Weapons and equipment are theoretically a matter of the state, and it is only natural that the state provides them to officers and soldiers when they go to war.
It doesn't bother Jia Liu, the great general, to have a headache at all.
However, the national conditions of the Qing Dynasty were relatively complicated.
Structurally, the weapons used by the Eight Banners Army are divided into three parts: official-made, self-made and paid-made.
Officially manufactured weapons and equipment mainly refer to weapons and equipment issued by the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry.
Both self-made and paid-made weapons are self-made weapons.
The "Qing Dynasty Huidian" clearly stipulates this, which is "one's own weapons, or one's old weapons."
They are generally weapons passed down from ancestors.
Jia Liu's family has a big bow left by Mr. Jia.
That is to say, when the flag soldiers go on an expedition, except for special weapons, such as muskets, artillery, and medicine, the other weapons such as horses, armor, bows and crossbows are actually required by the imperial court.
If it is not enough, the flag soldier needs to purchase it at his own expense.
There was no problem with this system in the early days of the People's Republic of China, because essentially the Eight Banners was a robbery gang.
The flag owner is the brains of the robbery group.
The return rate for robbery against the Ming Dynasty, Mongolia, and North Korea was extremely high, so all Eight Banners officers and soldiers enthusiastically brought their own dry food to the expedition.
After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, it enclosed the entire North China to meet the basic land needs of the Eight Banners.
The Shunzhi Dynasty customized 30 acres of land that the Eight Banners Soldiers could inherit from generation to generation.
In addition, the state pays military pay to the Eight Banners soldiers every year, and the level of military pay is divided according to the Manchu, Mongolian, and Han armies.
A low-level Manchu Eight Banner forward, guarding the army, and leading the charge, each person in the vest is paid 4 taels of silver per month, plus 46 hu of rice per year, which is equivalent to the annual salary of a seventh-grade county magistrate.
On the other hand, all men in the Eight Banners families in Manchuria can enjoy "imperial food", including newborn babies, which is relatively less.
High wages, coupled with basic land, rewards for military achievements, and income from past robberies, made the income of Manchu soldiers in the early days of the Republic of China, even at the lowest level, equivalent to that of the middle class.
In this way, the flag soldiers will have no financial pressure to prepare their own weapons. They will have a future and rewards after winning battles, and their enthusiasm for going to war for the country will not be as high as usual.
The problem is that over the past hundred years, all the Eight Banners disciples have become rotten from top to bottom. They only know how to eat, drink and have fun, but cannot ride a horse or draw a bow.
Being idle for a long time will definitely lead to the decline of the family fortune. Therefore, many Eight Banners disciples had most of their land pawned and became landless households.
On the contrary, the population of the Eight Banners increased rapidly, which made it difficult for the Eight Banners to make a living.
If they can't even support a family, how can we expect the children of the Eight Banners to keep their war horses well and maintain their weapons as carefully as their ancestors did, so that they can be ready to go to war as soon as the country needs them?
Obviously not!
The situation at the imperial court was similar.
The current emperor Qianlong is a famous prodigal son. In order to reduce the expenditure of the treasury, in the 21st year of Qianlong's reign, he issued an edict stating that "from now on, the armor and other military equipment of officers and soldiers on expeditions should be prepared by themselves. After a certain period of use, they should be remade by the holders themselves."
, which is more solid than the official system.”
That is to say, starting from that year, in addition to the muskets and artillery that were still being manufactured by the Ministry of Industry, the production of other armor, bows and arrows, sacks, waist knives, shackles, conches, etc. that were needed by the Eight Banners officers and soldiers was stopped.
When the time comes to go on an expedition, even the government-made equipment in the past will have to be purchased by the flag soldiers themselves, which will undoubtedly increase their burden.
When Jia Liu and his gang went out to Baitang'a, they were able to get weapons and equipment issued to them, mainly because they were reserve officers of the Eight Banners, and they were all descendants of Spyker, and their number was not large.
If there really were to be tens of thousands of soldiers, I'm afraid Jia Liu would have to pull the big black horse at home that was too old to walk and go to the battlefield carrying the big bow left by his old man.
Now the Eight Banners, together with the descendants of the clan, have to go out for 40,000 people at a time, and they can still make do with food and drink. Where can we get armor and weapons of this scale?
Is it possible that those Eight Banners soldiers really need to prepare themselves?
It’s hard for a really clever daughter-in-law to make a meal without rice.
You must know that the Qing family is in such a bad state, Jia Liu will never be the general king.
I had no choice but to ask Enming, the minister of the Ministry of Industry, to go to the military aircraft department and ask the old man. The old man replied simply: "Just make it custom-made as before."
In the past, customization meant issuing government-made muskets and artillery, and the rest would be taken care of on your own.
What Jia Liu understood was that as long as he could get weapons and equipment, the old rich man would not care whether he killed someone or set a fire.
In fact, the Eight Banners Soldiers basically all have armor, swords and spears, but they are just a little bit different, but there are really not many other consumables.
For example, Prince An's new white flag guard army of 3,000 people was required to be equipped with at least 1,000 bows and crossbows according to the system, but in reality this army was equipped with less than 300 large bows and crossbows.
The main weapons are standard swords and spears, and there are also some scary-looking ceremonial weapons.
As for muskets, the basic equipment is a few tenths.
Where did the musket go?
Most of them were stolen by Jia Liu.
After the ominous events in the city, in order to fully arm themselves, they established a military industrial park in Tianjin and vigorously developed new firearms, thereby increasing their success rate in seizing power with arms.
Jia Liu secretly ordered behind the backs of Lao Fu and Uncle Se that the former Ministry of Industry had jurisdiction over the gunpowder depot on Xizhimen Nei Street, the Ordnance Department, the Ordnance Case Room, and the Ordnance Counting Room under the Yu Heng Qing Li Department to stock muskets, cannons, lead, and
The artillery warehouse that collects and stores scrap iron cannons, as well as the ordnance stocked by the Yangxindian Manufacturing Office, together with technical personnel, packed up 80% of them and sent them to Tianjin.
To what extent the gunpowder magazines and armory rooms under the Ministry of Works' control have been cleaned up, there is really not even a scrap of scrap metal left for the Ministry of Works.
At the same time, a large number of weapons and equipment were stolen by the bannermen for self-defense.
The result was that when the imperial court came to its senses, the military inventory of the Qing Dynasty for decades was reduced to a pair of trousers.
In the past two days, the Ministry of Industry and Engineering has sent a total of equipment to the big operation, which is only enough to arm about 7,000 people. Many of them are junk goods that Jia Liu didn't like at the beginning.
This was the first time that Jia Liu actually commanded an army on an expedition. The last time he went to Shandong to quell the rebellion, his command authority was not clear and there were not many soldiers.
Therefore, for his debut, Jia Liu did not seek the most expensive, but also sought the best.
At least, you have to have a good posture.
Furious horses in bright clothes, bright helmets with pointed peaks, galloping war horses, fluttering banners, and numerous swords and guns are enough to show off.
Therefore, I was really a little anxious and scolded Enming, the liaison officer assigned by the Ministry of Works at the factory, bloody.
"Your Majesty, I have personally visited several warehouses and found that there are only a handful of usable weapons. I can only manage to collect a few in the ironware room of each capital's yamen."
It's not that Enming doesn't want to share the prince's worries, but he really can't change it.
Jia Liu rubbed his temples and said distressedly: "If it doesn't work, I will send a message to the provinces passing through and ask them to hand over all the ordnance in the warehouse."
Enming shook his head: "My lord, I'm afraid it will be difficult."
Jia Liu was puzzled: "What do you mean?"
Enming said that more than ten years ago, the Fourth Japanese Japs had issued a decree, requiring all provinces to "not allow any new lead-consuming pyrotechnics" and that all other military expenditures "should be handled according to the materials and materials used in the capital's manufacturing of lead and matchlocks."
In other words, except for the capital, which can start manufacturing ordnance, the provinces and localities are strictly prohibited from manufacturing weapons. Any need for ordnance must be reported to the court, verified by the Ministry of War, and allocated by the Ministry of Industry.
Jia Liu was dumbfounded: "So, if I go out with a large army, I don't even have any decent weapons?"
"Yes, there are some."
Enming dare not say no.
He told the prince that he had found a batch of muskets, more than 1,600 of them, in the ironware room of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' Manufacturing Office, as well as 4 iron cannons and more than 10,000 kilograms of medicine.
"Quick shot?"
Jia Liu noticed that Enming used the term "quick gun" and was immediately interested and asked what kind of quick gun it was.
Enming then asked someone to bring two rods to show to the prince.
Jia Liu took it and took a look and found that the gun did not have a match rope. Looking at the structure, it turned out to be a flintlock gun that he had people develop and produce in Tianjin.
He couldn't help but feel extremely excited and curious, and asked Enming: "Is this gun produced by the Qing Dynasty itself?"
Enming said no, saying that after the Qing Dynasty's war against Burma, many generals who participated in the war told the court that the muskets used by the Burmese people were not like the bird ropes used by the Qing soldiers, and could still be used in wind and rain, and were very powerful.
, so he asked the court to spend a lot of money to purchase imitations.
Fulong'an, the Minister of Military Aircraft in charge of the Ministry of Industry at that time, asked the imperial court to allocate funds to send personnel to Macau to purchase a batch of flintlock rifles and handed them over to the Manufacturing Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for imitation.
A total of more than 2,000 rods were imitated before and after, but they were not promoted. Except for some used for hunting, the rest were kept and sealed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
After hearing Enming's words, Jia Liu picked up his flintlock rifle and aimed it outside the tent. He thought for a while and asked someone to load the gunpowder, and then he pulled the trigger and fired.
Sure enough, the firing speed is several times faster than that of a matchlock gun.
"Why isn't such a good gun promoted by Eight Banners and Green Camp?"
Jia Liu actually had the answer in his mind, but he still wanted to get a definite answer from Enming.
"At the beginning, the emperor decreed that our Qing army should use cavalry to conquer the Han people and seize the world. Therefore, mounted archery is the foundation of the Qing Dynasty. The lower official thought that the emperor's original intention was that the children of the Eight Banners could not use it. If they could not concentrate on learning riding and archery, they would have to rely on simple firearms.
, then you are even more unwilling to learn.”
Enming found a good reason for his old master.
Jia Liu said nothing after hearing this. In addition to defending against Han and emphasizing riding and shooting, the biggest reason why the Fourth Japs did not promote new firearms may be that the national defense environment of the Qing Dynasty was relatively stable at this time and there was no major external pressure.
He threw the gun to the person next to him and told Enming: "Please erase these flintlock guns from the account book and they will not be distributed. I have other uses."
"嗻!"
Enming also worked swiftly and blackened all the flintlock guns on the account book with ink as soon as he picked up his pen.
I also reported some other ordnance, and said that there was also a batch of muskets that had been eliminated from the wars over the years. Some of them had been simply maintained, and some were ready to be remade.
Jia Liu casually handed Enming a cigarette: "How many are there?"
Enming glanced at the ledger: "More than four thousand rods."
After hearing this, Jia Liu ordered without hesitation: "Equip all these high-quality muskets to the Yellow Belt Camp."
Hearing this, Enming couldn't help but be startled, and whispered to the prince that these muskets had serious quality problems.
"Quality issues?"
Jia Liu waved his hand disapprovingly, "Emperor Taizu dared to gather a crowd to attack the Ming Dynasty as fierce as a tiger with only thirteen suits of armor, and ultimately laid the foundation for the strong Eight Banners and the founding of the Qing Dynasty!
What does this mean? It means that only weapons cannot be used!
It shows that fighting depends on courage!"
Speaking of happiness, Jia Liu slapped the two most advanced pistols in the world on the table:
“If weapons could really determine the outcome of a war, there would be no Qing Dynasty today!
I firmly believe that as long as everyone of my beloved Xinjieluo disciples takes the lead bravely, we will definitely be able to protect the people and eliminate the thieves!"