Because the recruits of the Fifth Infantry Regiment will not be recruited in Xingquan Prefecture, but in Liping Prefecture, the Ministry of War's many recruitment stations in Liping Prefecture have recruited about two thousand recruits for the Tang Dynasty's new army. Now these
Recruits receive basic physical fitness and tactical training in two recruit training camps under the Privy Council Training Department.
It is expected that in half a month, the Training Department will be able to deliver the first batch of several hundred recruits who have completed basic training to the Fifth Infantry Regiment, and within a month, the Training Department will be able to provide the Fifth Infantry Regiment with a full complement of soldiers!
Not only are the new recruits in Liping Prefecture, but the Fifth Infantry Regiment will also be stationed in Liping Prefecture in the next few months, so Zhou Yibao and the others naturally need to leave for Liping Prefecture.
Accompanying Zhou Yibao and the others, there was the Fourth Infantry Regiment, which had just been fully staffed and had just received a batch of ordnance.
The Fourth Infantry Regiment is also a newly formed unit, but unlike the other four infantry regiments, only one battalion in this Fourth Infantry Regiment is a regular battalion, and the remaining two battalions are garrison battalions.
The 10th Infantry Battalion under the 4th Infantry Regiment is already at full strength. Although it only has 100 muskets, it can barely fight. The shortcomings will be discussed later.
Coupled with the two already complete garrison battalions, it is considered to have preliminary combat effectiveness and can go to Liping Mansion in advance to prepare for the subsequent battle with the Ming army in the provincial capital.
The Fourth Infantry Regiment and the Fifth Infantry Regiment went to Liping Prefecture one after another, so that in the huge Xingquan Prefecture, there was only the Third Infantry Regiment and one Guards Battalion left.
As for these two troops, Li Xuan does not plan to move them for the time being!
On the one hand, the Third Infantry Regiment has not actually completed its expansion. In the past, personnel and ordnance were given priority to the First and Second Infantry Regiments. Even the 10th Infantry Battalion in the Fourth Infantry Regiment was given priority.
The degree should also be higher than theirs.
Therefore, the Third Infantry Regiment will need some time to expand so that it can be truly fully equipped.
Aside from this factor, it also has something to do with Li Xuan himself.
As an emperor, Li Xuan must keep an army by his side as a precaution. Now that he is surrounded by enemies and there are not two or three thousand people around him, Li Xuan is worried.
Besides, to the east of Xingquan Mansion is Huguang. Although Li Xuan does not plan to go to Huguang, the mountain road from Huguang is difficult to travel, but who knows whether the officials over there will get dizzy and send troops to kill them.
Therefore, we still have to leave a force to defend our hometown and the basic base of Xingquan Prefecture.
However, even though the expansion plan of the Fifth Infantry Regiment has been confirmed, for the new army of the Tang Dynasty, the gap in strength is still very large.
There is no way. Who made the Tang Dynasty surrounded by enemies? To the southeast and west, as far as you can see, it is the territory of the Dameng Dynasty. There are Ming troops in all directions. Not to mention those in Guizhou Province, but there are also
Guangxi, and Huguang to the east.
Among them, the army assembled by Guizhou Governor Zhu Zhihai alone is said to be as high as more than 50,000 people. This is less than 10,000 people. If all the troops are fully equipped, it is only 10,000 to 2,000 people for the Tang New Army.
In terms of strength, the military disadvantage is too great.
Therefore, the entire New Army of the Tang Dynasty, especially the senior officials, never forgot to expand the army.
No, the plan to form the Fifth Infantry Regiment has just been finalized. It doesn’t even have a single soldier yet. The Operations Department has already put forward the idea of forming a new unit and proposed to form a Sixth Infantry Regiment to deal with the huge Ming army.
.
Seeing this plan, Li Xuan threw it aside without even thinking about it!
And expand the army?
Are you kidding? It can be said that the supply of soldiers in Xingquan Mansion is almost exhausted now. Nearly 8,000 soldiers have been recruited from a population of more than 300,000. This has almost exhausted all qualified soldiers.
Even though Liping Prefecture still has population resources, the new Tang Dynasty army has only occupied the eastern part of Liping Prefecture. It has not even captured the city, let alone the western part of Liping Prefecture.
It is not easy to recruit thousands more qualified recruits.
Moreover, even if the number of soldiers is solved, the problem of ordnance is still difficult to solve. The output of muskets is only so small. Now among the many units of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, only the First Infantry Regiment and the Second Infantry Regiment have been fully staffed.
Although the Fourth Infantry Regiment only has one regular infantry battalion, even if the regiment's grenadiers are included, the number of muskets required is only 300, but it still lacks 200 muskets.
As for the Third Infantry Regiment, it just has no guns. The Third Infantry Regiment currently only has one hundred muskets from the original Second Mixed Battalion, which is short of 600 muskets.
As for the newly formed Fifth Infantry Regiment, it didn’t even have a single gun!
In this case, he came here to expand the army!
At present, the workshops of the Ministry of Industry, even if they adopt streamlined production, the current monthly output of the musket manufacturers in Zhengtai County is only more than 200 pieces.
It was put into production but the output has reached more than 200 muskets. If the two musket workshops are added together, the monthly output is probably more than 400 muskets.
Although the Ministry of Industry said that the output can reach 500 pieces next month, and more than 700 pieces the month after that.
But that is all for the future. Who can say for sure? The current Tang Dynasty's monthly output of muskets is more than 400, and an infantry regiment requires about 700 muskets.
In other words, the current musket output of the Tang Dynasty requires nearly two months to meet the expansion needs of an infantry regiment.
What's more, the musket is actually a consumable item. Whether it is training or fighting, the loss of the musket is considerable. Unless you do not conduct live ammunition training, you will not fire it in battle.
Therefore, even though the musket production of the Tang Dynasty has been continuously doubled, it is still seriously insufficient for the needs of the new army of the Tang Dynasty.
Currently, among the various units of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, the First Infantry Regiment and the Second Infantry Regiment have achieved full strength of firearms and artillery, while the Third Infantry Regiment still lacks 600 muskets, and the Fourth Infantry Regiment also lacks 200 muskets.
Muskets, the Fifth Infantry Regiment also lacked 700 muskets.
Well, we have to count Li Xuan's Guards Battalion. The Guards Battalion has the same establishment as the regular battalion. It has five teams, two of which are musketeers, and it is also a grenadier team. The whole battalion must be full.
More than two hundred guns are needed, and now there are only half of them.
Add this up, and you will find that the entire Datang New Army's firearms gap is as high as 1,600!
Well, this does not include the daily training and combat losses of the entire army. If this is only part of the weapon, three or four hundred more will have to be added.
In other words, based on the current scale of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, there is still a gap of almost 2,000 muskets. According to the current musket production capacity, it will take five months to meet the demand, even if the Ministry of Industry promises that the next
The monthly output reaches 500, and the production capacity in the next month can reach 700, but it will take more than four months to produce so many muskets.
In other words, the current Datang New Army has already secured all its musket production capacity for the next four months. What else can I say? Is it possible that the soldiers are going to take a training stick to the battlefield?
But Zeng Ziwen's words made Li Xuan find a new idea for army expansion. Zeng Ziwen suggested that the regular infantry battalion should not continue to expand, as it would be too costly.
But the army can continue to expand. They have a lot of various cold weapons captured from the Ming army, and they are now piled up in warehouses to get moldy. As for the recruitment of soldiers, it is already more difficult, but after the Liping Mansion is captured, this
The number of soldiers must have increased again.
Therefore, Zeng Ziwen suggested that in subsequent games, you should build an army equipped with pure cold weapons.
When Zeng Ziwen said this, Li Xuan suddenly realized, Damn, why didn't I think of why we must have musketeers and artillery to expand the army?
You can get sword and shield soldiers, spear soldiers and so on. Just give them a notched iron knife, a rusty spear, and a broken armor captured from the Ming army and pull them out. Who dares to say that they are not an army?
As for the combat effectiveness, well, this doesn't seem to be a big problem, because Zeng Ziwen said: Even the troops with pure cold weapons are not necessarily worse than the soldiers of the Ming Army Guards!
Because the pure cold weapon troops of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty also recruited soldiers for training. The only difference between them and regular infantry battalions is that they do not have muskets. What's more, even in regular infantry battalions, the proportion of musketeers is only half.
The remaining half are still spearmen and sword and shield soldiers.
For this reason, Li Xuan calculated that such a cold-weapon infantry battalion would still be trained as a regular infantry battalion in other aspects except that it was not equipped with muskets. The quality of the soldiers should not be a problem.
If the production of muskets increases in the future and two hundred musketeers are assigned to these cold weapon infantry battalions, wouldn't it be possible to get another regular infantry battalion soon?
The more Li Xuan thought about it, the more excited he became. He discussed it with Zeng Ziwen and other officers from the War Department for three days, and then came up with a plan to build a 'preparatory battalion'.
The reserve battalion, as its name suggests, is the back force of the regular battalion. The soldiers are mainly from newly recruited soldiers. The preparation of the reserve battalion is modeled after the regular infantry battalion. It still uses a five-team system, equipped with two spearmen and one heavy armored sword and shield soldier.
, a light armored sword and shield troop, and an archer troop.
Its organization is similar to that of a garrison camp. The only difference is that the soldiers in the garrison camp are almost all prisoners of the Ming army, while the troops in the reserve camp are newly recruited soldiers.
The main task is to cooperate with the main force in combat. At the same time, when the main force suffers battle losses and the rear training department is unable to replenish the main force in time, it will transfer troops to supplement the main force.
In this way, the expansion of the army will not be affected by the production of muskets and artillery. As for the cold weapons needed by the reserve camp, the new army of the Tang Dynasty has many cold weapons seized from the Ming army, although the quality is not good.
Ground, but it can still be used barely.
As soon as the plan for the preparatory camp came out, Li Xuan immediately planned to build ten preparatory camps with a stroke of his pen!
Li Xuan, who made this decision, did not consider the feelings of the tax department at all at this time. As soon as the people in the tax department heard that the military had sent out another expansion plan a few days later, with a total of ten battalions, with a total of five thousand
After discovering the plan, the officials in the tax department looked as if their parents were dead.
Damn it, you are talking about an army expansion plan of almost 5,000 men. Even if these reserve camps do not use muskets and artillery, it is possible that they do not need to eat and drink!
The army is expanding every day, why don't you ask them to get so much food there?
No matter how good our tax inspection team is, they won't be able to collect so much food in a short period of time!