As the saying goes, if you have food on hand, don’t panic!
After solving the food problem, Li Xianzhong could free up his hands to do other things.
Although the "Zhongkai method" of grain he implemented will also be adjusted according to the fluctuations in grain prices in the capital and Jiangnan and changes in the purchase prices in Mongolia, it is not a problem to increase the grain reserves by tens of thousands of dan every month.
Starting next year, Xiao Glacier's climate impact will become more and more severe. Li Xianzhong vaguely remembers that Jianzhou will encounter an unprecedented drought next year, with almost no harvest.
These grains are worthless now, but they won’t be at this price next year.
At this time, the equipment that Yuan Yingtai had promised had been allocated. Other things were fine, except for the muskets issued by the Ministry of War.
After inspection, at least 100 blunderbuss were of poor quality and easy to explode, so we had to send these blunderbuss to the workshop in Pinglubao to have the blunderbuss tubes replaced.
Now the scale of Pinglu Fort has expanded a lot. Fan Wencheng took advantage of the opportunity to open the original road to recruit troops in Qinghe and directly recruited more than 8,000 refugees on Qinghe Road. Today, Pinglu Fort has reached a scale of 20,000 people. .
This place is already an out-and-out military production base, and a group of craftsmen mobilized by Yuan Yingtai this time have all been sent to Pinglu Fort.
Nowadays, Pinglu Castle can produce all kinds of equipment, from ordinary swords, guns, bows and arrows, to various armors, and basically all firearms can be produced.
It can be said that except that it cannot make artillery, it can basically make other things.
Pinglubao can now produce 200 muskets per month.
Not just bird guns, according to the "Artifact Manual" brought back by Li Xianzhong, after nearly 2 months of repeated experiments, the craftsmen of Pinlubao finally succeeded in producing a qualified Lumi gun.
It turned out that the quality of the materials they used before was not good, so the Lumi gun they built could not reach a range of 120 steps.
Later, it was discovered that the blunderbuss tube must be made of repeatedly forged fine steel, that is, made from hundreds of steel refinings, in order to meet the requirements of continuous shooting.
However, the production process of Lumi guns is much more complicated than that of bird guns, and the current production is only 30 guns a month.
No wonder Liu Gui, the former eunuch in charge of the Military War Bureau, was unwilling to take this job.
But I have to praise Liu Gui. Although the price is very high, 20 taels a shot, the quality of this Lumi gun is nothing to say.
During the Battle of Guangshun Pass, the musket was useless for several rounds, but the Lumi musket he built could still be fired continuously. In the end, it was forced to give up because the barrel of the musket was damaged due to too many uses.
Moreover, it was completed ahead of schedule. The Lumi Gun, which originally took three months to be delivered, was now delivered in two months.
Nowadays, Li Xianzhong, who is rich and wealthy, originally wanted to order another 1,000 rods, but Liu Gui was unwilling to take the job anymore. Even when Li Xianzhong offered him an additional 22 taels of silver, he refused because he had other tasks to build the war bureau. .
Finally, under Li Xianzhong's persistence, Eunuch Liu finally decided to send several "technical instructors" to Pinglubao to guide them in building their own Lumi gun.
I believe that after the arrival of these experts from the war bureau, the output should be able to increase further.
Although the Lumi gun has better performance, the bird gun has low cost and high output, so it is still the main firearm of the Kaiyuan Ming army.
This time, more than 5,000 pieces of heavy-duty cloth armor were removed from the annihilated Tatars. Although many of them were damaged, they were still usable after repairs.
This also increased the armor coverage rate of other defenders.
Although there are still more than 9,000 new soldiers, Kaiyuanlu has now returned to its strength before being attacked by the Tatars.
Because Zhajia has not been greatly supplemented, the Liaodong Iron Cavalry can still only have 2,500 men; however, the assault battalion has been expanded to 3,000 men, and the Pinglu Guards have also been expanded to 1,500 men.
These three troops can be regarded as Li Xianzhong's special forces.
The two cavalry still fought in the same way as before, with the light and heavy cavalry assisting each other.
The point is that the Pinglu Guards were transformed by Li Xianzhong into a regiment mainly composed of firearms.
The current Pingluo Guard consists of 200 shield soldiers, 600 spearmen, 600 gunners and 100 gunners.
In terms of firearms, it is currently equipped with 400 Rumi blunderbuss, 200 bird blunderbuss, and 20 squatting tiger cannons.
With the current rate of fire of firearms, it is difficult to function in the wild.
However, with the cooperation of large shield soldiers and spear soldiers, they still have a little bit of field combat ability.
When facing the enemy, the large shield soldiers were in front of the formation, followed by several rows of spearmen behind them, the musketrymen in the back, and finally the cannonmen.
Although the number of gunmen in the current mainstream European phalanx far outnumbers the spearmen, usually by 4 to 1 or even 5 to 1.
However, taking into account the current differences in firearm performance, there are also differences in the actual number of equipment of the Ming army and combat opponents.
Li Xianzhong did not copy the Spanish Grand Phalanx or the Swedish Gustavian Phalanx. More spearmen were also used to attack the Jianlu cavalry.
Of course, Li Xianzhong currently has no idea of using them to fight with the Jianlu cavalry in the field. They are more used to defend the city. This configuration is also a golden configuration for defending the city.
The generals of both Kaiyuan and Tieling groups were also experienced battlefield generals, and the training of other units was left to them.
What Li Xianzhong could do for them was to try his best to replenish them with some good equipment, so this time the defenders at Kaiyuan's three passes also issued 200 bird muskets and a batch of granulated black powder.
After all, their mission is to guard the city gates, and the task of attacking must still be left to the two cavalry units.
Although the assault battalion is now the main force drawn by Xiong Tingbi from other armies, it can no longer be allocated according to the original proportion of troops.
However, in order to encourage the generals to train well, Li Xianzhong decided to hold a major competition every three months to determine the share ratio of each department.
The competition mainly consists of two events: one is queue training, and the second is confrontation competition.
During the queue drill, Li Xianzhong, Li Sanshun, and Cha Zhongwen scored each department respectively, and then decided the order of the confrontation competition based on the ranking.
Soon each department chanted slogans and conducted drills one after another.
This kind of drill mainly depends on the uniformity and the mental state of the soldiers.
Nowadays, each battalion is mainly composed of new recruits, and the overall mental outlook is still good. In fact, it is difficult to distinguish the superiors.
Clothing becomes a very crucial factor.
If you wear neat clothes and armor, you will look very neat.
On the contrary, if you dress in a variety of ways, no matter how neat your movements are, you will still look a little messy.
The four teams of Kaiyuan Sanguan and Tieling Acropolis are indeed good at this. They all sent Ming troops wearing red mandarin duck battle coats.
I saw a group of Ming troops wearing red mandarin duck jackets conducting drills neatly. Their team was orderly and marched in unison, exuding a sense of military majesty in their movements.
Their steps are steady and powerful, like flowing clouds and flowing water. Every step landed with a sound, uniform, like a ball of red flames.
Overall, Li Xianzhong is quite satisfied. No matter what the actual combat power is, at least it looks like that.
Soon these four teams were successfully ranked in the top 4.
The next step is to get serious and enter the confrontational competition.
The rule is that each team sends 50 soldiers for direct confrontation. Those who fall to the ground will withdraw directly. In the end, the side with more survivors wins.
Of course, for safety reasons, these soldiers can only choose wooden swords, guns, clubs and shields.
There was not much suspense in the first round of competition. This kind of confrontation was about the strength of the elite servants.
The top four teams easily defeated the other four teams to advance.
Soon Mao Wenlong's Guangshun Pass faced Gao Mingtai's Xin'an Pass.
Both sides selected the 50 most elite soldiers under their command.
The generals on both sides wore fish scale armor, and the rest of the soldiers also wore heavy cloth armor.
At this time, Mao Wenlong did not choose to take the initiative, but formed a half-moon defensive formation.
Seeing Mao Wenlong's side forming a half-moon defensive formation, Gao Mingtai immediately led Xin'an Pass to set up a "Crane Wing Formation" and advance forward.
"Crane Wing Formation", as the name suggests, is like the spread wings of a crane, focusing on outflanking the two wings!
Soon the 50 people from Xin'anguan, led by Gao Mingtai, attacked the opponent.
When Gao Mingtai and the others were approaching Guangshun Pass, they heard Mao Wenlong shouting: "Change the formation!"
The originally half-moon-shaped formation suddenly turned into four independent mandarin duck formations.
The "Yuanyang Formation" consists of 11 people in a team, with the captain at the front, and the next two people, one holding the long card and the other holding the shield card.
The long card player holds a long shield to block the Japanese pirates' arrows and spears, while the rattan card hand holds a lightweight rattan shield with a javelin and a waist knife. The long card hand and rattan card hand mainly cover the advancement of the rear team. In addition to covering, the rattan card hand can also engage in close combat with the enemy.
The two of them are holding wolf bamboo in their hands. The wolf bamboo is made from moso bamboo grown in the south. It is old and solid, and the end of the bamboo is beveled into a sharp shape, leaving sharp branches around it. Each wolf bamboo is 3 meters long. On the left and right, the wolf swordsman uses the sharp blade at the front of the wolf sword to assassinate the enemy to cover the advancement of the shield hand and the attack of the spearman behind.
Then came four spearmen with spears in their hands, two on each side, taking care of the shield bearers and wolf bearers on the left and right in front respectively.
Following up are two soldiers holding "boring palladium" to serve as security, support and other tasks. If the enemy attacks in a roundabout way, the short-handed soldier rushes forward with a short sword to kill the enemy.
There is a clear division of labor among various weapons. As long as everyone is proficient in the operation of their own type, the key to effectively killing the enemy lies in overall cooperation and the execution of orders and prohibitions.
Of course, due to weapon restrictions at this time, Mao Wenlong's mandarin duck formation could only be replaced by wooden shields, wooden spears, and wooden sticks.
Although the effect is somewhat compromised, the melee combat characteristics of the Yuanyang Formation can still be brought out.
At this time, Gao Mingtai and others who entered the formation were suddenly attacked from several directions. Although they were wearing heavy cloth armor, they were constantly hit by these wooden sticks and wooden guns, which still caused some soldiers to withdraw from the battle.
When Gao Mingtai saw something was wrong, he quickly asked the remaining soldiers to withdraw from the formation and regroup to confront Guangshun Pass.
But the characteristic of the Yuanyang Formation is its flexibility.
The "Yuanyang Formation" not only closely combines spears and shields, long and short, fully exerting the effectiveness of various weapons, but also the formation can be changed flexibly.
The large formation of 11 people can be divided into small "two-talented formation" and "three-talented formation" according to the situation.
When Mao Wenlong saw that the opponent had reorganized, he immediately ordered the Yuanyang Formation to disperse into small "Two Talents Formation" or "Three Talents Formation" to separate the opponent's formation.
After a while, Gao Mingtai and others were defeated.
Gao Mingtai said: "This is Qi Shaobao's mandarin duck formation, it's really unpredictable. Gao Mou lost this game unjustly!"
In the end, Mao Wenlong got his wish and took the first place, Tielingwei guerrilla Li Ketai took second place, Zhenbeiguan's Li Guanfeng tied for third place with Xin'anguan's Gao Mingtai.
As the rankings of each town were determined, they also received their own share of "dividends."
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I fell asleep while posting the second chapter, so I posted it a bit late. Thank you everyone for your subscription support!
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