In addition to the training of the navy and the construction of warships, the major event of military affairs in the nineteenth year of Chongzhen was the reorganization and training of the Fourth Army of the Guards.

The more than 200,000 troops of Huang Degong and Yuan Jixian's troops, in addition to some of the troops that supplemented the first, second, and third armies of the Guards Army, some of them were dismantled on the principle of their own volition, and the officers and men who were laid off were transferred from the military headquarters to the localities to serve as officials at the grass-roots level in Jiangnan, Jiangbei, and other places.

Some officers and men of the First, Second, and Third Armies of the Guards Army were transferred to the Fourth Army as officers, and the Fourth Army's generals such as Weng Zhengchun and Li Shichun and a number of middle- and lower-level officers were transferred back to Nanjing to serve as cadets of the Central Military Academy of the Ming Army, where they received modern military training and training in commanding hot weapons warfare.

Zhu Youzhen retransformed the former Huai'an Lecture Hall into the Central Military Academy of the Ming Army, and it was also located in Nanjing.

At the same time, Zhou Yuji, Liu Fangliang, He Xin, and even Liu Zhaoji, Liu Xiyao, Qin Bangping, Gu Yanwu, Zheng Chenggong, Yan Yingyuan, and other officers began to train the operational command course for firearms and artillery battle formations and suggestions for improvement in accordance with Zhu Youzhen's will and on the basis of their previous experiences in using firearms and artillery to fight.

At the same time, Liu Zhaoji, Liu Xiyao, Liu Qian, Chen Zilong, Jiao Lian, and some of the deputy commanders-in-chief of the 123rd Army of the Guards Army served as instructors and personally taught Weng Zhengchun, Li Shichun, and other generals.

He Xin, the eunuch and chief officer of the Second Army of the Guards, served as the priest (principal) of the Central Military Academy of the Ming Army.

The eunuch of the imperial horse eunuch palm seal is the third person in the inner court in addition to the palm seal of the master of ceremonies and the eunuch of Bingbi, and he is also the highest official in the military circle in the inner court.

The instructors are all the newly rising generals of the Ming Dynasty, and they have just made great achievements in defeating the Tartars, among which there are more talented people like Chen Zilong and veterans like Liu Zhaoji.

Even if Weng Zhengchun, Li Shichun and others were both henchmen of Huang Degong and Yuan Jixian and had made great contributions, they did not dare to disagree with the instructors.

By the end of the year, most of the grassroots officers of the Fourth Army of the Guards had been filled by officers and men of the 123rd Army of the Guards, while the military attachés of the Fourth Army of the Guards were transferred to the 123rd Army of the Guards Army as officers after receiving training at the Central Military Academy of the Daming Army.

In this way, Huang Degong and Yuan Jixian's Fourth Guards Army has all been reborn as the imperial court soldiers and horses that can be directly controlled by Zhu Youzhen's generalissimo's office, and are no longer Huang Degong and Yuan Jixian's private soldiers.

At the beginning of the nineteenth year of Chongzhen, the only armies that were not directly controlled by Zhu Youzhen were the Fourth Army of the Guards of Huang Degong and Yuan Jixian, and the Fifth Army of the Guards of the Exterminating Army and Gao Jie.

Zhu Youzhen did not plan to reorganize all these three troops and horses at the beginning, so it was easy to provoke a big change at once, and Gao Jie and the generals of the exterminating army could accept the appeasement, and they were naturally unwilling to accept the reorganization and lose their military power.

Therefore, Chongzhen and Zhu Youzhen only reorganized the Fourth Army of Huang Degong and Yuan Jixian's Guards Army.

Huang Degong and Yuan Jixian are both veterans of the Ming Dynasty, and they have no opinion on Zhu Youzhen's control of military power, and they have no worries about losing military power, not to mention that they also know that Zhu Youzhen, who is now the emperor, has the strongest combat effectiveness of the Ming Dynasty, and they naturally dare not go against the holy will.

Plus the two are not ambitious either.

After all, the process of reorganizing the Fourth Army of the Guards Army went smoothly, and by the end of the 19th year of Chongzhen, the Generalissimo of Chongzhen and Zhu Youzhen had six group armies under the control of modern army specifications.

These six group armies, with a total of more than 600,000 people, control five theaters of operations, and are the absolute main force to resist Jiannu's southward movement again in the future.

These six corps are all equipped with Chongzhen's 14-type flintlock guns, and the artillery of each artillery battalion has been equipped with 1,000 guns of three types, three-kilogram guns, six-pound guns, and 12-pound guns, which are enough to form a powerful artillery strike.

Coupled with the advent of the bearing system, the gun carriage was no longer as difficult to turn as before, and the transportation of the entire artillery was much cheaper, and it was convenient enough to move forward in the mountains of the south.

Although the Ming Navy is still unable to catch up with the naval strength of the Zheng Group, it has more than 60 hard-made sailing ships, including more than 20 large Fu ships, more than 30 soft-sail warships, and countless small warships, which are enough to control the situation in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

However, the strength of the navy naturally depends not only on the number of warships, but also on the combat effectiveness of artillery and naval officers and men.

The first batch of students of the current Daming Shipbuilding Bureau has completed classroom training in the nineteenth year of Chongzhen, and now they have begun to conduct actual combat training, and have been arranged to serve as naval soldiers in the navy of the Ming Navy and the Zheng Group.

Since most of the navy was transferred to local guards or directly dismissed as commoners, the current Ming navy has more than 20,000 officers and men in addition to more than 100 large warships.

Each warship is equipped with a new type of naval artillery of the Ming Dynasty, a new type of naval artillery improved by the Franc machine, which strengthens the airtightness of the sub-gun and the mother tube, and greatly improves the range and success rate of the gun.

Each naval soldier was armed with a Chongzhen 14 musket.

Moreover, in the nineteenth year of Chongzhen, the Chongzhen 15-type flintlock pistol also began to be developed, and the firing device and barrel material will be further improved, and even try to draw rifling to enhance the firing range and accuracy.

Of course, it was the Ministry of Industry that was responsible for the research and development of weapons, and the Ministry of Industry was not only beginning to develop weapons on a large scale, but also began to carry out large-scale construction of water conservancy projects.

Zhu Youzhen used his military power to severely crack down on the gentry in Jiangnan from the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, which greatly reduced the power of the gentry in the entire Jiangnan, coupled with the impact of the war, so that a large number of yeoman farmers appeared, and the water conservancy construction of agriculture was handed over to the imperial court.

The imperial court also assumed the main responsibility for the construction of water conservancy in the world.

In this era of frequent natural disasters with constant droughts and floods, because of the timely follow-up of water conservancy construction, the agricultural production in Chongzhen in 19 years has been significantly improved compared with Chongzhen's 17 years and Chongzhen 18 years.

Of course, this is also related to the end of the war and Zhu Youzhen's policy of reducing or reducing agricultural taxes.

The national education of the Ministry of Rites also began to enter the process, and social studies began to be established and rebuilt in various places, and a large number of students and children, especially those who failed in their careers, began to take the initiative to transfer to teaching positions in order to gain fame.

However, there is a shortage of labor in this era, and many ordinary people are reluctant to send their children to study in social studies, and would rather let them help their families do farm work, after all, children in this era are also a labor force.

However, in order to meet the targets set by the Ministry of Rites, the local government can only force local people to send their children to private schools, and even many girls are allowed to enter schools to fill the quota.

(End of chapter)