Volume 1: Birth! Seven time travelers Chapter 037 Changes in Dongying Island (I)
"Keng~Bang~Boom~"
"Yoshi! Takechiyo, this new iron cannon you supervised is much better than the previous Kunitomo Cannon in terms of range and accuracy! What's even better is that this iron cannon can be fired without a matchlock is solved!"
"Hai, thank you for the compliment, father. Speaking of which, father is indeed worthy of being the best cannon master in Tōkaidō. He can still hit the target with one shot from such a long distance."
"Hahaha, don't underestimate your father. Although I'm 62 years old this year, I can still eat three bowls of miso rice at every meal, and I won't go to the bathroom all the time during a meal."
"Hahahaha~~~ How can Lian Po compare to father's talent?"
1605, Japan, Edo Castle.
At this time, Tokugawa Takechiyo, who was about to turn five years old, was accompanying Tokugawa Ieyasu, the de facto ruler of Japan, at a secret shooting range in the suburbs to test a new type of iron cannon that he had recently instructed craftsmen to make - the flintlock musket.
The development of hot weapons, of course, began with light weapons, and the most representative of these were the muskets or rifles used by infantry.
The earliest controlled firearms began in the Southern Song Dynasty in China, and then spread to the West with the iron hoofs of the Mongols. Then, around the mid-to-late 15th century, the real matchlock gun appeared in Western Europe. It was introduced to Japan in the 16th century, and the Japanese called it iron cannon. Later, in the Ming Dynasty's battle against the Japanese pirates, the matchlock guns used by the Japanese were introduced to China, and the Ming Dynasty imitated them and called them bird guns.
Whether it was the earliest matchlock gun, or the iron cannon or the bird gun, although they were all powerful and could not be resisted by heavy armor within 100 meters, they also had great limitations. The most direct one was that the firing method required open flames, which resulted in the matchlock gun being subject to many restrictions by the weather.
Military needs promoted technological progress, and the backwardness of the firing device prompted skilled craftsmen from various countries to rack their brains to improve it. First, the rotary musket was invented, and later in 1547, the flintlock musket was invented by the Frenchman Mahan.
(In the historical plane, due to the huge profits of the original matchlock gun manufacturers, the inventor of the flintlock gun was assassinated, and the French military refused to use it on the pretext that the flintlock device could not effectively ignite gunpowder. It was not until the middle of the 17th century that the flintlock gun was widely equipped by the armies of European countries.)
After the firing mechanism was improved, Europeans began to pursue greater range and accuracy of muskets: matchlock guns and early flintlock guns were smoothbore guns with no rifling in the barrels - short range and low accuracy. So there were rifled guns (rifles) with lines engraved in the barrel to increase range and accuracy.
However, the emergence of rifled guns brought new problems: the rifles of this era were all muzzle-loading guns, and the bullets were loaded from the front of the barrel. In order to ensure the range of the bullet, the diameter of the bullet was generally slightly larger than the barrel - this was to ensure the airtightness of the gunpowder after it was ignited.
In the past, the barrel of a smoothbore gun was basically smooth . Although the bullet was slightly larger than the barrel, it was still easy to put the bullet into the barrel with a little force. However, when the barrel had uneven rifling, the problem became serious: it took a long time to get the bullet in, and it took more time to fire a shot than a smoothbore gun. Therefore, European countries struggled for many years between accuracy and speed.
This problem did not exist until 1823, when the British, drawing on the principle of the blowgun of the local Indian natives, proposed changing the shape of the bullet from round to conical, and adding expansion material at the tail to seal the gas in the barrel. However, due to the interests involved, this suggestion was strangely rejected by the British military, and was eventually promoted in France.
In 1849, the Frenchman Minié, following the British idea, created the famous Minié bullet: the bullet was conical in shape, with a diameter smaller than the barrel (so it could be easily inserted into a rifled gun), and there was a conical hole at the bottom of the bullet, which was plugged with a wooden plug in advance. After firing, the wooden plug expanded, preventing the gas in the barrel from leaking out. This solved the problem of rifled guns.
At this point, the speed, accuracy, range, firing device and other issues of the muzzle-loading musket have been basically solved. The muzzle-loading gun has now developed to a mature stage. However , the peak muzzle-loading gun did not make much of a name on the battlefield. Because, thanks to the improvement of metallurgical level, by this time, the breech-loading gun had come into being. This is the famous M1841.
Zhu Youdong probably knew some of the above knowledge: for example, he knew about flintlock rifles and Minié bullets. But what was the significance of Minié bullets? Sorry, he didn't know - he was a doctor and a history lover, not a military lover.
And this Japanese time traveler, whose current name is Tokugawa Takechiyo, knows all these things.
Because, before traveling through time, his main job was as a cartoonist.
Don't look down on cartoonists. The competition in the Japanese comics industry is just as fierce as it is at the starting point.
As a cartoonist, in addition to basic painting techniques and imagination, it is more important to have a lot of basic knowledge. Most of the people born in the 1980s in China have read Saint Seiya, and they should be able to see from the book that the author of this book has a good knowledge reserve of the Greek mythology system. Most of the people born in the 1990s have read Naruto, who dares to say that the author only has imagination but no rich knowledge reserve? People born in the 2000s should have read Attack on Titan. The equipment of the human army in it, although sci-fi, also has a high degree of physical basis...
This time-traveling cartoonist is good at military cartoons. He draws cartoons based on the background of the Warring States Period and World War II that reflect the Japanese militarism (there are many such cartoons in Japan, but it is not easy to see them in China). Such people may not be as good as real military experts or engineering men, but they still have a clear understanding of the basic context of the development of military technology.
Four years after crossing over, he officially began to learn. The teachers sent by Tokugawa Ieyasu to guide him were Honda Tadakatsu, who was in charge of military affairs, Honda Masanobu, who was in charge of strategy, and Okubo Nagayasu, who was in charge of finances.
As a result, although due to physical reasons, Takechiyo could not show more impressive martial arts skills, but in terms of strategy and financial sensitivity, Honda Masanobu and Okubo Nagayasu were quickly convinced.
From 1604, Takechiyo began to draw manga, the theme of which was the 200-year Warring States period.
In this comic, the samurai of the Tokugawa family are of course handsome, noble, and outstanding in martial arts. And the enemy of the Tokugawa family, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, is of course drawn with a monkey face.
This form of propaganda, which only appeared in the 20th century, had a very sensational effect once it appeared in this era. Samurai, nobles, and wealthy merchants throughout Japan began to beg for mercy from the Tokugawa family with a more humble attitude: the Japanese of this era valued being recorded in history more, and how to leave a good reputation and image in history in the future, this comic book played a huge role.
In addition, Takechiyo spent a lot of effort and energy to guide Japan's iron cannon production craftsmen and vigorously developed a new generation of muskets.
To be fair, in terms of history, the peak of the matchlock gun was not in Europe but in Japan: the matchlock gun was introduced to Japan during the Warring States Period. The overall war situation promoted the development of the matchlock gun. In terms of barrel quality, gunpowder ratio, matchlock material and many other aspects, the Japanese iron cannon did surpass the Ming Dynasty's bird gun.
Therefore, Japan has the technical foundation to develop a new generation of muskets.
As a time traveler, Takechiyo wanted to develop a breech-loading rifle in one step, but after countless experiments, he had to accept the result of failure: the firing device of the breech-loading rifle is a firing pin, which has extremely high requirements for the forging level of a country. At the same time, there are no high-strength springs or screws, so how can a breech-loading rifle be made? Even if a breech-loading rifle is made, it will be very difficult to mass-produce fixed copper-cased bullets, which is a torture to death.
So Takechiyo had to settle for the next best thing and make a flintlock rifle. And it was a perfect flintlock rifle: the firing mechanism used flint to ignite, the barrel had rifling, and the bullet was a Minié bullet. This was already the pinnacle of muzzle-loading rifles.
"Father, if such a cannon can be mass-produced , can we take action against the Toyotomi family in advance?"
