Late Yuan Dynasty: I am the true emperor

Chapter 153 New th Regiment

The printing technology of paper money needs time to develop, and it cannot be rushed. For the time being, we can only use copper-plated iron coins, and at most print some salt for emergency use.

However, Lu Jin had no plans to implement the salt wholesale system for the time being. The so-called salt wholesale system means that when the official transportation capacity is insufficient, merchants can organize their own transportation teams to deliver food and military supplies to the front line in exchange for salt permits, which are salt wholesale certificates. After merchants get the salt permits, they can go to the salt fields to purchase salt in bulk and then take it back to sell in retail.

This is a system that has existed since the Song Dynasty.

However, Lu Jin's territory is relatively small at present, so there is no transportation difficulty for the time being. When the territory becomes larger in the future, he will probably use canal or sea transportation. In this case, it would be better for him to sell the salt himself, with one less middleman, and make more money.

"Marshal, since we don't print paper money now and only mint iron coins, should we set up another department under the Marshal's Office to specifically take charge of minting coins?" Li Shanchang suggested directly when he saw that Lu Jin had no plans to print money for the time being.

Lu Jin nodded and said, "Of course, let's set up a mint temporarily, and register it under the Feixi Iron Works, so as to avoid opening a new one. One ironworks, two names, management will be registered under the Ministry of Finance of the Academy of Literature, and a person in charge will be appointed to be in charge of minting coins."

Li Shanchang was stunned. He originally thought that Lu Jin wanted to put the coin minting agency directly under the Secretariat, but he didn't expect to put it under the Finance and Household Department of the Academy of Literature.

There are naturally some differences here. If it is placed in the Secretariat, then Li Shanchang, as the chief secretary, will undoubtedly have more power in his hands. But if it is placed in the Academy of Literature, although the Secretariat can still manage it, it will not be under his direct jurisdiction.

But since Lu Jin has already made the decision, he can't say anything, otherwise it would seem that he is greedy for power.

So Li Shanchang said, "That's fine, Marshal. In addition to minting coins, there is another thing. Now our army is all wearing dark armor, which requires a lot of cloth. Do you want to set up a factory to weave cloth?"

Previously, Lu Jin exchanged textile technology for food for four merchants in Luzhou. Now the flying shuttle loom has been completed. The He family and the Fan family have already started to manufacture looms in large quantities, and are just waiting for the cotton and linen to be grown this year so that they can start working on it.

When Li Shanchang first met Lu Jin, he saw Lu Jin instructing craftsmen in making looms in the Marshal's Mansion. Now that he saw with his own eyes that both merchants had started to work, he thought about setting up a government-run weaving factory as well, otherwise it would be too expensive to buy cloth from merchants.

Perhaps the cloth itself is not expensive, but there are so many people in the Shengwu Army, and both military uniforms and armor require cloth, so the amount used is still very large.

Lu Jin shook his head. "We don't need to open a textile factory ourselves. We can just collect the tax in kind from those two factories. Cloth is something that is only used in large quantities for a short period of time. After we have equipped the entire army, it will no longer be necessary to run a textile factory ourselves."

After thinking for a while, Lu Jin said, "The cloth produced by the two families will be taxed at a rate of 30% in kind. Tell them that this is only temporary and the tax rate will be adjusted based on the specific situation in the future.

"If the cloth we collected is not enough, we can use the salt to exchange for it and run a textile factory ourselves. It will cost a lot but the return will be slow. By the time you have the factory ready, we may have already crossed the river."

"Yes, then I will go and arrange the matters of the mint first." Upon hearing this, Li Shanchang gave up this idea and immediately bowed to Lu Jin and said goodbye.

After the man left, Lu Jin looked around the training camp again, and then called Yang Huan over during the break.

"What are your orders, Commander-in-Chief?"

Looking at the young boy of only fifteen years old in front of him, Lu Jin was very satisfied. As the battalion officer of the training camp and Lu Jin's direct disciple, Yang Huan not only had to learn mathematics himself, but also had to teach other children in the training camp while learning. His ability was quite good, so he praised him.

"I just watched you give a lecture, it was good. How are your studies in the training camp going recently?"

Yang Huan immediately replied, "Replying to the commander, it is going well. There are less than 13 people in the entire training camp now, of which less than are over years old. The youngest is only six years old, which is the age of just beginning to learn. I don't need to teach them personally, so I can still cope with it."

"Well, well done." Lu Jin praised again, and then revealed his real purpose.

"Your training camp will soon have training tasks. The ironworks has already produced some artillery, and artillery will be delivered soon. Therefore, you must prepare in advance and organize these students over 13 years old who are under your personal supervision into artillery squads of 12 people each.

"I'm going to be away for a while, and when I come back I'll start the artillery training. Don't let me down then."

"Yes, I will obey the order."

Yang Huan was like a little adult. When he heard that the real military training was going to begin, he was immediately excited. His elder brother Yang Jing was already a division commander, while he was still the leader of the children. He was only fourteen or fifteen years old and was naturally impetuous. After hearing how glorious his elder brother was fighting on the front line, he, the younger brother, could no longer hold back his excitement and immediately knelt on one knee, bowed and accepted the order.

Lu Jin smiled, helped him up personally, encouraged him again, and made a big promise.

"Work hard and don't embarrass your brother. You are the first artillery commander in the army. You have a bright future. You may even surpass your brother."

Yang Huan's face turned red, not because of shyness, but because of excitement. He immediately assured again, "I will definitely live up to your expectations."

"Well, let's go."

Looking at Yang Huan's excited back, Lu Jin raised a smile. This group of artillerymen aged thirteen or fourteen are the seeds of the future. If they are all trained as officers and learn how to calculate distances, shooting angles and other artillery techniques, and then supplemented with some ordinary soldiers and let these trainees become artillery commanders, he will be able to quickly build a large-scale artillery team.

The day after leaving the training camp, Ye Sheng, who had gone to escort Yang Puxiong, also came back to report to Lu Jin.

Upon learning that Yang Puxiong's delegation had left Lu'an, Lu Jin nodded. This guy would have to climb all the way back to Hubei through the mountains, which would be a long journey. This trip would take at least more than a month. By the time Xu and Song had discussed the result, when they came again next time, they might have already defeated the first wave of counterattack by the Yuan army.

Thinking of the Yuan army cavalry general Chelibuhua who would come to Haozhou in a few months, Lu Jin looked at Ye Sheng in front of him and asked.

"Ye Sheng, how is your cavalry regiment doing now? If we fight against the Yuan army cavalry, what are the chances of winning?"

Ye Sheng frowned when he heard this, and thought for a while before speaking.

"Replying to the commander, it is not easy to train cavalry, and the cavalry from Dingyuan has only been trained for a short time. The horses bought from the people cannot be used directly as war horses. The cavalry must not only train people, but also horses. If we start a war now, I dare to guarantee victory in a battle with less than a battalion. If we pull all the cavalry regiments up, there will be too many new soldiers and new horses, so I dare not guarantee it." Lu Jin raised his eyebrows, "I know how to train soldiers, but how to train these horses into war horses?"

Speaking of training cavalry, Ye Sheng had some experience. After all, he was half of Lu Jin's riding teacher, so he immediately introduced him.

"General, the key to whether this horse can become a war horse lies in desensitization training. If civilian horses are not desensitized, they will be unusable. When encountering the sound of soldiers' footsteps, the sound of gongs and drums, the friction of armor plates, the shooting of arrows, and the stabbing of spears, if they are untrained, the horses will panic and be difficult to control. Once the horses are frightened, the battle formation will be broken and will be destroyed by the enemy.

"So, training soldiers starts with training horses. The horses must be trained together. The horses must be trained beside the army every day to get used to the battle formation. The riders must wear armor to feed and wash the horses, and stay with them day and night to get the horses used to the sound of the armor. The horses must also be shot with arrows without clusters to get them used to the stray arrows and not panic when encountering a rain of arrows.

"If you are practicing horse lance, you should often walk around the horse with the lance and stab the horse with the bamboo spear to make the horse accustomed to the lance and stick hitting it. Otherwise, when fighting with the enemy, if you encounter the enemy's lance formation, the horse will retreat and refuse to follow."

Lu Jin nodded when he heard this. He could understand this. In comparison, the easiest animal to train in the world is humans. As long as they are given some power, they can manage themselves. However, this is not the case with animals, whether they are military dogs or war horses.

Thinking of the desensitization training that Ye Sheng mentioned, stabbing with bamboo spears, shooting with bows without arrows, listening to the sound of armor leaves, the sound of military footsteps, and the sound of gongs and drums, I am afraid this is not enough. If the cavalry wants to cooperate with the musket and artillery phalanx in the future, the cavalry will have to add desensitization training for muskets and artillery.

So he said.

"I know all you said, but it's not enough. Now that the ironworks has output, we will immediately train artillery. The roar of artillery is like thunder, and there is smoke everywhere. In the future, on such a battlefield, will the cavalry still be able to cooperate with the musket formation, or even rush into the enemy's artillery formation to seize and destroy the artillery?"

Ye Sheng also knew the difficulty of training the troops, so he said, "When the commander-in-chief trains the artillery, he must let the cavalry watch from the side. Only after the horses are no longer startled by the sound of the cannon, they can train with the artillery. This takes time."

Lu Jin nodded, "That's right, you also need to speed up the training. As for the joint artillery training, it will take at most another month, and we should be able to see it then. You need to be prepared in advance."

"Yes, I will keep it in mind."

After Ye Sheng left, Lu Jin thought about future military training in the Marshal's Office and how to integrate artillery into the existing military organization.

The current main force regiments are composed of four combat battalions and one auxiliary battalion. If they are changed to be fully armed with firearms, with all combat soldiers using muskets and an artillery battalion added, the required logistical consumption will be even greater. Therefore, the auxiliary battalion cannot be cut, and even the number of vehicles must be increased.

To form a hollow square, at least four sides are required, which means four combat battalions are essential.

If the artillery battalion is organized as one cannon with 12 people per squad, and the Shengwu Army is organized as a 4-16 formation, then a platoon will have 64 cannons, a company will have 64 cannons, and a battalion will have 64 cannons. cannons are more than enough to arm a regiment. However, the caliber of these cannons still needs to be studied.

Counting it this way, there are four musket battalions, one auxiliary battalion, and one artillery battalion, a total of six battalions.

However, the soldiers only had muskets, which were fine for field battles, but not for sieges, as musketeers could not attack cities, and the battlefield environment in China was different from that in Europe.

In this era, siege warfare is still the mainstream, so heavy armored infantry using cold weapons is still indispensable. There must be at least a battalion of heavy armored infantry to break into the enemy ranks and even serve as part-time grenadiers.

As for street fighting, the musketeers will have no problem doing that. As long as they use heavy armored infantry to seize the city gate first, the musketeers can rush in.

However, such an army lacks mobility. If a cavalry battalion is formed to provide auxiliary services, the regiment will become eight battalions.

Artillery pieces are heavy equipment, weighing hundreds or even thousands of pounds. They require a large number of field gun carriages, ammunition trucks, and a large number of horses to tow the artillery pieces. They also require veterinarians and breeders. Bridges and roads must be built in places where the artillery pieces cannot pass, and broken gun carriages must be repaired on the spot. It would be best to have a professional engineering corps to provide support for the entire army, which does not overlap with the auxiliary function of transportation.

In this case, if you want to train such a force that can independently fight in the field, attack cities, and perform all kinds of tasks, you will need at least nine battalions. But there are already nine battalions. Is this still a regiment?
Judging from the coordination of the battalions of various arms, this can be regarded as an ancient version of a combined brigade. The original regiment had five battalions, totaling 4500 people. This all-round combined brigade has nine battalions adding up to 8100 people, a force of nearly people.

Such an army must be very capable in fighting, and can even directly determine the outcome of a battle. However, Lu Jin also knows that such a combined brigade must be very expensive. The 64 flintlock rifles, artillery pieces, a cold weapon and heavy armor battalion, and a battalion of cavalry alone are not a small number. If the entire army was changed to this kind of organization, he certainly could not afford it.

However, if we just modify our own guards and maintain a combined brigade, there would be no problem.

As for what to do with other divisions, we can try to set up an artillery regiment to strengthen the divisions in various directions.

Each division has an artillery regiment, and each regiment has four artillery battalions, with a total of 256 artillery pieces of various types. The artillery pieces can be concentrated for use in battles, and can also be organized at the battalion level and temporarily reinforced to each regiment when the troops are divided. In this way, each regiment can be temporarily reinforced with 64 guns.

After the production of muskets increases in the future, ordinary main force regiments can be equipped one after another. Four combat battalions can be changed into three musket battalions and a trap camp model, which can be used for field battles and sieges. This is currently the most cost-effective method.

If Lu Jin planned to set up a direct combined brigade, Zhu Shou's regiment was ready, Ye Sheng's cavalry was also ready, and the artillery of the training battalion was also being prepared, so he only lacked a trap camp and an engineering battalion.

This is an easy problem to solve. There are many craftsmen in Luzhou. It is no problem to select some of them to form an engineering battalion. Select capable fighters from the original troops to form a trap camp, and supplement the rest with some ordinary recruits to practice muskets. It is not difficult for Lu Jin to complete the establishment of this combined brigade.

So, just as Lu Jin was studying the new organization of the combined brigade in Luzhou, ten days later, the iron factory finally made the set of drilling tools he wanted, and also gathered 6,000 rifles.

The spear head of the spear is very light, only two and a half taels, and one pound of iron can make four. The iron factory now produces more than 7,000 pounds of iron every day, and the daily iron output is enough to make 20,000 spear heads.

But it doesn't mean that 20,000 gun heads can be made every day. For ordinary cold weapons, what limits the production of weapons is no longer the iron production, but the number of craftsmen.

Due to the limitation of the number of craftsmen, only so much can be forged every day. Even if you produce more iron, it cannot be consumed that quickly. This is true for weapons, and even slower for armor.

It was not until early February that Lu Jin finally set off for Haozhou with these newly made weapons and armor, as well as the set of drilling tools, to see the newly formed 14th Regiment in Haozhou to see if there was the person Lu Jin was looking for among their new recruits.

(End of this chapter)