The Shenji Battalion has a total of 5,000 people, and the battalion is organized into five armies: the middle army, the left sentry, the right sentry, the left sentry, and the right outpost, and each army has a garrison under its command.

Ma Cheng pointed to the hundred households and asked, "What's your name?" ”

The hundred households hurriedly knelt down and said: "Lord Hui Zongzhen, the last general Sun Hao, the left post of the middle division of the hundred households!" ”

"Okay, Sun Baihu, you send someone to find all the officers, and this officer will order troops!"

Sun Hao's face was embarrassed, and the entire Shenji Battalion had not ordered troops for more than ten years. However, the new general soldier was about to take up the new officer, Sun Hao had no choice but to find a few people to go to the city to find those officers, and he himself led his men to start into various grass huts to drive out those soldiers who were like beggars.

Ma Cheng stood at the gate of the camp and waited for half an hour before Sun Hao finally sorted out the soldiers of the entire Shenji Battalion.

Ma Cheng glanced at the seven or eight hundred people in front of him, this is all the strength of the Shenji Battalion? At the same time, there were seven or eight hundred people, old and young, from seventy or eighty white-haired old men to twelve-thirteen yellow-mouthed boys, and there were fifty or sixty women in the most angry queue.

You must know that the Shenji Battalion is different from other guards, and the Shenji Battalion is all recruited, so how can there still be women?

Ma Cheng called Sun Hao over and asked, "Sun Hao, why are there women here?" ”

"Lord Chief, those are the families of the soldiers!"

"How many soldiers are there in the Shenji Battalion now?"

Sun Hao didn't know how many people there were, he looked at it and estimated: "Lord Zongzhen, there are about more than eight hundred people!" ”

Ma Cheng couldn't control his anger when he heard Sun Hao say this, and scolded: "What do you know about your mother? Come on, give Lao Tzu ten boards to this guy! ”

After Ma Cheng finished speaking, some of his subordinates came up and pressed Sun Hao down and began to play the board, this was not like playing Ma Cheng back then, but hitting ten boards heavily, and Sun Hao lay on the ground and cried wolf.

Just when the unlucky ghost Sun Hao was spanked, seven or eight people came running in the distance, and they came to Ma Cheng in a panic.

The leader is a dead fat man in his fifties, wearing a general's uniform, but seeing that his clothes do not fit, it is estimated that he may have borrowed it temporarily. Several other people were guarded, guerrillas, and thousands of households, all of whom looked flustered in their clothes.

The dead fat general stumbled in front of Ma Cheng, knelt down on his knees and shouted, "Last... Qi Tai, the general of the army in the Shenji Battalion, meet the lord of the town! ”

"Lord Qi, as the chief officer and general, why aren't you on duty in the battalion? Why do you want to go back to the city? After all, Qi Tai is a senior officer like a general, not an unlucky ghost like Sun Hao, so Ma Cheng still suppressed his anger and asked.

This general soldier is quite young, but his temper is not small. Qi Tai muttered in his heart, but said on his lips: "Lord Zongzhen, the Shenji Battalion has not had a general general since the sixth year of Chongzhen, and they are all in charge of the last general, but the Ministry of War does not allocate military salaries and armaments, and our Shenji Battalion is a recruit, and it is difficult for a woman to cook without rice if there is no money!" ”

Listening to Qi Tai say this, Ma Cheng can't do anything, the state doesn't give money, do you let the officials take the money themselves? What a joke!

"Okay, the officer asked you, why are there still women in the army? Don't you know that women are not allowed in the barracks? ”

"My lord, this is no way, these soldiers are farmers found by the last general, and the last general promised them to live here, and when the imperial court orders troops, they can make up the number! The imperial court does not give money and the last general has to train the army, and the last general has no choice but to use this method! ”

In fact, Qi Tai told a lie, although the Nanjing Jingying military salary has never been paid in full, but it is also distributed a little every year, of course, the money has gone into the pockets of officers of all sizes. These peasants were displaced people from Qi Tai, and let them fill the number, although the military department did not care about anything, but they also came down to check from time to time.

Ma Cheng has never led soldiers, but Gu Changwei beside him is a veteran, and he knows a lot about this method of drinking the blood of soldiers in the army!

Gu Changwei leaned into Ma Cheng's ear and said all kinds of methods in the general's ear, and Ma Cheng's eyes turned red.

Although Ma Cheng really wants to kill the fat man Qi in front of him, but not yet, Ma Cheng is just a general soldier, his father Ma Shiying is not in power, and this Qi Tai in front of him is still a senior officer like a general, who knows if he has a backer behind him.

Ma Cheng had no choice but to hold back his anger and asked, "I don't care about the rest, where is your arsenal now?" ”

Qi Tai let out a sigh of relief when he heard that Ma Cheng was not pursuing it, and quickly stood up and said, "It's just behind, please check it out with Lord Headquarters!" ”

After Qi Tai finished speaking, he got up and led a few of his men to lead the way in front of him, and led Ma Cheng to a dilapidated house. The prison gun minister behind Qi Tai opened the door with a trembling hand, and a musty smell came to his nose.

Ma Cheng waited for the moisture inside to disperse, and was the first to walk in. This storehouse is not large, only 300 square meters, and three cannons are placed in the center, of course, not imitation of the Franc machine, but the oldest bronze cannon.

Ma Cheng stepped forward to see that the cannon body was covered with dust, and only after wiping it off with his hand did he see the inscription on the cannon body, "The twenty-seventh year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty"!

Ma Cheng is optimistic about the suspension of his nose, the cannon cast during the Hongwu period has been more than 230 years now, and the things that should become cultural relics are still used in the army?

Ma Cheng looked at the other two again, one was in the second year of Hongzhi, and the other was earlier, in the tenth year of Hongwu, probably this cannon also participated in the war with Chen Youliang.

In addition to the three cannons, Ma Cheng saw a pile of iron cylinders in the corner, and when he stepped forward to pick them up, he saw that they were all muskets, but the wooden handles had rotted clean, and only the iron barrels remained. Ma Cheng picked up an iron barrel and looked at it, the chamber of the gun had been rusted to death, and it had lost its value for maintenance at all.

Ma Cheng put down this iron cylinder and picked up another one, this one was worse than the one just now, and it directly became a pile of rust.

A few wooden barrels were placed next to the barrels of this pile, and Ma Cheng pointed and asked, "What is this?" ”

The gun supervisor behind Qi Tai hurriedly stepped forward and said, "Lord Commander, this is gunpowder and lead bullet!" ”

Ma Cheng took a waist knife from Xu Dahu's hand and split the wooden barrel, and the gunpowder inside had been cemented into a single piece. The other barrel of buckshot was ok, just of a different size, and it couldn't be used at all.

Ma Cheng looked at these rags and asked, "General Qi, what do you have to explain?" At this time, Ma Cheng already had the heart to clean up Qitai.

Seeing Ma Cheng's look, Qi Tai knew that he was going to be unlucky, so he hurriedly cried and shouted injustice: "My lord, this is no way, the eggs of the Neku gang want money!" If you don't give them money, we don't have such weapons, our Shenji Battalion can't pay salaries, and there is money to give gifts to those eunuchs, so we haven't issued new equipment for more than ten years! ”

Ma Cheng sighed when he heard Qi Tai say this, he had already been mentally prepared before he came, but Ma Cheng thought that the Shenji Battalion was the elite of the Gongwei Jing Division, no matter how bad it was, it couldn't be worse than that. But Ma Cheng saw it with his own eyes and knew why the Manchu army came outside Nanjing a year later, and those big officials opened the door and surrendered without firing a single shot, there was really no way to fight! As far as the so-called elite troops like the Shenji Battalion are hanging, let alone the other guards.

Today, Ma Cheng originally wanted to reorganize the Shenji Battalion and remove all those who did not meet the age, but now that they are like this, there is no one who is qualified at all. Ma Cheng didn't want to embarrass him when he looked at Qi Tai like this, this court was rotten to the root from top to bottom, and it was useless to clean up Qi Tai.

Qi Tai suddenly looked depressed when he saw the young chief soldier in front of him, and suddenly gritted his teeth, thinking that the adult was going to clean himself up, so he quickly took out a silver ticket from his arms, and then came to Ma Cheng's side and whispered: "Lord Zongzhen, meet for the first time, this time the last general's heart!" Please take care of the head of the town! ”

Ma Cheng took it and saw that it was one hundred taels of silver, but he didn't expect this old guy to be quite rich, and he would be one hundred taels as soon as he made a move.

Ma Cheng scolded: "I said Qi Tai, didn't you say that the imperial court has no military salary? How can you shoot so generously! ”

Qi Tai hurriedly shouted: "My lord, the little military salary given by the imperial court is enough for the brothers to chew, and I really don't hide it from my lordship, and in the end, I will open up the Daxiao field into farmland, and then hand it over to the surrounding farmers to plant, so that the life of the brothers will be guaranteed!" ”

In fact, the Shenji Battalion is not as bitter as Qi Tai said, although the dead eunuchs in the inner library collect money very much, but some gunpowder and lead bullets can still be issued every year, but these things are all taken away and sold by Qi Tai, or the money he came from bribes Ma Cheng?

Ma Cheng also knew that what Qi Tai said was half-true, but he was no longer ready to waste time here in the Shenji Battalion, it was very simple, these officers and soldiers were already rotten, and if they were added to their own team, they would not be able to bring their own team to ruin. Therefore, Ma Cheng decided to break away from the Ming army sequence and train the new army completely by himself.

Qi Tai stood at the gate of the camp and watched Ma Cheng lead people away and let out a sigh of relief, originally he thought that this young chief soldier would definitely take up the post of a new officer, but it seemed that he also received cash, and he was all the way. Knowing that cashiers are easy to do, Qi Tai has been in the Shenji Battalion for more than ten years, and he is his cronies from top to bottom, and this new general soldier is his opponent when he first arrives?

Ma Cheng rode his horse and said to Gu Changwei beside him: "Gu San, starting tomorrow, you will take ten people to the camp camp outside the city to recruit a thousand strong laborers for Lao Tzu, and the standard will be according to the standard of Fengyang at that time!" ”

Gu Changwei heard that Ma Cheng wanted to recruit troops by himself and hurriedly said: "My lord, if Emperor Shangao is far away, it is okay to recruit troops by himself, but this is the southern capital, let's recruit troops by ourselves, isn't it... ”

In the Ming Dynasty, the recruitment of soldiers and the training of soldiers were the affairs of the Ministry of War, and the local generals had no right to recruit soldiers privately, but from the beginning of the Japanese rebellion in the southeast of Jiajing, the local generals began to recruit soldiers privately, but they also had to be approved by officials at the governor level. Just like Qi Jiguang back then, if he wanted to recruit new soldiers, he also had to be approved by Hu Zongxian, the governor of the year.

Ma Cheng shook his hand after hearing Gu Changwei finish speaking, and said, "This is no problem, a thousand people should be nothing, I'll go back and talk to my father!" "Ma Cheng's Lao Tzu is now the secretary of the Ministry of War, this kind of trivial matter is naturally not a problem, Gu Changwei didn't speak when he heard Ma Cheng say this.