The French army's miserable victory in Shanxi, especially in the end, Colonel Simoyong's pursuit troops were almost wiped out - some artillery soldiers saw the opportunity quickly and escaped by chance - made the French middle-level commanders more determined that the naval general Courbet, the navy general, was not suitable for commanding large-scale ground wars.

It doesn’t count if you can easily release the main force of the Black Flag Army to break through and leave. You know that the main force of the Black Flag Army has left is 4,000, but Simoyong only leads two reinforcement battalions to pursue, which ends up almost annihilated. Who should you bear this responsibility if Courbet doesn’t take it?

Faced with the strong reactions of the intermediate officers and the differences between heaven and earth in the results of the Shanxi Battle and the Hue Battle, senior officials in France had to make re-arrangements.

Courbet was promoted to lieutenant general because of his victory in the Battle of Hue, and at the same time returned to the position of commander of the Tokyo Detachment, preparing to carry out the mission of blocking China's coastal areas. The land forces were replaced by lieutenant general Mile.

Courbet also knew that he might be transferred after the tragic victory in the Battle of Shanxi. Therefore, he had already prepared his mind. Before leaving, he sent a telegram to the country with earnest words:

"In the battle of our army to conquer Shanxi, we found that although most of the Chinese soldiers in the city were the so-called "Black Flag Army", 30% of the soldiers were still from China. They played a part in the defense of the city. More importantly, it was precisely because of the secret assistance of China that those troops, which should be armed by bandits, had extremely strong combat capabilities. They even equipped Green-style machine guns and Hakikas rapid-fire cannons that were rarely equipped in the Qing army. In view of this, I believe that if we want to clear the resistance forces in Tonkin, we must completely expel the Qing army entrenched here. When we lose support from China, those bandits will not be affected."

Before Courbet captured Shanxi, a strange murder occurred in the Vietnamese capital Hue - the newly appointed Vietnamese king was inexplicably poisoned to death.

The French who received the news panicked. They believed that the Qing Dynasty was assassinated at this time, with the purpose of destroying the implementation of the Hue Treaty that had been signed. Therefore, they were preparing to put military pressure on the Qing court directly. After receiving the telegram from Commander Courbet, France immediately agreed to Courbet's idea.

In January 1884, the French Parliament passed a military budget of 20 million francs with a vote of 327 to 154. It once again added a infantry brigade, two teams of artillery, and a team of engineers to the Vietnam side.

In February, when the newly appointed Lieutenant General Mile arrived in Hanoi, the French army in Vietnam had reached an unprecedented 18,000, of which nearly 15,000 were gathered in Hanoi alone. You should know that even when they attacked Beijing in 1860, the French used 7,000 troops.

After roughly familiarizing himself with the current situation, Mile divided the 18,000 troops into two infantry brigades, allowing his two deputy commanders, Major General Porier and Major General Nigri to command respectively. In addition, he handed over the command of the Tokyo squadron to Colonel Morebojo.

While Lieutenant General Mile reorganized his troops in Hanoi, he was far away in the old streets of Vietnam, and the Black Flag Army was also holding a meeting on the reorganization of troops.

"Dear uncles, please see..." As he said, Liu Shaoqing showed everyone a picture of the compilation. "After the reorganization, our most basic compilation changed from 'team' to 'shelf'."

"'shelf', as the name suggests, is a soldier living in a room. Oh, we can live in a big house now with 12 people, so ours is designated as twelve people."

"As for why this arrangement is mainly to make the soldiers familiar with each other, establish friendship and build feelings. Uncles and brothers are all people who lead troops all year round. They know that if the soldiers' feelings are intimate in a unit, their combat effectiveness and cohesion will be greatly improved."

Liu Shaoqing's explanation attracted unanimous approval from everyone. "Yes, just like the Tiandihui, everyone was sister and brother. When they fought Qing Yao, they would naturally have the energy to go to the same place." "Yes, look at the whistle, they are basically young men from the same village, so they won more than they lost even if they fought within our army."

This arrangement of enhancing soldiers' emotions, improving cohesion and combat effectiveness will be recognized by everyone. Liu Shaoqing had expected that after all, the Black Flag Army is different from the Qing army's green camp. It comes from all over the world. They are more like Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang's training and their source of soldiers come from adjacent villages or towns. I understand very well what kind of combat effectiveness the soldiers who are grouped together can exert.

"Okay, then above the 'shelf', it is a 'team'. One 'shelf' is twelve people, each team has three shelf, plus the chief and deputy shelf officials, which is 38 people. The leader of the shelf is called 'penmu', which is equivalent to the Qing court's foreign commission chief, which is the ninth rank official, which is considered the smallest level. The team is equivalent to the thousand shelf of the foreign commission chief, which is the eighth rank."

Speaking of this, someone immediately asked: "Young Master, are those of our original team officials, that is, the reorganized team officials?"

Liu Shaoqing nodded, "It's almost the same, but the number of organizational structures after the reorganization is slightly different, and the original teams performed differently in battle, so there will be some adjustments."

After answering this question, Liu Shaoqing continued: "There are 'sweaters' above the team officials. Each 5 team, that is, more than 190 people, are 3 of them. Among them, they have foreign guns, one with spears, and one with swords and shields to facilitate close combat!"

Now the Black Flag Army has specially invited some martial arts coaches, including Huang Feihong, a famous Guangdong martial arts maker. These people have designed a simple set of marksmanship and sword techniques to address the advantages of the French's high horse and the shortcomings of the Black Flag Army soldiers. The spear specializes in the upper three routes and the sword cards specializes in the lower three routes to make up for the shortcomings of the Black Flag Army in hand-to-hand combat.

"The chief of each post is called Qian Zong, and the adjutant is called General, which corresponds to the sixth and seventh ranks respectively."

"The above 'shou' is 'bat'. The first battalion includes three shousings and one personal soldier." Then Liu Shaoqing continued: "In this way, our reorganized battalion has about 600 people. With all our troops now, a total of 12 battalions will be reorganized. Each battalion's management is called Dusi and the battalion is called the garrison. It corresponds to the fourth and fifth ranks respectively."

Finally, the question that everyone is most concerned about is, "I would like to ask the young master, Fushuai, how can we divide these twelve camps?"

When it comes to the appointment of everyone, Liu Yongfu has to explain it himself.

"We are all old brothers for many years. Everyone should know how to distinguish the twelve battalions." Looking at the generals under his command, Liu Yongfu took out a piece of paper and read: "I announce that the twelve battalions are Huang Baozhu, Deng Yulin, Han Zaixun, Liu Wenqian, Li Tang, Liu Rongmei, Liu Chengliang, Pang Zhenyun, Huang Qingyun, Zhang Shentai, Ye Chenglin, and Zhu Bingqing."

Hey, what's going on?

The reason why everyone was concerned about the division of these twelve camps before was that there are more than twelve prisoners at the first level of the Black Flag Military Camp now, but no one wants to be inferior, so everyone is staring at the puzzled pit.

Now, the quota is clear, but everyone suddenly discovered that four people who should be on the list were unexpectedly not present. These four people were Huang Shouzhong, Wu Fengdian, Lian Mei and Yang Zhuen.

These four can be said to be the core team of the Black Flag Army and are also the old leaders in the army. No one should be without them.

But looking at the four people who looked like they were old gods, they didn’t seem to have suffered a loss. In addition, the Black Flag Army now has eight or nine thousand people. After all, there are only more than seven thousand people in these twelve battalions. Where did the remaining people go?

Well, there is insider.

Indeed, before Liu Yongfu announced the quota for the twelve battalions today, he had already found four brothers and had a deep discussion. Now, it is time to reveal the answer to the mystery.

"Haha, everyone must be curious about how the old Jiangs of our Black Flag Army deal with it. I don't hide it from you. In fact, above the 'battalion', our Black Flag Army has another layer of organization, that is the 'corps'!"

"The regiment training should naturally be a regiment. People used to call our Black Flag Army the "Liu regiment" because we were small in size before, and in their eyes, it was at most a regiment, not a regiment. Indeed, compared to the Hunan Army and the Huai Army, our two or three thousand people before were considered a regiment at most. But now it is different. We have grown stronger, no longer the Old Seventh Battalion, but the twelve major battalions. So I think this "Liu regiment" should be upgraded to an "army."

"In addition, everyone should be aware of the previous battles with the French. In addition to the first time, there were thousands of troops sent in the next few times. If one battalion and one battalion, the French would probably eat nothing left. The formation of a regiment above the battalion was also to fight with the foreign devils and make it easier to command. So I organized the twelve battalions into four regiments, including Huang Shouzhong, Wu Fengdian, Lian Mei and Yang Zhuen, each leading a regiment."

After my father assigned the battalions, Liu Shaoqing stood up for the second time and said, "In addition, in addition to three battalions, each regiment also has a personal whistle, two artillery teams and two short gun teams, so that each regiment will add more than 300 people. As for the short gun team, didn't you mention to everyone that you should find a way to deal with the French foreign cannons? This short gun team is just for dealing with foreign cannons."

When I heard this, many people were puzzled, "How to deal with short guns? This is a big difference."

Liu Shaoqing curled his lips and said helplessly: "This is also our helpless move now. We lack artillery, and the level of artillery control is far inferior to that of foreign devils. If we use artillery against cannons, we have no chance at all. Therefore, whenever we are about to fight, we need to send these two teams of short gunmen to the outside line. After the war begins, their mission is to secretly approach the artillery of the foreign devils, first use a long spear, and then quickly rush to the enemy's formation, and use a short spear to eliminate the artillery of the foreign devils as much as possible. Therefore, the soldiers of the short spear must be equipped with two guns, one long and one short, and the marksmanship must be good."

In the previous battle in Fusha Village, Liu Shaoqing discovered the magical use of short guns, so he had to come up with this worst when the artillery was not strong. Fortunately, Vietnam has many hills and jungles, which is conducive to concealing movements. If it is in the plains and wilderness, such tactics will not be used.

"Soldiers are practicing gun shooting now. As for short guns, I also asked my father to ask the Qing court to make up for us. According to our plan, at least five hundred short guns are required. In short, no matter how many are equipped in the end, the organization must be decided first."

After Liu Shaoqing finished speaking, Liu Yongfu looked at everyone, "Do you have any objections?"

For Huang Baozhu, Deng Yulin, Han Zaixun, Liu Wenqian, Li Tang, Liu Rongmei, Liu Chengliang, Pang Zhenyun, Huang Qingyun, Zhang Shentai, Ye Chenglin, Zhu Bingqing and others, they originally led one battalion, but now they are still one battalion. Although there is no lifting, their troops have increased a lot. Of course, there will be no objection. Lian Mei, Wu Fengdian and Yang Jieen will be promoted from the camp to the regiment, and there will be no objection. As for Huang Shouzhong, he originally had two battalions and one thousand people, but now he has become more than two thousand people in three battalions, and there will be no objection.

Everyone was very happy.
Chapter completed!