In order to quell the rebellion, especially to suppress the firepower, Kangxi had to appoint nan Huairen, the deputy superintendent of the Qin Heavenly Prison and the Jesuit missionary Nan Huairen, who was in charge of the revision of the calendar.
Born in Belgium, Nan Huairen, whose real name was Ferdinand Verbiest, came to Macau at the age of thirty-five and intended to go to Xi'an as a missionary, but at the invitation of John Tang, he went to Beijing during the Shunzhi period to assist in the study of the calendar. However, in the third year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Yang Guangxian, the qin heavenly superintendent, and others challenged Tang Ruowang, Nan Huairen, and other Jesuit missionaries, accusing them of conspiracy to rebel, heresy, and absurd calendars.
Soon after Kangxi took power, he rehabilitated John Tang, Nan Huairen and others, but catholicism was still regarded as a cult like the White Lotus Sect. Later, Nan Huairen restored the reputation of the Catholic Church because of his merits in casting cannons, but he was still not allowed to preach.
The prohibition of the prohibition of the word Catholicism with the White Lotus Sect for rebellion is too much to be deleted.
However, as a missionary and familiar with the calendar, how could Nan Huairen cast cannons? In fact, Nan Huairen's knowledge of casting cannons came from Tang Ruowang, who began to work for the Ming, and had close contacts with Xu Guangqi, Sun Yuanhua and other priests and doctors in the late Ming Dynasty, and wrote "Fire Attack Essentials". After entering the Customs, John Tang was appointed as the first Qin Tianjian supervisor of the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, Nan Huairen's artillery knowledge initially came entirely from the Fire Attack Essentials, and then continued to explore in practice.
It is not that the Qing Dynasty could not build cannons, before entering the customs, Emperor Taiji had set up an artillery workshop in Jinzhou, and the red-clad cannons helped the Qing army win many siege battles after entering the customs. However, in this rebellion, the red-clad cannons were too heavy to be suitable for field combat, so Kangxi asked Nan Huairen to make light artillery that could be used in the field.
Therefore, the first artillery made by Nan Huairen was a wooden cannon. It is said that the wooden cannon is actually a cannon with a wooden inlaid copper core, and this composite artillery production follows the production ideas of the iron core copper body of the late Ming Dynasty. Although it was not much made, it did play a role.
Soon after, Nan Huairen also manufactured the Shenwei Invincible General Cannon, the Shenwei General Cannon, the Wucheng Yonggu General Cannon, the Shengong General Cannon, and the Weiyuan General Cannon, which were all variants of the red-clad cannon, just to apply different ranges, weights, and other needs.
Among these kinds of cannons, the cannon of General Wucheng Yonggu is particularly exquisitely manufactured, which can be called a work of art, and the Qinghui Canon says:
The dynasty made Wucheng Yonggu the great general cast copper for it, the front and rear are slightly abundant, the bottom is like a bamboo knot, weighing from 3,600 pounds to 7,000 pounds, long from 9 feet 6 inches to a foot and an inch, a mixture of abode flower text, banana leaf text, palindrome, uplift ten ways, all of which are indium star text, the near mouth is a star, and the bottom is engraved left and right.
Although this cannon was cast in the second year after The Death of Nan Huairen (1689), because it was he who designed the style of the cannon, each cannon is engraved with the words "Judge Nan Huairen". In 1689, a total of 61 Wucheng Yonggu cannons were cast, but only 18 have survived so far.
Nan Huairen worked hard to build more than 500 artillery pieces for the Qing army, and finally caused him to die of illness in the twenty-seventh year of Kangxi (1688), and Kangxi also issued a special edict to give praise.
After Qianlong, the war in China and abroad was gradually extinguished, so the artillery gradually lost its usefulness until the advent of the Opium War. The late Qing Dynasty carried out changes in a defeated manner, but eventually in 1900, the Gengzi Boxing Rebellion triggered the Eight-Nation Alliance to enter China. In addition to plundering countless treasures, the artillery originally forged by Nan Huairen was also brought back to Europe as a trophy.
The only Wucheng Yonggu Cannon that was not taken away was originally stored in the German Embassy in Dongjiaomin Lane, Beijing, and was transported back from the Embassy in 1946 by the Beiping History Museum (the predecessor of the National Museum of China), and became a national first-class cultural relic because of its historical value, and it was not displayed in the Duanmen West Square until 1999 that it was able to meet the public.
The Duanmen West Square of the Forbidden City displays a Qing Dynasty "Wucheng Yonggu General Cannon", a collection of the National Museum of China, and a national first-class cultural relic
In addition to the Chinese mainland existing one, the Taiwan Chimei Museum has bought back two artillery pieces.
According to Baidu Encyclopedia, in the 26th year of Guangxu (1900), when the Eight-Power Coalition army invaded and occupied Beijing, the commander of the coalition army, Von Waldersee, brought many booty from China back to Berlin, including several cannons of General Wucheng Yonggu; these cannons later became important exhibits of the German "Wilhelm Suo Collection". In 1930 , the German army expanded its armament and melted some of its artillery , and the cannons that escaped this disaster were transferred to the British for private collection , and in 1994 , the Chimei Museum purchased two guns of General Wucheng Yonggu and displayed them on the lawn outside the museum , making it the best material for studying ancient artillery.
Baidu Encyclopedia【Wucheng Yonggu General Cannon】
In addition to the three guns owned by the two sides of the strait, only Japan in Asia has a collection of one Wucheng Yonggu general gun.
Japan Hakozaki Hachiman Kosho Sangei Naganaga
The wikipedia quoted above does not say how much Germany took.
In fact, there are twelve doors, which were displayed in the Berlin Military Museum, the Zeughaus (not the Wilhelmsau Collection). In 1936, due to the limited space of the museum, it was planned to melt down eight of them. Therefore, it was not Germany that wanted to melt the artillery to expand its armaments, and the second world war did not use copper to cast guns.
The Bayern Military Museum houses 17 artillery pieces, and in the middle of the picture above is the cannon of General Wucheng Yonggu
Finally, Germany retains four of them, two at the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte in Berlin, one at the Bayerisches Armeemuseum in Ingolstadt, and one in Veste Coburg.
The cannon of General Wucheng Yonggu at the entrance of the Westerko Museum
The Bern Museum in Switzerland obtained two of the eight cannons that the Germans intended to melt.
Bern Historical Museum (Switzerland)
The rest of the Wucheng Yonggu cannons were scattered throughout Europe, with four in the Arma del Genio museum in Rome, two in Vienna and two in Budapest. These two of Budapest are placed directly at the entrance of the museum.
Hungarian National Military Museum (Budapest)
@yin75paris
The Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna now houses two of them, and since the museum's collection of bronze artillery century was the first, no special picture of General Wucheng Yonggu could be found on the Internet. Friends who have visited can take more photos.
Artillery of the Museum of Military History in Vienna
At an academic conference to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Nan Huairen's death, Giovanni Stary, a researcher at the University of Venice in Italy, listed 17 cannons made by Nan Huairen in the collections of museums in various European countries. It can be seen that Italy has the largest collection. Except for the three cannons in the first series, which were cast in 1682, the rest were cast in 1689, the twenty-eighth year of the Kangxi Dynasty.
Stary said that the artillery in the London collection of the United Kingdom, after investigation, the two 1689 Chinese guns collected by the British Royal Armoury (located in Chelsea Hospital) were not Wucheng Yonggu guns, but Shengong General Guns.
@royalarmouries the text "General Shengong" can be clearly seen in the figure
Stary also pointed out this in his article, and the Taiwanese scholar Zhou Weiqiang's statistics of The Great General Wucheng Yonggu's artillery summary still include these two British ones, which is actually incorrect.
Moreover, Stary and Zhou Weiqiang both underestimated the two Wucheng Yonggu cannons owned by Bern, so we can re-count that there are a total of 18 Wucheng Yonggu cannons known to the world, of which only one is hidden in Chinese mainland, two in Taiwan, one in Japan, and the other 14 are in Europe. Among them, Germany and Italy have the largest, with four collections each, and the rest are evenly distributed in Austria, Hungary and Switzerland.
New York's Doyle Auction House Auctions "Winning General Cannon"
According to a "Winning General Cannon" made by Jingshan in the 34th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Doyle Auction House in New York sold for $362,500. It is estimated that the number is even rarer, and the price of the more exquisite Wucheng Yonggu General Cannon is at least a million dollars.
Because the victorious general cannon had been excavated quite a bit throughout Beijing in the 20th year of the Republic of China (1931), the United States, one of the Eight-Power Alliance, also brought back a lot. The American Auction House Cowan Auction House has auctioned similar artillery before, and in order to increase its price, they all said that it was minted by Nam Huai Ren and has survived very little.
Zhou Weiqiang pointed out that this view is not only wrong but also misleading, needless to say that in the thirty-fourth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Nan Huairen had already passed away, and there was no literature to prove that Nan Huairen had designed the "Victory General Cannon". Moreover, no less than 20 were captured by the Eight-Power Alliance.
The Victory General Cannon and the Weiyuan General Cannon and the Dragon Cannon were all designed by Kangxi, so they were called "Kangxi Imperial Cannons", mainly for the use of the Eight Banners of Beijing. In terms of form, it is far from the cannon of General Wucheng Yonggu, and it is less decorative and solemn.
bibliography:
Zhou Weiqiang: Shenwei Four Domains, Wucheng Yonggu: Kangxi Dynasty European-style Artillery New Examination)." Forbidden City Academic Quarterly, 2012.
Stary, Giovanni. "The'Manchu Cannons' Cast by Ferdinand Verbiest and the Hitherto Unknown Title of His Instructions." Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1623–1688): Jesuit missionary, scientist, engineer and diplomat: 215-25.
Doly拍卖：Chinese Bronze Cannon and Caisson
Canon from Beijing：http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?p=264767