Chapter three hundred and thirty seventh heavy artillery
Capturing Xingquan City and expanding the army after controlling the three counties was something Li Xuan had already decided long ago, and even many high-ranking civil and military officials in the Tang Dynasty knew it.
Even many of the things they were busy with after entering Xingquan Fucheng were all related to military expansion, even if not directly, they were indirect.
For example, the cabinet wants to set up administrative agencies at the county, town, and village levels and establish a tax system in the other two counties in the shortest possible time. This is not only to establish a complete administrative rule, but also to raise enough food and salary in the shortest possible time.
, used to maintain the expenditure of the army.
The expansion of the army is not just about recruiting new soldiers, it also needs to be matched with a large amount of equipment and food and wages.
Since ancient times, the army has been a big spender of money. Even if the new army of the Tang Dynasty does not have the habit of paying out salaries, it cannot continue like this. Sooner or later, it will have to be paid.
Even if Li Xuan delays paying his salary, the army still has to eat, and the amount of food needed by tens of thousands of people is not a small amount.
And weapons and equipment also cost a lot of money!
Therefore, in order to maintain the expansion of the army, the cabinet needs to raise a large amount of food, grass and money.
Of course, food, salary, gold and silver can be postponed. The most important thing is to recruit new soldiers. This time, the new army of the Tang Dynasty needs to recruit a large number of new soldiers. It is estimated that the first batch of new soldiers will reach 3,000.
In the future, recruitment will continue until the total force is expanded to 10,000 people.
In order to recruit enough new soldiers, the Ministry of War sent a large number of personnel to set up recruitment stations in nearby places starting the next day.
The Privy Council also established a number of new recruit training camps accordingly.
Even Lianhe County, which has not yet been captured, and the Ministry of War have been included in the scope of conscription. Lianhe County is just the county seat that has not been captured. However, there are not a large number of Ming troops in the vast rural areas, so it does not affect the Ministry of War.
Send people to recruit troops.
In addition, the cabinet has also sent officials to accompany the troops led by Wang Shanxu. If Wang Shanxu attacks his company and the county seat, the cabinet will directly establish county-level and town-level administrative agencies in Lianhe County.
Nowadays, time is very precious for the Tang Dynasty, so many things are done at the same time. It does not mean that one thing is done and then another thing is done, but it is done together at the same time.
The subordinate officials were busy, and Li Xuan himself was not idle. Army expansion was an established policy, and even the number of troops to be expanded was fixed. However, how to organize the troops after the expansion was a big problem.
Because currently the largest organization in the New Army of the Tang Dynasty is the battalion. The total strength of an infantry battalion is only more than 400 people, and the mixed battalion is even less, with only more than 250 people.
If the number of troops was small, Li Xuan could still command the troops by directly administering each battalion. However, as the strength of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty gradually increased, and even reached the size of ten thousand people, it was definitely not possible to directly administer each battalion.
This situation actually exposed many problems during the Second Battle of Lanjiang.
During the Second Battle of Lanjiang and the previous Battle of Crossing the River, the New Army of the Tang Dynasty was actually divided into three. The main force commanded by Hao Bainian once reached more than 1,400 people, including two main infantry battalions, a mixed battalion and other
If the auxiliary troops, including young and strong civilians, are included, the total number reaches 2,000.
The actual situation has shown that the new army of the Tang Dynasty already needs a higher-level organization than the battalion.
To this end, Li Xuan and Zeng Ziwen of the Operations Department discussed for several hours and decided to make changes in the organization!
The first is to expand the existing infantry battalion organization so that the infantry battalion has the most basic independent combat capability. In addition to the existing four infantry teams, it is also equipped with an infantry team. This team can be a musketeer team or a spear team, depending on the situation.
It can also be a team of sword and shield soldiers or archers. The specific allocation will depend on the shortage of weapons and the nature of the battle. It will be equipped with an additional cavalry platoon, a light artillery platoon, and a baggage platoon.
The size of its cavalry platoon is relatively small, with only sixteen cavalry. They are mainly used as reconnaissance cavalry to provide forward reconnaissance.
The light artillery platoon will have two light artillery. The Ministry of Light Artillery Engineering has initially produced a prototype of this kind of light artillery. It is a short-barreled gun specially designed to fire shotguns. The maximum effective range is expected to be 150
Meters, as for the maximum range, it can hit several hundred meters, but the maximum range has no meaning for the accuracy of artillery in this era.
Although the effective range is a bit short, the advantage is that it is very light in weight. In combat mode, the total weight is only 150 kilograms. It is also equipped with wheels. During combat, soldiers can easily maneuver short distances by simply pushing the wheels.
Moreover, the gun mount and barrel of this thing can be disassembled. During normal marches, the whole gun can be pulled by horses, or it can be disassembled and carried by horses. Even if it is not possible, it can be carried by several soldiers together.
, this mobility is beyond words.
Strictly speaking, this kind of artillery is very similar to the mortars of later generations, except that it can only fire shot shells.
A battalion is equipped with two such light infantry support artillery, which can effectively strengthen the firepower of the infantry battalion!
The baggage arrangement is naturally used to transport logistics materials.
With the addition of an infantry team and other ancillary units, the size of an infantry battalion can be expanded to 700 men.
Due to the expansion of the infantry battalion, its nature has become a mixed battalion, and the original mixed battalion organization is of little significance. Therefore, Li Xuan simply changed the existing two mixed battalions into regular infantry battalions.
, the 1st Mixed Battalion was reorganized into the 6th Infantry Battalion, the 2nd Mixed Battalion was changed into the 7th Infantry Battalion, plus the 5th Infantry Battalion previously formed by drawing troops from each battalion.
Counting this way, the New Army of the Tang Dynasty has a total of seven infantry battalions, and each infantry battalion has the initial ability to fight independently.
However, this is not enough, because even after the seven infantry battalions are fully expanded, their total strength is only 5,000 people, which is still less than half of the 10,000-person force.
For this reason, the day after Wang Shanxu led the 5th Infantry Battalion to Lianhe County, he officially issued the order to build the 8th Infantry Battalion, 9th Infantry Battalion, and 10th Infantry Battalion.
In this way, after the expansion is completed, the New Army of the Tang Dynasty will have ten infantry battalions. The total strength of these ten infantry battalions alone can reach 7,000 people.
As for the remaining 3,000 vacancies, they are naturally useful, because the New Army of the Tang Dynasty does not only expand the main infantry battalion, but also has many other arms.
Take the artillery, for example. According to the plan, Xie Ziwei's artillery team will be upgraded to an artillery battalion, consisting of four artillery teams, a baggage team, and an engineering team. The total strength will reach 800 people. Each artillery team has six artillery units.
Each artillery has a number of gunners, and each artillery team also has a number of musketeers in addition to the gunners, so that they can fight against the enemy and protect the artillery when the enemy comes up.
The artillery attached to the artillery does not refer to the light support artillery attached to the infantry battalion, but to the long-barreled cannon, with an effective range of more than 400 meters.
In addition, because Li Xuan deliberately suppressed the weight of artillery before, it was to follow the army and provide fire support to the infantry battalion. But now, the infantry battalion itself will be equipped with two light artillery, so the artillery in the artillery battalion has to go to the shooting range.
and developed in power.
The 800-pound cannon didn't look very good before, but now Li Xuan looks at it and thinks it's pretty good, suitable for use as the main artillery in major battles.
However, the 500-pound artillery guns that were rushed out later were a bit nondescript to be honest. They pursued light weight and range, but the power of the shells themselves was too small. In other words, the calibers of these artillery were relatively small, and the shells they fired were also small.
not big enough.
For this reason, Li Xuan has ordered the weapons workshop of the Ministry of Industry to abandon the nondescript 500-jin artillery. The main artillery is to cast 800-jin artillery, and even more powerful artillery. Newly developed more powerful artillery
It was naturally difficult, but in order to control the manufacturing difficulty and the risk of explosion, he did not place too many requirements on the range, as long as it reached the standard effective range of 450 meters.
After all, the weight, caliber, and range of artillery cannot be achieved at the same time. If you require a lighter weight and sufficient range, the caliber will not be as big as that. You want a larger caliber.
, which is light in weight, the range cannot be extended.
The old craftsmen in the weapons workshop of the Ministry of Industry have built many cannons. After Li Xuan expressed his request, they directly changed the design and sent the relevant data of the new cannon. The weight of this cannon was a bit heavy, reaching
It weighs 1,300 kilograms, has a caliber of three inches and one minute, a bomb weight of seven kilograms, and a barrel diameter of twenty times. It is expected that the effective range can reach 450 meters, and the maximum range can reach 3,600 meters.
.
Compared with the previous 800-jin cannon, all aspects of performance data have been qualitatively improved. The previous 800-jin cannon fired only five kilograms and six taels of solid bullets, and its actual effective range was only 400 meters. The maximum range
Three thousand meters.
Among them, the range is also said. To be honest, the difference between 400 meters and 450 meters is not big in actual combat. The most important thing is that the power has been improved. A five-pound six-liang shell and a seven-pound shell are two different things.
, if we use Westerners’ algorithm, it would be the difference between a six-pounder gun and a nine-pounder gun.
The only thing that makes Li Xuan hesitate is that the weight of this artillery is a bit heavy, about 1,300 kilograms. When converted into kilograms in later generations, it is more than 720 kilograms. It is quite troublesome to maneuver this weight.
The horses used to pull cannons during the march required six to eight horses, and they had to be tall horses. If they were the small ponies owned by the Tang army today, they would need about ten horses.
This kind of artillery was too heavy for the new army of the Tang Dynasty located in the mountainous areas of southwest China.
But Li Xuan couldn't bear the huge power of this heavy artillery, which made him a little confused for a while!