Daming Yuanfu

After the meal, the rest went to work on their own, while Gao Wushi called Liu Xin and went to her study in the Secretariat.

Gao Wushi sat in Liu Xin's usual position honestly and said: "If there is no accident in this Western Expedition, I plan to use Shengwu as the main general, and Xuanda will send at least one young general from the Ma family and the Ma family to serve as the other generals." Lieutenant General...But you can definitely see that there are still some problems in this arrangement."

Liu Xin gave Gao Yushi a blank look, and obediently moved another chair to sit next to him, saying: "You suddenly said that, I may not be able to see all the problems at a glance. However, Some obvious problems can be seen... For example, my brother's Liu's army headquarters has very few cavalry. If he was in the Chinese army, the speed of the Western Expedition may not be able to speed up, and this seems to be quite different from your previous plan. There is a discrepancy."

Gao Wushi said: "The Imperial Guard Army and the Ding Army of the five major generals will become the first batch of Class A troops. Naturally, the Liu Family Army will also be reorganized. In addition to the already elite infantry and chariot battalions (artillery), they will continue to improve their technical weapons. In addition to the ratio, the expansion of its cavalry is one of the main focus points.”

Liu Xin was a little surprised, and asked, "Are you planning to unify the Ding army of the five generals according to your wishes, and you don't plan to let them maintain the regional uniqueness of the permanent area?"

Of course, Gao Wushi knew what Liu Xin meant by "geographical uniqueness of the resident area".What this means is that, for example, the Ma’s army used to be dominated by cavalry, with very few infantry and not many artillery; They still have a certain scale of infantry and artillery forces; the Ma family army has a relatively comprehensive organization, with [-]% of its troops consisting of infantry, [-]% of cavalry, and [-]% of artillery and engineers.

The establishment of the Ma family army is quite comprehensive, mainly because his family has been under the command of Gao Yushi for the longest time, and the younger generation of the Ma family army has been more promising in recent years, so Gao Yushi has directly intervened to take care of him more, which makes the establishment of the Ma family army Comprehensiveness is relatively high.

Although Liu Jiajun is the most important supporter of Gao Yushi in the southern army, the south is not like the north, and the requirements for professional cavalry are not so high.

In addition, the areas where Liu Ting fought in the past few years were really scratching his head. It was either northern Myanmar or Guizhou, all of which were rugged and dangerous mountainous areas. Therefore, if there were too many cavalry under his command, it would be useless for heroes, so he only fought around two to three thousand all year round. Akira, not even [-]% of the total strength of the army.

The situation of the Qi family army has been mentioned before, the Qi family army in name only maintains a maximum of about 6000 people, but in fact the Qi family army can be said to be "scattered with stars all over the sky". Some of them were taken to all parts of the country, and they went as their "followers", that is, their own soldiers.

Of course the Li family would settle accounts themselves, so there was a strange incident where Li Rusong retreated after suffering a slightly serious loss during the Korean War.In addition to the trouble that the power of the main family and the branch may be out of balance, there is another point that Li Rusong dare not continue to lose, because if he loses too much, he is really worried that he will not have the money to make up for it.

"Why?" Liu Xin didn't understand. Why did she worry too much? It is true that so many cavalry are not needed for fighting in the southwest region.As for artillery, although it is hard to say that it is not necessary, if there are too many, the mobility of the battlefield will definitely be affected. Isn't this an obvious truth?
However, Gao Wushi shook his head and said, "The reason why you are worried is because you subconsciously feel that once the time comes for a big battle, there may only be the main force of the Liu family army in the entire Southwest that is reliable.

With 3000 people, the Li family army will not suffer losses under this scale. On the contrary, because the imperial court will treat them equally, their technical weapons ratio can be greatly supplemented.

"In the future, all Type A armies will be organized in an integrated and standardized way. Whether it is cavalry, artillery, or even engineers and supplies, all Type A armies will have the same organization." Gao Yushi said without hesitation: "You may It is too much to worry that too many artillery and cavalry will become a burden to the Liu family army stationed in Sichuan."

This article needs to be explained a little bit. The size of the Ding army of the various generals of the Ming Dynasty is uncertain, and the amount of military salary allocated by the imperial court depends on their own "activity".If your family's ability to move is strong, then the court will allocate more military pay, and you will have less money to subsidize yourself.On the contrary, it means that the imperial court did not give much money, and you had to post all the big heads yourself, which is very annoying.

It has to be said that the artillery these days is really expensive, especially the artillery made by Jinghua, which is well known for its high price - of course the reason why it can be sold at a high price is that it is indeed of excellent quality.

In Gao Wuzhen's plan for the six main forces of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial guards will remain unchanged for the time being, and still have five towns under its jurisdiction, and its artillery and cavalry establishments are slightly larger than those of the Dingnan garrison. In fact, there are nearly [-] troops. scale.However, as the imperial guards are the central imperial army of Ming Dynasty, the size of this organization is of course a special case, and the other five Type A armies cannot copy it.

There are two main reasons: first, only Jinghua has mastered the material production and manufacturing technology of steel artillery; second, only Jinghua can control the scrap rate of artillery production to less than [-]%.

Such a situation has led to a problem, that is, from the political level, the Qi family army needs to be one of the "six main forces". However, from the military perspective, the current Qi family army has only 6000 people. A substantial military expansion is required.

The simplest reason is that, like all previous reforms, Gao Yushi believes that in order to promote a reform, his first consideration at the beginning of the reform is how to appease the old vested interests.

Even under the current circumstances, the prestige of Gao Yu in the army is unmatched. Even if the Type A army is forced to be planned with a staff of less than 4, the Li family will only dare to slander, and will definitely not jump out and openly oppose it. .However, this situation is still not a good thing.

Of course, the major garrison forces in southern Xinjiang are based on the town (division) level, and the number of towns under the "army" level is not the same.For example, the Dingnan garrison currently has five towns under its jurisdiction, while the Vientiane garrison only has two towns under its jurisdiction. There is still a big gap in strength.

The total amount of silver that Li's army can get is not small, but his family has the largest military force, so it still needs to put money into the army.Of course, the Li family's property in Liaodong is very rich, which was explained a long time ago.

However, Li Rusong's attitude is worthy of attention, because the Li family was originally the number one general in the world. Although they suffered some losses in the Korean battlefield, they have basically made up for it again in the days after withdrawing from the war, so they The total strength of the Li family army has been restored to about [-].

Of course, we are not discussing the Huben Army that Gao Pragmatism just talked about just now, otherwise the Huben Army would be much stronger than the current Imperial Guard Army of the Ming Dynasty, and the scale of its establishment is also extremely large, which is completely incomparable.

At the same time, if there is no intrusion of Jinghua, the cannons of this era can only be made of copper. As a big country that is short of copper but uses copper coins, the cost of using copper to make cannons in China is obviously extremely high.

And the most important thing is that the expenditure of the Type A army is completely borne by the imperial court. No matter how the prices of military supplies such as muskets, artillery, and war horses fluctuate in the future, the Li family finally does not have to spend their own money. Great economic unwinding.

The problem now is that the high-practical idea is that except for the imperial guards, which are a special case, the other five Type A armies will be organized at the town level according to the model of the Southern Xinjiang Garrison (Southern Xinjiang is called a division), that is to say, only one There are 12700 troops in the town.

Of course, if your Li family wants to distribute welfare subsidies to the army alone, you will not care about it for the time being if you are highly pragmatic, and there will be a period of policy ambiguity.

But this is not because Jinghua deliberately slaughtered the imperial court like a pig, but in the artillery industry. At present, there are some reasons that only Jinghua can achieve such a profit rate.After the private military industry, not only Jinghua can produce artillery, no matter the north or the south, many families have tried to enter this industry, but until now, almost no significant progress has been made.

So, why does Jinghua's guns look very expensive, but whether it is the imperial court or the maritime merchants, everyone is still willing to be slaughtered by Jinghua?Without him, technology monopolizes.

According to many records, in the original history of building red cannons in the late Ming Dynasty, it took five thousand catties of copper to make one, and only two or three of the ten cannons could be used, so the final cost could be as high as 2000 Two silver per door—note, this is the official cost of the Ming Dynasty, and there is no profit in it.

But how to put it, selling artillery is actually an extremely profitable business.According to the No. 220 cannon with the largest amount of equipment in the Ming Army, the manufacturing cost of Jinghua was about 180 taels at the beginning, and then gradually dropped to about [-] taels due to technological progress and the expansion of production scale.

But no matter what, because Gao Wushi gave great support to several generals under his command later on, it formed a lot of competitive pressure on the Li family army, so the Li family had to "additional investment" and began to spend money on more technical weapons. Especially artillery.

But now Gao Yushi is going to form a Type A army, and he will not reduce the establishment of the Li Jiajun. Although according to Gao Yushi's idea of ​​standardization, the Li Jiajun will only be the same as the Ma Jiajun in the future, but at least he can still stay in the army. One of the main force.

The fixed establishment of the garrison is as follows: each town has a full establishment of 12700 people, with two standard infantry associations, three independent artillery standards, one independent cavalry standard, and two engineer battalions.

This sounds very unrevolutionary, but it is very realistic.When it comes to the reform of the Type A Army, Gao Yushi must first think of one thing: the first batch of six armies selected as the Type A Army must at least not be dissatisfied with the reform.

Except for Jinghua, those made by other manufacturers are either of poor quality or more expensive.Under such circumstances, in order not to be compared with other generals, Li Jiajun had no choice but to continuously create profits for Jinghua, and this forced the Li family to tighten their belts year after year.

Then, if the size of the Class A army planned by Gao Yushi is less than 4, the Li family and its related generals will inevitably suspect that Gao Yushi is weakening them in disguise.

The Imperial Guard will not be dissatisfied, because Gao Yushi treats it as a special case separately, its super-large scale will not be reduced, and some old equipment that has been equipped for a long time may even be replaced.

Ma Gui and Liu Ting will not be dissatisfied, because after the reform of the Type A Army, the strength of their troops will increase, their technical equipment will be further supplemented, and their strength will only become stronger.

According to the plan, the final establishment of such a type A army will probably have a total strength of about 3000 troops.The total number of troops has actually been seriously considered by Gao Pragmatically. The reasons for this are not only military factors, but also political factors.

Many people in later generations may not know that the scrap rate of artillery production in the [-]th and [-]th centuries was quite astonishing, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties of China in the original history, the scrap rate was often as high as about [-]%.At that time, if there was a man-made gun that could be used [-]% of the time, it would be an undoubted master.

why?

But in the future... Eliminating the influence of the private army is a long-term task. Although there is no rush, it must be done after all.

However, the price of the No. 800 gun is 650 taels for retail and 360 taels for large-scale military purchases.In other words, even for the large-scale military purchases by the imperial court, Jinghua's profit margin is as high as [-]%.

In matters like reform, the most fearful thing is to hit a wall at the beginning or plant a hidden danger. The former is too damaging to morale, and the latter is easy to form pustules.Therefore, it is best to pick the easy ones first. A good start is half the battle. As for subsequent reforms, they can be deepened and strengthened step by step.

The remaining five Type A armies are all "three-town armies" in the highly pragmatic organization concept, that is, each army has three towns under its jurisdiction, plus an army command, one command is directly under the Independent Artillery Association, and one command is directly under the supply standard. , a command directly under the engineer standard, and a command directly under the guard battalion.

However, the fact is that I will establish sufficient Type B armies for the South—not just the Southwest—and the strength of these Type B armies is at the level of the current Nine Frontier Army, so there is no situation where only Liu’s army can fight .

For more time in the future, Liu Jiajun's role in the south will be mainly to deter and awe, and to serve as the central army during combat to stabilize and boost morale. "

"So that's how it is..." Liu Xin nodded, and asked after thinking: "Then what did you call me here to tell me? Oh, no, you probably have something you want me to convey to my brother, right? ?”

"That's right. It's inconvenient for me to say some things directly to him, or even hint in a private letter. It's more appropriate for you to convey it on your behalf." Gao Wushi nodded and admitted.

Liu Xin opened her eyes wide and said in surprise, "There is such a thing? Tell me, I'm very curious!"
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Thank you book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your support, thank you!
Thanks to book friends "o Shang Shu Ling" and "Konna Wei Sheer" for their monthly support, thank you!
PS: Originally, I had no plans for the Lantern Festival, but my mother-in-law asked our family to go to my brother-in-law for the festival. Considering that it is not convenient to fish on Monday tomorrow, I only have this one tonight.