This traveler only wants to choose the lowest difficulty

Chapter 209

In fact, in the history of China, there were three obvious technical iterations of the catapult. The first one was naturally the human-powered catapult that originated in China. This kind of thing has been around since the pre-Qin period. It has almost exhausted its transformation potential until the Han and Tang Dynasties. It is difficult to make progress.

The next direction of improvement is actually the power source. The power source of the human catapult is the muscle power stored in the human body. This power is limited after all, so in the Song Dynasty, the ballista was developed. As the name suggests, its structure Much like a crossbow, which is an elastic trebuchet.

In the Song Dynasty, a lot of modifications were made to elastic trebuchets. The main idea is actually very simple, that is to change the original human muscle power of trebuchets as the source of power of trebuchets, and to use the elasticity of bows and crossbows to launch stones. .

The elastic potential energy of the bow and crossbow can be stored slowly, and then burst out in an instant. For war, it is obviously a big step forward compared with human-powered stone catapults. In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the Mongols even introduced return cannons from the expedition, that is, The so-called gravity trebuchet, a design that uses a delicate structure to use counterweights to become the source of power for the trebuchet, finally brought the ultimate form of the trebuchet.

During the Mongol and Yuan Dynasties, the gravity trebuchet had become a nuclear-weapon-level weapon for siege warfare on the eastern and western battlefields. The return guns used by the Mongols to attack Xiangyang were said to be able to fire 150-jin stone bombs at a time. After the stone bullet landed seven feet into the ground, at this time the trebuchet finally had enough firepower, and its killing target could no longer be people, but directly attack the fortifications in the city, such as European wars in the Middle Ages, many In a war, when the siege party pushed the trebuchet to the front line of the battlefield with great painstaking efforts, it basically indicated that the enemy's castle could be destroyed under the bombardment of huge stones.

Of course, this is also the last golden age of the trebuchet, because after that hot weapons will be on the stage of history, and under the roar of the giant cannon, the power of the trebuchet is not worth mentioning.

However, although it is inevitable that the trebuchet will eventually withdraw from the stage of history, after all, it is only 800 A.D., and there are still more than 800 years before the Mongolian Nanqingdu. Therefore, when Wang Dong introduced the complete structure of the counterweight trebuchet to Hou Junji , It is basically equivalent to taking the latest war technology more than [-] years ago and putting it in front of Hou Junji, so when Hou Junji understood the principle of the counterweight trebuchet, he quickly realized that this thing would have infinite war potential.

His eyes lit up and he stopped thinking about Wang Dong's refutation of his face just now, but quickly asked: "Wang Changshi, can such a thing really be made?"

There are many fantastic ideas on war weapons, but whether they can be realized in the end is a very big problem. The reason why Hou Junji asked this question is also because he is afraid that although the thing Wang Dong proposed looks beautiful, it is actually not at all in the end. Can't make it.

It is naturally possible to make it. Wang Dong thought that this thing is a technology hundreds of years ago. Even if it was considered a military secret in the Yuan Dynasty, it will be kept in a military museum in later generations. Things I'm too lazy to look at.

Although he does not have complete information on the gravity trebuchet at hand now, he thinks that he still has a chance to abort the mission, and the gravity trebuchet of later generations has long been played badly by enthusiasts. There is a special forum in China. , as long as you return to modern time and space, it is not difficult to find complete trebuchet information.

So Wang Dong said with a smile: "This type of trebuchet was given to me by a stranger when I was an official in Lingnan. He was just telling a story, but I made a note of it. He has made a small-scale real trebuchet, and has also verified its principle. If it is enlarged several times, it is expected that it can project a huge stone weighing more than a hundred catties, and the projection distance is close to [-] steps."

Hearing this data, Hou Junji and Xu Changfu couldn't help but take a deep breath.

Xu Changfu actually didn’t know much about trebuchets, but Hou Junji had fought in siege battles, so he knew very well the actual performance of trebuchets at this time. Even the largest heavy trebuchets could at most be able to It's just pulling more than 100 catties of stones. As for the attack range, ancient books say that it can shoot 100 steps from a distance, but in fact, it is already amazing to be able to hit more than 50 steps, or a distance of about 250 meters. The number of people who need to pull the rope for one use of the trebuchet will reach an astonishing [-] people. When attacking a large fortified city like Chang'an, you will see hundreds of people on the battlefield in large numbers. The scene of shouting a unified password, pulling up the rope heavily, and pulling the lever of the huge catapult, and the scene of a large-scale siege battle, using dozens of heavy catapults at one time is obviously very amazing. of.

In fact, this was also the question that Hou Junji was thinking about when he thought about attacking Gaochang. He had personally seen the large-scale siege battles during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and he had also seen the big scene where thousands of horses galloped and dozens of trebuchets were launched at the same time, but But he knew very well that it was impossible for him to bring so many civilians to operate such a large-scale trebuchet when he took people to attack Gaochang this time.And Gaochang has more than [-] cities. If there is no heavy trebuchet, he can only think of other ways to attack the city. After the military craftsman sent from the pass had arrived, he pushed aside the meeting between Xu Changfu and Wang Dong, and discussed carefully the reasons for the engineering equipment with the military craftsman who came from afar before the meeting.

But now Wang Dong suddenly told him that he could make such a giant trebuchet that could shoot 100 paces of live ammunition with a distance of more than [-] kilograms without the need for large-scale manpower. This solved one of his biggest problems.

After Wang Dong finished speaking, he saw Hou Junji staring at him, as if he was thinking about something. After a long time, he suddenly slapped the case with his big hand, as if he had made some decision.

"Wang Cai, let me tell you the truth. Now Chang'an is discussing the regulations for rebuilding the sixteen guards. Originally, you have made great contributions. I want to take this opportunity to recommend you to develop in the pass and change you to a better place. Go dawdle, but now that you say you have the means to manufacture such a large-scale gravity trebuchet, then I can't say no, I can only ask you to stay in Longyou to try out the machine first. If Wang Changshi stays this time, if the manufacturer If you become a machine, I will guarantee you a bright future, but you have to live in Longyou for a few more years. If you agree, you will stay here. If you don’t agree, I will still recommend you to develop in the pass. What do you think? "

(End of this chapter)