Regardless of the regime, changes in military organization and command system, especially if it is a major change, this means that the power of the generals will change.
Although the Tang Dynasty was just a mountain dynasty, it could not escape this fate. This was the case when the standing army was established before, and it was also the case when the five armies of the standing army were combined into one.
Now, Li Xuan wants to build a completely off-duty professional army based on the two militia-type armies, the Guards and the Standing Army, which will naturally lead to greater job changes, thus affecting the changes in the power of the generals.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the formation of the new army attracted the attention and even competition of Fang Dongquan, Wang Shanxu and even Chen Tufu.
However, before determining the candidates for generals, it is still necessary to determine the detailed establishment.
To organize the organization, you must first know that what Li Xuan wants to build in the future is a modern army with hot weapons as the mainstay and cold weapons as the supplement. In other words, the army he envisioned is composed of musketeers, spearmen, and cavalry.
, a mixed force combined with artillery.
However, it must also be taken into consideration that the output of muskets in the Tang Dynasty is not high, and the matchlocks still have many performance defects. This has also led to the fact that the two arms of the Tang Dynasty, the swordsmen, shieldmen and archers, will still be in the army for a long time.
exist.
Taking all things into consideration, Li Xuan planned to combine the previous formations of the Guards and the Standing Army, starting with the heavy armored swordsmen, shieldmen and archers. These two arms are actually more difficult to expand than the musketeers, especially the archers, whether they are bows or arrows.
Or the archers themselves, the Tang Dynasty would not be able to obtain them in a short period of time.
So you can only organize as many as you have. There were more than 70 archers in the two archer teams before. Unfortunately, several people were killed and injured in the previous battle with the Ming army. Now there are less than 70 people left. And this
The quality of the seventy people varied widely, and some of them were simply not suitable to be professional soldiers.
So Li Xuan planned to select the best and select thirty-six people from these uneven archers to form a team of archers. In other words, he would reduce the previous two teams of archers into one team.
The remaining archers who have not been selected usually go back to farming, and when a war breaks out, they will be pulled out and used as ordinary young men.
These thirty-six archers will all be equipped with Ming army standard strong bows, and then undergo various physical and tactical trainings. They are not expected to become sharpshooters, nor are they expected to be able to compete with the soldiers of the Guards.
They can also be disciplined, Li Xuan just wants them to become a normal archer force.
The requirements are not high, just about the same as those archers in the Ming military guard.
But even so, it is very difficult for these archers to meet Li Xuan's requirements.
Like archers, the number of heavy armored sword and shield soldiers is not limited to the number they want, because limited by the number of armors, the Tang Dynasty can only arm more than thirty heavy armored sword and shield soldiers.
No more.
These heavily armored sword and shield bearers need to rush into battle, which requires certain physical fitness and even personal bravery and courage. Therefore, in addition to the more than twenty armored bandits, Li Xuan plans to select ten more from among the bandits.
The remaining people made up thirty-six people.
In this way, there is a team of thirty-six archers and a team of thirty-six heavy armor, sword and shield soldiers.
In addition, there are spearmen and musketeers. The requirements for the two are basically the same. There is no requirement for personal skills, and even average physical fitness is acceptable. The only requirement is to obey orders, so those veteran bandits cannot ask for any of them, except
In addition to the original ninety-odd people in the Guards, Li Xuan planned to select from more than a thousand people who had just joined the Tang Dynasty family.
In terms of specific organization, there are three teams of spearmen, each team has thirty-six people. The spearmen are easy to train, the soldiers are simple, and the weapons are even simpler, so there is no technical difficulty. Most of the spearmen used are still close to the original ones.
Among the Guardsmen, honest men are selected to supplement the missing personnel.
For the musketeers, first determine the establishment of the two teams. The same number is thirty-six people per team. However, unlike other arms that can immediately select enough people and train them into an army, the musketeers only have an empty establishment now. If they want to gather together
We don’t know how long it will take to fill these two teams with 72 people, because the Tang Dynasty does not have that many muskets.
There is a team of baggage soldiers, each team has thirty-six people. However, Li Xuan does not intend to use these baggage soldiers as civilians, but as multi-purpose infantry. In addition to their own job, which is to transport logistics supplies, they also
Need to undertake more technical work, such as maintaining ordnance, building camps, building bridges and opening roads.
If war comes, it will be impossible for this mere thirty-six-person baggage team to complete all the logistics and transportation tasks of the army, and it must be expanded on a large scale.
Therefore, the baggage army is actually just a framework during peacetime. It will expand rapidly during wartime. By then, one of these thirty-six baggage soldiers may bring hundreds or even more civilians to transport grain and grass.
Therefore, the baggage soldiers must also be equipped with weapons and be able to fight. If they cannot fight, then they are not soldiers, but ordinary civilians.
Therefore, the most important task of the baggage troops, "transporting grain and grass," will be largely borne by civilians in subsequent actual operations, and the main tasks they need to undertake will become escorting grain and a small amount of technical work.
With the musketeers, spearmen, archers, sword and shield soldiers, and heavy troops, naturally there is also a cavalry team, a total of thirteen cavalry, which was just established in the Tang Dynasty a few days ago.
Thanks to more than a dozen horses captured from the Ming army, the small Tang Dynasty now also has a cavalry unit. Although the riding skills of these cavalry are only limited to riding and walking, they can even ride a horse to run faster.
It was so difficult that they couldn't even hold a knife firmly on horseback, let alone mounted shooting.
Moreover, the horse he was riding was a little short, a little thin, and a little old!
But this still cannot deny that they are a cavalry, and they are also the most expensive and most intimidating unit in the entire Tang Dynasty. These thirteen cavalry were even nicknamed the Thirteen Taibao by the bandits in Huangzhushan!
Looking within a thousand miles, the only one that can rival the Tang Dynasty in terms of cavalry numbers is the Ming Dynasty.
Calculated in this way, the strength of the Tang Dynasty King's Master can barely be regarded as the second in the world!
Of course, Li Xuan would never say that this is because within a thousand miles, everything is the territory of the Ming Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty in the middle is like an isolated island. Looking out from the mountains, everything is a fucking ocean!
The above three groups of spearmen, two groups of musketeers, one group of heavy armored sword and shield soldiers, one group of heavy baggage soldiers, and a small group of cavalry will form the new professional army of the Tang Dynasty.
Except for the cavalry, all other teams have six corps, each with a captain and a deputy captain. In addition to the thirty-six people in each team, there is an additional captain and a deputy captain.
, one messenger and two guards.
A standard team is thus formed, with a total number of forty-one people in each team.
For example, there are eight teams, with a total of 300 people, one is not too many, and the other is not too few!
However, this establishment does not include a higher-level command system, because Li Xuan intends to imitate the previous standing army. He plans to personally serve as the commander-in-chief of the entire army. The staff and paperwork in the army will also be handled by civilian officials like Liu Bagou.
Do it for you.
It's just that although the establishment has been confirmed, there are still a lot of personnel shortages. Especially the Musketeers have an establishment of two teams, but now they can't even form one team.
They only have more than twenty musketeers. If they want to gather more than seventy people, they have to rely on the craftsmen to make more muskets in the future.
The original number of craftsmen in the Tang Dynasty was only a few, and the output of muskets was quite low. They could only make single-digit muskets a month. This time, a total of more than 30 people were 'invited' from Longhua Town and other villages outside the nearby mountains.
Most of the craftsmen are blacksmiths, and half of them are craftsmen who originally made various weapons for the Ming army in Longhua Town. There are a few people who know how to make primitive firecrackers, and there is even someone who knows how to prepare gunpowder.
In order to increase the production of muskets and other cold weapons, the Tang Dynasty would also assign a large number of ordinary young men as assistants to these craftsmen, reducing the ordinary manual labor of the craftsmen, so that these craftsmen could focus more on technical work.
It can be expected that the Tang Dynasty's musket output will increase rapidly in the future. The monthly output of muskets should be twenty or thirty, not to mention too many.
Calculating this way, they can hope to build the muskets needed for the two musketeers in three months and form initial combat effectiveness.
However, the premise is that there are sufficient raw materials for making muskets and preparing gunpowder.
These raw materials are not easy to come by. A large amount of iron is needed to make a musket, sulfur and saltpeter are used to prepare gunpowder, and lead is used for bullets.
Among them, saltpeter is the best. Even if Li Xuan has no knowledge, he knows that saltpeter can be obtained in toilets. Although the quantity is not large, they do not use much. He does not believe it. More than 3,000 people are pooping and urinating.
Not enough saltpeter can be produced.
Tomorrow, he will have a lot of public toilets built. From now on, you have to go to the toilet to relieve yourself. If you catch anyone who defecates casually, they will slap twenty big boards. In addition to making soil and saltpeter, the toilet waste can also fertilize the fields. It has multiple uses.
What a good thing, how can it be thrown everywhere!
Even if they can't extract saltpeter from the toilet, they can still secretly buy saltpeter in the name of buying medicinal materials.
Sulfur can also be purchased from pharmacies.
However, the quantity cannot be too large. You can only buy it bit by bit, but it is enough. After all, in this era when a decisive battle can only fire a few shots, and soldiers go to the battlefield with only ten rounds of ammunition, lead
The amounts of bullets and gunpowder used are actually very small.
Therefore, this lead can also be obtained from copper coins. Copper coins these days are all added with lead, and there are many inferior lead coins, or you can simply purchase them from outside.
Whether it's gunpowder or lead bullets, these are not big problems. The real big problem is iron!