kingnovel Chapter 124: Training the Troops
Chapter 124: Training the Troops
When the military and civilians in Shenyang retreated to Liaoyang, Xiong Tingbi took the opportunity to clean up the old followers of the Li family, and appointed three generals, including Chai Guozhu, the general of aiding Liao, He Shixian, the general of Liaodong, and Li Huaixin, to be responsible for commanding the troops near Liaoyang and organizing the defense.
At the same time, Xiong Tingbi also went deep into the grassroots level to learn about the situation of the military and civilians in Liaodong in detail, and reported the lack of money and food in Liaodong to the court, repeatedly requesting the court to send food and military supplies to Liaodong.
The threat posed by the Jiannu is now at its most serious. Once Liaodong is lost and the Jiannu crosses Shanhaiguan, they will directly threaten the capital city.
Therefore, Emperor Wanli almost responded to Xiong Tingbi's requests, immediately increasing taxes and allocating food, salaries, gunpowder, etc. to support Liaodong.
When the Ming Dynasty was first established, the main policy was to implement the Weisuo system, supplemented by large-scale military settlements. The soldiers in the Weisuo were all military households. They farmed in peacetime and went to war in wartime. The combination of farming and fighting solved both the problem of fighting and the problem of military pay.
But even in the early Ming Dynasty, it was difficult for the soldiers to achieve self-sufficiency through farming. Later, the system of the garrisons gradually collapsed, and the soldiers gradually could not even support themselves and their families, and had to fight on the front lines. The military households saw no hope of success and began to flee.
Under such circumstances, the recruitment system was gradually brought up again.
During the reign of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty, recruiting a soldier required two taels of silver in military pay plus two pieces of cloth per month, and five taels of silver in resettlement expenses.
During the Wanli period, recruiting a soldier required three taels of silver as resettlement allowance, and the monthly military salary was one tael and two cents.
But in fact, it was difficult for these two taels of silver to fall into the hands of the soldiers.
After Xiong Tingbi investigated the situation, he immediately made changes and raised the soldiers' salaries to one tael and five cents, about 18 taels per person per year.
This was quite rare in Liaodong at that time.
As a thousand households, Lu Cheng had a full complement of 1800 soldiers under his command, and the food and salary expenditure was taels every month.
Of course, given the current situation in the Ming Dynasty, it is impossible to guarantee the long-term military pay of the Liaodong soldiers, and Lu Cheng did not expect to rely on the court.
However, Lu Cheng doesn’t have to worry about these things now.
What Lu Cheng was most concerned about was to complete the reorganization and training of the troops as soon as possible and to develop combat effectiveness.
After arriving in Liaoyang, Lu Cheng took advantage of Xiong Jinglüe's opportunity to clean up the old members of the Li family and gathered another group of troops. He screened and eliminated all of them and finally gathered 1200 soldiers.
Moreover, among these soldiers, young and strong men account for 2/3.
Afterwards, Lu Cheng started the first round of training. In order to ensure the smooth progress of the training, Lu Cheng also paid out of his own pocket to buy a batch of food supplies so that the soldiers could have enough food.
After the soldiers had rested for a few days and undergone some simple training, Lu Cheng first selected 720 combat-ready soldiers through age screening and physical fitness tests, and the rest were all used as auxiliary troops.
Due to the large number of people, the subjects of the physical fitness test are also very simple, including running and lifting stone locks.
Afterwards, Lu Cheng set up an arena in the military camp and decided the candidates for middle and lower-level officers through competitions in strength, archery and other subjects.
As for whether the selected middle and lower-level officers are competent and have command abilities, now is not the time to consider this issue.
After the initial allocation of grassroots officers, they entered the first stage of training, drill training.
Queue training may seem simple, just practicing marching in step, goose-stepping, etc., but it actually has great effects and significance.
Through drill training, the soldiers' discipline, obedience, and solidarity can be trained as quickly as possible, and their collective concept can be established.
Of course, Lu Cheng did not expect these soldiers to be as uniform as the armies of later generations, lined up in straight lines or something. At least they should be able to obey orders and cultivate a certain spirit.
Lu Cheng first gathered all the selected middle and lower-level officers and taught them the most basic movements such as marching in step, running, and standing still so that they could learn them.
At the beginning, these middle and lower-level officers had some opinions. They believed that military training should be divided into spearmen, swordmen, and archers. Spearmen practiced stabbing, swordmen practiced chopping, archers practiced shooting, and so on.
But Lu Cheng didn't care what opinions they raised. He just asked them to obey his orders and established a strict reward and punishment system.
Soldiers these days are basically illiterate, have little education, and don’t understand the truth. They should be beaten when they deserve to be beaten, and scolded when they deserve to be scolded.
Lu Cheng directly set a time limit. Those who could learn each set of movements within the specified time could continue to serve as officers. Those who could not learn would be directly dismissed and go back to being his soldiers.
If you can learn the fastest, you will be rewarded.
Of course, Lu Cheng is not rich now, and it is impossible for him to give money to his soldiers at any time.
However, Lu Cheng bought some meat. Those who performed well in training could eat meat, while those who performed poorly could only eat vegetables.
Encouraged by this simple reward and punishment system, the officers quickly learned drill training. Except for a few who were clumsy and couldn't tell the difference between their hands and feet, the rest did quite well.
Afterwards, this group of officers began to organize various soldiers into units of ten people and carried out various drill training.
Lu Cheng was not in a hurry to train them in assassination moves. In addition to physical training, they also did queue training every day.
After half a month of reorganization, the more than 700 selected combat-ready soldiers began to show some energy and spirit.
At the very least, they have been able to eat and drink enough in the past half month, which is much better than before, and these soldiers are training more diligently.
At the beginning, after Xiong Tingbi heard about Lu Cheng's method of training troops, he specially called Lu Cheng over to ask about it.
Half a month later, when Xiong Tingbi saw that the soldiers were able to shout slogans and march in unison without any noise in the team, he understood Lu Cheng's intention and began to look forward to the results of Lu Cheng's training.
After completing the basic queue training, Lu Cheng began to issue new training tasks. Spearmen were trained in stabbing and retracting spears, swordmen were trained in chopping and slashing, and archers were trained in shooting.
Of course, while training these, physical training and queue training have never stopped, and have even been upgraded.
Lu Cheng combined some training methods of this era with his own experience in modern training. He kept exploring and summarizing, making adjustments at any time to improve the discipline and obedience of the team as much as possible.
Fortunately, after Nurhaci captured the North Gate, he did not go south to attack Shenyang and Liaoyang, but went back to rest. This also gave Xiong Tingbi the opportunity to arrange defense, and Lu Cheng also had time to train his troops with peace of mind.
In order to ensure the smooth progress of the training, Lu Cheng spent almost all the money he had previously obtained on purchasing food, vegetables and some meat, to ensure that his soldiers could have three full meals a day and occasionally a meat meal.
By the end of September, after more than a month of training, the 700-plus soldiers were no longer as pale and thin as before, and could even work in unison.
Lu Cheng stayed in the military camp almost every day and personally directed the training.
After the training had made some progress, Lu Cheng selected 700 soldiers with outstanding performance from more than 50 soldiers and temporarily formed a special training class for officers to teach them some basic martial arts and basic command methods.
The team will certainly continue to grow in the future. If we want to be able to quickly complete training and form combat effectiveness after each expansion, we must train a group of qualified officers.
At the same time, this officer training class is also designed to better control officers and thus control the entire team.
As long as the middle and lower-level officers can obey orders and follow commands and are of one mind with Lu Cheng, the entire team will always follow Lu Cheng.
When Lu Cheng first led his troops out of the city to fight, he mainly resorted to monetary means. After all, nothing else would work at that time.
But if you want to completely control a group of people or an organization, you can't just use money and interests.
After all, people who can be bought with money can easily be bought with more money.
Therefore, in addition to money and benefits, we also need ideas and even beliefs.
While opening the officer training class, Lu Cheng also began to carry out ideological construction work.
Although he had never personally worked as an instructor or political commissar in his previous life, Lu Cheng was very familiar with the various fine traditions of our army.
Organize soldiers to hold a grievance meeting, denounce the crimes of the Tartars, stand on the same front with them, and scold corrupt officials. Then go to them, sit down with them, have a meal, chat with them, tell them stories, look forward to the future, etc.
In a word, following Captain Lu, you will have enough food, food and salary, meat to eat, and clothes to wear...