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The news of Vézé's coronation excited Vézé's subordinates for a while, but Vézé, as the person involved, was too indifferent about it, and the excitement soon died down.
Yang Xiuqing gave Vézé the designations of the Eleventh Army to the Twentieth Army, and Vézé's army expanded very quickly. In order to make their families a soldier's family, and because Anhui was a poor place and joining the army was a good way to make a living, a lot of Anhui locals joined the army. Vézé's army expanded to fifty thousand soldiers like a balloon.
The fifty thousand soldiers were organized into ten armies, each of which had five thousand soldiers. The Eleventh Army served as a training army, and the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Armies were the three main armies.
Vézé had never underestimated Yang Xiuqing's capabilities, especially when such a hero made unusual moves. Vézé would be even more careful. Considering Vézé's achievements from Wuchang to Nanjing, the food campaign, and the fact that he had suppressed Vézé for such a long time, Vézé wouldn't have to be coronated as a king.
Even if Qin Rigang gave Vézé part of the authority in Anhui, there was no reason for Vézé to be coronated as a king right now. If there was a reason behind it, Vézé believed that Yang Xiuqing probably already felt that the northern expedition was not going well.
However, it was Yang Xiuqing who made the northern expedition strategy, and he couldn't order the Northern Expedition Army to return when the Northern Expedition Army wasn't seriously threatened. Vézé could tell that the Northern Expedition Army had suffered a tragic failure, but Yang Xiuqing didn't know what the Northern Expedition Army was facing thousands of kilometers away. In addition, the Taiping Army had been fighting on the move without logistics. Maybe a few days ago, when the situation was in a mess, the Qing Army would show some flaws, and the Taiping Army would seize the opportunity to turn the tables.
Vézé regretted that even a great hero like Yang Xiuqing had fallen into such a mistake in the current situation. In the meeting of the General Staff, Vézé discussed the strategy with the generals of the General Staff. The result was completely different from what Yang Xiuqing had hoped for.
"Even if the Northern Expedition Army takes Beijing, the Manchu Qing court won't perish. They can retreat to many places. On the other hand, the Northern Expedition Army won't abandon Beijing. They'll definitely choose to defend it, so they'll lose their last advantage of mobility. Of course, the premise of this prediction is that the Northern Expedition Army can take Beijing. For now, the Northern Expedition Army won't be able to do that. "
"In order to rescue the Northern Expedition Army that's surrounded, we have to send reinforcements. The reinforcements can only be our troops. "Vézé didn't want to hide this, and it was useless to hide it. Among the armies of the Taiping Rebellion, Vézé's troops were closest to the north.
Vézé believed that the purpose of sending reinforcements this time was to bring the Northern Expedition Army back. If that was the case, if the Commander-in-Chief of the reinforcements was lower than Deputy Prime Minister Lin Fengxiang, he wouldn't be able to command the entire army. One of the main reasons for this conferment was that Yang Xiuqing wanted to solve this problem as soon as possible.
"If that's the case, we might as well prepare the field army. Three armies, fifteen thousand brothers, and train them strictly. Only with such elite troops can we safely go south after rescuing the troops. If we send out weak troops, we'll lose our lives too, not to mention rescuing the troops. "Vézé explained why he wanted to strengthen the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Armies.
"Is this why we need to do the first rotation in the General Staff Headquarters?" Wei Changrong smiled.
Theoretically, the General Staff Headquarters had to do a personnel transfer every once in a while. The staff officers at all levels would be transferred to various military command positions. Then, a batch of people from various military command positions would be transferred to the General Staff Headquarters. However, the scale of the transfer this time was too large. The Eleventh Army was commanded by Wei Changrong, the Twelfth Army was commanded by Ke Gongyu, the Thirteenth Army was commanded by Ruan Xihao, the Fourteenth Army was commanded by Lei Hu, and the Fifteenth Army was commanded by Hu Chenghe.
The Twelfth Army was stationed in Luzhou, and the Fifteenth Army was stationed in Shouzhou. Although these two armies were unlikely to participate in the Northern Expedition, they supported the strategic points of the Anhui front. As for Zhang Yingchen, who had been sent out, he was now the Sixteenth Army's commander. He was stationed in Chuzhou, directly facing the Manchu Qing Jiangbei Camp. Although the loss of Chuzhou would have a limited impact on the entire Anhui Taiping army, Vézé didn't want to deal with it. Once Zhang Yingchen could lead the Sixteenth Army to withstand the pressure from the Qing Army Jiangbei Camp and hold on in Chuzhou. When Vézé returned from the Northern Expedition, he could use his elite troops and Zhang Yingchen's Sixteenth Army to defeat the Qing Army Jiangbei Camp.
But this was a matter for the future. Among the other troops, the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Armies were stationed in Luzhou, and the Nineteenth Army was stationed in Shouzhou. The Twentieth Army was now stationed in Tong City. The troops were ready to gradually retreat to Luzhou when Qin Rigang's strength was developed. Until the area south of Luzhou was handed over to Qin Rigang.
After determining the strategy, Vézé handed over the administrative work to Bi Qingshan, who had performed well in the grain tax payment, and he was appointed as the provincial commissioner. Since late September, the troops had carried out comprehensive training activities.
Luzhou was a good place. Vézé had finally found pyrite in this area. Although the overall output was not large with the current mining capacity. But Vézé didn't want to use pyrite to smelt iron and steel. He wanted to crush the pyrite and heat it at high temperature to produce sulfur dioxide. The military factories already had the experience of using sulfur to make sulfuric acid. Even so, looking at the black "industrial sulfuric acid", the military factories were dumbfounded.
Fortunately, although the color of the sulfuric acid was bad, the quality was not as bad as imagined. The amount of mercury fulminate needed for the fire caps was relatively small. As long as they followed the steps when producing mercury fulminate in large quantities, the rest would be much easier.
Moreover, the four mercury fulminate accidents had killed more than ten experienced technical workers in the anti-personnel troops. The factory learned from this painful experience and began to work safely under the ISO9000 quality control regulations proposed by Vézé. Everyone had seen the explosion of mercury fulminate in the laboratory. In order to better protect their own lives, the implementation of safety production basically did not encounter any pressure. On the contrary, everyone's enthusiasm for chemistry far exceeded Vézé's imagination. Vézé simply handed over the work of firing glass to the department in charge of the production of mercury fulminate.
After all, producing products in transparent glassware had good observation conditions. Even if there was an explosion, everyone would be able to see the clues in advance and avoid casualties as much as possible.
As for the military department that processed the fire cap guns, they were relatively happy recently. After hundreds of failed experiments, Vézé's high-carbon steel smelting crucible had finally succeeded a few times. With high-carbon steel cutters, the efficiency of drilling holes in gun barrels was clearly increased. Crucible steel was much stronger than quenched iron. In the time it took to process a gun barrel using quenched iron, crucible steel could process at least five barrels. Coupled with a specialized hydraulic drilling machine, the efficiency could be increased by more than ten times. The fifteen thousand fire cap gun barrels had already been completed. On the contrary, the production of gun stocks, bayonets, and other accessories was relatively slow.
Seeing that the training had gone smoothly into the beginning of November, the Qing Army finally had some movement. The first news that Vézé received was that the Qing Army had strengthened their forces in Fengyang. Furthermore, on Hongze Lake, traces of the Qing Army's marines had gradually appeared.
The Nian Army in Fengyang reported to Vézé that the Qing Army had recently sent a large amount of supplies to Fengyang. According to the Nian Army, the total amount of gunpowder had reached tens of thousands of kilograms. As soon as he heard that there were tens of thousands of kilograms of gunpowder, Vézé immediately submitted.
After careful selection and strict training, Vézé's fifteen thousand troops had roughly taken shape. However, if he wanted to train this army to an even stronger level, he first had to have enough logistical supplies. As for the other Taiping army, they also trained on a daily basis. Similarly, they trained with clear objectives. Compared to the training of the other Taiping army, the training of Vézé's troops was not only clear, but it was also a kind of training that could be improved continuously. The improvements included equipment, training, and the entire system.
This kind of training greatly increased the fighting strength of the troops. At the same time, this kind of training consumed a large amount of Vézé's logistical supplies. Not only did Vézé know how to make mercury fulminate, he also knew the manufacturing processes of several types of smokeless gunpowder. Dissolve nitrocellulose in ether and ethanol, add an appropriate amount of stabilizer, and form a gelatinous substance. After being pressed into sheets, cut into strips, and hardened by drying, one could obtain a very practical smokeless gunpowder. The problem was that the current production capacity could not provide a stable supply of ether to Vézé.
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