Chapter 91: Volume Three: Defender of Shunxiang Fort — Chapter Ninety-One: Gunpowder Depleted

Volume Three: Defender of Shunxiang Fort — Chapter Ninety-One: Gunpowder Depleted

When Wang Dou was previously at Jingbian Fort, there were only six or seven craftsmen like Li Maosen. By early Chongzhen 8, there were over twenty artisan households, with over thirty able-bodied craftsmen, including several pairs of artisan fathers and sons, and brothers working together in the workshop.

Later, to produce pre-packaged paper cartridge ammunition, besides selecting some elderly, weak men and women from the artisan households, they also picked some elderly, weak, and women from within the fort to help. All told, including craftsmen and ordinary workers, the Jingbian Fort workshop at that time had over a hundred people.

After Wang Dou arrived at Shunxiang Fort, most of these workers and craftsmen from Jingbian Fort were soon transferred into Shunxiang Fort.

The Shunxiang Fort registers originally listed over seventy artisan households. Excluding those who had fled, there remained over sixty able-bodied craftsmen — ironworkers, carpenters, and stonemasons each making up a portion. However, as hereditary artisan households, they were not limited to a single skill; most were proficient in iron forging, woodworking, and similar trades. Of these Shunxiang Fort craftsmen, aside from a portion sent to the Koujiagou Ironworks, the majority remained within Shunxiang Fort, numbering over forty able-bodied men.

But these artisan households mostly had fathers, brothers, sons, and grandsons at home. Including their family members, the Shunxiang Fort workshop now held over 150 skilled and semi-skilled craftsmen. Especially after Wang Dou implemented the new reward and penalty system at the Shunxiang Fort workshop, in order to earn more wages and monthly grain, these artisan households essentially brought their entire families along, except for children too young to run about.

Thus, combined with the craftsmen who came from Jingbian Fort, Shunxiang Fort now had over 180 craftsmen in total.

The elderly, weak, and women who assembled weapons and armor and portioned out pre-packaged paper cartridge ammunition also numbered over a hundred.

The skills of these artisan households were mostly passed down from father to son, and the rules for taking on apprentices were extremely strict. Those skilled able-bodied craftsmen mostly had their own individual furnace, bellows, anvil, and workbench positions. Ordinarily, except for certain critical components, the weapons and equipment were mostly forged by their own sons, disciples, and apprentices, with the craftsmen themselves performing the final inspection.

Wang Dou's strict quality requirements for weapons filtered down to Li Maosen, who in turn placed extremely high demands on the craftsmen. Every weapon that came out of the furnace bore a serial number; if a problem arose, the forging craftsman and the supervisor could be easily traced. For Li Maosen now, Wang Dou held him in high regard, and for every batch of weapons forged, he received corresponding rewards. Within Shunxiang Fort, he was considered a high-earning, senior technical specialist, and he had no desire to ruin his own reputation.

When Wang Dou entered the Shunxiang Fort workshop, the clanging and banging inside was incessant. The craftsmen were working at a feverish pitch. In front of every ironworker were an anvil, hammers, tongs, a furnace, bellows, and other equipment. The woodworking tools were somewhat simpler — just axes, saws, planes, chisels, and the like.

Next to the workshop was the firearm assembly room. After the various firearm components were fabricated, they were assembled here. Inside were arrayed numerous simple gun-stocks and other items, with Li Maosen personally leading some craftsmen in charge. On the other side of the assembly room was the assembly area for weapons like blades, spears, and armor. Since the technical requirements were lower, many of the elderly, weak, and women were already capable of performing the work. After completion, Li Maosen signed off on the finished products, and they were collectively sent into the storehouse.

Beside the assembly room, there was another large building. Inside, it was exclusively elderly, weak men and women, with only a few craftsmen responsible for patrolling and supervising.

These workers made matchcord here. The matchcord was made from hemp rope or tightly twisted cloth strips, soaked in a certain solution and then hung to dry, allowing it to burn slowly during combat. There were also pre-packaged paper cartridges: some people carefully weighed the gunpowder, placing a fixed amount of powder and a bullet inside, then others wrapped them, packing fifty tubes per chest.

Concerned with their own incentive wages, these workers were all burying their heads in hard work, and when Wang Dou entered, they could not spare him even a glance.

When Wang Dou found Li Maosen, this shrewd, stocky, middle-aged head craftsman, wearing a leather apron, was assembling a firearm, gritting his teeth as he screwed a bolt into the female thread at the breech end of the barrel. Screwing this bolt into the breech served to seal the gas; if a soldier needed to clean the inner wall of the barrel, the bolt could also be unscrewed.

When Wang Dou called him, he was still gazing with satisfaction at the dark, thick, solid firearm in his hands, his expression as if he were looking at his beloved woman.

Seeing Wang Dou, he hurriedly came forward to greet him.

In truth, Wang Dou had come to find Li Maosen today not only to see whether Li Maosen could forge five hundred firearms before the battles of the seventh month arrived, but also with other ideas, such as having the workshop produce some grenades, landmines, and also artillery.

According to the historical materials Wang Dou understood, landmines had been widely used as early as the Great Ming and were not at all rare. During the Jiajing era, the Three-Frontier Viceroy Zeng Xian manufactured many landmines in Shaanxi, causing the Mongols on the frontier to suffer greatly. However, those landmines required a steel-wheel ignition device, and he did not know whether Shunxiang Fort had any craftsmen capable of making such a thing.

And then there were grenades. With Great Ming's technology, manufacturing fuses should not be a problem. However, black powder was relatively weak in power; a grenade had to be made quite large to have sufficient force. A grenade weighing seven or eight jin could not be thrown very far, and the possibility of it not hitting the enemy but blowing up one's own men was high. Its field-battle effectiveness was minimal, though it still had some use in defending a city.

As for artillery, after thinking it over, he decided to forget it. Casting cannons required relatively high technical skill and consumed large quantities of iron and copper materials. For now, he should forge more firearms and direct all resources to where they were most needed. The walls of Shunxiang Fort currently had three bronze cannons, five bronze and iron breech-loading swivel guns, two "Invincible Hand" cannons, and two tiger-tail cannons; this should be sufficient for defending the fort.

After hearing Wang Dou's words, Li Maosen pondered for a long moment and said, "My lord, as long as the iron supply keeps up, and we halt the forging of blades and spears, forging two hundred firearms and forty suits of iron armor per month is not impossible."

The current new-style arquebuses were much easier to forge than the old ones; one craftsman could roughly forge a barrel in half a month. In the fourth month, since the Koujiagou Ironworks had produced nearly ten thousand jin of iron material, Li Maosen had again led the craftsmen in forging one hundred firearms and over thirty suits of iron armor.

It was now nearly the fifth month. From the fifth month to the seventh month was a span of two months. If they concentrated solely on forging firearms and armor, for Li Maosen, with over 180 craftsmen currently at Shunxiang Fort, plus over a hundred ordinary workers, the task Wang Dou assigned could still be accomplished. His only worry was the raw materials.

Calculating five jin of wrought iron to refine one jin of fine iron, one firearm required seven jin of fine iron. One hundred firearms required four thousand jin of wrought iron, and two hundred meant eight thousand jin. Then there was the iron armor: one suit of iron armor required over thirty jin of fine iron. Wang Dou demanded forty suits of iron armor forged per month, which meant over six thousand jin of wrought iron per month.

Calculated this way, forging two hundred firearms and forty suits of iron armor per month required over fourteen thousand jin of wrought iron monthly — over seven tons of iron. This was nothing in later ages, but in the Great Ming, this was an enormously huge figure. Probably the entire Baoan Prefecture Guard did not receive this much iron material allocated from above in a whole year.

Did the Koujiagou Ironworks currently have this production capacity?

Wang Dou fell into thought. Indeed, producing ten thousand jin of iron material per month already had everyone in Shunxiang Fort marveling at the Koujiagou Ironworks' production capability. If they wanted to expand production to twenty thousand jin per month, they could only continue adding manpower. He believed that with a human-wave tactic, there would still be a way for the Koujiagou Ironworks to produce seven hundred jin of wrought iron material per day.

But where would this manpower come from? Shunxiang Fort's current manpower was already stretched to its limit.

That Koujiagou Ironworks originally selected its hands from Huiyao Fort and several nearby garrison forts. Aside from some skilled iron-smelting craftsmen, there were over two hundred able-bodied men laboring, while the remaining sturdy women handled the transport, using wheelbarrows daily to haul coal in or iron material out.

Not long ago, Wang Dou sent over a hundred men from the new military households to the Koujiagou Ironworks, bringing the local male miners to over three hundred.

These miners all used simple tools for mining, such as hammers and axes. Without the machinery of later ages, the extraction volume was rather small. By this time, the Great Ming already knew how to use gunpowder to blast open mines for extraction, but where would Wang Dou get so much gunpowder? He could only have the miners use hammers and axes to chisel away at the rock, blow by blow, day after day.

Calculating that two tons of iron ore smelt one ton of pig iron, and that pig iron must then be refined into wrought iron suitable for forging, for the Koujiagou Ironworks to produce seven hundred jin of wrought iron material per day, it needed at least several thousand jin of iron ore daily. The miners' work was extremely exhausting; they could not labor every single day, so they worked in shifts. Using hammers to chisel every day, with such a large extraction volume, manpower was indeed tight.

Moreover, to produce more iron, more coal was needed, and the manpower for transporting coal had to increase correspondingly, which again required more hands.

There was no manpower left within Shunxiang Fort.

Seeing Wang Dou deep in thought, Li Maosen said, "My lord, in fact, making armor does not necessarily require iron. We can make cotton armor or leather armor, which can also defend against bullets and arrows."

Cotton armor could indeed effectively protect against firearms. When the Eight Banners soldiers made cotton armor, they soaked cotton, then repeatedly beat it into very thin cotton sheets. After sewing many such sheets into a thick cotton cloth, they placed iron plates between two layers of cotton cloth, secured them inside and out with copper nails, and the cotton armor was complete.

Such armor offered very good protection against firearms and could also keep out the cold in winter.

Compared to iron, cotton was relatively common in the northern regions of the Great Ming and its price was lower than iron. However, Wang Dou considered that with warfare everywhere now, the supply of raw materials like cotton and cloth was unstable, leaving him subject to the control of others. The Koujiagou Ironworks, on the other hand, was right beside Shunxiang Fort, making it easy for him to control the raw materials without constantly worrying about their source. The same applied to leather armor.

Furthermore, the Qing soldiers mostly used bows and arrows, and compared to cotton armor, iron armor offered better protection against arrows.

Then firearms and iron armor it would be. Wang Dou made up his mind. He said to Li Maosen, "Head Craftsman Li, you need not worry about the iron material. I will find a way. You just focus on leading the craftsmen to forge the firearms and armor."

Seeing that Wang Dou had put it this way, Li Maosen respectfully accepted the order.

Regarding Wang Dou's earlier mention of manufacturing grenades and landmines, Li Maosen thought for a moment, cupped his fists in salute, and said, "My lord, forgive my bluntness, but those landmines and such are flashy but impractical. Their effect in killing the enemy is minimal, and they would waste our already limited ironware and gunpowder. I suggest using all the iron material for forging firearms and armor."

Finally, he also revealed a piece of news to Wang Dou: the gunpowder stockpile in the workshop was running low, and he asked his lord to think of a solution.