129 soldiers are strong and strong

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The problem of making gunpowder is not a difficult thing for Li Zixiao, and few people in later generations do not know the formula of gunpowder.

It's just saltpeter, sulfur, and toner, which are configured according to a certain proportion, and the ratio of gunpowder in the Ming Dynasty has been quite mature, and there is basically no difference between the ratio of gunpowder in later generations.

It's just that Li Zixiao doesn't have saltpeter and sulfur at hand at the moment, and he wants to make his own gunpowder, at least now it's not realistic, so the only bit of gunpowder has become Li Zixiao's treasure.

In addition to equipping each bird with twenty rounds of gunpowder, the measly remaining stock of gunpowder was only enough for the Tiger Squat Cannon to fire five or six times.

At this time, Li Zixiao did not have sulfur and saltpeter in his hands, but as long as there was silver, this thing could be purchased, and after a while, he could find a channel to purchase this saltpeter and sulfur, and he could configure gunpowder by himself.

But even so, after a few days of practice, Li Zixiao still reluctantly asked the gang to come to a live shooting to test the training effect of these days.

Li Zixiao didn't dare to put the distance of the target too far, all of them were fifty steps away, this is considered a medium distance, thirty steps is too close, if this can't be hit, wouldn't Li Zixiao have trained them for so many days in vain.

Eighty steps is too far, for the poor accuracy of the bird at this time, it is too difficult for these people to hit, fifty steps is just right.

"Start loading." After Li Zixiao ordered them to line up, he ordered loudly.

The twenty-eight bird gunners immediately put the handle of the bird gun on the ground, and with a neat movement, they took out a bamboo tube containing gunpowder from their waists, bit off the wooden plug at the front end of the bamboo pipe, and instantly poured the gunpowder in the bamboo pipe into the chamber.

Then he used a cane to insert the gun into the chamber to pound the gunpowder, took out a projectile from the projectile bag, stuffed it into the mouth, and used the cane again to smash the projectile into the bottom of the gun chamber, and tightly fit the gunpowder together.

Then they took the gun, opened the lid of the pool, poured the powder into the pool, closed the lid of the pool, lit the arquebus on the musket, opened the dragon's head, held the gun in both hands and placed it vertically in front of them, and blew the arquebus with their mouths so that it would not be extinguished.

Then one by one, the Birdsmiths shouted, "Reloaded." ”

After several days of repeated training, these guys have become very familiar with the whole loading action, and in about half a minute, these people have completed the loading and reported loudly to Li Zixiao.

Li Zixiao nodded with satisfaction, this kind of training is still effective, at least the reloading speed has really increased a lot, so he immediately ordered loudly again: "Raise the gun, aim." ”

After the twenty-eight bird gunners excitedly loaded the gunpowder, they flattened the bird guns together with a bang, raised their guns and began to carefully aim at the humanoid target set for them by Li Zixiao fifty paces away.

"Fire!"

With Li Zixiao's order, these bird-screws pulled down the bolt together, and came with a standard salvo.

All they could hear was the sound of a thumping gunshot, and a cloud of gunsmoke immediately rose in front of them, making it almost impossible to see the target's situation.

"Put down your gun and clear your chamber!" Li Zixiao then ordered loudly.

The platoon of gunners immediately lowered their guns, immediately pulled out their canes, and inserted them into the still smoking chambers of the guns, removing the remnants of the unburned gunpowder residues from the chambers.

And quickly pick up the gun, clean the small hole leading to the chamber of the cartridge, to prevent the next time the pond is used, the ignition powder cannot fire the gunpowder in the chamber.

At this time, in the ditch on the other side of the target, several people lying on their stomachs immediately got up and began to inspect the row of humanoid targets.

"Target No. 1 hits the abdomen, Target No. 2 hits the head, Target No. 3 misses, Target No. 4 hits the leg......"

After a while, the group of people on the opposite side who were inspecting the humanoid targets shouted out loudly, and reported the results of their shooting to the bird-bearers on this side.

The bird handman who hit the target was immediately overjoyed, grinning loudly, showing off to his companions next to him.

When they shot just now, they were really worried that this guy in their hands would blow them up and kill them.

But now they were in a very happy mood, and hitting the target in fifty steps was something they had never dared to think of before.

But now that they have done it, it seems that Li Zixiao's rigorous training for a few days is still very effective.

Those bird gunners who didn't hit the target were unlucky, and finally got a live shot, but they also beat the lead to nothing, and these inaccurate bird gunners, one or two, were very frustrated and felt very ashamed.

After listening to the target, Li Zixiao did the math, almost half of the twenty-eight bird's guns hit, and half missed, although he was not satisfied with this result, but it was about the same.

Because this bird gun is poorly manufactured, it is fortunate that it did not blow up the chamber, and the hit rate of half of the fifty steps is already a pretty good result.

He nodded slightly to indicate that it was acceptable, and praised those men who had hit: "Yes, it seems that you have worked hard these days.

The person who hits the target today will add a piece of meat to each person at night, and everyone who doesn't hit will not eat meat, which is called reward and punishment. Don't be frustrated, there will be opportunities in the future. ”

In the playground of the cottage, the sound of passwords is practiced at this time, and a team of recruits are being ordered by some veterans, constantly doing various queues or assassination actions, and from time to time there will be earth-shattering shouts of killing.

Of course, there are also the roars of the officers scolding, and the screams of some unscrupulous guys being pressed to the ground and beaten.

In short, after this group of recruits joined the cottage, under the rich and sufficient food supply in the cottage, the enthusiasm of these more than 200 recruits for training has also been mobilized.

One by one, the veteran officers who followed them very hard, learned various queues and killing actions, and at the same time, in order to improve the training enthusiasm of these guys, Li Zixiao also introduced reward and punishment measures.

Every afternoon, everyone gathered outside the fort, and then had a short drill to rehearse the subjects practiced that day, so as to test the effectiveness of the drills of each team.

If the results of the drill do not meet the requirements, they will be punished for doing fifty push-ups on the spot or frog jumping around the field, and at the same time, they will have to deduct part of their food for the night, at least there is no meat to eat, and they don't even have to think about broth.

For those queues with good training results, they will be rewarded with additional meals that night, and the meat and broth withheld from the poorly trained squad will be rewarded to these well-trained squad members, so as to distinguish the training results.

As a result, as soon as this kind of reward and punishment measure was introduced, there was an immediate strong response, and these recruits lived a life of insufficient food and clothing before adding cottages.

Now let them eat enough every day, and there is meat to eat, of course they feel satisfied, and they don't want to go back to the hard life before, although Li Zixiao only eats and drinks with his soldiers at this time, and has no money, but they are still very satisfied.

Besides, people are not ordinary animals, people have a sense of shame, no one wants to be at the bottom, let people see their jokes, not to mention that the training results are directly linked to their food, who doesn't want to eat more good things!

So these guys immediately set off a boom in large-scale military training, and the recruits of each team were competing with each other openly and secretly.

If you practice assassination 1,000 times today, I will practice 1,200 times, and if you practice 1,200 times, I will practice 1,500 times.

In this way, the training effect is much better, and the training subjects that were originally planned to be completed in three days often turn out to be basically able to meet the requirements at the end of one day.

Such rewards and punishments have a multiplier effect on training, making Li Zixiao look at it and smile secretly.

In the following days, Zhang Ergouzi successively selected some young and strong homeless people to bring back to the cottage, and some homeless people who got the news defected on their own.

Because Li Zixiao is not sure where he will develop in the future, he only recruits all young and middle-aged soldiers as soldiers, and does not recruit people who drag their families with them.

However, in the past two days, Li Zixiao has focused on letting Zhang Ergouzi collect among the homeless people, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, and leathersmiths, these people can be brought back with their families.

Especially the blacksmith, Li Zixiao now has only eight in the cottage, Li Zixiao also plans to build a bird, but there is a serious shortage of manpower, so he asked Zhang Ergouzi to find blacksmiths everywhere, and even did not hesitate to loot some from the surrounding villages.

The youngest of these newly recruited displaced persons is fifteen or sixteen years old, and the oldest is no more than 30 years old.

And the displaced people who can survive this winter are basically relatively strong people, and the old, weak, sick and disabled have long been eliminated by the cruel winter.

Therefore, as long as these people are fed for a few meals, they can immediately devote themselves to the training.

In a few days, there were dozens of more subordinates under him, and these people were immediately temporarily incorporated into the baggage team, and the soldier Li Zixiao of the cottage remained unchanged for the time being, and all the newcomers who joined the cottage would be incorporated into the auxiliary soldiers, that is, the baggage soldiers.

The baggage team in charge of Dong Xiang suddenly had more than 200 men, and it was almost enough to top the establishment of two companies.

In desperation, he had to complain to Li Zixiao and asked Li Zixiao to match him with a few more people to relieve their pressure.

At present, his strength has expanded to more than 350 soldiers, more than 200 soldiers, plus a small number of women and children, the number is close to 600, so he hurriedly stopped Zhang Ergouzi's plan to continue recruiting homeless people.

Li Zixiao's subordinates at this time can be described as strong and strong, and the strength of his subordinates is expanding extremely fast, he estimates that he will soon be noticed by the government, and will usher in the encirclement and suppression of the government.

This is also a helpless thing, Li Zixiao himself is a bandit, if he wants to continue to grow his strength, he will definitely be surrounded and suppressed by the government, unless he is always willing to be a small pole and mix food and clothing.

However, Li Zixiao also knew that even if there would be officers and soldiers to encircle and suppress him soon, he would not be the elite division of the Ming Dynasty, because at this time, the few most elite troops of the Ming Dynasty were all guarding against the Tartars in the north and encircling and suppressing Li Zicheng in Shaanxi.

Moreover, as long as Li Zixiao does not raise the banner of rebellion like Li Zicheng one day, the Ming court will only attack them as rogue bandits.

At this time, Emperor Chongzhen's attention to bandits and rogues was far less than that of Li Zicheng's righteous army, after all, bandits and rogues were nothing more than for money, and those rebels were rebelling and wanted to overthrow him.

Since the imperial court is unlikely to send an elite army to encircle and suppress him, most of the soldiers sent are the guards of the guards, and for these guards of the Ming court, they will not live up to the majesty of the year at this time.

He is confident that he can rely on the strength in his hand at this time to resist the encirclement and suppression from the officers and soldiers of the Daming Guard, and their cottage should be fine in a short period of time, as for the long-term development of the cottage in the future, Li Zixiao has been thinking about it during this time.

While Li Zixiao was in the cottage to train the birds, Zhou Dazhu, Wei Hong and Liu Chong led people to make a fuss in Yongcheng County in the next half month, patronizing all the Cai family's iron and coal mines.

It is impossible for the Cai family to set up too many mine protection teams in these coal and iron mines, at most twenty or thirty people are good, and it is okay to scare and scare those bitter miners on weekdays, but in the face of Zhou Dazhu's attack of one hundred and eighty people, how can they be protected.

They easily captured one coal and iron mine after another, and before the Cai family could react, they organized people to pull away the coal and iron ore mined by Li in these mines.

The coal was directly pulled back to the cottage, and the iron ore was sold by someone, and the price was nearly one-third lower than the price of iron ore in the market, so there was no need to find a buyer.

The Cai family is also powerful in Yongcheng County, and in other places, his Cai family's face is not good, and in order to make money, there is no businessman who does not dare to do it.

Li Zixiao contacted a merchant in Xiayi County through Qi Wei, resold all the iron ore in his hand to them, and agreed with them to buy iron from them at a reasonable price.

Li Zixiao didn't think about making iron by himself, but now that Li Zixiao has a lot of things to do, he really doesn't have time to tinker with the iron-making furnace.

So I can only sell these iron ores first, and then buy iron materials from outside, as for the iron-making furnace, Li Zixiao knows that they will build it sooner or later, but he has to wait for him to make time.

The coal transported back to the cottage not only ensures the heating of the cottage in winter, but also requires a large amount of coal for the blacksmith shop to build weapons every day.

These blacksmiths made spearheads, broadswords, arrowheads, armor, etc., for cottages, and carpenters made barrels, bows, shields, etc.

Old man Sun Tong's new blacksmith shop for the Bird Gun was also completed, and with enough coal and iron materials, he also began to build the Bird Gun with the assistance of several blacksmiths, but the progress was very slow at first.

Peng!

The Cai family's mansion, at this time, Cai Tianyuan, the head of the Cai family, smashed the teacup in his hand to the ground, and all the Cai family children around the lobby were sitting on the seats on both sides, and no one dared to speak at this time.

And there were still kneeling on the ground the two subordinates who had just run back from outside the city to report the news, and when they saw their lord's angry appearance, they were so frightened that they knelt on the ground and trembled.

"You all heard it, the bandits surnamed Li attacked all our coal and iron mines outside the city, I didn't expect the revenge of this group of bandits to come so quickly."

Cai Tianyuan's face was gloomy at this time, and he glanced at the Cai family disciples standing in a circle with his eyes, and said in a deep voice.