It was already late June when Chen Wen returned to the Quzhou front, and half a month had passed since the beginning of the month when he set up a bureau to sneak back from Quzhou's capital to return to the division to quell the rebellion.

After putting down the rebellion in the rear for half a month, Chen Wen did not have the slightest joy. Not only because he did his best to change the anti-Qing situation in Zhejiang, but because of the chain reaction, which led to the outbreak of rebellion, and the fighter plane was fleeting, and now it is not as easy as it was half a month ago to recover Quzhou again.

Quzhou Fucheng and the two Qing armies stationed in Jiangshan County have completed the merger, but the number of soldiers has exceeded 10,000, Chen Guobao is still sitting in the rear with the battalion directly under the town, and the soldiers on the Quzhou front line are only more than 5,000. However, his family background is too thin now, and if he loses once, he will lose all his efforts. If you are forced to do something like this, it is better not to take such risks.

But who knows, Chen Wen's flag was re-established in the city of Longyou County within a few days, the Qing army withdrew, to be precise, the main force of the Qing army withdrew from the west of Taoyuan Mountain between Longyou and Dingyang Creek to the east of Dingyang Creek, most of which withdrew to the area of Quzhou Fucheng, leaving only a pitiful number and proportion of troops as outposts, as well as several pontoon bridges on Dingyang Creek to ensure the communication of the Qing army between the two places, and the war was only left with the exploration and fighting of the horses of both sides in the middle of the ground.

Chen Jin's retreat made Chen Wen feel a great surprise, he left in the half month, the Qing army from just crossing Dingyang Creek cautiously to the east with a horse to the east, and then a few days before Chen Wen rushed back, suddenly vigorously expelled the Ming army sentry, and soon besieged Longyou County, but in the end because the Nantang battalion, which had always been free, suddenly appeared in the rear and had to temporarily retreat for a distance.

During this time, it was clear that the Qing army always held the initiative, and the Ming army could only respond passively. But as soon as Chen Wen returned to Longyou, the Qing army of such a scale retreated so easily, and Chen Wen was not so arrogant as to think that he had scared Chen Jin away.

Fortunately, this question was solved within a few days with the arrival of a messenger from the rear, because the messenger brought the news that the Qing army besieging Anhua Town had also retreated, and retreated to the area around Zhuji County to stand by.

After a long siege, several large-scale attacks not only failed in success, but caused considerable damage. At this moment, it is almost July, and the temperature in Zhejiang is really not conducive to large-scale fighting, especially in such temperatures, the epidemic bred by corpses may turn the entire army into the same existence as the source of infection at any time, plus there is always a threat of the Ming army on the flank, and it will be a big defeat if it is not done. At that time, such a loss was really unbearable, and now he had to temporarily retreat a distance so that he could find another countermeasure.

The Qing army on the northern front retreated, and the Qing army on the southern front probably did so out of similar considerations.

Of course, there should be reasons why Cao Conglong's rebellion was quickly quelled by Chen Wen, as well as some other reasons that he hadn't yet discovered.

But in any case, the truce was only temporary, whether it was the nearly 20,000 Qing troops gathered in Hangzhou and Quzhou, or the Jinhua Ming army that was formed and trained with more soldiers, it was impossible for both sides to continue to wear them down. At most two months, it is absolutely impossible to drag on until mid-September, and the war will inevitably reopen, and then it will be a critical moment to determine the victory or defeat for this year's southeast battlefield, because the victory or defeat in western Zhejiang will inevitably affect the fate of the Ming army in Fujian and Jiangxi.

With little time left, Chen Wen decided to take advantage of this time to strengthen his military strength as much as possible.

In the half month after Chen Wen left the army, Wu Dengke led the Yiwu battalion and half of the Dongyang battalion to guard Longyou County, Li Ruixin took the Nantang battalion to gather in the southern mountains as a surprise soldier, and Lou Jiye took the staff officers and the water battalion and some of the reserve soldiers who came with the army to hold the Lingxi defense line, and at the same time coordinated the two general troops of Wu and Li to carry out defensive operations.

In just half a month, it seemed that the three generals had coordinated with each other quite well, but as the reports of the military judges were sent to Chen Wen's desk, Chen Wen found that the truth was far less optimistic than he imagined.

Chen Wen left Lou Jiye to coordinate with the intention of strengthening the authority of the chief of staff system, so as to popularize this modern military system at the battalion level. However, when Chen Wen left the mouth, Wu Dengke and Li Ruixin, in order to facilitate the communication between the two heavy army groups, simply directly used the horses to communicate with each other, and only sent a copy of the information obtained by each other and the analysis of the battle situation to Lou Jiye, which seemed to regard the chief of the general staff as an official responsible for backing up documents.

This problem has not caused any obvious losses yet, that is because Wu Dengke and Li Ruixin are the first batch of generals to follow Chen Wen, and the relationship between them is also very good, while Lou Jiye can only be regarded as a backward and received such a position, and in their opinion, the authority is naturally lower.

The most important thing in the relationship between the military and the military should be class and dispatch, rather than faction and friendship, which is a truth that Chen Wen has always firmly believed. In his memory, the last opponent before the establishment of the republic was to fall into his own internal strife, and it was completely overthrown in just a few years when he had a great advantage. And the original Iron Lion of the Republic, although not without factions within it, can fight with each other under the same banner.

Chen Wen's army was established in a short period of time, and although there was not a lack of gangs among his subordinates, for example, the relationship between some former superiors and subordinates was obviously better, but it was far from developing to the extent of forming a faction in the true sense.

It is impossible to eradicate this potential problem completely, but it is still possible to reduce the excessive losses caused by internal friction caused by factions. It's just that it's not time yet, so Chen Wen decided to stay quiet for the time being.

In addition to this problem, until now, Chen Wen re-examined the sawtooth array he designed and found that there was a fatal problem in it, that is, once the soldiers lost too much, the formation had no ability to recover itself. And the destruction of the formation means that the army is about to collapse.

This problem was not very obvious when forcibly crossing Lingxi, mainly because the Ming army was in a dead place, and once defeated, it was almost difficult for the soldiers to escape from the battlefield alive, and the mouth of the terrain was held by the Ming army, and the supervision battalion could not give full play to the advantage of troops. These are not impossible for the Qing army to solve, because the gap between the two sides is really not small, and the wheel battle can completely drag down the Ming infantry who cannot be replaced.

If it weren't for Li Ruixin's quick move to transfer two Franc cannons to accelerate the collapse of the Qing army and leave it without a chance to rotate, it is likely that the Qing army's Biaobiao Battalion will win the victory rather than the Ming army's Nantang battalion.

The main reason for this problem is that he is too superstitious and flexible in the mandarin duck array, but ignores the response of the Qing army. At present, in the face of the Qing army in Zhejiang, what his military formation lacks is thick and dense, and the mandarin duck array is very good in terms of local density, but due to the emphasis on flexible relationships, the thickness is insufficient.

Qi Jiguang's method was to use the artillery battalion to build a temporary "city wall", rely on firearms to break up the opponent's military formation, and then use cavalry and infantry to assault, but Chen Wen faced the Qing army with a large number of artillery, before the appearance of tanks, the best way was to rely on fortifications and soldiers' firm will to defend and attack, so the military formation must be thick, especially in the middle of the formation. And he didn't give full play to his heavy expertise while forming the spear array killer team, or relied too much on the flexible Mandarin Duck Array killer team and firearms team to attack, so it led to the embarrassing situation that both sides could not achieve the effect now.

In this case, Chen Wen planned to reorganize the barracks, and all the spear killer teams were unified into the first and second games of each battalion, and the Mandarin Duck Array killer teams were unified into the third and fourth rounds. When the formation is arrayed, the heavy spear array killer team sits in the middle army, and the flexible mandarin duck array killer team guards the flank, and at the same time exists as a reserve, and it is mobilized by changing the formation according to the situation during the battle, which should be stronger than the current somewhat nondescript sawtooth formation.

The modification of the formation requires time and training to run in and adapt, and the modification must be started immediately. Since the Qing army temporarily avoided the war, Chen Wen, who originally only reorganized the Yiwu battalion, decided to use this time to reorganize it in batches, and the barracks of each station had to be rotated back to Jinhua Mansion. In addition to the addition, there were more important things there that required the participation of the officers and non-commissioned officers of the barracks.

After inspecting for a few days, Chen Wen returned to Jinhua Fucheng, and the first batch of rotating troops were arranged according to the schedule designed by the staff officers in charge.

Within a few days, Chen Wen returned to Fucheng again, which was very unexpected by the officials and gentry of Jinhua Mansion, but after hearing the news of the temporary withdrawal of the Qing army, one by one after a little shock, they hurriedly came to compliment Chen Wen's "tiger might" to deter the enemy, and Chen Jin took Chen Wenzhiwei and did not even have the courage to fight. What's more, he insisted that it was not Chen Jin, even if Jin Li came, but no one dared to say that the Eight Banners Army would be afraid of Chen Wen, after all, everyone was a cultural person, and they had to know how to say it in a measured manner.

It's just that Chen Wen is not even interested in giving an ear to these compliments. Returning to Fucheng, Chen Wen hurried to the workshop of the Military Industry Division.

The so-called Military Industry Department is the original Ordnance Division, and the more distant Dalanshan Construction Division. After Chen Wen put down the rebellion, the civilian officials of the Ordnance Department were purged, and the craftsmen ushered in a new batch of leaders, and after getting Chen Wen's permission, they also changed the brand to the Military Industry Department, in order to draw a clear line with those rebellions.

There is a big difference between the current Military Industry Department and the former Ordnance Division, the Ordnance Department was adapted from the Construction Division, but some craftsmen brought by Yu Guowang and recruited in Jinhua Mansion were added. In contrast, the main administrative officials in the new Department of Military Industry were replaced by some civilian officials who were inclined to Chen Wen during the rebellion, supplemented by a few literate disabled officers to supervise them, and a few skilled craftsmen were selected to serve as deputies in charge of civilian officials in major workshops, changing the original system in which civilian officials were in an absolute leadership position.

The rights of civil officials were restricted, and according to the reality of the Ming Dynasty, resistance and opposition from the civilian clique was almost inevitable. But when the rebellion had just been quelled, Sun Yu, the highest-ranking civil official, had a tacit understanding with Chen Wen, and the people below did not dare to jump out to touch Chen Wen's moldy head in the face of the butcher's knives of the criminal officials, so the reform began silently.

Of course, the problems of the military industry are not only the system, Chen Wen also found some other problems through his conversations with craftsmen and soldiers after quelling the rebellion.

There is no doubt that the main work of the Department of Military Industry is the manufacture of weapons. But now the craftsmen of the Ordnance Department are still old-fashioned handmade, and the craftsmen are also craftsmen, if it weren't for the civil officials of Dalanshan who grew up under the supervision of their old bosses Wang Yi and Wang Jiang, they are far from falling to the end of the Ming Dynasty The dead pig is not afraid of boiling water, it is estimated that Chen Wen would have been mad a long time ago, and it would not be their turn to rebel.

The artisan household system was started in the Ming Dynasty since the Hongwu Dynasty, Chen Wen took advantage of the loopholes in the middle of the conscription system and the guard system to establish Jinhua Town and Jinhua Wei, and made limited adjustments to the military household system, but directly reformed the craftsman household system, he has not yet thought about how to improve, so the focus of the reform is to improve the wages of craftsmen, which he can understand if he has done sales in modern times.

In addition to rewarding inventions and rewards, Chen Wen decided to stimulate the enthusiasm of craftsmen according to the method of piecework wages, after all, the number of pieces that should be done is thrown away, and the more you do, the more bonuses you can get. Of course, in order to prevent craftsmen from relying on indiscriminate filling to improve production efficiency, each weapon must be engraved with the code names of the officials in charge, the supervising officials and the craftsmen involved, and if there is a quality problem, they must be held accountable according to the records.

Chen Wen didn't know if the Ming court had done this before, who made him and the civil officials of Dalanshan were all from wild roads, and they didn't know much about the details of the Ministry of Industry's yamen. Even Li Ruixin, who used to be a soldier of the regular army of the Ming Dynasty, was the same, because Huang Degong did not trust the weapons and armor produced by the Yamen of the Ministry of Industry and other generals. But since the Dalanshan Ming Army did not have it before, Chen Wen felt that it would always be beneficial to take out a good system.

Of course, there is also a problem with hand-made, that is, although the weapon is standard, it will be more or less different. Whether it's weight, or length, or the curvature of the blade, or whatever, the difference is everywhere, but it affects the use of the soldiers. Especially for the gunner, because the caliber of the gunner will be slightly different, so each soldier needs to use tools to make buckshot, the size can not match the caliber must be polished, and the amount of gunpowder is also different, these inconveniences will delay the rest time of the soldiers, affect the effect of training and combat.

However, he knew that he could not achieve standardization in the true sense of the word, and that he could only reduce the error by standardizing the measuring tools and molds used by craftsmen. After all, the examples of standardized weapons of the Qin Dynasty unearthed in later generations exist, and if the technology cannot reach Chen Wen, he can only rely on manual labor to make up for it for the time being.

In fact, in China at the end of the Ming Dynasty, many Western science and technology have been affirmed by the scholar class, especially science and technology related to the military industry, which is highly respected. But now Chen Wen wants to introduce, either send someone to Macau, or copy it little by little according to the records in the book, the former is not realistic, and the latter can send someone to find a local scientist like Song Yingxing, the author of "Heavenly Creation", to carry out technical research, but the unrealistic problem also exists, so it is better to issue a reward now.

Chen Wen believes that the wisdom of the Chinese is not comparable to those barbarians, and there will always be some remnants in the recklessness, and what he has to do is not to do everything, as long as the talents are selected.

After leaving the Quartermaster Division, Chen Wen inspected the Quartermaster Department again, Gu Shouli was imprisoned during the rebellion and suffered a little, Chen Wen appreciated his loyalty, even if the work of the Quartermaster Department has never made Chen Wen dissatisfied, he still took time to preach his comfort.

Several relevant departments have been inspected, and there are still some things that need to be improved, and Chen Wen intends to improve them after thoroughly considering the pros and cons. At this moment, it is almost the time to get off duty, and Chen Wen, who has been busy recently, decided to let Zhou Jingting, who has always been diligent and often work overtime, work another shift. It's just that when Chen Wenping retired from the other people in the big tent and explained his plan to Zhou Jingting, he got a word of worry in exchange.

"Sir, it's easy to attract Shilin's taboo by doing this, do you want to think about it again?" (To be continued.) )