Chapter 907: The Improved Cannon

The journey took an hour and a half even on horseback. Three companies of household troops and twice that number of militia were stationed here at all times, with cavalry squads rotating patrol duties. The villages around the worksite had all been relocated, so no outsiders would appear—or if one did, they could be seized immediately.

The cannon inspection took place on the firing range, an expanse of open flatland. Looking out toward the firing direction, distance markers stood every hundred paces.

"Is this your improved cannon?" Zhao Jin asked. He asked because the improved cannon looked very different from the drawings he had provided.

The cannon barrel itself was not particularly strange—it looked far more refined than the government troops' cannons they had captured that day—but the gun carriage and limber were nothing like what Zhao Jin had shown the craftsmen. He had shown those drawings to the foreigners and to the Xu family blacksmiths, yet what stood before him was clearly not that design.

It looked more like a scaled-down cart. The body and wheels were a size smaller and shorter, or rather, it resembled the frame Yu the blacksmith had designed for the "Nest of Fire" rockets, applied directly here. The cannon simply rested on the cart bed.

"How heavy a shot can this cannon fire?" Although Zhao Jin knew a fair amount about cannons, differences in casting techniques and materials produced enormous variations in size and shape. What he knew could not be taken as definitive.

"One catty and a dozen-odd taels—just shy of two catties." With Blacksmith Yu Shan present, many things that once required an interpreter to relay could now be understood directly.

Sixteen taels to the catty. After all these years, Zhao Jin still could not get used to this system of conversion. He paused, and Yu Shan continued, "These foreign masters say it's three 'pounds' in weight—probably a Western usage."

Hearing this, Zhao Jin could not help but laugh, though he understood now: it likely meant a three-pounder cannon. But did Europe in this era even use that unit? Or was it perhaps a French term, or from some other language?

"Can the firing angle be adjusted?" Zhao Jin asked. Blacksmith Yu Shan looked somewhat puzzled, so Zhao Jin smiled and rephrased: "Can you change whether it shoots far or near?"

Yu Shan nodded repeatedly and said, "It can, it can. That's exactly what we came to show you today, Master Jin."

Off to the side, the Prussian, Old Mai, had been staring at the cannon the whole time, while Louis kept his eyes fixed on Zhao Jin. Hearing Yu Shan bring this up, Louis hurried forward and interjected, "Master Jin, please look over here."

Though Louis's Mandarin accent remained exceedingly strange, he was understandable and far more fluent than before. With great eagerness, he led Zhao Jin to the front of the muzzle. Zhao Jin followed, while his personal guards cleared everyone else away from the cannon. One man even reached over to test the touchhole.

"Master Jin, look here."

Zhao Jin noticed that the cannon barrel was fixed into a wooden trough. Between the trough and the carriage frame, wooden wedges were inserted, apparently forming an inclined plane. Beneath the gun carriage, several more triangular wedge blocks lay scattered about.

Seeing this, Zhao Jin immediately understood what the improvement was. These foreigners had seen and experienced such things after all, so their direction was correct, and they had built the right thing.

"Master Jin may not fully grasp this yet. Allow us to fire a shot first, then we'll explain," Louis said with a smile. Zhao Jin smiled and nodded, stepping aside. He understood Louis's thinking. The foreigner's sense of urgency had been growing bit by bit. After Old Mai arrived, Louis became more proactive; after Blacksmith Yu Shan joined, he grew more proactive still.

As for this detail of adjusting range, Zhao Jin only recalled it after seeing the physical object. Yet he also knew that Louis had been aware of it all along. Anyone who had been on a battlefield and handled cannons would know it. That Louis had only produced it now was likely forced by that very sense of urgency.

Once Zhao Jin stepped aside, Louis and the others began loading the cannon. The three foreigners moved with fluid skill, while Yu Shan alone seemed to have no place to lend a hand.

With the shot loaded, under the watchful eyes of the personal guards, several men brought over a charcoal brazier, preparing to ignite the cannon.

Boom—a thunderous roar. Many of the personal guards instinctively recoiled several steps, and some faces still showed traces of fear. Zhao Jin took note of all this. He knew that the guards protecting him were handpicked elites, their loyalty beyond question, men who would lay down their lives to protect him. But those who flinched and stepped back were experiencing the blast of a cannon for the first time; shock and terror were unavoidable. By contrast, the guards who had been here before remained far calmer.

"The household troops must hear the cannon's roar and experience this. Otherwise, on the battlefield, the thunder of cannon fire will break them in an instant," Zhao Jin murmured to himself.

The shot blasted out. In the distance, along the firing line, dust and smoke rose where the cannonball struck the ground. Zhao Jin narrowed his eyes and studied it, then said with some surprise, "It's firing farther than last time."

Before Blacksmith Yu Shan could speak, Louis rushed to say, "This is all Old Mai's doing. Before, the cannons we cast couldn't hold much powder for fear the barrel would burst. But Old Mai improved the casting method—he digs a pit in the ground to set the mold and casts the cannon vertically. The molten bronze is poured in layer by layer, the weight pressing the lower part dense and solid. So this cannon can take a heavier powder charge."

Compared to Old Mai, who knew only gambling and drinking, and Yu Shan, who had just left the anvil to become a supervisor, the experienced Louis understood far more.

The longer he stayed in Xuzhou, the better he understood the situation here. Louis saw it very clearly: when it came to firearms manufacturing and its related crafts, the things he knew would only depreciate in value. Although the newly arrived Old Mai did not know much, he already possessed details that Louis himself did not. And this local man, Yu Shan, could draw inferences from one example to another. As long as the lord of Xuzhou kept investing so heavily in the search, he would surely find truly skilled craftsmen and technicians. When that happened, Louis himself would be useless.

For Louis, this Great Ming was never part of the plan. Had it not been for that accursed shipwreck, he would never have come to Xuzhou. But after arriving here, he discovered an opportunity.

From Europe to Asia, from West to East, a journey of tens of thousands of miles across dozens of nations—Louis had seen much of the world. When he first met Zhao Jin, he took him for a powerful noble, a man with a fief and a sizable regular army under his command. Such strength in Europe would warrant at least a count's title, perhaps even a duke's. So much so that for a time, Louis and his servant had believed that "Bao Zheng" was simply the Chinese word for a great aristocrat.

When he learned that the imposing, disciplined force—so similar to the elite troops of European nations—was not a regular army but Zhao Jin's private soldiers, Louis the Frenchman reimagined Zhao Jin as a rajah of the Indian princely states, or even a figure like Charles the Bold of France: a local king ruling his own domain, or a warlord seeking greater power. But as he continued to learn, this understanding, too, was overturned.

Louis's Mandarin accent was bizarre, and his word choices often provoked laughter. Yet those who listened to him tended to forget one thing: he had only been studying for a few months. Many of the Tartar assistants Wang Ziyang had brought along still spoke stiff, broken Mandarin after more than a year, while Louis was already reasonably fluent. Even in Europe, men like Louis who had received a formal education were not common. He knew how to learn, and he knew the methods of learning. Those glittering, gleaming precious metals gave Louis boundless motivation, driving him to devour knowledge about Zhao Jin, about Xuzhou, about the Great Ming. And then, the interpreter had been instructed to answer whatever Louis asked.

Once he grasped the general state of the Great Ming and the situation of the Zhao camp, Louis's heart went cold. So this was no local king or nobleman—this was plainly a bandit entrenched in Xuzhou. And the Great Ming's regular army numbered a terrifying million-plus. They simply had no hands free at the moment. If the Emperor grew serious, Xuzhou would be annihilated.

He had thought himself a honored guest of an Eastern prince, only to find he was a bandit's slave. Yet looking at Xuzhou, it was clearly a prosperous, well-ordered autonomous domain—nothing like a den of thieves. And when the interpreter spoke of these things, Louis could clearly read the grumbling expression on his face. Doubts were inevitable. Still, when the interpreter was in a good mood, he would also praise Xuzhou lavishly. But his description of Xuzhou and Zhao Jin remained the same. In other words, the portrayal of Xuzhou as a bandit's lair was no slander born of vented frustration.

So what if they were bandits? They paid him real gold and silver. And Xuzhou was cleaner and more orderly than any place he had ever been; public safety was superb. Never mind bandits—neither Eastern nor Western kings and nobles ever demanded anything of their domains' sanitation. What this young Zhao Jin was did not matter. What mattered was that he was Louis's employer, and a generous one at that. That was enough. And he had to work quickly—the servant Hildor was already more popular than he was.

On that northern campaign against the government troops, Louis had accompanied the Zhao camp into battle. He had assumed the entire Great Ming was like Xuzhou: prosperous, orderly, clean, well-governed. He never imagined that once he left Xuzhou, he would see poverty and misery. This wondrous land brimming with gold and silver, as Marco Polo had written, seemed to exist only faintly in Xuzhou. Everywhere else differed little from those hellish villages of Europe—perhaps even harsher.

And then they had effortlessly defeated the Great Ming's regular army. As Louis himself recorded in his diary: "It was an armed parade. We reached the destination, won, and then returned."

After that battle, Louis suddenly realized something. Whatever Zhao Jin was—noble, rajah, chieftain, or bandit—he possessed immense ambition. A man so young, who had built such an enterprise—what did he want? He surely sought more. Perhaps he had always been eyeing the crown of this Great Ming.

This conjecture made Louis tremble all over. But the trembling was not from fear—it was from excitement. In all his days in Xuzhou, the attitude of those around him had shifted from fear to ridicule, then settled into normal familiarity. And because he was a reliable "outsider" with poor command of the language, people did not guard their words around him; they spoke freely of everything. He knew that many believed no one in the East could match Zhao Jin.

Thanks to the new and old friends on Chuangshi—"Yuan Heng Li Zhen," "Qi San Wen," "Yong Hu Che Hu," "huifly"—and on Qidian—"Sui Xin Zi Wo 0," "kkmmm"—for your tips. Thank you all for your subscriptions and monthly tickets. I went out in the morning and only just got back; I'm a bit tired, so just one update today.