Strict requirements for the army are to be strict, this is Zhu Ao's consistent purpose, because the army is to fight with others, if you want to defeat the enemy, you must first defeat yourself, even such a little difficulty in the march can not be overcome, how can the widow expect you to defeat a strong enemy?

Zhu Ao and Lao Zhu's idea of governing the army is the same, that is, the emperor is severe, when Lao Zhu was fighting the world, a general lost the city and ran to the sky, although he had tried his best, Chen Youliang was too strong at that time, and there were Chang Yuchun and other generals to intercede for him, but Zhu Yuanzhang still killed him.

Because Lao Zhu stipulates that the lord who loses the city must be a capital crime that is unforgivable, this time you did your best and ran back, I forgive you. It's hard to guarantee that the next time you taste the sweetness, you won't try your best, you will run away after two hits, and when you come back, you will say that you have done your best, how can I know if it is true or false? I was not on the front line again.

Therefore, you must kill, that is, to use your head to tell everyone that the person who loses the city is guilty of unforgivable, so you must fight me with my life. In this way, there was a miracle that Hongdu resisted Chen Youliang for more than 80 days, because no one dared to run, and if he ran, he would die, so it was better to fight with them, at least he could get a pension. Your family will have the state to take care of you for the rest of your life.

Therefore, Zhu Ao has very strict requirements for the army, especially the officers of the soul of the army, no matter who it is, no matter what kind of high position you inherit in the future, when you enter the military academy, you must undergo three months of devil training, this little thing can't resist, what's the use of raising you? Wasting rice?

After dawn, Zhu Ao left the military academy accompanied by the guards, and after his observation in the past few days, he was still very satisfied with the management of the school and the students' learning attitude. Such potential officers are the pillars of our country, and they are worthy of your investment.

However, there is another problem, that is, these officers are hereditary, and one person will work for a lifetime, not two years before he is transferred, so after this batch of cadets will inherit their father's position in the future, and then they will have more than ten years to send their sons for training, and in these ten years, will this military academy be abandoned?

How can this be? Isn't that a huge waste? Zhu Ao had an idea, and thought of a way, the officers were gone for a while, aren't there still non-commissioned officers? As the core of the basic combat organization of the Su State, they enjoy a high level of national income, how can they not come here for devil training? Anyway, they are also out of production, and they practice by themselves at home, and they also practice when they come to school for collective training, and they can also cultivate team spirit.

From now on, the non-commissioned officers of the Su Kingdom will come here regularly for rotational training. He wants to build the army of Su into an invincible army like the Qi family army in later generations.

The matter of the military academy is over, the military academy is already on track, and there is no need to worry much about it for the time being, and the next thing is to solve the problem of army weapons.

Even in ancient times, the role of weapons and equipment was very huge, and it was absolutely different between wearing armor and not wearing armor to fight bayonets. When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty counterattacked the Xiongnu, the casualty ratio of the Han army and the Xiongnu could reach one to five, that is, if one Han army died, five Xiongnu soldiers had to be killed, largely thanks to two weapons and equipment - the first armor, the second was a repeater.

With these two weapons with great lethality in ancient times, even the Hun soldiers who grew up on horseback did not dare to confront the Han army head-on.

In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, Li Hongzhang, the minister of foreign affairs, once had a classic saying about governing the army - "There are not many expensive essences, and expensive weapons are not expensive." The first sentence is easy to understand, so I don't need to explain it. The second sentence was widely criticized, and some people even said that the Huai army he trained was greedy for life and afraid of death, which led to the miserable whiteness of the army in the First Sino-Japanese War, and the officers and men of the Beiyang Naval Division he built dried their clothes on the main guns, which led to the destruction of China's first modern navy.

The people who hold this view are all poor and sour literati who have never been on the battlefield, they don't know how to fart, they don't do any work, they only know how to stand behind and compare blindly.

What is war, in the final analysis, war is the use of weapons and weapons, everything is nonsense without weapons, and only with weapons can it be used. Moreover, in modern times, during the war years, when hot weapons were the mainstay, it was much easier to use weapons than to make them. Take an ordinary rifle as an example, if a random person teaches him, he will also use it, but when it comes to manufacturing, the Qing Dynasty has never been able to manufacture a gun that is at the world's advanced level.

In terms of physical strength and intelligence, people are almost the same, take our country's annual conscription as an example, every year there will be a lot of soldiers, these soldiers come from all over the world, although there are excellent top-notch people, but it is impossible for everyone to be a military genius, most of them are ordinary people like you and me. It's such a common man, after two years of training, he can generally use the weapons in his hands proficiently, but only if you have them.

That's why Li Hongzhang said that "expensive weapons are not expensive", in his time, it was far more difficult to get a gun than to teach a person to use a gun. And the so-called human factor can only work when the weapons of both sides are about the same, an ordinary woman with a gun can easily kill several martial arts masters, let alone a professional soldier?

In the final analysis, the defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War was due to the excessively large gap in strength, which can be explained by looking at a set of data. The First Sino-Japanese War was divided into two battlefields: land and naval warfare. On the land battlefield, Japan has dispatched a total of 120,000 elite field divisions, all of which are equipped with modern weapons and have received good training, and they are a force to be reckoned with.

But what about the Qing Dynasty? Although the army of the Qing Dynasty had a lot of numbers on the books, there were hundreds of thousands of people, but only Li Hongzhang's 53,000 Huai troops really participated in the war, and they were also responsible for defending the coastal forts, and the strength was very limited. The other governors just shouted in the back: "Those who offend me will be punished even if they are far away!" Slogans like this are blind comparisons, and no one wants to do it. After the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing Dynasty's control over the local area weakened, and they were helpless, so they could only rely on Li Hongzhang to confront Japan alone.

Not to mention the naval battle, it was completely the Beiyang Naval Division formed by Li Hongzhang to fight against the combined fleet of the entire Japanese Empire, and the two naval divisions of Nanyang and Guangdong actually openly declared their independence and watched the Japanese army destroy the Beiyang Fleet.

Even the weapons and equipment of the Beiyang Fleet have lagged behind Japan, and in the years when Weng Tongyi was the secretary of the household department, out of personal grudges, he made things difficult for Li Hongzhang everywhere, deducted the funds of the Beiyang Naval Division, and even embezzled a lot of money from the Beiyang Naval Division in the name of repairing the garden for the Empress Dowager Cixi, resulting in the weapons and equipment of the Beiyang Naval Division lagging behind Japan.

At that time, Japan used the strength of the whole country to build a navy, and equipped their combined fleet with a large number of rapid-fire guns, rapid-fire guns used the advanced retreat technology at that time, which is often seen in movies, every time the cannon fired, the barrel would retreat, and then automatically reset, which unloaded the recoil of the cannon, so that the gunners could quickly fire the second gun. This is a technological revolution, the cannon with the retreat technology can fire at least five cannons in a minute, and the fast one can fire six to eight cannons, and the rate of fire is six times that of the original rear-firing guns of the Beiyang Naval Division. In addition, the Japanese artillery at that time was equipped with flowering shells, and the power of its explosion could even burn steel, which was much stronger than the solid shells of the Beiyang Naval Division.

Finally, the Japanese Combined Fleet was also faster than the Beiyang Naval Division. This is relative to when you fight the glory of kings, the opponent's hero attack is higher than yours, the attack speed is faster than yours, and it also has a critical hit, and the movement speed is faster than yours, how can this be played? There is information that realistically states that in the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, the hit rate of the Beiyang Fleet was still higher than that of the Japanese Combined Fleet, but this was useless, the firepower of others was fiercer than yours, and even if the hit rate was low, it hit you more times than you.

It is a pity that for more than 100 years, the so-called scholars who have studied this period of history have often ignored the huge disparity in strength between the two sides, and always blamed the defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War on the greed for life and fear of death, corruption, and lack of training of the Qing army, which poured dirty water on them for more than 100 years. In fact, during the entire war, the Qing army was relatively heroic on the whole, but no matter how heroic its flesh and blood were, it could not resist Japan's modern state apparatus.

The most ridiculous thing is the remark of drying clothes on the main gun, which is admired by so many Chinese people, and the US Navy is still drying its bra on the main gun, which is not the same as being invincible? Instead of doing so because of the huge gap in strength between the two countries at that time, and then building the country well, people who hold such remarks attribute the victory or defeat of a major war that decided the fate of the two countries to such trivial matters as whether they dry their clothes or not.

If you really fight, you will fight hard, but the problem is that your weapons are too different from others, and people can kill you from a few miles away, no matter how brave you are, what is the use of iron and blood?

Therefore, Mr. Liang Qichao said that Li Hongzhang is an enemy of one country, and even if he is defeated, he is still a hero.

In view of this, Zhu Ao decided to immediately vigorously develop the military handicraft industry of Suguo, because there was no industry in this era, and he could not make mechanized production equipment such as steam engines, so he could only vigorously develop the military handicraft industry, relying on the hands of craftsmen to make armor and weapons.

The reason why the development of military handicrafts is only now began is because first, he did not think about the development of military handicrafts before, if the model of the Tang Dynasty is adopted, all weapons have military households to go out to fight is their own, although the quality of ordnance can be guaranteed, because no one is willing to joke with their own lives, but this kind of production mode of one household is not conducive to the progress of military science and technology, it is very likely to make the military science and technology of the Su State stagnate for a long time, be surpassed by later Europe, and begin to be beaten by others like the Qing Dynasty.

If the system of the Song Dynasty is adopted, the equipment is built by the state in a unified manner, there are also drawbacks, because these equipment are supervised and built by civilian officials, and they do not have to go to the battlefield, so the requirements for the quality of weapons are very low, and even cut corners and shoddy, which makes the combat effectiveness of the Suguo army seriously decline.

In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the money for building weapons was embezzled by those officials, and the treatment of craftsmen was very low, resulting in their lack of enthusiasm for work, and the weapons they built were simply unusable. Some soldiers in Liaodong even thought that the quality of the bird guns issued by the state was too poor, so they sold them, and then spent their own money to hire craftsmen to fight again.

The standard for those officials to build bird guns is that they can sound them, and they don't care if they can kill people, the bird guns they create are only suitable for hitting rabbits.

The second reason is the problem of money, it costs a lot of money to build ordnance, it costs a lot of money, although there are war reparations given by the Uighurs, but Zhu Hao does not want to sit back and eat, but wants to take out a part of it to invest first, put the money into operation, and ensure that the money can generate money, so that there will be a steady stream of funds for armaments. It's like playing Red Alert, if you don't develop a minecart, you can only die of poverty in the end.

Now that the money is in operation, the issue of armaments should also be grasped quickly, otherwise the money you have worked so hard for will be snatched away by others.

In view of the advantages and disadvantages of the respective armaments of the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, Zhu Ao decided to use them together, stipulating that cold weapons such as swords, guns, swords, halberds, and armor should be provided by the military households or requisitioned households.

Of course, since then, those military households and strong men in the armor are armed and unstable, and if they are gathered, they are likely to cause trouble for him, the king, under the leadership of a strong man. Therefore, Zhu Ao also followed the example of the Tang Dynasty, stipulating that military households and strong men in the armor were not allowed to leave their own jurisdictions without incident, and even if they did, they had to report first, and they were not allowed to carry weapons without permission, otherwise they would be punished as treason.

In order to ensure the quality of weapons, Zhu Ao stipulated that the name of the craftsman who made it should be engraved on each weapon, and if the craftsmen cut corners or were careless and caused the quality problems of the weapons, they would be strictly held accountable.

In addition, Zhu Ao also reformed the wages of the craftsmen, set up a basic salary plus performance salary system, out of the importance of craftsmen, Zhu Ao once greatly improved their living standards, but now in order to better supervise their work, Zhu Ao decided to implement such a differential wage for them.

The basic salary of craftsmen stipulated by Zhu was very low, only enough for them to support their families, and they had to complete the production of qualified weapons in the required quantity, otherwise their wages would be deducted.

In addition, Zhu Ao refined the craftsmen of the arsenal and divided them into several subjects, such as shields, spears, bows and arrows, broadswords, firearms, etc., and a craftsman could only do one subject of work, which helped him to strive for perfection and make better weapons. In order to mobilize the enthusiasm of craftsmen to work, Zhu Ao stipulated that if the craftsmen who have completed the task produce more weapons and sell them, they can get a commission in them as a reward for their own performance, so as to improve the living standards of themselves and their families.

Because the number of tasks specified by Zhu Ao is relatively reasonable, as long as the craftsmen of Su Guo are not lazy and work hard, basically everyone can get a rich return every month, specifically more than five buckets of grain with one stone, and they do not have to pay taxes or serve to make themselves and their families live a well-off life.

Human beings are intellectual animals, scientific and technological progress is the main force to promote social progress, and the main force to promote scientific and technological progress is craftsmen, so Zhu Ao decided to vigorously improve the treatment and status of craftsmen, in addition to setting up state-owned enterprises such as arsenals to support a large number of craftsmen, but also allowing craftsmen to rely on their own private skills to open handicraft workshops, build weapons, and produce and sell themselves to make money.

In this way, the craftsmen have two choices, one is to enter the state-owned enterprises, work for the king to receive commercial grain every month, drought and flood to ensure the harvest, and there are rewards for doing a good job, and their positions can also be hereditary, Lao Tzu died and his son replaced, ensuring that all generations have stable jobs and iron rice bowls. The other is to start his own business, open his own workshop to create farm tools, living utensils and weapons that King Su does not prohibit from circulating among the people to make money.

First of all, if there are craftsmen with excellent craftsmanship among the people, Zhu Ao will find a way to dig them all to work in state-owned enterprises. Second, if the scale of the development of a private arsenal is very large, then the king of Su will try his best to restrict it, send troops to stand guard and monitor, or even buy it, because this industry is too sensitive, if it is left unchecked, it will be used with ulterior motives to create a bunch of weapons to arm a group of outlaws, which is definitely a hidden danger for the country.

Therefore, although Zhu Ao allowed some craftsmen to make money by handicraft, he clearly stipulated the scale of private workshops, that is, the number of craftsmen could not exceed 20, and if there were more than 20 people, they would be forcibly purchased by state-owned capital. Therefore, it can be seen that Zhu Ao's attitude towards these folk craftsmen is to allow them to live a well-off or even a small rich life with their own skills and business acumen, but they cannot be so big as to threaten the existence of imperial power.

Of course, this restriction on the number of employees is only limited to military enterprises, and for some civilian enterprises that build agricultural tools and water conservancy facilities, Zhu Ao's restrictions are still very relaxed, after all, they are well developed, and they still play a very role in promoting the development of the national economy of Suzhou.

In order to better govern the world, Zhu Yuanzhang divided the people of the Ming Dynasty into three parts, the first part was the households, which were responsible for farming and paying grain and providing food to the emperor; The second part is the military household, which is mainly responsible for self-sufficiency and helping the imperial court fight wars in wartime; The third part is the craftsman, who is responsible for the manufacture of various instruments.

Comparatively speaking, the status of civilian households and military households is comparable, and both are higher than those of artisan households, because people from these two types of household registration can participate in the imperial examination, but their obligations are different, so it is impossible to talk about who has a higher status than whom. The famous Ming Dynasty cabinet chief assistant Zhang Juzheng, Li Dongyang and others were all from military households.

However, the artisan household is different, one day is a craftsman, and the descendants are all artisans, which cannot be changed, cannot participate in the imperial examination, and belong to the object of forced labor. This shows how low the social status of the craftsmen was at that time. Artisans are generally subordinate to military households, building weapons and equipment for the army, and the source of artisans is mainly prisoners, or "unbearable requisitioners in the army", and it is conceivable what those grumpy big-headed soldiers will do to them. They get up early every day and work greedily at night, and they can only receive some meager rewards, and their enthusiasm for work can be imagined.

In order to change this status quo and improve the enthusiasm of craftsmen to work, Zhu Ao decided to separate craftsmen from the military households and set up an arsenal specializing in making weapons, as well as a civilian handicraft factory to produce other production and living utensils. Let all the craftsmen go to work there, pay wages according to the actual work performance, clearly mark the price, and no one shall deduct it, otherwise it will be severely punished.

From then on, the craftsmen of the Su State were no longer oppressed by the military households, no longer lived a life of begging for rations from other people's mouths, and began to rely on their own craftsmanship and diligence to make money, to obtain wages, so that their families could live a rich life, so their enthusiasm for work became higher and higher, and the requirements for craftsmanship became more and more refined. Because if your craftsmanship is not perfect, you will not be able to sell the things you build, and if you can't sell them, you will not be able to get a commission, and you can only live a hard life on a basic salary.

Before, the craftsmen thought that they were doing drudgery, inferior work, and every day they dreamed of leaving the craftsman's status, and even some of the brave began to run away. Since Zhu Ao reformed the craftsman system, they suddenly found that the industry they were engaged in had become fragrant and sweet, and each of them had become employees of state-owned enterprises with iron rice bowls, ensuring income in drought and flood, and they could also pass on their positions to their sons, which was really not worse than those households. Those households have to work with their backs to the loess every day, and there is not much more than them left after the tax is removed from the tax in a year, not to mention that they have to serve forced labor, and craftsmen do not have to serve forced labor.

The most important thing is that the salary of the craftsman is stable, as long as you are not lazy, you will never starve to death, and where can those households farming avoid drought and flood locust plagues and poor harvests?

It's really nice to have a stable job, at least without worrying about running out of food. These craftsmen are very grateful for Zhu Ao's kindness, and everyone has a string in their hearts, and they are all trying to improve their skills, for fear that their skills will be compared to others and lose this stable iron rice bowl.

In order to train more craftsmen, Zhu Ao wanted to open a school again, this time the school was a vocational and technical college, which was established specifically for craftsmen, in addition to reading and literacy, but also to learn the production of various instruments, arithmetic, physics, chemistry knowledge also accounted for a greater proportion.