From the tenth to the eleventh year of Chongzhen, the army of Li Zicheng, a thief in the northwest, was surrounded and suppressed by Hong Chengchou and Sun Chuanting of the Ming Dynasty, and suffered heavy losses. Zhang Xianzhong's army, which was wandering around Huguang, was also defeated by Zuo Liangyu, Zhang Xianzhong accepted Zhao'an, and the peasant army movement turned into a trough.

However, Zhu Hao knows that this situation is only temporary, in the autumn of the eleventh year of Chongzhen next year, with the re-entry of the Qing army, it will cause a series of chain reactions, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong will also take the opportunity to start again, and then the entire Ming situation will encounter a crisis again, and the situation will be out of control until the destruction of the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, it is necessary to take advantage of this stable time of less than a year to build a force capable of fighting well as soon as possible, lay its own foundation, and build a base area. As for the Qing army, Zhu Hao knew that sooner or later there would be a battle, so next year when the Qing army entered the customs, no matter whether it could reach Xuzhou or not, Zhu Hao would also find an appropriate time to meet the so-called Eight Banners Force.

It's October, and winter is about to begin.

Zhu Hao convened a meeting of generals at all levels, and the main topic was how to train a strong team before tomorrow autumn, and the main hypothetical enemy was the Eight Banners Iron Cavalry.

Zhu Hao looked at Zhou Da, who was sitting at the end, and said, "General Zhou, what do you think of?" ”

Zhou Da was also impressed by Zhu Hao's charm and his way of governing the army these days, and strengthened his belief in following, followed Luo Yunqu and others as a good student for a period of time, polished off a lot of sharpness, and learned a lot of things.

"General, colleagues, I think there are only two ways to deal with the Manchurian cavalry, one is firearms, and the other is cavalry against cavalry, but our cavalry is too weak and its combat effectiveness is more than that of the Manchurian soldiers to fight the enemy, so it is still mainly firearms, and cavalry is auxiliary."

"Lao Zhou is right, if you want to deal with the cavalry, you have to have our musket team, as long as you train the formation, you can have a complete victory against the cavalry." Xiao Maoce couldn't wait to affirm. Since the last bandit war, Xiao Maoce has deeply "fallen in love" with the musket team, and spared no effort to promote the power of the musket team for Zhu Hao.

Although Xiao Maoze's statement is reasonable, it is not without any faults. The main reason is that the mobility of the musket team is too poor, and if the opponent is routed, and we have no cavalry, it will be difficult to annihilate the enemy's living forces. Zhang added.

"Yes, the power of the musket team is great, not to mention that we can't catch up with the cavalry if they escape, and once the opponent rushes with superior forces regardless of the dead and wounded, the musket team is in danger of being crushed without cover, and the melee musket team is much worse than the infantry, let alone the cavalry, so the development of cavalry is a must." Wang Boda also spoke.

"Cavalry is a must, but regardless of combat experience or combat effectiveness, our cavalry is not comparable to the Manchurian cavalry in a short period of time or even for a long time, and how to improve the combat effectiveness of the cavalry is also an urgent problem." Zhao Yuansheng added.

"Lao Luo, what do you say?" Zhu Hao looked at Luo Yunqu, who had not spoken, and asked.

"Young master, what everyone said makes sense, at present, the focus of our training is still the training of the musket team, and at the same time spare no effort to build a cavalry that can fight to protect and cooperate with the musket team, everyone also misses one point, that is, how should our musketeer team work hard to deal with the cavalry charge, how can we make the musketeers not afraid of the enemy's charge?" Speaking of this, Luo Yunqu also frowned a little.

Zhu Hao looked at Luo Yunqu with appreciation, the military thinking of this former singles master is becoming more and more mature.

"Everyone is right, but only Lao Luo said the key point, that is, how we can train the musket team to stabilize the position in the face of cavalry charges, if this problem is solved, we will become an invincible division. Think about it, what can be done? Zhu Hao said with a smile.

"Young master, it seems that you have already made a bamboo in your chest, so don't play dumb riddles, I'm in a hurry." Li Dong scratched his head and said.

"you, all the ideas are mine, what's the use of you generals?" Zhu Hao was a little dissatisfied.

"General, it's better for us to form cavalry and musket teams to practice by ourselves and do it a few more times, so that even if the real enemy comes to attack, we won't be in a hurry." Zhou Da had a flash of inspiration, and when he saw that Zhao Yuansheng was about to speak, he rushed to say.

Looking at Zhao Yuansheng's complaining eyes, Zhu Hao was happy in his heart, there are still a few capable people!

"What Lao Zhou said is exactly what I want, in fact, although the infantry has some natural disadvantages to the cavalry, the biggest disadvantage is the psychology of the infantry," Zhu Hao paused, seeing that everyone was a little puzzled and continued: "For example, a ten-year-old child and a twenty-year-old youth fight, generally speaking, adults must beat children, but everyone has thought about it if both of them are holding lethal weapons, in fact, the combat effectiveness is almost the same, but children will naturally be afraid when they see adults, So the already weak combat effectiveness will be even weaker, but if this child serves his fear and dares to fight for his life, then the winning rate will be greatly improved, which is the strength of psychological quality, which will greatly affect a person's combat effectiveness, understand? ”

Looking at everyone's sudden expressions, Zhu Hao struck while the iron was hot: "So the focus of our next training for the musket team is the training of psychological quality, you must know that even the opponent's cavalry can only form a lethal attack force by rushing to the front, and in this regard, both the enemy and the enemy can use it, so use Zhou Da's suggestion to form a cavalry to charge their own people, until the people of the musket team are trained to numbness, and the musket team must be expanded immediately, and strive to reach two-thirds of the people to become musketeers within half a year." ”

Hearing this, everyone couldn't help but prick up their ears, and their hearts were all thinking about how to win this expanded musket team.

"The cavalry must be formed, the cavalry as a strong assistant to the musketeers will play an important role for a long time to come, many tactics such as breakthrough, outflanking, volleying, etc. are the work of the cavalry, we now have more than 600 horses, and strive to reach more than 1,000 in the next year. Which of you has ever been a cavalryman? ”

"General, I used to be a cavalryman!" Zhou Da was busy responding. The others had no cavalry experience and could only be greedy.

"Okay, I will appoint you as the commander of the cavalry battalion, form cavalry, and in addition, I will form artillery, who understands this?" Zhu Hao remembered and asked.

Artillery is the god of war, Napoleon's classic quote, and has always been one of the leading forces in modern warfare.

"General, some of our brothers in the old battalion have operated redcoat cannons." Zhou Da is out of the limelight today.

"Okay, you can get them right away and I'll inspect them myself." Zhu Hao was also pleasantly surprised.

Zhu Hao also announced on the spot the reorganization of the army and its resignation: the establishment of a command, due to the increase in the number of soldiers, the former squadron was changed to a brigade, Luo Yunqu concurrently served as the captain of the first brigade, Li Tongwu was well trained and was reappointed as the director of the training department, Shang Cailian was reappointed as the director of the internal affairs department, Liu Ru was appointed as the confidential secretary, Du Qishan was appointed as the director of the intelligence department, Zhang Benduan and Wang Boda's teams were reorganized into the musket team, Zhou Da was the commander of the cavalry battalion, Liu Fangze's uncle and nephew were temporarily appointed as the chief and deputy captains of the guard, and the rest remained unchanged.