On the second day of the first lunar month, Li Guodong and He Xiuying got engaged. On the day of engagement, Li Guodong invited Han Dashan, Cao Lei, He Xing and other groups of confidant brothers to come to his new home to attend the engagement banquet.

The so-called new home is the three tiled houses built by Li Guodong and his brothers in the city. They were regarded as Li Guodong’s new home in Shabeigou, and now they are just used as a wedding house. Li Guodong gave He Xing’s family 100 taels of silver as a betrothal gift, setting the date of formal marriage on the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th.

From New Year's Eve to the fifth day of the first lunar month, except for the sentries who rotate every day, the rest of the city were on holiday. By the sixth day of the first lunar month, everything returned to normal.

The New Year has passed and the marriage has been settled. Li Guodong has arranged for young and strong men who have not officially become soldiers in the city to join the army starting from the sixth day of the first lunar month.

Although they are all from the city walls, there is a big difference between whether they can become soldiers. After joining the army, they can have three meals a day for free, and there is one or two taels of military pay per month. If they cannot become soldiers, from the start of the grain harvest this summer, the city walls will no longer support them and provide two meals a day for free. Instead, they need to farm themselves. Most of the harvest from farming must be handed over, leaving only food that can make a living. Some people will be arranged to go to a farm, or be a fisherman, or a herdsman. In short, they have to work to support themselves and have to hand over more than half of their labor income.

Although I had to do some physical work after joining the army, if I farm, the harvest would be my own. What's more, there are military pay that I can get, free meals and three meals a day, which is much more preferential than being a farmer.

Not every refugee can become a soldier. In addition to age restrictions, they must also open their mouths and look at their teeth like checking animals, then open their arms, and take off their clothes for checking. Checking the body is the first level. After passing the first level, the second level is the exam. Let refugees choose from any tests such as martial arts, strength, riding, bows and arduousness. Only when they pass can they be selected to join the army.

Among the refugees who signed up for the army, only one of the three was qualified to become Li Guodong's soldiers, and the rest could only go back to farm obediently.

Those who have passed the recruits team will first conduct three months of recruit training after registering and building the recruits, which is physical training, queue training, etc. After passing the recruits training, these recruits will be assigned to the troops based on the registered roster.

Every new recruit who passes the assessment test will be registered for the items they choose. When the troops are assigned, those who can ride horses will become cavalry; those who can shoot archers will become archers and firearms; those who are good at martial arts and good at short swords will become sword players; those who are good at using spears will become pikes, and those who are all-around can become pikes at night; those who are strong have their own uses, which is a good seedling. After all, there is a saying that one force can beat ten skills. After training, people with strong strength can become heavy armor infantry, while those with excellent endurance are good seedlings for training.

After passing the new recruits assessment, Li Guodong already had three thousand new recruits.

There were originally 1,500 veterans. Considering the elimination rate of the recruits, it is estimated that half of the three thousand recruits can pass the three-month training period, so that three thousand soldiers can be gathered.

According to Li Guodong's plan, three thousand troops, 1,500 cavalry, and 20 three-pound field artillery artillery were also incorporated into the cavalry, called flying cavalry artillery, equipped with two three-pound field artillery. There were 1,500 infantry, and among the infantry were divided into sword cards, spearmen, archers and firearm soldiers, 300 sword cards, 500 spearmen, 200 archers, and 500 firearm soldiers. Among the infantry's firearm soldiers, there were also artillery soldiers, equipped with two flying cannons, four Folang machine guns, and four tiger squat cannons. Heavy musket soldiers also belonged to artillery, with a total of 100 heavy musket soldiers. Excluding 140 gunners, the remaining 360 firearm soldiers will be equipped with bird guns.

The training of new recruits is very harsh. Even those who have served in the Yansui Border Army or the Taiyuan Camp soldiers must conduct the most basic queue training like the new recruits selected from the refugees.

According to Li Guodong's requirements, it is to practice in the winter and in the summer. Only after the most rigorous training can one become a qualified soldier. After three months of training for recruits, more than 3,000 recruits will be deducted from the eliminated people, and about 1,400 or 500 of them will be qualified, and the rest will be eliminated and become farmers.

The task of training new recruits was handed over to He Xing, who was responsible for the task of infantry generals, and Li Guodong himself was fucked with the craftsmen and began to create a new bird gun.

Li Guodong decided not to imitate the Lumi guns and bird guns used by the Ming Dynasty, but to go his own way to create improved bird guns used by his army. Of course, I had tried to build spring steel strips for flintlock rifles before, but the twenty spring steel strips that more than a dozen craftsmen spent more than a month to create were mostly either too hard or too soft, and could not be used at all. In the end, there were only three qualified products.

More than a dozen craftsmen spent more than a month to build three flintlock rifles. Such production efficiency forced Li Guodong to give up making his own flintlock rifle, so he should buy it honestly.

No matter how excellent a weapon is, it cannot be mass-produced, it is not a good weapon, it can only be a work of art. Since the way to make a homemade flintlock rifle cannot be understood, it is better to build a bird gun to make it faster.

Li Guodong considered that the effective range of the bird gun was a little shorter, only fifty steps. Compared with the Later Jin bows and arrows, the Ming army's bird gun lagged behind the Later Jin archers. After more than fifty steps, the bird gun could not hit the target at all. The effective range of the Lumi gun can reach a hundred steps, which is farther than the archers, but the Lumi gun also has great defects: the gun barrel is too thin and the bullets are too small, which leads to insufficient penetration and the distance is far, so it cannot penetrate the armor of the Later Jin army at all. In addition, the gun barrel is too thin, which also brings the problem of loading ammunition, and the loading speed is much slower than that of the bird gun.

If you want to have a long range and high accuracy, you must lengthen the gun barrel and increase the pressure of the chamber; if you want to have a strong power and fierce penetration, you must thicken the gun barrel.

In this way, a new bird's nest with a weight and caliber between a bird's gun and a heavy fire gun was created. Li Guodong decided to create a new bird's gun with a caliber of 0.4 inches, equivalent to the later thirteen millimeters, a barrel of four feet long, and a heavier weight than the Lumi gun. The weight is not known yet, and it will only be known after it is built.

Before building the bird gun, Li Guodong took the craftsmen to put the cast iron into the blast furnace, directly refine the iron, and then let the craftsmen hit it one by one.

This type of gun barrel imitates the double-layer gun barrel structure of the Lumi gun. First, a steel core is clamped on the workbench, then the red-burned iron is wrapped on the steel core, and a hammer is used to knock the iron plate into a tubular shape. After quenching, heat it and weld the gap while it is hot.
Chapter completed!