Of course, the regulations on military service seem to be strict on the surface, but when they are actually explained, they also make the Hongmen people breathe a sigh of relief.

Although all men over the age of 18 are required to serve, based on the family situation, physical fitness, and other considerations of these men, more men just learn the necessary military tactics and combat skills with the local defense forces, know how to simply array and cooperate, and receive about half a year of training in the local area to complete the service.

After all, Hongmen takes the Ming Dynasty as an example and takes agriculture as the foundation, where does it really dare to exhaust the main labor force under his command and sweep it away!

The introduction of this policy naturally wants to let those families with many men in the family be able to contribute; The second is to cultivate everyone's awareness of sharing hardships with Hongmen from now on, so that the villagers can form a close relationship with Hongmen.

Some people are happy and some are worried, after seeing the explanation of the military service system, the families who feel that their families are not prosperous naturally feel that there are not too many problems, but those whose families are prosperous are not without their worries about the safety of joining the Hongmen army.

While stepping up the integration of the ideological work under the command of Hongmen, the cannon foundry was also working overtime to build steel cannons, and more than 100,000 taels of silver were spent like flowing water, in exchange for a cannon that exuded a dark metallic color.

As the masters of the cannon factory became more and more proficient, coupled with the division of labor and cooperation of the assembly line, the speed of the members of the foundry who did their own work became more and more sophisticated, and until now they have not found the limit of the speed increase of the cannon casting, seven qualified cannons were cast in August of the sixth year of the Apocalypse, and in September, eight cannons were cast, which can be called the miracle of this era.

Li Tianyang is not clear about the technology of Western foreigners to the casting of cannons, but Li Tianyang has heard of the speed of the cannon casting factory of the Macau Franco machine, and even the speed of the ordnance manufacturing institution of the Ming Dynasty Li Tianyang They also have a general impression, which is completely incomparable with the speed of the cannon foundry under his command, not to mention the power of the artillery produced.

Thanks to the continuous supply of ore from Shilu's side, of course, there was also a relationship between Li Tianyang who squandered a lot of silver and smashed Hai Dafu's mind in a trance, so he couldn't help but send more people to mine iron ore for Hongmen, and even his main business of copper was abandoned.

In October, the 10 "Yang Fan" warships under Hong Tang's command were fully armed by Li Tianyang, and they were equipped with 10 main guns, 30 18-pounder guns, and 20 guns of about 9 pounder guns, which were fixed on the upper and lower decks of the "Yang Fan" warships.

And because of the toughness and suitability of the materials, these guns cast by Hongmen themselves were far more economical than those of the same specification cast by Westerners.

For example, the eighteen-pound cannon, the cannon cast by Westerners is generally about 2,000 catties, but the weight of the cannon produced by the Hongmen Cannon Foundry is only more than 1,000 catties, which is hundreds of catties lighter at once.

The advantage brought by the weight of these dozens of cannons alone allowed the Hongtang "Yang Fan" warship to carry more ammunition and materials, and it was more durable than Westerners.

As a quasi-second-class battleship, Hongmen's ten Western-style fleets built with Li Tianyang's painstaking efforts can at least allow Hongmen to maintain their strong position in the South China Sea.

You must know that at the beginning, the thirteen Western sea ships of all kinds led by the Dutch Hongmaoyi had already galloped across the Daming Sea and were invincible, and even Hongmen could only passively respond to the battle.

If it weren't for the sparse number of the Dutch at the beginning, the Hongmen took the old nest, and the commander of the Dutch fleet at that time frequently made stupid moves, it is impossible to say that the Hongmen would have been strangled by the other side just by fighting guerrilla warfare and siege warfare.

The fleet has been armed, and although the officers and men of the Hongtang Navy Division have been fighting less and less over the years, compared with the slackness of other departments in Hongmen, as a sharp weapon in Li Tianyang's hands, they have not been idle, but have been familiar with the performance and operation skills of the "Yang Fan" battleship.

They are all veterans of boating at sea, but the most troublesome and manpower-consuming place for Western warships is on the dozens of soft and hard sails on the ship, how to control and operate is one of the problems, but it is difficult for these men who make a living from the sea.

After two or three years of hard work, the soldiers who operated the "Yang Fan-style" battleship in Hong Tang would not necessarily lose even if they were to compare their boating skills with the sailors in the elite fleet of the West.

As the saying goes, everything is only due to the east wind, and in October, Hongmen appreciated the initial results in the ideological education plan, and organized the fleet to conduct an actual combat exercise in the open sea.

Hongmen, who had been calm for more than a year, once again brandished the sharp swords in their hands, attracting the sideways glances of the pirates and seafarers in the surrounding seas.

Some people sat back and watched, some people were happy, and some people were uneasy, but after the Hongmen attack object was leaked, most of the seafarers in the South China Sea were relieved, and only a few people looked at the direction of Dayuan Island in amazement.

At the same time, because of Hongmen's actions, the situation in the South China Sea gradually began to surge, although there was no movement on the surface, but secretly the various gangs in the two pirate districts of Ryukyu and Qiongzhou began to communicate with each other.

Of course, at this moment, Li Tianyang, who had already focused all his energy on the strong enemies in the east, naturally did not pay attention to these small movements around him. Even if Hongmen dispatched the elite to organize ten "Yang Fan-style" warships to march eastward this time, with the strength of Hongmen Hongtangdu, the display of staying in Turtle Island, Bengang, and Huludao was still enough to deter the surrounding unscrupulous people.

Not to mention that Li Tianyang still has a reserve team in his hands, and the Penghu Sailor team, which is numbering 6,000, happens to have nothing to do, and pulling it out for a parade can dispel most people's bad ideas.

In order to take the other side by surprise, the expedition to the East Japanese Fleet, with Lu Kui as the fleet commander, did not carry a single redundant warship, and only dispatched the ten "Yang Fan-type" warships that Li Tianyang spent most of his time concentrating on building and quickly marched towards the east.

Li Tianyang did not despise the Satsuma Tibetan people, but he knew very well that they went on this expedition just to show Satsuma Bo their advantages on the sea, and they did not really want to attack the city and plunder the land, and they could not really occupy the territory of the Satsuma Tibetan Japanese people, which Li Tianyang still knows.

Therefore, to do his best to strangle the strength of the Satsuma people on the sea, and to force the Shimazu family of Satsu to take the initiative to sue for peace through the pressure on the sea, in exchange for Hongmen's Pingchuan on the coastal sea border of the Ming Dynasty, this is the purpose of Li Tianyang's dispatch of troops.

(End of chapter)