We all know that the Ming Dynasty was the period when firearms began to flourish, according to records, in the thirteenth year of The Ming Emperor Hongwu, the Fan Army had 100 households with punchers, real names, signboard hands, archers, 30, and gunners, and firearms accounted for 10 percent of them.
During the Ming Dynasty, the world's earliest specialized firearms-equipped Divine Machine Battalion was established.
From the Ming Dynasty to the Ming Jiajing Period, the proportion of firearms soldiers used in the Ming Dynasty military camps ranged from the initial ten to one-third, and then to fifty percent, it can be said that the Ming Dynasty's emphasis on the use of firearms was the peak of the beginning, and the early firearms were domestic goods, of which China's earliest mortars and tiger ton guns were in this.
The final invention of the Tiger Dun Cannon was a long-range weapon developed by Qi Jiguang, a famous general of the Ming Dynasty, and was equipped and used by the Qi family army.
During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the Wukou in the southeast coastal areas of China were rampant, and the Ming army was defeated one after another, Qi Jiguang noticed that birds, beasts and Flange could not play an effective role on the battlefield, so he studied a number of centralized light artillery in the early Ming Dynasty, combined with the actual terrain of the southeast region at that time, and finally developed the Hudun cannon on the basis of the Baizi Lianzhu cannon.
So what is the Hundred Sons Cannon?
The Hundred Zi Lianzhu Cannon has a lead behind the Hundred Rounds Of Contained Bullets, a rotating shaft at the tail, and the gun hill is mounted on a square wooden frame, which can be fired up, down, left and right.
The appearance of the Tiger Dun Cannon is very similar to that of the Hundred Sons Lianzhu Cannon, the shield cannon is about 590 mm long and weighs about 21.5 kg, as a whole.
Hand iron manufacturing, the muzzle of the gun is installed with a support frame, the barrel plus five mushrooms, it is not easy to explode when used, the front body is attached to the top of the claw when firing, and the rear body is fixed to the ground with iron flaps, resembling a tiger shield and named tiger dun cannon.
Two kinds of shield cannons are recorded in the new book of the technical school, one is about two feet long, about two inches thick in the abdomen, with five or six iron hoops, and weighs thirty-six pounds;
The other is more than three feet tall and weighs a lot. The reason why Qi Jiguang designed the predecessor and rear of the Tiger Dun cannon in this way was to overcome the shortcomings of the self-injury caused by the easy rear seat when firing from other firearms.
The Hudun cannon has a short body and a range of 500 meters, but the firing of scattered shells has a relatively large killing surface, and the body is clear and mobile, which is very suitable for fighting in places with complex terrain such as mountains, forests, paddy fields, etc., and can also be loaded on ships, which is why the speed of light of seven is seven.
Every one hundred and fifty people in the Qi family army led by him would be equipped with a shield cannon and rocket artillery, which shined in the War of Resistance Against the Japanese Empire and were invincible on the battlefield of the Ming Dynasty.
In 1592, Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched a seven-year-long Qing Dynasty War against Korea to satisfy the desire of the feudal lords to expand their territory and merchants to monopolize overseas trade.
In the second month of the Qing Dynasty, the Korean Peninsula almost fell into the hands of the Japanese army. Faced with such a situation, North Korea had no choice but to ask the Ming Dynasty for support.
In 1598, the combined Ming and Korean naval forces launched a surprise attack on hundreds of Japanese ships in the sea near the Luliang Strait.
Ming warships pursued the Japanese to the South China Sea in Busan, and the battle was fierce. In the end, we relied on the numerous tiger piers and cannons on the ship to continuously and fiercely attacked, and the Japanese warships reloaded and caught fire, and the Japanese army was defeated.
In this naval battle, the Japanese suffered more than 10,000 casualties, and all but the first fifty warships were buried on the seabed.
After the war, all Japanese troops withdrew from Korea and did not dare to invade Korea again for twenty years.
This is only one of the records of the Tiger Dun Cannon's War of Resistance against the Wu Dynasty, but the Tiger Dun Cannon was not only used in the War of Resistance against the Wu Dynasty, but also performed very well in the process of the Ming Dynasty's confrontation with the northern departments.
Many people may think that the Tiger Dun Gun is only a light artillery, which is equivalent to the current light mortar, but for the military firepower at that time, it was a heavy cannon that could directly and quickly solve the battle.
In addition, it has to be admitted that the tiger bulb is a microcosm of the development and use of firearms in that era of the Ming Dynasty, in addition to reflecting the grand situation of firearms in the Ming Dynasty, it also represents the research and development capabilities of domestic firearms at that time.
Today, in the 21st century, the China Maritime Museum collects the former Chinese nautical firearms as cultural relics, including the Tiger Pier Cannon.