Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

The confirmation of his position as Prime Minister made Zhu Youjian feel much more relaxed and he no longer had to worry about trivial matters.

This frees him up to focus on other issues.

In fact, he was not idle during these days hiding in the harem. In addition to modifying musical instruments with Princess Tian, ​​he also made major changes to the Four Warrior Guards Camp of the Imperial Stables.

The biggest change was that he split the Warrior Four Guards Battalion into the Warrior Battalion and the Four Guards Battalion.

The Warriors Camp was mainly composed of winners of martial arts competitions, who were trained as generals and elite soldiers. Zhu Youjian attached great importance to these people and even arranged for people to teach illiterate people to read and learn martial arts.

As long as they proved their ability to lead troops, Zhu Youjian would send them out as his own direct subordinates and disperse them in various armies of the Ming Dynasty. It can be said that the role of the Warrior Battalion is equivalent to the later teaching camp.

Another role is to arrange for experts who are not good at leading troops. They are incapable of leading troops, and will serve as elite soldiers similar to special forces, responsible for security and special missions.

The soldiers of the Four Guard Battalions were all selected from the Tengxiang Left Guard, Tengxiang Right Guard, Wuxiang Left Guard, and Wuxiang Right Guard as his personal soldiers responsible for guarding the palace. The soldiers were mainly infantry and charioteers, and their main training was to build fortifications for defense.

In addition, Zhu Youjian also planned to select soldiers from the Warrior Camp and the Four Guards Camp, and add the elite selected from the guards in various places to form a Warrior Guard Camp.

This army will be mainly composed of cavalry. The infantry will also need to be able to ride horses, and later equipped with horses, they will become mounted infantry with fire guns as their main weapons. As highly mobile troops, they will be responsible for going out to fight.

The Warrior Battalion, the Brave Guard Battalion, and the Four Guard Battalions became the main forces under the Imperial Stables.

At the same time, because the Imperial Horse Guard was led by eunuchs, some generals were not happy to say that they were the soldiers of the Imperial Horse Guard. Zhu Youjian called the three camps the Imperial Camp and asked them to call themselves the soldiers of the Imperial Camp. The eunuchs sent to the three camps were also given the title of military supervisors and military supervisors, and their duties were equivalent to those of the military guards.

Zhu Youjian even granted tokens to the commanders of the three camps, allowing them to enter and leave the palace, making their relationship with the emperor closer and diluting the meaning of being commanded by eunuchs.

As the winner of the martial arts competition, Ji Jike, the world's number one warrior, led the Warrior Camp. His position was the Assistant General promised by Zhu Youjian, with the title of a fifth-rank thousand households.

The Yongwei Battalion is led by Zhou Yuji, whose current position is Lieutenant General and the title of Fourth Grade Commander.

Huang Degong, the commander of the Fourth Guard Battalion, has the same rank as Zhou Yuji. The two entered the Warrior Fourth Guard Battalion together, and now each leads a battalion of soldiers.

After half a month of adjustments, the Warrior Battalion and the Four Guard Battalions have been established. Zhou Yuji, the lieutenant general of the Warrior Battalion, has even gone to the nine borders to select the elite troops of the guards.

On May 20th, after the summer solstice earth sacrifice, Zhu Youjian summoned the soldiers of the Warrior Camp for training in the inner training ground.

Just like the previous training of the patrol battalion, Zhu Youjian mainly trained the formations and their obedience.

In order to suppress the arrogance of these people, Zhu Youjian made many preparations. He also asked Liu Qiao, the Minister of the Ministry of Defense, to recall some of the scattered patrol camp soldiers and let those who were willing to join the army rejoin the army.

Some of these people stayed in the Patrol Corps, and some were sent by Zhu Youjian to the New Army as grassroots officers to help Xu Guangqi, who had already selected the soldiers, to train the new army.

Before training the soldiers of the Warrior Battalion, Zhu Youjian asked the soldiers of the Patrol Battalion to carry out an exercise.

Zhu Youjian had ordered this drill a long time ago. Liu Qiao, the Minister of the Imperial Guards, was mainly busy with these things in the past few days.

After he was accused of painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival, he did not dare to neglect the emperor's request. After the emperor asked him to gather the soldiers of the patrol camp who had participated in the training to practice the mandarin duck formation, he invited veterans of the Qi Family Army through various channels and practiced several mandarin duck formations according to the emperor's request.

Now, according to the emperor's request, the drill is being conducted for the soldiers of the Warrior Battalion to watch.

The famous Mandarin Duck Formation is a very sophisticated fighting method. The key point is the coordination of shield, wolf-whip and spear: using shield to defend against enemy weapons, using wolf-whip to occupy battlefield space, and using spear to kill enemy troops.

(The Mandarin Duck Formation Diagram from the 14th volume of Jixiao Xinshu)
After Qi Jiguang created the Mandarin Duck Formation, "he fought many battles for several years, and all his orders and marching troops were exactly as planned, without any changes. Therefore, he won every battle without any loss to his troops." He often killed and wounded the Japanese pirates in large numbers, while his own losses were minimal.

After Zhu Youjian read "Jixiao Xinshu" and learned about this formation, he was amazed at Qi Jiguang's genius creativity.

In his opinion, this formation can be called magical, and it makes the best use of the battlefield space. Enemies who are not good at long-range weapons will be defeated when facing the Mandarin Duck Formation. What he particularly likes is that this formation is very suitable for dealing with masters with strong individual combat power. In order to prevent the winners of the martial arts conference from getting cocky, Zhu Youjian's first choice to intimidate them is Qi Jiguang's Mandarin Duck Formation.

Most of the soldiers present had heard of this formation but had never seen it in person. After all, the Mandarin Duck Formation was mainly used to deal with Japanese pirates. When Qi Jiguang arrived in the north and encountered Mongolian soldiers who were good at riding and shooting, he switched to using chariot formations to fight the enemy. After all, no matter how strong the Mandarin Duck Formation's close combat ability was, it would still be defeated by the Mongolian archers.

Therefore, although the Mandarin Duck Formation is well-known, few people have actually seen it. After seeing it in the inner training ground, many people suddenly changed color.

Because they clearly realized that if they faced the Mandarin Duck Formation alone, they would most likely be defeated. With the wolf-whips covering the branches occupying the battlefield, no matter how great their abilities were, they would not be able to use them at all.

If they tried to force their way forward, they would most likely be blocked by shields, trapped by wolf-whips, or stabbed to death by spears. No matter how strong a single soldier's combat power was, it was nothing compared to the Mandarin Duck Formation.

Even Ji Jike, the world's number one warrior and known as a master of the spear, felt that close combat was not enough to break the Mandarin Duck Formation after seeing it. This made him feel a little dazed, but he calmed down.

After the Mandarin Duck Formation, there are other drills.

First, the musket developed by Lu Xiang, Xu Guangqi, Bi Maokang and others has become perfect after many adjustments.

Zhu Youjian imitated the use of guns and arrows in the early days of the country and asked the soldiers of the patrol camp who had participated in queue training to practice three-stage shooting.

The leaders of the Yongwei Camp were horrified when they saw that the arrow-shaped bullets fired from the muskets could penetrate heavy armor even at a distance of hundreds of feet.

Because they all realized that this weapon posed a great threat to them, and no matter how powerful the military force was, it was difficult to defend against arrow-shaped bullets.

Some people even feel that their era is fading away.

The second was the repeating crossbow that Zhu Youjian asked the Jinyiwei Equipment Department to develop, which he thought was very suitable as a close combat weapon.

After all, a musket that can fire continuously cannot be developed for the time being, and the crossbow, as a continuous-fire weapon, will have room for equipment for a long time.

As for the problems of the crossbow being heavy, short range, and weak power, Zhu Youjian thought it was not a problem at all, because he positioned the crossbow as a hand crossbow, a police weapon and a self-defense weapon, and did not require a long range or great power.

He even asked the Jinyiwei to develop a catapult that fired projectiles, which had less lethality than crossbows and were used to subdue less dangerous enemies. This weapon would be child's play if used by the army, but it could be used by the Jinyiwei when arresting people or raiding their homes.

After a period of research, the military craftsmen of the Jinyiwei successfully made a crossbow with a ten-shot quiver, referring to the "Wu Bei Zhi" and other materials. The effective range was more than ten feet, close to the fifty meters of the later pistol.

(Zhuge Liannu from Wubeizhi)
Zhu Youjian was very fond of this repeating crossbow. Not only did he play with it himself, he also had the Embroidered Uniform Guard equip themselves with it as a standard weapon.

What is being practiced now is the Imperial Guard Corps using crossbows to quickly shoot when facing an attacking enemy.

The dense crossbow arrows made the winners of the martial arts competition despair. They had no idea who could break through this rain of arrows.

As for the shortcomings of the crossbow in terms of range and power, and whether it could penetrate armor, after seeing the gunner behind the guard just practicing three-stage shooting, no one thought it was a big problem.

After all, they had just seen the range and power of the arrow-shaped bullets. The combination of these two weapons was suitable for both close combat and long-range combat.

The mandarin duck formation, arrow-shaped bullets and crossbows greatly shocked the leaders of the Yongwei Camp, making them realize that no matter how skilled they were in martial arts, they were not invincible.

Zhu Youjian successfully suppressed their arrogance through this exercise.

Then, when they were arranged to conduct formation training, these people saw that the soldiers of the Patrol Corps were training seriously, and they also trained seriously in the hope of not being outdone by them.

The warriors of the Warrior Battalion gradually became one entity. (End of this chapter)