The sound of hurried footsteps came from outside the Imperial Study.

After a while, Chen Qi's figure appeared, he walked up to Xiao Ming and saluted, and called "Emperor".

"First Song Changping, and now it's you Chen Qi, the two of you have always been on the Three Treasures Hall for nothing, let me guess, you must have made some progress in artillery."

Chen Qi had some tiredness on his face, but his eyes flashed with excitement, and he said: "Your Majesty, it is true, after all these years of accumulation and research, now the artillery factory has finally succeeded in manufacturing the first rifled breech gun in one battle. ”

"Really? Today is a really good day, first with metal bullets, and now with breech guns, it is really a double blessing. ”

The smile on Xiao Ming's face became more and more intense.

In fact, Chen Qi has been conducting research on rifled guns for a long time, but the development of firearms is too fast, which makes Chen Qi constantly change the original design, until the Han-style rifle is finalized, which makes him suddenly feel that all the problems he faced before have been solved, and the breech gun engraved with rifling also came into being.

Of course, Xiao Ming understands Chen Qi's research, but he didn't care about him except for throwing some information to him, he didn't want to care about it before, knowing that the industrial base at that time could not make qualified breech guns, but now all the conditions are obviously in place, and naturally all the results will come naturally.

However, if you want to talk about breech guns, in fact, this kind of artillery appeared very early, and the Furlong machine used by soldiers in the contemporary Ming Dynasty is a typical breech gun.

The structure of this gun is divided into two parts, one part is the barrel and the other is the rear-loading sub-gun, as if a complete gun is cut into two sections, and each time it is fired, the soldier will load the shell and ammunition in the sub-gun, and the sub-gun and the barrel will be aligned and ignited and fired.

In this way, only the sub-guns need to be replaced after each launch.

According to historical records, this artillery was a kind of artillery popular in Europe from the late 15th century to the early 16th century, and the inspiration cannon was derived from the eagle cannon, which could fire continuously and eject like a fire snake, and was also known as a rapid-fire cannon.

The metal bullet is now nothing more than a natural extension of the Furlong rear-loading sub-gun.

In this era, this type of artillery was also available in the West, and the Dutch had described it to him in detail and sold it to him, but he refused.

The reason is simple, he from modern times did not like this rear-loading structure at all, and his decision turned out to be right, because within a few years, Qingzhou produced a breech-loading gun of the nineteenth century level.

"Hehe, Your Majesty, this time the lower officials did not lag behind, but used all the previous technology accumulation, rifling, gun latch, and pulling fire are all complete, and this kind of artillery is much better than the previous field artillery in terms of range and accuracy." Chen Qi said excitedly.

Xiao Ming nodded with satisfaction, the rifling technology comes from the rifling technology of the musket, and the firing tube comes from the firing technology of the grenade, only the design and manufacture of this cannon latch is a new process.

It can be said that the evolution of artillery this time is a by-product of industrial development.

"In that case, I will take the generals of the Military Aircraft Department to see your masterpiece." As the saying goes, hearing is better than seeing, and now he is also a little itchy.

Moreover, the development of weapons in the nineteenth century basically laid the tone for later generations, and the subsequent development was only a partial improvement, so if the Han-style rifle and this kind of artillery were officially installed, it would mean that the Dayu ** team was truly modernized.

After that, the three of them went out of the imperial study together, and when they passed by the outer palace, he asked Qian Dafu to call Niu and Luo Quan.

The group arrived at the military workshop under the protection of the Janissaries.

"Your Majesty, this is our metal bullet production line." Song Changping's tone was proud.

Xiao Ming looked along the factory pointed by Song Changping, at this time, the machinery in the factory made a roar of metal collision in the operation of the workers, and the workers were sending boxes of separate bullet casings and bullets to the factory next door.

Some workers are assembling primers, propellants, warheads, cartridge casings in this plant.

"Your Majesty, the production speed of this metal bullet is really much slower, how can it be like a sheep." Niu frowned, the conical bullet used in the previous breech gun was cast, and the lead water was poured on a dense mold, which could be made in large quantities at one time.

Now comparing the two, he suddenly felt the gap, "According to the statistics of our previous battles, after the appearance of the trench, it will cost an average of 2,600 rounds to kill an enemy, and this is still when they are not familiar with our firearms, the emperor, if it is this kind of production speed, the last general thinks that it is better to use the previous paper shell bullets." “

Luo Quan nodded when he heard this, "That's right, the paper shell bullet is enough, this kind of metal bullet is so troublesome to produce, it is estimated that the price is expensive, and it is more than enough to deal with Goryeo or the Wa Kingdom." “

Xiao Ming smiled when he heard this, the two of them said that he was a qualified general, and blindly touting weapons and ignoring the cost performance would not be a qualified general.

Judging from the current situation, there is indeed no urgent need to use such high-cost bullets in the current Dayu country, and the use of paper shell bullets for Han-style rifles is enough.

Just as the Western countries actually had rifled guns for a long time, but they did not produce them in batches, and they still used smoothbore guns for a long time, until they were beaten by rifled guns in the war.

For Xiao Ming, he naturally understands this truth, but the Great Chongqing State has its own national conditions, and the huge territory and long border line make him have to deploy a large number of troops to defend it.

Goryeo and Wa could not completely settle down for a while, and they had to station troops, so that the number of soldiers he could use for overseas colonization would be reduced, and he could not be infinitely violent, because he needed to migrate to Kanto and even Siberia to consolidate the occupied lands.

In the future, after driving out the Golden Horde from the steppe, it will also be a headache to control the steppe.

In this way, he had to rely on the generation of weapons to make up for the lack of troops, and it was with this advantage that Europe was able to control large areas of colonies with a small number of troops.

After explaining his thoughts to the two, Xiao Ming continued: "The current Europe is full of soldiers because of the rise of the Great Yu Kingdom, and it must be sparing no effort to catch up with us in terms of weapons, so it is necessary to maintain the generation gap, but as you said, the production price of metal bullets and shells is high and slow, but we can hoard them and use them when necessary." ”

Niu and Luo Quan looked at each other and nodded, they still couldn't keep up with the emperor's thinking sometimes.