The battleship moved slowly, and Wallace led the senior officers of the Three Guards to the artillery deck on the top deck. The battleship that Li Xin was on was a specially built sail battleship, not a modified cargo ship, so it had a special straight-through gun deck.

When you come to the gun deck, you are in two worlds compared to the upper deck. First of all, there is the turbid air, the smell of sweat and the smell of sulfur residue mixed together is simply suffocating. It was pitch black everywhere you looked, with a thick layer of gunpowder residue adhered to the bulkheads and ceiling, and buckets, cannon brushes, and boxes of solid projectiles stacked on the deck, except for the powder kegs that were stacked neatly. Looking at the gunners who operate the guns, they are all naked, and the sweat and gunpowder dust are mixed together, making the gunners look as if they have not taken a bath for hundreds of years.

In contrast, the upper deck was almost spotlessly washed, and the sailors lined up in fresh, crisp and new military uniforms. It makes people look at it at a glance and suddenly feel the majesty of the navy. But after arriving on the artillery deck, Li Xinzhi had the illusion that he had arrived at the coal kiln, and these gunners were the drudgers digging coal.

Hearing Li Xin's exclamation, Wallace was embarrassed and did not explain in time, but Heisenberg showed a familiar look on his face and introduced a few words in a low voice.

"Don't be surprised, the guns and decks have always been like this."

Li Xin nodded, feeling that his imagination of the navy of this era was a little too perfect, and in Heisenberg's mouth, the so-called navies of various countries are actually no different from pirates, if there is a difference, that is, the navy will hang the coat of arms and flags of the royal families, while pirates can only hang the skull flag.

It is clear that Heisenberg's evaluation of the Navy is not high, and even derogatory. Li Xin also wanted to hear the introduction of Wallace, the chief soldier of the fleet, after all, everyone has different opinions on the same matter, and the conclusions drawn are very different.

The artillery deck was not long, and it was almost a complete circle. Wallace, who had been accompanying Li Xin, was a little cramped, and before that he had consulted a few Han officials, the points that his superiors would normally care about.

At this point, everyone knew that Wallace was going to invite the town marquis to watch the exercise, so they all told each other what they knew. Wallace finally summed up the following points, first of all, the most important point is to show the most glamorous side of the fleet, in addition to the perfect and clean maintenance of the warship facilities, the sailors who are welcomed in the queue must also be selected to be in good shape, those who have been disabled in the war, and those who have been damaged in the war, and those who have been damaged in the war, and those who have broken their appearance cannot appear in the welcome procession. The words of a scrivener made Wallace deeply indignant, "Otherwise, it will be unsightly!" ”

These sailors who were wounded and mutilated in naval battles were the bravest sailors, and although he could not understand Chinese, he felt the disdain and contempt of the officials of the Eastern Empire for these brave soldiers in the translated texts. If he had been tempered in the past, Wallace would have fought for the rights and interests of these insulted sailors. It was just a critical moment that a sentence from the Marquis of the Ming Dynasty made him endure it.

At this time, he kind of realized what exactly is the meaning of dancing with shackles, is it to swallow his anger? If the imperial bureaucrats were free to humiliate the generals and soldiers of the empire, it was hard for him to imagine how these generals and soldiers could maintain their loyalty to such a monarch and not rebel.

Wallace's flagship, of course, also had sailors who were wounded and mutilated, and there were quite a few of them. These people were placed on the artillery deck before the exercise, which was an insult to them, and many were outraged by it. Wallace was afraid that someone would cause a big disaster in front of the marquis of Zhen, so he kept being reluctant and worried.

Li Xin had never seen a sail warship of this era, and his attention was completely attracted by the guns and various unnamed facilities on board. Soon, he discovered that the guns on the deck were basically eight-pounder guns, which were different from the field guns of the infantry, which had much longer barrels.

As for the Franc cannon that made Li Xin thunder, there was not a single one on the deck of the warship.

"General Wallace, General Wallace?"

Li Xin called several times before Wallace came back to his senses.

"Humble duty, please give instructions to His Excellency the Marquis!"

"In the West there is a seed mother rapid-fire cannon, which is called the 'Franc cannon' in the East, has the chief soldier Wallace heard of it?"

"There are indeed rapid-fire cannons!"

"Why is it that our ships are not equipped with a single rapid-fire gun of this kind?"

It was only when he spoke of things related to the sea that Wallace's eyes shone with excitement and confidence.

"Although this rapid-fire cannon is very fast to load and fire, it has many intolerable shortcomings, because the airtightness of the sub-cannon is very poor, the firing range is shortened, the power becomes smaller, and the most intolerable thing is that the projectile launch curve is too large, it is difficult to hit the side of the enemy ship, and it cannot effectively destroy the enemy ship and kill the sailors. So now the navies of various countries would rather choose a front-loading large-caliber cannon than use this kind of artillery with a rapid-fire name! ”

Li Xin seems to understand whether he understands or not, he can't judge the truth of Wallace's words, and according to what Li Xin knows, post-boring ammunition is the trend of artillery development, so this kind of rapid-fire artillery with post-boring ammunition should have cross-era significance, how can it be abandoned by the navies of various countries? Could it be that the conservative forces are too strong? Interfered with the development of such artillery? Or is there some other reason.

Putting aside the Franco's cannon, he pointed to the eight-pounder gun on the deck, "The caliber of the guns on our battleship is too small, and the eight-pounder guns are not as good as the twelve pounder guns of the Three Guards infantry. ”

The problem pointed out by Li Xin is very acute, and this is also the problem that has always haunted Wallace, precisely because the overall caliber of the fleet's artillery is too small, and the firing range is too short, and before the defeat, it repeatedly suffered losses in the confrontation with the artillery battalion of the Three Guards, so that he did not dare to approach the south bank of the Yangtze River for a long time. It wasn't until later that I learned that the artillery along the Yangtze River of the Ming army was extremely lax, but he kicked the stone with his first kick.

Wallace shrugged helplessly: "It's not that our warships can't add large-caliber guns, it's that the Dutch are too stingy and think that this kind of eight-pounder gun is enough to deal with the local natives, and it's not worth spending a lot of money to buy large-caliber guns." ”

Wallace's answer made Li Xin's eyes burn with a blazing flame of hope.

"So, we can replace these small-caliber guns by casting our own large-caliber guns and adding them to the ship?"

Who knew that Wallace shook his head frequently: "No, no, no!" The cannon imitated by the Oriental people has poor stability and is very easy to blow up and bor. Moreover, the long-barreled cannon used by the Navy is larger than the field artillery of the infantry......"

In short, Wallace gave many examples to support his idea that he did not want to use the Ming Dynasty's homegrown cannons. Li Xin disagreed, believing that this was Wallace's bias. Speaking of artillery, Heisenberg next to him definitely had a say, and he turned his attention to this Germanic man again.

Heisenberg shrugged his shoulders and said just one sentence to the frustration of Liesinton.

"There is indeed a gap between the artillery we make and Europe. Even if it is the artillery produced by the Three Guards Army in the iron factory in Datong, the blast and boring rate is still very high! The explosion and boring rate of the artillery produced by our new iron plant in Longtan is higher than that of the artillery produced in Datong! Artillery battalions usually reduce the rated charge to prevent the occurrence of blasting and boring, but explosions and boring incidents still occur from time to time. ”

Li Xin only knew about these things at the beginning of the formation of the Third Guard Army, but later he never heard any more information about the bombing and boring, and he thought that the problem of bombing and boring, which had always plagued the artillery, had been solved, but he did not expect that it was actually solved in this way.

Li Xin was a little helpless, and looked at Wallace again, "Then you say, we can't use what we built ourselves, where can we get so many large-caliber guns?" ”

"Buy! As long as there is silver, we can buy it! Immediately after that, Wallace added: "Buy from the Spaniards, they have the most warships in the East, as long as they are willing to pay, they can sell them!" ”

Money is not a problem, the problem is that it can only be purchased from outsiders, which will significantly limit the development of its own weapons technology. In the final analysis, buying from the outside can only be an expedient measure, and he hopes to find out the reason why the local guns of the Ming Dynasty are easy to blow up and bor.

When it comes to the specific process of making cannons, Wallace attributed the boring to the poor quality of the iron trained in the Ming Dynasty. In this regard, Heisenberg seems to have more say, "It is true that the iron ore in the East is not of good quality, but it only affects the quality of the cast sword." The influence of musket artillery is not great, the cannon produced by the Three Guards is easy to blow up and bor, when it comes to the root cause, it is still the technical level of our craftsmen is outdated and backward, and the experience is even less pitiful. When I fought with the general in the north and south, I saw countless muskets and cannons piled up in the warehouses of various places, rusting and rotting into a pile of scrap metal. The craftsmen do not make cannons, they make guns, they prefer to forge swords. In the long run, there will be fewer and fewer craftsmen who have experience in making cannons and muskets......"

Li Xin prefers to believe Heisenberg's analysis, and he can only accept Heisenberg's conclusions, if he adopts Wallace's conclusions, will he have to travel thousands of miles to India and Europe to transport iron ore? Such a cost is not even affordable even in rich countries. Moreover, Li Xin did not hear of the example of China in later generations having to import ore for the production of iron products because of the poor quality of iron ore.

Therefore, Li Xin was more inclined to improve the artillery-making process, introduce technology, and train qualified and experienced craftsmen to make up for this shortcoming.

A commotion diverted Li Xin's attention, and he found that at the stern of the deck, a group of topless, but ragged Western sailors seemed to be shouting loudly. It was clear that they were expressing their grievances, and even the occasional flirtatious whistle sounded.

Seeing this, Wallace's face immediately turned ugly. Li Xin sighed secretly, it seems that there is still a cat here!