Gou was a member of the imperial family in the late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 147 Rebuilding a Strong Army
Take Luzhou Guard for example. Currently, the entire Luzhou Guard has five thousand-household divisions, each of which has ten hundred-household divisions. The population of military households under each thousand-household division now exceeds three thousand people, and some have four thousand or even more. This number has not been officially counted. If it is officially counted, the number will probably be even higher.

In this way, the total number of Luzhou Guards should be close to 5600, but the actual number of registered soldiers is still 5600. However, this is only on the surface. Nearly half of the 2800 soldiers who received military pay were vacant, which means that at least soldiers in the Guards only existed on the list, and their military pay had long been pocketed by the Qianhu, including the commander of the Guards, the commander-in-chief and other officials at all levels.

That's not all. The garrisons had enormous power over the military households below them. Initially, it was a relationship of superiors and subordinates in the army, but later it gradually deteriorated into a relationship of landlords and tenants. In some places, the relationship between the thousand-household garrisons and ordinary military households was almost like that of master and servants. However, Luzhou Garrison was better. Compared with other garrisons, the conflicts in this regard were not as intense.

Wang Rong has just taken control of the guards and has also taken over the thousand households, but it is far from being possible to say that Wang Rong has absolute control over the guards. The thousand households and the hundred households of the thousand households are all hereditary and very independent. Even though Wang Rong is a commander of a much higher rank, he has not yet achieved full control over the thousand households and hundred households. At best, he is using the trend of interests to win them over, just like now.

This was also the real reason why Wang Rong did not take action against the Qianhusuo after dealing with the officials of the garrison. Wang Rong himself was born into a military household, so of course he understood the twists and turns in the garrison. Now, as long as he could get the support of the Qianhusuo and the Baihusuo, everyone could work together to do business privately and make money. As for other things, he didn't need to think too much about it for the time being.

The Qianhu Suo could not be moved, but that did not mean Wang Rong had no autonomy. Zhu Shenzhu had thought about this a long time ago, and when Wang Rong first took office, he and Wang Rong had made a plan in private.

In addition to the five thousand households in the left, right, front, back and center, the guards also had a thousand households stationed in a separate place and directly under the jurisdiction and command of the capital command headquarters, called the guard thousand households. Similarly, the guards could also set up a hundred households according to the configuration of the guard thousand households.

The two newly established centurions in Yangtou Mountain and Zhaowuling (Zhaowu Village) were set up with such reasons. These two directly affiliated centurions are under the jurisdiction of the commander-in-chief Wang Rong. In addition, Wang Jinwu serves as the centurion of the personal army directly under the garrison, and he has people he can use. This is the real confidence that Wang Rong can gain a foothold in the garrison.

Under such circumstances, Zhu Shenzui now has few troops that can be truly trained. Apart from the personnel serving as guards under the name of Hengtong Trading Company and the old troops in Wangjia Village, he can only think of ways in the two newly established centurions in Yangtou Mountain and Zhaowuling.

The personnel in these two places are relatively reliable. They were originally Zhu Shenzui's men. Some military households were transferred from the garrisons through channels and moved there. By piecing together the personnel, they could only gather more than 200 people at most.

Even if such a small number of people were all equipped with firearms, they would not be able to form much combat effectiveness, not to mention that Zhu Shenzhui now had no ability to spend such a huge cost to maintain a pure firearms army.

In this case, Zhu Shencui had to think of another way to train the troops. He had planned several plans, but none of them were suitable in the end. In the Battle of Liaoyang, the performance of the White Spear Army and the Qi Family Army made Zhu Shencui feel regretful and shocked. Although Zhu Shencui had heard of the reputation of the Qi Family Army a long time ago, and the Qi Family Army was also famous in later generations, Zhu Shencui never thought that the Qi Family Army was so good at fighting.

Let’s not talk about the Baigan Army for now. Although Zhu Shenzhui also envied the strength of the Baigan Army, the Baigan Army was the private army of the Sichuan chieftain. Although it also belonged to the Ming army, it was different from ordinary Ming troops.

Whether in terms of manpower or command, the Baigan Army only obeyed the orders of the chieftain. The Baigan Army always followed orders but not announcements from the Ming Dynasty court. Unless Zhu Shenzui was a chieftain or the son of a chieftain, it would be wishful thinking to attack the Baigan Army.

The Qi Family Army is different. It is a professional army and a strong army that can be replicated.

Since Qi Jiguang founded the army, it is unknown how many generations have passed through the Qi Family Army. Even though the Qi Family Army suffered heavy losses after the military riots, it still had such terrifying combat effectiveness after the reconstruction, which could not but make Zhu Shenzhui tempted.

After much thought, it was most appropriate to build a strong army of their own based on the formation structure and training mode of the Qi Family Army. Moreover, the Qi Family Army was not only good at fighting, but even the Eight Banners elite, which was known to be invincible with less than 10,000 Jurchens, still almost lost the war despite the advantage of the Qi Family Army. From this point of view, this was the best choice.

If you want to do it, just do it. The next day, Zhu Shenzhui went to find a book called "Jixiao Xinshu", which is a military book written by Qi Jiguang. It embodies Qi Jiguang's military thoughts and methods of training troops, and also includes the Mandarin Duck Formation tactics that made Qi's army famous.

After reading it carefully, Zhu Shenzui had to admit Qi Jiguang's military genius. Many parts of this book already reflected the shadow of modern military in later generations. Moreover, compared with other military books, this book was more practical, with clearer analysis of war and more suitable for the current war system.

The more he read, the brighter Zhu Shenzhui's eyes became. He used the contents of the book and his own knowledge of modern military training methods to verify and gain a lot. However, Zhu Shenzhui only had a partial understanding of the most important description of the Mandarin Duck Formation. Although Qi Jiguang wrote down the structure and operation methods of the Mandarin Duck Formation in the book, and there were illustrations of the array changes of the Mandarin Duck Formation, Zhu Shenzhui only understood the basics after reading for a long time. The reason for this is also very simple. It can be described in one sentence that what is learned from books is always shallow. The actual operation and theory must be combined. Theory alone is far from enough.

For example, in a martial arts novel, someone fell off a cliff and luckily got a martial arts secret book. He then practiced hard in the mountains for many years and finally mastered the skills. After coming out of the mountains, he killed anyone who stood in his way and was invincible. This is simply nonsense.

How can you learn martial arts from a book? If that were the case, all modern people would be martial arts masters. You have to know that in the era of information explosion, there are so many martial arts secrets on the Internet, including traditional "Tai Chi", "Bagua Zhang", "Tan Legs", "Eagle Claw Kung Fu", "Vajra Finger" and so on.

These martial arts secrets are everywhere, even the legendary "Nine Yin Scriptures" and "Great Shift of the Universe" are available. If you look carefully, you might even find the "Sunflower Manual".

Let's not talk about these real and fake things. Even the Shaolin Temple had already made public the original version of the Shaolin 72 unique skills many years ago, but who has mastered these things? Over the years, everyone knows these secrets, but no one has ever heard of anyone who has mastered them.

Even if there are real martial arts masters, they didn't learn it by relying on secret manuals. Only when a master teaches by hand and teaches by example can one understand it. Otherwise, if one works behind closed doors for a lifetime, let alone mastering the magic, the possibility of becoming a psychopath is probably higher.

This is true for martial arts training, not to mention military training and military formations? How can one know the secrets of the formations just by looking at the formation diagrams? Moreover, Qi Jiguang's military training and the creation of the Mandarin Duck Formation were based on his long-term actual combat experience. Even after the creation of the Mandarin Duck Formation, Qi Jiguang did not change it in one way or another. He learned lessons from one war after another and made continuous adjustments. This eventually led to the formation of the Mandarin Duck Formation, which was invincible and created the great reputation of the Qi Family Army.

After reading Jixiao Xinshu, Zhu Shenzhui became more and more determined to find the remnants of Qi's army and use their training model to build a strong army. After careful consideration, he felt that it was not enough to just go to Liaodong to find them, because Qi's army was completely wiped out after the Battle of Hunhe, and it was unknown whether anyone survived or could be found. If he only pinned his hopes on this, it would be a bit slim.

At that time, Zhu Shenzhui thought of another way, which was to send people to Yiwu to find veterans of Qi's army and find a way to hire a few of them at a high price. Qi's army was not a military household, but a recruited army. Most of the Qi's army were from Yiwu, and Yiwu was also the place where Qi's army was born.

If we start from this aspect, it should not be a problem to find experienced old men who have even served as officers in the Qi family army. As long as we find some and bring them back to Luzhou, we will have a greater chance of building elite troops.

Zhu Shenzhui did what he said. He found Zhou Anmin and entrusted the matter to him. After listening to Zhu Shenzhui's reasons, Zhou Anmin looked at him deeply, with a look of wanting to say something but stopping himself. But in the end, he didn't ask any more questions and nodded to agree to the matter.

After staying in Luzhou Wei for a few days and arranging the search for the remnants of Qi's army and the elderly, Zhu Shenzui left Luzhou Wei.

After leaving, he did not return to Pingyang City immediately. The caravan in Pingyang had already explained when he was arranged to come out, and Ma Shizhou, Wang Hai and others would be responsible for the follow-up, and with the assistance of Kang Youfu and Zhang Xijun, there would be no problem.

As for the grassland, Tana was in the tribe. He left some people with Tana when he left the grassland. With them around, everything would go smoothly.

Zhu Shenzhui planned to let Ma Shizhou and Wang Hai make a few trips first so that they could familiarize themselves with the route and the subsequent trade procedures with the tribe. As for himself, he would of course go too, but not now. Now he had to go to Zhaowuling first and then go to Yangtou Mountain.

After Wang Rong took over as commander, he set up two centenary offices in Yangtoushan and Zhaowuling (Zhaowu Village) after solving the internal problems of the garrison. These two newly established centenary offices did not encounter any obstacles as the internal affairs of the garrison had been settled, and interest groups had been formed on the side of the thousand-household offices, so naturally there would be no objection. In addition, these two centenary offices were directly under the command of the garrison commander and had no interest conflicts with the thousand-household offices, so there would naturally be no trouble in setting them up.

(End of this chapter)