Shi Langyi didn't let everyone wait too long, and soon continued:

"Based on the current background of the Empire, especially the production and supply capacity of ordnance, we believe that in the short term our goal should be to expand the Imperial Army to the size of eight divisions.

In addition to the existing five divisions, the 7th and 10th Mixed Brigades will be expanded into divisions, and a new infantry division will be built! ”

"However, with the strength of these eight divisions, it is difficult to take care of all aspects, so we believe that we need to further reorganize and regularize the Cooperative Defense Army, so that it can share part of the pressure on the Imperial Army."

Hearing Shi Langyi say this, the group of people below nodded secretly in their hearts, it seems that the Joint Staff has not made too exaggerated plans, and the proposed plan is still relatively pragmatic and on the existing basis.

At present, the Chinese Empire has five divisions and two brigades of the Royal Army as the absolute main force, but in fact, the auxiliary defense division has occupied a very important position.

These cannon fodder units, which mainly come from prisoners and are not paid military salaries, and the large-scale use of cold weapons have played an increasingly important role in the Chinese army.

When Zhenjiang was first conquered, it actually relied mainly on the succession of these auxiliary defense divisions, and only won the victory after paying a large number of casualties, while the Royal Army only acted as a fire support and supervisor.

Seeing the growing importance of the Auxiliary Defense Force, it is not surprising that the military attaches importance to the Auxiliary Defense Force!

Shi Langyi continued, but he talked about some detailed issues, such as how to expand the two mixed brigades into divisions, how to build the newly built division, and how to solve the weapons of the unified auxiliary defense division after the regularization of the auxiliary defense division, and how to solve the musket regiments needed by the musket regiment in the auxiliary defense division.

In fact, these contents are no longer within the scope of the Joint Staff, he is just talking about an introduction, and how to solve them actually needs to be coordinated and solved by other departments of the High Command.

For example, on the issue of soldiers, you have to supplement the existing five infantry divisions, expand two mixed brigades into divisions, and build a new infantry division, but tens of thousands of recruits are needed here, and the recruitment, training, and distribution of new recruits are all the business of the military training department, and the joint staff department cannot interfere.

No, since the military training department does not have a general director, so as the deputy chief Hunter? It was in this broken Chinese that William said: "In recent months, our military training department has successively increased its recruitment efforts in various parts of Zhejiang, Su Songtai and other places, and established five new recruit camps, but on the whole, our current military resources are still somewhat lacking, and it is difficult to provide more than 30,000 recruits in a short period of time. ”

"The construction of our military training department is that the new recruits this month and next month will give priority to replenishing the 7th Mixed Brigade and other existing divisions, while the new troops will be delayed and replenished after June!"

But after he finished speaking, Lin Zhe said: "The soldiers of the new army, weapons must be supplied first!" ”

The reason why Lin Zhe suddenly interjected to say this was because he already had a predetermined plan for this new unit, and the Joint Staff and others said that a new division was needed, but Lin Zhe's plan was to build a new guards division.

He wanted to establish a private guard to ensure not only the strategic security of Nanjing, but also his personal life.

Although the army is now in the name of the Royal Army, it is not actually a force of the nature of the Guards and the Praetorian Guard, and as the emperor, he must always have direct control of an army.

In the past, the First Division played this role, but since he had decided to send the First Division out to fight, it was very necessary to build a new army that was completely under the personal command of the emperor and stationed in Beijing for a long time.

Lin Zhe's words, the people below naturally did not dare to object, so they quickly bypassed the new troops, and then talked about the replenishment of artillery.

But the problem with artillery is bigger than with the soldiers.

Although the Imperial Army has very high requirements for the soldiers of the regular army, although the population in the area under the jurisdiction is large, the qualified soldiers are actually very limited, and the Imperial Army is unwilling to lower the requirements and fill the number indiscriminately, so the pressure of recruiting troops in the existing control area is still relatively large.

But the problem of artillery is greater than that of soldiers.

Nowadays, there is only one artillery supplier in the Chinese Empire, that is, the Linde Machinery Factory, and the Linde Machinery Factory, as the only weapons supplier in the Chinese Empire, although the scale has become larger and larger, but due to the large number of production lines, to produce rifles, pistols, and cold weapons such as sabers, command knives.

Artillery is not only produced for the army, but also for the navy, which has to be supplied by the Linde Machinery factory, and the navy needs more artillery and is more difficult to manufacture.

Many factors add up, although the Linde Machinery Factory is already operating at full capacity, it is still unable to supply the huge needs of the Chinese Empire's naval and land forces.

As for the possibility of importing, for example, rifles, the Mini rifles used by the Chinese army now, especially the small-caliber Mini rifles, there are only two in the world, one is the Chinese army, and the other is the United Kingdom, and the British 1853 Enfield rifle is not enough for home use, and it is difficult to buy this advanced rifle on a large scale for the time being.

As for artillery, it was okay to buy a few or a dozen guns on a small scale in the past, but now as Britain and France began to prepare for the Second Opium War, large-scale arms exports to China have been stopped, and the smuggled weapons are not at most at all, and they cannot be bought if they are too much.

As for the twenty-four-pounder or even thirty-two-pounder cannons for the Navy, it is even more difficult to buy.

Therefore, imports are unreliable, at least not in a short period of time!

At this time, Han Xiangfang of the Ordnance Department said: "At present, the output of the Linde Machinery Factory is still far from meeting our needs, so the construction of our Ordnance Department is that we can separate some fragmentary production tasks from the Linde Machinery Factory, such as military kettles, sabers and command knives for cold weapons."

There are many small-scale, but large-scale handicraft workshops in our jurisdiction, although their technical capabilities and production scale cannot be compared with large-scale manufacturers, but if they place orders in a dispersed manner, they should be able to solve some of the production capacity problems.

In addition, in order to solve the problem of insufficient supply of guns, we have already started to prepare a new arsenal in Nanjing! ”

When Lin Zhe heard this, he interjected and asked, "New Arsenal? ”

Hearing Lin Zhe personally ask, Han Xiangfang immediately said: "Yes, I plan to be led by our Ordnance Department, and then co-founded with Lin Deji Factory, and I plan to establish an arsenal in Nanjing, which will mainly produce rifles in the early stage, and can be expanded to produce artillery in the later stage!" ”

Lin Zhe frowned when he heard this, and then said, "If the military hosts it, it will easily cause unnecessary trouble." ”

Your Lin Zhe's concept is very clear, your group of officials go to set up a factory, and you must not turn the entire factory into a government agency, and then all kinds of problems such as corruption, eating and waiting for death will come.

It is better to let entrepreneurs do the business of setting up factories and mines, and as a ruling institution, you must have the consciousness of a ruling organization, just be high, and there is no need to meddle in everything.

But Han Xiangfang also showed a look of embarrassment: "Running an arsenal is different from opening other livelihood industries, and if you invest a huge amount of business in the early stage of setting up a factory, I am afraid it will be difficult to have business investment, and the military industry and even national defense heavy weapons, if you run a pure commercial business, I am afraid it is easy to have problems!" ”

Lin Zhe said: "You don't have to worry about this, I will explain to the people in the palace department when I go back, let the royal industry take the lead, and attract other private capital to deal with this problem!" ”

Since you want to run a business and at the same time want to control it yourself, there is nothing more convenient than directly using the royal property to do it.

The so-called royal industry, in fact, is the former Lin family industry, after the establishment of the palace affairs department of the finance department, all the Lin family's properties are included in the management of the department, by the former Lin family business bank treasurer Pan Lixuan as the director.

Pan Lixuan used to be the chief treasurer of the Shanghai branch of the Lin Commercial Bank, and later after the Lin Commercial Bank gradually shifted its focus to Shanghai, he was appointed by Lin Zhe as the chief treasurer of the Lin Commercial Bank, becoming the actual helmsman of this large commercial bank with millions of assets.

Lin Zhe said that the emperor established the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department, and Pan Lixuan took advantage of the situation to become the director of the department, and was still responsible for taking care of the royal industry dominated by the Lin family's commercial house.

In order to better manage the royal industry, and also for the first step of the 'Imperial Company Law' formulated and promulgated by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Pan Lixuan has divested many industries of Lin's Commercial Bank, and separated Linde Machinery Factory, Linde Machinery Factory, Lin's Silk Reeling Factory, Shanghai Shipyard, etc., and its main body, that is, multiple silk reeling factories and other raw silk industries, to establish 'Shanghai Textile Company', 'Linde Machinery Factory', 'Linde Machinery Company' and 'Shanghai Shipyard' are independent and independent.

In particular, in order to continue to expand, the Linde Machinery Factory has already owed the military more than 300,000 taels of 'scheduled ordnance money', and the Shanghai Shipyard also owes several ships worth 70,000 taels to the procurement department of the Admiralty.

However, in the royal industry, there are also those who can't draw too much money due to expansion for the time being, but the Shanghai Textile Company is very cash-flowing, and a number of silk reeling factories under the command of the Shanghai Textile Company have been built and put into operation, and its profits are quite lucrative.

Therefore, it is estimated that it will not be a problem to raise two or three hundred thousand taels of silver from the royal industry, and if there are two or three hundred thousand taels, the planned Nanjing Arsenal will be able to be built.

The meeting, which Lin Zhe personally chaired, lasted for two days, and most of the time it was to discuss various detailed issues.

It was not until the next evening that this year's reorganization and expansion plan was preliminarily decided.

According to the plan, the Imperial Chinese Army will strive to replenish the existing five infantry divisions to full strength within this year, expand the 7th Mixed Brigade and the 10th Mixed Brigade into the 7th Infantry Division and the 10th Infantry Division, and establish a new Guards Division.

It is important to note that due to the small number of cavalry in the Chinese army, it is difficult to realize the previous plan of assigning each division to one cavalry regiment and 800 cavalry, so the cavalry of each division is to be reduced on a large scale, and for the time being, it is attached to a cavalry company.

The 1st Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Division and the 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 5th Division, after leaving one company each, once again became independent cavalry regiments like the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.

The navy is expected to order a 1,000-ton steam hybrid, dark wheel propulsion wooden warship this year, as well as two 400-ton river gunboats and a number of 100-ton river gunboats.

This was a great challenge for the fledgling industry of the Chinese Empire.

For example, the navy is expected to order a 1,000-ton pure steam-powered, dark-wheeled warship, although the Shanghai shipyard has manufactured a lot of steam-powered, dark-wheeled warships, but in fact they are some 100-ton small ships, 1,000-ton ships have not been built, but those are sail-powered merchant ships.

Now it is necessary to make a thousand-ton warship all of a sudden, and it is also a pure steam-powered, dark-wheeled warship, which is quite difficult, even if it is a steam engine and some key components can be imported, but just a hull is enough to choke.

The army wants to expand two brigades into divisions and build a new division, which alone has at least more than 10,000 rifles, and the other five divisions also need new rifles to replace and expand, but the Linde machine factory now produces more than 1,000 rifles a month.

As for artillery, there is even more!

To produce these ordnance in a short period of time would be a great test for the empire's nascent industrial base (to be continued). )