Since only rewards are not punished, it is necessary to let the rewarded soldiers get more benefits than those who search for corpses, so that the remaining people can take the initiative to think about what they should do to maximize their own interests the next time they encounter something similar.

First of all, of course, there is spiritual encouragement, in a sense, men are medals, regardless of the era.

Xu Shiyang melted a batch of silver coins and minted a batch of medals for the soldiers who participated in the war this time (thank God, he now has a lot of craftsmen in his hands).

All the musketeers of the New Army and the spearmen who were the first to storm the seashore to take part in the capture of the ship were each awarded a bronze medal of loyalty, and the spearmen were given a cloth soldier assault medal on the sleeve of their right arm.

In order to make the medal more influential, Xu Shiyang held a grand award ceremony at the headquarters of 15 Tun, and the soldiers who received the medal will also receive one-on-one flowers from the women's team of Wubao and cheers from all the people of the fort.

In addition, more affordable rewards should not be missing, and the soldiers who have received the medal will have an additional supply of one fish per day in the future, and those who have relatives who are still alive will have a tax reduction of one bucket per acre of land cultivated by their relatives.

There were no surviving soldiers, and Xu Shiyang and his team issued no one a land voucher that would be redeemed after five years - as long as they served in the new army for five years and were not punished for violating military discipline during this period, they would receive a five-acre field regardless of whether they retired or not.

Unlike the heavily taxed land, these lands will belong exclusively to individuals, and the tax rate will be relatively light – 3 buckets per mu in the upper field, 2 buckets per mu in the middle field, and no tax will be paid for the first three years of the lower fields, and 1 bucket per mu for the next three years.

The land will always be the treasure of the Han people, as long as they serve obediently for another five years, and do not make big mistakes during the period, the Xu family will produce the first batch of real self-cultivated farmers in Jiangbei since the Great Zhou Dynasty moved south.

Although there were only five acres of land, it was enough for the soldiers, all of whom were farmers, to make everyone boil.

The exquisitely made medals, the amazing rewards, the flowers offered by the maidens, and the cheers of the other burghers mixed with envy and jealousy, made all the soldiers who received the medals drunk and smoked themselves, and raised their heads as haughtily as little roosters.

And those soldiers who did not get the medal, without exception, were complained by their relatives at home - 1 bucket of grain per mu per year!

The soldiers themselves were also very chagrined, and stripped them of a widow, and at most they were given a rag coat, and if they were lucky, they could get a few copper coins or scattered silver taels, which were no different from heaven and earth than enviable medals, real tax cuts, or land.

'Next time I go into battle, I won't go to search for corpses, that's only worth a few dollars!' ’

……

At the end of the ceremony, Xu Shiyang immediately began to arrange the next work, the new army has proved to be superior in combat effectiveness, and under the condition of sufficient food, expanding the establishment of the new army is naturally the primary task.

Xu Shiyang decided to adopt the model of one old man and one new, expanding the strength of the new army to 200 people, and the two detachments were exactly the same, with 10 cold weapon melee soldiers, 10 artillerymen, 30 musketeers and 50 pikemen.

Because the spear is also one of the main weapons of the Japanese Bandits, so now the number of spears in Xu Shiyang's hands is sufficient, but the part of the gun near the tip of the gun needs to add a sleeve to prevent chopping - in the battle against the Japanese Invaders, there was a phenomenon that the spear was cut off by a katana, if it was not for the spearmen assault, the Japanese Kou had collapsed, and the new army should have paid a greater price.

The melee soldiers had no problem with their weapons, at least they had enough wood axes, and it was not difficult to find twenty or thirty heavy cold weapons of good quality from the weapons seized from the Tartars, thieves, and pirates.

The weapons required by the artillery are also easy to prepare, the production of wooden cannons is simple, does not need to be reloaded, is one-time use, and can even be preloaded and mothballed.

Due to its light weight, a squad of 10 people can carry 3 wooden cannons in a unicycle during field battles, and if you are defending the city, you can even use the wooden cannons in stock as heavy shotguns and release them in turn.

The biggest problem with the equipment is still the musket.

Due to the increase in the number of craftsmen, 15 Tun can expect to increase the number of serpentine arquebuses to 30 in the next three months.

But the remaining half of the musketeers still had to use the snake shaft musket as their main armament, and for this reason, he had to recycle the muskets that had been distributed to the female soldiers and equip them with the front-line troops.

Zhao Lin complained to her sister about this, but there was no way, it was still the initial period of the new army, and Xu Shiyang's real base was only three dissatisfied villages, and in this environment, everything had to be used to the fullest.

Gongsun Sheng once proposed to continue to produce muskets, because this weapon has a short barrel and does not require parts such as butts, and the time required to build a musket is only about one-third of that of arquebuses.

However, the musket and even the snake-shaft arquebus were transitional weapons in Xu Shiyang's mind, and they were only used in the infant stage of the new army, so he firmly rejected the idea of reproducing the musket.

In order to increase the production of arquebuses, Xu Shiyang gritted his teeth and offered a very high reward: if he could reduce the production hours of arquebuses without reducing the quality, the blacksmith of the dock fort could be promoted to lieutenant and get 20 acres of land coupons.

Craftsmen who were born as bandits and robbers were all written off for any crime in the past, and then promoted to sergeant.

Xu Shiyang's goal is to triple the size of the new army to 800 to 1,000 men within this year, and by that time, all new army musketeers will be mainly equipped with arquebuses.

The new army soon expanded to 200 people, Xu Shiyang divided them into two squadrons, the squadron leader was Xu Shiyang, Xu Da acted as a corporal for the daily affairs of the first squadron, and Xu Er was also responsible for the work of the second squadron as a corporal.

Since he was going to go out to suppress bandits next month, Xu Shiyang asked the two acting squadron leaders to train the recruits in the queue and discipline first, and the rest of the subjects were trained in the subsequent battle against bandits.

Beginning on 11 April, the Forces nouvelles entered another large-scale training exercise.

Unlike last winter, this time, regardless of the veteran and new recruits, only the queue and the march are trained, and the veterans only preach the queue discipline to the recruits once, and then help the recruits one-on-one in front of the veterans in the back, and if the recruits make any mistake, they will receive five to ten strokes of the military stick.

If the recruit still makes a mistake after ten days, the veteran recruit is punished together.

This kind of boring training is very uncomfortable for many, even veterans – last winter's training was far less monotonous than this one.

Fortunately, it didn't last long.

Twenty days later, the training camp ended, and for the next five days, the soldiers began to intersperse training with the operation of weapons in the gap between the training of the queue.

On the sixth day of the fifth month, the training was suspended, and a large convoy of 200 soldiers of the New Army, 20 coachmen, and 10 medical teams, plus Xu Shiyang himself, a total of 231 people, left Wutun and went to Benjiawu Fort to start the war of the six alliances to jointly suppress bandits.