In mid-April of the 13th year of Chongzhen, the nine-headed bird issued an assembly order.

The gathered troops were rushing towards Huangzhou. On the Han River and the Yangtze River, there were continuous troop transport ships carrying the nine-headed bird flags, and on land, there were also convoys and cavalry teams moving continuously.

The number of troops sent this time was more than 30,000, and one-third of the troops from the three towns in Huguang were drawn. The eighth town Yunyang Town was mainly the troops, and some troops from the ninth town and the tenth town were drawn. Half of the troops from the last Eastern Expedition were left behind, and the new troops from the ninth and tenth towns were replaced to fight and train in actual combat.

Zhang Guozhu was in a long journey, "We organized the first combat brigade, and the three towns drew troops and horses and navy, land, and sea, infantry, and cyclists, with a total of more than 10,000 people. There are three such combat brigades."

Qi Yuan suddenly heard the useful information inside, "Is this Eastern Expedition going to divide troops into three groups?"

"I don't know if the troops are divided into three groups, but I will definitely not act together. We are going to harass the coast of Liaodong, and we are not going to go deep into Jianzhou. We definitely don't need to gather too many soldiers to act together."

The setting of combat brigades is actually not new, it is actually a camp. It has existed in ancient times. For example, during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the government army was usually dominated by the system of government troops. The court army was stationed everywhere in the form of military governments. Whenever there was a war, the government troops were mobilized. Then these unparalleled government troops were reorganized into a camp, divided into front, back, left and right departments, and appointed command officers, mixed infantry and cavalry, etc.

The First Combat Brigade consists of a brigade command, a reconnaissance department, a cavalry department, three infantry departments, plus a chariot department, a logistics support department, plus an artillery regiment, and a squadron.

The brigade command is composed of a headquarters and a brigade directly under the headquarters. The headquarters has combat offices, staff offices, logistics offices, and equipment offices everywhere.

It turned out that the Jiutou was a battalion, but now it was divided into combat brigades, but there was no battalion-level system. The largest was about 1,000 people at the brigade command center, the reconnaissance department had 500 horses, the three infantry departments had more than 3,000 people, plus two thousand people in the six artillery regiments, and more than 3,000 people in the squadron. There were more than 1,000 people in the Logistics Support Department, and the total number of this combat brigade exceeded 10,000.

Zhang Guozhu was originally a general of the infantry battalion, and is now appointed as the chief of staff of the First Combat Brigade. The commander of this brigade is Fu Shan and the deputy commander is Zhang Guodong.

"Don't the infantry have a battalion force? How to cancel the battalion level?"

"The first combat brigade does have more than 3,000 infantry, but these three infantry departments have drawn one from the infantry battalions of the three towns, and the same is true for the other two combat brigades." Zhang Guozhu explained that although doing so disrupted the original organization and deployment, from a distance, it can also strengthen control over the three towns and give the other two towns outside Yunyang Town the opportunity to train troops.

"Our three infantry departments are not simple. Apart from yours, the other two are famous. One is the Baigang Soldiers from Kuizhou and the other is the Zhenjian Soldiers from Hunan."

The Baigang Soldier was the chieftain of Shizhu, Chongqing, Sichuan, and Qin Liangyu. Because Qin Yimin was appointed as the deputy general of Hubei, the Chu army also had a Baigang Soldier. The Zhenzi Soldier was also a chieftain soldier, claiming to be one of the three strongest chieftain soldiers of the Ming Dynasty known as the Baigang Soldier and the Guangxi Wolf Soldier. The Baigang Soldier was a Tu soldier. The Zhenzi Soldier was a Miao soldier.

These town soldiers were extremely fierce and brave in combat. When reorganizing the Hunan New Army, they also reorganized the town soldiers of a battalion. This time, Liu Jun transferred the town soldiers of this battalion and divided them into three combat brigades.

In addition to being fierce, the town soldiers and the white-rod soldiers were also best at fighting in mountains. The Liaodong area is also a mountainous area. Liu Jun specially dispatched these two troops to the scene, which also showed obvious intentions.

A few days later, outside Huangzhou City, more than 30,000 people had gathered here and mixed them into three combat brigades. The Eastern Expedition General Command was established above, and there was a direct battalion of the headquarters. The three combat brigades below also established command centers, and the brigade headquarters and the brigade headquarters were organized. All officers at all levels were appointed.

At the First Battle Brigade Camp, a fight had just passed. The fight between the two townsmen and the white-rod soldiers were separated. A large group of military policemen wearing black armbands surrounded the school. Fu Shan looked coldly at the soldiers on both sides who were still red-eyed.

"What is our slogan? Nine-headed bird. Brothers! Join the military camp, we are brothers. What are brothers? Brothers are the ones who can hand over their backs to him on the battlefield, and they are people who share life and death. But you fight each other in the military camp and fight together, tell me why the fight started?"

After asking for a long time, I finally got the cause of the fight.

When a white-rod soldier passed by a town soldier, he looked at the Miao soldier for a more time. Then the Miao soldier opened his mouth and cursed, then both sides scolded each other, and then took action. Then each of them helped, which eventually turned into a fight between hundreds of people.

"Just because of a glance, I was going to fight?" Fu Shan was so angry that he didn't know what to say. These local soldiers were really nonsense. Zhang Guodong said to Fu Shan helplessly, "The Baigang soldiers are already very fierce, but the soldiers in the capital are even better than them. Usually, these Miao soldiers can fight their own people because of trivial matters, and they have to fight several times a day. If they encounter quarrels and fights with foreigners, they will be able to fight them all at once. Although we strictly enforce military discipline, we still can't correct them for a while."

"It's better to recruit more of our children from East E, be honest and willing to work hard, train hard, and have a tough role, and are no better than these barbarians."

"It's useless to say this now. This is what the marquis means. Just discipline yourself more carefully. Everyone is punished for one hour." Fu Shan announced the penalty decision.

After hearing about the punishment of military posture for an hour, a group of local soldiers with red eyes were all confused. They were not afraid of being beaten by military poker or whip, but they were afraid of being punished by military poker and being locked in a dark room.

After a whole hour of pain, the local soldiers were disbanded, but today they had to be responsible for cleaning the toilets and hygiene of the barracks.

A group of local soldiers kneaded their sore legs along the way, and went to clean the cottage honestly. Although they were very unhappy, no one dared to get up and make trouble. When they were in Hunan, they had just been reorganized into Changsha Town, and some people were not adapted to the strict military discipline, but those who took the lead in causing trouble were cut off their heads.

Later, under the lesson of standing in the military posture and closing the dark room, these people became much more honest.

Of course, it is impossible for them to be so honest if they just stand in a military posture and close the dark room. Many local soldiers endure it because they have a salary of at least two taels of silver per month. They perform well in training and can also receive additional rewards. Not to mention, although the training in the military camp is hard, they can eat well for four meals a day, and they also have clothes, shoes and socks.

After the life of the Nine-Headed Bird Army, no one was willing to go back to the mountains to live the hard days of not having enough food. This time, the town soldiers were transferred to Hubei to go to Liaodong to fight. After they came to Hubei, they found that this place was more prosperous than Changsha. They also saw the huge warships and countless cannons moored in the Yangtze River, and also saw how free and easy the soldiers of the Eighth Town were. After hearing that these Yunyang soldiers went to the Eastern Expedition, they all earned hundreds of taels of silver.

Hundreds of taels of silver were extremely attractive to the soldiers in the town.

On the side of the Yangtze River in Huangzhou, the newly built artillery factory is already being tested. This is a new artillery factory that uses the blast furnace method to train iron and then cast iron with iron. The main technology is European artillery technology. This technology has a history of a hundred years in Europe. Many European powers such as Spain, Netherlands, Britain, France and Sweden have mastered this technology. Liu Jun has now obtained this technology from craftsmen such as the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal.

Although iron cast cannons are not as good as bronze cannons, they can be cheaper in construction, and the materials are not limited by too many materials. In addition, the cast cannons are lighter, especially for naval cannons used on warships, the cannons on ships are larger, and the barrel of the bronze cannon is relatively soft. When circular shells are fired many times, the shells pass through the cannon barrel in an uneven way, which easily deforms them. Therefore, bronze is not suitable for making heavy cannons.

Now this new gun factory uses the overall casting gun barrel technology and uses the most advanced boring technology of the overall casting gun barrel at this time. This makes the gun more accurate and standardized, and each gun is no longer an independent product.

At the same time, because the standards of artillery seized from various countries are different, the types of artillery are complex and diverse, making the supply of ammunition a very troublesome problem and a heavy burden, and the role of artillery is reduced. In order to change this situation, Europeans have standardized artillery.

Liu Jun now also standardizes artillery. Field guns have set three models: four pounds, eight pounds, twelve pounds, two models, and four standard models of siege cannons, twelve pounds, twenty-four pounds, and four standard models of ship-borne long cannons, twenty-four pounds and thirty-two pounds, and sixty-four pounds.

A new type of shell factory was built, specializing in the production of new type of solid bombs, shotguns and explosive bombs.

The Nine-Headed Bird has formed its own gun standard, namely the Nine-Headed Bird’s Twelve-Year-Type, 4, 8, 12, 24, 32, 64.

The artillery outside this set of standards was changed to be transported to various castles for use as city defense cannons. The old-style red artillery was also changed to be used in the castle. As for the Bolang machine and the light firepower guns such as the Tiger Squat and the Milu, they were changed to melee support firepower in use, and even became the heavy firepower at the department and flag-level, and were uniformly included in the light cannon range.

Before sending troops in the Eastern Expedition, the Musket House also launched two new muskets with relatively complete performance after the test. One is the short flintlock musket for cavalry, and the other is the long flintlock musket for infantry.

Liu Jun replaced all the cavalry's weapons, and the cavalry and scouts' weapons were changed to two cavalry guns, one long musket, one spear, and one cavalry knife, no longer equipped with bows and arrows.

The infantry changed one-third of the original to the musketeers and added half of the infantry equipped with new flintlock muskets.

The artillery was equipped with four-pound, eight-pound twelve-pound cannons in field battles, and another twenty-four-pound mortar cannons, which eliminated the equipment of a thousand-pound folang machine.
Chapter completed!