One of the hidden dangers of the rapidly expanding army was that there was a serious shortage of officers, and although a large number of leaders of the Heaven and Earth Society who had brought their own personnel were appointed and an organizational structure was established, the number of technical officers was completely insufficient to train these people into the army.

Zhou Lang's first batch of subordinate official positions are almost described as soaring, basically the thirty core soldiers who were the first to follow him have now become grassroots officers, Zhao Wen, Ma Dalei, and Chen Zhizhi have all been promoted to the head of Qian, and the three earliest members of the Heaven and Earth Society who followed him, Wei Lianli, Chen Xiaoshou and Hong Jiuzhi were also promoted to the general manager of Qian because of their meritorious recruitment.

These officers, who had already been trained as mercenary officers, were now training their men with the experience they had learned. But most of the middle- and lower-level officers, or the leaders of the Heaven and Earth Society who brought their own men, did not know how to train soldiers at all.

At this time, the local Chinese soldiers under Colin became the sweets in Zhou Lang's heart, these people have been training under Colin for a period of time, and many of them have a certain level of military skills, and they can solve Zhou Lang's urgent needs by bringing them to serve as low-level officers.

And these people really want to serve Zhou Lang more and more, because they have seen with their own eyes that Zhou Lang has appointed those brothers of the Heaven and Earth Society who have brought people to serve as officers, and they are still just a small soldier under Colin, seeing that others can be officials, but they can only be small soldiers, one by one they are more and more urgent.

But Zhou Lang is unwilling to dig these people over, first, this will cause a direct conflict with Colin, he still needs Colin, and with the increase in the strength of his subordinates, Colin's threat to him has decreased, and it is not so urgent to get rid of Colin; In the second week, Lang also needed these people to stay under Colin, so that it would be easier for him to defeat Colin when he turned against Colin in the future.

In order to appease the mood of these leaders of the Heaven and Earth Association who were eager to become officials, and to prevent them from being unable to get the future they wanted here in Zhou Lang, they ran to Chen Zhouquan in a hot mind, Zhou Lang asked Wei Lianli to come forward and secretly promised them that according to their current status, more than ten of the backbone members would be appointed as the general manager, and the big boss would be appointed as the general manager. In this way, the possibility of them taking refuge in Chen Zhouquan is greatly reduced, because after all, Chen Zhouquan cannot pay his subordinates a good military salary. It is not reliable to just promise official positions, and with Colin's familiarity with Chinese culture, no one dares to guarantee whether they can be pulled over, after all, the British have been too successful in their method of attracting Indian native soldiers.

So Zhou Lang also plans to give them an additional military salary, according to the size of the official position, they not only receive military salaries from regular channels, but also receive a subsidy from Zhou Lang, but they don't dare to do this yet, once they are pitifully detected, they will definitely think that Zhou Lang is buying his soldiers and let him take precautions in advance, so the world of Colin's soldiers will not be so smooth.

Colin could have been asked to send a group of mercenaries, but this method is not working at the moment, because Colin used the excuse that a large number of mercenary officers were sick, but the actual situation was that the contradiction between Colin and Zhou Lang intensified again.

The conflict intensified, ostensibly because Colin was concerned that Zhou Lang had been staying in Fengdanxun to recruit soldiers, and delayed receiving the ports that had been assigned to the company, but in fact, Colin began to be a little jealous when he saw the rapid increase in the strength of Zhou Lang's subordinates. Unless Zhou Lang is willing to hand over the command of these soldiers to Colin, but this time is different from the past, this is no longer the time to be in the left battalion, at that time Zhou Lang had no one under him, and Colin controlled the military power and went his own way; Now Zhou Lang has more than 60 Chinese hired from Nanyang as his team, and he has the ability to control a larger military force, so on the grounds of lack of translators, he did not consult Colin at all, and these soldiers were organized separately.

Asking his men to help train these soldiers when Colin was completely out of his hands would be like sharpening his opponent's knife, and of course he didn't want to do it.

However, the lack of technical officers is not unsolvable, as long as it is a human problem, it can be solved through subjective initiative. Zhou Lang adopted the practice of training officers first, and then letting officers train soldiers. Take the point to the surface, and finally spread it out in full.

But material scarcity is real scarcity. Before leaving India, Zhou Lang purchased hundreds of Hebis rifles, and after fighting and training, only 500 are still in normal use. The mercenaries and Chinese soldiers under Colin, as well as the more than sixty soldiers under Zhou Lang in the early days, and the current officers, basically divided up this batch of weapons, resulting in the newly recruited people not even having weapons.

The equipment problem is extremely scarce, so you can only temporarily hire a blacksmith to build cold weapons and equip soldiers. However, this obviously did not meet Zhou Lang's criteria for building a military force, but he had always regarded the East India Company and the Western army as his potential future opponents, so his army had to be equipped with the most advanced weapons and equipment of this era.

I only hope that when Harald comes back next year, he will be able to bring back the weapons he needs, and at the same time, Zhou Lang has begun to find a local blacksmith to try out the Hebis rifle, as long as it can be imitated, it is acceptable that the performance is poor, after all, this is the difference between zero and one, it is better than nothing.

The lack of sufficient officers in manpower and the serious shortage of weapons in material resources forced Zhou Lang to suspend the recruitment of soldiers after ten days and discuss the dispatch of troops with Colin.

Asked Colin to send mercenaries to help train the soldiersColin excused that most of the mercenaries were sick, but when he consulted him about sending troops to seize the good port, he refused to mention these difficulties, as if they were not insurmountable.

After consulting with Colin, the mercenaries under Colin and 300 Chinese soldiers were the main force to launch an attack on Tagu Port.

According to the current intelligence, the defense force of Tagu Port is not as empty as Chen Guanghui said, because the soldiers in the two flood areas of Tagu Xun and Qihou Xun, which are defending Tagu Port, have not been transferred by Fengshan County, not because Fengshan County does not want to be transferred, but because these two floods belong to the sea flood control and are not under the jurisdiction of the Green Battalion of Fengshan County.

The two flood lands are located in the north and south of the two capes of Tagu Port, high on the cliff, the terrain is dangerous, and there are forts, each has a fort, three chimneys, and a high-rise building. And there is a city built, as early as the Zheng Chenggong era to build the coastal defense fortress, the famous north gate of Xiongzhen is the fort of the drum flood.

The north gate of Xiongzhen and the Qihouxun fort firmly locked the port, and there were as many as three or four hundred soldiers stationed in Liangxun, which was equivalent to the strength of Colin.

However, the corruption of the Qing army was not only the army, but also the navy, and even worse. Ten years later, Cai Lian, a giant on the sea, captured this place from the sea, and also killed all the way to Fengshan County. And now Colin is attacking from his belly and back, and the coastal defense fortress designed to defend against maritime threats has no effect at all, and it only took one day for Colin to take it, but this time there were finally casualties, and ten mercenaries who still led the charge were killed, and more than ten Chinese soldiers were also killed or wounded.

The reason for this outcome is not that the combat effectiveness of the naval division is stronger than that of the green battalion, but more because the coastal flood control land is attacked by the rear of the land, which often means that the defenders are trapped, so they do a battle of trapped beasts, unlike the green battalion army, there is a possibility of escape. In addition, the problem of the command of the Chinese soldiers has not been resolved, and there has been confusion in the execution of combat orders, and there are also problems with the will to fight.

But in the end, it was still defeated, and after the Dagu Port was defeated, it became the most valuable asset of the Chinese (East India) Company at present, a natural deep-water port, and after Colin found that his men were not so reliable, he asked Zhou Lang to send more people to garrison it.

Zhou Lang stayed in Fengdanxun, and after receiving the news, the reorganized army began to evacuate here. If you don't evacuate, you can't do it, because you have been stationed outside Fengshan County for a long time, it has already led to a conflict with the forces of Chen Zhouquantiandihui in the city. If it weren't for the relatively solid terrain of Fengdanxun, Zhou Lang's arrival relieved Chen Zhouquan, and the two sides also agreed to form an alliance, coupled with the pressure of the Qing army in Taiwan, maybe Chen Zhouquan would have come to fight Fengdanxun a long time ago. He had sent Chen Guanghui many times to urge Zhou Lang to transfer the army to the coast. The other party's tone is becoming more and more blunt every time, and if Zhou Lang doesn't act, it will be a matter of time before the relationship between the two parties breaks down.

So Zhou Lang recruited enough people and immediately started to act.

In this regard, Chen Zhouquan of Fengshan County was very satisfied, and sent people to send 2,000 loads of grain as military rations on the road, but when Zhou Lang sent 300 people to play drums and floods, and 300 people were transferred back to the left camp to garrison, and there were less than 500 people left, Chen Zhouquan sent people to contact, hoping that Zhou Lang would not leave.

Originally, Zhou Lang recruited troops in Fengdanxun, which has always made Chen Zhouquan very scrupled, so he has asked Chen Guanghui to negotiate many times, hoping that Zhou Lang will attack the coastal areas as soon as possible, and suddenly asked Zhou Lang not to leave, naturally because of the change.

Reinforcements from the Qing army have arrived!

The Qing army had a total of 3,000 horses, and they came from the capital city of Taiwan.

Chen Zhouquan didn't take it seriously at first, because his recent power expansion is more terrifying than Zhou Lang, he is the leader of the Heaven and Earth Society of Zhengyin, after the uprising in Fengshan County, just like Lin Shuangwen's uprising back then, the Heaven and Earth Society congregation rushed to respond first, and after capturing Fengshan County, in less than ten days, he recruited 5,000 soldiers and horses.

Then Chen Zhouquan began to send troops to the four fields, attacking cities everywhere, the Qing army in Fengshan County fled from the flood land everywhere, and for a time the entire Fengshan County was almost controlled by Chen Zhouquan, and the forces of the Heaven and Earth Society in the surrounding areas came to take refuge, and even the Taiwan Mansion in the north had members of the Heaven and Earth Society to take refuge, but because the north was the Taiwan Mansion, it could not be connected with the Heaven and Earth Society in Chiayi County, Changhua County and other places, otherwise Chen Zhouquan's power development would probably be greater, so the soldiers and horses under his command also reached more than 10,000 people.

So Chen Zhouquan was full of spirits, and when he learned that the Qing army reinforcements were coming, he was not worried, but asked his general Huang Chao to bring 5,000 men and horses to stop him, and was defeated in Lanpoling and Shijingxun successively.

Chen Zhouquan sent 5,000 additional reinforcements, and let Chen Guanghui lead the decisive battle with the Qing army in Xiaodianzixun with a total strength of 8,000. But this time, the rebel army of the Eight Thousand Heaven and Earth Society was defeated again by the hands of the three thousand Qing army.

The small shop is the name of a shop, and the radical of the word "shop" is the "tongue" part, so this word has the meaning of transmitting information, and the shop house together is the building that transmits information, in fact, the shop house is the so-called post station. But unlike the post station, it is not responsible for the reception function, and is purely used to deliver news, and it is also a military message. According to the regulations, ten miles is the shop, and there are five soldiers. Because Fengshan County is mostly mountainous, it did not place soldiers, but hired local people, did not provide them with food, and only gave them some torch silver.

There are six paved like Xiaodianzi, from Fengshan County all the way to Taiwan. The closest to the county seat is called the county front shop, followed by the Guanyin Mountain shop, followed by the small shop, so the Qing army arrived at the small shop, which means that the Qing army is not far from the county seat.

And since these shops are all institutions built on official roads, this also means that the roads leading to the county seat have basically been opened.

Chen Zhouquan's remnants of troops still exceeded 10,000, but his mentality had been completely shattered, so he asked Zhou Lang to stay and help him retreat from the enemy.

Zhou Lang finally felt that the situation was serious, but he didn't expect the Qing army to be so able to fight, so that he couldn't figure out the details of the elite pacesetters in Fucheng for a while.

Hurriedly sent someone to beat the drum and inform Colin, asking him to bring his troops back to prepare for the decisive battle, after all, Colin's more than 300 mixed soldiers equipped with Hebis rifles are the real combat effectiveness of the army.