Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 212 Tianxiong Army 4
Although he has made up his mind to sharpen the fangs of the Tianxiong Army at all costs, but actually doing it, Lu Xiangsheng feels powerless.

The reason why he is powerless is the same as Yang Menglong's, lack of money.

Yes, this Confucian general is really short of money now.

Military training has always been the most expensive, not to mention that what he wants to train is an invincible elite soldier, not a ostentatious display.If you want to obtain invincible elite soldiers, there is no other shortcut. It is nothing more than carefully selecting soldiers, rallying the morale of the army with generous treatment, deterring the unscrupulous with strict discipline, beating their muscles and bones with strict training, and using effective drills. The reform of the regulations will polish his character, and then transform him with bloody battles. After two or three years like this, he can become an elite soldier.As for the plot of training an invincible elite soldier in three months, it's over as a joke, don't take it seriously, three months, I'm afraid there are still soldiers who don't know who their top leader is, and how to divide it from front to back, left to right, Invincible ghost!In military training, the general's talent is very important. A cowardly, incompetent general with no ambition can't lead a victorious army, and a loose and greedy general can't lead a well-disciplined army. There is no invincible general in the division of belly, and the causal inheritance here is clear at a glance.When a general trains his troops, he is also training himself.In addition to the talents of generals, money is also very important. A penny is difficult for a hero. Because there is no money, the melon farmer is embarrassed. Without money, it is difficult for a heroic character to show his strengths.The Tianxiong army has nearly ten thousand horses, thousands of artisans, more than a thousand war horses and a large number of mules and horses. People eat horses and chew, and a golden mountain can be eaten up. The most terrible thing is that this team has to be trained every day. Daily training consumes a lot. Arrows, gunpowder, and lead bullets need to be replenished, spears and shields need to be repaired, knives with curled blades need to be replaced, worn-out shoes and socks need to be changed every month, and military pay needs to be paid. If you want to buy...it really costs money like water.During this period of time, Lu Xiangsheng was afraid of spending money. Every day, he watched huge sums of money flowing out like a river, but he didn't get any income. Ordinary people really couldn't understand that kind of feeling.Now, if we mass-produce granular gunpowder and lead bullets with pointed-headed concave bottoms, the cost will definitely be high. Granular gunpowder needs to repeatedly filter out impurities, which will consume a lot of materials and increase the working hours; The craftsmanship is far more complicated than ordinary lead bullets, and more materials are used. One or two shots may not be noticeable, but after a day of training, the number of lead bullets fired is more than thousands, and the consumption is huge!
"Perhaps, I should also learn from that big horse monkey, encourage folks to build workshops, and strictly collect business taxes?"

Facing the ever-rising financial deficit, Lu Xiangsheng had a thought that he had never thought of before.He admires Yang Menglong's vigorous efforts to reclaim wasteland, improve water conservancy, manufacture fertilizers, open mines, and manufacture ordnance by himself, but he has reservations about Yang Menglong's strict collection of business taxes and large workshops.Isn't collecting business tax a competition for profit with the people?It is really worthless to fight tit-for-tat with merchants for some commercial taxes.As for large-scale workshops, there are many problems. Food is the most important thing for the people. The importance of farming is self-evident. With so many workshops, the wages are much more than the output of the land. Isn’t that tempting farmers to give up their land and work in workshops? In this way, farming will be abandoned and food production will be reduced, so it’s okay!But it has been so long, according to the information he collected, there is no trouble in Nanyang, more and more workshops, more and more people, more and more food production, more and more prosperous!This shows that Yang Menglong's method works. Since he has such a good experience, why doesn't he learn from it?Yes, business tax must be strictly collected, maybe I can't control the businessmen in the entire Beizhili, but at least if you want to do business with me, you have to pay taxes honestly!

Master Lu, who was really short of money, decided to set up some workshops after the autumn harvest and collect business tax.

The three prefectures of Daming, Shunde, and Guangping have all achieved rare harvests this year, especially the Weisuo Juntian, which has an astonishing output of 30 mu of wheat fields, and the harvested wheat alone is as much as 70 shi, and 140 mu of potatoes. The output was more than [-] million shi. It can be said that no guard in the middle and late Ming Dynasty could obtain such a bumper harvest, and the military households were all smiles.This astonishing output made Lu Xiangsheng's name once again appear in the court's sight——people who are both civil and military, who can govern the region, farm production, and lead troops to fight are very scarce in any dynasty!
Of course, Wuyangwei's gains were even more insane.The output of 25 mu of wheat in Wuyang is generally more than three shi, and some are close to four shi, and the yield of [-] mu of potatoes is generally as high as [-] shi!
That is to say, in Wuyang alone, more than 24 shi of wheat and over a million shi of potatoes were harvested. This kind of production made Lu Xiangsheng dumbfounded and sighed.However, the harvest of military fields in other guards is not so ideal. The yield of wheat per mu is about two shi, and the yield of three shi is very small, and the output of potatoes is less than [-] shi. It is not as sufficient as Wuyang's side, and the management is not as good as this side.Several other thousand-household institutes are complaining that Yang Menglong is eccentric and gave most of the phosphate fertilizer to Wuyang Thousand-Household Institute—two bumper harvests are in front of him, who doesn’t know that phosphate fertilizer can increase production, then he must be an asshole Number one idiot!

Corresponding to the bumper harvest, taxes and salaries have increased again, and they have increased a lot.The Guan Ning army is building Dalinghe City, but building the city requires money, where will the money come from?Of course, it came from the common people. Originally, there were hundreds of millions of people in the Ming Dynasty. If the cost of building the city was spread out, it would not be a big deal if it was spread on everyone. They are often doubled or even tripled when dealing with them. Every tax increase by the court is a good opportunity for these bastards to make a fortune. How dare you receive three or even five cents of a penny of tax and not pay it?If you don't hand over, you are a mob, kill you!The life of the common people in the north is getting more and more difficult, but the common people in Shaanxi can't survive at all. The refugees flock to the wild, and the hungry are everywhere. The common people who can't survive drag their families and flee to Henan and Hebei. Thousands of hundreds, batch after batch!
No matter how the ruling princes whitewashed the peace, the decline of the Ming Dynasty could no longer be concealed.

Lu Xiangsheng didn't think so much for the time being, and it wasn't his turn to worry about these problems.After the harvest, he was busy with entertainment all day long, dealing with grain merchants from all over the country.Now that the price of grain is getting higher and higher, but the output of grain is getting lower and lower. Finally, a source of grain has emerged. Grain merchants hope to get a batch of grain and then make a profit from it.Lu Xiangsheng had his own plan. Although the grain merchants offered higher prices than the other, he still insisted on selling 60 shi of potatoes to Cheng Ji according to the original agreement, and paid off the debt he owed for military training first; Another 30 shi of potatoes were sold at the price of four qian silver a shi, leaving 50 shi and 20 shi for the military households as food, and the rest were processed into potato noodles for military food reserves.As for wheat, each military household is allocated five to eight shi according to the size of the family. This amount of wheat plus potatoes is enough for them to eat until next summer, and there is still some surplus food that can be sold.In doing so, nearly 10,000+ stones were removed from the wheat.Then, he sold 30 shi at a price of one or two taels of silver per shi, and deposited the remaining [-] shi into the treasury.

After some fiddling, his shriveled wallet bulged, and the granary of the military households was full for the first time. The Tianxiong Army replaced new shoes, socks and mandarin jackets in advance. He was satisfied, the military households were satisfied, God The Xiongjun was satisfied, and even the princes of the imperial court were very satisfied—————————— Finally, the Tianxiong Army's salary can be dragged out with confidence!You have easily earned three to four million taels of silver. You must not pay attention to such a small amount of money. You might as well give us money for wine!
Although there is money, in Lu Xiangsheng's view, the money is still not enough.An army is not invincible if it is well trained and equipped. Without reliable logistics, no matter how elite the army is, it will only be smoked as a pig's head.In the Great War of Changping, the Zhao army was as strong as the army, the soldiers were brave and brave, the equipment was excellent, and the generals were calm and brave. None of them lost to the Qin army. After a thousand years, it still makes everyone who is a general shudder.Lu Xiangsheng didn't want to repeat Zhao Kuo's lessons. He had to build a strong and smooth blood vessel for this elite division that he had spent countless efforts on training.In order to ensure that his troops can get enough food and grass during long-distance mobile operations, he must purchase enough carts, mules and horses, and this is a big eater, and there is not enough money to buy horses and build carts.Of course, he can also save this money. Everywhere he goes, the local prefectures and counties will provide food and grass. However, last year, Qin Wang bumped into obstacles everywhere on his way, and even when he arrived in Beijing, there was no food and grass. He saw clearly that the princes in power are a group of people who want the horse to run away and refuse to let the horse eat grass. Unless it is a last resort, he is absolutely unwilling to entrust the logistics supply on a group of guys who eat vegetarian food. When he has time, money, and the imperial court supports him, he will turn the Tianxiong Army into a mule army, not a group of mud legs that can only walk and transport on two legs!
Although the plan is good, it is not realistic.Because all the racecourses in the Ming Dynasty have already existed in name only, not to mention war horses, even mules and horses are becoming less and less, and the price of mules and horses has naturally skyrocketed!Qi Hu calculated for him: Tianxiong's tens of thousands of horses, each eat two catties of grain every day; 1000 two hundred war horses, each eat twenty or thirty catties of horse feed every day. It can reach 80 to [-] kilograms; a field army of tens of thousands of people is pulled out for long-distance and long-term mobile operations, and it needs at least five times the assistance of civilians to help build bridges, pave roads, transfer materials, chop firewood, carry water, set up camps and dig trenches, otherwise just These chores can exhaust this elite division——only idiots will let their elites do these chores, waste energy, and kill morale——these tens of thousands of civilians still have to eat, even if they The ration of the soldiers is only half of that of the soldiers, and they have to eat [-] to [-] catties a day. In this way, the daily consumption of grain and grass is no less than [-] catties, which is nearly [-] shi. Load more than [-] cars.This is only a theoretical number. In reality, [-] carts are far from enough to meet the needs, because if it is a long-distance combat, it is impossible for the [-] carts to travel once a day. Then go back and transport them. When they arrive, even if the troops are not starved to death, they will be weak from starvation. There must be the same number or even more vehicles for transshipment to ensure that the food and grass can be delivered continuously. That is to say, there is no one or two hundred A large truck cannot meet the needs of grain transportation.This would be fatal, the horse and the cart both cost money, and they were not cheap at all!
If the number of troops going out to fight is doubled, the consumption of supplies may not be as simple as doubling.This is still an ideal road condition. Under the condition that the grain road is smooth, if the road conditions are bad, or if the grain road is on the verge of being attacked, and the material transfer station is burned, the consumption will suddenly increase by more than ten times, and even lead to the paralysis of logistics. There is no way to fight.

In other words, if the Tianxiong Army wants to have sufficient supplies for long-distance field battles, it must prepare at least 240 carts that can hold seven stones and [-] mules and horses.Considering that the grain road might be attacked and the entire grain convoy might be wiped out, he had to prepare at least [-] more carts and [-] mules and horses.This number made Lu Xiangsheng's forehead sweat, and he was speechless.

(End of this chapter)