In the first battle of Taoyuan, the first army achieved quite a lot of results, killing more than 8,000 enemy soldiers and capturing more than 18,000 prisoners, while other captures were piled up.

And although they themselves have some casualties, they still make a lot of money relative to the results.

In this battle, the total casualties of Shi Qingxuan's First Army were about 3,000, of which the two main forces of the First Division and the Third Division suffered about 800 casualties, and the cavalry of the Second Cavalry Regiment also suffered nearly 200 casualties.

In addition, although the three auxiliary defense divisions were fighting soy sauce and did not contribute much, they suffered a lot of casualties, with nearly 2,000 casualties.

Such a large-scale battle, no matter how smoothly it is fought, it is impossible to say that the casualties are small!

However, fortunately, the Royal Army, as the main force, only suffered about 1,000 casualties, and the casualty ratio was less than 6 percent, which did not make the main force of the First Army suffer from injuries.

As for the auxiliary defense forces, although there were more casualties, the actual impact was not great, and according to the practice of the Chinese army, the large number of prisoners accepted after the war would be replenished to these auxiliary defense forces, and the auxiliary defense divisions with large losses would be able to recover in a blink of an eye.

After inspecting the captured Qing army training soldiers, the officers of the military training department found that although the overall quality of these training soldiers was not as good as the soldiers of the Royal Army, they were much stronger than those prisoners of the Green Battalion and the Eight Banners, and even much stronger than the existing soldiers of the Chinese Army.

After all, the Qing court's training army was established after the predecessor of the Chinese Army, that is, Yu Shengjun, and the soldiers recruited were all excellent soldiers. The level of training is also acceptable, and these training soldiers were able to withstand more than 20 percent casualties before and continue to shoot in line with the Chinese army.

These soldiers are for contemporary China. It is a relatively valuable soldier, definitely not those soldiers of the Green Battalion. It's not even comparable to the soldiers of the Chinese Army's Auxiliary Defense Army.

Therefore, the officers of the Military Training Department who accompanied the army immediately decided to list about 3,000 prisoners of training and persuade them to join the Chinese army one by one.

After some persuasion, nearly 1,500 people were willing to join the Royal Army anyway, and the officers of the military training department waved at these people. It was directly replenished to the 1st Division, the 3rd Division, and the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and even replenished 500 more than the number of people damaged in the battle, so that the first division, which was not yet in formation before the war, was fully established.

There are still half of those who are unwilling to join the Royal Army anyway, and the Chinese Army will naturally not kindly let them go directly, and even give them travel expenses and the like, but they are all forced to shave their heads, and then regardless of whether they are willing to directly supplement into the auxiliary defense army, they will be cannon fodder at that time.

And the more fifteen thousand captives of the Green Camp, these people are better handled. Whether they want to or not, they will directly supplement or reorganize into an auxiliary defense force, and the officials of the Military Training Department do not bother to ask them if they are willing.

Among them, 2,000 young people with better physical conditions were selected. Added to the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division, the Nineteenth Auxiliary Defense Division, and the Twentieth Auxiliary Defense Division, the remaining 10,000 or so personnel were reorganized on the spot into three auxiliary defense divisions, namely the 21st Auxiliary Defense Division. The 22nd Auxiliary Defense Division, the 23rd Auxiliary Defense Division. The future is the life of cannon fodder!

In addition, due to the serious shortage of existing officers, the officers of the Quanxu Division once again reluctantly reduced the proportion of officers in the auxiliary defense division and the proportion of low-rank and high-ranking officers. In the past, there was a lieutenant colonel and division commander, a major deputy division commander, three major regiment commanders, three captain deputy regiment commanders, nine captains or lieutenant battalion commanders, and nine second lieutenant deputy battalion commanders, a total of about five colonels and 21 lieutenants.

However, this time it is necessary to set up three new auxiliary divisions, and it is obviously impossible for the high command to send over hundreds of new officers, and if there are troops under the jurisdiction of the First Army, it will also greatly damage the combat effectiveness of the existing troops, that is, the First and Third Divisions.

Based on this situation, the officers of the Quanxu Division stationed in the northern direction of Jiangsu had to adopt a workaround, on the one hand, to transfer a small number of officers over, and on the other hand, to increase the proportion of experienced non-commissioned officers.

For example, the 21st Auxiliary Defense Division, its first division commander was not the previous rank of lieutenant colonel, but a major, who was previously a logistics staff officer of the First Army, and its deputy division commander was only a captain, and none of the three regiment commanders were officers, only three captains, and the deputy regiment commander was not an officer, but only three non-commissioned officers with deep military experience. The nine battalion commanders were only second lieutenants, and most of the previous deputy company commanders of the first or third divisions, and the deputy battalion commanders had no officers, and they were also replaced by non-commissioned officers.

If the three divisions were to do this, the demand for officers would be greatly reduced, and the combat effectiveness of the main force of the First Army would not be greatly affected.

After all, for the Chinese army, the auxiliary defense division is a cannon fodder unit, which is equipped with momentum on weekdays, fights, and used as cannon fodder in wartime to reconnoiter the enemy's defensive deployment, or simply to consume the enemy's bullets.

Therefore, although there are more and more auxiliary defense forces of the Chinese army, to be honest, they are also less and less valued, and the number of officers in this auxiliary defense division is not even comparable to the number of officers of an infantry battalion of the Royal Army.

The shortage of officers also made the Chinese army begin to reuse some surrendered officers of the Qing army or the Taiping army who were willing to take the initiative to do the opposite, although the quality of these officers was good and bad, but they were also officers, and most of them were literate.

This time, there was such a group, about 20 people, all of whom were captured in the Battle of Yangzhou, the generals of the former Qing army, garrisons, and even guerrillas. After they were captured, the Chinese army did not care whether they were big or small officials, and all of them shaved their heads and were organized into ordinary soldiers of the Auxiliary Defense Army.

After these few months, some of them are still alive, and at the same time they are more clever, crying and shouting to reimburse the Great China Empire and fight for the Great China Empire. Well, by the way, in order not to continue to be cannon fodder. One day he was driven to fill the moat.

After selection, there were about 20 people. Then they were assigned to the three newly formed auxiliary defense divisions, and served as officers with the rank of company commander, regardless of whether they were garrison or guerrilla, and were all awarded the rank of second lieutenant in the army.

When these people received the official officers of the Royal Army from the hands of the logistics officers, a few people who were moved cried!

After staying up for many months, I finally don't have to be cannon fodder, and I finally don't have to worry about it, for fear that tomorrow I will be sent to a certain city to fill the moat with my life.

The Chinese army treats civilian officials more favorably, as long as you are willing to shave your head and swear allegiance to the Chinese Empire. Basically, it is 100% to hold the original position, and it doesn't take long to be promoted if you do a good job.

However, the army does not have the habit of reusing captured generals, and a small number of high-ranking people with great influence have been captured, such as Li Xiucheng, who are generally escorted back to Nanjing and thrown into prison, not that you can do it anyway if you want to. And some middle- or lower-level generals simply ignored it and directly treated them as ordinary prisoners and incorporated into the auxiliary defense force as cannon fodder.

Only a very small number of enemy officers who took the initiative to lead troops and surrendered anyway were able to receive preferential treatment, but this preferential treatment did not mean that they should continue to lead troops, but that they would be given an idle or civilian position. It will not say that they should continue to lead the troops, for example, in Zhenjiang, most of the Taiping generals who took the initiative to surrender to the city were arranged to retire in idleness.

Therefore, the current Chinese army. Whether it is the Royal Army or the Auxiliary Defense Army, all the officers above the rank of second lieutenant are all officers trained by the Chinese Army itself, and there is no officer from the Qing Army or the Taiping Army who surrendered to Chengcheng.

And now. The shortage of officers limited by the Chinese army is too large, and at the same time, the auxiliary defense force continues to accept a large number of prisoners. As a result, there is an extreme shortage of officers in the auxiliary defense division, so the Quanxu Division plans to use the current 20 or so people as test sites. Try to select some defective officers who barely passed the test to serve as officers of the auxiliary defense division.

This attempt by the Chinese army is to free more than 20 officers of the former Qing Dynasty from the bitter sea of cannon fodder and become the lowest-ranking officers in the Chinese army.

Three new auxiliary defense divisions have been formed, and the equipment of these auxiliary defense divisions does not have to worry, it is enough to directly use the equipment of the captured Qing army, there are many cold weapons, and there are also a large number of captured arquebuses and smoothbore guns in the case of firearms.

This time, the Qing army captured more guns, and some of them were fired smoothbore guns, for these troops, the officials of the ordnance department have transferred them away, ready to be transported back to Shanghai to modify rifling, this is a Mini rifle, which is more important for the Chinese army, which has a relatively low production of Mini rifles.

And those flintlock pistols made by the Qing court, although strictly speaking, can also be converted into Mini rifles, but because it is also necessary to modify the firing mechanism, the flintlock is replaced with a fire cap, the cost is a little high, in addition, the Ordnance Department for the Manchu Qing Dynasty to make these flintlock pistols is really not trusted, the quality is too poor, and the size of the barrel can not be uniform, the style of these captured flintlock pistols looks similar, but the difference between the largest caliber and the smallest caliber is as much as three or four millimeters.

A few of the things produced in this workshop may be of very good quality, but most of them are of poor quality.

Therefore, the Ordnance Department assigned these flintlock pistols directly to the Allied Defense Force units, just like the previously captured flintlock pistols.

This time, there were a lot of flintlock muskets captured, more than 6,000 of them, and one auxiliary defense division and one musket regiment were about 1,500 people, which was enough to equip four auxiliary defense divisions.

Now the First Army has the original three auxiliary defense divisions in northern Jiangsu, plus the new three, a total of six auxiliary defense divisions, four of which can use flintlock pistols, and the remaining two have to continue to use old arquebuses.

When these people in the Quartermaster Department and the Ordnance Department were busy reorganizing the prisoners and accepting the trophies, in fact, the First Army led by Shi Qingxuan had already moved again.

In the afternoon of the same day, Shi Qingxuan left a small number of auxiliary defense divisions to clean up the battlefield, and he led his troops directly north to Suqian, and an infantry regiment of the First Division, the vanguard of the First Army, arrived outside Suqian that day.

At the same time, on the afternoon of the same day, the Qing army in Taoyuan County learned that the Qing army in Suqian was defeated, and was so frightened that they turned around and retracted to Suqian.

Since these people in the south didn't dare to keep up, Shi Qingxuan naturally didn't care about them, but went straight to Suqian with the main force, and he wanted to take Suqian directly! (To be continued......)