Outside Fengyang City, by the Feishui River.
The flags are fluttering and the hunting dogs are dancing. Under the scorching sun in early July, the campus was full of tigers and trees.
The five thousand officers and soldiers of the "Proton Army" were all wearing heavy-weight and not very breathable cloth-covered iron armor, wearing iron helmets, holding long guns, or carrying turtledoves on their shoulders, and stood in silence without saying a word.
Five thousand-man battalion phalanx and fifty centurions formed a perfect phalanx formation.
Although autumn has entered the seventh month of the lunar calendar, and it is now the Little Ice Age with a relatively cold climate, the Fengyang area is not the North after all. At noon every day, the temperature is still quite high, not to mention that these "protons" are fully clothed and basking in the sun... and they stay in the sun for two hours! Even if the cloth armor is hot from the sun, even if the clothes on the body are soaked, even if drops of sweat fall down the face that has been tanned by the sun, these should be pampered, enjoying life, and waiting quietly. The nobles and hereditary military ministers from the southeast or their nephews who came to be slaughtered by the soldiers of the Qing Dynasty were still struggling to persevere!
Before they were "tied" by the tyrant Zhu Youjian, they really couldn't even think about the pain of standing in formation under the scorching sun for most of the day!
In front of the five square formations is a square platform made of wood. The stage was empty except for two men wearing plate armor, one large and one small, both holding sword hilts and standing straight. The two people's standing postures were no worse than the five thousand protons below.
The big one and the small one are of course the Ming Emperor Zhu Youjian and the emperor's nephew Zhu Cixiang.
The father and son, like the five thousand proton army below, have been standing here for two hours. They watched the five thousand people march in, spread out their formation, and then stood still.
"Brother Chun," Zhu Youjian suddenly spoke, "Is it hot?"
"Hot!" Zhu Cixi replied.
"Are you afraid of the heat?" Zhu Youjian asked again.
"Afraid!" Zhu Cixi's answer was straightforward.
"Then why don't you leave?" Zhu Youjian asked again.
"My son can't leave!" Zhu Cihong said, "This is my responsibility!"
"Then do you know what the duties of the Emperor and Kunimoto are?"
Zhu Cixiang said: "Select talents and appoint them, reward merits and punish demerits, and make the sages become capable ministers, so that the capable ministers will be loyal to the king's industry."
Zhu Youjian finally asked: "How can we do a good job in selecting talents and appointing talents, and rewarding merit and punishing those who have failed?"
"Of course, he must know military affairs, financial management, farmland and water conservancy, and the affairs of foreign countries." Zhu Cixiang said, "If the king does not know military affairs, wealth, farming, and diplomacy, but only knows the principles of saints, he cannot be a wise king. , can only be a foolish king!"
Zhu Youjian nodded. These principles were taught to him by Nizi in his previous life, and he will teach them to Nizi in this life!
"Brother Chun," Zhu Youjian said, "it is not easy to be a king. It is like walking on thin ice. If you are not careful, you will be doomed... And caution and carelessness are actually knowledge and ignorance. How can those who don't know the ice know the ice? How thick is it? How do you know where you can go and where you can't go? The reason why the state of this dynasty is weak is because there are many kings who don't know. They don't know how to fight, manage finances, and farm, and naturally they don't distinguish between loyalty and treachery. So for the king You must be eager to learn, because there is no end to learning, and you will always encounter things you don’t understand. When you encounter them, you must learn and apply them now. It doesn’t matter if you are not good at learning, but you must understand. Only if you understand, you will know that among the officials, Whoever is pretending to understand is truly proficient.”
"My father's lesson must be remembered by my sons and ministers," Zhu Cihong said.
Zhu Youjian added: "Brother Chun, you are smart, eager to learn, and physically strong, so I have high requirements for you. Not only must you be knowledgeable, but you must also be proficient in two of the most important knowledge for running a country. These two are the most important. One kind of knowledge is to use troops; the other is to gather wealth.
I'm not good at amassing money either, so you have to figure it out yourself. But I can talk to you about the use of troops. The king's use of troops is divided into generals and generals...Those Confucian scholars who teach us usually don't understand generals, so they only use examples from history books of people who are good at generals. Fool us.
But if you don't know how to generals, you can't generals... The emperor of the Han Dynasty rose up by killing the white snake, pacified Qin and destroyed Chu and established the world. During this period, he fought many battles and faced battles. If he didn't know the soldiers, he would have died long ago.
In the first year of Emperor Taichu of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty first established the Jianzhang Camp and Cavalry. He also took the descendants of the soldiers who died in the army and raised them as Yulin officers. They taught the five soldiers and named them Yulin Orphans. Emperor Wu could do such a thing, which shows that he also knows how to fight. As for the later Emperors Guangwu of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Wei Dynasty, Emperor Xuan of the Jin Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Song Dynasty, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Taizu of the Song Dynasty... until Taizu, Chengzu and I of this dynasty, who can not only generals but also soldiers? So starting from you, from now on, our country, the Ming Dynasty, must know its soldiers and be able to fight as much as possible. "
"I know, I must learn the art of war." Zhu Cihong said.
Zhu Youjian smiled, then turned his gaze to the "Proton Army" soldiers below who were still basking in the sun, and nodded: "Today was not bad...no one fainted, such soldiers can go into battle!" "
Wearing armor that weighs dozens of kilograms and is not very ventilated, and being exposed to the sun for two or three hours is a great test for physical strength and willpower. If you are not in good physical condition, you will have to risk your life.
And this kind of seemingly inhumane training is necessary for the square infantry - the key to the battle between infantry and cavalry is not to resist cavalry attacks or cavalry fire at all, but to resist the enemy one after another. wheel attack.
The cavalry is a unit that can move quickly on the battlefield, but once the infantry forms a formation, it is difficult to move - line infantry that throws away their armor and replaces it with bayonets and flintlocks is not bad at mobility. But it was impossible for ancient infantrymen wearing heavy armor to compete with war horses on the battlefield.
Therefore, in a battle between infantry and cavalry (even if the cavalry dismounts to fight), the infantry is often in a passive position and is beaten. The cavalry has the initiative whether to fight or not, and the initiative where to fight.
Therefore, the cavalry can rest and take turns to go into battle, while the infantry needs to put on armor for a long time (it can also rest, but the time is relatively short, and the risk of removing armor is very high), and some infantry who are attacked by the cavalry need to A long sustained battle.
Without physical strength, you can't be an infantryman at all!
Although these "protons" personally selected by Zhu Youjian are not good people, their physical fitness is still passable - there are no porn films left these days, and the dandy boys are the "rowing boats" on the Qinhuai River. They are older. Of course it hurts the body, but I could bear it when I was young. So Zhu Youjian can still spend a few months training them out. If it was the Eight Banners disciples in the late Qing Dynasty who were addicted to smoking and all fell on the ground, there would really be no way...
However, Zhu Youjian left a lot of government affairs unattended, and the purpose of going to Fengyang to train these proton soldiers was not really to use them as soldiers.
It is about letting them know what kind of hardship their ancestors endured and how to train an infantryman. Only by knowing this can they be able to shoulder the responsibility for the rise and fall of the Ming Empire and become a qualified Ming army officer.
With these barely usable Ming army officers, Zhu Youjian could begin to rectify and dismantle the garrison posts in Southern Zhili.
Now, it is time to completely end the 200-year-old guard system.
Only by abolishing the guard system can the military of the Ming Dynasty usher in a comprehensive revitalization - just having some new troops in the nine-border land in the north is not enough. The Ming Dynasty is such a boss. In the future, it will have to go abroad to beg for food. The troops in front of the army will not be enough. ah!
Therefore, it is imperative to abolish the guard system and at the same time build a new army on the ruins of the guard system.
But if we want to successfully abolish the military base and build a new army, we cannot kick away those nobles and hereditary military ministers. Because there are indeed many useful generals and strong men among them. It's just that the proportion is not high, so we have to use point collection and recruitment methods to select them.
In addition to clearing the way for the officials and gentry to pay grain and taxes and share their land, the purpose of gathering the nobles and military officials in Nanzhili was to train the noble military officials who were still worthy of use and use them for the country.
