"Brother, what gift did you bring to me?" Crown Prince Zhu Cilang asked happily when he saw Liu Jun. "Although he is the crown prince of a country, he is only eleven years old this year, a prince raised in the deep palace. When he is with those teachers, he is always subject to many constraints. However, when he is with Liu Jun, he never asks him to do this or that. Instead, he can always tell some interesting stories outside the palace to him, and even bring some good gifts every time.

Last time Liu Jun gave him a thousand-mile mirror, he was very happy.

"I brought two gifts to Your Highness." Liu Jun smiled and stepped forward. After Chongzhen accepted Liu Jun as his adopted son, he specially asked the prince, the two princes and the two princesses to call him the prince Liu Jun brother, and the princesses from then on. Maybe Liu Jun is young, or maybe Liu Jun is born to lack awe of the imperial power, which makes both the prince and the princess very close to him.

The gift Liu Jun gave to the crown prince was a model of a globe and a Garen sailboat. In fact, it was the decorations he had seized from the Batavia in the captain's room, and the model of the ship was the Batavia.

"What is this?" The prince looked at the globe. It turned out that the globe was marked with Dutch marks on the surface. Liu Jun asked the craftsman to change the chart, and the entire one was re-identified with Chinese characters.

"This is called the globe, this is the planet we are on. Look, this place next to the sea is our Ming Dynasty. Its east is the sea, the Mongolian Plateau to the north is Jianlu, the peninsula to the east is Korea, the archipelago that goes east is Japan, and the archipelago that goes south is the countries of the South China Sea. Europeans call it the East Indies, also called the spice island, which is named because it produces spices."

“Where is Europe?”

"Europe is far away from our west, and it is Europe. There are many countries, the Holy Roman Empire, France, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Britain, etc., and then to the west is the ocean, that is the Atlantic Ocean, and continue to go west. There is the New World, and then cross the continent, another ocean, that is the Pacific Ocean. When you cross the ocean, you will reach the southeast of our Ming Dynasty again." Liu Jun pointed to the globe, then turned gently, turned around, and then arrived at the Ming Dynasty again.

The concept of the earth was not a strange understanding in the West at this time. In China, with the arrival of missionaries, this knowledge was also accepted by many Chinese people.

"We live on a large sphere? But why don't we fall down?" No one has ever talked to the prince about these geography and heaven. Even since ancient times, heaven has been a royal theory that prohibits ordinary people from studying it. If you learn astronomy privately, that is, violations are to be convicted.

"Because there is gravity, it's like you jump up, but it will always fall to the ground in the end. The earth will have gravity to attract us."

“Is the earth really round?”

"Of course. This has been proven long ago. If you go to the beach one day, you will find that when the ships on the sea appear, the first thing we see is the sail at the top, and then as it approaches, we will see a part of the mast bit by bit." Liu Jun smiled and spread the subject to the crown prince.

Empress Zhang, Empress Zhou, Yuan and Tian, ​​both sitting on the side and smiling.

The two kings of Yongding were younger, and they were more interested in the model of the sailing boat that Liu Jun gave to the prince. But the two children also knew that they could not grab the prince's things at will. So they could only look at Liu Jun.

"I've brought you all a gift, too."

The gift Liu Jun gave to the two princes was a set of soldiers' pottery figurines, each set with hundreds of soldiers, and a miniature battlefield, which showed a battle. The Yong King's set was to attack Sicaohai Fortress, and the Ding King's one was to capture Chichicheng.

The soldiers were all painted pottery, vivid and beautiful. Some were riding horses, carrying guns, pushing cannons, and cities, fortresses, etc. The two princes fell in love with each other immediately and started to set up their soldiers with them in a hurry.

The crown prince fiddled with the globe for a while and began to look at the ship model again.

"Is there really such a big ship?"

"The flagship of the Beiyang Navy I led is this ship. It usually carries a thousand sailors and soldiers. If it is a war, it can carry more than one thousand people. The fastest speed can reach 60 miles per hour and can carry 3.65 million kilograms."

"Didn't that run faster than a horse?"

"Yes, it can run day and night every hour for forty miles on the sea. If it is a good wind, it can be faster. Marco cannot run twelve hours a day."

"How tall is this boat?"

"The main mast in the middle is twenty-one feet tall!"

"Twenty-one zhang? Isn't it taller than the Qianqing Palace of my father?"

The Qianqing Palace was only more than seven feet high, so it was naturally taller than it.

Liu Jun also brought gifts to the queen and concubines, perfume produced from Europe. The beautifully shaped glass bottle contained various perfumes. When he gently twisted it, a fragrant smell came to his face. When the queen and concubines tried it, they all liked it very much.

The two princesses were dolls with cloth sewns, each with several, including Chinese little girls with traditional Ming Dynasty dress and hairstyle, European white girls with red-haired and blonde hair, and some puppets of puppies and kittens.

Although the two princesses were bigger than the two kings of Yongding, they saw these dolls and dolls without any reservations, and they hugged the dolls happily and kept laughing.

"What good gift did Ci Ye give you again to make you so happy." Chongzhen strode into the hall from outside and said with a smile.

The princes and princesses immediately proudly showed the new gifts to the emperor. Chongzhen looked at them and found that they were all very innovative but not luxurious and expensive, so he didn't say much.

"Let the imperial kitchen deliver the dishes."

During the meal, Liu Jun also gave Chongzhen a gift.

"Your Majesty, this is the bond raised by issuing bonds in the first half of this year. It is a total of 10 million silver dollars, which is a certificate of deposit. Now the bank is in the Sihai Bank bank bank treasury in the capital. Your Majesty can send someone to use the certificate of deposit to get the silver, silver dollar coupons and silver dollars at any time."

"Oh, another 10 million silver dollars was sold?" Chongzhen excitedly took the certificate of deposit, looked carefully several times before he collected it. "Jiye, thank you for your hard work. While training troops and fighting, he also had to help raise funds. I don't know what to say."

"Your Majesty, this is what I should do as a minister. Now that the country is still in a difficult situation, the court and the monarchs and ministers must do their best to overcome this difficulty. After a few years, after rest and recuperate, the world will naturally be peaceful and the bonds issued can be repaid."

Chongzhen sighed, "There is no other way. I have hundreds of millions of people who enjoy thousands of miles of rivers and mountains, but I have to borrow money."

Queen Zhou said on the side, "Your Majesty, don't sigh. If it weren't for Ci Ye, Your Majesty wouldn't have borrowed money even if he wanted to borrow money."

"Yes, yes, if I hadn't had a successor, I had nowhere to borrow it if I wanted to. Only inheriting my career can help me solve this worries and difficulties."

Liu Jun hurriedly said, "It's all the duty of the minister. Today, Your Majesty told his sons about artillery. I thought about it later and felt that I had artillery on the warships in my hand, and the situation was pretty good. Therefore, I planned to draw out most of the artillery originally equipped in the army and send it to Ningjin to enhance their firepower."

"My son plans to transfer five hundred tiger squat cannons, three hundred enemy destroying cannons, and one hundred 300 kilograms of Filar, fifty 500 kilograms of Filar, twenty kilograms of 1,000 kilograms of 1,000 kilograms of 1,000 kilograms of 1,000 kilograms of red cannons to Ningjin."

Jiutou now has a new type of artillery and a new type of casting gun factory, and the artillery fire is quite abundant. Now Jiutou does not lack artillery, but a complete artillery system that standardizes the artillery it has.

Try to standardize and simplify many types of artillery of different sizes to several models. In this way, the efficiency of artillery can be increased, and only a few standard models of artillery shells are needed to be manufactured and transported.

Now the Nine-Headed Bird's artillery system has been used to group the purpose, including four types: field guns, siege guns, naval guns and shore defense guns. Field guns only retain 4 pounds. 8.12 standards, siege guns have two standards: 12 and 24. In addition, the three standard 6-inch dunes in field and 8-inch dunes in siege, 8, 10, and 12 standards, which have been simplified as much as possible.

Other types of artillery have been placed in urban and shore defense as much as possible, and the same model has been concentrated together as much as possible.

Through this standardization, the artillery fire of the Jiutou is now much better and has much higher efficiency. In addition, with a special artillery force, it turns out that a large number of tiger squats in the army will have no effect on destroying these artillery artillery.

Those guns are too weak in range and lethality, and it is also troublesome to carry. The Arsenal House has reported to Liu Jun that it has developed several new howitzers, which are lighter in weight. Four pounds, eight pounds, twelve pounds, three new howitzers are much lighter than the original howitzers. Four pounds light dunes are only 55 pounds, eight pounds, and eight pounds, and only 170 pounds of twelve pounds. The most important thing is that this kind of light howitzer can be disassembled, and the twelve pounds of light howitzer can be transported away at most three mules, and can also carry three boxes of shells, which can cross mountains and hills. Although its power is weaker than ordinary grenades, it is weaker than howitzers.

But compared to the Tiger Squat, the original light infantry support firepower of Milu and Folang Machinery is much stronger. This new type of cannon has been named infantry grenade by Liu Jun, also known as mountain grenade, and is specially used as light support firepower at the department and bureau level.

New artillery has begun mass casting and production, so the old artillery like tiger squats in the army will have no effect at all. The emperor and the cabinet assistants have already set their sights on Liu Jun's artillery. Since Liu Jun did not want to hand over the new artillery to the court and send it to Liaodong, he finally thought about it and had to send these eliminated old light artillery to Liaodong.

By the way, I also sent a few old-style red barbarians that were both heavy but not powerful to Liaodong, which was also considered to be a blocking the court's hand.

Although they were all the nine-headed birds who were despised by the fallen guns, and even the small cannons like the tiger squat were not considered to be cannons in the nine-headed birds. However, the number of thousands of cannons still made Chongzhen very happy.

However, Liu Jun did not give it for free. The next day he agreed to the Ministry of Works to hand over the more than a thousand cannons to the court. The Ministry of Works drew a large number of copper, iron and sulfur saltpet and other materials to Liu Jun. (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!