Chapter 2586: Reserve system, hot recruitment scene
In fact, Ying Hao had already thought about future army expansion plans in advance before the army expansion.
In Ying Hao's vision, after two years of rest, Da Qin could expand its army and expand it to 1.4 million in one year, including 950,000 light and heavy infantry, 300,000 light and heavy cavalry, and 300,000 water. Army 150,000.
But compared to the development of Great Qin, Ying Hao's army expansion plan was still too conservative.
Great Qin's development in the past two years or nearly three years has achieved results in all aspects much faster than Ying Hao expected, especially in sea trade, which accounted for almost half of Shenwu's total financial revenue of Great Qin in a year.
On the surface, the Nanyang countries appear to be extremely primitive and backward, but they are extremely rich in resources and have a huge demand for all kinds of commodities from the civilized and advanced Qin Dynasty. Therefore, they have become the largest commodity dumping ground in the Qin Dynasty.
In the first year of Shenwu, Ye Qingmei went to the West for the first time, and the value of the goods he brought back accounted for 50% of Da Qin's total annual income;
In the second year of Shenwu, Zheng He led the second voyage to the West.
Due to the rapid development of Da Qin in this year, even if the weight of the goods sold during the second voyage to the West was 20% more than that of the first voyage, it only accounted for 40% of Da Qin's total revenue for the year;
In the third year of Shenwu, as Wu, Chu, and Ming joined the sea trade ranks, they naturally also seized a certain proportion of Da Qin's market share.
However, due to Ying Hao's advance planning, Daqin and various countries in Nanyang have signed trade agreements with fixed transaction quotas every year. In addition, the products he sells are of better quality, so he is not afraid of competing with Wu Chuming and the other two countries.
Even if Wu and Chu tried their best, they only took away 20% of the market share, and Daqin still monopolized 80% of the profits from sea trade.
Seeing that Wu Chuming and the Three Kingdoms could not take away Daqin's market share, they had no choice but to open up new markets and increase their total share by expanding the total transaction volume of sea trade.
In this regard, Da Qin not only did not stop it, but was also happy to see it. After all, the maritime trade market was far from saturated, and the markets currently expanded by the Wu, Chu and Ming Three Kingdoms would naturally belong to Da Qin after the world was unified.
Qin's third voyage to the West was still led by Zheng He, with Shen Wansan and Magellan as assistants.
Zheng He has not returned yet, and it is estimated that the proceeds from this voyage will account for at least 35% of Daqin's total revenue this year.
From 50% in the first year, it was only 3.5% in the third year.
Great Qin's annual sea trade revenue is increasing, but its financial share is getting lower and lower. This just shows how fast Great Qin is developing.
In the past three years, Daqin built academic palaces, repaired Chi Road, regulated the Yellow River, dug the Yinshan Canal, and reclaimed an average of 50 million acres of fertile land every year. Major projects that benefit the country and the people were steadily advanced.
In contrast, although maritime trade revenue is also increasing year by year, the growth rate is not as rapid as the country's development, so the total proportion has decreased.
Three years of rapid development have made Daqin's fiscal revenue almost double what it was three years ago.
This was also the reason why Ying Hao dared to expand his army by 700,000 at once, raising the total strength to 1.55 million.
In fact, with the current national strength and total population of the Qin Dynasty, not to mention an army of 1.55 million, even 1.8 million can be afforded. If the belt is tightened, the army can barely be expanded to 2 million, but the country Development can also come to a standstill.
Ying Hao did not think that the destruction of the seven kingdoms of Shu, Chu, Wei, Song, Wu, Ming, and Sui would require the use of two million troops, and 1.55 million would be more than enough.
Letting an army of 1.15 million charge forward and leaving 400,000 troops to guard the rear is considered to be leading the waves steadily, and there will definitely be a lot of surrendered troops in the process of unification.
Therefore, expanding the army to 1.55 million is enough, and there is no need to recruit more troops.
Wouldn’t it be nice for him to use the wasted military expenditure to develop domestic affairs?
Da Qin's current total military strength is 850,000. If it directly expands its army by 700,000, it will be equivalent to increasing its size by 82%. This is a huge project and naturally cannot be completed in a short time.
As for the specific matters of army expansion and the proportion of water cavalry in the three armies, Ying Hao, Prime Minister Wang Meng, six ministers, Guo Jia, Jia Xiu and other first-rank officials spent a whole day discussing it.
In the end, Ying Hao made the decision to conduct a nationwide conscription, and in the next year, the army would be expanded to 700,000, and the corresponding training matters would be completed.
However, in order to conceal the specific number of military expansion, Da Qin will secretly open and build 70 military camps in the mountainous areas of more than 20 densely populated cities such as Luoyang, Chang'an, Jinyang, Nanyang, Xiangyang, Yecheng, etc., each military camp can accommodate Ten thousand troops for secret training of new recruits.
Among them, Luoyang alone will directly build fifteen military camps, while Chang'an, Xiangyang, and Yecheng will all have ten.
As for the distribution of the thirteen cavalry training camps, there are four in Bingzhou and three in each of the three Youlianghe states.
With this arrangement, even if all countries find out that Great Qin will expand its army, since Great Qin is expanding its army secretly and will not reveal the amount of its army expansion, and the new army is distributed across the country, all countries will naturally not know how many troops Great Qin has expanded.
After the army expansion is completed, Qin's 1.55 million army will be divided into the following categories: 1.1 million light and heavy infantry, 300,000 light and heavy cavalry, and 150,000 navy.
In this new army expansion plan, compared with Ying Hao's previous army expansion plan, the number of water and cavalry arms remained unchanged, while only the number of infantry increased by a full 150,000.
After all, after the war of unification begins, siege warfare will definitely be inevitable, and infantry is the main force in siege warfare.
In addition, after the army expansion plan is completed, the Qin army will also have a full 300,000 cavalry, reaching the highest number of cavalry in history.
Whether it was the Qin Shihuang period or the Han Dynasty Emperor Wu period, the number of cavalry was far less than that of the Ying Hao period.
With these 300,000 cavalry, after unification, Ying Hao can easily destroy the Yuan and Qing Dynasties and expand the Qin territory to the entire East Asia and Northeast Asia.
As for the navy, before the Qin Dynasty there were only 50,000 in total, but now it has expanded to 150,000. The total strength has tripled that of before, even surpassing Wu and Chu in the south of the Yangtze River.
Before the Qin Dynasty, there were only two water stronghold bases in Beihai and Tianjin, which naturally could not accommodate so many naval forces. Now, six new water stronghold bases are opened in Bohai, Liaodong, Liaoxi, Lelang, Edo, and Luzon, for a total of eight major water bases. Water village.
Among them, there are six bases in Beihai, Bohai, Tianjin, Liaoxi, Liaodong and Lelang, all distributed around the Yellow Sea area.
If Great Qin could capture Donglai again, it would be able to seal off the entire Yellow Sea area and make the Yellow Sea the inner lake of Great Qin.
However, in order to achieve this goal, the Ming Navy must be defeated.
Beihai, Tianjin, Liaodong, Bohai, Liaoxi, Liaodong, and Edo. These seven water villages all station 20,000 naval troops, while Luzon has 10,000 naval troops stationed.
Among the 150,000 naval troops of the Qin Dynasty, 120,000 were placed in the mainland, and the remaining 30,000 were placed in Yingzhou and Luzon.
Yingzhou and Luzon are related to the lifeline of Daqin's sea trade. They send a large amount of benefits to Daqin every year. There is no room for any mistakes. It is very necessary to keep 30,000 navy troops stationed.
In addition, four of the six major water villages in Da Qin were placed in Youzhou.
It is conceivable how the three countries of Jin, Qing, and North Korea would react after learning about it. They would probably be worried and unable to sleep for several days.
——————————
A few days later, Da Qin announced its military expansion, but did not announce the specific number of troops. It only announced that it would recruit troops from the private sector.
After learning the news of the expansion, the people in all the counties and prefectures of Daqin were all excited.
You know, Great Qin's military pay is the highest among all countries. The military pay a person can get from serving as a soldier for one year is enough to comfortably support his whole family for a year and a half, and the food in the military camp is better than at home.
In addition, whether they were killed in battle or disabled, they would still receive pensions.
Disabled veterans will also be properly resettled, and they will basically return to their hometowns to work in low-level positions such as village chiefs, mayors, and militia instructors.
Serving as a soldier in Da Qin is a high-paying and very honorable job, so the people of Da Qin are completely different from the people in other countries who are against being a soldier.
Not only did the people of Great Qin not dislike being soldiers, but most of the men were looking forward to being soldiers and thinking about going to the battlefield to kill the enemy and make meritorious deeds. This was also the fastest way to make meritorious deeds.
But it is not easy to join the army in Da Qin.
Ying Hao established an extremely sound reserve system for Great Qin. Militiamen, county soldiers, police officers, veterans, etc. all belonged to the reserve ranks.
Today, the total military strength of the Qin Dynasty is 850,000, and the national militia, county soldiers, police officers and other reserves for maintaining public order also number nearly 300,000.
This does not include the 300,000 veterans laid off.
Once a war breaks out and frontline troops suffer too many casualties, the military will call in reserves from the rear to supplement the troops.
As for the cost of supporting these reserves?
First of all, militiamen and veterans are not required to receive military pay at all.
As for county soldiers and police officers, although they need to be paid salaries, they are only one-third of those of the regular army.
In other words, the cost of raising 300,000 county soldiers and police officers is only equivalent to 100,000 regular troops, but it maintains law and order across the country. This can be said to be quite cheap and cost-effective.
Of course, the combat effectiveness of the public security reserve forces is obviously much weaker than that of the regular army. If they actually go to the battlefield, they can only defend the city. In frontal combat, they are destined to be unable to defeat the regular armies of various countries.
Even if the Qin Dynasty recruits troops, it is first recruited from the reserves. Therefore, if ordinary people want to become soldiers, they must first become reserves such as militiamen, county soldiers, and police officers, and receive three months of training.
However, although Da Qin had a large reserve force, the number of them converted into regular troops was not large. This was because Da Qin had a tradition of replenishing the army's gaps by retraining and recruiting surrendered troops.
Before the surrendered army was officially established, there was no military pay or pension at all.
When the official establishment is communicated, it can take as short as three or four months or as long as one and a half years, which can save a lot of military expenses.
This is also officially believed to be the case. The generals of the Qin army generally like to recruit surrendered troops to supplement their strength. Naturally, there is no need for soldiers recruited from the reserves.
The Qin Army's battle damage rate has never been high. In most cases, the army's shortfalls can be completely replenished just by recruiting surrendered troops. However, sometimes it is not enough, so some quotas will be allocated to reserves.
Therefore, whenever Great Qin recruits troops, even the reserve forces have to rush to sign up. Even five or six people compete for a spot. They are then selected through layers of physical endurance, etc., and only those who stand out can become the regular army.
Only when the number of reserves is insufficient, Da Qin will recruit troops from ordinary people.
But whether it was before or after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Great Qin's reserves were never enough, which resulted in ordinary people having no way to join the army even if they wanted to.
But Qin's military expansion this time is different. The huge number of 700,000 new troops is not enough even if all the reserves are added together, so this time the army will be recruited directly from the people.
Ordinary people did not know the inside story. They only knew that the imperial court had finally recruited soldiers from the private sector. Once they became regular soldiers, they would be able to live a good life. Therefore, they naturally could not miss such a good opportunity, so they rushed to the recruitment station to sign up.
Even if their home is dozens of miles away from the recruitment station, it is still difficult to extinguish the enthusiasm of the people. They have to travel dozens of miles across mountains and rivers, even if they walk for several days, to sign up.
"Sir, take me in, take me in, I can lift fifty kilograms of stone locks."
"A fifty-jin stone lock is nothing. I can lift a sixty-jin stone lock."
"I can shoot a powerful bow with just one stone."
"It's just a stone, but it deserves to be called a strong bow? I can shoot two stones."
"Sir, I've walked fifty miles on the mountain road. If you don't accept me, I won't be able to go home."
Situations like this are not uncommon at recruiting stations across Daqin.
In just three days after the military expansion order was promulgated, nearly one million people from all over the Qin Dynasty signed up to join the army, and this was just the beginning.
