Valley Emperor

No wonder these foreigners made such a fuss, they traveled thousands of miles from Europe to the Far East, and finally saw the golden country described by Marco Polo.

They came to the Far East almost with a pilgrimage mentality, for what? Isn't it just to earn cute coins.

But these foreigners who came from Europe to the Far East soon discovered the embarrassing fact that they did not have many suitable goods to sell to the Ming Dynasty. In turn, the Ming Dynasty had what they needed. of precious goods.

Especially silk and porcelain, once these two things are shipped back to Europe, their value will increase several times or even dozens of times.

But to purchase these goods, they have to come up with the corresponding goods or gold and silver!

The goods are mainly spices, but spices are also urgently needed in Europe. Europeans with very large body positions have even greater demand for spices than Chinese.

As for gold and silver, everyone knows that these things are good things, how can they be willing to trade them.

This confusion of foreigners has troubled them for two or three hundred years in history. During this process, they were forced to take out a large amount of silver to purchase goods from China. In fact, a lot of silver from the Americas was not shipped back to Europe. Instead, it was shipped to the Ming Dynasty.

This situation continued until the eve of the Opium War, because they finally found a commodity that could be used for trade, that is, opium, ending the embarrassing situation that lasted for hundreds of years.

The opium trade also directly led to the outbreak of the two Opium Wars, which plunged China into a nearly semi-colonial era.

Of course, no one would think about such a distant thing now, even Li Xuan himself was too lazy to think about it.

Now these foreigners have found that with the outbreak of war, in addition to silver, these Chinese have a huge demand for their guns and other arms.

An old 12-pound naval gun can actually be bought for more than 500 taels, and such a brand new naval gun costs only about 200 taels in Europe.

Any old matchlock gun can easily be sold for a high price of more than ten taels of silver, and the price of this matchlock gun in the Far East was only two or three taels of silver in the past.

Therefore, many foreigners quickly invested in the arms trade with China. Unfortunately, they did not have much inventory on hand, and it was unlikely that they would really bring naval guns and muskets from Europe to sell them. The cost is too high to be worth it at all.

However, this is not impossible. For example, guns can be cast directly in the colonies in the Southeast Asia region.

Although the colonial activities of Western countries in Southeast Asia have not been so rampant, it is worth mentioning that the Portuguese have already occupied Malacca and established colonial rule.

Spain also arrived in the Nanyang region and tried to colonize the Philippines, but it failed. As for the later sea grooms, the Dutch have not yet appeared in the Nanyang waters.

Therefore, the western colonial countries currently active in Southeast Asia are mainly Portugal.

Of course, although other Western countries have not established colonies in Southeast Asia, it does not mean that their merchant ships will not come and trade with the Ming Dynasty.

In addition, it is worth noting that at this time in the Far East Sea, the colonial powers of Western countries were not strong. The most powerful ones were actually the navy of the Ming Dynasty, followed by the pirates collectively known as Japanese pirates.

Among them, because the navy of the Ming Dynasty mainly adhered to the coast, the maritime forces active in the far sea were mainly pirates from the Far East.

The strength of these pirates is not weak. The large and small pirate gangs are numerous, ranging from dozens of people in a few ships to hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of people.

If there is a super-strong leader in the waters of the Far East who can integrate all pirate forces, then the power of this pirate is enough to sweep the navy of the Ming Dynasty and the colonial fleets of Western countries, and completely dominate the Far East waters. It is a pity that This kind of thing is impossible, even Deng Chenggong, who is entrenched in Taiwan in later generations, cannot do it.

Since there are a large number of foreigner fleets operating here, and their ships are basically armed merchant ships, whether it is the Datang Dynasty or Wang Yue who wants to purchase artillery and muskets is all right.

It is difficult to just want a 12-pounder with such a powerful naval gun. Ordinary merchant ships will not be equipped with this stuff. Many are equipped with 9-pound and 6-pound artillery. The 12-pound gun is usually less, and some people are average. Nor will it be easy to sell.

However, under the silver bullet of Tang Jun and Wang Yue, this principle became a non-principle. A large number of artillery and muskets were directly removed and sold, and then they were excited to go to Malacca and other places to purchase more The naval guns and muskets are ready to be sold to both the Tang and Ming armies.

Li Xuan was also happy to see these reactions from the foreigners, and instructed the Ministry of Commerce to make a promise that as long as the foreigners dared to bring in naval guns and muskets, they would open the acquisition.

Especially naval guns, it doesn't matter whether it is twelve-pounder or nine-pounder or six-pounder, or even a small cannon of about three-pounder, and it doesn't matter whether it is a semi-cannon or a long cannon or a light robe or even a shotgun. All want.

After all, when it comes to artillery technology, Europe has enough artillery technology to beat East Asia these days. Just look at the naval guns equipped by the Spanish warships in the 16th century. Forty-eight pounds, thirty-two pounds, twenty-eight pounds. The four-pounder gun is the main force of the naval guns, and the sixteen-pounder, eleven-pounder, and seven-pounder guns are only secondary firepower.

As for the Folang machine guns that the Ming army wanted to equip, that is, small and medium-caliber shotguns, people didn't even bother to list them in the list of naval guns. Those things were just auxiliary firepower.

Under the leadership of Li Xuan, the Tang Dynasty took so much effort to produce seven jin artillery pieces, and this seven jin artillery piece is actually not a standard cannon, it should be said that it is a light type. The semi-cannon is the pursuit of power and lighter weight, but not the pursuit of range.

The Ming Dynasty is not much stronger than the Tang Dynasty. At most, they can only be equipped with the Great General Cannon and the Folang Cannon. The Folang Cannon is not to mention the shotgun. For the Great General Cannon, there are three specifications. They fired seven, five and three catties of artillery shells, which were actually the same as the three kinds of field guns of seven, five and three catties in the Tang Dynasty, but this kind of general artillery was used in the Ming army. The number of equipment is relatively small, far less extensive than the Folang cannon.

As for why, this involves the issue of the contemporary Ming army's combat philosophy or preferences. They prefer to use shotguns, which in the past can blast away a large area of ​​the enemy, so even if it is their general artillery or history The imitation of the Hongyi cannon in space and time is also shot most of the time.

The reason why they like to use shotguns is also related to the strength of the enemy facing the Ming Dynasty, because the Ming Dynasty has never encountered an enemy with a large number of advanced firearms. This is a typical example of no power without demand.

Now that they have encountered an enemy who likes and is good at using firearms, the Pseudo-Tang Bandit Army naturally pays attention to this aspect and purchases foreigners' weapons.

Tang Jun was naturally unwilling to lag behind, and basically opened up acquisitions, and the more the naval guns, the better, and it would even be better to obtain their artillery technical talents.

But in the case of muskets, the Tang Dynasty did not want to directly purchase muskets shipped by foreigners. It is best to customize them according to the requirements of the Tang Dynasty. The most important condition is that the caliber must be 14 mm.

Because this takes into account the general problems of ammunition, the physical strength and power of soldiers, and secondly, it is also convenient to transform these arquebuses purchased from outside.

That's right, if the Tang Dynasty purchased their original muskets, they would need to be transformed.

After purchasing a batch of artillery pieces, in fact, the Master of the Tang Dynasty also purchased a batch of muskets, but after using them, the generals of the Master of the Tang Dynasty found that the performance of these guns with a caliber of 20 mm was not as good as that of their own guns.

But if it's not easy to use, they buy it, because if they don't buy it, Wang Yue will buy it. With the attitude of not letting Wang Yue buy more ordnance, Tang Jun will actively buy any ordnance, and it doesn't matter if the price is higher.

Besides, even if the performance is inferior, it is still a firearm. Buying a few hundred pieces can effectively supplement the firearms of the Tang Dynasty. To expand the source of ordnance, the Tang Dynasty will not let it go.

However, the original version you bought cannot be used directly. You have to refit one or two first. The caliber cannot be changed. You can only add accessories such as a socket bayonet, front sight, ruler, etc., and then unify them for the paper shell.

Therefore, in the follow-up purchase ~www.wuxiaspot.com~Datang Dynasty put forward a demand for a caliber of 14 mm, and left room for modification.

This procurement model basically entrusts foreigners to produce the main body of the musket, and some fragmentary parts and components are produced by the Tang Dynasty themselves and finally assembled.

The Tang army and the Ming army went on a shopping spree at the Pearl River Estuary. They almost bought all the ordnance on the foreigners' ships that stayed near the Pearl River Estuary. Naturally, they can't buy it now. However, there are already shrewd foreign merchants who have rushed back to Nanyang and other places to prepare. Bringing more arms to trade, they found that guns are better than spices and more profitable.

And this has also caused quite a strange thing, that is, the artillery equipped by both sides, especially the 12-pounder caliber artillery, was purchased from foreigners, or to be more precise, from the same batch of Portugal. Bought from human hands, even these twelve-pounder guns are from the same ship.

The Portuguese people directly took down the naval guns they put on and sold them to both parties!

And these artillery pieces also sang the prelude to the Battle of Guangzhou!

The rumble of cannons also announced the official outbreak of the Guangzhou Battle!