Zheng Chongjian's 12,000 troops were wiped out in Jiaoziya. After the urgent reports of Guandi's army encircling Taiyuan City came to the capital, Zhu Youjian was furious and scolded the Minister of War Zhang Fengyi and the Governor of Xuanda Yang Sichang, who was far away in Shuozhou, on the spot, and immediately summoned the ministers to discuss countermeasures.

Zhu Youjian's court officials generally have a characteristic. They talked about small things and turned red in their faces. When encountering big things, they mostly kept silent and just glanced at the emperor's face.

This time is no exception.

It is no small matter to be surrounded by Taiyuan, it is the fief of King Jin.

If King Jin falls into the hands of the Qin thief... the consequences are unimaginable.

Although it was not the first time that the Qin thieves surrounded Taiyuan, the thief in the past seemed to be difficult to break through the city, so they just ransomware of money and food.

But not long ago, the guy took only one day to break through the city called Wucheng. This thief is still a thief, but it is no longer the same as before.

It is important to be cautious in words and behavior.

Therefore, except for the urgent call to commanding generals from all over the country to rush to help and annihilate the Qin thieves in one fell swoop, Zhu Youjian did not get any effective suggestions.

After a long time of air attack, Zhu Youjian immediately ordered troops from all over the country to rush to Taiyuan.

Even the Ming army that were suppressing bandits in Shaanxi, Sichuan and Henan received imperial edicts to enter Jin to lift the siege of Taiyuan, including Sun Chuanting, who was promising bandits.

Last year, until the beginning of this year, Sun Chuanting trained a total of 30,000 New Qin troops, and the Ming troops in the former Guanzhong towns had 40,000 troops.

Since the second half of last year, the New Qin army led by him has been invincible and won many battles in the Qinling area, and the bandits such as Gao Yingxiang, Li Hongji and Zhang Bingzhong fled everywhere, fled from Qinling to Daba Mountain, and then fled from Daba Mountain to Wushan, and fled in a panic under the complex terrain of the mountains.

In addition, the Ming army encircled and suppressed the Ming army in Henan, Sichuan, Huguang and other places. Many desperate bandits chose to surrender to the Ming army, and the traitors in various places gradually became clear.

After receiving the imperial edict, Sun Chuanting only left 5,000 troops to search and suppress small bandits in the Ankang area. He led his army north to Tongguan, preparing to cross the Yellow River from Tongguan to Jin.

After passing Shangluo Mountain, Sun Chuanting suddenly divided his troops into two groups, with 25,000 main forces from one group heading towards Tongguan as planned. He led only 10,000 elite troops from Shangluo to Lantian, and under the cover of the mountains, quietly heading west along the Qinling Mountains, hiding in the mountains between Lantian and Zhouzhi.

Most of the bandits who have been hiding from Tibet have no food. If the Ming army encircled and suppressed for several more months, they would probably be defeated.

At the time of desperate situation, Zhu Youjian's imperial edict pulled the bandits from the desperate situation, and the news that Sun Chuanting withdrew troops from Tongguan even more encouraged Gao Yingxiang and Li Hongji and others.

They were finally able to eat a bite of meat, it was so sweet that they could keep the clouds and moon blooming.

After confirming that Sun Chuanting's army was leaving from Tongguan, Gao Yingxiang and Li Hongji immediately joined more than 7,000 troops, passed through the gap between Hanzhong and Ankang, crossed the Qinling Mountains along the Jiaoxi River, entered Zhouzhi County, and then went straight to the vast Guanzhong Plain from Heihe.

They wanted to take advantage of the opportunity when Sun Chuanting crossed the river and entered Jin, and the interior of the Guanzhong Plain was empty, and they showed their skills and became arrogant.

Gao Yingxiang and Li Hongji and others marched all the way and finally arrived at the mouth of Heihe Valley. The vast and wealthy Guanzhong Plain came into view. When they thought they could finally fly high, the sound of drums and thunder suddenly sounded in the mountains on both sides of Heihe Valley, followed by dense gunfire and heart-pounding sounds of breaking through the air.

Being in a hurry!

Gao Yingxiang and Li Hongji were shocked and quickly led the command center to form a camp.

However, the two men's subordinates were already scared by Sun Chuanting, and the incident happened suddenly. They were in panic and could not organize an effective formation at all.

Sun Chuanting lies in Heiheyu and killed 10,000 elite troops from the two wings of the mountains. One attacked the front army of the bandits and the other attacked the back army of the bandits, blocking the front and back sides of the bandits. In less than a quarter of an hour, more than 7,000 bandits were completely defeated.

Li Hongji, who had always been smart and cunning, saw that the situation was not good, immediately abandoned his horse and walked, and only led dozens of old camps to fight out a bloody road from the west, then climbed up the mountain, and drilled into the vast wild forest.

Gao Yingxiang still kept commanding the troops to resist, and soon he was surrounded by the Ming army.

Seeing that the situation was over, Gao Yingxiang had to put down his weapons and beg for surrender.

As for this person who ranked first among the thirty-six bandits in terms of strength and prestige, Sun Chuanting did not dare to make a fuss, so he only asked the soldiers to tie him up and build a prison cart, and escorted the capital to the emperor on the same day.

With Zhu Youjian's character, the one who waits for Gao Yingxiang will probably be Ling Chi's execution.

The King of Rebellion will end here.

...

After soliciting opinions from many generals and soldiers, Qin Chuan finally completed the design of the half-body armor and sent someone to send the drawings back to Loufan and asked the Industrial Department to make samples immediately.

The bearing factory has already started mass production. Because the craftsmen are not skilled enough, the current output is still very low, and they can only produce forty or fifty sets of bearings a day.

The lathe factory has begun construction. During this period, the Industrial Department has built a total of twelve lathe samples of different types, waiting for the lathe factory to be completed and started construction, and then began mass-producing these lathes.

By the second half of the year, the efficiency of all mechanical production projects within Qinchuanzhi will be greatly improved.

Chen Zhan and Li Xuejing are still busy. On one hand, they are all kinds of machinery factories, and on the other hand, they are busy improving artillery and muskets. The latter is even more important than the former.

After the converter steelmaking has been achieved, the quality of the steel has been improved to a certain extent, so the guns and cannons have to be improved.

First of all, the fortress cannon. This thing has a long range and great power. In this era, it despises the world's existence, but its disadvantage is that it is too heavy and difficult to manufacture. Until now, the yield rate still cannot reach 50%.

Its range and power are enough, so Qin Chuan does not intend to increase the amount of the launching medicine, but only plans to reduce the weight and increase the output. Reducing weight is nothing more than reducing the thickness of the barrel, reducing the fortress cannon as a whole by a small circle, reducing the weight from 3,800 kilograms to over 3,000 kilograms.

The second is the General Tianwei cannon. The weight of this thing is within an acceptable range and the maneuverability of field combat is not too poor. The range and power have been caught up by the Qing and Ming cannons. When siege, you need to push three miles to fight against the enemy.

Therefore, Qin Chuan planned to increase the launching medicine of General Tianwei's gun to increase the range and power, but the artillery factory still needs to conduct continuous tests to see if the barrel length is to be increased. If it is to be increased, it must be slightly reduced to maintain or even reduce the original weight.

Qin Chuan plans to reduce the cannons of the Red General and the Big Bolang machine cannons, reduce the weight and increase mobility based on the original power to cope with future expeditions.

The small folang machine and the tiger squat cannon do not need to be reduced. A soldier cannon can carry it and run. The launching medicine should be increased to increase its power and gain greater advantages in field battles.

Muskets need to be greatly improved.

The flintlock will be replaced by a rifled gun within one or two years, so only the rifled gun and short gun are improved.

The existing rifled rifles have a disadvantage, that is, the barrel is long and the center of gravity is high. After the musket is fired with a gun several times, the arm will be overcooked, resulting in a decrease in accuracy.

Qin Chuan not only wanted to solve this problem, but also wanted to increase the range and increase the effective range of the rifled rifle from 300 steps to more than 350 steps.

He remembered that the effective range of Minie rifles in later generations could reach more than 500 meters, and the well-trained sharpshooter could even accurately hit the target within 600 meters, which was equivalent to the current 350 steps.

It is difficult to achieve further up. Human vision is limited, and the effective range of mechanical gates cannot be aimed at enemies seven or eight hundred meters away, unless there is an eight-fold mirror.

Qin Chuan has asked the Industrial Department to start experimenting with manufacturing optical scopes on the basis of manufacturing telescopes, but now they have not solved the problem of blurring the telescopes, and the scopes are even more unlikely to be realized in the short term.

Now we will solve the problem of the top priority first.

To this end, Qin Chuan thought of two ways before going to war, one was to change the octagonal barrel to a circular barrel.

All previous muskets were forged into octagons because they were convenient for forging, but to increase the strength of the barrel. However, the octagon means that the barrel will be heavier, and changing it to a circle will inevitably reduce some weight.

Another way is to get inspiration from artillery.

Long before the gunmaking began, Chen Zhan was inspired by the Flang machine cannon with thick gun bore and thin gun bore. He designed the red-clothed General's cannon as the barrel with the largest bore pressure and the barrel with thicker barrel, while the muzzle with the smallest bore pressure is thinner and extends smoothly to reduce weight.

Cannons can be made like this, and muskets can definitely be done according to the method.

Just grind it to the front as you polish it.

The barrel of the gun chamber is thicker and the muzzle is thinner, so the center of gravity will naturally be lowered. After adding a wooden stock, the center of gravity of the entire gun should be moved to the middle.

In addition, Qin Chuan also plans to use forging and pressing to improve the manufacturing process of the gun barrel.

First, after thick forging and fine forging on the lathe, steel bars slightly thicker than the designed barrel are obtained, and the steel bars are heated until red, and then the steel bars are forged into the mold, that is, let the steel bars pass through a hole.

When the steel bar passes through the mold, the four sides will be subjected to a relatively uniform pressure, making the internal structure of the steel bar more uniform, thus obtaining embryos with higher quality and fewer defects. Then drilling, ripping, polishing, and tempering the embryos to obtain the finished product of the barrel.
Chapter completed!