Of course, it is impossible to form a navy with the 1,000 people of the Jiang Zhou brothers alone.

Liu Zheng also needs to reorganize other soldiers and horses. These people, Liu Zheng had already ordered Xu Huang to be in charge of recruiting a month ago.

Of course, the manpower of the navy is not so easy to recruit, and the navy is more scarce than ordinary cavalry and archers, but this is only relative to other places, in Jiaozhou and Yangzhou, these two places, are not very rare.

Because the most important thing about the water army is that they can swim, and in these two states and counties, you can find a lot of such people.

Of course, it is not enough to be able to swim, after all, there are many people who are not suitable for long boats, some people will be seasick, and they can't even get used to the hard work of being home on a boat.

Therefore, the selection of the navy is still more harsh, and in a month, Xu Huang recruited 13,000 people from all over Jiaozhou.

These thirteen,000 people were handed over to Jiang Qin and Zhou Tai, not all of them were trained into a navy, but a wave of selection was carried out first, and those who met the requirements were incorporated into the ranks of the navy, and if there were some that did not meet the requirements, Liu Zheng would still let them rush into other teams.

A few days later, these people began to reorganize their personnel under the leadership of Jiang Qin and Zhou Tai, two new generals of the navy under Liu Zheng's command.

In just three days, more than 13,000 people were eliminated by Zhou Tai and Jiang Qin.

It is conceivable how high the requirements of the two of them are for the men and horses under their command, and for the people they eliminated, Liu Zheng did not let them go back, but all of them were transferred to other teams as reserve soldiers and horses, and let these sailors under the command of Zhou Tai and Jiang Qin and some of their original soldiers and horses form a sailor army of 10,000 people.

Temporarily acting as Liu Zheng's navy and starting training near Hepu, Zhou Tai and Jiang Qin assured Liu Zheng that within a month, the initial training of this army could take shape.

Regarding this, Liu Zheng really didn't particularly care, he was busy with other things at this time.

That is the question of the equipment of the soldiers and horses under his command.

Liu Zheng has been dealing with the people's livelihood problems in Jiaozhou before, most of the time, he spends money on the management of the development and governance of Jiaozhou, although the military is very concerned, but this time, after returning to Jiaozhou, in several barracks, after a trip, Xu You submitted a new idea to Liu Zheng.

Xu You compared the swords and weapons in the hands of the soldiers under Wang Fen in Jizhou, and then compared them with these horses under Liu Zheng.

Today's soldiers and horses under Liu Zheng are actually not short of weapons, and there are even a lot of redundant ones, but the quality of these weapons is not very good.

First, most of these weapons were seized from Jiaozhou, and there are still some differences between Jiaozhou's weapon-building skills and those in the Central Plains.

Second, it is also because although Liu Zheng himself will also lead people to build some weapons, those weapons are difficult to mass-produce, mainly because the number of blacksmiths under Liu Zheng is not large.

The weapons created are limited, and most of the good weapons created are held by the generals under Liu Zheng, or they are only possible to be carried by elite troops.

In the past, the number of soldiers and horses under Liu Zheng was not much, only 10,000 or 20,000 people, although the supply of these weapons was slightly insufficient, but after a long time, they could barely support it.

But now, Liu Zheng has recruited more than 10,000 troops in the entire Jiaozhou, plus the four permanent corps he owns.

It already has 100,000 horses.

100,000 horses, although only 40,000 are the main battle troops, plus the newly recruited 10,000 sailors.

There are 50,000 soldiers and horses, and the supply of weapons for these 50,000 horses has been extremely difficult, not that there are no weapons to use, but the quality of those weapons is not up to par, and they cannot be as sophisticated as the generals that Liu Zheng built himself.

If Liu Zheng's soldiers and horses are all able to hold more elite weapons, their combat effectiveness can be improved by a few points.

Therefore, it is necessary to expand Liu Zheng's blacksmith production line before.

Liu Zheng came to the ordnance workshop, which has now become a military center, and generally only the most core part of Liu Zhengjun can come here, because here, not only is Liu Zhengjun's sophisticated weapons produced, but also responsible for the research and development of new weapons.

The old blacksmith Han Fu saw Liu Zheng appear, and immediately came over to report the results of this time to Liu Zheng.

Han Fu was the first group of people to follow Liu Zheng, when Liu Zheng was in Runan, he lacked weapons and occupied a blacksmith in Runan that was difficult to find.

Han Fu was originally a cronie of the Yellow Turban Army, so he followed Liu Zheng in a daze, and now he has become the most powerful blacksmith in Jiaozhou, and his status in Liu Zhengjun is more respected than ordinary generals.

"Uncle Han Fu, I haven't seen you for a month, and your workshop has expanded a few points."

Because of the large demand for weapons, Han Fu's side can only expand the ordnance workshop, and with successive transformations, the area of the workshop is naturally larger, and the output has also been greatly improved, but it still can't catch up with the rapid expansion of the people under Liu Zheng's command.

"Lord, where do you say, even if the line of sight is expanded like this, it is not of much use, the demand for weapons in our various military departments is too great, General Xu Huang and General Zhou Cang came to urge me a few days ago to increase production."

"Did you encounter any difficulties?"

Liu Zheng saw that Han Fu's face was somewhat suspicious, so he hurriedly asked.

"There are some difficulties."

"But it doesn't matter, I'm here to solve those troubles for you."

"Then I'll say it directly, first, there is not enough iron ore. We don't have much iron ore in the first place, and there is not enough iron ore in the first place, and with the recent increase in the number of weapons we have built, the amount of ore is even more scarce. ”

Han Fu said to Liu Zheng about the difficulties in the ordnance workshop at this time, and before he finished speaking, Liu Zheng had already frowned.

Iron ore is not a recent problem, but Liu Zheng has always had a shortcoming, he had no territory at the beginning, so it was naturally impossible for him to mine ore by himself, and many times, he went to find someone to buy it by himself.

However, the amount of ore purchased has not been enough to meet the weapons of tens of thousands of people under his command, not to mention, there are other places that need to be used in iron, such as agricultural tools, building houses and digging canals, making ships, and a series of places that are useful to pig iron.

Although it later occupied Jiaozhou, the iron ore mining area found in Jiaozhou seems to be quite far away from Jiaozhou, and the amount developed is far less than that of the Central Plains.