I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 296 Yuan Shu's New Army

If you want to build a good army, you have to be very particular from the beginning of recruiting soldiers. If the source of soldiers is not good, no matter how you train them, you will suffer a great loss.

Qi Jiguang, a famous military expert, suffered from this kind of loss. He trained a group of soldiers recruited from the market, gave them various technical and tactical training, and then led them to the battlefield to fight the Japanese pirates with full confidence.

As a result, when the Japanese pirates charged, these big soldiers turned around and ran, but Qi Jiguang was still rushing forward stupidly. As he rushed forward, he found that he was the only one left. The famous general almost died.

Then Qi Jiguang came to the conclusion that "people in the market are not useful" and "the best source of soldiers comes from farmland and mines."

Yuan Shu agreed with this point very much, so he paid special attention to it when recruiting new soldiers.

Even the 6,000 elite troops he trained himself were mainly from Liangzhuang, all of whom were honest farmers. Although not all of them were Han people, the Xianbei, Xiongnu and even Qiang people also became honest farmers after they arrived at Liangzhuang.

With this attribute, it is more reliable.

Of course, the most reliable ones are the brave scholars who share the same ideals. These people have faith in fighting, dare to fight and charge, have strong subjective initiative, and are particularly likely to produce generals.

Therefore, when recruiting soldiers, Yuan Shu paid special attention to recruiting those honest, dark-skinned farmers. As for those professional or semi-professional mercenaries who already possessed a certain level of technical and tactical skills, Yuan Shu would often conduct a background check.

Therefore, during the entire recruitment process, Yuan Shu paid special attention to increasing the proportion of soldiers with a farming background to an absolute majority, and those old soldiers who came from the market and looked slick were not accepted at all.

He has no shortage of grassroots military talents. Among the 6,000 elite soldiers, a considerable number are members of the Yi Xin Society. They have studied the art of war and learned military affairs from the regular Han army. They have common sense and combat experience. They are directly promoted to team leaders, garrison commanders, military marquises and the like. They are fully qualified, and even further, many of them can serve as military Sima and colonel.

He did want to improve the army's literacy rate as much as possible in order to build a strong army that was invincible in the world, but issues such as military culture could be dealt with slowly after the army was formed. In this regard, Yuan Shu had many ideas.

The main thing is to ensure that this army is relatively pure from the beginning, and does not have those old soldiers who are good at escaping. Yuan Shu does not want to rush forward on the battlefield and find that he is the only one rushing forward, while everyone else has run away.

He may not have the same luck as Qi Jiguang to escape death.

In general, over the past month of recruitment, the number of people who have signed up to participate has basically exceeded 30,000, and is almost reaching 40,000. However, Yuan Shu has only selected over 20,000, so there is still a gap of more than 10,000.

The main reason is that there are too many veteran soldiers. Among the good families in Sanhe, a considerable number of them are veteran soldiers. When asked what is the most important thing in fighting, they said it is the ability to save their lives, because only by saving their lives can making money have meaning. Otherwise, what is the point of making money but not being able to spend it?
Isn't this the purpose of being a soldier and eating food and earning military pay?
If they were asked again what to do if their commander ordered them to move forward, some of the experienced soldiers would actually laugh and tell about their life-saving tips on the battlefield. They could think of all kinds of strange and bizarre methods, and said that they were able to survive until now thanks to these tips.

Would Yuan Shu want such a skilled soldier?

If we really recruit them, it won’t be long before the entire army is led astray by them.

However, there is still a lot of time, and Yuan Shu is not in a hurry. What Sanhe and some surrounding counties are most in need of are farmers and good family men. He is not worried about not being able to recruit enough people. If it really doesn't work, he can just draw a group of farmers from the good villages to supplement them.

At least their loyalty is absolutely up to standard, and they will not abandon Yuan Shu and run away on their own.

In addition to recruiting soldiers, Yuan Shu also basically solved the problem of the entire army's organization. The basic configuration of 30,000 troops, 5,000 cavalry, 5,000 archers and 20,000 infantry will not change.

The infantry adopted the military system of the Eastern Han Dynasty without any changes.

There are five people in a team, with one team leader.

There are fifty people in a team, with one captain.

There are 100 people in a village, and there is one village chief.

Every two hundred people form a song, and a military officer is appointed.

Above that is a unit of a thousand men, usually led by a military commander.

Above the military commander is the colonel.

The generals of the colonel commanded 2,000 or 3,000 soldiers, but there were also cases of 4,000 or 5,000 soldiers. It was not a rule because in wartime, the colonel was a member of the senior military officer group. Yuan Shu directly stipulated that there were 2,000 soldiers in a battalion, with one colonel and two military commanders in charge, fixed the organization, and improved the system, with 10 colonels of infantry and 20 military commanders.

As for the cavalry, there was a battalion of 1,000 men, led by a cavalry captain, and under him were troupes of 200 men, led by military marquises. A cavalry battalion consisted of five troupes, and the entire cavalry had a total of five colonels and twenty-five military marquises.

The organization of archers and crossbowmen was similar to that of the cavalry, with a battalion of one thousand men, each of which was divided into a troop of two hundred men. There were five troops in each battalion, including two archer troops, two strong crossbow troops and one crossbow troop, for a total of five colonels and twenty-five military marquises.

In addition to this regular combat force of 30,000 people, Yuan Shu also ingeniously set up a [General's Direct Guard] and placed it outside the regular force of 30,000 people.

Originally, Yuan Shu was planning to trick Yuan Feng into paying for the military expenses of this army. However, Yuan Feng refused to agree, saying that he really couldn't afford the money. Yuan Shu had no choice but to pay for the support of this personal guard himself.

This guard included a guard cavalry and a guard artillery.

The Royal Guard Cavalry was commanded by Cavalry Commander Xu Chong. They were all the most elite cavalrymen, a total of 700 people. All of them were excellent in riding skills, riding and shooting, and had excellent fighting ability. They were absolutely brave and could fight ten people at once. Among them, more than 300 people were directly from the Yi Xin Society.

They are the last bulwark around Yuan Shu, and they have no choice but to desperately preserve Yuan Shu's last strength.

Or, if Yuan Shu gets addicted to killing and can't hold it back anymore and has to charge into battle to show his strength, then they will protect Yuan Shu and tell him to pay attention to himself so that he won't get killed by mistake, otherwise it will be all over.

To put it more bluntly, the purpose of the existence of this royal cavalry is that if Yuan Shu dies, none of them can survive.

As for the Royal Guards Artillery, it is even more intuitive. Artillery Artillery is a heavy siege force that operates various types of catapults.

Yuan Shu had already anticipated that future wars would not be limited to the level of grassland cavalry assaults. In the future, he would inevitably extend the influence of the Han Empire outward and further west, so the importance of siege troops was very great.

In the west, there are many countries with certain production capabilities, and they also have magnificent cities.

That's not something that can be taken down by simple cavalry.

Therefore, Yuan Shu decided to invest a lot of resources and money to improve and build newer and more lethal siege troops. The current catapults are only in an incomplete form. He also plans to continue researching more powerful and accurate catapults, striving to reach the level of Huihui cannon.

In this way, no city in the world will be able to withstand the powerful ability of the artillery under his command.

At present, the first twenty captains of the entire army are all members of Yi Xin. Other positions such as military commanders and military marquises are also mostly held by Yi Xin members and old farmers in Liangzhuang. Only a few are appointed to newly recruited personnel with very strong experience and abilities.

In addition, Yuan Shu also appointed Lu Zhi as a general and Fan Li as a general, making them the second and third in command of the army and his important assistants.

Among the original Thirteen Guardians, five others, Lian Da, Yu Chou, Dai Hua, Huang Zhi and Deng Ying, followed him to build the army. They were all appointed as colonels and became the most important responsible officers in the army.

In any case, Yuan Shu had firmly grasped the leadership of this army from the very beginning and had never let go.

As for other details, Yuan Shu also had some special appointments.

For example, Cao Cao was placed in the lower level of the army and made a garrison commander. At the same time, Xiahou Dun was also sent to the army to be a garrison commander.

Yuan Shu felt that Cao Cao was obviously more than just a village chief. If he was given the opportunity, he would soon become successful.

As for Xiahou Dun, no matter how incompetent he is, he can be unable to do the job of a garrison commander. He should gain some experience and then, when Bingzhou finds a suitable logistics position for him, he can be appointed there. Let him start from the grassroots level and become a good logistics officer in the future.

In addition, Yuan Shu also summoned Xun You, Zhong Yao, and Zhang Hong back to his side.

He decided to use them to initially form a professional staff team around him to assist him in commanding this army of 30,000 people.

(End of this chapter)