Xiao Xuan's biggest concern before was that people in this era could not put the concept of quality first, which is a thing that many people in modern China, from employees to the grassroots, lack sufficient awareness. It's just that everything I saw at this time shows that my worries are a little excessive.

Even in modern times, there are few so-called "craftsman spirits", because the life and death of enterprises do not need to worry about themselves. In an immature market society, doing a good job may not necessarily earn more, and it is even possible to become an "old scalper". And in many cases, producers are not consumers of their own products. But if the producer is not only the main consumer of his own product, but also the main consumer of profit and life, everything becomes different. Xiao Xuan explained why he put the quality of the weapon in the first place, and it didn't take much effort and time.

Xiao Xuan also roughly calculated an account with the craftsmen: "If the things produced are to be used to maintain more troops, it will inevitably cost more money." The cost of a regular barracks soldier is no less than that of those who now receive unprecedented wages. Roughly calculate: In order to make the officers and men have at least meat and fish, or to be able to slaughter livestock every day during the battle, and calculate the cost of raising livestock, it is necessary to convert at least three liters of rations into food, salt, vegetables, and meat every day, and considering that the inevitable waste in transportation and combat readiness storage is four liters. If the soldiers of the regular barracks want to have a relatively strict organization and discipline, they cannot set up a person in charge of affairs with more than 100 people like you, and these people will inevitably be drawn from them. Lin Lin finally calculated, just the ration cost five or six liters a day, and a year to calculate two thousand catties of rations or three thousand catties of raw grain; Coupled with the necessary military pay and overlay expenses, this is also the reason why an infantry member of the Northern Song Dynasty Forbidden Army needed to spend an average of 50 yuan a year. You just work every day, and according to the wages that are much higher than in the past, that's probably the level, right? However, if the accuracy of our army's arrows or ammunition is doubled, or the actual killing and penetrating effect is doubled, it is directly equivalent to doubling the number of troops, even if the output rate is reduced, slow work and meticulous work. Do you think that under the condition that there is sufficient procurement and supply of raw materials, can two or three years of work make the whole army have so many weapons and ammunition that everyone needs to become a horseman to pull it? But it can be spent, but in fact it is not much more... ”

When explained carefully in this way, not everyone could understand it at first for the craftsmen whose cultural level was not very high in this era, so Xiao Xuan took a lot of effort to make his thinking roughly understand to others: the cost of elite soldiers may be twice as much as that of ordinary warlike armies, and the cost of an army with sophisticated equipment may be twice as much as the cost and men of the artisan auxiliary battalion, but the actual combat effect brought by me is obviously not as simple as one and a half times.

In order to reassure the old people, Xiao Xuan also said without hesitation: "Back then, Han Xin boasted that Han Xin led as many troops as possible, and he personally knew for the generals: to be able to make the 50,000,000 army very effective, and there is no hidden danger of rebellion, and it will not let some troops become independent kingdoms of some people, so it is possible to be a famous general who is not born in the world." I thought that although I had a bit of understanding in the art of training and principles, this method was also more demanding for the person who personally led the army, and I thought: At best, I can raise another full battalion of about four or five thousand people, and command more than 10,000 guards, which may be my upper limit. ”

"Holy Lord, rest assured! No matter how harsh the requirements of the Holy One are in the future, or if they seem to be deliberately embarrassing, the subordinates will never doubt that everything the Holy Lord said is for the sake of the combat strength of the whole battalion, and even for those of us who have never been too high in the past... ”

Hearing this, Xiao Xuan was no longer worried about the morale of the auxiliary craftsmen. It's just that after a rough calculation in my heart, I still feel that the fundamental factor that limits my combat effectiveness now is money and food.

Under the higher management requirements, more craftsmen need money to motivate morale, and money is needed for sufficient carriage and horse expenses.

Of course, money can't be everything, for example, the finances of the Song Dynasty at its peak did not count any grass, salaries and other messes. There are tens of millions of guan, stones, and taels of money, grain, and silver alone, but it cannot rely on this to have hundreds of thousands of troops that can catch up with and surpass the Three Kingdoms. And the problem is: if there is too little, it will also be "difficult for a good woman to cook without rice". It seems that he can spend a lot of money at any time in a team of five or six thousand people, and there is no shortage of money, but with the help of the three or four hundred thousand taels of silver plundered by the Qing Shui eunuchs, as well as the weapons and equipment and expenses of the Imperial Horse Supervisor himself and even the captured ones, he has saved a lot of money on carriages and horses, and if there is no foreign money, there will be problems in a year.

In Xiao Xuan's calculations: it is impossible for the army to have the combat effectiveness of the Polish hussars in a short period of time, at least it must have the core elite of Gustav's 10,000 soldiers who are not short of horses as their core support, so as to be able to effectively deal with various internal and external risks, which is still a lower limit. In the summer of the first year of Chongzhen, that is, half a year later, another guard right battalion should be formed. In this way, when you lead a team to go out, you will have the necessary team to come to see the house. In this way, the army of chariots, horses, and firearms that are not short of tens of thousands of food and salaries can be maintained. There are also many firearms to be improved, and of course, there is more important: to make at least 2,000 or so cronies of young people very good at using bows and arrows and conducting massive archery training, which is a relatively large expense.

In order to quickly form combat effectiveness as quickly as possible, at least 100 to 100 arrows a day, a bow and a lot of other training equipment for training in three days, which also need to be equivalent to the cost of about 200 stone of grain per person a year. For example, it would take at least a few thousand archers to be able to maintain this level of training. If it was 2,000 young officers and soldiers, everyone would do this, especially considering that in order to increase the cost of rebellion of the Guards, it was expanded to far more than 1,000 men, but it was not obviously close to the scale of 10,000 people. In the end, it is necessary to pay about one million stone of grain every year to solve some of the most basic problems.

Thinking of these, Xiao Xuan returned to the stone house that had been built temporarily for office purposes and even daily residential purposes in the past few days, so he no longer hesitated, and personally flipped through some of the internal records sent by the Imperial Horse Supervisor since Wanli. In the last year of Wanli, when Jiannu had just started the army, it was still relatively rich, and it was said that there were millions of taels. This is already a considerable amount of money for the emperor's private money. But later, the Ming army was defeated in Liaodong continuously, the border pass was in crisis, and when Ning Jin finished this series of battles and ascended the throne, the entire internal army did not even have the so-called 70,000 taels after Li Zicheng came in in the last year of Chongzhen.