Zhu Cihong's army was dispatched as fast as he said at the court meeting. The war situation in the north seems to be extremely critical, and it is no longer possible for Zhu Cihong and Chongzhen to stay in Nanjing for one more day. On the second day of the Great Dynasty Meeting, Emperor Chongzhen, under the urging of Zhu Cihong, left the imperial city of Nanjing with ten concubines and crossed the river to the north under the banner of the imperial expedition...... Five miles north!

Right! It's five miles!

Zhu Cihong and Emperor Chongzhen boarded a centipede boat together at the Longjiangguan Wharf in Nanjing, arrived at the Jiangbei Wharf, and rode north for five miles after going ashore, and arrived at the destination of the Chongzhen Emperor's personal expedition - Jiangbei Ying.

The so-called Jiangbei camp is actually a large fortress. It is located in Jiangpu County, which is subordinate to Yingtianfu, and faces Nanjing City across the river. The castle is only five miles away from the wharf on the north bank of the Yangtze River - all within the fire of the Hongyi cannons!

This fortress was built by Zhu Cihong after the Nanjing Eunuch Rebellion. It is also the specification of a simple fortress, not counting the eight protruding platforms, and the circumference of the castle reaches 3,000 steps. The walls are made of logs, mud and sandbags, and the outer walls are also sloping and about one foot and two feet high. The interior space is large, about one more point square kilometer. It was divided into five areas: Miyagi, the school yard, the barracks, the storehouse, and the official building.

As early as before Zhu Cihong arrived to protect Emperor Chongzhen, the 15th Regiment Model Army and 10 ordinary infantry regiments that were not "exemplary" had quietly crossed the river and stationed in Jiangbei Camp.

That is to say, there are as many as 60,000 soldiers and horses waiting for Chongzhen, Zhu Cihong and his son in the Jiangbei camp, which fills the entire Jiangbei camp......

When Zhu Cihong and Chongzhen arrived outside the Jiangbei camp under the protection of a small number of guards and pure troops, the 60,000-strong army had already spread out a phalanx of capital regiments, waiting for review.

"The reincarnation of Emperor Gao of the Ming Dynasty...... Invincible! ”

"The reincarnation of Emperor Gao of the Ming Dynasty...... Invincible! ”

The deafening slogans rang out, from the camp in the north of the Yangtze River to the banks of the Yangtze River.

There were also dozens of sailor warships and thousands of sailors on the wharf by the river, the warships were moored on the shore, the anchor chain was lowered, and the sailors were lined up on the side of the ship.

Emperor Chongzhen, who arrived with Zhu Cihong, was also a little stunned by the army in front of him.

He carefully looked at the soldiers who had spread out in a queue along the wide Pukou official road, one after another, and all of them showed a majestic lineup.

The team is extremely well-organized! Look at a line horizontally, a line vertically, and obliquely...... Still a straight line!

"997" and the last cut law seemed to be effective, and under the insane urging of the officers, the array, march, and discipline of the infantry of the new army were finally passed!

Formation, marching, and discipline were the main training subjects for the infantry of the New Army, and Zhu knew that the role of individual bravery in future warfare would become less and less. No matter how many warriors he was in Manchuria, in front of the turtledove foot firecracker, he was a pile of rotten meat.

For the next 200 years, infantry relied mainly on equipment (flintlock pistols, rifled guns), discipline and formation, and coordination with artillery and cavalry to defeat the enemy.

Therefore, in the past year, the focus of the training of the new army has always been on discipline, formation and physical fitness.

As for combat skills, of course, they also have to be trained, but the proportion is not high, and there is a strong emphasis on specialization - that is, soldiers need to be proficient in the combat skills of their respective classes, and they do not need to be omnipotent.

And how to let the hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the new army have the right equipment, Zhu Cihong has been very troubled in the past year.

He knew very well that an important reason for the decline of the Ming army's combat effectiveness was the inferior level of equipment!

In the official army at the end of the Ming Dynasty, except for a few families who could have a good armor and a few blades, most of the soldiers had a bad armor at most and a few shoddy weapons. It can't compare to the Eight Banners Han Army at all, let alone the more well-equipped Eight Banners True Manchuria.

The main reason for the inferior weapons and equipment of the Ming army is, of course, the lack of money.

The second is that the military industrial system of the Ming army is completely decayed. And after Zhu Cihong, the prince of Fujun, took full power, even the completely rotten military industrial system no longer exists.

Whether it is the Ordnance Bureau under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry, or the Military War Bureau under the jurisdiction of the Inner Government, or the military industry run by the border towns themselves (the guard station theoretically also has a military industry), they did not follow the southward migration as a whole, and only a few craftsmen followed-this is a natural thing, and the craftsmen did not get any benefits, so why did they follow Zhu Cihong? The "righteous craftsmen" that Zhu Cihong brought to Nanjing were all brought from Tianjin Wei, and they were willing to follow because they had enough of the pain of the rogues in the two battles of Tianjin Wei.

Relying on these craftsmen, Zhu Cihong could only barely support the Nanjing Artillery Bureau and the Nanjing Artillery Bureau. However, the scale of these two bureaus is small, the production is limited, and the products are very simple. It is simply not enough to support the needs of an army of more than 100,000.

As a last resort, Zhu Cihong had no choice but to adopt an ordnance procurement model that seemed to be crazy in later generations - contract procurement!

That is, the Generalissimo's Office will formulate the shape and specifications of the equipment required by each branch of the army, and then issue (drawings, specifications, and production methods) to the commanders of each regiment and battalion, and then send the required funds to them, and they will purchase them by themselves.

At the same time, the regiment commanders and battalion commanders who received the funds must also be responsible for the quality of the equipment!

The preparation of the equipment is also included in the last cut assessment subjects!

Of course, not all purchases will be decentralized. For example, guns, artillery, gunpowder, and other equipment that were not supplied in large quantities near Nanjing, would be procured by the Generalissimo's Office - the procurement was carried out through the Ten Imperial Merchants and the Portuguese merchant López, and the Generalissimo's Office would bid for them and then sign a procurement contract with various requirements.

However, the Generalissimo's Office was not responsible for the inspection, and the inspection of the guns, artillery, and gunpowder was still the responsibility of the regimental and battalion officers who used them. The Generalissimo's Office will send people to inspect the relevant regiments and battalions, and the results of the inspection will also be included in the assessment of the last rank......

And among all the equipment and equipment that has been delegated to procurement, the most important is armor.

For the purchase of armor, the Generalissimo's Office set three specifications, one is to splice the half-body plate armor - this kind of plate armor, also known as slatted armor, is to rivet strips of iron together to make the appearance of plate armor. No one did this in Europe for a long time, and they had hydraulic hammers that could easily punch out whole pieces of armor.

But here in East Asia, you don't have this condition, so you can only make do with slatted armor, which is common at the end of the Warring States period in Japan next door.

And the specifications of the spliced half-body plate armor proposed by Zhu Cihong's Generalissimo Office are much stronger than the Japanese plate armor.

This is because there is a seventeenth-century oriental iron smelting center in Foshan, which can produce a large number of strips of iron used to splice plate armor!

The blacksmith on Nan Zhili's side only needs to rivet these strips of iron to make the main part of the half-body plate armor.

The second type of armor specification is a spliced cuirass, which is a half-spliced half-body plate armor, with only the front part and no back part. Such a "cutting corners" is not to save money, but to reduce weight.

The spliced cuirass was intended for hussars. A pair of cuirasses, an eight-petal iron hat, a pair of arm armor, and a pair of spliced slatted skirt armor constitute the armor of the Ming army's light cavalry, with a total weight of more than a dozen catties.

The third type of armor specification is cloth iron armor, that is, the iron piece is riveted to the inside of the step clothes, and from the outside it looks like a step armor covered with iron nails. This is the most commonly used armor in the Ming army, and the protection ability is not weaker than the spliced half-body plate armor, and the price is actually about the same, but the disadvantage is that it is heavier...... It's just that it's easier to get iron sheets in the southeast, but it's not easy to get iron slats, so Zhu Cihong also included cloth iron armor in the armor specifications.

As for what kind of armor to buy, with the exception of the hussar battalion, it is up to you to decide.