Five infantry battalions, two cavalry battalions, if you want to take the two adjacent county towns, it is obviously not enough. Because once it is taken, the defensive line will be greatly expanded, and the number of garrisons required will be greatly increased.

Coupled with the characteristics of a vast and sparsely populated place in Western Xinjiang, it is only three county seats, but the sphere of influence is very broad, much larger than the three internal county seats.

According to conservative estimates, in order to hold the defensive line of the sphere of influence of the three county towns, the regular garrison needs at least 60,000 to 80,000 troops, and then, it is necessary to have 20,000 to 30,000 mobile troops to reinforce and deal with emergencies at any time.

After the expansion of the army, the number of the new army was Ma Jiajun. The title of Ma Shuo's left chief is already qualified to establish a private army with his own name. It's just that, under normal circumstances, the size of Zuo Shuchang's private army is only 3,000 people.

Of course, Ma Shuo will not comply with this rule, because these are extraordinary times. Fortunately, he still bears the title of General Weiwei, and the upper limit of General Weiwei's troops can reach 50,000.

Coupled with the name of the general of the Mabian Army, there is no problem with the scale of the Ma Jiajun reaching about 100,000.

Ma Shuo's plan was to expand the number of cavalry to 20,000, remove the titles of the left cavalry battalion and the right cavalry battalion, and set up the Sixiang battalion. That is, the Qinglong Battalion, the White Tiger Battalion, the Vermilion Bird Battalion and the Xuanwu Battalion, each battalion is 5,000 people, and the final configuration strives to achieve one person and two horses.

Among them, the main body of the Qinglong Battalion is composed of Panlongwei, so the Qinglong Battalion still bears the responsibility of the guard.

The infantry set up five element battalions, namely the Jinzi Battalion, the Muzi Battalion, the Water Character Battalion, the Fire Character Battalion and the Earth Character Battalion. The total number of infantry battalions is capped at 20,000 per battalion, for a total of 100,000.

Of course, 100,000 infantry is the target, and it does not need to be done in one step for the time being.

The expansion of cavalry is relatively much easier, because most of the guards on the side of Panlongling are familiar with cavalry and archery, which is the best source of supplementary troops. During this time, the size of the Guardian Army has expanded a lot, exceeding 5,000 people.

In addition, during Ma Shuo's time in Chishui City, the scale of Panlongwei, who had stayed by Mark's side, also expanded, reaching the scale of 2,000 people.

In this way, the existing cavalry has reached about fifteen thousand. Therefore, what the cavalry really has to replenish is the appearance of five thousand people. There is not much gap in the total number of cavalry horses. In addition to the 16,000 or so war horses brought back by Ma Shuo, there were also about 10,000 war horses on the side of the Guardian Army and Panlongwei.

Therefore, although there is still a gap between one person and two horses, at least everyone can have a horse. At the same time, on the side of the secret base in the barbarian region, the breeding of horses has formed a certain scale, and it is able to provide at least a thousand adult war horses every year.

Of course, judging from this situation, if Ma Shuo wants to vigorously develop cavalry, he also needs to open up the source of war horses.

The problem of cavalry is easy to solve, and all that remains is the recruitment of infantry. At present, there are only more than 35,000 infantry, and if another 5,000 are selected to be converted into cavalry, it means that the existing number of infantry is only 30,000.

In this way, at this stage, it is necessary to recruit at least 20,000 infantry first, and first let each battalion of the Five Elements Battalion reach the scale of 10,000 people. Then, the follow-up will be supplemented continuously.

With 20,000 infantry, Ma Shuo planned to select a group of strong ones from among the barbarian captives, and the transformation was already relatively successful. How many can be selected depends on the specifics. However, there is a principle, and that is to prefer shortage to abundance.

Previously, Ma Shuo used the barbarians to form a new barbarian battalion, and during this time, under the leadership of Wuyan Muchi, most of them were well transformed. Of course, those who have not been reformed have become corpses.

In the battle during this period, the performance of the new barbarian battalion is reasonable, with a total loss of more than 2,000 people, and there are still less than 8,000 left.

Ma Shuo planned that the Tuzi Battalion in the Five Elements Camp would be formed on the basis of the New Barbarian Battalion, and eventually the size of the barbarians would be controlled below 10,000 people. Wu Yan Muchi served as the captain of the Tuzi Battalion, and of course, there would be two other Qin deputy captains.

Therefore, the new barbarian prisoners selected were first replenished to the Tuzi battalion, and the rest were scattered and incorporated into other battalions.

In fact, there is still a special team of people in Panlongling that is not counted, that is, the women's army created by Qi Jing. What Ma Shuo didn't expect was that during this period of time, the size of the Women's Army would actually expand to two thousand. Not only that, but 500 of the 2,000 were actually cavalry, and the cavalry and archery skills of these 500 cavalry were not bad. So when Wan'er learned the news, she directly asked to join the Women's Army. Even, this time she chose not to follow Ma Shuo, but asked Ma Shuo to send her to Panlongling.

In desperation, Ma Shuo had no choice but to agree to the girl's request and sent someone to send her away.

At the same time, Ma Shuo also issued a conscription order in the name of the border army. However, on the conscription order this time, Ma Shuo asked that the amount of military pay be clearly written. However, at the same time, it is also written that the selection criteria will be very strict.

The standard of salary given by Ma Shuo is not low, one tael of silver a month. This standard is actually a little higher than that of the border army. Ma Shuo's purpose is to have a brave man under the reward. Otherwise, in the current situation, it would not be easy to recruit enough soldiers, after all, Ma Shuo could only recruit people within the scope of Huangsha City.

Sure enough, as soon as Ma Shuo's conscription conditions were announced, it immediately attracted a lot of attention.

"One tael of silver a month, obediently, this is high enough!"

"Can you get your hands on it?" Clearly, there are those who are skeptical.

"This, but the recruitment order issued by the Ma family's army. My family has relatives in the Ma family's army, and their salaries are never in arrears, and there will be another reward when they kill the enemy! Someone answered immediately. The one who answered the call was actually deliberately arranged, and for this kind of thing, it was necessary to arrange some support. However, this is telling the truth.

Under Ma Shuo's command, there will never be any arrears of military salaries. With the efforts of Fan Zeng and Bai Xuan, Ma Shuo did not lack money for the time being.

Although the barbarians invaded the western frontier, the western frontier fell into war. However, with the help of the secret base, Bai Xuan still transferred a large number of barbarian specialties to Western Xinjiang, and then trafficked them to the northern counties of Daqin to obtain huge profits through Fan Zeng's side.

Of course, Fan Zeng will also take the opportunity to buy back a large number of materials that Ma Shuo needs from the mainland, from grain to cloth, to iron ore and so on. Of course, even so, you can get a lot of silver taels every time. With these silver taels, Ma Shuo is not worried about military salaries for the time being.

The conscription work is in full swing, and this matter is naturally the responsibility of the person who arranged it by Mark. When someone was in charge, Ma Shuo naturally became the shopkeeper. It just so happened that he was going to take advantage of this time to sort out those unsealed memories in his brain.

When he calmed down and immersed his mind in his own brain domain, Ma Shuo was shocked to find that an unexpected change had taken place in his brain domain.