The front line continues to accept surrendered troops, and more garrison troops are continuously reorganized. Now there are as many as twenty-eight garrison divisions.
But at the same time, the Chu army was constantly reducing and reorganizing the garrison. The basic process was to first organize some soldiers with average quality into construction camps, transportation camps, and reclamation camps, or after demobilization and retirement, they were sent to factories affiliated with the Ministry of Industry. Work.
After being eliminated several times, this division will often only have at least one or two thousand, but no more than two or three thousand relatively elite soldiers left.
The army will then retrain the remaining elite garrison soldiers, equip them with matchlock guns, two-and-a-half-pound field guns and other weapons and equipment, and finally reorganize them into a regular army.
In the past year, many newly expanded regular troops in the Chu Army came this way.
The ultimate goal of the Chu army's top brass is to eventually reorganize all the garrison troops through gradual restructuring. Most of them will be eliminated and resettled through settlement camps, while a few will be reorganized into the main force.
In the future, only the regular army will be left in the army, and there will be no such thing as a garrison.
After all, the overall quality of most of the garrison troops in the Chu army is really average.
Because they accepted a large number of Ming army prisoners and surrendered soldiers, their quality was not very good. Except for a few professional soldiers, most of them were ordinary guard soldiers or even young men recruited temporarily.
If it were not for the purpose of preventing these people from wandering to other places and causing harm to the place, the Chu army would not even want to organize them into a garrison.
Because the quality of the soldiers is really average, even if they are selected and reorganized garrison troops, their combat effectiveness is not very good, so they can only fight with the traditional guard soldiers in the Ming army. The new standard army, or those professional soldiers, are easily defeated.
Therefore, after the Fujian-Zhejiang campaign ended, Zheng Zhilong accepted recruitment, and the Guangdong-Guangdong campaign had also been a complete success in the past few months, and there was no big threat to the southeast, the army began to attack Jiangnan, Fujian-Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Chunan and even The garrison in the northern Chu region is undergoing a new round of elimination.
Except for a small number of elite combat troops and technical units such as cavalry and artillery, the rest of the garrison division troops were converted to farming, construction and other units on the spot.
For example, the three garrison divisions, the 11th, 16th, and 17th garrison divisions stationed in Guangdong, selected more than 4,000 elite soldiers and cavalry or artillery from them, and then temporarily organized the 10th garrison division. The three mixed brigades were combined into the 13th Army Division.
This division, together with the 7th Division, is responsible for coastal defense in the Guangdong direction, including Qiongzhou Island, the Pearl River Estuary, Nan'ao Island and other coastal defenses, as well as inland suppression.
The remaining 20,000 people were collectively organized into multiple reclamation camps, construction camps, and labor camps in October, and were arranged to go to local areas for reclamation or road and bridge construction, or to work in factories affiliated to the Ministry of Industry, and were arranged in batches. Retired and demobilized, and finally completed all demobilization and disbandment.
Strictly speaking, these three garrison divisions no longer exist.
Several garrison divisions in the Guangxi region also performed the same operation. Most of the garrison soldiers were organized into farming camps, construction camps, working camps, transportation camps, etc., and then retired in batches.
Some of its elites were selected and newly organized into the Fourteenth Division, and together with the Fifth Division, they were responsible for operations in Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and other directions.
The same goes for several garrison divisions in Chunan and Chubei, such as the First Garrison Division, the Fourth Garrison Division, the Ninth Garrison Division, etc. However, because several garrison divisions in Chubei have gone through many rounds of elimination and reorganization before, and have been eliminated for a long time. On the garrison front line, the overall quality of the soldiers is better and their combat effectiveness is stronger. Therefore, the garrison forces in these two places have been reorganized and the proportion of remaining soldiers is also larger.
The 1st Garrison Division was reduced to a main brigade, and a battalion was transferred from the 1st and 3rd Divisions respectively. Then they were combined into the 16th Army Division of Dissatisfaction, which was still deployed on the front line of Nanyangfu, and the 16th Army Division was still deployed on the front line of Nanyangfu. The Second Division is jointly responsible for the war in the direction of Ruzhou and Henan Prefecture, Henan.
The Second Garrison Division was also reorganized into a brigade, and was combined with the temporary First Mixed Regiment to form the 17th Army Division of Dissatisfaction. It continued to garrison Yunyang Prefecture and the eastern area of Hanzhong Prefecture, and was responsible for the war in the direction of Hanzhong Prefecture, Shaanxi Province.
The Fourth Garrison Division was reduced to a brigade, and was combined with the temporary Second Mixed Regiment to form the 18th Division of Dissatisfaction. It continued to be stationed on the Badong and Wushan lines and was responsible for the war in eastern Sichuan.
The 3rd Garrison Division and the 8th Garrison Division were each reduced to a regiment, and then some troops of the 9th Division were added to form an unsatisfied Army 19th Division. They cooperated with the 9th Division to suppress Chunan and were responsible for southeastern Sichuan, War in Northeast Guizhou and other places.
The 5th garrison division of Huangzhou Prefecture in northern Chu was reduced to a brigade, and the 13th garrison division of Anlu was reduced to a regiment. These two divisions plus the temporary third mixed regiment stationed in Hantian were combined. Organized into the 20th Army Division, the four regiments are stationed in Hantian, Jiujiang, Huangzhoufu, Anqing and other places, control and guard the sections along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and serve as the reserve team for the Eighth Division, the First Cavalry Brigade and other units. use.
The 7th Garrison Division and the 12th Garrison Division in Fujian, plus a garrison division that had been reorganized and established after entering Fujian and Zhejiang, were collectively reduced to a brigade, and then together with the temporary 12th Mixed Brigade Together they formed the Twelfth Division of the Army, which was stationed in Fujian and Dayuan (Island), which is directly part of Fuyuan Province.
The 14th and 15th Garrison Divisions in Zhili Yingtianfu and Jiangnan Province, Zheng Zhilong's original garrison on Chongming Island, the garrison on the Zhoushan Islands, and a garrison brigade in northern Zhejiang, These many garrison troops were reduced to one and a half divisions, namely the Army's 21st Division and the Army's 43rd Brigade, which were stationed in Jiangnan Province and Zhejiang. They will subsequently be responsible for coastal defense in Jiangsu and Zhejiang and internal suppression.
At the same time, the Army's 43rd Brigade will accept some of the veterans of the First Division who are not adapted to the new tactics and a batch of equipment, thus expanding into the Army's 22nd Division and garrisoning Jiangnan Province.
As for the First Division that was originally stationed in the south of the Yangtze River, it has now begun to completely replace the flintlock muskets. If there are no major surprises in the future, this division will become one of the main forces in the Northern Expedition and will not stay behind. Jiangnan.
Taking advantage of the lull in fighting during the autumn and winter, there was no threat from the south. At the same time, the Ming court in the north did not counterattack, and it would still be several months before the Chu army launched the Northern Expedition.
The Chu army began to carry out a large-scale reorganization of all garrison troops. More than 100,000 old and weak garrison soldiers were transformed into farming soldiers. Only the elites of tens of thousands of garrison troops were reorganized into regular troops.
After this round of reorganization, although many of the newly reorganized divisions were dissatisfied and lacked matchlocks, artillery and other equipment, the regular army in the Chu army still expanded to 22 divisions.
This does not include the two divisions of the Guards.
Not to mention the several units equipped with flintlock muskets that the Chu army is currently forming and has not yet been officially designated as an army.
The troops in the Chu army equipped with flintlock muskets have now been formed, and the only ones that have been assigned designations are the 10th Army Division, the 11th Army Division, the 2nd Guards Division and those expanded from the temporary 15th Mixed Brigade. The fully-equipped 15th Army Division.
In addition to these, the Chu army is currently refitting the flintlock muskets of the Army's First Division and First Guards Division.
At the same time, there are about 50,000 people receiving recruit training in several recruit training camps. The recruit training these recruits receive is different from the training in the old recruit camps, mainly training queues, the use of flintlock guns, etc. New book tactics stuff.
To put it bluntly, these more than 50,000 people were trained to form new units like the 10th Division, 11th Division, 15th Division, and 2nd Guards Division.
Once these more than 50,000 people are successfully trained, they will be able to produce at least three new fusiliers.
These are the core and main forces of the Chu army in the future, especially in the Northern Expedition.
Of course, it's useless for these recruits to be trained now... because there aren't that many flintlock guns to equip them with.
In order to increase the production capacity of flintlock muskets, Luo Zhixue has been worried about it in recent months. After entering November, he went to the Dangtu Arsenal in person to inspect.
The flintlock production line under the Dangtu Arsenal has been in trial production for several months, but it still failed to achieve large-scale mass production, which made Luo Zhixue quite dissatisfied.
So before coming to the Dangtu Arsenal for inspection, he had already dismissed the right minister of the Ministry of Industry who was responsible for supervising the Dangtu Industrial Zone, the supervisor of the Dangtu Arsenal, the manager of the musket branch, and more than 20 officials...and then let him go again. The Inspectorate will investigate what should be investigated and arrest what should be arrested.
A bunch of rubbish, for more than a year, they have been asking for money, people for money, and equipment for equipment... After such a long time, they have not even achieved mass production... The Hantian Arsenal has built a flintlock gun from the beginning to the end. The production line does not take this long.
If they just copy the homework, they won't be able to get promoted, so what's the use of such ministers?
If they were asked to study it from scratch, it would take ten or eight years.
During the war, the Northern Expedition was just around the corner. How could they have so much time to waste?
The most critical thing is that the last batch of a large number of mechanical equipment built for the flintlock production line at Hantian Machinery Factory has been in place for more than a month. However, Dangtu Arsenal has not yet completed equipment debugging.
Some of the equipment is still piled on the dock. It has not been installed at all, and no protective measures have even been taken to allow the equipment to be piled in the open.
After someone was impeached, Luo Zhixue sent people to investigate and found that the official responsible for the equipment installation fell into the water and was seriously ill some time ago, and was no longer able to handle affairs... However, the boss did not arrange a new person in charge, and allowed the equipment to be exposed. Blow the rain and dry the sun!
In this case, it is not a problem of insufficient hardware, but a problem of people.
Luo Zhixue only dismissed them from their posts and asked the Inspectorate to investigate, instead of directly throwing them into the Yangtze River to feed the fish. This was all for the sake of their early resignation.
Otherwise, Luo Zhixue would have had his house searched long ago!
The commissioning of the Dangtu Arsenal was not going smoothly. After much deliberation, Luo Zhixue pulled out Ding Gangyi, who was already serving as the left minister of the Ministry of Industry, and asked him to directly supervise the operation of the Dangtu Arsenal as the left minister of the Ministry of Industry.
Although the people below did not have a very good opinion of Ding Gangyi, and some people impeached Ding Gangyi for committing corruption while supervising the Xiangyang Factory and the Hantian Factory, Luo Zhixue also asked the Inspectorate to investigate... There is real corruption.
But Luo Zhixue only gave Ding Gangyi a slight beating, and had no intention of dismissing him from office and questioning him.
If not for anything else, just because Ding Gangyi is really awesome at running a factory!
