Chapter 1: The Banjiu Foot Gun

The Banjiu Foot Gun

1. The Banjiu Foot Gun was the largest-caliber firearm of the Ming Dynasty, also called the Ban Gou Gun. The barrel was 5.5 chi long (each construction chi roughly 31–32 cm), with an inner diameter of 0.6 cun (about 19 mm). It used 1.3 liang of powder, and the lead ball weighed 1.5 to 1.6 liang (about 56 g). The large Banjiu gun's ball weighed 1.8 liang (68 g — terrifying). The gun body was very heavy and required a foot stand for support; the stand resembled a bird's foot, hence the name. Its power far surpassed the ordinary bird gun, and its style was entirely different from the bird gun and the Lumi gun, which had thin barrels and small bullets. At the time, Macau and Guangdong could manufacture them. Pirates used this type of firearm, and government troops also had small quantities in their equipment. Among the batch of firearms that Xiong Wencan shipped to Beijing in the eighth year of the Chongzhen reign, there were 100 of these foot guns. After the Song-Jin Battle, the Ministry of War proposed transferring Zheng Yiguan's naval forces to defend Juehua Island. Zheng Yiguan, fearing death, refused to go. One of his reasons for refusal was that only Guangdong could manufacture the Banjiu Foot Gun. In the end, after some maneuvering, a batch of firearms was shipped to Dengzhou to settle the matter.

2. The contemporary Spanish MUSKET heavy smoothbore gun had a caliber of around 20 mm, a total gun weight of 10 kg, and a bullet weight of about 50–60 g. Like other smoothbore guns, its accuracy was extremely poor. Within 20–30 meters one could barely aim; beyond 30 meters it had no accuracy at all. However, its power was formidable, with a range reaching 400 yards (360 meters). At 150 meters it could still penetrate light armor and wooden planks. Firing this thing once was no easy task. According to Comrade Mo Lisi's breakdown, there were a total of 43 actions — even memorizing them was difficult. In a battlefield environment, holding a roughly 10 kg gun and completing the drill perfectly without error was truly beyond what an ordinary soldier could achieve. Therefore, the Spanish tercio also employed a lighter CALIVER matchlock to increase close-range fire density within the formation. It weighed 5–7 kg in total, which in fact was not light compared to the Ming army's tragic bird gun.

See Figure 2 below for the MUSKET (from the MUSKET section of Mo Lisi's Dutch arms drill manual), which is the type of heavy musket used by Huang Stone (a nod to Stealing the Light).

A general comparison of the data and shapes of the two firearms shows they are roughly equivalent. Therefore, the Banjiu Foot Gun should be a Far Eastern imitation of the MUSKET, likely manufactured mainly in Guangdong. This is why it is not recorded in the Shenqi Pu, Xifa Shenji, or Huogong Qieyao, though the Binglu does touch on it briefly. The late Ming had a rich variety of firearms, and the technology to manufacture this type of weapon certainly existed. This book will use it for a period of time.

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Only upon uploading did I discover that one chapter can only post one image, and it's super small. So the MUSKET gets its own chapter. If there are many images later, I'll see about finding an image hosting space.