On April 23, the 17th year of Chongzhen, on the second day of Li Zicheng's defeat in the Battle of Shanhaiguan, Zhu Youzhen, the emperor of Chongzhen, accompanied by Zhou Shixian, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, Xue Changfu, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, Shi Kefa, the secretary of the military department, and thousands of escorts and horses, arrived at Yanziji outside Nanjing by dragon boat.

Nearly 100 large and small ships crossed the Yangtze River, as if coming from the sky, mighty and immense, which can be described as "extraordinary".

Thousands of officials and gentry in Nanjing, as well as countless people in the city have been waiting outside the city for a long time, the Son of Heaven is extremely sacred in this era, Jiangnan has always been rich, there are many idlers, and there are official gentry arrangements, which naturally attract countless people to watch the court.

When Emperor Chongzhen was in Huai'an before, he had already beaten these officials to obedience, and the mountains of government affairs in the south had been basically dealt with under his clothes and food at night, and under the review of several days/approvals day and night.

Therefore, at this time, in addition to the officials of the central government, there were also many governors and generals of the surrounding provinces in Nanjing, who were also edicted to come to meet the Son of Heaven.

Zhou Shixian traveled back and forth between Nanjing and Pukou several days ago, and he was ordered by Chongzhen to be responsible for the preparations for the sacrifice, and inspected the Nanjing camp in advance to prepare for the exercise.

However, this also gave him the opportunity to get acquainted with the real power eunuchs in Nanjing in advance, as well as the nobles in the Beijing camp, Zhou Shixian threw an olive branch slightly, and some people knelt down directly to follow him to make contributions.

After all, there are not many opportunities like this, and it can't be said that it will be this time in a lifetime, and others just want to kneel, but I'm afraid they won't kneel on this ground.

Of course, Zhou Shixian did not want to oppose the civil officials, that was not his enemy.

It's just that in order to avoid imbalance in the court, he must be prepared in advance, Li Banghua and Ni Yuanlu are his people, and Shi Kefa is also half of them, these are all huge help for him to quickly realize his training plan.

After Emperor Chongzhen landed on the shore, he first paid homage to the filial piety mausoleum, and then entered the city from the Chaoyang Gate of Nanjing City, and the crowd was excited and lively along the way, and Chongzhen and Queen Zhou were full of joy to see it.

Even Zhou Shixian saw it, and he couldn't help but admire the officials of this era, who were even stronger than later generations in terms of bluffing and engaging in face-saving projects.

Because the imperial palace in Nanjing City has not been completely repaired, Chongzhen's holy car temporarily stayed in the inner garrison mansion. It was not until the third day that Chongzhen was able to move the imperial palace, and thus officially issued an edict to the world to rebuild the imperial court in Nanjing.

Then, according to the results of his previous discussions with the ministers, Emperor Chongzhen officially promulgated the appointment of officials at all levels of the Nanjing Imperial Court in the Nanjing Imperial Palace.

Shi Kefa, the former secretary of the Nanjing Military Department, was a scholar of Dongge University and a secretary of the Military Department, and joined the cabinet to do things; Li Banghua, the former imperial historian of the capital, is a scholar of Dongge University and still holds his original position; Ni Yuanlu, the former secretary of the household department, is a scholar of Dongge University, and concurrently serves as the secretary of the household department; Ma Shiying is a scholar of Dongge University, and the title of deputy capital of Lingyou, and is still the governor of Fengyang;

At the same time, the original officials at all levels in Nanjing also made some adjustments, with Jiang Yueguang, the former Zhan Shifu of Zhan Shifu, as the left attendant of the Ministry of Rites, Zhang Shenyan as the secretary of the ministry, Gao Hongtu as the household servant, and Liu Zongzhou as the imperial history of the left capital of the Imperial Procuratorate, and other yamen officials also made arrangements one after another.

According to Shi Kefa, Li Banghua, Ni Yuanlu and others, this is to let the "righteous people" occupy the key areas, so that the imperial court can have a new atmosphere.

Of course, in fact, it is necessary to take into account the distribution of power between the important ministers in the capital and the Nanjing faction, so as not to provoke unnecessary internal contradictions.

And Emperor Chongzhen is naturally not a soft bone like Zhu Yousong, his means of controlling the ministers should not be underestimated, and there are more soldiers and horses of Zhou Shixian in his hands, since this arrangement was made at the beginning, many people were able to get their wishes, balancing the power of the court, and it will not change for a long time after that.

At the same time, after Chongzhen returned to power in Nanjing, Shi Kefa and Ma Shiying had neither the contradictions in their original history nor their status in their original history.

Ma Shiying did not have the original historical support, and letting him enter the cabinet was actually just a means for Emperor Chongzhen to win over this force.

After the civil officials were properly arranged, it was the turn of the "Four Towns of Jiangbei" in the original history, but because of the arrival of Zhou Shixian, they all lost their original prestige, and they also lost the so-called support, plus the deterrence of the army under Zhou Shixian, now one is better than the other.

Chongzhen didn't understand the military affairs, and it seemed that he had really learned a lesson, and he didn't command indiscriminately, and handed over all the power to the concubine Zhou Shixian to plan.

Compared with the original historical arrangement, Zhou Shixian made some changes in the garrison according to the current situation and his own needs.

Huang Degong, who had strong soldiers and horses and was also loyal, was stationed in Luzhou Mansion and Hezhou Mansion, and Liu Liangzuo was stationed in the southwest of Fengyang Mansion. Ma Shiying, the governor of Fengyang, commanded the two and stationed behind them with his soldiers and horses to assist in the defense.

Ma Shiying originally had a lot of soldiers and horses in his hands, but he was made a move by Lu Jiude, and almost half of the elite were swallowed up by Zhou Shixian, and he didn't dare to ask the other party to come back, let alone complain, it was simply "dumb people eat Coptis chinensis, and they can't say anything about their suffering".

Of course, the same as him suffered Liu Zeqing.

Ma Huabao finally took advantage of the chaos to flee to Henan, which made him a handle, so he could only be a man with his tail between his legs, and watched as the most elite more than 1,000 soldiers and horses in his hands were taken away by Zhou Shixian.

At the same time, Gao Jie, who was the strongest among the four towns, was stationed in the prefectures and counties northeast of Fengyang Prefecture, as well as Xuzhou Prefecture, and Liu Zeqing was still assigned to Huai'an Mansion, and the two formed a defensive line against the enemy from Shandong. Lu Zhenfei, the governor of Huaiyang, commanded the two, and also took his patrol pacesetter battalion to assist in the defense.

And Yangzhou Mansion, Zhenjiang Mansion, and Ying Tianfu have become the garrison of the army under Zhou Shixian, this time, Gao Jie did not dare to snatch Yangzhou again, this is the territory of the horse, unless he wants the other three towns and Ma Shiying, Lu Zhenfei The two adults were promoted quickly, and with a fearless spirit, they took the initiative to sacrifice their lives and soldiers.

Zhou Shixian also took the opportunity to arrange the deployment and training of the soldiers and horses under his command, and implemented the official positions and the final establishment of the troops that had been given to them before.

During this period, the military establishment of the Ming army was very chaotic, and the personal preferences of the local generals played a considerable role in it, which made the establishment of the various armies very different, and it was more difficult to cooperate with each other.

However, most of them referred to Qi Jiguang's training strategy in the north, and even the layout of the battlefield military formation, and in many ways they could see the shadow of the Qi family army in the north back then, which also saved Zhou Shixian, who also used Qi Jiguang's training method.

In fact, Zhou Shixian's military restructuring was not a major change, that is, he took the opportunity of training new soldiers to reorganize the 20,000 slender men and the nearly 5,000 soldiers and horses that had been collected and annexed, and the soldiers and horses of each battalion were supplemented and completed according to the establishment to form a basic standard, with a view to giving full play to the best combat effectiveness of the army.

According to Zhou Shixian's vision, the core main field army is mainly divided into three types: war battalions, cavalry battalions, and mixed battalions.

The battalion is mainly infantry soldiers, with muskets, spears, swords and shields as the main weapons, and is equipped with light artillery such as tiger squat guns and four-pounder guns, forming an artillery team, with a full number of about 2,700 people.

The tiger squat cannon is capable of being produced by the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty, and the four-pounder cannon may need to wait until John Tang brings the craftsmen back from Macao, but Zhou Shixian's establishment was originally set up for a long time in the future, so it is not wrong to prepare early.

The cavalry battalion was equipped with bows and crossbows, spears, knives and axes as the main weapons, and was equipped with lighter weight and shotgun tiger squat cannons, and the full number was also about 2,700 men.

Zhou Shixian also planned to equip some cavalry battalions with short guns, but the productivity of the firearms workshop was far from keeping up, and this plan, like the four-pounder gun, was still in the conceptual stage.

Moreover, with the war horses that Zhou Shixian currently owns, he can now make up an independent war battalion at most.

As for the mixed battalion, on the basis of one combat battalion, two thousand troops, more than 1,400 cavalry, and an artillery team of more than 100 men are added, so that it has a comprehensive attack capability and can carry out combat missions independently from the main force corps, with a total strength of nearly 5,000 troops.

In addition, according to Zhou Shixian's plan, his troops should also have sailor battalions, vehicle battalions, baggage transport battalions, etc., which are all supplements to the main battle troops, which may not be conspicuous in the war, but they are all indispensable, otherwise it will be difficult to exert the power of soldiers, musketeers, and cavalry.

Among them, Zhou Shixian of the sailor camp has no clue yet, he doesn't believe in the Nanjing water battalion, those boats can be used, but people forget it, he plans to win over Zheng Chenggong, and then use this strongest man in naval warfare in the late Ming Dynasty. When the time comes, it will definitely not be a problem to build an invincible sailor.

For the reorganization of the army, in fact, the most serious problem now is the corresponding firearms equipped, although there are still a lot of knives and guns in the Nanjing treasury, but the artillery and muskets are not usable, whether it is large artillery, or the future equipped with small and medium-sized artillery of the battalions, or Zhou Shixian has to find a way to produce, and tens of thousands of musket demand, it is a headache for him.

However, this kind of thing could not be rushed, and Zhou Shixian still had to coordinate with various ministries to recruit craftsmen from Guangdong and Fujian, and wait for John Tang to set off for Macao.

And the first thing he wants to solve at the moment is the problem of the official system, at that time, the officials of Chongzhen were too high, just to bluff people, in fact, they are used like that, and if they make meritorious contributions in the future, they will not be able to be sealed again.

As a result, Zhou Shixian privately re-established a set of practical official positions for them, and at the same time, it was also to establish his absolute leadership over this army.

They are the soldiers of the horses, not the emperor's soldiers, which Zhou Shixian wanted to clearly tell every general under his command. If anyone dares to cross this line, then don't blame him for not being affectionate and killing the killer.