Valley Emperor

Because the recruits of the Fifth Infantry Regiment will not be recruited in Xingquan Mansion, but in Liping Mansion. At present, the many recruiting stations of the Ministry of War in Liping Mansion have already recruited about 2,000 new recruits for the new army of the Tang Dynasty. Recruits are trained in basic physical and tactical training in two recruit training camps under the Privy Council Training Division.

It is expected that in half a month, the Training Division will be able to deliver the first batch of hundreds of recruits who have completed basic training to the Fifth Infantry Regiment. Within a month, the Training Division will be able to provide the Fifth Infantry Regiment with a full number of soldiers!

Not only the recruits are in Liping House, the 5th Infantry Regiment will also be stationed in Liping House in the next few months, so Zhou Yibao and the others naturally need to leave for Liping House.

Along with Zhou Yibao and the others, there was also the Fourth Infantry Regiment, which had just been fully staffed and had just received a batch of ordnance.

The Fourth Infantry Regiment is also a newly formed unit, but unlike the other four Infantry Regiments, only one battalion in this Fourth Infantry Regiment is a regular battalion, and the remaining two battalions are garrison battalions.

The 10th Infantry Battalion under the 4th Infantry Regiment was already fully staffed. Although there were only 100 muskets, they were barely able to fire. The shortage will be discussed later.

Coupled with the two already complete garrison battalions, it is considered to have preliminary combat effectiveness, and can go to Liping House in advance to prepare for the subsequent battle against the Ming army in the provincial capital.

The 4th Infantry Regiment and the 5th Infantry Regiment went to Liping House one after another, so that there was only one Third Infantry Regiment and one Guard Battalion left in the huge Xingquan House.

And these two troops, Li Xuan is not planning to move for the time being!

On the one hand, the expansion of the 3rd Infantry Regiment has not actually been completed. In the early days, personnel and ordnance were given priority to the 1st and 2nd Infantry Regiments, even the 10th Infantry Battalion in the 4th Infantry Regiment, priority higher than them.

Therefore, it will take some time for the Third Infantry Regiment to expand so that it can be fully loaded.

Aside from this factor, it is also related to Li Xuan himself.

As the emperor, Li Xuan always had to keep an army by his side as a precaution. Now that there are enemies all around, and there are no two or three thousand people around, Li Xuan is not at ease.

Besides, Huguang is to the east of Xingquan Mansion. Although Li Xuan doesn't plan to go to Huguang, the mountain road to come from Huguang is difficult, but who knows if the officials over Huguang will get dizzy and send troops to kill them. Therefore, it is necessary to leave an army to defend the hometown and defend the basic plan of Xingquan Mansion.

However, even if the expansion plan of the Fifth Infantry Regiment has been determined, for the Datang New Army, the gap in strength is still very large.

There's no way, who made the Tang Dynasty surrounded by enemies? In the south, east and west, it's all the territory of the Dameng Dynasty, and all directions are full of Ming troops. Guangxi, and Huguang to the east.

Among them, the army assembled by the governor of Guizhou, Zhu Zhihai, is said to be as high as 50,000 people. This is only less than 10,000 people for the current force. Then all the troops are fully loaded, and it is only 10,000 to 2,000 people. The new army of the Tang Dynasty The military disadvantage is simply too great.

Therefore, the new army of the Tang Dynasty, especially the high-level people, never forget to expand the army.

No, the Fifth Infantry Regiment has just decided to form a plan, and there is not even a single soldier. The Operations Department has already proposed the idea of ​​forming a new unit, and proposed to form the Sixth Infantry Regiment to deal with the huge Ming army. .

Seeing this plan, Li Xuan threw it aside without thinking about it!

Expand the army?

What a joke, it can be said that the source of soldiers in Xingquan Mansion is almost exhausted. Nearly 8,000 soldiers have been recruited from a population of more than 300,000. This is almost all qualified soldiers. , Even if there are population resources in Liping House, the new army of the Tang Dynasty has only occupied the eastern part of Liping House, and even the city has not been taken down, let alone the western part of Liping House.

It is not easy to recruit thousands of qualified recruits.

And even if the soldiers are solved, the problem of ordnance is also difficult to solve. The output of muskets is only so little. Now, among so many troops of the Datang New Army, the First Infantry Regiment and the Second Infantry Regiment are all fully loaded. Although the Fourth Infantry Regiment has only one regular infantry battalion, even if the regiment's grenadier team is added, the required muskets are no more than 300, but they still lack 200 guns.

As for the 3rd Infantry Regiment, it just ran out of guns. At present, the 3rd Infantry Regiment only had 100 muskets from the original 2nd Mixed Battalion, and the lack of 600 muskets.

As for the newly established Fifth Infantry Regiment, there is no gun at all!

In this case, he came to rush to expand the army!

At present, the workshop of the Ministry of Industry, even if it adopts the flow-type production, the monthly output of the firearm manufacturer in Zhengtai County is only more than 200 pieces. It has been put into production, but the output has also reached more than 200. If the two musket workshops add up, the monthly output is probably more than 400.

Although the Ministry of Industry said that the output can reach 500 pieces next month, it can reach more than 700 pieces in the next month.

But that's all in the future. Who's to say? In the current Tang Dynasty, the monthly output of muskets is more than 400, and the muskets required by an infantry regiment need about 700.

In other words, the current production of muskets in the Tang Dynasty will take nearly two months to meet the needs of an infantry regiment's expansion.

What's more, the musket is actually a consumable item. Whether it is training or fighting, the loss of this musket is quite large, unless there is no live ammunition training, and no shooting is required in battle.

Therefore, even if the production of muskets in the Tang Dynasty has doubled, it is still seriously insufficient for the needs of the new Tang Dynasty.

At present, among the units of the Datang New Army, the 1st Infantry Regiment and the 2nd Infantry Regiment have achieved the full complement of guns and artillery, the 3rd Infantry Regiment is still short of 600 muskets, and the 4th Infantry Regiment is still short of 200 guns. Musket, the 5th Infantry Regiment also lacked seven hundred muskets.

Well, we have to include Li Xuan's personal guard battalion. The personal guard battalion is the same as the regular battalion. It has five teams, two of which are musket teams, and it is also a grenadier team. The entire battalion must be full. More than 200 guns are needed, and now there are only half of them.

Adding up like this, it will be found that the firearms gap of the entire Datang New Army is as high as 1,600!

Well, this does not include the loss of the entire army's daily training and combat. If this is part of it, three or four hundred will have to be added.

That is to say, just with the current size of the Datang New Army, there is still a gap of almost 2,000 muskets. According to the current musket production capacity, it will take five months to meet the demand, even if the Ministry of Industry promises that the next The monthly output reaches 500, and the monthly production capacity can reach 700, but it will take more than four months to produce so many muskets.

In other words, the current Datang New Army has already wrapped up the production capacity of muskets for the next four months, and then expand the sentence? Could it be that the soldiers are going to take a training stick to the battlefield?

But Zeng Ziwen's words made Li Xuan find a new idea of ​​​​expanding the army. Zeng Ziwen suggested that the regular infantry battalion should not continue to expand, which would cost too much.

But the troops can continue to expand. They have seized a lot of cold weapons from the Ming army. Now they are all piled up in the warehouse and moldy. As for the recruiting of soldiers, it is difficult to recruit, but after the capture of Liping Mansion, this will become a problem. There must be more soldiers.

Therefore, Zeng Ziwen suggested that he should play and build troops equipped with pure cold weapons.

After Zeng Ziwen said this, Li Xuan suddenly realized, c'mon, why didn't I think, why should the army expand to get musketeers and artillerymen?

Swords, shields, spearmen, etc. can be obtained. Just give them a notched iron sword captured from the Ming army, rusty spears, and tattered armor, and then pull them out. Who dares to say that they are not the army?

As for the combat effectiveness, um, it doesn't seem to be a big problem, because Zeng Ziwen said: Even the troops with pure cold weapons are not necessarily worse than the soldiers of the Ming army guards!

Because the pure cold weapon troops of the Datang New Army also recruited soldiers for training. The difference between them and regular infantry battalions is that they do not have muskets. What's more, even in regular infantry battalions, the proportion of musket soldiers is only half. The remaining half are still spearmen and sword and shield soldiers.

For this reason, Li Xuan calculated that such a cold weapon infantry battalion, except that it is not equipped with muskets, still conducts training according to the regular infantry battalion, and the quality of the soldiers should not be a problem.

In this way, if the production of muskets will increase in the future, and if two hundred musketeers are assigned to these cold weapon infantry battalions, wouldn't it be possible to get another regular infantry battalion soon?

The more Li Xuan thought about it, the more excited he became, and after three days of discussions with Zeng Ziwen and a group of officers from the Combat Department, he came up with a plan to build a 'reserve camp'.

The reserve battalion, as the name suggests, is the back of the regular battalion. The soldiers are mainly from newly recruited soldiers. The preparation of the reserve battalion follows the regular infantry battalion. , a team of light armored swordsmen and shields, and a team of archers.

Its organization is similar to that of the garrison battalion. The only difference is that the soldiers of the two are different. Almost all the soldiers in the garrison battalion are prisoners of the Ming army, while the troops of the reserve battalion are newly recruited new soldiers.

The main task is to cooperate with the main force to fight. At the same time, when the main force is damaged in battle, and the rear training department cannot replenish the main force in time, it will recruit troops to be added to the main force.

In this way, the expansion of the army will not be affected by the production of guns and artillery at all. As for the cold weapons required by the reserve camp, the new army of the Tang Dynasty has many kinds of cold weapons seized from the Ming army, although the quality is not good. land, but barely usable.

As soon as the plan for the preparatory camp came out, Li Xuan waved his pen, and immediately planned to build ten preparatory camps!

And Li Xuan, who made this decision, did not consider the feelings of the tax department at this time. As soon as the people from the tax department heard about the military, a few days later, they came out with an expanded total of dozens of battalions, with a total of 5,000. After the people's plan, the officials from the top and bottom of the tax department all looked like their dead parents.

Ma Dan, one mouth is the plan to expand the army with about 5,000 people. Even if these reserve camps don't need muskets and artillery, it is possible that they don't need to eat and drink!

Expand the army every day, you let them go there to get so much food!

No matter how awesome our tax inspection team is, they won't be able to loot so much food in a short period of time!