The Ming Dynasty: Starting with the border troops, it was overthrown and the Qing Dynasty was destro

Chapter 212 Training the Militia
Hearing this, Zhao Sheng was somewhat surprised:
"General, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo are only twelve or thirteen years old. Is it appropriate to let them lead troops?"

He was somewhat puzzled:
"There are so many valiant generals in the army, why did you suddenly think of these two?"

But Jiang Han didn't answer him directly. He couldn't very well say that he could predict the future and knew that Li Dingguo would definitely become a great general.

He simply waved his hand:
"It's alright, just go and pass on the order, I have my own arrangements."

Upon seeing this, Zhao Sheng immediately put aside all his doubts and nodded decisively.

He knew very well what he could suggest and what he had to do unconditionally when working under Jiang Han.

He never meddles in matters of military power and personnel.

Firstly, he knew that his ability to lead troops into battle was not good enough, far inferior to fierce generals like Shao Yong and Li Laowai;

Secondly, this is also where Jiang Han's core power as the commander-in-chief lies, and as a subordinate, he must not overstep his bounds.

When it comes to being a person, you must always know your place.

Before long, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo were brought to the main hall of the government office.

Both of them looked excited and thrilled, clearly having received some inside information from Zhao Sheng beforehand.

After exchanging greetings, the two young men stood ramrod straight, their faces full of anticipation as they looked at Jiang Han, who sat high at the head of the table.

Jiang Han didn't waste any words with them and went straight to the point:

"I called you here today for no other reason than..."

"I intend to have you lead the troops..."

Before he could finish speaking, the two boys cried out in delight:

"real?!"

Their joy was palpable; they had been working in the auxiliary troops camp for almost a year.

Every day, their work consisted of moving supplies, organizing weapons, and sometimes cleaning up the battlefield.

Although life was tough and tiring, they learned a lot of combat skills from following the veteran border soldiers.

Later, they were transferred to Jiang Han's camp to serve under him. Through this exposure, they learned a great deal about troop deployment and camp setting.

Feeling that they had achieved some success, the two of them became increasingly determined to join the army.

Which good man doesn't want to wield a three-foot sword and achieve unparalleled feats?
Leading troops into battle and dominating the battlefield is far more prestigious than being in an auxiliary battalion.

Now that Jiang Han has personally told them that he wants them to lead the troops, the two are naturally overjoyed.

They had assumed that the commander-in-chief, seeing their progress, intended to enlist them in the combat battalion as officers or similar positions, leading their troops into battle.

But Jiang Han's next words were like a bucket of cold water poured over their heads.

"Don't be happy too soon."

"I plan to send you to lead the militia."

"militia?"

Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo exchanged a glance, both seeing disbelief in each other's eyes.

Jiang Han, on the other hand, had an expression that seemed completely taken for granted:
"Of course it's the militia. What are you two thinking?"

"With your small frames, you think you can get into the combat troops?"

"Leading troops? Who do you think you can command? And who will obey your orders?"

Jiang Han had considered it very clearly; these two were at most teenagers.

The border troops under his command were all burly men from the Northwest, each six or seven feet tall.

In addition, he never skimped on food and fodder, feeding them three meals a day, so these men were all raised to be strong, healthy, and tall.

Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo are not yet adults. Even if they grow taller, they can't compare to those Northwest border troops.

In terms of combat skills and physical fitness, they were far inferior to those veterans.

Forcibly placing them in the combat battalion would not only fail to win over the troops, but would actually harm them.

It would be better to let them lead their own militia and start from scratch.

While training the militia, the two men also grew alongside them.

Forcing growth is not a good thing; we should nurture them slowly. He believed that it wouldn't be long before these two rough gems could be polished into something useful.

Jiang Han ignored the surprise on their faces and instead carefully explained his arrangements:

"Training militia aims to expand armed forces at low cost and form a tiered defense system."

“Taking the four counties of Long’an Prefecture as an example, each county can recruit five to eight hundred young men to form a militia. In this way, the entire prefecture can quickly build a garrison force of about three thousand men.”

“These people may not be good at field battles, but they should be of great help in defending cities, patrolling, and maintaining local security.”

As Jiang Han spoke, he then began to test the two people below him:

"Do you know what the benefits are of doing this?"

Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo exchanged a glance and began to rack their brains, thinking carefully.

Li Dingguo reacted faster:
"I understand, Commander!"

“These people can be provided with food during wartime and farmed during peacetime, which will minimize the cost of maintaining the army.”

"In this respect, it is somewhat similar to the garrison system in the early Ming Dynasty."

Jiang Han nodded in satisfaction, then looked at Yu Chengye, wanting to hear his opinion.

After a moment's thought, Yu Chengye added:
"These people can also be used as our reserve soldiers."

“We can no longer recruit veterans from the border towns, so we can train these people as reserves for now.”

"Once they become familiar with archery and horsemanship, the best among them can be selected and incorporated into the combat troops."

Jiang Han nodded in satisfaction after hearing this:
"good."

"Your task is to train these farmers into qualified militiamen."

"I don't ask for much, at least I want them to be able to keep discipline, understand orders, and distinguish between commands."

"I estimate that the land will be distributed by the end of November; then you can go and select your soldiers."

"Each of you will lead three hundred militiamen and temporarily serve as sentry leaders. You will be directly under my command and obey my orders."

"The spring planting next year will probably be at the end of February. During this period, you will have three months to train."

"Go back and think carefully about how to lead this team out."

"At that time, I will personally inspect the militia you have trained."

"If it doesn't work out, you two can go back to the auxiliary troops camp."

After saying that, Jiang Han waved his hand and chased the dumbfounded Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo out.

……

As Yu Chengye walked out of the Marshal's Mansion, his face almost collapsed to the ground.

"Oh no, Dingguo, it looks like we'll have to go back to the auxiliary troops camp for a few more years this time."

Li Dingguo remained calm:

"What's the rush, Brother Chengye? We still have several months."

"It all depends on man!"

"Haven't you always wanted to lead troops? Now that the opportunity has come, how can you not seize it?"

Yu Chengye sighed:
"But I want to bring combat soldiers!"

"What use are these militias composed of ordinary people and farmers?"

"They can't even stand still in formation; they'd probably flee at the mere sight of government troops."

But Li Dingguo remained optimistic, his eyes sparkling:

"I think this is precisely an opportunity."

"What the commander said makes a lot of sense. We don't really have the ability to lead troops right now."

"Instead of leading those veterans, we might as well start from scratch and train a completely obedient army."

After hearing this, Yu Chengye rolled his eyes at him:
"What you said is so easy!"

"Right now, we're just commanders without any troops. We don't have a single veteran under our command. How are we supposed to train them?"

Li Dingguo beckoned to him mysteriously, gesturing for him to come closer:
“Brother Chengye, listen to me. Since there’s no war right now, we can ‘borrow’ some soldiers from the military camp.”

"Not many, just three or five will do."

"If all else fails, we can spend some money, scrape together some cash, and hire a few veterans to come and help us train!"

Just do it.

The two took out all their spare change and scraped together eighteen taels of silver as their "start-up capital".

There is still one month left before the land is distributed.

They couldn't rush things, so they could only do some preparatory work first.

At the end of the month, Yu Chengye took Li Dingguo to the military camp stationed outside the city, found the familiar centurion Cao Er, and explained their purpose.

"What? Borrowing troops?!"

Upon hearing Yu Chengye's words, Cao Er suddenly jumped up from the ground, staring at the two boys in shock.

Yu Chengye quickly explained:
"Yes! We won't lend it for nothing! We have money!"

"Just lend us three people, and pay them two taels of silver a month!"

Cao Er's face instantly darkened, becoming extremely serious:
"You wish!"

"Let me tell you, these soldiers belong to the commander-in-chief. Without the commander-in-chief's order, I will not lend out a single one!"

"You two better not try to harm me. If you want to borrow troops, bring the commander-in-chief's order."

"Anything else is out of the question!"

Seeing this, Yu Chengye had no choice but to resort to persistent pleading:

"Brother Cao, please help us!" "This is a test that the commander-in-chief has given me and Dingguo. It is also our first time training troops. If we don't do well, we will probably have to go back to the auxiliary troops camp."

"I don't do anything else, I mainly want to invite a few experienced veterans to help with the training."

Even after he said all the nice things, Cao Er shook his head like a rattle drum:
"no!"

"You can't reason with the heavens!"

He said firmly:

"Let me tell you, there's absolutely no way I'm going to start this!"

"If I were to lend you my troops privately today, how would I be any different from those corrupt officials and generals in the imperial court?"

Seeing Cao Er's resolute expression, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo realized that their ideas were too naive.

Having made a bad start, the two were somewhat dejected. They apologized and prepared to leave.

Seeing their state, Cao Er couldn't help but find it amusing, but ultimately couldn't bear it and called them back.

"Here's an idea for you two."

"The commander-in-chief only wants you to train as militiamen, not elite soldiers for field battles."

"You've studied in the military for so long, your skills are more than enough to teach a bunch of civilians."

He said earnestly:

"In this battle formation, individual martial arts skills are secondary."

"The most important thing is discipline!"

"As long as a team can advance and retreat in unison and obey orders without question, even if it is a warrior capable of defeating ten thousand men, it will not be able to withstand a barrage of arrows and lead bullets."

"You guys should go back and think carefully about how to train this rabble to be disciplined."

"In addition, you can first write out a training program based on military books, and I will submit it for you."

"Let's see if the commander can be merciful and allocate some manpower to you."

After listening, the two men seemed to wake from a dream, and thanked Cao Er profusely. After returning home, they immediately took out their military books and studied them carefully.

……

A month passed quickly.

Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo finally got to select their soldiers.

On the drill ground, in several villages around Pingwu County, every family that had been allocated land sent out their able-bodied young men, forming a large, dark mass.

Following the methods learned from the "New Book of Effective Tactics," the two began to meticulously select the soldiers under their command.

Originally, according to military books, there are "four musts" and "four must nots" in selecting soldiers.

People who are not good at city life, people who have worked in government, people over forty years old, and people with fair skin are not welcome.
There are also claims that the timid are prone to fleeing, while the bold are prone to recklessly disrupting the formation, and so on.
But frankly speaking, these things are not absolute rules.

For example, the first choice is an honest, rural man who is dark-skinned, strong, hardworking, with firm skin and hands, and a rustic appearance.

But in summary, it all boils down to one core principle: be honest, obedient, and follow orders.

Qualities like great strength, imposing stature, cleverness, and martial arts skills are merely icing on the cake.

Just as Cao Er said, on the battlefield, the most important thing is always discipline.

Only a team that knows when to advance and when to retreat can be considered a true military force.

However, it is clear that Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo at this moment only have a superficial understanding of this principle.

They simply followed the rules of military texts blindly, meticulously selecting the best methods.

Jiang Han, who was secretly observing from a short distance away, sighed repeatedly, feeling rather disappointed in his son.

It seems these two still didn't understand what I meant.

Of course, he couldn't be too critical, since this was the first time Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo had led troops.

If you choose strictly according to the dogma, you won't go too far wrong.

After several days of careful selection, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo finally selected their three hundred militiamen and prepared to conduct a three-month rigorous training program for them.

Jiang Han also transferred forty veterans from the combat battalion to help the two of them train.

Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo were overjoyed.

They felt that with these veterans leading the way, training these new recruits would be a piece of cake.

But the two men soon realized that turning these farmers, who had just put down their hoes, into a qualified militia was far more difficult than they had anticipated.

The rules they set for the new recruits were to train them in formations and with equipment during the day;
In the evenings, they would gather together to read and recognize characters and identify command flags.

To facilitate training, they specially set up a training ground near several villages.

The goal is to allow these people to train without any distractions.

However, just a few days into the training, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo noticed something was wrong.

During training, the new recruits were all distracted and listless.

The veterans' commands often took them a long time to process.

But when it was time to disperse, these new recruits ran like rabbits, faster than anyone else, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

When evening came and they finally managed to gather them together to teach them to read, they were all yawning and their eyelids were drooping, making it impossible for them to concentrate on learning.

Seeing that the training was not effective, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo became anxious.

They extended the training time and made the new recruits do extra training on their own, prescribing a drastic measure.

Even so, the results were minimal.

Left with no other option, the two decided to seek help from Jiang Han, but were met with a closed door.

Jiang Han provided all the support except for help, but left the two of them to figure out their own solutions without any mercy.

After returning, Li Dingguo thought about it again and again. He felt that he had been too rigid in his work. He only knew how to bury himself in training every day and did not pay attention to the specific situation of his new recruits.

So he sought out Yu Chengye, and after discussing it, the two decided to conduct a "home visit" to the new recruits.

They called it a home visit, but it was actually a covert surveillance operation.

That day, the two secretly followed several militiamen, hurrying home with them, wanting to see what these people were up to.

However, they discovered that after the group returned, they did not practice the daytime drills and assassination techniques as they had requested.

Instead, he threw himself into the fields that his family had just been allocated, and began to take care of them with all his heart.

After several days of careful observation, the two finally understood the key to the matter.

It turns out that although it is currently the winter off-season for farming, these farmers still have a lot of work to do!

Basic maintenance of farmland is also necessary in winter.

Since these fields have only just been allocated to the farmers, they need to hurry up and clear away the rice stubble and weeds left over from the previous harvest to reduce overwintering sites for pests and diseases.

These areas provide insulation, and the eggs of pests such as rice borers and rice planthoppers can easily attach to the stubble, thus surviving the cold winter.

Some paddy fields also need to be shallowly tilled to loosen the topsoil before introducing cold water for winter irrigation.

On the one hand, it can freeze and kill pest larvae buried in the soil; on the other hand, it can also make the soil looser after the winter freeze-thaw, which is conducive to rice planting the following year.

Some land has been abandoned for a long time and needs repair of the field ridges, inspection for collapses or cracks, and compaction with new mud to prevent water leakage during irrigation the following year.
Because they were all preoccupied with these tasks, the militiamen had little time or energy left for training.

In fact, in order to save some food, they would rather go hungry than eat their fill, and would rather save the food to take home to their wives, children and elderly parents.

As a result, they naturally lack the physical strength to cope with high-intensity training.

After learning about these circumstances, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo suddenly realized what was going on.

I thought training troops only required focusing on formations and relentless drills; I never imagined there were so many twists and turns behind the scenes.

After discussing it, they decided that instead of forcing the militiamen to train, they should help them solve all the farm work first.

Only in this way can these militiamen devote themselves wholeheartedly to training.

Therefore, the two made a bold decision to temporarily abandon training.

Instead, he organized all the militiamen under his command to work together, going door-to-door to clear the land and handle farm work.

This decision initially met with opposition from many veterans.

In their view, all it takes is to teach these militiamen a lesson with batons, and they will learn to focus on training.

However, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo rejected this idea, believing that physical punishment could only solve the problem temporarily and was not a fundamental solution.

So the next day, they each led their own teams of three hundred militiamen to the fields to do farm work.

They were no longer the sergeant giving orders, but the foremen leading the work.

The two divided the team into several smaller groups, each responsible for different tasks: some weeding, some tilling the soil, and some repairing the field ridges.
The forty veterans who were transferred were also forced to serve as conscripts out of necessity.

When hundreds of people work together as one, their efficiency far surpasses that of individual households working alone.

In just over ten days, they tidied up several thousand acres of land perfectly.

When these militiamen saw with their own eyes that their commander actually rolled up his trousers and jumped into the icy mud with them to do farm work in the freezing cold, they finally stopped resisting, and the barriers in their hearts completely disappeared.

When the militiamen looked at their own neatly cleaned land, and then at Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo's faces, which were red from the cold, they were all moved to tears.

They finally understood that these two young generals were genuinely thinking of them.

Although they didn't understand the meaning of "a scholar will die for one who understands him," the militiamen secretly resolved not to let down the two young generals' good intentions.

No more veterans need to use batons to urge and force them.

With their worries resolved, the militiamen returned to the training ground with a completely different spirit and energy.

Everyone put in their best effort, without any hesitation.

Even in the cold wind, the militiamen meticulously carried out every order given by the veterans.

The ranks were no longer scattered, and the shouts of battle on the training ground were full of vigor and enthusiasm.

Thus, after the initial setbacks, Yu Chengye and Li Dingguo's training plan gradually began to get on the right track.

(End of this chapter)