Chapter 455: The Four-Wheeled Millstone Gun Carriage

"Everyone put your backs into it..."

Chen Xu pushed as he cheered on his brothers, his thick Shandong accent especially conspicuous.

The Jingbian Army promoted the use of the official language, and it was also part of promotion considerations, but Chen Xu was older and his mouthful of local accent was hard to change. He could be promoted because his technical skills stood out — shoeing horses, building bridges, constructing watchposts, he did everything with impressive results, so although he had not seen much battle, he still rose to Squad Commander.

In the logistics battalion, officers who led by example like Chen Xu were not the only ones; numerous squad leaders called out to their brothers, and many platoon commanders and squad commanders personally pitched in.

The logistics troops pushed carts and war wagons forward, following the mountain path, a dense mass of mules, horses, and supplies snaking all the way to the edge of the mountains.

"All soldiers, push on ahead!"

Zhao shouted once, then looked back with satisfaction at the logistics battalion behind him. Since the eleventh year of Chongzhen, his beloved war wagons had finally gone out on campaign again.

And the war wagons of today, compared to the single-wheeled war wagons of before, were even more imposing and mighty — how could this not delight a fanatical devotee of war wagons?

For this campaign, the Grand General had also heeded his advice: the logistics battalion not only carried a large batch of Ten-Thousand-Man-Killers on campaign, but also numerous ash-pot bombs, poison-smoke bombs, and other weapons, all new-type equipment from the military workshops.

The Ten-Thousand-Man-Killer aside, it was the Great Ming's hand grenade.

As for the ash-pot bomb, it was inspired by the ash pot used for city defense, developed by various personnel at the military workshops; inside were lime, arsenic, and other substances. After bursting, the damage to the eyes went without saying, and if inhaled into the lungs, it would also make a man lose combat effectiveness.

There were also poison-smoke bombs — such things had appeared before the Ming and were nothing new; Ming troops also frequently used rockets to launch poison-fire flying arrows. During the Wanli Korean campaign, the Ming army's poison rockets had made the Japanese troops suffer greatly. When Wang Dou marched on Luoyang, many defenders also wrapped firewood and grass with saltpeter and sulfur, lit it, and hurled it down, making the Chuang army miserable beyond words.

The Jingbian Army's poison-smoke bomb drew on relevant materials from the Ming army and the Song army; inside, besides gunpowder, there were large amounts of croton, wolfsbane, lime, pitch, arsenic, and other substances. Upon explosion it produced toxic smoke; those struck bled from the mouth and nose, no less than sarin gas.

Considering there would be trench warfare, these weapons could all be put to use, so Wang Dou had the logistics battalion carry a large quantity of Ten-Thousand-Man-Killers, ash-pot bombs, poison-smoke bombs, and the like on campaign.

Of course, these weapons were double-edged swords: while harming the enemy, they could also harm one's own men, just as Li Rusong back then had accidentally inhaled his own poison smoke and did not recover for several months. So after these weapons were produced, Wang Dou, besides ordering antidotes to be issued, personally directed the logistics department to manufacture large numbers of face masks.

Because the face masks were practical, the medical department also took quite a few.

Zhao also suggested that Wang Dou use incendiary bombs, called fierce-fire oil at the time; some Ming cities were equipped with fierce-fire oil tanks, whose effect somewhat resembled napalm bombs. But Wang Dou believed this item was fine for city defense, but not necessarily practical in field battle. Moreover, marching out in summer, with the weather scorching hot, carrying such a thing in the army was too dangerous.

Wang Dou's refusal to let this item go on campaign pained Zhao deeply, but overall he was still satisfied.

He turned his head back and looked again toward his artillery battalion. At that moment, large numbers of gunners were helping the horses and mules, straining along the mountain path to push the battalion's cannons forward.

Especially the relatively heavy red-barbarian six-pounder cannons, and the battalion's many ammunition carts, fully loaded with cannonballs and gunpowder, all required soldiers to help push and pull.

Because the military workshops, during the time the Jingbian Army had returned to the Eastern Route, had cast seven more six-pounder cannons, Zhao's artillery battalion now had a total of seventy red-barbarian cannons, of which thirty-three were six-pounders and thirty-seven were three-pounders. This was also the advantage of the iron-mold method — casting cannons did not need to consider the season.

Of course, there were also ten red-barbarian cannons and thirty-five grand-general Frankish cannons left at Laishui; when the main army reached the capital, the garrison there would also transport the cannons and provisions to the capital to rendezvous with the main army.

For this battle, all the red-barbarian cannons went on campaign, and fifty-five medium and small Frankish cannons accompanied them. As for crouching-tiger cannons, their effective killing range was thirty paces, and in the warfare of today they could no longer be of much use, so they were not taken along.

All these cannons before him had gun carriages, and imitating the red-barbarian cannons, the Frankish cannons no longer used wooden blocks of varying thickness to adjust elevation, but were modified to use screw-iron handles to adjust the angle. Even the crouching-tiger cannons left on the route had gun carriages, but since crouching-tiger cannons fired grapeshot with a killing range of thirty paces, there was no need to use cranks and screw rods.

According to the intelligence obtained, Zhao knew that the Qing army's red-barbarian cannons firing three-catty and five-catty shot used two-wheeled gun carriages similar to the Jingbian Army's, and also used screw-iron handles to adjust the angle; at the time, Ming army red-barbarian small cannons were all like this, nothing strange.

But what was strange was...

The Qing army's heavy cannons firing shot of over ten catties, the Divine Might Grand General heavy cannons weighing three to four thousand catties, because they were excessively heavy, used four-wheeled gun carriages and needed to be staked and tied down with ropes when firing. Such heavy cannons had firing angles that were hard to adjust and were also very difficult to turn.

Generally, such cannons were only used in defensive city battles and siege battles, but intelligence reported that the Qing used a kind of four-wheeled millstone gun carriage, which solved this problem.

With this gun carriage, when turning the cannon carriage or adjusting elevation, several or a dozen strongmen would turn the millstone under the carriage, and the desired result could be achieved.

At the time, the Liaodong garrison said: "The rebel cannons can swivel and turn, can go high or low; though heavy to ten thousand catties, the strength of a few men can push and pull them lightly and nimbly."

Zhao wondered in his heart what this rebel-slave gun carriage looked like, and whether they had drawn inspiration from mules turning millstones.

At the same time, heroic sentiment surged in his heart, filled with the desire to compete against the Tatar caitiff artillery battalion.

"Soldiers, push on!"

Zhao Xuan shouted once more to the artillery battalion soldiers, then his mind wandered, drifting off to who knows where.

Those who understood him knew he was clearly pondering artillery battalion matters.

Zhao Xuan had joined the Shunxiang Army in the ninth year of Chongzhen, at the age of thirty. Several years had passed, and he was still his old self, interested only in technical things and indifferent to everything else.

At this moment, he was indeed pondering artillery battalion and cannon issues.

After the Jingbian Army established its battalions and reorganized in the fifth month, Zhao Xuan's artillery battalion now had a strength of two thousand men, with the gunners divided into three shifts.

Among the red-barbarian cannons, each squad of ten men was responsible for one cannon, and every twenty cannons formed a basic salvo unit, with one observation officer assigned and equipped with a cannon scope.

Forty cannons formed a section, with a company commander; including the company commander's headquarters and all personnel, one section totaled five hundred men.

Two company commanders were responsible for the red-barbarian cannons, totaling one thousand men.

For the large Frankish cannons, every five men were responsible for one cannon, under a squad commander; including the squad commander's headquarters and all personnel, one squad totaled two hundred men.

For the medium Frankish cannons, small Frankish cannons, and the like, every three men were responsible for one cannon, under a squad commander; including the squad commander's headquarters and all personnel, the total was two hundred men.

Because there were enough observers and gunners, and the technical requirements for loaders and ammunition handlers were not high, the one hundred sixty cannons going on this campaign all had experienced gunners.

There was also an artillery battalion logistics section, with many ammunition carts inside, specially transporting ammunition.

There was also the battalion headquarters; these people together numbered nearly a thousand.

Whether in the logistics section or the battalion headquarters, most were artillery apprentices, learning all kinds of artillery knowledge in the training camp and the artillery battalion. Real combat was the best learning; training a hundred days on the drill field was not as good as fighting one day on the battlefield, so these men served as artillery battalion logistics soldiers and all followed on campaign.

At this moment, what Zhao Xuan was considering was the problem of powder bags.

From the development of the former Shunxiang Army artillery squad to the present, every aspect of the artillery battalion was extremely mature.

In the artillery battalion, the book on artillery ranging, "The Meaning of Measurement Methods," compiled by Xu Guangqi and others in the early Chongzhen years, as well as "Essentials of Fire Assault" on measuring cannon barrel elevation, had long been collected. Even "Discourse on Western Fire Assault Divine Instruments" by He Rubin, and "Western Method Divine Mechanism" by Sun Yuanhua, and the like, had likewise been collected.

These books and manuals, the gunners and artillery officers had all carefully studied.

They had practically researched the use of the square instrument (quadrant) and round instrument (cannon gauge) mentioned above, and the range and powder charge amounts for different elevation angles were also recorded in special manuals. The gunners and artillery officers had to memorize them by heart; the assessment of artillery battalion soldiers' skills, the distinction between upper-class soldiers and lower-class soldiers, lay precisely in this.

Therefore, although the sighting and aiming techniques for red-barbarian cannons were secret skills of the army and state, kept strictly secret within the Great Ming and not transmitted to outsiders, the Eastern Route had produced all the related cannon instruments one by one, plus a large amount of live-fire practice, constantly correcting errors, and with cannon scopes and telescopes, the Jingbian Army's artillery battalion had reached an extremely high level of cannon-handling skill.

An artillery apprentice from the Eastern Route, if sent out, would be regarded by others as a master-level figure.

Powder bags had also long been in use; this was nothing special. The several books mentioned above had also long referred to the use of powder bags. "The Record of Arms" discussed it: "Use cloth or paper to sew and fit the charge accordingly, still seal and mark the designation; at the moment of use, first insert an iron nail into the vent, then use the vent charge."

Back when the Shunxiang Army produced fixed paper-cartridge ammunition, the gunpowder for cannons was likewise fixed; back then they used paper, later changed to cotton cloth, and grapeshot also used shot bags.

What Zhao Xuan was now considering was the problem of powder bag material.

Using cotton cloth powder bags, unburned residue and soot were always left in the bore, requiring a wet swab to clean the bore; otherwise, if the bore overheated, or if there was even a little spark, it would cause the gunpowder to ignite spontaneously. Moreover, it made the iron cannon's cooling time too long.

Zhao Xuan knew that brass cannons or bronze cannons, compared to iron cannons, needed much less cooling time, but considering the cost, obviously the Eastern Route could not use brass or bronze cannons. Thus, they could only work on the powder bags; as long as combustion was complete, the bore would not easily overheat, and the reloading process could be greatly accelerated.

Zhao Xuan remembered something: a few days ago, before setting out on campaign, he had accidentally started a fire in his room; luckily it was put out immediately. At the time, Zhao Xuan noticed one thing: several bolts of cloth in the room had burned; among them were cotton cloth and silk. The silk burned extremely fast, leaving hardly any ash afterward, while the cotton cloth was not like that.

This gave Zhao Xuan a flash of inspiration: silk catches fire more easily than cotton cloth — should the powder bags for the mortar shells be changed to silk powder bags?

Zhao Xuan knew that when the powder bags were changed from paper to cotton cloth, quite a few people had criticized it, secretly cursing him as a wastrel; now to use even more expensive silk…

Zhao Xuan thought to himself: "I don't care. Getting cursed is the general's business; I only care about firing the mortars."

Also, the priming powder for the cannons still used a powder horn to pour into the vent — the action was slow, and it was easily scattered by the wind. If musket balls could use fixed paper cartridges for the powder, why couldn't the priming powder do the same?

However, to make fixed priming charges, one had to consider the problem of a flammable conduit, and it also had to be stiff enough to be inserted in one go — what material would be good to use?

With his mind full of these thoughts, Zhao Xuan advanced along with the great army.

Before and behind him, the many cannon crews pushed the heavy gun carriages, winding along the mountain road.

Row upon row of gleaming cannons, under the sunlight's glow, gave off a chilling gleam.

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