Source: Mechanics-Bar (ID: Mechanics-Bar), Author: Zhang Weiwei, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology.
Introduction: The 23rd year of Zhizheng (1363) Chen Youliang attacked Zhu Yuanzhang's territory Hongdu (now Nanchang, Jiangxi), and the soldiers only used bamboo shields and broadswords in their hands to open a hole of more than ten zhang in the city wall, and the defender Deng Yu repelled the enemy's fierce attacks with the help of firearms;In the 26th year of Zhizheng (1366), Zhu Yuanzhang attacked Zhang Shicheng's territory Pingjiang (now Suzhou, Jiangsu), built a high platform outside the city, and used fire guns and Xiangyang artillery to attack the city;In the second year of Jianwen (1400) Guo Ying, Marquis of Wuding, used mines to break Zhu Di's army in the Battle of Baigou River; in the Battle of Jinan, Zhu Di made no progress in attacking the city for three months, and set up an artillery array to prepare for the siege of the city, and the defender Tie Xuan hung Zhu Yuanzhang's tablet around him, and Zhu Di withdrew his army. In the battles involved in "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty", there was always the participation of hot weapons, in fact, there was a long period of coexistence with hot weapons (firearms) in the cold weapon era, and during this time China's firearms equipment was still world-class.
Probably most people would think that although gunpowder was synthesized by ancient Chinese alchemists in the process of alchemy, guns were invented by Westerners. Therefore, some people say that China invented gunpowder to make firecrackers, while the West used it to make guns. In fact, this is not the case, whether it is the first gunfire or the first cannon sound in the world, it happens on the land of China.
The earliest record of the explosion of gunpowder is Zheng Siyuan's "Zhenyuan Miaodao Essentials" (about the 9th ~ 10th century) at the end of the Tang Dynasty: "There are those who burn sulfur, realgar saltpeter and honey, and burn the hands and embers of the house. And warned: "Saltpeter should not be burned with three yellows (sulfur, realgar and orpiment), (otherwise) disaster will be seen immediately." After constantly summarizing the properties of saltpeter and sulfur, alchemists put forward alchemy methods such as sulfur and saltpeter.
The earliest record of the use of gunpowder in warfare is a war in the last years of the Tang Dynasty in the "Chronicles of the Nine Kingdoms" written by Lu Zhen of the Northern Song Dynasty: in the first year of Tianyou of Zhaozong of the Tang Dynasty (904 AD), Yang Xingmi besieged Yuzhang (now Nanchang, Jiangxi). Some people speculate that it is a firearm that can be used to eject a burning gun or other object farther with the help of gunpowder, while others speculate that it is a long barrel mounted on a spear to fire flames and injure the enemy. Firearms in the Tang Dynasty were still relatively vague, but since the Song Dynasty, they have been relatively clear.
Generally speaking, there are three main types of firearms on the battlefield in ancient times: one is incendiary firearms, which spray flames to injure the enemy. The second is explosive firearms, which injure the enemy by fragments from the explosion of gunpowder, and the third is long-range firearms, i.e., guns and cannons. Essentially, combustion and explosion are both ways of releasing energy, and an explosion can also be seen as an extremely violent combustion. The difference between them is that combustion usually diffuses energy at subsonic speed in the form of diffusion or convection, while explosion is much more intense, usually in a shorter time and a smaller space, to achieve energy conversion and accompanied by the generation of high pressure, high temperature and shock waves, etc., the process of diffusion of energy at supersonic speed. It can be seen that the latter two types of firearms have strong lethality on the battlefield, especially the invention of guns and cannons, which play a decisive role in changing the pattern of war (advanced weapons are the biggest asymmetry on the battlefield), and they are both called tubular firearms.
The earliest tubular firearms (muskets) were invented and manufactured by Chen Gui in Anlu County, Hubei Province during the Southern Song Dynasty, when the Jin soldiers invaded the Central Plains, the prefect of De'an Prefecture abandoned the city and fled, and Chen Gui defended on his behalf. In the second year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty (1132), the old rules put gunpowder into the bamboo tube to make a bamboo musket, and the operation was generally a group of 3 people, one person held the gun, one person ignited, and one person charged. However, the stereotyped bamboo musket can not be regarded as a gun, the real sense of the gun appeared in 1259, according to the "Song History, Bingzhi": the first year of Kaiqing (1259), Shouchun Mansion (now Shou County, Anhui) "and make a sudden musket, with a giant bamboo as the barrel, the inner Anzi Yao, such as burning the flames, and then Zi Yao emitted such a cannon sound, heard more than 150 steps from afar. "The assault rifle has the rudimentary form of a modern rifle, with a giant bamboo as a barrel as the barrel as the barrel, and an inner 'an Ziyi (ke, a sound) as a bullet, usually porcelain pieces, broken iron, stones and the like. It is worth noting that from the assault rifle, rifles and artillery can easily appear.
Fire gun, the picture comes from the Internet
After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, based on the techniques of the Jin and Song dynasties, gunpowder and projectiles were made into guns and cannons fired in metal tubes, and in the peasant uprisings at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, a considerable number of guns and artillery were already used on the battlefield. Therefore, it is not surprising that the hot weapon war described in "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty" is not surprising. It's just that Chen Youliang, Zhang Shicheng and others are troublesome to use firearms, and are unwilling to use a large number of equipment, only Zhu Yuanzhang saw the value of firearms, while organizing people to develop new types of firearms, while studying firearms tactics, Zhu Yuanzhang was also the first commander to use firearms as an independent army, which made Zhu Yuanzhang stand out in the rebel army at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.
Among them, the most commendable is the three-element fire weapon combat method pioneered by Mu Ying (Zhu Yuanzhang adopted as an adopted son when he was eight years old) in Yunnan. In the fourteenth year of Hongwu (1381), Zhu Yuanzhang sent Mu Ying to accompany Fu Youde and Lan Yu on an expedition to Yunnan, and a year later Yunnan was pacified, and Zhu Yuanzhang ordered Mu Ying to defend Yunnan. In order to deal with the local elephant soldiers (elephant army), Mu Ying responded with muskets and artillery, but it took time to change the gunpowder and bullets after each fire, which could not form a sustained lethality. In this case, Mu Ying divided the firearm into three rows, and fired the first row after the attack, and then the second and third rows took turns to fire, taking turns to reload. Nearly 400 years after Mu Ying invented the three-line firearm method of warfare, King Frederick II of Prussia (1712-1786) invented a similar three-line method of warfare after a long period of study, and used it to dominate Europe.
The picture comes from the Internet
After seizing power, he paid more attention to the development of firearms, and in the early Yongle year (the first year of Yongle was 1403), he established a formed Shenji battalion, which was the first formed gun unit in the world, and the first formed Spanish musket team in Europe was not established until 1510. Due to the limitation of guns and ammunition, Zhu Di also cooperated with the formation of 3,000 battalions - cavalry corps, as well as five military battalions with a mixture of cavalry and infantry. The three battalions cooperated with each other according to the battlefield conditions and coordinated operations to achieve the goal of annihilating the enemy. This played a key and decisive role in dealing with the onslaught of the Mongol cavalry in the north.
In March of the 19th year of Yongle (1411), Zhu Di held a world-famous grand military parade (known as hunting in ancient times) in Huailai, north of Beijing. When Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan Dynasty, did you ever think that three of the "Four Great Khanates" established by Genghis Khan were still alive, and after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, a large number of Yuan Dynasty officials went into exile in the other three khanates of Central Asia and West Asia, and desperately encouraged the monarchs of their countries to adopt a hostile attitude towards the Ming Dynasty. Among them, Timur, a powerful minister of the Western Chagatai Khanate, staged a coup d'état, established the Timurid Empire, and conquered China in the fourth year of Yongle, but died of illness on the way.
In this context, Zhu Di sent Chen Cheng to the Western Regions on the one hand, and Zheng He to the Western Ocean on the other hand, to declare the strength of the Ming Dynasty by land and sea, and to restore and consolidate the "tributary relations" between the Ming Dynasty and the countries of Central Asia and West Asia. Subsequently, various countries sent missions (some led by the emperor) to visit China. In the eighteenth year of Yongle, there were more than 20 foreign missions in China, more than 600 people, Zhu Di sent elite cavalry escort, along Jiayu Pass through the Ming Dynasty Jiubian Military Town (Nine Military Regions) to visit, show strength, and at the same time specially arranged Mongolian and Hui officials to receive, introduce the Ming Dynasty's ethnic policy, and successfully established the external image of the Ming Empire.
In March of the 19th year of Yongle, the mission returned to Beijing to watch the military parade, and at this time the delegations of 27 countries had gathered. In this military parade, Zhu Di transferred a total of 100,000 troops, and the five military battalions, the 3,000 battalions, and the Shenji battalion appeared one after another, performing cavalry outflanking, infantry assault, infantry and cavalry combined attacks, and transferred "coyote soldiers" and white pole soldiers from Guangxi, Yunnan, and Sichuan to practice military subjects such as infantry crossbow salvo and spear infantry assassination. In particular, the firearms drill of the "Shenji Battalion" in the Ming Dynasty displayed many "high-tech" weapons such as "Huwei Cannon", "Fire Dragon Gun" (special musket for cavalry), Annan Gun (carrying gun), "Swarm of Bees" (rocket artillery), "Fire Dragon Car" (flamethrower), etc., which opened the eyes of the envoys of various countries. This "hunt" lasted for a whole month, to the surprise of the "envoys of all countries".
In the 90s of the last century, the sixth chapter of the Japanese writer Shinoda Koichi's book "Encyclopedia of Ancient Chinese Weapons" (which is indeed quite complete, even the magic weapons of the gods in the Romance of the Gods are also included) is dedicated to firearms. Regarding the cannon of the Ming Dynasty, it is mentioned that there are two kinds of fixed guns and gun carriages, and there are two types of projectiles: solid bullets and hollow bullets, and the solid bullets can shoot up to 500 small projectiles at the same time, which is called Baizi Lianzhu cannon, and the range of solid bullets is also very long. The hollow cannon is a kind of artillery shell that can explode after hitting the target, and sometimes it also contains poison gas, such as the Flying Cloud Thunderbolt Cannon, and the Poison Mist God Smoke Cannon are all poison gas bombs.
The fire dragon spear, also known as the pear flower spear, uses one or two bamboo barrels filled with gunpowder, tied to the head of the spear, and fires flames to burn the enemy soldiers during the engagement, and then stabs them with the head of the spear. It contains mixed agents such as willow charcoal, iron decanter, magnetic powder, sulfur, arsenic, etc., which has the effects of combustion, toxic smoke and spraying. The pear flower gun of the Ming Dynasty has only one iron cylinder, which is shaped like a pointed bamboo shoot, can be an fuse, a large head caliber, contains poison, and is sealed with mud. Soldiers can carry several cartridges with them in case they need to be replaced, and the poisonous flames can be several feet away.
Fire Dragon Gun Source: Internet Search
The Annan gun, also known as the gun, is a large-scale gun, which requires two or several people to operate (generally three people are in charge of ignition, aiming, and dressing change), and can be placed on a triangular wooden frame or on the soldier's shoulder when shooting. Compared with the gun, the gun is long, and the gunpowder is also loaded with more and is powerful.
Lifting the gun Source: Ancient Chinese Weapons
A swarm is a type of multi-launch rocket, in which a rocket is a rocket that flies to a target by the gas jet force generated when gunpowder burns, rather than an arrow fired from a crossbow. When operating, it is hung on the shoulder by a belt, and the launch canister is carried out by holding it in your hand. Even if a large swarm of bees is too heavy, it will be fixed on the ground and launched, or mounted on a vehicle, which is called a fire chariot. A swarm of bees can effectively compensate for the shortcomings of the low hit rate of a single rocket.
A swarm of bees Source: Encyclopedia of Ancient Chinese Weapons
Probably the most famous flamethrower of the Ming Dynasty was the Shenhuo Flying Duck, which was in the form of a flying bird (paralyzing the enemy), and the bird feathers were equipped with four rockets propelled by gunpowder, which began to burn after hitting the target, and was called "a rocket with a single head or a multi-stage rocket" by modern experts, and was often used in siege warfare. The same firearm, made in the shape of a dragon for water stations, is called the water fire dragon.
Divine Fire Flying Duck, Water Fire Dragon: Source of Ancient Chinese Weapons
The proportion of firearms in the army in the Ming Dynasty was also considerable. According to the Ming Huidian, the Ming Dynasty built 3,000 cannons and 3,000 muskets every three years in the 137 years after the founding of the country. In the thirteenth year of Hongwu (1380), Ming Taizu issued an order: "All armies are one hundred households, ten guns, twenty swords, thirty bows and arrows, and forty guns." It is roughly speculated that the firearms equipment rate of the Ming army during the Hongwu period was 10%. In the second year of Chenghua (1466), the Ming general Guo Deng suggested to the imperial court that the infantry "use ten divine guns, ten archers, five sword players, ten medicine and arrow crossbowmen, eight divine cannons and gunpowder, and seven miscellaneous users". According to this provision, the rate of firearms equipping soldiers in the infantry is about 30 per cent. In some battles (such as Qi Jiguang's war against the Japanese Invaders), 50 percent of the Ming army used firearms. During this period, the firearms and equipment of the Ming army far exceeded those of other countries of the same era.
It should be said that the firearms and equipment of the later Qing army were slightly improved compared with those of the Ming Dynasty, except for the armies of a few provinces, which generally consisted of 50 percent of the firearms for 100 soldiers, and the rate of firearms was 50 percent, and the rate of guns for the soldiers of Guangdong was even higher, with 60 guns for 100 people. According to the records of the Imperial Soldiers, there were 114,091 artillery pieces and 262,365 arquebuses in the whole country. We will find that the firearms and equipment of the Qing Dynasty have made great progress compared with the Ming Dynasty, after all, history is progressing.
The picture comes from the Internet
"Learning is like sailing against the current, if you don't advance, you will retreat. In fact, in all kinds of competition, slow progress is a kind of "retreat". In the 14th century, after gunpowder was introduced to Europe by the Arabs, it was probably transmitted along with guns and cannons through warfare, and Europeans quickly developed a strong interest in guns and gunpowder. In 1346, at the Battle of Clercy between the English and the French, the English used three cannons (with limited power). But by 1388, the English Arsenal of Urich had built a heavy cannon that could pierce a 6-inch-thick wall 1,555 meters away.
Please pay attention to this description: it is possible to pierce a 6-inch thick wall from 1555 meters away. From this description it seems to be that this is precisely measured. Combined with the fact that we rarely see such quantitative descriptions when we talked about Chinese artillery before, but focus more on atmosphere rendering, such as general artillery, tiger squat cannon, whirlwind cannon, Weiyuan cannon, and a little longer name, such as Feiyun Thunderbolt Cannon, Poisonous Mist God Smoke Cannon, Thunderbolt Thunder Cannon, as well as Nine Arrows Drill Heart Poison Fire Thunder Cannon, Eight Whirlwind Fog Bombardment Thunder Cannon, the name of the earth-shattering sound, but there are few specific destructive force parameter descriptions. In Europe, quantitative analysis led to the modern scientific system, which in turn promoted the practice of technology, and this research characteristic contributed to the great leap forward in gunpowder and gun technology in Europe.
For example, the ratio of gunpowder, saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal used to make gunpowder in the mainland is basically 60%:20%:20%, which has not changed much, while the British first studied the optimal ratio of gunpowder is about 74.64%:11.85%:13.51% (there are other sources that are slightly different), which provides accurate theoretical guidance for the manufacture of gunpowder. In addition, from the late Tang Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty, gunpowder has always been used in powder form, which has many disadvantages in preservation and use, and the Europeans adjusted gunpowder into granules (granular gunpowder), which is not only easy to preserve, but also further improves the power of explosion.
In the process of making artillery, it was found that the ear of the gun that could adjust the firing direction was designed, and at the same time, the fire door was narrowed, so that the space of the medicine room was tightened, and the explosion power was increased; in the use of materials, it was found that the wear resistance of iron was not as good as copper, and the cast iron used to make the barrel was replaced with copper; in the ammunition, it was found that the iron of the same quality was smaller than the size of stone, and the shells made of iron could not only hit far but also lighten the gun body; after that, the ignition method, aiming method, and In this way, through quantitative calculation and analysis, and then detailed improvement, the application technology of guns and gunpowder has been developed and matured little by little, and thus promoted the rapid development of chemistry, mechanics, mechanics, military science and other disciplines.
Not only does this remind me of the myriad of new names for innovation and change that are emerging in an endless stream today, but no matter how loud the names are without concrete and tangible theoretical improvements and technological innovations.
Bibliography:
Those things in the Ming Dynasty back then
Historically, European and Chinese guns http://m.kdnet.net/share-11765966.html
Shinoda Koichi Ancient Chinese Weapons.
RONG Zhiyi. A New Theory of the Invention of Gunpowder by Taoist Priests in the Eastern Jin Dynasty[J]. Chinese Taoism, 2009, 72(2):188-192.
LIU Teng. The Great Military Parade of the Ming Dynasty [J]. Science Park, 2010(18):33-33.
NING Jianguo. Words exploded in every way. (Popular Mechanics Series)
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