Late Ming Dynasty: So what if Emperor Chongzhen was inactive?!

Chapter 288 Six Types of Thirteen Firearms (Multiple Data Warning!)

Matchlock guns were divided into a standard type and a modified version of the Rumi gun. The standard type had a barrel length of 3 feet, a total length of 5 feet, a caliber of 3 fen, a total weight of 6 jin, fired lead bullets weighing 3 qian, and was loaded with 3 qian of gunpowder. It had an effective range of 80 paces and could penetrate armor within 50 paces.

This is currently the most widely used firearm in the Ming army, with a total stock of no less than 20. Its main feature is its low cost, with a production cost of 1 tael and 2 mace of silver.

The Lumi Cannon Modification was a new type of matchlock gun invented by combining the advantages of the existing Lumi Bird Cannon and the Mother-and-Child Cannon of the Ming Dynasty. Although it was just a combination of a chicken and a basketball, Zhu Youjian still gave the craftsman who invented the cannon 20 taels of gold as encouragement.

The improved matchlock musket is similar in appearance to the standard model, but with a longer barrel. For ammunition compatibility, both have the same caliber. The difference lies in the barrel: the standard musket's barrel is made of rolled wrought iron, painstakingly hammered out by craftsmen with small hammers – a highly skilled craft that blacksmith apprentices cannot accomplish, only gold-level dwarven blacksmiths can manufacture; the improved model, however, uses a drilling process.

Compared to the standard model, its inner walls are smoother and straighter, its structure is more compact, its strength is higher, and it has straight rifling. With the same amount of ammunition, it has a longer range and greater power.

It also references the bayonet design of the breech-loading musket, allowing the barrel to be screwed into a plug-in bayonet. The bayonet blade is 1 foot 3 inches long, and the handle is 5 inches long; the handle is inserted into the muzzle and twisted to lock it in place. The reason a chuck-type bayonet isn't used is, of course, because it's impractical. The breech-loading musket with the bayonet attached can reach a length of 7 feet.

The improved arquebus can be used for both long-range and close-range combat, boasting superior performance and reliability; however, its cost is also quite substantial. Unless the price of raw materials fluctuates significantly, even with mass production, the cost cannot be reduced to below 3 ounces.

Currently, only 9000 rods have been manufactured. Drilling is too laborious, so production has remained low. However, the standard model represents the past, while the improved model represents the future.

The improved musket weighs 8 jin (approximately 4 catties). Although the lead bullets still weigh 3 qian (approximately 15 grams), the increased propellant charge (4 qian) due to the longer barrel allows for a greater effective range of up to 100 paces, with significantly improved accuracy. Currently, it can only be equipped by a select group of elite units and cannot be deployed across the entire army.

The three-barreled musket was a handgun used exclusively by cavalry. It consisted of three barrels joined together, with a simple design. It was 2 feet long, with each barrel having a 5-fen caliber and a total weight of 5 jin. Each barrel could hold 5 qian of powder and 5 qian of small lead pellets or iron shot.

However, its accuracy was very poor, and its effective range was only 30 paces. Its advantage was that it could fire three barrels in succession, and after firing, the heavy gun barrel could be used as a mace. It was inexpensive to manufacture, costing only 1 tael of silver.

Zhu Youjian imported a 2-inch hand cannon from Japan, which is more accurately translated into Chinese as a hand cannon. This thing is actually a super-enlarged "Plus" version of the arquebus. Not only does it look similar, but its structure is also basically the same as that of an ordinary matchlock gun. The only difference is that the barrel caliber is increased, the barrel thickness is increased, and the handguard is also correspondingly enlarged and reshaped.

Currently, this weapon is active in the mountains and forests of North Korea. Its power is just enough to penetrate the triple armor of the Jurchens. However, its accuracy is somewhat poor, resulting in a long maximum range but a very short effective range, and it is basically fired at point-blank range.

The Ming Dynasty provided a total of 2500 hand cannons to the South Korean auxiliary army and the North Korean rebel army. The South Korean auxiliary army handed over 73 slave heads, while the North Korean rebel army submitted more than 800, which was better than nothing.

Of course, the battle reports Zhu Youjian received all stated that "tens of thousands" of Bordered Blue Banner soldiers had been defeated by the Koreans, but the soldiers had fought bravely and had not managed to kill anyone.

But this doesn't mean the weapon was useless. Eight hundred men was already quite an achievement. The Jurchens probably didn't even lose eight hundred men when they conquered the entire Korean peninsula.

This illustrates that for a large country, the war of maintaining order is far more difficult than the war of conquest. This is a weapon very suitable for guerrilla warfare. Zhu Youjian had a slight feeling of unease, as if he had shot himself in the foot. A guerrilla weapon like this is perfect for rebellion!

Zhu Youjian made up his mind that after liberating Korea, he would collect all the weapons in the country and cast them into the Twelve Divine Might General Cannons! The Tiger Crouching Cannon was essentially a mortar cannon. Apart from not looking like a stone mortar, it also had the characteristics of a short and thick barrel, an extremely high firing angle, and curved firing.

The caliber of mortars can be incredibly large. The largest mortars were the Gustav and Dora cannons, which could fire 7-ton shells, equivalent to launching an adult male African elephant.

If the European mortar is a heavy, point-explosion indirect fire cannon, then the tiger crouch cannon is a light, area-damage indirect fire cannon.

The Tiger Crouching Cannon was designed based on the curved-fire infantry cannon established by Qi Jiguang, and was named for its crouching posture.

The cannon barrel was 1 foot 8 inches long, with a caliber of 2 inches, and a total weight of 36 catties. It contained 5 to 8 taels of powder and could fire a large lead ball weighing 30 taels, or 500 small lead balls and stones, creating a hail of bullets. Its effective range was 200 paces, and it was specifically designed to deter cavalry charges. Each cannon cost 5 taels of silver.

The Tiger Crouching Cannon was widely used in the military. It was very useful, cheap and easy to manufacture, and loved by soldiers on the front lines. The Tiger Crouching Cannon was also feared by enemies such as the Jurchens and the Northern Barbarians. Originally, there were more than ten sizes of breech-loading cannons. Today, four types are retained: light, medium, heavy, and mounted breech-loading cannons, weighing 70 jin, 200 jin, 800 jin, and 20 jin respectively.

The Hongyi cannons come in four types: small, medium, large, and the invincible general, weighing 1000 jin, 2000 jin, 5000 jin, and 7000 jin respectively!
The cannons produced in the Ming Dynasty, such as the Yongle cannon, could also weigh up to a thousand catties, but their power was far inferior. This was a technological iteration that spanned 200 years!
In terms of appearance, the cannons native to the Ming Dynasty were cylindrical, with thick barrels, short barrels, thick walls, and small calibers.

The Hongyi cannon was club-shaped, tapering from front to back, with thinner walls at the front and thicker walls at the back, resulting in a longer barrel and a higher caliber. It was a muzzle-loading smoothbore cannon, cast as a single piece, with trunnions for precise adjustment of the firing angle. Its range, accuracy, and power completely surpassed the old cannons of the Ming Dynasty, representing the most advanced artillery technology of its time.

The good news is that the Ming Dynasty was fully capable of replicating this thing; the bad news is that it was ridiculously expensive, with even a small cannon costing 1000 taels of silver. And Zhu Youjian's so-called invincible Great General Cannon was currently just a concept; it hadn't been built yet.

The largest existing Hongyi cannon in the army weighs 4500 jin (approximately 2,250 catties), and a 5000 jin cannon has also been built but has not yet been put into service. There is not even a trace of a 7000 jin cannon.

The thousand-pound breech-loading cannon has a barrel length of 8 feet, a diameter of 3.3 inches, and a powder charge of 5 pounds. It fires solid iron bullets weighing 10 pounds each. Its effective range far exceeds that of other cannons, reaching 5 to 7 miles. It can destroy city walls and sink ships, and its power is enormous.

These were the main weapons selected by Zhu Youjian and his ministers for the Ming army. Centuries later, during the War of Resistance against Japan, we learned the hard way that importing weapons from various countries was not a viable strategy. For long-term development, the Ming Dynasty needed to iterate its firearms families, developing its own distinct families of guns and artillery.

Zhu Youjian set up a collection room in the palace, which was filled with all kinds of firearms. In addition to guns and cannons, there were also various warship models, cold weapons and armor. Perhaps the essence of mankind is actually that of a collector of figurines.

Although this was just one of his little quirks, the reason he claimed to the outside world was very lofty: he kept these weapons so that if a weapon-making technique were lost due to an accident in the future, people could come to his collection room to conduct technical archaeology.

Zhu Youjian was strictly forbidden from using firearms, and not a single piece of gunpowder was allowed to enter the Forbidden Garden. However, he secretly hid a box of ammunition, not daring to let the old men know. His collection could actually be converted into immediate combat power at any time, at least to clear a path for him to reach Coal Hill.

(End of this chapter)