Fischer had also arrived at Fengdanxun at this time.

The task given to him by Zhou Lang was not to fight, but to train, and Zhou Lang had 500 people under him who needed to be trained, and all of them were handed over to Fischer to be responsible.

First of all, fifty generals were selected for individual training, and these generals were also very cooperative, because they were all very satisfied with the current situation, as the generals, Zhou Lang gave them two silver dollars a day, and there was a subsidy of five silver dollars in the case of combat, so the military salary was higher than that of a county official. In addition, most of them were just poor peasants in the past, yes, peasants, which Zhou Lang had not expected before.

After recruiting troops, Zhou Lang found out that most of the members of the Taiwan Heaven and Earth Society turned out to be farmers. Originally, I thought that only urban workers had the motivation to participate in the Heaven and Earth Society, but later I realized that in fact, in rural areas, especially in rural areas of Taiwan, there are also a large number of farmers who have the motivation to participate in the Heaven and Earth Society. Like the lower-class people in the city, their first intention of joining the Heaven and Earth Society was also to seek protection.

City dwellers join the Heaven and Earth Society because they rely on this organization to help them fight against the dominant class, the shop guys don't want to be bullied by the shopkeeper, the dock workers don't want to be paid by the ship owners, all of these need someone to stand up and speak for them, and the Heaven and Earth Society is the best choice. In fact, the low-level tenant farmers in the countryside also have this need, because if they don't want to be arbitrarily increased by the landlord, they need someone to help them talk to the landlord.

The situation in Taiwan is very different from that in the mainland, whether it is coastal or inland, there are powerful clan forces, these clan forces and clan culture govern the rural society, and at the same time protect every member, for example, some villages, the fields are all clan fields, everyone cultivates the clan fields left by the ancestors, no one is a landlord, the landlord is an ethereal ancestral ancestral ancestral hall, although the patriarch and the descendants can often use their power to share more, but everyone is relatives after all, and everyone has to get by. In some places, there are one or several clans in the whole village, but they are all tenants, and the landlord is someone else, in this case, the landlord cannot raise the rent at will, otherwise he will encounter a backlash from the clan.

And these traditional social relations are rare in Taiwan, because Taiwan is a society of immigrants, everyone is an outsider, and because of the encirclement of the powerful in history, the reclamation of the big landlord forces, Taiwan's land is very concentrated, and there are very few homesteaders, although on average, the per capita arable land here is much more than that of the mainland, and it can always attract immigrants to come, but the distribution is very unfair, and the social contradictions are very great. , No. 12 to No. 102, No. 201, No. 211 to No. 301 form a team, and so on, across ten people to form a group, which completely disrupted the original system. Since most of them are members of the Heaven and Earth Society, and there are rarely more than ten leaders of the Heaven and Earth Society under their command, it is basically difficult to encounter the old relationship in such a disrupted reconstruction, so in fact, all the old relationships are disrupted.

Zhou Lang's purpose was to prevent the emergence of small groups in the army from the beginning, so that it would not be difficult to clean up in the future.

Of course, those leaders of the Heaven and Earth Society are not fools, and this method of breaking up their contact with their henchmen will definitely cause them dissatisfaction, so Zhou Langcai put the whole training at the end. Especially when the officers were pulled together for training and the officers were separated from the soldiers, the officers were not suspicious at first, because Zhou Lang had trained the officers first, and then asked the officers to train the soldiers, and they thought that after completing the training, they could go back. The officers were separated, and only then began to break up the soldiers, and at this time the soldiers were not led by officers, and the officers had no soldiers available, and there was no organization at all, so there was no trouble. In addition, Zhou Lang guaranteed that after the completion of the officer training, they were still officers, and they were still the general, and they were guaranteed their military salaries, so they did not make any major incidents, except for some complaints in private, and the reorganization of the establishment was completed smoothly.

Fischer took ten men, each in charge of the training of five teams, and the five hundred men were distributed in this way.

There are still problems with language communication, but the problem is not as big as it used to be, after a few months of contact, many mercenaries have been able to understand a few simple Chinese words, but more importantly, everyone's sign language expression skills have been rapidly improved.

Of course, the most important thing is that Zhou Lang not only translated the commonly used military terms, but also marked the Chinese dialect passwords with Western phonetic transcription, which is equivalent to forming a simple small dictionary, so that the officers are familiar with it. In colloquial language, none of the mercenaries could communicate with each other, but all of them learned the military passwords translated by Zhou Lang.

In addition, these soldiers have also observed the training of other soldiers before, and they basically understand the actions they have to do, which is nothing more than standing in line and walking.

But even so, the training effect is extremely poor, and letting the soldiers stand in a line is almost an officer fiddling with the soldiers one by one, turning left and right and walking in unison, and other actions are also even pulling and analogy, often this one is right, that is wrong, and most of the time is used to correct mistakes.

Therefore, Zhou Lang still continued to act as a translator, but he could not be a translator for all five hundred soldiers, so he could only be a translator for the officer corps, and fifty officers were personally trained by Fischer, and Zhou Lang participated in the training as a translator, which was also a good opportunity to deepen the relationship with these officers and understand each other.

In later generations, the university military training is often about a month, and the result of the training is at most to walk and line up, and individual universities with good conditions may also give a few bullets to shoot live, and now Zhou Lang's officers are almost all composed of illiterates, plus the language communication efficiency is not high (it is not as good as direct communication with a translator), even if they are given a month, it is impossible to reach the level of university military training, and university military training is a showmanship in Zhou Lang's view, so the time is very urgent.

On the third day, news came from Colin's side that he had fought with the Qing army, and Colin described the battle with the Qing army in detail. He admitted that the combat effectiveness of the Qing army encountered this time had increased, and Colin defended the Banpingshan position with 200 men, including ten cannons, 200 rifle firepower, and the Qing army also had a large number of artillery. But the two sides did not break out a decent artillery battle, the other side seemed to be very uncomfortable with the artillery battle, but the Qing army was still able to remain calm under the shelling, in this era, the intimidating effect of artillery is far greater than the actual lethality, the Qing army is not afraid of artillery, artillery can not destroy them. Then the Qing army launched a charge, they had 300 cavalry, which allowed them to rush almost within 100 meters of the position of Banping Mountain, but they suffered many casualties under the rifle fire, and finally had to retreat.

After the failure of the first charge, the Qing army stopped using horse corps to charge and instead allowed the infantry to advance. Colin thinks the men are courageous, and they brave the cannon bombardment to advance with a large shield that can be pushed along, which Colin explains is somewhat like the wooden shields of the fishermen they met in the fishing village before. Moreover, Colin found that the wooden shields used by these armies were stronger, and the cannons could be easily destroyed, but the rifle bullets could not penetrate them, which caused Colin a lot of trouble. As a result, Colin replaced the solid bullets with the most effective anti-infantry bullets, which could penetrate the shield but were too small to penetrate, and the Qing army could easily fill the gap. Solid bullets can almost cross the entire line of the Qing army, so it is very troublesome for the opponent to make up, and the most powerful is the kind of chain bullets that are generally used to hit the mast of enemy ships, and they are swept out in pieces. Eventually, the Qing army retreated under artillery fire, and if they were allowed to rush into position, Colin thought it would be a big problem.

After informing him of these circumstances, Colin suggested that Zhou Lang's defense of Fengdanxun should also be based on artillery.

But the purpose of Colin's letter was not to suggest how to fight Zhou Lang, but to tell Zhou Lang a very important piece of information, that is, the Qing army did not put the main force in the left battalion, nor did it let go of the left battalion and directly attack Fengshan County, but the troops were divided into two routes, all the way to Fengshan County, and all the way to attack the left battalion.

According to the reconnaissance, Colin believed that the strength of the attacking left battalion was about 1,000 people, and the army attacking Fengshan was about 2,000 people, which was consistent with the result of the total strength of the Qing army of 3,000 that Heaven and Earth would say.

Due to the division of the Qing army, Colin believed that he did not have the extra troops to come to Fengshan to rescue, and he also put forward a very dangerous guess, he believed that the Qing army would most likely attack the left camp from the sea, and he must stay in the left camp to guard.

Colin's letter gave Zhou Lang a sense of foreboding, Zhou Lang really didn't plan to rescue Zuo Ying, even if Colin came to ask for help, he didn't plan to go to the rescue. Unexpectedly, the Qing army did not put the main direction of attack on the left battalion, but advanced at both ends, which shows that the commander of the Qing army was either a stunned young man, or he was overconfident, thinking that he could divide the troops into two ways to kill the resistance forces of the left battalion and the county town at the same time.

Now Colin has also stated that he will not come to the rescue, which makes Zhou Lang wonder if this is also Colin's malice? The thief is weak-minded, the strategist is suspicious, Zhou Lang is plotting against Colin, and now that the same thing is happening to him, his first reaction is that Colin is afraid that he has the same idea as himself. also wants to borrow the knife of the Qing army to kill himself, and then calmly absorb Zhou Lang's forces.

Zhou Lang pondered for a moment, and he found that there was really such a possibility. If Colin had to use Zhou Lang before, and he had to get Zhou Lang's support to dare to act in the left camp, it was because Colin needed to use Zhou Lang's banner to establish a commercial base in Taiwan, using Zhou Lang as a pretense, so as to prevent the East India Company from directly clashing with the Qing court. But now that the Heaven and Earth Society has revolted, Zhou Lang's role is no longer irreplaceable, and without Zhou Lang, they can still cooperate with the Heaven and Earth Society.

Under the guise of having a heaven and earth society, it may not be worse than Zhou Lang's banner, and even worse, it can cooperate with the Qing army!

When he worked for the East India Company, Zhou Lang knew a lot about the methods used by the East India Company to make its fortune, and one of the most important ways was to cooperate with various Indian forces to help them suppress the resistance in exchange for the privilege of doing business.

Thinking that Colin could even cooperate with the Qing army, Zhou Lang couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat.