Prince Wilhelm has been King of Poland for twenty years, and most of that time he has been doing one thing, the Prussianization of Poland.

The Prussian system was constantly implemented in Poland, and although the Polish territory changed several times, in the area west of the Vistula River, these systems had been established, and now Poland was the largest territory after the partition, and it was nominally an independent state.

The Polish aristocracy could also enter the parliament in a grand manner, and like most countries, the nobility had no borders, the nobility had no nation, and the nobility was European. Long-term marriages with foreign nobles have made them far less intimate with their own nationals than with foreign nobles, and they are a group of European people floating in the upper class of European society.

Unlike the rest of Europe, the Polish nobility did not develop a hierarchical hierarchy before the partition, and there was no division of titles among princes and princes, but their aristocracy was huge, numbering 700,000 in the 16th century, or 7% to 8% of the total population.

The so-called aristocracy in Poland, like in Russia, only represented landowners, more than half of whom owned only 10 to 20 acres of land, which was in fact no different from the Chinese gentry.

The middle landlords owned one or two villages, but among the Polish nobility at the top formed large landowners of all European proportions. The owners of these lands often owned millions of acres of land, administered dozens of towns, hundreds of villages, and hundreds of thousands of subjects living on them.

These top-level landlords are actually comparable to the aristocracy in the European sense. If placed in Europe, they could become some knightly lord with real power, or even the Grand Duke of the Duchy, and even some kings would not have as much land and population as they were.

But they were only members of the nobility in Poland, meeting with other noble parliamentarians of various sizes to decide Polish policy.

Historically, they were threatened by the surrounding countries, and they refused to make substantive reforms, so that Poland became a centralized state, so they continued to show favor to the surrounding countries, and they had the power to elect the king, so they chose the big nobles abroad as their kings again and again, in order to use the hat of the Polish king to resolve the threat of these countries to Poland. So the Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, and Swedes were successively kings of the Poles.

Later, after being divided, these large landowners began to accept the corresponding titles of the three countries of Russia and Austria, and accepted the status of earls and barons. After that, the long-term dependency relationship made these nobles slippery, and they had close ties with the upper echelons of the Three Kingdoms, who relied on them to rule Poland, and they relied on the upper echelons of the Three Kingdoms to ensure their status.

These great nobles have long since become less combative, and now in the Kingdom of Poland, these nobles with the titles of counts and barons conferred by the three kingdoms of Russia and Austria at different times have entered the parliament and formed the House of Lords, and it is unrealistic to expect them to fight against the royal power.

And the House of Commons, elected by the taxpayers, are mostly bourgeoisie, and these people are not only not anti-king, but on the contrary, they are calling for an independent Poland, and now that the Prussians have given them an independent Poland, what reason do they have to oppose it. What reason did they have to reject the system that had been in practice in Prussia for a long time, and which had made Prussia a great power? Prussia's bourgeois system, although more conservative than that of England and France, was much more advanced than that of Russia and Austria.

In the last war, Prince Wilhelm was in control of only half of Poland, but in the end he was able to raise a Polish army of 100,000 men. The Kingdom of Poland under its current rule was larger and more populous than it was then, and could afford to raise more armies.

Moltke was now in charge of the job, and Moltke did not intend to inherit the Prussian system entirely, he had greater ambitions, he wanted to create a more efficient system.

Out of trust in Moltke and Moltke's outstanding performance in the Ottoman Empire, Prince Wilhelm believed that since Moltke could make the Ottoman army behave head-to-head with the Russian army, then the Polish army under his command would never be worse than the Ottoman army.

So Moltke began to implement reforms in Poland as early as last year.

Due to the fact that Poland was dependent on Prussia, and even the German-speaking people were widely distributed throughout Poland, the military reform of Poland was later seen as part of the Prussian military reform.

This reform was basically divided into two parts, one part was the overall Prussianization, that is, the inheritance of Prussia's existing military system, mainly the training system and the officer training system. This work was actually completed during the twenty years of Prince Wilhelm's reign, and there was no difficulty in carrying it out on the territory of Xinzeng, because the implementation in the Greater Poland and Lesser Poland regions in the west gave them enough talent reserves to cover the whole of Poland.

After the end of the war against Russia, the Polish army was reduced to 80,000 men, and according to the Prussian system, 20,000 recruits were recruited every year, 20,000 veterans were retired, and the service period was three years, and after three years, they were transferred to the reserve, and the reserve army was two years, and the reserve army was seven years. According to the experience of Prussia, this system can basically guarantee combat effectiveness within ten years, but after twenty years it will be ill. But Bismarck didn't have to wait twenty years, so he didn't care if he was reformed or not.

The second part, which is Moltke's contribution, is called the staff headquarters system. The history of the establishment of the general staff department is a long time, and excellent staff officers have a certain role in cooperating with commanders. But most of the time, staff officers are actually mere formalities, and many staff officers are simply called by the commander as adjutants. The General Staff, created by Moltke, was not a vassal of the commander, but a department commanding the commander.

Moltke's General Staff drew up an extremely detailed battle plan, and the commander only had to be responsible for its implementation, and it had to be carried out. While this may seem like a deprivation of commanders of decision-making power on the spot, like all military reforms, it is historic, and it is most in line with realistic conditions. Before the Seven Years' War, European countries had very little experience commanding more than 100,000 troops, and before the Napoleonic Wars, European countries rarely had experience commanding more than 200,000 troops. Even Napoleon could only play to the fullest in the battle of about 100,000 people.

This means that the previous military command model can no longer adapt to the operations of large corps. In fact, China is also facing this problem, throughout Chinese history, the scale of wars before the Qin and Han dynasties was generally huge, and after the Qin and Han dynasties, the level of wars of the national war almost disappeared, facing the predatory invasion of nomads again and again, these scattered invasions, in fact, are not large. Whether it is Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire or the Eight Banners of the Manchu Dynasty, it is at most 200,000 levels. Most of the time it was a few thousand people looting, and occasionally there were large-scale looting, and there were no more than 100,000 people.

Therefore, the Central Plains country lost the experience of commanding large corps to fight, and the management model of the pre-Qin period was also lost in history. So in the Song and Ming dynasties, the Song Dynasty fought the Western Xia, and the Ming Dynasty fought the Manchu Dynasty, all of which were divided into troops, because the scale was large, and they couldn't manage it, and the Song Dynasty was defeated by the Western Xia many times in a row, and the Ming army was defeated by Nurhachi I only went all the way. It's not that they don't know the simple truth of joining forces, it's just that they can't manage it themselves after joining forces.

When he arrived at Zhou Lang, he actually didn't understand military affairs, so he groped all the way, and in order to command the whole army, he gathered a large number of various advisers around him. The civilian commanders of the military such as the Zeng State Domain also had a huge staff organization, which was called the shogunate. Although it is still different from the staff headquarters system in the West, it is also a product of adapting to the large corps.

The significance of Moltke's contribution was to institutionalize the situation of the shogunate, which brought together various human resources and advisors.

In Moltke's staff headquarters, there were all kinds of talents. During the Franco-Prussian War, French officers complained about the lack of uniforms on their front lines, the mismatch of weapons and ammunition, and the fact that some troops had artillery without shells, and some units had artillery shells without artillery, which was considered to be a mess in the management of the French army. In fact, in the era of industrialization, there was a lack of professional institutions to manage the war of industrialization.

Moltke's General Staff Headquarters allowed Prussian train transportation to the minute, not only in Prussia, but also in France, where the Prussian army used the French railways to transport troops and provisions, even faster than the French army. This at least shows that there must be a professional staff officer in Moltke's staff who is proficient in train dispatch and logistics management, but he is not necessarily a professional soldier.

It was Moltke's innovation to bring together a wide variety of professionals and manage the army in a scientific way.

Applying the management model of later generations, this is similar to the various professional departments of the head office, such as technology, design, engineering and other departments to formulate professional plans, and the project manager is responsible for the specific implementation as the commander. The professional design of various professional departments makes up for the shortcomings that the project manager cannot have all the professional knowledge, and can give full play to his management ability.

It took two years for Moltke to build such a highly professional staff headquarters in Poland, but at this time, even Moltke himself did not know the power of this system, he just combined his practice and experience in the Ottomans to further improve it.

Now Moltke has been given the task of giving Poland 400,000 soldiers to fight within two years.

Moltke was supported by a £10 million a year earmark, which Prince William authorized Moltke to use as he pleased.

After some consideration with the General Staff, Moltke decided to spend most of the money on the construction of the railway.