The reason why Luo Zhixue was able to launch the six battalions and two sentinels plan immediately after returning to Songjiazhuang and organize the first infantry battalion into an army in just a few days was certainly due to the accumulation of the Baoxiang Battalion itself.
But it is also related to the fact that Baoxiangying annihilated Dingpotian and Chuangpotian's troops twice.
Through two annihilation operations, Baoxiang Camp killed, wounded and captured more than two thousand old thieves, and the cavalry also included nearly two hundred half-baked cavalry.
After these two battles, Chuang Potian's battalion was almost completely defeated. Even if Chuang Potian himself was not dead, he was unable to recover.
The four thousand so-called army that Chuang Potian left behind immediately dispersed after learning that Chuang Potian's soldiers in front were defeated...
Because there are only two to three hundred of these four thousand so-called old thieves in the army, and the rest are young men who were kidnapped one after another after entering the territory of Ruzhou.
When those old thieves saw that Chuang Potian was dead and still had the guts to stay in Lushan County, they turned around and ran away. As for where they went, only God knows.
And the young and strong people who were held hostage dispersed in droves without anyone taking care of them. Those who went home went home, and those who became refugees became refugees.
Anyway, it can be said that the entire army has been destroyed so far in the Potian camp.
And as the Baoxiang camp who defeated the main force of the Chuangpotian camp, they also gained a lot.
A batch of food and cold weapons were seized, especially the weapons and equipment of the two thousand old thieves directly under Chuang Potian. They had knives, spears, bows and arrows, as well as dozens of pieces of armor, and more were seized. Hundreds of rideable war horses and hundreds of draft mules and horses.
In addition, you can also recruit people among prisoners of war.
This also allows the expansion of Baoxiang Camp to be guaranteed in terms of personnel and materials.
For example, without the hundreds of war horses and the half-baked cavalry who were recruited and surrendered one after another to persuade them to defect, the second cavalry post would not be fully staffed.
However, even so, the Second Cavalry Post actually only expanded by one team. The previous two teams were expanded one after another before facing Ding Po Tian.
It's embarrassing to say that in the Baoxiang Battalion's expansion plan, the infantry was expanded with battalions as the symbol. The first batch was three battalions, and the second batch had three more battalions.
However, the expansion of cavalry is based on teams, and it takes a while to expand a team.
It is almost impossible to obtain hundreds of qualified cavalry in a short period of time.
This is also the reason why Luo Zhixue wants to engage in pistol cavalry. As for dragoons, strictly speaking, they are not cavalry, but just mounted infantry. Luo Zhixue may engage in pistol cavalry in the future, but this still cannot make up for the lack of regular cavalry. defect.
As for the pistol cavalry, they need a qualified cavalry pistol. Matchlock pistols cannot be used, so it is best to get a flintlock pistol.
Flintlock pistols are not something that the current Baoxiang Camp can produce.
The so-called industrial capabilities of Baoxiangying are actually based on the original skills of contemporary craftsmen such as Song blacksmiths. Its technical level is actually not fundamentally different from other gun workshops under the control of the Ming Dynasty government.
Luo Zhixue's water-powered machinery, power storage and human-powered small machinery and other equipment can only improve production efficiency.
It cannot allow the industrial technology of Baoxiangying to make progress in raw materials and technology.
In response to this problem, Luo Zhixue has begun to solve it. Last year, he successively selected more than ten smart teenagers to learn various scientific knowledge.
At the end of last year, he also sent people out to search for various scientific and technological materials that may be available in the contemporary era, especially those technical materials brought by Western missionaries and various materials translated by domestic scholars, but so far, So far no reply.
Maybe the people he sent would be killed by various bandits or refugees on the road...
At present, the materials these young people study are basically created by Luo Zhixue himself.
He had long since begun to write down all kinds of scientific knowledge that he still remembered. Basically, he would write down whatever came to his mind, so as to avoid forgetting it as time passed.
This knowledge that is scattered, unsystematic, and missing many things is what young people learn.
Moreover, many of these knowledge systems only have results, but no inference process... Even if these teenagers really learn, they only know what they are doing and don't know why.
But even so, Luo Zhixue still has high hopes for it. He hopes that after training for a period of time, there will be a few talents with certain scientific knowledge among these young people, even if they are only half-experienced, even if they just follow the script, it will be good.
But the time is still too short and there is no results for the time being.
——
After clarifying the preparatory work for the three infantry battalions, especially after the first infantry battalion was initially formed, Luo Zhixue did not wait for the subsequent formation of the second infantry battalion and third infantry battalion.
Instead, they once again sent troops to various places in the countryside of Lushan County to continue to implement the predetermined plan: to control the countryside of Lushan County and attack a number of predetermined large landowner targets in order to obtain sufficient money, food and other strategic resources.
As for Lushan County, Luo Zhixue gave up this idea after taking Songjiazhuang.
After taking over several large landowners such as Songjiazhuang, the various resources obtained by Baoxiang Camp are enough to support the next stage of development of Baoxiang Camp. There is no need to attack Lushan County and attract a large number of main officers and soldiers.
For the Ming army in Henan today, there are hundreds of thousands of various bandits in Henan, and a large group of them are attacking the city. Even Luoyang has been attacked by the bandit army. Small groups in other places have The city is even more precarious.
They were currently busy fighting the main force of the rebels who were attacking the city. Luo Zhixue felt that he did not need to divert the attention of the main force of the officers and soldiers.
Now it would be good to conquer a dozen landlord estates in the countryside and recruit grain and soldiers from each village.
Why go to Lushan County, which has no special function?
Luo Zhixue continued to send soldiers to attack everywhere, and successively captured more than a dozen landowners' estates, two of which were large landowners.
Although its strength is not as good as that of the Song family, it still has high walls and many guards. The Baoxiang camp deployed 600 kilograms of long artillery to conquer these two landlord estates.
Under the continuous attacks, Baoxiang Camp obtained a large amount of food, gold, silver and other materials.
By the way, I also brought back dozens of scholars...
In fact, these scholars, like Guo Quanshu and others before them, were all descendants of landlords.
When these landlords faced the attack of the Baoxiang camp, they chose to obey and provided food and money to protect themselves. The Baoxiang camp generally would not embarrass these landlords who knew how to behave, and would take away the appropriate amount of supplies. Leave.
But when I leave, I usually take one of their direct descendants with me...
That is, as hostages, they try to further kidnap these landlords' families around Baoxiang Camp. On the other hand, Baoxiang Camp is expanding too fast, and there is a huge gap in demand for talents.
Under normal circumstances, not many scholars would come to apply to be officials in the Baoxiang Camp. Therefore, in addition to recruiting some half-hearted scholars from wild backgrounds as officials, the Baoxiang Camp forcibly recruited the children of these landlords.
Not to mention, the effect is quite good.
You see, Guo Quanshu, the chief of the field section of the Grain Recruitment Office, did a very good job. He built the shelves of the Grain Recruitment Office by himself.
Moreover, Guo Quanshu has become more and more energetic recently, and is actively working on matters such as counting spoils of war and collecting grain.
After running around for a while, Guo Quanshu also made a suggestion to Luo Zhixue, suggesting that Luo Zhixue establish a township grain collection station, with each station responsible for grain collection affairs in several nearby villages.
Guo Quanshu didn't think too much when he put forward this opinion. He simply felt that the current workload of the Baoxiang Camp to directly collect grain from each village was too large and very cumbersome, which kept him busy all day long.
So he thought about setting up a grain collection station in each region according to regional management, and assigning a grain collection official to be responsible for grain collection affairs to reduce his workload.
However, after Luo Zhixue saw the report, he directly called Guo Quanshu over and asked him if he was interested in becoming the director of the Personnel Affairs Department.
The Personnel Affairs Department, as you can tell from its name, is responsible for managing officials, and its functions are similar to those of the Personnel Department of the Ming Dynasty.
There was no such thing in Baoxiang camp before, because at that time, it was still huddled in Funiu Mountain, there was not much population down there, let alone many officials, so Luo Zhixue took care of the selection of officials and other duties by himself.
However, after the Baoxiang camp came out of the mountains, in order to facilitate grain collection, the Baoxiang camp began to set up village chiefs in each village, trying to directly control the vast rural areas.
As a result, there were more and more messy things, which gave Luo Zhixue a headache.
Coupled with the fact that he happened to see Guo Quanshu proposing the establishment of a township grain collection station, Luo Zhixue also made a plan to directly establish the township government office in order to initially establish a grassroots administrative system for the Baoxiang Camp.
If the township government is established, there will be many more officials. Coupled with the officials currently in various parts of the Baoxiang Camp headquarters, the number is estimated to be hundreds.
Luo Zhixue cannot directly manage hundreds of officials by himself, so it is inevitable to establish a special official management agency.
However, when Guo Quanshu heard that Luo Zhixue asked him to be the director of the Civil Affairs Department, he was stunned...
What the hell is going on?
He was obviously forced to help the Funiu Mountain rebels. Although he did his best, it was only to protect himself and his family.
But, in the past few months, I was promoted to an official every once in a while.
At first, he was promoted from an ordinary clerk to the deputy section chief of the agricultural section, and then to the full section chief.
Before leaving the mountain, he had the title of acting deputy director of the Grain Recruitment Department, concurrently serving as section chief of the Land Acquisition Section, and serving as the grain requisition officer with the army.
Now, Luo Zhixue, the rebel leader, asked him to directly become the director of the civil affairs department.
This promotion speed is faster than riding a rocket...
If Baoxiangying was regarded as a normal country, it would be equivalent to climbing from the lowest level clerk to the position of Minister of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in just a few months...
Guo Quanshu is not stupid, he also has basic knowledge. When he hears the name of the Personnel Affairs Department, he knows that it is a smaller version of the Personnel Department.
If I become the director of the civil affairs department, I'm afraid it won't be long before my name is spread to the imperial court.
When he thought that he, a scholar who aspired to take the imperial examination, would one day become one of the bandits in Funiu Mountain and the director of the pseudo-official affairs department, Guo Quanshu, he was heartbroken...
He wanted to refuse, but seeing Luo Zhixue looking at him with hopeful eyes, he was unable to say the words of rejection in the end, but knelt on his knees:
"Thanks to the General's respect, the student will definitely protect our hometown camp for me in the future and die for the General's sake!"
Luo Zhixue stretched out his hand to help: "Mr. Guo, please get up quickly. We are all family members, so there is no need for such a big gift!"
