The army in Jinhai Town under Yang Zhen currently has a total of eight regiments and battalions.

Such as the Songshan Regiment Camp in western Liaoning, the Fuzhou Regiment Camp on Jinhai North Road, the Zhuanghe Regiment Camp on Jinhai East Road, the Jinzhou Regiment Camp on Jinhai Middle Road, the Andong Regiment Camp led by Qiu Zhenhai and the Musket Regiment Camp of the March to the East Army.

The Grenadier Regiment Battalion of the Eastern Army and the Artillery Regiment Battalion of the Eastern Army.

The eight major regiments and camps are divided into two categories. One is the directly affiliated regiment and camp, that is, the regiment and camp directly commanded by Yang Zhen himself, that is, the three major regiments and camps of the advance army for the Eastern Expedition.

The other type is the regiment camp outside the department, that is, the regiment camp in the assisting place commanded by the various left-behind or assisting general troops, such as the Songshan regiment camp, Fuzhou regiment camp, Jinzhou regiment camp, Zhuanghe regiment camp and so on.

Anton regiment camps are all in this category.

In the past, due to various reasons such as insufficient troops, insufficient food and grass, and limited pay, Yang Zhen ordered the formation of eight major regiments and camps, but the actual situation of each regiment and camp was different.

Some regiments and camps have more people. For example, the Songshan regiment has three battalions and fifteen sentries. Counting regular soldiers and auxiliary troops, there are more than 4,500 people in total.

However, some regiment camps have relatively few troops. For example, the Fuzhou regiment camp, Jinzhou regiment camp, and Zhuanghe regiment camp have only three battalions under their jurisdiction, including the original naval camp.

Some have ten posts, some have eleven, but none of them are truly fully staffed.

Now Yang Zhen has made adjustments to the navy on the north road, the navy on the east road, and the navy battalion on the middle road. They have been transferred away and transferred to subordinates. The situation of dissatisfaction among the people in the previous regiments and camps has become even worse.

It's serious.

As for the three directly affiliated regiments and battalions under the vanguard of the Eastern Expeditionary Army, the situation is also the same. After the Battle of Zhenjiang Fort and the formation of the Anton regiment and battalion, none of them were fully staffed.

Among them, the Musketeer Regiment camp originally consisted of the following three battalions and nine posts, with a total of more than 2,700 people. Currently, the nine posts are not full, and the number is only more than 2,300 people.

As for the Grenadier Regiment Battalion, there were eight sentries with over 2,400 men before the Battle of Zhenjiang Fort. During the Battle of Zhenjiang Fort, they suffered considerable losses. After the war, they actually had more than 1,900 men left.

The next six sentry teams.

The situation in the artillery regiment camp is even more pitiful.

Although the artillery regiment battalion had a new battalion leader led by Jin Yukui in the Battle of Zhenjiang Fort, this battalion leader had been transferred to the Jinhai South Road Navy by Yang Zhen in the blink of an eye.

At this point, the artillery regiment and battalion returned to their old appearance of two battalions and six sentries before the war.

Therefore, although the artillery regiment and battalion are considered to be a regiment and battalion, the actual number of men and horses is less than a quarter of what Yang Zhen thinks a full regiment and battalion should be. It is a regiment and battalion with the smallest number of people.

Faced with such a situation, it is urgent to order them to expand their staff.

Moreover, with the rapid development of large-scale cross-sea reclamation and immigration operations since the 14th year of Chongzhen, the number of settlements under the jurisdiction of Jinhai Town has increased rapidly. In just over four months, the number of settlements under each settlement has increased rapidly.

, the number of households and households has almost doubled.

Nowadays, most of the villages and towns in Jinhai Town have completed the spring plowing and cultivation in the 14th year of Chongzhen. The heavy farm work has come to an end, and now is a good time to expand the army and train troops.

Therefore, Yang Zhen directly ordered all major regiments and battalions to implement the conscription and expansion orders, and the expansion must be completed at once.

According to Yang Zhen's original idea about the regiment camp, a regiment camp was directly expanded from the original three battalions to five battalions, and each battalion was expanded to five sentries.

Moreover, within a time limit of thirty days, each post must eliminate the weak and retain the strong, and then recruit the young and strong, so that all posts must be fully staffed, that is, the full complement of 300 people.

According to Yang Zhen's army expansion plan, after all eight regiments and battalions are currently expanded as scheduled by early July, the strength of the three regiments and battalions of the Eastern Expedition Army directly led by Yang Zhen will reach 22,500 people.

In Yang Zhen's plan, one regiment camp was divided into five battalions, one battalion was divided into five sentries, one sentry was still three teams, and one team was still composed of one hundred people.

In this case, a regiment camp consists of five battalions, twenty-five sentries, seventy-five teams, and seven hundred and fifty sheds, with a total of 7,500 people.

It just corresponds to a fully-woven Gushan under the Eight Banners of Qinglu.

In this way, the eight Manchu regiments and camps under Yang Zhen were equivalent to the eight Manchu regiments under the Qinglu, with a total of 60,000 people.

This does not include the battalions of the Zhongyi Gui Ming Army, as well as Yu Liangtai's Denglai East Road Navy who went south to garrison on Liugong Island, Wu Dynasty's Zuoden Laixi Road troops who went south to Wei County, Laizhou Prefecture, and other naval forces.

Camps and miscellaneous prison camps.

If these troops are included, then after this military expansion, according to Yang Zhen's vision, the entire Jinhai Denglai Second Town can command more than 90,000 troops.

Of course, these are Yang Zhen's imagination or military expansion plans on paper.

In fact, the final scale of the military expansion is still unknown.

In particular, the expansion plan for the three major regiments and battalions of the Advance Army for the Eastern Expedition does not involve just recruiting soldiers.

For infantry who use leading weapons, it is enough to recruit soldiers, equip them with swords, spears, bows and arrows, and then train them for a period of time.

However, for Yang Zhen's current troops in Jinhai Town, there are very few infantry who purely use cold weapons, and they are mainly concentrated in the newly formed battalions of the Zhongyi Guiming Army.

However, this time for the reorganization and expansion of the army, the battalions of the Zhongyi Gui Ming Army, which had already gone south to Shandong and the Central Plains and other places, were not included in the expansion.

Among the eight major regiments and battalions included in this military expansion, none are infantry regiments and battalions that purely use cold weapons.

For example, the Fuzhou Regiment Camp and the Zhuanghe Regiment Camp needed to expand their battalions, mainly cavalry, but the expansion and training of the cavalry was limited by the number of horses.

Another example is the Jinzhou Regiment Camp and the Anton Regiment Camp. The battalions they need to expand are mainly naval divisions. However, the expansion and training of the naval divisions are limited by the number of warships.

As for the three major regiments and battalions directly under the Eastern Expeditionary Army, whether they can be fully staffed as scheduled depends on how many muskets, artillery and air generals and other ammunition can be provided by the Songshan Baggage Battalion and the gun factory and ammunition factory in Lushun Beicheng.

.

In fact, in order to smoothly realize the ammunition pressure brought by the expansion of the three directly affiliated regiments and battalions of the Eastern March, at the same time that the army expansion order was issued, Yang Zhen had already reserved ammunition for the musketeers, grenadiers and gunners at the ammunition factory.

The base number was lowered from the original three hundred rounds per person to one hundred rounds per person.

But even so, Yang Zhen's army expansion plan also put huge pressure on the gun factory and ammunition factory in Lushun North City.

The issue of muskets and artillery is easier to talk about, because in early May, Wang Shoutang, Wang Shen and his son, and the craftsmen they brought from Lushunkou to Yuncong Island, had completed the initial construction of the coke factory and smelting plant on Yuncong Island.

.

At the same time, according to Yang Zhen's order, Wang Shoutang's eldest son Wang Shen stayed at the Yuncong Island branch to take charge of the smelting and cannon casting affairs, while Wang Shoutang himself returned to Lushunkou by boat in early May.

Nowadays, the smelters, firearms factories and cannon foundries in North City of Lushun are all working three shifts around the clock, forging with all their strength, making gun barrels, and using iron molds to cast cannons.

The production of guns and artillery, which had been suspended for some time, was once again operating at full capacity.

Therefore, the pressure on gun production, at least the pressure on musket production, is not great. Even if the strength of the musket regiment battalion of the Eastern Conquest Army is doubled, there will be no problem.

The real problem mainly focuses on the production and supply of ammunition.

Because high-quality fire saltpeter and sulfur are always a bottleneck that is difficult to break through and are always in shortage.

Just a few months ago, this was the reason why Yang Zhen agreed to the request of Cohen, the deacon of the Dutch East India Company in Nagasaki, and was willing to use two thousand tons of high-quality sulfur per year in exchange for opening trade with them on Yingzhou Island.

Although the supply camp that stayed behind in Songshan mined several iron ores with high sulfur content in western Liaoning, and could also produce a certain amount of sulfur while smelting iron, that amount was far from enough for Jinhai Town, which was experiencing repeated wars.

As for the smelting plants in Lushun North City after the move, they also tried every means to combine iron and steel making with sulfur production. However, the iron ore they used from Anzhou Jiechuan brought them unexpected consequences.

question.

The quality of iron ore from Jiechuan is much higher than that of iron ore from Liaoxi, and the proportion of iron and steel in tapping is greatly increased.

However, high-quality iron ore contains less sulfur. When smelting steel, the amount of sulfur that can be produced is greatly reduced.

There are no natural sulfur deposits at all within the current jurisdiction of Jinhai Town. At least Yang Zhen doesn't know where there are such natural deposits in the Liaodong Peninsula or the area east of the Yajiang River.

And some of the sulfur deposits he knew were currently either located on several volcanic islands under the control of the Won Nu Kingdom, or on several volcanic islands controlled by the Dutch East India Company.

Of course, there are also rich natural sulfur deposits on the Kamchatka Peninsula, thousands of miles north of the Wonu Kingdom.

But for Yang Zhen, it is too far away. At least for now, water far away cannot save the fire nearby.

In the same way, the Ryukyu Islands located in the southeastern sea are also rich in sulfur and were the main source of sulfur imports in the Ming Dynasty. However, for Yang Zhen, they are currently beyond their reach.

For him, besides getting some from the Dutch East India Company, the best way was to occupy the sulfur producing areas of the Kyushu vassals of the Japanese slave country.

And this was one of the reasons why he sought to join forces with the Dutch to tear off a piece of flesh from the Japanese slave country.

Of course, Yang Zhen has many ideas, but for now they are just ideas and cannot temporarily solve the ammunition supply problem after he recruits and expands his army.

After the expansion of the army, the ammunition factory must not only produce and reserve at least one hundred standard lead bullets and one hundred standard musket powder bags for each musketeer, but also must produce and reserve at least one hundred flying generals for each grenadier after the expansion of the army.

Grenades or tens of thousands of enemies.

At the same time, it is necessary to produce and reserve at least 100 solid projectiles for heavy artillery or different specifications of explosive shells and their associated charge packs for sky cannons and thunder cannons for each artillery piece compiled by the expanded artillery regiment and battalion.

This is a huge test for the ammunition supply capacity of the entire Jinhai Town.

Therefore, military expansion is not just a matter of expanding troops, it also involves the issue of ammunition supply or ordnance supply.

As for the food and salary issue that restricted Yang Zhen's army expansion in the past, he no longer cares much about it.

First, even if he keeps the original salary of 10,000 people and insists on not expanding the army, Emperor Chongzhen will not be able to provide him with corresponding food and salary.

Both, the continuous arrival of immigrants to open up wasteland and land reclamation, the continuous expansion of the sweet potato and potato planting area, and the large-scale implementation of the land-based payment method also gave Yang Zhen a certain degree of confidence.

Of course, the most important thing is that with the expansion of the territory and the changes in the situation, Yang Zhen's past line of elite troops has become a bit unworkable, and the problem of insufficient troops has begun to become prominent.

Under this situation, Yang Zhen once again remembered what Fang Guangchen had said to him before, that if you have soldiers and horses, you will naturally have food and wages.
Chapter completed!