At the present stage, the most important issue of the military conference is, of course, the expansion of the armed forces.

Feng Sanhu's new battalion has already experienced a battle, and the training time is not too short, so it can be directly integrated into the army.

In this way, the new army has nearly 2,000 new recruits at once, and with the addition of those former militia fighters and volunteers who have been promised priority recruitment in battle, the new army has a basis for further expansion in terms of strength.

However, Xu Shiyang still did not plan to form a new field camp, and he chose to expand the old field camp to about twice the size of the original.

The name was also changed, and the name was changed from a field battalion to a field brigade.

Among them, the Dingyuan Brigade, as an experimental benchmark unit, completely abolished pikes and arquebuses in the formation, but incorporated some regular cavalry, forming two infantry battalions, a cavalry company and an artillery company.

The infantry battalion tentatively consisted of six companies of 100 per battalion, plus officers, for a total of 620 to 630 men.

These included a company of selectors with a focus on cold weapons and five companies of flintlock pistols.

The flintlock company will become the main body of the infantry, while the selection company will focus more on individual tactics and skirmishers in the future.

The cavalry company has a strength of 120 men and is composed entirely of regular cavalry, and is designed to provide the infantry brigade with long-range reconnaissance capabilities and rapid pursuit capabilities if necessary.

According to the requirements of this mission, the cavalry is only equipped with simple leather armor and helmets to reduce the load, and the only weapons and equipment are sabers and pistols.

Under the new establishment, the artillery company will receive eight cannons, including two field guns and six magic guns.

This formation is completely copied from the French artillery of the Napoleonic era, except that the field guns are used instead of howitzers, and the cannons are filled with magic cannons.

Because the cannon was very light and required fewer gunners, Xu Shiyang's artillery company was more than one-third less than Napoleon's French army, and there were only 100 officers with escorts, gunners, and soldiers who took care of mules and horses.

The total strength of two battalions and two companies, together with brigade officers, escorts, and communications troops, is about 1,500 men.

The establishment is relatively small, and Xu Shiyang is responsible for this mobile combat that is conducive to broken terrain.

Well, well, it's just talking, but it's actually a helpless move when nothing is enough.

After all, at this stage, even if the above is a pitiful establishment, except for the undiscounted completion of the Dingyuan Battalion, several other infantry battalions have to make do.

For example, in the infantry, the infantry battalions of other brigades must keep 200 sharp soldiers to fill the shortage of musketeers, and 300 musketeers must also be flintlock muskets and arquebuses.

The same is true for cavalry, due to the lack of war horses captured in the last battle, Xu Shiyang dismantled the entire Zhiyuan battalion, and it was not enough to fill the cavalry companies required by each brigade, so in addition to Dingyuan, the cavalry company under the brigade temporarily only had 80 cavalry.

After the split of the Zhiyuan battalion, this originally only regular cavalry battalion was transformed into a complete infantry brigade, which was completely indistinguishable from the Zhenyuan and Jingyuan brigades.

Sun Li was very sad about this, but Xu Shiyang had made up his mind that the Zhiyuan battalion must be turned into a complete infantry brigade.

At this point, the only cavalry battalion of the new army was left with the Jingyuan Brigade, which used miscellaneous horses to fill the numbers, and used horseback maneuvering and dismounting and shooting on foot as the main tactics.

The establishment of the Jingyuan Brigade is slightly different from that of the infantry brigade, with a total of 1,000 people in 8 companies, including 120 people in 6 companies of mounted infantry, a total of 720 people.

The two have 6 magic guns each, a cavalry artillery company of 120 people, and 40 officers, guards, and bannermen under the brigade headquarters.

In addition to the ten field brigades, Xu Shiyang still had a separate formation of trap soldiers in his hands, this team was still composed of common people or foreign slaves who had committed crimes, and it was a completely cold-armed dead soldier army, and due to the large number of prisoners replenished, this battalion was expanded to as many as 800 people.

The newly formed Blue Army Battalion had 200 people, and Xu Shiyang's guards left by his side were expanded to 500 people.

The Guards have 200 Fengfeng and Shenji, and 100 professional cavalry.

In this way, the total number of front-line troops is 16,000 people, and the strength of the army has more than doubled, and the advantage is that those who were considered new recruits before have experienced fierce wars and can be regarded as veterans.

In order to improve the quality of the recruits as much as possible, all newly recruited soldiers are required to stay in the recruit camp for three months and participate in basic training before they are integrated into the various field brigades.

At the same time, according to the rotation system of chief officers, the brigade commanders of the 10 brigades of the new army will also be rotated.

The new commanders of the brigades are:

Dingyuan Brigade: The new brigade commander is Li Jinghuai.

Zhenyuan Brigade: The new brigade commander is Feng Sanhu, the former recruit battalion.

Jingyuan Brigade: New Brigade Commander Xie Zhen.

Laiyuan Brigade: The new brigade commander is Xu Ning, a former general of the forbidden army.

Pingyuan Brigade: New Brigade Commander Gongsun Sheng.

Jiyuan Brigade: New Brigade Commander Xie Bao.

Weiyuan Brigade: New Brigade Commander Wang Yong.

Zhiyuan Brigade: After being changed to an infantry brigade, the brigade commander was replaced by Lin Chong.

Jingyuan Brigade: The brigade commander is the only Luan Tingyu who has not been replaced.

Yuyuan Brigade: The brigade commander was replaced by Sun Li.

Among the original battalion-level officers, Xu Shiyang served as the commander-in-chief, and there were guards around him, so he no longer served as the commander of the troops.

Xu Shisong went to Jiangnan, and it was impossible to remotely command the troops of Qi Province.

Xu Shibai was transferred from the army and went to Laizhou to serve as a local official.

Xu Muhe's brother-in-law, Zhang Ye, was transferred to Quancheng by the Governor, and also held a local position—the Governor's Mansion of Qi Province at this time was already qualified to start trying to separate the military from the local officials.

Since then, except for Xu Shiyang, there is no other Xu family member in the new army of Qi Province who has held the position of senior officer - in fact, even Zhang Ye is gone.

In a sense, this also underscores Xu Shiyang's complete control over the New Army.

Of course, as the actual "prince" of Qi Province, Xu Shiyang still has some rights outside the army.

For example, he also controls most of the factories in Qi Province, and thus controls a large part of the financial resources.

Therefore, Xu Muhe himself knows very well that Qi Province can do without him as the governor now, but it must not be without Xu Shiyang as the commander.

Ah, by the way, there's another one.

In addition to the army and factories, Xu Shiyang actually controlled the water division of Qi Province.

At present, this fleet has a total of more than 50 seagoing vessels, of which 10 are medium-sized ships of the same class as the "Dengyingzhou".

These fleets will become the core of Xu Shiyang's strategic offensive in the next stage.

That's right, not only to intercept Li Feilong's fleet to transport New Year's coins to Liaodong, but also the sea route is Xu Shiyang's first choice for counterattacking Liaodong.

The reason is very simple, starting from Dengzhou, taking the sea attack can lead directly to Lushun in southern Liaoning, and a round trip can not even be used for two days, and it can perfectly avoid the terrible land supply route in the desolate Hebei Province.