixiao to send troops to suppress the bandits.

The order was issued by the Xuzhou government, hoping that he could send troops to exterminate a group of water bandits in the area of Zhaoyang Lake in the north of Xuzhou.

At this time, the north of Xuzhou, adjacent to the junction of Shandong, has not yet been posterity, the area of a huge Weishan Lake, but there are still many lakes here, and the water system is developed.

Among them, there are Zhaoyang Lake and Dushan Lake, two huge lakes, because of the abundant water sources, so that this place is similar to the later generations, with dense reeds and waterways.

Such an environment is particularly suitable for water bandits, and at this time, there is a group of hundreds of water bandits entrenched here, doing evil everywhere.

Shandong Tengxian County sent officers and soldiers to encircle and suppress it several times, but they all failed.

The bandits were familiar with the local waterway situation, and relied on the complicated terrain to repeatedly let the officers and soldiers fall into the air, and then they found an opportunity to ambush the officers and soldiers, and the officers and soldiers were defeated.

What's more, this is the place where the Grand Canal passes, there is plenty of oil and water, and none of the caravan merchants who were attacked were inextricably linked to the government officials.

Those businessmen have not been less filial to the local officials, and those who are officials have taken other people's money, can they not send troops to exterminate the water bandits?

And recently, this water bandit has slowly infiltrated the territory of Xuzhou, and Qiu Guangming, the prefect of Xuzhou, has no choice but to turn to Li Zixiao for help.

And in the letter, Qiu Guangming was also very polite, saying that the cost, grain and grass of the White Dragon Army this time were all borne by the Xuzhou government.

And afterwards, they will write to the court and ask for credit for Li Zixiao.

After Li Zixiao received Qiu Guangming's letter, his eyes suddenly lit up, and he immediately convened a meeting of his generals.

Li Zixiao has been trying to get his hands on Xuzhou, which is a treasure land of feng shui, and it has been a battleground for soldiers since ancient times.

It's a pity that Li Zixiao has never gotten the right opportunity, and recently he has been busy with other things, so he has left this matter behind.

Now, a letter from Qiu Guangming, the prefect of Xuzhou, gave him a new idea.

In Li Zixiao's thoughts, Xuzhou, which is close to Yongcheng, is the territory he will take next, and then, he is faced with the choice of going north to Shandong, or south to Jianghuai.

At that time, whether it is to go north to Shandong or to occupy Jianghuai in the south, it will become a very important strategic choice for him.

Because these two pieces are enough to help him achieve the king's foundation.

So at this time, taking Xuzhou is Li Zixiao's next important move.

But he didn't want to lose it at this time, the 'skin' of General Daming, which he had finally obtained, would be of great use in the future.

This also made him unable to get involved in Xuzhou in a grand manner, and at this time, Qiu Guangming asked him to enter the country to suppress bandits, so he gave him a chance.

Li Zixiao didn't think about it, so he replied to Qiu Guangming, agreed to his request, and also took the order of the imperial court.

In this way, it can dispel the court's worries about him, after all, he is a bandit army who was Zhao'an.

Sure enough, after Li Zixiao convened a meeting of his subordinates, all his generals agreed with this action of sending troops to suppress bandits.

In particular, Wei Hong, the general of the recruit battalion, vigorously supported this operation, because the recruit battalion under his command needed a real battle to let them see blood.

In terms of the selection of generals to lead the troops, Li Zixiao also thought about it.

The area of this battle is mainly in the lake and river areas, and several of the battalions of the White Dragon Army under his command are all infantry and cavalry, field warfare, and cavalry warfare, they are good at it, but they are not suitable for this battle.

In the end, Li Zixiao made a very bold decision to let Wei Hong personally lead another recruit battalion to fight.

He also hoped that Wei Hong could take advantage of this opportunity to lead two new battalions to exercise in the area of Zhaoyang Lake, so that he could train a soldier who was good at water warfare.

Li Zixiao asked Wei Hong to lead the second and fourth battalions of recruits, totaling more than 1,200 people.

These two new battalions are said to be new barracks, but in fact, the soldiers in them can already be called veterans, the second battalion has been established for more than half a year, and the fourth battalion has been established for five months.

The second battalion has been taken out by Wei Hong to fight a few bandits, and many soldiers have seen blood, and the fourth battalion is not bad.

Coupled with Wei Hong's cautious and meticulous combat style, Li Zixiao was not worried that he would put all the soldiers of the two battalions into it.

Li Zixiao told Wei Hong that he didn't expect them to be able to exterminate the bandits, and in any case, the first task was to preserve their strength, and the second was to destroy the enemy.

Of course, Wei Hong understood what Li Zixiao was thinking, and it was nothing more than taking this opportunity to let his recruits receive actual combat training and feel the atmosphere of actual combat.

Subsequently, the White Dragon Army moved quickly; Two days later, Wei Hong led two new battalion soldiers to leave the White Snake Village and go to Xuzhou.

It won't be long before the prefect of Xuzhou will know what 'it is easy to invite God and difficult to send God', Li Zixiao sent Wei Hong to occupy a location in the north of Xuzhou this time to gain a foothold.

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And Li Zixiao is not idle, anyway, now the spring ploughing is about to end.

Li Zixiao was handling military affairs, training recruits, and paying attention to the production of weapons in Baihu Village.

Baihu Village has basically built a large-scale workshop base now, and various workshops are built in the village along the mountain, row upon row.

All kinds of iron, coal, wood and other raw materials are continuously transported into the village every day, and nearly 1,000 craftsmen of all kinds are busy here, which can be called a prosperous town.

The Iron and Gunpowder Workshops are now the most important workshops in the wall, they basically ensure the military needs of the White Dragon Army, in fact, to put it bluntly, it is an arsenal.

The scale of production is also expanding day by day, and the number of blacksmiths alone has reached an unprecedented number of four or five hundred, and the sound of ironwork in the workshop has not stopped all day long.

Even at night, there are night shift craftsmen in the ironwork, and they are busy fighting at night.

A brand-new new bird gun was produced by these craftsmen, or it was temporarily put into the warehouse for storage, waiting for the White Dragon Army to send someone to accept it.

The original output of less than 100 new bird guns a month has increased again after the craftsmen have fully mastered the process, used drilling machines, and ensured the sufficient supply of raw materials.

The monthly output has almost reached nearly two hundred, and the large-scale equipment of the new bird gun is naturally great for the improvement of the combat effectiveness of the White Dragon Army.

The ironmaking process in Beigu Town has also been greatly improved in the past three months.

Originally, iron furnaces were made of coal, but now they have basically begun to use coke for ironmaking, which has greatly improved the quality of the iron produced.

The output of refined iron has also increased significantly, so that high-quality raw materials have been provided for the iron workshop, and the quality of the bird guns on the iron side has also been greatly improved.

In today's birds, while keeping the diameter, length, power and safety of the barrel unchanged, the bore wall of the barrel is gradually getting thinner and thinner.

The accuracy is also getting higher and higher, and the weight has been reduced a lot compared to the earliest production, and those new bird guns have been reduced, which is more convenient to carry, and the shooting accuracy has also been improved.

The bird-gunners in the White Dragon Army, after rigorous training, are all able to maintain relatively good shooting accuracy.

After seeing such a situation, Li Zixiao knew that the external conditions in his hands were already very good at this time, and it was time to speed up the manufacture of flintlock pistols.

Judging by his knowledge of the history of firearms, the level of control of the craftsmen at his disposal, and the level of science and technology in the world.

If you want to make a breech rifle, you can't, but there is basically no problem in building a flintlock pistol.

If it's a rifled gun, it's not impossible, but it's no fun in a short time, and the step is a bit big.

Li Zixiao has always pursued the principle of 'eating one bite at a time', which is easy first and then difficult.

Starting with flintlock guns, as for rifled guns, it is estimated that it is still difficult to get them done, at least the process of drilling rifling is difficult to solve in a short time.

It can be used as a direction for future development, and there is no need to start developing it immediately.

As for the manufacture of flintlock pistols, Tie Pingliang's side actually started a few months ago.

Tie Pingliang was greatly inspired by Li Zixiao's telling him about the principles of the flintlock pistol and the differences from the arquebus.

The flintlock pistols that appeared in this era were divided into two types: revolting muskets and percussive flintlock pistols.

It is said that the first time was a clockmaker, through the clockwork, inspired by the inspiration of the wheel of the lighter.

But this kind of revolver type musket has a big problem.

That is, the structure is very complex, and the cost is also quite high, and the skill level of the craftsman is even more demanding.

After the rotor mainspring is contaminated, it is easy to cause failure without ignition.

Therefore, after this kind of revolver musket was developed in the West, it has not been widely equipped and promoted, and has only played a role in small-scale wars.

Therefore, when Li Zixiao discussed the flintlock pistol with Tie Pingliang at that time, he directly abandoned the design of the revolver musket and directly considered the impact flintlock pistol.

After all, this kind of impact flintlock pistol has a simpler structure, and the process is not very complicated, and the cost is relatively low, which is the most suitable for manufacturing.

After nearly half a year of continuous design and improvement, Tie Pingliang finally completed the design drawings of the flintlock pistol and produced the first prototype gun.

Although it didn't succeed, Tie Pingliang knew that this direction was correct, and he had actually achieved a lot of results, but many details needed to be improved.

In the final analysis, there is not much difference between the structure of the flintlock pistol and the arquebus, the barrel is basically the same, but the firing device is changed.

The key is to solve the problem of the spring blade used for firing, as long as the elasticity and toughness of the spring blade are solved, it is basically a big thing.

After Li Zixiao received the news from Tie Pingliang, he sent someone to tell him not to be in a hurry, take his time, and hope that he would design and manufacture a real flintlock pistol, and then he would be the hero of the White Dragon Army.

Li Zixiao's only pity is that at this time, he can't get a real flintlock pistol from the West, otherwise Tie Pingliang's job will be much simpler.

At the same time, Li Zixiao is also paying attention to the production problem of Li Ke's cannon casting workshop.

In one month, Li Ke's cannon casting workshop cast three three-pounder bronze cannons and two six-pounder iron cannons.

Such a production speed is already very fast, and the quality of these guns is completely qualified after test firing.

In particular, the power of the six-pounder cannon has increased by more than three or four times compared with the power of the three-pounder gun.

The three-pounder gun was the light artillery of later generations, while the six-pounder gun was more like a heavy gun.

Because of the increase in the caliber of the breech, the power of the six-pounder gun has also increased greatly, and the number of shotguns loaded is almost five times more than that of the three-pounder gun.

Once the six-pounder cannon uses scattered bullets, it can sweep a large area in one shot, and at a distance of 200 paces in front of the muzzle, it can sweep a horizontal plane nearly 20 paces wide.

After Li Zixiao inspected the gun, he still felt insufficient.

For this kind of six-pounder gun, Li Ke cast grapeshothulet projectiles with large particles, so that grapeshotfire has also become a must-have type of ammunition for six-pounder guns.

In terms of dealing with cluster targets and long-range ranges, the flowering bullet is still more powerful, far more powerful than ordinary solid bullets, and the damage to the enemy is much greater.

The blossom bomb has been lost in later generations, Li Zixiao has only heard of it, but he has never seen a detailed picture or a real thing.

But one thing is certain, this thing should have been invented at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but it has long been used in wars among officials and soldiers.

According to legend, Yuan Chonghuan was in Ningyuan, and killed Nurhachi, the head of the wild boar skin, and took the opportunity to make a so-called Ningyuan victory.

It is very likely that the boar skin head was hit by a flowering bullet, and if he was hit by a solid bullet from the Hongyi cannon, the wild boar skin head would definitely die.

Therefore, even if the flowering shell is not yet mature in this era, it is necessary to exist, and only in this way can the maximum power of the cannon be brought into play.

After he dug an old craftsman from Kaifeng, and took some apprentices of craftsmen, they began to make flowering bombs.

In addition, Li Ke also ordered someone to establish an artillery training class to train gunners for the White Dragon Army, and Li Ke was one of their instructors.

Many people know that when a cannon fires, it is necessary to measure the range first, and then it can be aimed and fired, but not many people know how to measure the range.

And as a gunner, if you don't know how to measure the range, don't want to be a good gunner, and don't want to shoot the gun accurately.

The current artillery battalion officers and men under his command should not only practice speeding up the loading of gunpowder bullets, but also improve their shooting accuracy.

There are some veteran gunners, who gain experience in aiming by firing for a long time, and can also improve the accuracy of shooting.

However, the White Dragon Army is not rich now, and there are not enough shells, so the gunners practice with live ammunition every day.

As a result, it was not possible to increase the level of shooting of the new gunners of the artillery battalion in a short period of time.

Li Zixiao had no choice but to let Li Kelai teach the new artillery, some simple artillery manipulation and aiming techniques.

What Li Ke taught was the most familiar and simple thumb distance measurement method.

In the artillery training class, he taught this ranging method to the artillerymen of the White Dragon Army.

Often, after a short period of training, some artillery recruits go back to the army to practice aiming at their guns, which makes the shooting accuracy much better.

At least they won't easily miss the target and hit the shell high or low.