The team that followed Xiao Xuan to the north not only included 70,000 young recruits from humble backgrounds who didn't seem to be very well nourished, but also included many of these people's direct family members. Although most of the officers and men of the Guards Battalion and the Brave Guard Battalion were selected as much as possible in the selection process, and as many young people as possible were orphans, widows, or brothers who were orphans, widows, or brothers were the best of the year, there were still direct family members of a scale that could not be ignored when the range of age requirements was very narrow. Although the atmosphere of the young people who were born as orphans in the countryside in Shandong is slightly better than that of those who wander in the capital, many of them are obviously infected with many bad diseases. According to the same strict requirements, many were eliminated in the initial training trial.

In this way, the number of people who followed the entire team to the north plus more than 200,000 dependents is enough to have a population of nearly 300,000, including young children who have not yet developed, and there are also many adult elders. The vast procession of grain carts and horses accompanied by many collected grains seemed to be as far as the eye could see in the fields at the end of winter. It seems that the team led by Xiao Xuan at this time is not an official army belonging to the royal family, but Li Zicheng's department, which has just left Luoshan and quickly pulled up hundreds of thousands of horses.

Fortunately, not all of these hundreds of thousands of people are young and middle-aged soldiers who consume a lot of food, some of the chariots and horses are not fully cavalry-like troops, and the horses they have are only tens of thousands, and the marching area is mostly densely populated, so it barely makes this vast contingent too logistical problematic. Supplemented by the rations he carried, he mainly took water and collected grain on the spot, and it seemed that there was no big problem in arriving in Beijing. However, in this way, the speed of the march was reduced a lot. In the case that there were many non-combatants, and the proportion of horses was not as high as that of the peasant army in the late Ming Dynasty in history, although the army was required to rest every day, the army could only march about 40 miles a day in order to accommodate the concentrated civilian troops, as well as to accommodate the slowest people in the ranks and take care of the entire formation. It will obviously take at least a month or so to return to Beijing.

In order to prevent accidents and changes and even people's hearts, Xiao Xuan could only let more than 1,000 cavalry return to Beijing first to avoid accidents, and at the same time use the spare time during the march to prepare for temporary discipline training in the temporarily organized "army".

In the first five days, at least 20,000 or so young men with a sense of discipline and obedience who were still not very good were selected to form a reserve battalion of equipment, about 500 men each. Forty officers and men of the upper middle and upper ranks, selected from each unit, are responsible for the day-to-day management of these people.

Xiao Xuan selected about 100 teenagers from the pro-soldier battalions of the Guards Battalion and the Yongwei Battalion who had the best performance in the past year's internal reports and had no great bad deeds, and held an impromptu meeting. The purpose is, of course, to give these people the most important mission: to follow the example of what he did when he first ascended the throne in the Imperial Horse Prison for about five days, with relatively strict selection and training, and one person to make at least 500 people a barely quite combatable team.

With the showdown already decided, Xiao Xuan does not plan to expand the army step by step as in the past. Since a person like himself, who only knows a little about military training life and has a little military hobby and brain, can do it, there is no reason why these teenagers in the army, who are more prominent in terms of cultural study and actual combat tests, will be inferior to themselves when they were chasing ducks and putting them on the shelves. Of course, what worries Xiao Xuan the most is that these people do not have the consciousness of seeing themselves as protagonists, but only regard themselves as officials or executives.

Therefore, Xiao Xuan not only did not hide too much in his own training experience over the past year or so, but also talked about the methods of winning over a small number of outstanding people to establish different statuses and using class differences to control the troops and maintain training discipline. He also bluntly said to these outstanding teenagers: "Your mission this time is not temporary, but permanent. If you don't make a mistake, you'll forever be a great general, a legendary protagonist to be remembered. Therefore, I don't want you to treat this as just an errand. You have to have a sense of urgency and understand why I suddenly changed my original plan, and it took as little as two or three months, or as much as a year to expand the army as quickly as possible. I don't need to hide anything, our opponent is not only the Jiannu outside the pass, but also the countless moths and reactionaries that have accumulated and multiplied by our Ming Dynasty for more than 260 years. Up to now, any way to pass the imperial decree or military order or even the will is not enough to bring the sun and the moon back to light, and it is only possible to clarify the sea by setting things right, fighting the world again, and conducting another founding war. Therefore, your future enemies are not only strong enemies outside the gates, but also gentry, nobles, and warlords in the world who may rebel at any time. Or: even if they don't intend to rebel, we will eliminate them by force. If we fail, don't say that we are a hereditary succession of vassals, even if we are not executed by the victors, we are likely to be buried again, and become the most miserable tenant or slave as a helpless foreigner in a place where we do not understand the language, not to mention what may happen to your family. Therefore, in this showdown and decisive battle, we must not fail, let alone have a trace of negligence and luck. Each and every one of you must seize every hour as I did when I was preparing for a showdown with the enemy inside the Imperial Horse Warden Barracks, so that these teenagers, who are still a rabble for the time being, can form their combat effectiveness as quickly as possible... ”

In this way, after the corps and the civilian corps were separated, about 500 young officers and men were selected from the 100 pro-barracks and about 500 young officers and men who had been selected from each corps and were of the upper and middle ranks, and about 100 temporary new barracks were established. Each of the five hundred men was manned by a battalion officer and five squadron leaders. The proportion of officers about one-eighty is an abnormal number in modern armies, and there is a clear lack of substitutes or auxiliary positions in ancient armies. However, in general, this is a military organization system in ancient times, which fully meets the standard of officer allocation.

More than 100 battalions marched about 40 miles in the morning, and in the afternoon after the big break, the most basic discipline and queue training were carried out. It was still largely maintained in front and behind the entire marching column of several hundred thousand people. Compared to when he was in the Imperial Horse Prison, it was obvious that there was no need to be so eager in terms of actual combat skills.

(End of chapter)