While the ruler of the Ming Dynasty was plotting peace with his courtiers, the fleet of the Qiong navy was on its way to Tianjin. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

If pursued by land, the Joan navy would not be able to catch up with Abatai in any case, so they had to take a shortcut from the sea. According to the news inquired by Wang Qinian, Abatai will rush to Shunyi to meet with Azig after going north, then Tianjin is the only way, as long as he lands at Dagukou, he will have the opportunity to intercept Abatai again.

On the way, the staff officers of the Military Aircraft Staff Office had already deduced the entire process of Tianjin's interception of Abatai, considered the possibility of his escape, and formulated a detailed plan. According to this plan, it was difficult for the Qiong navy, which was all infantry, to trap the cavalry-dominated Houjin army, especially under the premise that the other side had already been afraid of Changyi and had no intention of fighting, and it was necessary to have the cooperation of the local garrison, and it was not impossible to mobilize several cavalry units to intersperse and divide them, and stumble Abatai's hands and feet, and annihilate this force.

However, Xia Nan was unable to mobilize the troops in Tianjin and Baoding, so he could only ask the capital for help. Tianjin is very close to the capital, and it is feasible to go back and forth in two or three days, as long as the imperial court does not make bureaucratic mistakes, and before Abatai arrives, it is feasible to bring back the order of the military department to mobilize troops to cooperate with the Qiong navy to intercept it.

Sima De also suggested that the captured Tartar heads should be sent together to strengthen the confidence of the emperor and his ministers, so that the government and the opposition would know that the Qiong navy was capable of blocking or even completely annihilating the Abatai division.

A few days later, the fleet arrived at the mouth of Dagu in Tianjin.

Dagukou was a coastal defense fortress of the Ming and Qing dynasties in China, located at the mouth of the Haihe River in the southeast of present-day Tianjin. It is about 170 kilometers away from Beijing in the northwest, bordering the Bohai Sea in the east, the Haihe River Plain in the west, and facing Tanggu across the river. "When the land is nine rivers and Tianjin, the road leads to seven provinces of boats and cars", it is known as the gateway of Beijing and Tianjin, and the throat of sea and land. In the second year of Yongle (1404), after Chengzu Zhu Di built the capital of Beijing, he built a city and a garrison in Tianjin, and built a pier and a cannon in Dagu Haikou.

The Ming Dynasty has always paid little attention to sea power, and the inland city walls have become stronger and stronger, but the Dagu Fort has been neglected as the gateway to Beijing and Tianjin. More than 200 years have passed, and the fort built in that year has been dilapidated under the erosion of wind and rain, and it is half a pound and eight taels with the Humen fort at the mouth of the Pearl River. The fact that the two most famous forts in modern history, one in the south and one in the north, have decayed to such an extent shows how weak the Ming Dynasty's maritime defenses were.

Xia Nan stood at the bow of the majestic "Guangdong", looked at the rusty artillery of the Dagu Fort in the distance and the soldiers lazily basking in the sun with a telescope, shook his head again and again, turned back to Lin Weiye and said: "If Houjin has a passable sailor, the army starts from Lushun, crosses the Bohai Bay, and lands from Dagukou in Tianjin. ”

Lin Weiye said regretfully: "Those people in the imperial court are short-sighted, and such an important position is actually allowed to be wasted. If I were to arrange it, the bamboo-reinforced concrete fort plus 24-pound or even 48-pound shore defense guns, as long as it was not an ironclad ship, would have sunk him by any ship, and the storage would make Dagukou impregnable. ”

Xia Nan said with a smile: "Let's take over the Forbidden City one day in the future, let's mention this stubble, now the Dagukou Fort is as dilapidated as possible, if we want to land in Tianjin from the sea, we will save a lot of effort." ”

Lin Weiye habitually followed this sentence and began to imagine: "Landing in Tianjin and taking the capital directly? So are we going to create a Marine Corps as an arm of amphibious operations? After all, the Army's game of beach-grabbing landing is not professional. ”

Xia Nan's eyes widened: "Is it necessary to also establish a Marine Corps?" In the entire Asian continent, including the Ming Dynasty, the Later Jin Dynasty, Japan, Korea, and even Annam, who values sea power and who has professional coastal defense batteries? In this time and space, there is no such thing as a beach-grabbing landing, and it is enough to directly transport the army to it. ”

Lin Weiye has an extraordinary enthusiasm for the design of weapons and the construction of the army, and he said unwillingly: "Even if our potential enemies do not have decent coastal defense batteries, there are always troops stationed in sensitive areas, right?" The ancients also paid attention to a half-crossing attack! Landing operations have a certain technological content no matter what era they are, and if the enemy is on guard, if they cannot quickly seize the beach and launch a position, they will fall into passivity. Not to mention anything else, come up and give you a bow and arrow, and most of your people are still in the water and have not come ashore, how can this battle be fought? You must know that many soldiers in the army do not know how to water, and they have to be rescued if they fall into the sea. ”

Hearing Lin Weiye say this, Xia Nan couldn't refute it. The situation on the battlefield is ever-changing, and the situation mentioned by Lin Weiye cannot be ruled out.

Lin Weiye continued: "The army's main artillery is a 10-kilogram field gun, even if it is much lighter than the Hongyi cannon, plus the front vehicle and gun carriage, the weight is also calculated in tons, and the handling of artillery when going ashore is a big project, which cannot adapt to a rapid and mobile landing battle. Our base camp is in Qiongzhou, and the wars are all far away from the mainland, and the mode of transportation is by sea, so I personally think it is necessary to establish a small, lean, and well-equipped Marine Corps to cooperate with the actions of the large army. ”

Xia Nan couldn't help but ask: "Compared with the officers and soldiers of the imperial court and the Houjin army, our army's equipment already has a generation difference advantage, how can it be excellent, do you still have any treasures?" ”

"Not really, baby, but we can put rifled guns on the agenda." Lin Weiye smiled, "With the existing conditions, we can pull out the rifling of the flintlock pistol, but it cannot be mass-produced, but it is not a big problem to arm a smaller-scale army, the big deal is one person and one gun, customized by hand, and it will be scrapped after the fight, anyway, we are not short of money now, and it is okay to waste a little." ”

"Rifled guns?" Xia Nan asked, "Why can't it be mass-produced?" Is there any advantage over the guns used now? ”

"At present, there is no qualified machinery and equipment, and the rifling can only be pulled out by pure manual technology, which is not much more efficient than the craftsmen of the imperial court who manually drill the barrel inch by inch to the bird, and the output will naturally not go up, but this is not the most important obstacle - the biggest difficulty is to control the clearance and accuracy, the caliber of the bullet is small, and the clearance between the bullets is too large, so the bullet will not be embedded in the rifling and rotate, and the rifling will lose its meaning; The caliber of the bullet is so large that it simply cannot fit into the barrel. Skilled craftsmen carefully build by hand, and may be able to control this clearance within a certain range to produce rifled guns that meet the requirements, but mass production is not a matter of thought. And now we use the Qionghai rifle is a smoothbore gun, the accuracy requirements are very low, the clearance between the bullets can be very large, as long as the chamber is not exploded, the bullet can be fired, this is enough, with the current conditions can achieve a certain degree of standardized assembly line operations, so it can be mass-produced. ”