Regarding Joanna's question, Guo Kang is actually not very easy to explain.

To be honest, he is not optimistic about the recruits brought in by Cao Jian. Not to mention anything else, he talked to Joanna for a while, but there was no response over there, which means that it is difficult for these people to even march in formation, and Cao Jian is estimated to be on his head now.

However, he was embarrassed to say it. If it was Theodora next to him, he might not be able to help but complain, even if these people were brought to Egypt, they could only be used as army laborers. However, the people here are not so familiar after all, and it is not good to turn around and let Cao Jian hear it......

And this is indeed a long way to say. Even for a Serris, it may not be easy to understand intuitively.

For example, why did the soldiers of the Purple Horde train for this length?

Because it was customary for the legionnaires to be brought in from all over the country, and the requirements were quite strict.

When a male citizen reaches adulthood, he will be registered with the local military district according to his household registration, and will be engaged in militia training every year without taking a leave of work, master the basic methods of using weapons, and understand the simple rules of battle formations. Of course, the most important thing is to get used to the discipline and strict rules of collective life that Rome has been strongly advocating.

After two years, the young men will be engaged in a year of off-the-job training, and then join the local war regiment and serve as a garrison of the military district for a year. Due to the long borders of the Purple Horde and the fact that they were full of enemies, almost everyone was able to actually fight a few battles during the year.

After the year's garrison was over, ordinary soldiers were eligible to join the regular legion. Before they are formally recruited, they will undergo additional training for half a year to ensure that they can have all the skills required for the operation of the army.

After passing the training for half a year, he can be regarded as a "corps recruit" who has entered the door and can serve in the main brigades of various military regions for another three years. If there is a big war and it is necessary to form a legion, they will be ordered to organize and go out to fight.

This is also why it would be so troublesome for the Cyros to go to the legion, and they had to go out of the country and open up all the joints in order to give a special exception - because even ordinary citizens have to work hard to join the legion. The legionnaires do look down on outsiders, but unfortunately, they do have the qualifications and confidence......

In Guo Gai's time, the difference between the legionaries and the local garrison army was not very obvious, because the Purple Horde basically fought defensive wars, and sometimes took the initiative to attack, and generally everyone was shoulder to shoulder, so it was not so much exquisite. But now that the family background is thicker, it is possible to pick and choose people and improve the average quality, so since the establishment of the military region system, it has generally been this way.

There are various theories about where this training time comes from. However, what Guo Kang believes more is his family's own ancestral statement - Guo Gai and others, who actually didn't understand it very well at that time. The rule of two years of training was copied directly from ancient history books......

It is said that during the Han Dynasty, the ancients recruited soldiers in this way. After two years of training, he can already act as a pawn and act as the main body of the army. Under this model, the Han Dynasty could maintain the ratio of one soldier for one hundred households for a long time. The cultivation technology of the Purple Horde was more advanced than it was then, and it was still affordable.

However, as the war intensified, these two-year training soldiers were not enough to meet the requirements, so the Han Dynasty later established a longer service recruitment. But these are not practical for today's situation.

Because in Europe, "training" is a luxury. For a long time, people didn't have this concept.

Mercenary leaders generally recruit random people and stipulate some basic discipline. All kinds of skills, at most, rely on the veterans in the team, self-education and teaching, and there is no unified standard. Everyone also believes that instead of wasting time and money on training, it is better to pull recruits directly to the front. Anyway, as long as they survive a few fights, they will become veterans. It's a lot easier than training.

Moreover, not only the past and the present, but also the future.

About 200 years later, Prince Maurice of the Netherlands developed a set of discipline codes to regulate the training of soldiers, and since then, Western European armies have unified normative requirements. However, the actual effect of this incident was not as great as that later generations of European military scientists said.

First of all, the code of conduct is not an alien concept. Not to mention the East, the Eastern Rome next door also had a drill code back then; The Mamluks, across the sea, also have this kind of thing. This is not a new thing in the whole world, and the Europeans themselves do not understand it, so they make a fuss all day long.

Moreover, the focus of the code is only on "how soldiers should fight", not "how long and how to get all soldiers to do this." It's not that the latter isn't important. In fact, Morris and others also had a lot of training skills, and there were also a number of related books in that era. But in the realities of Europe at that time, it was impossible to roll them out in a standardized way.

Europeans have long adopted a system of hire and contract, like Prince Morris's own soldiers, which are available everywhere in the north and south. In this case, it is already good to drive them to obey orders and act in a more efficient array and combat style, and the rest cannot be too demanding.

And in actual combat, although the Spanish enemy was defeated many times, judging by the results, it was more likely that political victories and the level of command of Morris himself played a role.

His soldiers, who were clearly inferior to the Spaniards in training, were well aware of this, and carefully avoided a decisive battle with the main army led by the famous Spanish general. However, in his later years, Maurice was forced to face the elite Flanders in order to rescue the important city of Breda.

Even with the support of the British, the two relief attempts organized by Morris ended in disastrous defeats. In a fit of rage, Maurice vomited blood and died, and the city of Breda surrendered to Spain a little over a month later.

And what about the Spaniards? In fact, they don't have special training rules. However, Spain has a very clever rotation system.

When a recruit joins the legion, he first goes to places like Italy and stays for about a year. Local battles are relatively simple and allow recruits to familiarize themselves with the war in a relatively less dangerous environment. After a year of abusing vegetables, and gaining some experience, I will be transferred to tricky places like the Netherlands. In this way, there is a continuous supply of relatively reliable soldiers.

Although it may seem rustic, the Spanish army, organized in this way, was already the ceiling of Europe at that time - even higher than the quality of the soldiers in the era after them.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the quality of European soldiers has not improved linnearly since the late Middle Ages. After the Spaniards, for a long time, the armies of European countries were closer to the "sea of garbage" tactics, relying on the large number of people. In terms of quality and training, it continued to decline.

For example, many people think that the infantry of the musket era could not just lie down and dodge bullets. And many officers at that time did think so. Because as long as they lie down, the soldiers will not be happy to get up, and don't expect this unit to play normally.

But the Spanish army often used this method, and more than once there was a record of "kneeling to avoid bullets", and even so, they were still able to stay in line and get up again to fight.

In 1634, the Spanish legions engaged the Swedish army at Nordlingen, again evading fire in this way, and finally turned the tide of battle against each other despite the defeat of their allies. The Swedes suffered heavy casualties, and the most elite "Yellow Army" was almost completely wiped out.

- This army is the Guards formed by Gustav, and it is also the most important of these color-named Swedish armies. It is probably equivalent to the annihilation of the Swedish Yellow Flag, which shows the huge impact. After that, Sweden basically withdrew from the competition.

Therefore, not to mention the East, even Europe itself, it is by no means as simple as "linear evolution of different formations".

(End of chapter)