Luo Zhixue wants to continue to expand Baoxiang Camp!

Soldiers are the easiest to deal with. As long as Luo Zhixue raises the flag for recruiting soldiers, he only needs to give him a mouthful of food, and there will be a lot of young men outside to recruit soldiers.

In addition, you can also obtain some experienced veterans, cavalry, archers and other technical units from prisoners of war.

As for the food and grass issue, although this is a big problem, it is more focused on the food and grass needed for long-term maintenance in the future, and to ensure that there is no shortage of food and grass for the rural camp in the short term.

The current Baoxiang camp alone can support an army of more than 5,000 people for about a year.

The problem is, it can only last for one year. If you can’t get enough food within a year, you will starve to death!

But even so, there is no problem with food and grass in the short term.

The biggest problem limiting the expansion of the Baoxiang Camp now is all kinds of equipment!

The expansion of infantry and artillery is actually simpler. What limits the expansion of infantry is muskets. Although the musket factory is constantly expanding production, the output in a short period of time is far from keeping up with the demand of the Baoxiang camp.

However, Luo Zhixue plans to equip some of the main forces first, and the other newly formed troops will use cold weapons first, and then change their equipment when the musket production capacity increases later.

At the same time, the two-hundred-pound light artillery required by the infantry is also simple. The existing ten guns are divided into one point, which is enough for three infantry battalions. It will not be difficult to expand the army and organize the fourth, fifth, and sixth battalions in the future.

As long as the raw materials are sufficient, the production of this thing is very simple and far less difficult than the 600-jin long cannon. With the production capacity of the Songshan Village Artillery Factory, if there is demand, a batch of 200-jin light cannons can be produced quickly to equip various troops.

But the 600-pound long cannon is more troublesome. It requires more iron materials, and the casting takes too long.

At present, the artillery factory's artillery casting process still uses the traditional clay mold process. It takes almost two and a half months for an artillery to start from making the mold to leaving the factory.

The main reason is that it takes too long to naturally dry the clay mold, and even if the weather is good, it takes more than a month. Plus the time of other processes, it is not easy to make it in more than two months.

After the artillery factory moved to Songshan Village, a new round of casting of 600-pound artillery pieces began, and this batch of artillery will not be completed until mid-February at the earliest.

This batch of four artillery pieces, plus the current two, is just enough to be used by the first artillery sentry for long-range fire suppression and strikes.

It is expected that the six 600-pound artillery pieces required for the second artillery post that will be established in the future will not be available until April.

The third artillery post that follows is even more ridiculous, because the Baoxiang Camp currently does not even have the iron required to cast the third batch of artillery. If you want to build the third batch of artillery, you must first collect enough iron.

Let’s talk about materials, otherwise there won’t even be iron materials, and the production of artillery will be a mirror image. No matter how many craftsmen there are, no matter how strong the technology is, it will be useless.

The casting of the artillery has also been affected by many factors such as the manufacturing time taking too long, the number of craftsmen being small, and the lack of raw materials, so it cannot be completed for the time being.

In order to save labor and raw materials, the artillery factory now restricts the casting of two-hundred-pound cannons. Otherwise, thirty or thirty two-pound light cannons would have been produced.

Whether it's infantry or artillery, regardless of whether it's difficult or not, the Baoxiang camp has a way to solve it. At most, it just takes a little longer.

Only the expansion of the cavalry is difficult to accomplish with the Baoxiang Battalion’s own strength.

Because the expansion of cavalry requires a large number of professional cavalry and qualified war horses.

The war horses are all fine. Baoxiang camp has captured quite a few horses in several battles, and by picking and choosing among them, we can get hundreds of horses that can be used for riding.

But horses can be found with difficulty, but qualified cavalry are hard to find.

According to the current standards of Baoxiang camp cavalry, good riding skills are the most basic, and you must also be able to ride and shoot.

However, it is difficult to find cavalry who can ride and shoot. They are more difficult to train than gunners.

The artillery can also select some good seedlings, and with some effort and training, they can barely cultivate some. After all, the number of people required is not large, and training a dozen or twenty of them together can temporarily solve the problem.

But it is impossible to train hundreds of cavalry capable of riding and shooting in a short period of time.

Cavalry, like archers, is difficult to train in a short period of time, and there is no way to do it quickly.

At best, it will create a bunch of half-baked people.

And half-baked cavalry will die miserably against elite cavalry.

The more than one hundred and a half cavalrymen under Chuang Potian's command were beaten by elite cavalrymen like Wang Xiazi throughout the whole process. It can be said that they had no resistance.

This gives Luo Zhixue a headache, but there is no good solution. The only way is to increase recruitment efforts or even select from prisoners of war, as many as there are!

For example, among these bandit prisoners of war, you can barely find a dozen who can ride and shoot, and use threats and inducements to get them to join the Baoxiang camp.

The rest will be trained by some people who are good at riding. Even if you can't ride and shoot, you still need to be able to charge with a saber. If not, you can also ride a horse and use a walking bow.

As for the later stage, Luo Zhixue is thinking about getting a cavalry pistol for the cavalry. Since it is too difficult to play mounted shooting, he will just play the pistol cavalry.

When Luo Zhixue revealed to Zhang Malin that he was going to establish a battalion-level establishment, he didn't ask Zhang Malin to keep it secret, so it didn't take long for Wang Xiazi and An Yongduo to know about it.

No one is surprised by this.

They also know that as the scale of the rural protection camp expands, it is inevitable to add a larger level of establishment.

They didn't understand the specific preparation, so they didn't participate. They just did whatever Luo Zhixue said.

However, Huang Guangmao, the demoted general, was very interested in the new organization and believed that these things were what he was good at and could play a role. That night, he happily gave Luo Zhixue a report on the new organization that he had written.

Even though Luo Zhixue would not adopt many of the opinions put forward by Huang Guangmao, Luo Zhixue was still very pleased with them.

This means that the retired generals represented by Huang Guangmao have been completely integrated into the big family of Baoxiangying and are making plans for the development of Baoxiangying.

However, more people are concerned about the candidates for the chief officers of the new establishment after the establishment of the senior establishment.

Promotion is what they pay more attention to.

For this reason, except for Wang Xiazi, the cavalry general, and Zhang Malin, the artillery general, who were sitting firmly on the Diaoyutai, other infantry generals such as Lin Dongsheng were watching eagerly.

After cleaning the battlefield and returning to Songjiazhuang, Luo Zhixue did not let his generals wait too long. The next day, he announced the plan to establish the first infantry battalion, the second infantry battalion and the third infantry battalion.

Among them, the 1st Infantry Battalion was the first to form an army, and the 2nd Infantry Battalion and 2nd Infantry Battalion were trained while being formed.

Regarding the specific formation of the infantry battalion, he focused on the fifth post, also referred to some of Huang Guangmao's opinions, and even listened to the opinions of Lin Dongsheng, Wang Xiazi and others.

But in the end, Luo Zhixue’s own ideas were the main ones.

That is to expand the organization with the fifth post as the core.

When Luo Zhixue was on the fifth post, he was fighting in line.

The previous fifth post had 60 spearmen and 60 musketeers, coupled with more than ten sword and shield bearers, archers, and a number of officers, messengers, cooks, coachmen, etc., it was finally established.

New infantry formation.

This also resulted in the fifth infantry post having more troops than the other four posts, reaching a scale of about 150 people, of which 30 spearmen were also issued armor.

However, during the actual combat, Luo Zhixue found that the scale of the fifth post was still too small. Because the number of troops was too small and the width of its line was too small, it could easily be bypassed by the enemy.

In response to this situation, Luo Zhixue's response was simple and crude: directly increase the number of troops!

According to the principle of one to one musketeers and spearmen, the number of spearmen and musketeers will be expanded to 216 each.

When forming a specific formation, there are spearmen in the middle and musketeers on both sides.

Each row of spearmen has thirty-six people, with six rows in front and back, a total of 216 spearmen. The spearmen in the front row are equipped with armor; these spearmen are divided into two sentries.

There are musketeers on both sides of the formation. Each row of musketeers on one side is eighteen people, and there are also six rows. The number of musketeers on one side is 108 people. The sum of the two sides is 216 people; these musketeers.

The gunmen have two sentries.

The above 432 troops together constitute the core combat strength of the infantry battalion.

In addition, in order to ensure the operational diversity of the infantry battalion, in addition to these core forces, a reconnaissance team must be assigned to conduct reconnaissance, cover line operations and other tasks. At the same time, this reconnaissance team also serves as a force directly under the battalion commander.
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This reconnaissance team is actually a traditional mandarin duck formation, equipped with armored sword and shield bearers, light sword shield bearers, archers or musketeers, and spearmen.

Arrange an artillery team equipped with three 200-pound light artillery to strengthen the direct firepower of the infantry battalion.

The above combat strength plus the battalion officers, officer guards, messengers, cooks, coachmen, grooms, medical soldiers and other auxiliary personnel, it is estimated that the strength of each battalion will reach about 550 people.

According to Luo Zhixue's idea, three such infantry battalions will form a reverse formation during combat, and then cooperate with at least six 600-pound field artillery and at least one sentry cavalry unit to form an independent battle group for field operations.

Used in large-scale battles.

Of course, it is unrealistic to have three such infantry battalions now, because there are not so many muskets and not so much armor.

Now, including the muskets seized and self-made in the past month or so, the total number in the Baoxiang camp is only about two hundred, which is only enough for one battalion.

Armor is even more scarce. After ensuring the supply of armor for the cavalry battalion, the infantry unit has always had very little armor. Now the battalion is still short of enough armor for training, so we can only use as much as we have.
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Due to the lack of equipment, Luo Zhixue decided to first use the fifth post as the core, join the first post that had already begun musketry training, and also mobilized some spearmen, shield bearers, archers and other troops from other posts.<

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The above-mentioned troops were first organized into a combat-capable 1st Infantry Battalion as the main force, while the 2nd Infantry Battalion and 3rd Infantry Battalion trained and fought at the same time.

Because the personnel and equipment are readily available and can be adjusted directly during reorganization, the formation of the army is very fast. Just five days after the establishment of the 1st Infantry Battalion was announced, the personnel and equipment of the battalion were already in place.

But it will take some time for soldiers to use new tactics.
Chapter completed!