strong military attack(chuán jiān pào lì)

strong military attack

From the 18th century to the 19th century, the western countries developed rapidly under the impetus of the industrial revolution, and the military armed forces were strong. China, on the other hand, moves forward leisurely in the dream of heaven. The main purpose of the navy in Qing Dynasty was not to defend the outside, but to secure the inside. Although the ship was not strong and the gun was not good, it was enough to subdue the common people. It is these practices that have dealt a fatal blow to China's coastal defense.

brief introduction

Zhu Yin Chu á NJI ā NP à ol ì [explanation] Jian: firm; Li: sharp. A strong warship with strong guns. It literally means that the ship is very strong and the artillery is very fierce. This idiom describes a strong navy. [source] in the Qing Dynasty, Lin Zexu's "the situation of repeatedly bombarding the foreign ships with the sharp mouth of the piercing nose": "this time, Shi MI and others came to make a quarrel It's nothing more than relying on the strength of the ship and the strength of the artillery to help the greedy. " In Sun Yat Sen's last book of Li Hongzhang, it is said that "the foundation of the prosperity of Europe is not all ～ It's about people doing their best and the earth doing their best. "

An analysis of the strength of British and foreign ships

Strong ship

The first Opium War was a duel between the comprehensive forces of China and Britain at that time. Both sides used all available forces to attack each other, especially the artillery and warships with great lethality. During the Opium War, the British "Eastern expeditionary army" sent 66 warships of various types to China. Among them, the British Navy mainly included Melville, Wellesley, Blenheim, druid and other 50 warships. The East India company mainly included Madagascar, Nemesis and E Enterprise, etc. warship is a very important combat weapon, which is the carrier of carrying personnel and other weapons. In 1840, the total tonnage of British battleships reached 257000 tons, which was 88000 tons more than that of the United States, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and Sweden. By the Opium War, the British navy had a huge fleet composed of battleships, cruise ships, light cruisers, armed steamers, troop carriers and transport ships, with clear division of labor, advanced organization and flexible tactics. The gun on the ship mainly used long barrel cannon, land and sea mortar and kanggriff rocket. The design idea, material, casting technology, gunpowder, range, firing speed, mobility and firing accuracy of the gun were obviously higher than those of the Qing army. With the improvement of recoil release technology, gun ignition technology and shell innovation technology, the gun power has been greatly increased. wind power is the main power of warship, and wind direction and wind speed determine the maneuverability of warship. During the Opium War, the British warship's sailing technology was greatly improved. The guyed sail between the jib and the mast is more windy than the cross sail. With the increase of the driving force of the cross sail, the wing sail is also strengthened, which extends outward from the cross truss end of the original sail. At full sail, a large sailing warship can sail 36 sails and advance in waves at a speed of 10 knots. With the combination of cross sail and longitudinal sail, the ship has been able to navigate against the wind through the circuitous route. In the era of windsurfing, the ship has abandoned the manual rowing, relying entirely on the sail and the wind. The appearance of tiller changed the clumsy method of turning the rudder by manpower in the whole width of the deck, liberated the sailors, made more space for artillery, and more importantly, improved the combat mobility of warships. Using copper to protect the hull not only blocks the adhesion of marine organisms, but also increases the speed. Since the 19th century, new steam power has been gradually applied to warships. During the Opium War, there were at least 14 wooden and iron steamships in Britain, which was the first time that they were put into use in actual combat. Although its tonnage is small and artillery is small, it is difficult and effective in the formal naval battle in the west, and it does not occupy a dominant position in the Navy. However, with its shallow draft, sufficient power, fast speed and strong mobility, it can sail straight, and it does not have to navigate according to the wind direction and current twists and turns, and it can also run rampant along China's coastal and inland rivers with backward weapons and equipment. At that time, Humen, Zhenjiang and other coastal fortresses were located at the estuary of the river. It was very inconvenient for the old sailing boats to go upstream. It was very convenient for them to use steam powered iron hull surface ships as tugs to drag the main ships to the right position for attack, or to drag more than 20 sampans connected end to end to land near the beach. in the "black powder era", with the replacement of oar sailed warships by windsurfing warships, the increase of artillery caliber and range, new changes have taken place in the tactics of Naval Warfare: the transition from side to side combat, that is, from side to side combat by warships of both sides, to open up the battle position, open up the distance and launch artillery combat. This is the "line tactics" commonly used by the British navy, that is, to face the enemy from the side and form a long line, so that half of the guns of each warship can fire at the enemy, which is conducive to the firepower of the fleet. "Line tactics" is a great invention of the British navy, the key figure is the bourgeois militarist Cromwell. The "line tactics" played a great role in the artillery power of the sail warships, and the power of the Western warships, including the British warships, was greatly increased because they generally used the "line tactics". During the Opium War, China and Britain did not fight directly at sea in a complete sense. At that time, the naval battles between China and Britain were mostly between British warships and Chinese fort. Because of the short range, weak firepower and poor accuracy of Chinese artillery, British warships often used "linear tactics" to bombard the Chinese fort, sometimes cooperated with "tactics of concentrating superior forces to make breakthroughs", and occupied the Chinese Fort one by one. To sum up, during the Opium War, the technology of British warships was in the transition period from the era of wooden sails to the era of steam armored warships. Generally speaking, the British warships participating in the war are mainly class 5, 6 and other class warships and a small number of class 3 warships, which have the advantages of high height, fast speed, strong corrosion resistance, excellent mobility, good sinking resistance, convenient operation, stable airworthiness and fierce firepower. Born in the 1830s, the steam powered iron hull Ming steamer has been put into use in actual combat, and its advantages have been brought into full play. The above reasons are the secret of the British "strong ship". Because of these key differences, the British army, with its advanced warship technology, traversed the southeast coast of China, determining the time, place and scale of the war. (author: Zhang Jianxiong; setting: Opium War Museum)

Cannonball

During the first Opium War, the main mode of war between China and Britain was sea and land artillery. The technology of Hongyi artillery, the Qing army's leading artillery, was at the level of European 17th century cannons. By the time of the war, the gun technology of clay mold manufacturing had narrowed the gap with European sand mold casting gun and solid bore drilling technology. The cast iron gun in Foshan, Guangdong Province reflects the basic situation of coastal gun used in coastal fort at that time. The iron mold casting gun technology initiated by Gong Zhenlin in Zhenhai, Zhejiang Province is the best miniature of Qing army gun. According to the ballistic characteristics, the main types of Qing artillery are: heavy Hongyi artillery, light artillery, skygun, lift artillery and so on. the British artillery still belonged to the era of smooth bore with black powder as propellant. The gun bore was a cylinder, and the gun shape was a cone, which was composed of ears, tail buttons and other accessories. Its shape and design idea did not change qualitatively, and its type was mainly cannons, but its quality was better than that of the Qing army. It is divided into cannons with long barrel but low trajectory, howitzers with moderate barrel but curved trajectory, land mortars with short barrel but curved trajectory, marine cannons and congriff rockets. The cannons are matched for their purposes, and the range and lethality are considered both far and near. Their types have adapted to the tactical needs of land war, sea war, siege war and mountain war. In terms of shell technology, the Qing army used stone, iron, honeycomb, chain, hollow and imitation Yingyi bombs. The material of stone bullet is easy to pick up, but it is often irregular. It is easy to increase the clearance value between the bore diameter and the projectile body. The projectile has weak speed, and it is easy to cause damage to the bore. Its performance is the worst among the types of shells. traditional Chinese Shenji guns use lead pellets. Large caliber guns need iron bullets instead of lead bullets, because although lead has the advantages of low melting point, great lethality, and easy casting and repair, it has been practiced more and more, and it is easy to burst after repeated fire. Moreover, it is softer than iron bullets. Bumping and extrusion will lead to unevenness, so it is often necessary to wrap cotton cloth to seal the gun bore. The artillery of Qing Dynasty mainly fired spherical solid iron bullets with small weight. It is made of pig iron or lead, and the proportion of shells with stitches on the waist and aurora is limited. The usage of the solid iron bullet is that the gunner uses the principle of "floating in the water" to make it bounce on the flat ground and sweep the enemy's dense columns at high speed. The attack effect depends on the rebound, rolling and impact effect of the shell. The Qing artillery was huge, but the spherical solid projectiles made of pig iron were very small, generally weighing 1.5-15 kg. The deck and side plates of the British wooden sailboats were generally designed and manufactured to resist the impact of 30.8 kg solid projectiles, so it was often said that they would "touch back". The honeycomb bomb originated from the European Hongyi shell introduced by China in the late Ming Dynasty. The honeycomb bomb consists of a gate which is consistent with the inner diameter of the mouth and a group of broken iron and lead. Seal the door, aim at the target, and attack by impact. The group is wrapped in long and thin pockets, which is very lethal to infantry. But its speed lost very quickly, only in the distance from the cannon

Chinese PinYin : chuán jiān pào lì