Compared with Li Zicheng's five-battalion military system and the general military system of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the biggest difference between this new organization designed by Li Laiheng is that it places less emphasis on command and more emphasis on troops.
A major feature of the army during the Ming and Qing Dynasties is that from the governor to the guerrilla garrison, generals at each level must hold the most elite elite soldiers or private soldiers in their hands to use as the central army.
The result of this approach is that the Chinese army and pro-army forces are strong, while the basic force establishment has become empty. When commanding, it will lead to a situation where they fight independently and cannot act as one arm.
For example, the Ming army can often achieve very impressive results in battles involving hundreds or thousands of people. For example, during the Songjin War, the Ming army could often overwhelm the Eight Banners soldiers in small-scale battles, but when
When the scale of the battle expands to tens of thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, it will be completely defeated.
On the one hand, the pinnacle of military attache promotion in the Ming Dynasty system is the level of chief military officer, and the chief military officer can command tactical corps of up to 10,000 people. Going higher up, he can command strategic corps of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.
The only ones who can do this are the governors and civil servants. These governors and civil servants lack the ability to organize the corps in large-scale battles, and the governors and governors they control are not enough to completely overwhelm the servants in the hands of the general soldiers. As a result, they often form a situation where they fight on their own, and they are easily defeated.
The Qing army defeated it.
The Chuang Army itself lacked the input of senior civilians, and of course all corps-level commanders were military generals. However, based on institutional inertia, the military system formulated by Li Zicheng still emphasized the pro-military generals and ignored the basic troops. This approach was not only the Ming and Qing armies
It is a reaction of feudalism, which in turn will strengthen the personal dependence relationship between generals and soldiers.
The modernity of the army is not only reflected in its equipment, techniques and tactics, but also in its organization and establishment. However, this is an issue that is often ignored by people.
However, the emphasis on command but on troop establishment still requires a complete set of supporting systems to run together. Otherwise, if Li Laiheng does not have a strong personal army, will he become a mere commander?
His approach is to have the command center unified in charge of recruitment, training and logistics:
Needless to say about logistics, Bai Wang's camp envoy system and Bai Jiuhe and Zhang Yuheng's branch envoy system have centralized finance in the commander's mansion;
Regarding the issue of conscription, generals at all levels are strictly prohibited from recruiting soldiers on their own, and a special recruiting and training officer is set up in the commander's office (for this position, Li Laiheng planned to arrange Li Polu, a Baoding soldier instructor from the camp school), who will recruit soldiers uniformly.
After unified training, the new recruits are assigned and added to each unit.
Gu Kecheng is the veteran of the breakout army and has brought hundreds of backbones. It is impossible for Li Laiheng to let him be inferior to Gao Yigong, Guo Junzhen and others. It just so happens that Li Laiheng also wants to bring Gao Yigong, Bai
The two troops of Wang were completely digested, so he decided that Bai Wang would continue to serve as the envoy of the capital camp and break away from the front-line troops. Gao Yigong and Gu Kecheng would serve as the left and right generals of Guoyi.
Gao Yigong's own troops followed the route, and Feng Yangzhu's two troops were drawn from Gao Yigong's pro-army troops. After the recruits and training envoys replenished the troops, they were set up as the third and fourth infantry targets of the front battalion.
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Li Laiheng himself wrote down a more intuitive organization list, and also added subordinate officials at all levels of the Commander's Mansion. The summary is as follows:
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Fengtian Initiative Camp Huguang Jiedu Envoy/Former Camp System General: Li Laiheng
Officials of the Marshal's Mansion: Secretary Fang Yiren, Du Ying Tian Envoy Bai Wang, Branch Envoy Bai Jiuhe, Deputy Branch Envoy Zhang Yuheng, Recruitment and Training Envoy Li Polu, Ken Deji Chief Storekeeper Xiao Weisong, Red Team Supervisor Yan Salary
Deputy envoy of Huguang Festival: Gao Yigong
General Guo Yi: Gao Yigong, Gu Kecheng
Four infantry standards: Guo Junzhen, Miao Lichen, Lu Yingbiao, and Feng Yangzhu
Three Cavalry Marks: Hao Yaoqi, Aizhuo, and Ma Bao
An artillery logo: Li Shiwei
A personal soldier: Zhang Pixuan
The total strength is about 20,000.
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In order to implement the unified recruitment and training system under the responsibility of recruiting and training officers, the gap in the administrative backbone of the Chuang Army was even greater. Li Laiheng was extremely busy and spent most of the day in the camp school, so he was very concerned about the achievements brought by Gu Kecheng. These hundreds of cadres of the invading army felt like a sudden burst of rain after a long drought, which suddenly alleviated many of their difficulties.
After all, the unified conscription system cannot be reformed with just one order. It requires the army to sink its administrative tentacles to the grassroots level at the township, village and market level, so that it can effectively draw on local human resources.
In order to facilitate the implementation of the new unified conscription system, Li Laiheng tied it with the camp system for implementation:
The first point is to abolish the Ming Dynasty's original health system that was independent of the provinces, prefectures, and counties, to unify the local administrative system, and to gradually integrate the camp management system and the local administrative system into one (of course, there is still a strong sense of military control at this stage ). The Ming Dynasty's garrison military system has long been in decay and has become a negative resource that hinders administrative efficiency. Complete abolition of it and reducing the level of administrative management will not only facilitate the implementation of the new camp law, but also facilitate unified recruitment management;
Secondly, the implementation of the new Yingzhuang Law on the division of conscription military districts has greatly strengthened the control of the Chuang Army over Huguang, and the "Yingzhuang" itself has been divided into administrative divisions at a lower level than the county level on the basis of natural villages. , the conscription military region can directly follow the administrative division of the camp;
The third point is to unify logistics and improve the treatment of soldiers. Regarding the specific living treatment of soldiers, Li Laiheng, Tong Fang Yiren and many veterans of the Chuang Army negotiated for a long time before temporarily setting a standard: soldiers' monthly rations are three dou of rice. , the living allowance is one tael of silver, the family's monthly ration is one and a half dou of rice, the living allowance is five taels of silver, and there are other special expenses for cavalry and artillery.
The new conscription law and camp restructuring were implemented at the same time. The Chuang army faced unprecedented pressure in terms of finances and personnel. One year's food and salary expenditure alone was estimated to be as much as 100,000 shi.
That's why Li Laiheng hurriedly used "public-private partnership" to extract another amount of money from the jute gentry.
"There is no one to hold the bag. Even if Gu Kecheng brings hundreds of backbones to help. But the camp field envoy system and the recruitment and training envoy system will eat up a lot of people. The army here needs to be expanded to 20,000 people. , the generals at all levels are very tight, there is a shortage of manpower everywhere, even if one man is broken into three parts and used, it is not enough!"
Li Laiheng was upset and depressed. He asked Zhang Pizhu to call Fang Yiren. The number of planners under him who could discuss the matter was indeed too few.
In order to facilitate the office work of the Shuai Mansion, most of the officials of the Shuai Mansion lived nearby, so Fang Yiren hurried over in a short while. Li Laiheng asked him to sit down, took a few sips of tea first, and then asked: "Leshan, Chuang As the army continues to expand, is there a lot of pressure on food, ammunition, and money? We must always act within our capabilities."
The specific affairs of grain, grain, salary and silver are mainly responsible for the three people: Bai Wang, the capital envoy, Bai Jiuhe, the branch envoy, and Zhang Yuheng, the deputy branch envoy. However, Fang Yiren, as the secret secretary in charge, is also aware of all aspects of the situation. chest, so he could immediately analyze the logistics situation of each unit of the front battalion for Li Laiheng in an orderly manner.
"Reporting to the Lord of the Palace, there is still no shortage of food and salary for all ministries. The biggest problem now is, first, the cost of manufacturing guns and armor is very high. The Baigong Yamen and the Military Academy under the jurisdiction of the Zhi Du Envoy are short of experienced craftsmen, swords and guns. Armor is better, but muskets and artillery are particularly difficult to make."
"We are still a grassroots team and we are short of people everywhere. We can only grit our teeth and deal with it for a while."
Li Laiheng had a splitting headache when he thought about the cadre problem. Nowadays, the army camp is too big. There is a shortage of people in the camp system, conscription system, and army system. Compared with the importance of camp field, conscription, and the army, equipment manufacturing is There is only one row to the back, so the gap in human resources is the largest.
He had previously instructed Baijiuhe to request the Ordnance Academy to give priority to replicating red barbarian cannons and bird blunderbuss in order to promote the standardization of weapons for the invading army. Shen Zhuang's army once purchased a batch of self-made fire blunderbuss from Guangdong. It's a flintlock gun. Li Laiheng originally wanted to imitate a self-generating gun, but the technical difficulty was too great, so he had to take a step back.
But now it seems that weapons imitation is full of problems, the biggest problem being lack of manpower.
Fang Yiren continued: "In addition to the issue of weapons, the second issue is water conservancy."
"Water conservancy matters?" Li Laiheng waved his hand and shook his head repeatedly. "Of course I know that Huguang has a dense water network and water conservancy is important to farming. But now that Ding Qirui and Zuo Liangyu are about to return to Chu, where do they have the extra energy to build water conservancy? Leshan, why are you so confused about the importance? You can only put this kind of thing aside for now."
Fang Yiren smiled bitterly and said: "The master of the palace does not know that there have been many droughts and floods in Huguang in recent years. Every February and March, the ice and snow in the Yangtze River melt, and the water level will rise greatly. Seeing that the spring flood is coming, if we don't Be prepared, I am afraid that the operations of De'an Prefecture and Huangzhou Prefecture during this period will be washed away by floods."
ah!
Spring floods... Li Laiheng cursed in his heart how could he forget such a thing. Huguang was fine, but the Yellow River, the Yellow River, and the peach blossom floods in Henan were much more serious than those in Huguang.
Now that Wang Qiaonian was defeated and killed, Zuo Liangyu's army was defeated and returned to Chu, leaving only Kaifeng as an isolated city in Henan. If the governor of Kaifeng could not restrain himself and used the Peach Blossom Flood to burst the dikes and flood the river, the main force of the invading army would very likely suffer heavy losses.
What's worse is that if the governor of Kaifeng succeeded in breaching the embankment and turning Henan into a yellow flood zone as in later generations, then all the operations of the Central Plains Breaking Army in Henan would be in vain, and Li Zicheng would have no choice but to go south to Huguang to eat.
From a public point of view, Li Laiheng could not sit back and watch the rebel army suffer heavy losses due to the Peach Blossom Flood, causing Kaifeng to be flooded; privately speaking, if Henan rotted into a yellow flood zone, and all the rebel army went to Huguang to eat, Li Laiheng would not be able to provide supplies.
He was so worried that he immediately called Gu Kecheng and asked him to send people back to Henan. He must remind Li Zicheng that the Kaifeng officials and gentry were in a hurry to dig up the Yellow River embankment and turn Henan into a yellow flood zone.