On February 16, Zhu Di was in the Yanwang Mansion in the Northern Plain, and was currently holding a court meeting in the institute.

The original Yanwang Mansion became the new political center of the Ming Dynasty, and most of the civil and military officials of the imperial court held the first court meeting.

Zhu Zhanji originally thought that he had nothing to do with this court meeting, but he didn't expect that Zhu Di asked him to participate in this court meeting as an observer.

Therefore, his young army and Yu Linwei's scout competition, he didn't have a chance to watch at all.

However, in order to be afraid that those young soldiers would not do their best, he appointed Li Liang to attend this competition instead of him.

The main content of this court meeting was to deal with the affairs of the Northern Expedition, but it also dealt with some of the affairs of the imperial court during this period.

Xingzao became the headquarters of the entire Northern Expeditionary Army, and orders were issued from here, and the whole of Beiping began to be active.

In the afternoon of the same day, the governors Liu Jiang and Zhu Rong were appointed by Zhu Di as the forwards, and they took the lead in leaving Beiping tomorrow and embarked on a journey to the desert from the middle road.

Zhu Zhanji also listened to the war plan jointly made by the Governor's Office of the Five Armies and the Ministry of War, and for the first time made formal contact with the dispatch of troops in this era.

In later generations, Zhou You's men had 100,000 security guards and more than 20,000 mercenaries.

But in those days, he had his own military satellites, his own communications network, and his own logistics department, which was supported by deep financial resources.

Whether it is the weather, transportation, ammunition supply, or food supply, there is a supercomputer to coordinate it.

But in this era, there is nothing, and everything needs to be piled up by manpower.

Even the most basic transportation network is now absent, and most of the areas are uninhabited.

Therefore, modern warfare is not the same thing at all as ancient warfare. If you look at the current war from the perspective of future generations, the overall arrangement is as funny as playing a house.

The first step of the Northern Expedition was to assemble in Zhangbei, and Zhu Di was to hold a large military parade before the army set out for the desert, this kind of military parade was not to show off force, the only purpose was to boost morale.

The soldiers of later generations knew what they were fighting for, but what about now? Most people join the army just to make ends meet.

Therefore, the first step of Zhu Di's royal expedition is to parade and give money to the soldiers, only in this way can the soldiers have the motivation to fight.

In the future, the transportation conditions from Beiping to Zhangbei County were only more than 200 kilometers and about 450 miles, which was only a matter of a few hours.

But now, it takes a full ten days to walk.

The soldiers carried their own weapons and marched only thirty kilometers in a normal day. Even if the road is open now, it is only forty kilometers, and if you want to go faster, you will only exhaust the soldiers.

The endurance ability of soldiers in this era is definitely higher than that of later generations, but their physical conditions are limited, and they can't even eat meat a few times a year, how good can their health be?

It's good to fight in the steppe, there are special heavy battalions. Like Mu Ying, they fought in the southwest, the mountains were high and the roads were narrow, and the soldiers needed to carry their own weapons, dry food and bedding, and marching twenty kilometers or thirty kilometers a day was already the limit.

In this northern expedition, hundreds of thousands of troops marched, and the logistics supply of each guard, resting grounds, food rations, medical treatment, and emergency response all needed to be arranged by personnel.

Just to maintain communication between them, five percent of the soldiers would be required to be in charge, a figure that Zhu Zhanji did not dare to imagine at first.

In the future, only one satellite was needed, and the general headquarters could send orders to every squad and even every soldier thousands of miles away, but now with tens of thousands of soldiers, it can barely maintain the connection between each guard on these thousands of miles of front.

Zhu Zhanji also truly realized why when reading history books, those marshals and military gods competed not to be who was powerful, but who made fewer mistakes.

Like those generals written in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, they beat the soldiers, it's complete nonsense!

The so-called four famous works of later generations, not to mention that they have not been written, are written, and they are also online texts in this era, YY novels.

On the first day of the meeting, it was only determined that the forward battalion would set off first. Then I kept arranging various liaison offices, establishing a communication system, and finally I was busy until late at night before arranging the supply system for the various military guards.

Zhu Zhanji did not return to his residence until he was in a hurry, and his mind was a mess, and he was dizzy from this backward mode of war.

Seeing Li Liang, who had been waiting for him, Zhu Zhanji was also a little weak. "What are the results of today's competition?"

Li Liang was full of excitement and said with a smile: "Your Highness, although the young army is young, today it is in the limelight. Yu Linwei's scouts will only make a cursory observation, escape, and hide. They don't know how to look at the stars, they don't know how to survive in the wild, they don't know how to disguise themselves in the wild, and they don't know how to convey information without opening their mouths. Lord Zhao originally disdained the young army, but after a day of competition, he had already regarded the two hundred young soldiers as treasures. ”

"That's good, I'm very tired today, so let someone bring me the tonic soup."

Lying in the hot wooden barrel, Qiu Yue helped Zhu Zhanji press his head, and Dong Xue helped Zhu Zhanji hold the pheasant soup stewed with ginseng, wheat winter, Tiandong, raw land, and cooked ginseng Guben pills.

After eating a whole pheasant and sweating again, Zhu Zhanji began to feel back to his senses.

After meditating for a long time, his mind kept thinking about the backward tactical arrangements of this era, but he didn't know how to change it.

Because this is not an era different from the war model he is familiar with, but a full 600 years apart.

Even if he had some understanding of the training and tactical arrangements of the army in later generations, now, the experience of later generations is completely inapplicable.

He needs to start from scratch, and as for reform, at least he can talk about reform until he is familiar with the current set.

On the second day, the military meeting was still arranging the supply routes of the heavy battalion, which not only could not become a burden on the march, but also had to serve nearly a million people, and it was not a simple matter to arrange it well.

On February 18, Liu Sheng, the governor of the left army, led the tiger charm, appointed the general of the expedition, and led the Shenji battalion to march north from the east road.

Zhu Zhanji looked at the map, and this east road was roughly along the Xilin Gol in later generations, to the Hulunbuir area.

In later generations, the Hulunbuir area is now a Tatar settlement, and four years ago, it was they who made a rebellion and were subdued by Zhu Di.

The Tatar Khan Benyasuri was driven away, and the original national teacher Arutai surrendered to Zhu Di, and was named King of Hening by Zhu Di.

But their decline led to the rise of Warat, who was on the side this time, claiming to be dealing with the Arutai of the Tatar Asut Ministry, but in fact was spying on the Nuer Gandusi, who was now under the rule of the Ming Dynasty.

Arutai was beaten by the Ming Dynasty four years ago, and this time he was threatened by the Warat people, so he could only ask the Ming for help.

Since Arutai surrendered, Da Ming naturally didn't want him to be directly eliminated, and then let the Warat forces get out of control.

Originally, Zhu Di didn't want Arutai to participate in the war, because he was afraid that Arutai would fight back and attack the Ming army with Wara.

But after a long talk between Zhu Zhanji and Zhu Di at the beginning of the expedition, Zhu Di decided to give Arutai a chance, and by the way, he also wanted to see the sincerity of the other party.

But he didn't dare to be careless, so he sent Liu Sheng's Shenji Battalion, which had destroyed the Tatars four years earlier, to join them.

Against the Tatars, Liu Sheng's Shenji Battalion had an experience and psychological advantage. The Tatars were also afraid of Liu Sheng, so Zhu Di was still very relieved that he was presiding over the Eastern Front.

Before the expedition, Zhu Zhanji also went to Liu Sheng's Shenji Battalion on behalf of Zhu Di to sacrifice the army, and this time the army did not involve money, but only read out the expedition book written by Hu Guang and ate a meat meal.

This expedition book is actually the so-called declaration of the righteous war, even if the Ming Dynasty is the first to go out now, you must label yourself as a righteous army.

Zhu Zhanji also took this opportunity to watch the most widely used artillery and firecrackers in the world today.

Today's cannons are all copper tubes, the smallest weighs only five catties, and the heaviest weighs seven or eight hundred catties, with a caliber of about 110 millimeters.

The establishment of the Shenji Battalion is only 5,000 people, but with the support of Zhu Di, it has now reached nearly 20,000. Nearly a quarter of them were artillerymen, a quarter were firecrackers, another quarter were cavalry, and a part were craftsmen and service personnel.

Cannons can be cast in bronze, but muskets are made of blacksmiths. The barrel was closed with a double iron pipe, and the outside was tightened with iron bars.

Compared with the later generations of clayman, because of the problem of technology, it is much more backward.

However, in terms of bullets, today's craftsmen have developed single and scattered shells, and cannons have flowering shells.

Zhu Zhanji originally wanted to take the opportunity to show off his knowledge of black powder, but now that he came into contact with it, he realized that at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there were more than 30 different formulas of black powder.

Gunfire, artillery, including fireworks and firecrackers, although all use black powder, but the formula of each black powder is different, and it is the most suitable formula ratio for its use.

Although people in this era did not have much knowledge of chemistry, they definitely did not lack the spirit of experimentation. It's just that many times, they just don't know why it is, and often they can only rely on experience to operate, and they can't leave written knowledge.

This discovery also made Zhu Zhanji change his original plan, and he decided not to study black powder, but directly transition to nitrocellulose.

Because nitrocellulose is the most suitable gunpowder for guns after black powder.

However, in this era, it is difficult to obtain sulfuric acid and nitric acid on a large scale.

In his previous life, he had made overall investments in basic industries, and he had some understanding of three acids and two alkalis.

In the Tang Dynasty, Taoist priests obtained sulfuric acid by drying distillation of stone gallbladder (bile alum).

However, sulfuric acid is easy to obtain, and nitric acid is hard to find.

Because the reserves of saltpeter in the world are not large, except for Chile and India and the northwest territories, there are very few in other places.

The main way for Taoist priests to obtain saltpeter is mainly through the soil used to boil toilets, and the purity of saltpeter obtained by this method is very low.

The improvement of gunpowder is the indispensable foundation of a strong army.

Zhu Zhanji is also considering whether to take Zheng He to the Americas first in the future to develop the saltpeter mine in Antofagasta.