Zheng Sen's math class was the last class of the morning, and in the afternoon, the soldiers of the factory protection team were about to begin to receive various training in military technology. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

After months of physical recovery and simple physical training, the team is now able to conduct some slightly more complex tactical training, such as the phalanx.

The phalanx is nothing new, and as early as the classical period, it was a common tactic. In China, it is said that the phalanx has been used since the time of the Yellow Emperor, and in the West, Alexander the Great's spear phalanx is even more powerful, but later this ancient tactic disappeared for a time.

Although the classical phalanx had various defects, the main reason for the decline of the phalanx was not the inflexible characteristics of these battlefields, but another huge flaw of the phalanx infantry, that is, the phalanx was too expensive.

But from the point of view of equipment, this statement seems to be difficult to hold, because the main weapons of various phalanxes are also spears. Spears are much cheaper than other weapons because they use relatively little metal. As for armor or something, the Swiss phalanx, which once dominated Europe, has almost no decent armor. Moreover, the phalanx is a collective battle, and the requirements for individual combat skills are also limited. In this way, it seems that it should be cheaper to raise a phalanx infantry.

But another attribute of the phalanx is that the previous advantages of saving money are negated. This attribute is that the phalanx requires a very high level of discipline from the army. Phalanxes, especially spear phalanxes, require a very high level of discipline. Without discipline, the phalanx simply cannot be maintained. The spears in the hands of the phalanx soldiers are often 4 to 6 meters long, and a weapon of this length will be very clumsy if you fight alone, and the enemy's sword and shield soldiers can easily defeat him. Only by forming a dense phalanx can they have strong combat effectiveness.

The phalanx soldiers are in a dense formation, and the soldiers have no room to dodge at all, and the extra-long spears also make it difficult for the soldiers to make effective blocks. If someone were to escape, it would almost inevitably lead to the destruction of the phalanx form, and once the phalanx form was destroyed, the phalanx soldiers with such long spears would almost only be slaughtered.

The soldiers in the middle of the phalanx also have to face a problem, that is, because their vision is blocked by their teammates, they can hardly see what is happening on the battlefield. They attack, walk, and stop relying entirely on the rhythm and commands of the flute or drum. Because they can't see anything about the situation on the battlefield, they can only guess the situation on the battlefield by hearing, which naturally increases their psychological burden. If there was not enough discipline, perhaps the battle was gaining the upper hand, but the soldiers in the middle of the phalanx suddenly collapsed, and then the victory turned into defeat.

The military is not born with strong discipline, and the cost of discipline is quite high. First, discipline relies on morale. An army can only maintain discipline if morale is high. In general, two common phenomena can greatly damage morale. The first is to deduct military salaries, although high military salaries may not ensure high morale, and low military salaries are not necessarily low morale, but you can't expect yourself to play all kinds of tricks to drink soldiers' blood, and deduct military salaries to be happy, and the morale of the soldiers under your command can still be high. After all, everyone is not stupid. It is very difficult in an era of corruption not to withhold military salaries. The second is that the practice that will greatly reduce morale is to treat the troops under his command unfairly. For example, if you put a certain bald head, you like to divide the army into descendants and miscellaneous ones. Then, all the good things that take advantage of the advantages are related to the lineage, and the bad things that suffer losses are all miscellaneous. The result? As a result, as soon as there was a war, the descendants felt that this matter of sending people to death and the matter of betraying the blame should not be miscellaneous? Let's first give "immovable as a mountain", and then "turn into the wind", right? When the miscellaneous cards are crippled, just go over and destroy him. Miscellaneous cards can only be ...... So whether it changed into a puppet army, it changed into a turtle army.

Therefore, when the later Clausewitz mentioned some of the most important qualities of a good commander in his "On War", he ranked the quality of justice at the top, and regarded him as the most important quality of a commander, even more than bravery and wisdom. This is because injustice is bound to be devastating to the morale of the military.

It is not that the army cannot be divided into elite and ordinary according to its combat effectiveness, but the rights and obligations must be unified, and the soldiers with the most salaries should stand in the first row, and the elite troops should fight in the most difficult places. That's fairness. And this, in the feudal period, in fact, few countries were able to do it.

In addition, discipline also relies on long hours of training, and training is very expensive.

So all things considered, raising a disciplined and well-trained army has never been a cheap thing.

In today's era, in Europe, the most brilliant general is the second master of Gu (King Gustav II of Sweden). Gu Erye's reform of infantry tactics. Gu Erye changed the phalanx to a linear formation with a smaller depth to give full play to the firepower of the musket, and also used the artillery independently. In the Thirty Years War in Europe, which was still going on, Gu Erye relied on his new infantry to fight the German states. Although Gu Erye died in battle a few years ago, his tactics were definitely epoch-making.

Zheng Sen now plans to use Gu Erye's tactics as a blueprint to temper the Swedish Army, which has always been a copycat. However, in Zheng Sen's opinion, Gu Erye's army is not perfect, because Sweden is too poor, and Gu Erye's army can't afford flintlock pistols, and is still using arquebuses.

In fact, in 1547, the Frenchman Mahan had already developed a near-perfect flintlock pistol. His invention was also appreciated by King Henry IV of France, who was even preparing to replace all the arquebuses in the hands of the domestic army with flintlock muskets. It was only because of the sudden assassination of the State Grid that this plan did not have time to be realized. After the king's death, the old guards in the army opposed the flintlock pistol, which delayed the flintlock pistol as the mainstream. However, by this time, flintlock pistols were no longer uncommon in Europe, and even in Asia, the Spaniards and Dutch had a lot of them. On the one hand, Zheng Sen has also hired relevant European craftsmen to set up his own flintlock pistol production line, and on the other hand, he has also purchased a batch of flintlock pistols from the Dutch and Spaniards. to equip their own factory protection team.

Compared to arquebuses, flintlock pistols do not have to worry about burning arquebuses igniting other people's gunpowder, so soldiers can stand closer together, so that they can use denser and shallower horizontal formations. And in Zheng Sen's musket workshop, a new weapon is also being made, and this weapon is the bayonet. The bayonet is also an epoch-making thing in the history of infantry, with the bayonet, the musketeer has the power of self-preservation at close range, and the pikemen used to protect the musketeer can be eliminated, thus improving the ability to output fire. Of course, bayonets are not easy to make. It requires quite high tolerances for the manufacture of weapons. For example, as long as you have the slightest problem with the accuracy of manufacturing, the bayonet will not be able to be fixed to the barrel. In the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in later generations, the Chinese army often used large blades in hand-to-hand combat against Japanese bayonets, not because the broadsword had any advantage against bayonets, but because due to the lack of precision processing capabilities, it was impossible to manufacture a large number of bayonets that could be mounted on rifles.

Zheng Sen's precise processing ability at this time naturally cannot be compared with the Republic of China period, so the card bayonet used in later generations must not be made, and the simplest plug-in bayonet, although it is simple to manufacture, but it cannot shoot when it is on the bayonet, and the fixation is not good, and it often falls from the muzzle. Zheng Sen naturally didn't like such a simple thing, so the only choice was a collar-type bayonet. However, even a collar-type bayonet is not so easy to do, fortunately, there is enough time, and there is no need to rush too much.

And the famous legion cannon of the second master Gu, Zheng Sen is also a little unsightly. Gu Erye's artillery emphasized the need to be able to follow the infantry on the battlefield, so he used a relatively light 3-pounder gun, in order to reduce the weight, Gu Erye reduced the charge of this 3-pounder gun some, so that the barrel could be thinner, and he also shortened the barrel. In this way, Gustav's regimental cannon was so light that it only needed a horse to pull it away. It is very convenient on the battlefield. However, its weakness is also very obvious, that is, the range and power of this cannon are very average, and its lightness is achieved by reducing the power and range.

In Zheng Sen's opinion, the power of the three-pounder gun was really a little low, and Zheng Sen felt that if his multi-layer barrel technology could achieve good results, then he could use the 6-inch gun as a legion gun, and when the time came, the flintlock pistol plus the bayonet, plus the six-inch legion gun. Zheng Sen felt that he had the confidence to go to Europe and pretend to be 13.

"It's just that there is still a big problem, and that is the problem of minerals. There is almost no value of iron ore and copper ore mined in Taiwan, copper ore is fine, at least it can be imported from Japan, but iron ore ...... Fujian also doesn't have any particularly good iron mines, so it seems that it may be the idea of attacking Hainan Island? Zheng Sen thought.

……

"Major General." A voice interrupted Zheng Sen's thinking, and Zheng Sen looked at it, but it was Liu Yuanzhi, the head of the gun and stick coach of the factory protection team.

"Oh, what's the matter?" Zheng Sen asked.

"The formation drill is about to begin, do you want the major general to take a look?" Liu Yuanzhi replied.