Chapter 1544: The Final Golden Finger

In the cabin of a ferry crossing the Bosporus, the Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü finally met the Ming "Prince Henry," along with two generals of the Ming-Indian Expeditionary Force who had accompanied Prince Henry. One of them looked rather dark-skinned and was probably an Indian. The other had an East Asian face — whether he was a Mongol or a man of the Ming, it was hard to tell.

The Ming Empire's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire had also come along. This ambassador was likewise surnamed Zhu, a member of the Prince of Zhou's family, named Zhu Lundun. He was of the same generation as Prince Henry, in his thirties, and had also come up through the Imperial Academy. After graduation he had entered the Foreign Ministry. First he was sent by the state to the Ottoman Empire to study Turkish and Arabic, and later he served in alternating posts between the Foreign Ministry and the Ottoman Empire. Now he had already risen to ambassador — once these descendants of the old Zhu family were no longer raised like pigs, they began crowding out the common scholars' ladder to success. So raising them like pigs actually had its advantages!

Besides Zhu Lundun and the two expeditionary generals (one was Mourinho, Maria's elder brother, and the other was Hu Zhongyong, sent by Galdan), there were also a full 7,200 Goan Portuguese warriors (they had originally wanted to recruit 8,000, but in the end this was all they could enlist) and 800 cavalry from Zunghar and Western Chu — it had to be said that the efficiency of Zunghar and the Republic of Western Chu, two wartime states with nerves stretched taut, was indeed extremely high, and they also understood the significance of this war.

Right now, Zunghar, Western Chu, and Khoshut were fighting somewhat laboriously in their war in Central Asia!

Although the Zunghar-Khoshut allied forces had captured the Khwarezm oasis last autumn, on the Middle Jüz steppe the armies of Zunghar and Western Chu had met with repeated setbacks — not that they had suffered any major defeats, but rather that they could never find an opportunity for a decisive battle.

The Kazakh and Russian armies were extremely cunning. They would not engage Zunghar and Western Chu in a frontal decisive battle, but instead kept circling around them on the steppe. At the same time, they dispatched cavalry to raid Western Chu's settlement areas and Zunghar's pasturelands!

And Zunghar and Western Chu did not dare push deep into the Little Jüz (the Little Jüz lay on the very border of Europe and Asia), because it was too close to the Russian homeland. Neither Zunghar nor Western Chu, with their rather small populations, was willing to fight such an uncertain war, so the war on the Middle Jüz steppe looked set to drag on endlessly.

Just when Zhu Cijiong and Galdan were somewhat at their wits' end, Zhu Cixuan's letter was delivered into their hands by Aurangzeb's envoy.

Of these two, one was a "king in a cage," the other a "hegemon" of a republic. Though neither was an absolute monarch, they did not need to report every matter to the Ming court — Western Chu and Zunghar were both "states beyond propriety," after all, and they were at war. So they could make decisions very quickly.

And their decision was to send troops in support, to build up Zhu Henry's prestige and at the same time strengthen the Ottoman Empire's confidence.

Both of them understood the affairs of the world, and of course they knew what the Ottoman Empire's capture of Vienna would mean.

However, the strength of Western Chu and Zunghar was limited. Being able to provide 800 men was already quite good — better than nothing, at least!

And the Ottoman Empire's Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü had never expected the 8,000 reinforcements brought by Zhu Henry to actually go to the front lines — he knew that Aurangzeb had explained in his letter that most of these 8,000 men were Christians from Goa, with the remainder being Easterners who believed in Buddhism. Although they were all quite capable fighters, they certainly could not compare to the warriors of the Janissary Corps.

For this Battle of Vienna, Ahmed Köprülü had already expanded the Janissary Corps to a strength of 100,000 men!

With 100,000 Janissary warriors, why would the Grand Vizier need foreign reinforcements to take the field?

These foreign reinforcements could just serve as a cheering squad — half dressed as Indians, half dressed as Chinese.

The old man made some small talk for a while, and only when the ferry was nearing the Golden Horn of Istanbul did he smile and bring up the real subject.

"Your Highness Henry, the mere fact that you have brought men here has already greatly pleased His Majesty the Sultan. It shows that the Ming Empire and the Indian Empire stand firmly together with the Ottoman Empire! But you have come from afar and are our guests. We of the Ottoman Empire will not let our guests take risks, so the troops you have brought need not go to the front to fight the Christian armies."

His words were translated into Chinese by Zhu Lundun. Zhu Henry listened, then smiled and replied: "Your Excellency the Grand Vizier, I believe the troops I have brought can play a rather significant role in the coming Battle of Vienna."

Zhu Lundun translated these words into Turkish. The old man merely smiled, noncommittal.

Zhu Henry continued: "Among my troops there are quite a few sharpshooters!"

"Sharpshooters?" The old man was amused by Zhu Henry's words. "How sharp?"

Zhu Henry smiled and said: "In training, when visibility is good, they can reliably hit a man-shaped target at over 300 yards!"

"300 yards, hahaha..." The Grand Vizier laughed out loud. "That is impossible. No such firearm exists. Even cannon grapeshot cannot reach that far! Your Highness Henry, surely you have had too much to drink?"

Zhu Henry looked utterly serious and said to the Grand Vizier, one word at a time: "Your Excellency the Grand Vizier, I am in earnest. My men really can hit a man-shaped target at 300 yards with a firearm! But this is not entirely because they possess outstanding marksmanship — it is also because they possess rifled guns and a special kind of bullet!"

"Oh?" The Grand Vizier nodded. "I know of rifled guns. I own one myself. But such guns have a very slow rate of fire and are of little use in actual combat."

Zhu Henry smiled: "There is now a special kind of bullet that allows a rifled gun to achieve the rate of fire of a smoothbore, while also ensuring a proper gas seal!"

The old man understood guns. Hearing this, he was simply stunned, staring blankly at Zhu Henry. "Your Highness Henry, are you speaking the truth?"

"Of course it is the truth!" Zhu Henry smiled. "Otherwise, why would I have come to Istanbul?"

He was talking about the Minié ball!

It was a cylindrical-conical lead bullet with a round nose. The bullet was slightly smaller than the rifle bore, so it could be easily pushed into the barrel with a ramrod, greatly increasing the rate of fire. The bullet's body was turned with spiral grooves to match the rifling, the grooves were filled with animal fat, and the base of the bullet used a cork plug. When fired, the powder gas struck the cork, and under the instantaneous impact the cork suddenly expanded the bullet. Because the bullet expanded, at the moment of firing it could complete the sealing of the chamber by means of the bullet itself, preventing the leakage of powder gas that would cause a loss of the bullet's kinetic energy. This solved the chamber-sealing problem of old-style muzzle-loading guns, greatly enhancing the firearm's rate of fire, range, and safety.

In the original history, this bullet was not invented until the mid-19th century, by Captain Claude-Étienne Minié of the French Chasseurs.

And now, it was the final golden finger in Zhu Cilang's hand!

Zhu Cilang was not from a technical background, so he could not deploy too many golden fingers — the "Zilun Gewu Pian" was something that treated the root rather than the symptoms, and could hardly be called a golden finger. The golden fingers he had successfully deployed over the years amounted to nothing more than sandbag fortification, the socket bayonet, the wooden-plug expanding shell (the nail-head wooden-plug expanding shell), the clipper bow, parallel siege works, ricochet firing, sanitary disinfection methods, and so on — and the final golden finger was the Minié ball!

This final golden finger was very easy to copy. As soon as it appeared on the battlefield, the enemy would surely pick it up and imitate it!

With the handicraft industry of Western powers such as Britain, Holland, and France, manufacturing the Minié ball posed no great difficulty, and they could also manufacture rifled guns. According to records, Italy had possessed guns with spiral rifling as early as 1476. And the best muzzle-loading rifled gun at present was the French Minié muzzle-loading rifle.

The gun factory under Zhu Cilang's Royal Trading Company had been working hard since the 12th year of Hongxing to copy the Minié muzzle-loading rifle. In the 20th year of Hongxing, they finally succeeded in developing the Type 20 long rifle on the basis of the Minié muzzle-loading rifle.

And the Minié ball (officially named the cork-plug rifled bullet) was also successfully developed in the 20th year of Hongxing and put into production.

However, Zhu Cilang did not issue the cork-plug bullet to the troops. Instead, he kept it hidden away as his final golden finger.

Now this final golden finger was about to be used at Vienna!

(End of Chapter)