As we all know, the late Qing Dynasty was a rather chaotic era, when it lagged behind other countries in many ways due to its closed-door policy. After the emergence of many advanced technologies in the West, China has not yet appeared. As a result, people at that time were relatively backward in their thinking. In addition, I believe that everyone knows li Hongzhang, a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty, who has actually been working hard for the rise of the Qing Dynasty, and he has no choice but to be born at the wrong time, and let many posterity have a bad evaluation of him. Today, Xiaobian wants to tell the story of Li Hongzhang when he first saw the machine gun.
In that era, in fact, Li Hongzhang had begun to have an awakening consciousness, he was well aware of the gap between the military strength of the Qing Dynasty and the West, and he began to advocate learning from the West. As one of the representative figures of the Western affairs movement, Li Hongzhang began to encourage people to set up private enterprises and introduce advanced Western technology to make the Qing Dynasty achieve the goal of becoming rich and strong. In addition, Li Hongzhang also single-handedly established the Beiyang Fleet, and he repeatedly purchased ships and artillery equipment from Britain to enhance the equipment strength of the Beiyang Fleet.
In the 1890s, in order to examine more weapons and compare the advantages and disadvantages of each weapon, Li Hongzhang decided to go to Germany himself. During this trip, Li Hongzhang saw a rather peculiarly shaped "Makqin machine gun" and was immediately interested. According to the people next to him, the German army used this "Maxim machine gun" to shoot 60,000 soldiers of the enemy country in one day, which was so powerful that it was called "widow maker". It is the world's first automatic weapon that uses gunpowder gas as an energy source, and it can shoot continuously and uninterruptedly, which is shocking.
Li Hongzhang, who listened to these introductions, had even more confidence. So he asked for a field demonstration of the gun so that he could really see the power of this machine gun up close. Subsequently, de yi began the shooting drill at the request of Li Hongzhang, and as the gunshots continued to sound, it took only a dozen seconds for the huge wooden rake to be beaten to pieces, which made Li Hongzhang more satisfied. When the two sides were about to discuss the price, Li Hongzhang suddenly asked: "How many rounds of ammunition can this kind of machine gun fire in a minute?" The German side replied: "This machine gun has a very fast rate of fire, it can shoot 500 to 600 bullets in one minute, the power is huge, and you are satisfied." ”
Who knows, Li Hongzhang, who was quite satisfied a second ago, suddenly changed his face when he heard this, and he waved his hand helplessly: "No, the rate of fire is too fast, Daqing can't afford so much ammunition consumption." Although Li Hongzhang always wanted to strengthen the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty treasury was in deficit at that time, all guns and ammunition had to be imported from abroad, and its expensive costs should not be underestimated, and even when it came to such a good weapon, it was impossible to bear the cost of purchasing ammunition, which was really regrettable.