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"The first team has it!"

"To the left!"

"Enter the shooting position! Walk in step!"

Outside Chongming County, on the New Army shooting range, the newly recruited soldiers lined up and entered the shooting positions one by one under the command of the commander.

"Reload ammunition!"

Listening to the commander's command, the recruits took out ammunition from the armed belt, erected the Enfield p1842 firing front-mounted smoothbore gun in their hands, clamped it with their legs, and then poured the gun medicine in the paper tube into the barrel, compacted it with a strip, and then placed a 557-inch lead bullet into the muzzle, and also compacted it with a strip.

Of course, although the name of the p1842 musket looks like a standard equipment, in fact, each musket is made by hand. Although it is stipulated to be 557 inches in diameter, because the lathe accuracy of this era is not high, each barrel cannot guarantee its accuracy. Some are greater than 557 inches, and some are smaller than this size. In this way, each musket must be equipped with a bullet-making device. People who use this musket need to make the bullet head by themselves. They cannot use bullet heads made by others, otherwise there will be a bullet-hit explosion.

When the recruits loaded their guns and bullets, the commander ordered again.

"Recharge the fire hat!"

The fire hat is a key symbol of a firing musket and is much more useful than a flintlock rifle. The fire hat is used instead of guiding gunpowder and flintlock flint devices, which greatly improves the practicality of the battlefield and is a revolutionary invention of a musket.

The recruits moved the hammer away and carefully placed the fire hat into the bottom fire firing hole under the hammer.

The whole process of recruits from loading up the launching medicine, warheads, and then installing the fire cap takes about half a minute to one minute. An excellent musketeer can complete it three times in one minute, which is already the limit of the musketeer era.

Among Li Weiguo's army, veterans can launch about twice in one minute, and there are also soldiers who can launch three times in one minute, but the proportion is very small.

"Rise the gun!"

"preparation!"

"shooting!"

With the commander's order, the team of new recruits raised their guns, aimed, and then fired.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

As the soldiers pulled the trigger with their fingers, the hammer hit the bottom fire and ignited the gunpowder, firing out the lead bullet in the gun chamber.

But the muzzles of these rows of muzzles were sprayed out, some of which could even spray flames. These were all caused by the fact that the launching drugs were filled with too much or less.

Thirty meters away, there are dense human-shaped targets.

These human-shaped targets are very special and are very different from the shooting ranges that people know later generations. Many people who have shot targets in later generations know that there are generally only a row of convex ring-shaped targets with circles on the shooting range, and they are very far apart from each other, and the shooting distance is generally 100 meters.

The improvement of the shooting range was not on the whim of Li Weiguo, but a careful choice made by himself after he studied the line tactics of the musket era.

In the musket era, it was almost impossible for a soldier to score a number of rings. This is because they used a smoothbore gun. When the projectile was out of the bore, they might still be able to keep shooting in a straight line within 20 to 30 meters. Once it exceeds 30 meters, the bullets flew around. The number of rings was only the patent of high-precision rifles. Therefore, Li Weiguo did not use a convex ring line target, but was close to the actual combat requirements. He used a human-shaped target, and as long as he was on the target, he was considered qualified.

At the same time, there were a total of 500 human-shaped targets on the shooting range, which were built according to the standard system of a battalion of the Qing army and arranged according to the formation of the two armies when they confronted each other on the battlefield, which was close to the actual combat requirements.

Li Weiguo's purpose of this arrangement was to let the soldiers see how many individual targets they could hit, and on this basis, check the number of target bullets, and then divide them by three, basically the actual combat effectiveness of these new recruits on the battlefield.

As for why it is divided by two, it is actually very simple. If any army is usually trained and fired at a target rate of 100, it will be affected by various battlefield atmospheres (such as cowardice) on the real battlefield, which will prevent it from performing its normal level. This is why in a small-scale battle, both sides consumed hundreds of thousands of bullets, but in the end they found that not many people were killed. If a few bullets were killed as usual as usual training, wouldn’t it be invincible in the world? According to normal analysis, veterans can perform 60% of the normal level, and new recruits can perform 30% of the time.

Li Weiguo needs to know the actual combat effectiveness of his troops, so he will conduct target shooting training like this. In this way, he can evaluate what kind of enemies can fight and what kind of enemies should temporarily avoid, otherwise he will be seeking death.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

At this time, the first team finished shooting, the second team quickly opened fire, followed by the third team. The three teams rotated, and a total of three rounds were shot.

"Stop shooting!"

"Report the target!"

After a while, the target reporting personnel completed the count.

"Shot on the target at 25!"

Hearing this result, the recruits didn't know what was going on, and they were still muttering that who hit him.

But their commander turned pale and cursed, "What are you talking nonsense? Do you know what this means? It means that you have been wiped out! Your enemies have five hundred, but you only killed twenty-five people. And the enemies are only thirty meters away from you. After you three rounds of shooting, they rushed to you with bayonets. The remaining four hundred enemies will kill all of you with bayonets."

The recruits were so scared that their faces turned pale and showed heavy expressions.

"When you shoot, you lower your guns and see if you're all bullets hit the sky. You're not killing people here! Why are you still standing there? Each person has a thousand push-ups! You won't have a memory!" The commander cursed angrily, and then began to corporal punishment of the soldiers.

All of this was seen by Li Weiguo on the tower. He found that the shooting rate of targets was not high, whether it was a veteran or a new recruit.

At first he did not find the reason, so Li Weiguo experienced it himself. Soon he found that if he couldn't hold the gun when firing, the gun would jump up, and the bullet would easily hit the sky.

Later, Li Weiguo discovered that when the p1842 musket was fired, the muzzle was very flamed. This was not just because the gunpowder was filled with a lot of gunpowder, but the airtightness of the smoothbore gun itself was not enough, and the muzzle was bound to be fired. He found that after continuous shooting, his eyes could not withstand the violent flash of the muzzle flame and closed it tightly, and he couldn't see the target in front for a long time. At the same time, the airtightness at the bottom of the muzzle's bolt was not enough. While the muzzle was spraying fire and smoke, smoke would also come out from the bottom of the fire pit, and the airflow hit the eyes, making the eyes very painful. Therefore, many soldiers closed their eyes instantly when they shot, resulting in unstable muzzle and naturally could not hit the target.

How to solve this problem is directly related to the combat effectiveness of the Li family army. He knew that musketeers from various powers came like this, and they would close their eyes when they fired. However, they usually trained soldiers for five or six years or more, with rich experience, and even if they closed their eyes, they would not affect shooting. However, the soldiers of the Li family army were not good. The veterans of them had been in the army for less than a year, and the new soldiers had only been a month, so obviously they could not compare with the army of the great powers.

Suddenly, Li Weiguo felt the light thorn in his eyes, so he put on the sunglasses that Ba Weisi gave him.

This immediately gave Li Weiguo inspiration. He hurriedly tested the musket shooting again. This time he was wearing sunglasses. Whether it was the flame at the muzzle or the smoke flow that was not airtight enough, they were blocked by the sunglasses and no longer irritated the eyes, so he no longer had to close his eyes.

After discovering this secret, Li Weiguo suddenly thought that later American soldiers also wore sunglasses during battles, even at night when they were dark and languid. Those who didn't know thought that the US soldiers were pretending to be cool. In fact, sunglasses were the best way to protect their eyes from being hurt by the muzzle.

When this connection was made, Li Weiguo immediately had a solution in his mind.

So Li Weiguo quickly sent people to Shanghai Baweisi Glasses Store. At this time, Baweisi had not set off yet because the transportation was not developed this year and this year, and there were not many air tickets to and from China to the UK every day. The ships to the UK only had to wait until all the cabins were full before departure. Otherwise, if there were too few people and there was not enough capital, the captain would not drive the ship.

Although Ba Weisi bought a boat ticket the next day, he still had to wait, so he couldn't leave.

It just so happened that Li Weiguo sent someone to contact him and bought all the sunglasses in Ba Weisi's hand. These sunglasses were polished by Ba Weisi himself, and he also had a lot of sunglasses and glasses, all of which were bought by Li Weiguo.

At the same time, Li Weiguo also sent people to other concessions of the great powers to contact sunglasses and glass merchants, purchased a large number of sunglasses and glass materials from them, and then ordered people to polish them into sunglasses and distribute them to soldiers for use.

With sunglasses distributed to troops, soldiers no longer have to worry about the dazzling light of the muzzle or temporarily blurring their eyes when shooting. They can focus on aiming at the enemy and their hit rate will be greatly improved.

Seeing that the soldiers' shooting performance improved significantly after putting on sunglasses, Li Weiguo was immediately happy. It was so cool to think that he would lead this army with sunglasses to the battlefield. It was so cool, and it was exciting to think about it.

Just as Li Weiguo stepped up his training in the army, the Taiping Army captured Wuchang, and then 500,000 troops (involved refugees) captured Jiujiang along the Yangtze River, with great momentum.

Soon, the Governor of Liangjiang Lu Jianying sent a letter asking Li Weiguo to lead his regiment to Anqing to block the Taiping Army's advance eastward.

However, Li Weiguo deliberately refused to let the new army go to train and remained silent. After Lu Jianying urged many times but failed, Yi Xin, the head of the Military Affairs Office, recommended Li Weiguo as the magistrate of Shanghai to Xianfeng. Xianfeng reported accurately. The Military Affairs Office then issued a document to transfer Li Weiguo to Shanghai County Magistrate, which happened to be in Lu Jianying's hands.

As long as Li Weiguo is concerned, Lu Jianying has to ask about it, so he seized the official documents and forced Li Weiguo to send troops.

At this time, Li Weiguo was focused on the little knife club in Shanghai, so he naturally would not listen to Lu Jianying.

However, what Li Weiguo never expected was that when Lu Jianying saw that he could not mobilize Li Weiguo, he asked Liu Jianzhang to lead his regiment training to reinforce Anqing.

Although Liu Jianzhang was also a mortal enemy of Lu Jianying, he did not have the courage of Li Weiguo. Faced with the transfer order from his superiors, Liu Jianzhang dared not refuse to listen. He immediately led the newly formed regiment training with Liu He to leave Shanghai and go to Anqing to fight the enemy.

As soon as Liu Jianzhang left, Shanghai's troops were empty, and Xiaodao would suddenly become alive.

Li Weiguo knew that as soon as Liu Jianzhang left, Xiaodao would probably rebel soon, so he stepped up his military training and sent a note to the embassies of Britain, France and the United States in Shanghai, asking them to supply arms to Li Weiguo as the Shanghai County Magistrate.

The great powers of Britain, France, the United States and other countries all knew that the Taiping Army was very powerful and hesitated for a while in terms of war or harmony, so they attached importance to Li Weiguo's request and agreed to arms and supplies.

So, on the one hand, Li Weiguo purchased arms from the great powers, and on the other hand, he stepped up training the army and sharpened his sword, waiting for Xiaodao to rebel. In this way, even if Li Weiguo did not receive the transfer document from the Shanghai County Magistrate, he could send troops to occupy Shanghai with justification.

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