Late Yuan Dynasty: I am the true emperor

Chapter 216 Mass Production

"Commander."

After Yang Heng returned to the Marshal's Mansion, he immediately went to Lu Jin to report the situation.

"Well, how is the situation at the iron factory? Can the output of firearms be doubled?" Lu Jin stood up, put down the sand table, wiped his hands, and then asked.

"Reporting to the commander, the ironworks now has eight furnaces that can produce stably, 40,000 kilograms of refined iron per day, and they are still building new furnaces. In a few months, the output will surely continue to increase, so there is no shortage of materials.

"There are no problems with cannon casting and gun barrel rolling. The only thing that limits production now is that the Marshal has very high quality requirements for guns and cannons. The gun barrels and cannon barrels produced must be finely bored by machines, but the number of boring machines in the ironworks is limited, which limits production further.

"I have inquired with the craftsmen carefully, and they said that boring the gun barrels is easy to solve, and production can be increased by adding more craftsmen, but there is only one water-wheel boring machine that can bore gun barrels. Even if we build another one, it will probably not be easy and will take time.

"The people at the iron factory said that the water volume in the canal in Feixi is limited, and it is impossible to build new water wheels indefinitely. Moreover, the construction of new factories will also occupy a lot of fertile land by the river."

"Hmm," Lu Jin thought for a moment before speaking.

"Then let's first purchase some manual boring machines for drilling gun barrels, and then recruit some craftsmen from Anqing Road, recruiting people from the existing craftsmen there, and first increase the production of muskets. Within six months, no, within five months, we must produce at least 10,000 muskets, the more the better.

"As for the hydraulic boring machine for artillery, we can choose another place to build it."

After Lu Jin finished speaking, he turned and looked at the sand table. Before the invention of the steam engine, most people who wanted to engage in mechanized industry would choose places with plenty of water so that they could make full use of the water wheels. The water volume of the river in Feixi is limited, so they chose places with plenty of water to build a few more workshops.

There is no need for these branch bases to be able to smelt iron, as long as they can bore gun barrels and cannon barrels.

Lu Jin looked at the water veins on the sand table and quickly selected several locations.

"Here in Gubu Town of Lu'an, which was Huoshan County in the previous dynasty, there is the Pi River flowing through the mountains, and it is also a timber harvesting base. We can build a workshop here, set up a waterwheel, and specialize in boring gun barrels.

"We can also add a waterwheel workshop in Luzhou City. We can also add a workshop in a place with a large drop in the mountains of Chushui River downstream of Liang County. We can also add a workshop in the upper reaches of Wanshui River in Qianshan County.

“In this way, we will add four new workshops specializing in drilling and boring gun barrels, and the output should increase significantly.

"Someone, go call Xu Jichuan from the Construction Department and let him do this."

"Yes." A guard immediately took the order and left.

However, Yang Heng and Bao Yu on the scene were very puzzled when they heard that Lu Jin was going to add four new workshops at once and manufacture 10,000 new muskets within five months. They felt that it was a gamble, and thought that Lu Jin was betting everything on firearms to improve combat effectiveness, which was a bit irrational. What if the effect after practice was not so good?
Yang Heng was new and didn't dare to oppose Lu Jin's opinion on such a big matter, but Bao Yu had no such concerns. He helped Lu Jin to kill Zhao Pusheng. As long as Lu Jin didn't rebel, it would be alright for him to say anything as they had done bad things together.

Bao Yu immediately asked, "Marshal, the Imperial Guard Division now has a reorganized combined brigade, which has only four musket battalions, plus two chariot battalions, which is only six battalions. The combined brigade already has two battalions of muskets, and to fill it up, it only needs four more battalions of muskets, less than 4,000.

"If that's the case, why did the Marshal suddenly want to build so many muskets?
"And the artillery. One artillery battalion only has 64 guns. Even if we train another artillery battalion, it will only have 128 guns. Why add so many new workshops?"

Lu Jin was not angry when he heard this, but explained, "The strength of the Imperial Guards needs to be increased. When we cross the river in the future, I will not only bring Zhu Shou's regiment, but also Zhang Wen's Sixth Regiment. Therefore, these two troops must be reorganized into firearms. The doubled output is for Zhang Wen's Sixth Regiment."

Bao Yu frowned upon hearing this, and said with some worry, "But this musket squadron has no record of success, and this method of warfare is unique and unprecedented. If it fails to exert the power that the commander-in-chief wants, wouldn't it be a waste of a lot of time and money?"

"Time? Anyway, we won't continue to attack outside within half a year. The troops are idle anyway, so why not practice? As for the power of firearms, why do you think I insisted on leading the team to attack Anqing this time? Isn't it just to verify the power of firearms?

"I only brought ten artillery pieces to Anqing this time, and only six of them were field direct-fire guns. Do you know how much of a role these ten guns played on the battlefield?" Lu Jin explained immediately.

Bao Yu naturally didn't know the details of the Battle of Anqing and could only shake his head.

However, Lu Jin pointed in the direction of the Congyang River on the sand table.

"In the battle of the half-crossing of the wooden bridge over Shahe River, we had two regiments, a battalion of cavalry, and a battery of ten guns. I deployed the battery two miles away from the bridgehead, and two of the heavy howitzers fired flower shells to block the bridge deck. The effect was very good. With only two guns firing in turn, we blocked the enemy's movement across the river.

"The remaining six guns aimed directly at the enemy formation, and each gun killed an average of seven to eight people each time it fired. Do you know what this means?

"That is to say, with just these six guns, one salvo killed about 50 enemy soldiers, and two salvos wiped out a hundred households, while our field guns could fire at least two or three salvos per minute.

"This is only the power of six guns. What if there are 64 guns in a whole artillery battalion? We should be generous with the enemy, so it is not too many. Even if one gun can only kill four people, a salvo from the whole battalion can kill about 250 enemy soldiers. Four rounds of artillery fire can wipe out a thousand households.

"Even if I stand two miles away and wait for the enemy to attack, he will still take twenty rounds of my artillery fire.

"Twenty rounds of artillery fire! Who can face me head-on and bear the cost of five thousand casualties before the battle even begins?"

After hearing these words, Yang Heng and Bao Yu were stunned. The scene described by Lu Jin was too exaggerated. It seemed that in Lu Jin's eyes, war was just a simple math problem.

With the power of artillery, even if it was a solid bullet, if you fired one shot at a crowd, killing four people with one shot, would that be a lot? Not much. As long as you successfully hit the crowd, you can kill or injure four people at random.

So one gun killed four people, and the 64 guns of the entire battalion killed 250 people in one salvo. Is it exaggerated? Calculating the enemy's marching speed based on the distance, is it impossible to fire salvos before engaging the enemy?
Since you can fight, can't the enemy really lose a few thousand people? Let's not talk about such outrageous things as annihilating 5,000 people with 20 rounds of artillery fire. As long as you can kill 2,000 or 3,000 enemy soldiers before the battle, the enemy will probably collapse long ago and will not rush to you.

In this way, the artillery can truly be called a powerful weapon of war!

After Lu Jin's explanation, which was supported by actual combat examples, Bao Heng could no longer say anything against it.

As for Yang Heng, he was on the side of the Yuan army in Anqing before. He only knew that the 15,000 reinforcements he sent out were ambushed by Lu Jin and then wiped out. As for how the Yuan army lost and the details of the battle, he actually didn't know.

After listening to Lu Jin's description, I realized that Lu Jin used artillery fire to block the wooden bridge, cutting off the communication between the two sides of the Yuan army, and then used artillery fire to break through the formation and won the battle.

Especially what Lu Jin said about six cannons killing fifty people in one round of bombardment and one centurion in two rounds of bombardment was really too terrifying.

Even if a few people are really killed on the battlefield, perhaps only the people around them will notice it. For the entire formation, the death of hundreds of people is actually not noticeable.

But when you look at the pure statistics, you suddenly realize how terrifying it is to kill a centurion with two rounds of artillery fire. If the number of artillery is multiplied several times, it is simply too terrible. Yang Heng dare not think about it any further. However, artillery is artillery, and there is still a difference between it and muskets, especially when infantry is only equipped with muskets, and they are used as the main weapon by an entire unit. This is still a bit puzzling.

Artillery is powerful, but no matter how powerful it is, it is only an auxiliary weapon, used to cooperate with the main force. You can't have an army composed entirely of artillery without infantry. This is why Lu Jin equipped the infantry of the Imperial Guards with muskets, which made them confused.

So Yang Heng also asked curiously, "Marshal, what about the muskets? Is it necessary for the entire army to replace them with muskets?"

Lu Jin turned around and looked at him. Instead of answering directly, he asked, "Let me ask you, if you were an ordinary soldier and were asked to go to the battlefield to fight the enemy, which type of soldier would you be most afraid of? Sword and shield soldiers, spearmen, or crossbowmen?"

Yang Heng really thought about this question carefully. He did not answer directly, but continued to ask Lu Jin, "Do I have armor? What kind of weapons do I use?"

"Whatever. It's just a hypothesis. Think about it yourself. What if there is armor? What if there is no armor?"

Yang Heng thought for a moment before saying, "If I don't have armor, then I'm definitely most afraid of the enemy's archers. No matter what weapon I have, if I'm shot by an arrow from the enemy, I'll either die or be injured. If I have armor or a shield, maybe I can block it. If I have a sword or a gun and the enemy also has a sword or a gun, then there's nothing to be afraid of. We all have two shoulders and one head, and it's not certain who will kill whom."

Lu Jin nodded and praised, "That's right, on the battlefield, the enemy's long-range soldiers are the biggest threat. In fact, you forgot to mention one thing, that is, the close combat soldiers holding swords and guns cannot fight back against the enemy's bows and crossbows. They can only rely on armor and shields to block them.

"This kind of battle is exactly what hurts morale the most. Anyone who sees his comrades being shot to death one by one will feel that he or she may fall down at any time. He or she has all the strength but cannot hit the enemy. He or she wants to fight the enemy desperately but cannot. If you were on the battlefield, how could you have any morale?"

Yang Heng thought about it and nodded affirmatively, "That's true, but it seems that there aren't many archers in the Marshal's army?"

Lu Jin spread his hands, "That's the problem. Since I started the army, all the bows and crossbows in the army have been captured. You want me to make them myself? How should I make them? A good bow requires the tendons to be treated in spring, the horns to be treated in summer, the wood to be treated in autumn, and the harmony to be made in winter.

"It's easy to get wood for a bow. We can just cut it in the mountains. But where can I get so much tendon and horn? And even if I can gather all these materials, it will take at least a year to make a bow. Will the Yuan court give me that much time and watch me slowly make a bow?"

Yang Heng immediately shook his head and began to understand why Lu Jin made the musket.

"There is another reason. Even if we can make a bow and arrow, how long will it take to train a qualified archer? Not to mention a sharpshooter who can hit the target from a hundred paces away, how long will it take to train an archer who can hit six out of ten targets from a hundred paces away?"

Yang Heng was stunned by the question again. He had never studied this question before, so he shook his head and said, "I don't know."

Lu Jin held up three fingers and said, "Elite archers need to be selected from those who are strong and sturdy. They can be called elite after three years of training. If we only need 6 out of 10 middle-class talents, it will take at least one year. I don't have that much time to train them."

Yang Heng opened his mouth. It was the first time he knew that archery training would take so long.

Seeing his surprised expression, Lu Jin continued, "There are many advantages to a musket. First, it only requires two materials, wood and iron, to make a musket. Now we can produce both wood and iron ourselves, so there is no restriction on materials. I can make as many as I want.

“Secondly, the projectiles used in muskets are actually much cheaper than arrows. Arrows require bamboo, wood, iron tips, and feathers, while musket bullets only require a small piece of lead iron, which is equivalent to a tip of an arrow.

"Third, firing a musket does not require pulling a bowstring like a bow and arrow, and does not require elite soldiers with amazing physical strength. Any half-grown child can fire it, which lowers the standard for selecting soldiers.

“Fourthly, training an archer takes at least one year and at most three years, while teaching an ordinary farmer to fire a musket can take at most three months before he can be sent to fight in the battlefield.

"Fifth, the power of the musket is great enough to kill an unarmored person from a hundred steps away, and to penetrate armor within a few dozen steps. No matter what kind of armor you wear, even if you pull the elite iron pagoda of the Jin Kingdom over, you will still be shot into a honeycomb within fifty steps. Can a crossbow have such power? Perhaps the Shenbi crossbow of the former Song Dynasty can, but how many Shenbi crossbows can it have?
“This is the sixth one.”

"And a sixth?" Yang Heng was a little confused after listening to it. He didn't expect that Lu Jin would say so many advantages of a musket, and it did sound reasonable. Compared with the crossbow, the crossbow was simply useless.

"Of course there is, and this is the biggest advantage, which is that the cost of arming a musketeer is actually much cheaper than that of other types of soldiers.

"Have you ever thought about how much equipment you would need to build and how high your combat power would be if you were to equip an army with swords, spears, and crossbows? If three out of seven are swords, a 4,000-man army would need a thousand swords and three thousand spears. You don't even have archers, and you lack long-range shooters. No matter how you arrange these three types of troops, each type would only have two to three thousand, or even a few hundred people, right?"

Yang Heng nodded. If there are only four thousand in total, and you divide them into three branches, then there will only be so many people in each branch.

"Bring me a musket." Lu Jin shouted to the guards, and someone immediately brought a musket.

Lu Jin fiddled with it in his hand, then pulled out the matching bayonet and put it on the barrel, then gestured.

"You see, this is a musket, which can be used as a crossbow for long-range shooting. If the whole regiment uses this thing, that would be more than 4,000 crossbowmen. Now if we add bayonets, it would instantly turn into more than 4,000 close combat swordsmen and spearmen."

Yang Heng was stunned. He thought that a musket could only be used for shooting, but he didn't expect that it could be turned into a pistol by inserting a bayonet.

Lu Jin demonstrated a stabbing motion, then a hitting motion with the butt of a gun, and then explained.

“If the whole army is equipped with this thing, it can be used as archers to shoot at a distance, and can be used for hand-to-hand combat with the enemy at close range. If it is arranged in a spear formation, even the enemy cavalry can be stopped.

"If we train a musket unit like this, it can fight both at long range and at close range, and can also fight cavalry. If we add a battalion of artillery, 5,000 people can be used as 20,000 people. One type of soldier can be used as several types of soldiers. Isn't this very cost-effective?"

Yang Heng opened his mouth, but was completely speechless.

Lu Jin continued, "You have never seen the power of a musket on the battlefield, so you are skeptical, but this thing was designed by me personally, and I understand its usage and power very well.

"Regardless of whether the effect of the musket is really what I want, it can replace bows and arrows. There is no limit to the materials used, and it is easy to train an army. We should produce more of them. Anyway, if I ask you for bows and arrows, you can't make them, right?"

Yang Heng and Bao Yu nodded immediately after hearing this. This last sentence was the key. Don't say anything else. Since bows and arrows cannot be produced at present, it is natural to produce more muskets as a substitute for bows and arrows.

Lu Jin spread his hands and said, "That's it. Let's find a way to increase production and make more."

"Yes." The two of them immediately bowed in agreement and no longer raised any objections.

Coincidentally, Xu Jichuan was also called over at this time, and Lu Jin immediately arranged for him to build a new hydraulic boring machine workshop to increase the production of artillery.

Now the entire army has turned to training and defense, and the civil service system must also work hard to raise various supplies to prepare for the battle of crossing the river. In addition, it is now early spring in March, so there will undoubtedly be a large-scale production activity next.

(End of this chapter)