If I fail to overcome the tribulation, I can only return to the Ming Dynasty and become a prince.

Chapter 202 Logistics Support
In this Northern Expedition, because he had borrowed the money, Zhu Zhanjun naturally had to participate, and because of the combat effectiveness of the Qingyu Guards in his hands, Zhu Di specifically ordered Zhu Zhanjun to transfer the Qingyu Guards back from the Japanese country.

Zhu Zhanquan returned to the country by himself, and only brought one Qingyu Guard from Qianhusuo with him. The remaining four Qingyu Guards from Qianhusuo stayed in Japan to train and expand the new army.

So now that Zhu Di personally issued the order, Zhu Zhanquan could only transfer the Qingyu Guards back from the Japanese capital, along with one of the three Tianjin guards and one of the Kyushu guards.

Zhu Zhanquan now has Qingyu Guards, Tianjin Three Guards, Jiuzhou Three Guards, and vacancies for the three guards that the imperial court gave him that he has not yet had time to establish.

If they were all filled up, it would be an army of ten guard posts.

It's just that the vacancies for the three guard posts were added by the emperor after Zhu Zhanquan returned to the Ming Dynasty. The three Jiuzhou guards did not start recruiting troops until he returned to the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, although he had ten guard posts, he still had ten guard posts. Still only four guards can fight.

Considering that some veterans were left to guard Kyushu Island, the troops he could mobilize were the Qingyu Guards and one or two of the three Tianjin Guards.

However, the Jiuzhou area is still relatively stable at present, so when Zhu Zhanquan mobilized a little more troops, he took away three guards. However, he did not draw all the veterans from the three guards, but drew one new guard.

After all, although the three guards in Kyushu are all new recruits, the backbone of them are [-] people of the Ming Dynasty, so their loyalty can still be guaranteed.

As for the Kyushu region, the family members of the Qingyu Guards who moved there plus the remaining two Kyushu Guards and the two Tianjin Guards, now even if there is a Japanese rebellion in the Kyushu region, they can still suppress it.

So Zhu Zhancheng is not worried about a fire in his backyard.

And compared with troop deployment, the more important thing is the logistics of this Northern Expedition.

The three armies should move forward before using food and grass. This is the secret of military strategists since ancient times.

In the era of hot weapons, military warfare relied heavily on logistics. Even in modern times, the combat effectiveness of the army can almost be said to depend entirely on logistics.

After all, the vehicles and vehicles of the modern army all burn oil, and if the logistical fuel supply is not available, they will have to lie down.

Let alone a real fight, the bullets and shells that are like splashing water will be consumed, and if the logistics are interrupted, everyone will die!
Although today's Ming Dynasty is still mainly in the cold weapon era, and the application of firearms has not been widely spread. However, since Zhu Di has chosen to use the new army equipped with firearms as the main force in the Northern Expedition, this logistics must keep up.

Otherwise, if the battle in the front is in full swing and the ammunition supply in the back cannot keep up, then the army will really die.

After all, if you are a traditional cavalry, if you are out of food and can still choose to kill the horse and then dismount to fight on foot, you will still have room to fight to the death.

But even if the musketeers are equipped with bayonets, when their ammunition is exhausted, they can do less fighting than the cavalry after they dismount.

Even if Zhu Zhanquan not only equipped them with bayonets, but also each had a waist knife for close combat, he did not expect these musketeers to actually go up and fight with others on the bayonet, especially with the Mongolian cavalry.

If possible, what Zhu Zhancheng wanted to see most was to directly use cannons and muskets to make them good at singing and dancing.After all, it is better for this "minority" ethnic group to be good at singing and dancing. Wrestling, archery, horseback riding, etc. can be reserved as performances in festival celebrations.

In order to achieve this goal, a large amount of gunpowder will certainly be necessary.

Fortunately, today's Ming Dynasty itself has mastered the gunpowder manufacturing technology. Although the quality may not be very good, the equipment Zhu Zhanquan currently equips the Ming army is only front-loading muskets, tiger crouching cannons and small-caliber French cannons, which are crude and inferior. The gunpowder may affect the firing accuracy and power, but it does not affect the use.

What troubles Zhu Zhanjun more is the issue of cannonballs and bullets.

In order for the artillery to have better damage, it is naturally impossible to prepare only solid round bullets. Shotgun shells, which are most effective against cavalry, must be arranged.

Although the front-loading smoothbore gun equipped by the Qingyu Guard is only a front-loading flintlock gun, the bullets used are custom-loaded paper bullets. Although this thing is not as time-consuming to produce as metal custom-loaded bullets, it still requires someone to manually install it. .

If it were not for the previous construction of the workshop, Zhu Zhanyu would have considered the consumption of bullets. In addition, during the Japanese conquest last year, the consumption of bullets was also a bit high. When Zhu Di considered the issue of supplying the new army and ordered the expansion of the workshop By the way, the size of the bullet production workshop has been expanded five times. The supply of this bullet is really a problem.

But even so, to ensure that Zhu Di's nine-guard new army and his own three-guard muskets had enough bullets, Zhu Zhanjuan felt that at least one ammunition factory should be established in Peiping and Tianjin to provide the army with Enough ammunition, instead of waiting for it to be produced in Nanjing and then shipped to Tianjin to supply the army.

In addition to ammunition factories, grain and other military supplies transported from the south to the north should first be concentrated in Tianjin and Peiping, and then transfer stations and material warehouses should be established in the north to reserve materials to a certain extent in advance to ensure the departure of the army. After reaching the front line of the Great Wall, we can still obtain sufficient and stable supplies.

Of course, if it were just like this, Zhu Zhanqi could handle these things with two people from the East Palace, and there was no need for him to go to Tianjin in advance to take charge of the logistics work.

You must know that this Northern Expedition was the emperor's personal expedition, and the emperor personally went out. The logistics required were completely different from those of ordinary generals leading troops.

Even if Zhu Di is an emperor who is about to conquer the world and is not the kind of person who pays attention to luxury, he still needs to prepare these things.

At the very least, the emperor's eating standards cannot be at the same level as those of ordinary soldiers or generals, right?

Then, the large tent that the emperor will use for his march must comply with the regulations of the imperial court. Although the emperor only conducted a military expedition in person in the eighth year of Yongle, he can't let the emperor use an old tent, right?
Furthermore, even if the things used in the Northern Expedition in the eighth year of Yongle can still be turned out and used, many of them still need to be cleaned and organized, and they cannot be used right out of the warehouse.

These things are complicated and need people to deal with them.

Fortunately, most of the things were done in Nanjing, and were handled by Fat Dad, who had already presided over the logistics of the Northern Expedition. Zhu Zhanquan went to Tianjin to receive military supplies sent from Nanjing and establish a material transfer station in Tianjin. .

This is a suggestion he made, and it is naturally up to him to implement it.

However, because Tianjin was used to transport military supplies during the previous Japanese expedition, many things were ready-made, so Zhu Zhanquan established material warehouses and transfer stations without too much trouble.

(End of this chapter)