Capturing Xingquanfu City and expanding the army after controlling the land of the three counties has been decided by Li Xuan a long time ago, and even many high-ranking civil and military officials in the Tang Dynasty know it.

Even many of the affairs they were busy with after entering Xingquan Mansion City were related to the expansion of the army, if not directly, but also indirectly.

For example, the Cabinet of Ministers should set up administrative organs at the county, town, and village levels in the other two counties in the shortest possible time, and establish a taxation system, not only for the purpose of establishing a sound administrative rule, but also for the purpose of raising enough food and salary in the shortest possible time to maintain the army's expenditures.

The expansion of the army is not only about recruiting new soldiers, but also about supporting a large amount of equipment and food.

Since ancient times, the army has been a big swallower of gold, even if the current Datang New Army does not have the habit of issuing Yulu, but it cannot continue like this, and sooner or later it will be issued.

Even if Li Xuan dragged it and didn't pay the salary, but the army always had to eat, and the food needed by tens of thousands of people was not a small amount.

And weapons and equipment also cost a lot of silver!

Therefore, in order to maintain the expansion of the army, the cabinet needs to raise a large amount of grain, grass and silver.

Of course, food, salary, gold and silver can still be suspended, the most important thing is naturally to recruit new soldiers, this time, the number of recruits that the Datang New Army needs to recruit is not a few, just the first batch of recruits is expected to be recruited to reach 3,000 people, and the follow-up will continue to recruit until the total strength is expanded to 10,000 people.

In order to recruit enough recruits, the military department began to send a large number of personnel to set up recruitment stations in nearby places from the beginning of the second day.

The Privy Council also correspondingly established a number of new boot camps.

Even the Lianhe County that has not yet been defeated has been included in the scope of conscription, and Lianhe County is only the county seat that has not been defeated, but there is no large number of Ming troops in the vast rural areas, so it does not affect the military department to send people to recruit soldiers.

In addition, the cabinet also sent officials to prepare to accompany the troops led by Wang Danxu, Wang Danxu hit his Lianhe county seat, and the cabinet side will directly establish county-level and town-level administrative organs in Lianhe County.

Nowadays, time is very precious for the Tang Dynasty, so many things are going hand in hand at the same time, and it is not said that one thing is done, and then another thing is done, but at the same time.

The subordinate officials are busy, and Li Xuan himself is not idle, the expansion of the army is an established policy, and even the number of troops to expand the army is also fixed, but how to organize the troops after the expansion is a big problem.

Because at present, the largest establishment in the new army of the Tang Dynasty is a battalion, and the total strength of an infantry battalion is only more than 400 people, and even fewer are mixed battalions, only more than 250 people.

If the number of troops is small, Li Xuan can still command the troops by directly administering the battalions, but with the gradual increase in the strength of the Datang New Army, and even after reaching the scale of 10,000 people, it will definitely not work for the battalions directly under the central government.

In fact, this situation has already exposed many problems during the Second Lanjiang Campaign.

In the Second Lanjiang Campaign and the previous battle of crossing the river, the Tang New Army was actually divided into three, and the main force of Commander Hao Bonian once reached more than 1,400 people, including two main infantry battalions, a mixed battalion and other auxiliary troops, and if you add young and strong people, the total number reached 2,000 people.

The actual situation has shown that the Datang New Army already needs a higher-level establishment than the battalion.

For this reason, Li Xuan and Zeng Ziwen of the Operations Division discussed for several hours and decided to make changes in the establishment!

The first is to expand the existing infantry battalion establishment, so that the infantry battalion has the most basic independent combat capability, in addition to the existing four infantry teams, and then with an infantry team, this team can be a musket team, a spear team, or a sword and shield team or an archer team, depending on the situation situation, the specific allocation is according to the shortage of weapons and the nature of the operation, an additional cavalry platoon, a light artillery platoon, and a baggage platoon.

Its cavalry platoon was relatively small, with only 16 cavalry, and was mainly used as scout cavalry to provide forward reconnaissance.

The light artillery platoon will have two light guns, this kind of light artillery has been preliminarily manufactured by the Ministry of Light Artillery, which is a short-barreled gun, specializing in firing scattered shells, and is expected to have a maximum effective range of 150 meters, as for the maximum range, it can hit several hundred meters, but the maximum range has no meaning for the accuracy of artillery in this era.

Although the effective firing range is a little shorter, it is very lightweight, the total weight in combat is only 150 catties, and it is also equipped with wheels, so that the soldiers can easily carry out short-distance maneuvers when they push the wheels directly during the battle.

Moreover, the gun carriage and barrel of this thing can be disassembled, and the march can be carried by horses in peacetime, or it can be disassembled and carried by horses, and even if it is poor, several soldiers can carry it together, and this mobility is not to be said.

Strictly speaking, this cannon is very similar to the mortars of later generations, except that it can only fire shotshots.

One battalion is equipped with two of these light infantry support guns, which can effectively strengthen the firepower of the infantry battalion!

And the baggage rearrangement is naturally used to transport logistics materials.

With the addition of an infantry unit and other subordinate units, the size of an infantry battalion can be expanded to 700 men.

Due to the expansion of the infantry battalion, its nature has become a mixed battalion, and the original mixed battalion establishment is of little significance, so Li Xuan simply changed the existing two mixed battalions into regular infantry battalions, the first mixed battalion was reorganized into the sixth infantry battalion, the second mixed battalion was changed to the seventh infantry battalion, plus the fifth infantry battalion that was formed by drawing troops from each battalion

In this way, the Datang New Army will have a total of seven infantry battalions, each of which has the initial ability to fight independently.

However, this was not enough, because even if the seven infantry battalions were fully expanded, their total strength would only be 5,000 men, which was still half the size of 10,000 people.

For this reason, on the second day after Wang Danxu led the Fifth Infantry Battalion to Lianhe County, he officially issued an order to build the Eighth Infantry Battalion, the Ninth Infantry Battalion, and the Tenth Infantry Battalion.

In this way, after the expansion is completed, the Datang New Army will have ten infantry battalions, and the total strength of these ten infantry battalions alone will reach 7,000 people.

As for the remaining 3,000 vacancies, it is naturally useful, because the Datang New Army is not only expanding the main infantry battalion, but also has many other arms.

For example, artillery, according to the plan, Xie Ziwei's artillery team will be upgraded to an artillery battalion, with four artillery teams, a baggage team, and an engineer team, with a total strength of 800 people. Each artillery team has six artillery guns, and each artillery has a number of gunners, and each artillery team will have a number of musketeers in addition to the gunners, which are used for the enemy to rush up and fight the enemy and protect the artillery.

The artillery attached to the artillery did not refer to the light support artillery attached to the infantry battalion, but the long-barreled cannon, which had to reach an effective range of more than 400 meters.

In addition, because Li Xuan deliberately suppressed the weight of the artillery before, it was to provide fire support to the infantry battalion in order to act with the army, but now, the infantry battalion itself will be equipped with two light guns, so the artillery in the artillery battalion has to develop in range and power.

In the past, the eight-hundred-pound cannon didn't look very good before, but now Li Xuan looks at it and thinks it's pretty good, suitable for use as the main artillery of the Great Campaign.

However, the 500-pound artillery guns that were made later were a bit nondescript to be honest, one-sidedly pursuing light weight and range, but the power of the shells themselves was too small, in other words, the caliber of these guns was relatively small, and the shells fired were not large enough.

For this reason, Li Xuan has already instructed the weapons workshop of the Ministry of Industry, and the nondescript artillery of 500 catties is not needed, and the main artillery casts 800 catties of artillery, and even more powerful artillery. The new development of a more powerful gun was naturally difficult, but in order to control the difficulty of manufacturing and the risk of exploding, he did not make too many requirements in terms of firing range, as long as it reached the standard effective range of 450 meters.

After all, the data of the three aspects of weight, caliber, and range cannot be obtained at the same time, and if you ask for a lighter weight and a sufficient range, the caliber will not be as big as it is, and if you want a large caliber and light weight, the range will not go up.

The weight of this artillery is a bit large, reaching 1,300 catties, the caliber reaches 3 inches and 1 cent, the weight of the bullet reaches 7 catties, the diameter of the body tube is 20 times, and the effective firing range is expected to reach 450 meters, and the maximum firing range can reach 3,600 meters. (Note 1)

Compared with the previous 800-pound cannon, the performance data in all aspects have been qualitatively improved, the previous 800-pound cannon, the solid bullet fired is only five catties and six taels, the actual effective range is 400 meters, and the maximum range is 3,000 meters. (Note 2)

Among them, the firing range is also said, to be honest, the difference between 400 meters and 450 meters is not big in actual combat, the most important thing is that the power has increased, five pounds and six taels of shells and seven pounds of shells, that is two different things, if you use the algorithm of Westerners, it is the difference between a six-pound gun and a nine-pound gun.

The only thing that made Li Xuan hesitate a little was that the weight of this artillery was a bit large, 1,300 catties, which was converted into kilograms in later generations, that would be more than 720 kilograms, and this weight was quite troublesome to maneuver, just the horses that pulled the artillery during the march had to be six to eight horses, and they had to be tall horses, if it was those small horses owned by the Tang Army now, it would have to be about ten.

This kind of artillery is too heavy for the Datang New Army, which is located in the southwestern mountainous region.

But Li Xuan was reluctant to bear the huge power of this heavy artillery, which made him a little entangled for a while!