It is difficult to say whether the total strength of 90,000 troops deployed on the Hunan front can withstand the army of King Sanshun, but it is definitely enough to block the more than 20,000 Han Eight Banners and Green Battalions in Hubei. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

The newly built conscription office and new barracks in the east of Zhaoqing, the capital of Xingdu, have recently recruited 20,000 new soldiers, and the first choice for the recruits is the soldiers and civilians who are full of blood and blood feud with the Manchu Qing Dynasty, followed by the subway miners, and the most important are the peasants of Guangxi. Guangxi's poor mountains and bad waters, the people's customs are fierce, brave and ruthless, and the places where strong soldiers have been produced since ancient times, these are all good sources of soldiers and good seedlings of strong troops.

The current military reform is not thorough, there are many compromises, Huguang and Jingying have a large number of private armies in groups, and they have not been dispersed and reorganized, which is always a threat to the center and the emperor. The coming war will certainly be accompanied by a large number of casualties among the sergeants, and it is a good opportunity to phase out the private armies of the towns.

Zhu Youlang took precautions and built an independent conscription office, no longer giving independent conscription rights to the Ming military towns in Xingdu Jingying, Liangguang and Huguang, and the military department was solely responsible for the recruitment and training of new soldiers.

If these dismissed soldiers are disbanded on the spot, they will always be a hidden danger if they are disbanded on the spot, unloaded and returned to the field to stay in Huguang, and if the king of Sanshun goes south, he will take the opportunity to join forces with the outside and seize the city.

Instead of staying in Huguang and being slaughtered by the Qing army, it is better to send it to southern Sichuan, enrich the Dingkou in the jurisdiction of Wen'an, and replenish the strength of the garrison, the current situation of the people in Sichuan is too miserable.

Since being ravaged by the Qing soldiers and Zhang Xianzhong in turn, tens of millions of Dingkou have died ninety out of nine, and the remaining Shu people have fled into the deep mountains and old forests, with grass and clothing, and after a long time, white hair has grown all over the body and has become a wild man. There are thousands of miles of people in Shu, thorns everywhere, the city and countryside are desolate, and there are no people in sight.

The Qing army had no food, so they had to withdraw from Shuzhong, and Wu Sangui guarded Shaanxi and controlled Sichuan remotely. After Jiashen, about three years later, there was no one to govern Sichuan. Wang Yingxiong, the governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi, although he was conceited, had some skills, and was Zhou Yanru, Wen Tiren's sharp axe, and cut down many political enemies for them.

Zhang Xianzhong occupied Sichuan, and Zunyi became the base camp of the Ming army. Wang Yingxiong opened a mansion in Zunyi and took care of military and political affairs. After Wang Yingxiong's death, Wang Xiang used the seal signal in his hand to annex the battalions one after another, and recovered southern Sichuan. With more than four or five thousand troops, he became the de facto governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi.

Zeng Ying's subordinate general Yang Zhan was also in southern Sichuan, garrisoning Jiading. There is also a skin bear, who married his daughter to the king of Han, and planned to support the king of Han in the southern Sichuan prison country, but did not Zhang Luo, and these three forces often fought against each other.

The three Ming armies were no less than 100,000 (most of them were strong men who were forcibly pulled), and they lived exclusively on looting, and no one was able to settle the fields. There is no shortage of gold and silver in the military camp, but there is a lack of food. If they are hungry, they buy buckwheat from Tibetan herdsmen, who are thousands of miles away, and there are many people who go and few who come back. There was simply no food in northern Sichuan, and the three forces were all active in the Sichuan-Guizhou area, plundering on their own, and becoming a rabble.

After Wen Anzhi, the new governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi, arrived in southern Sichuan, the three towns were divided into dominants in the jurisdiction, and they felt that the imperial court had lost its prestige in the past. didn't take Wen Anzhi, the court official, in his eyes at all.

Wen Anzhi followed Zhu Youlang's instructions, secretly ordered Shi Yan to proclaim the envoy, and ordered his wife Qin Liangyu to enter the Wei Governor's Office. Qin Liangyu was sick and unable to make the trip, so he sent his son Ma Xianglan to lead 3,000 white pole soldiers to the governor to listen to the order.

Although the number of white pole soldiers is not large, it is indeed prestigious, and the three towns have become frightened birds when they hear that the white pole soldiers have arrived, and they do not dare to burn and loot anymore, ignoring the military and political orders of the governor, and most of them have conditional cooperation.

After Du Yinxi sent to him the 100,000 or so strong men who had been removed from Huguang in accordance with the emperor's instructions, Wen Anzhi found a wilderness place surrounded by mountains between Bawu and called it Jiulianping, surrounded by mountains, easy to defend and difficult to attack, and the soil was fertile, which was just suitable for Tuntian. He arranged 100,000 stragglers to settle there, which not only solved their food problems, but also prevented them from causing trouble when they had nothing to do, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.

Under the pressure of the Qing army's imminent southward march, more than 40,000 Beijing battalions in the five towns were training in full swing in the barracks in the east, west, and south of the city, and actively preparing for war.

On a shooting range in the east of the city.

Zhu Youlang, under the escort of dozens of sharp soldiers who set the hegemony in the capital, watched the sergeants practice target shooting on the sidelines.

Hundreds of musketeers stood in two columns, all resting their muskets on their shoulders.

A military commander next to him shouted: "Take the gun!" ”

The two columns of musketeers shouted at the same time: "Take the gun!" ”

With a bang, they all took the fire gun in their hands.

The military commander shouted: "Vertical gun!" ”

With a bang, two columns of firecrackers put the firecrackers on the ground together.

Commanding Officer: "Reload!" ”

The two musketeers stuffed the gunpowder and lead bullet from the cartridge ammunition into the musket.

Commandant: "Take the cane!" ”

The two musketeers pulled out the tongs together, stabbed them three times into the mouth, stabbed the gunpowder lead bullets solidly, and then inserted the tongs back.

Commandant: "Gun!" ”

The two musketeers set up their muskets in a shooting position again.

The military commander raised the small flag and waved it violently.

The fire was blazing, smoke was rising, and crackling sounded.

Ninety steps ahead, in a row of targets, sawdust flew sideways, and most of the targets were shattered.

Zhu Youlang nodded with satisfaction and shouted "stop".

Then he walked to the front of the queue of firecrackers, and casually signaled a firecracker in the back row to hand over the firecracker in his hand, and the firecracker carefully handed over the firecracker in his hand as ordered.

Zhu Youlang looked at this firecracker, it was black and thick, the whole body was made of fine iron, the gun tube was straight and long, there were crosshairs in front and back, and the back of the gun was sealed with bolts, and the wooden support was slightly bent downward. At first glance, it is a well-made firearm, and it is no longer the kind of junk firearm that can be separated from the gun and the gun holder with a little force.

According to the gunsmith master of the firearms workshop of the craftsman's camp, Zhu Youlang knew that this kind of firearm was called the turtledove's foot gun.

The turtledove foot gun is the largest fire gun with the inner diameter in the Ming Dynasty, also called the hook gun, the gun is 5.5 feet long (about 31-32 cm per ruler), the inner diameter is 0.6 inches (converted to about 19mm), the medicine is 1.3 taels, the lead weighs 1.5 to 1.6 taels (about 56 grams), the big turtledove gun bullet weighs 1.8 taels (68 grams, terrifying), the gun body is very heavy, needs to be supported by a tripod, and resembles a bird's foot, hence the name, the power is far better than that of ordinary birds.

It is completely different from the style of the bird and the Rumi pipe. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, only Macao and Guangdong can manufacture, pirates have used this kind of firearms, the official army also has a small amount of equipment, Chongzhen eight years Xiong Wencan transported to Beijing a batch of firearms, including this kind of firearms 100 doors, after the Songjin War, the Ministry of War to transfer Zheng Zhilong's sailors to guard Juehua Island, Zheng Zhilong is afraid of death, one of the reasons for refusal is that only Guangdong can make turtledove foot.

The turtledove foot gun is a rare boutique in the arquebus series, but unfortunately it is difficult to mass produce it due to the constraints of technology and materials.

The bird gun is the first sharp weapon in the battle, the sharp hole armor, the shot can hit, and the bow and arrow can reach. Historically, the Qi family army trained the bird hand, and stood a five-foot-high wooden card in eighty steps, and the bird hand was in the three-in-one, and the seventeenth party was the art master.

The effective lethality of the three-eyed gun is only more than 20 steps, while the bird gun is much farther, and the effective lethality of a good bird gun can be 80 steps.

The infantry bow full of eight banners has an effective range of 70 steps, and only when it enters 50 steps can it have obvious lethality to the target. To break the opponent's armor, leather armor, cotton armor, iron armor, etc., it is necessary to take about 30 or 40 steps closer. However, the arrows of their arrows are extremely long, their shape is like a chisel, and the arrows have been soaked in horse manure, etc., which is difficult to take out after shooting, not to mention, the toxin spreads, and it is easy to lose life. Therefore, it cannot be underestimated, especially the Sanshun Wangbu and the Han Eight Banners of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and many battalion heads are also equipped with sophisticated bird guns and firearms, which cannot be underestimated.

At present, the fire hammers under the command of Jiao Lian and Wu Jisi of the Beijing camp rely on the sharp weapon of the turtledove foot gun, and they can smash most of the targets 90 steps away, according to the requirements of the Qi family's army, they can be regarded as superb skills, of course, Zhu Youlang knows that the soldiers of the Beijing camp can get these results, all of which have been shot out through countless live ammunition.

In Zhu Youlang's view, the Ming Dynasty did not lose in terms of whether the weapons and equipment were advanced, but more political factors in all aspects. Moreover, the warlordization of various towns in the late Ming Dynasty, coupled with poor logistical corruption, greatly affected the promotion of all kinds of advanced firearms.

Firearms troops require systematic and rigorous training, and all aspects of support are complex issues. And the cold weapon army, casually pull some strong men, give swords, guns and sticks, you can fight, and you can boast to the outside that you have tens of thousands of male soldiers, occupying an important position in the eyes of the imperial court, but in fact, the combat power is at the level of the five scum of war. The so-called 100,000 male soldiers are no more than a few thousand well-trained firearms troops with sophisticated artillery, firearms, and weapons.

After watching the firearms soldiers shoot targets on the training ground, Zhu Youlang watched the artillery team's artillery training again, and dozens of artillery pieces were divided into large cannons, small cannons, and tiger squat cannons placed in the wide shooting range, and a temporary commander was set up for each type of artillery. (To be continued.) )