I want to be emperor

Chapter 357 The Old-Fashioned and Stiff New Chu Army

It's just that these officers who came from the official classes of the Army Officer Academy are not without faults, that is, they are too rigid, or they only know what is taught in the military academy.

Therefore, when they lead troops to fight, they seldom have flexibility. They fight as the instructors in the school teach them.

Watching them lead troops to fight is like watching a big mentally retarded fight with a group of dull little mentally retarded, and sometimes you will be pissed off...

This point has been said by many senior generals, and even reflected on Luo Zhixue's side, saying that it is to increase the number of teachers in the military academy and teach more tactics...

However, these seemingly old-fashioned officers were disliked by some senior generals in the existing main force, but in the Second Guards Division and the newly formed Tenth Division, they performed far beyond ordinary officers.

On November [-], Luo Zhixue watched the live-fire exercise organized by the Tenth Division, which had just arrived in Jinling City by boat.

During the exercise, the officers from the official squad who led the exercise looked staid and stiff. Nima even had to tidy up the appearance of the military uniform before getting on the horse...

The movement of wielding the knife to command is exactly the same, highly consistent!
The most important thing is that the soldiers they lead are also like this!
When the soldiers they command perform various tactical actions, they seem to be neat and orderly like robots, but they always make people feel very stiff...

How should I put it, it doesn't look like a human... It looks like a group of robots.

Especially when they continued to advance in line, there happened to be a ditch with stagnant water in front of one of the infantry posts.

But they still stupidly lined up and continued to advance, ignoring the water-logged ditch in front of them. Without any hesitation, they stepped in directly, crossed the water-logged ditch and continued to advance as a whole team.

Seeing this scene, Luo Zhixue immediately stood up and stared at the queue ahead!

These robot-like soldiers are the line infantry in his mind!

What is the best line infantry?

Develop an instinct for following orders.

And under the command, he can ignore everything in the outside world, and still execute his tactical actions mechanically and rigidly.

Luo Zhixue didn't know how the soldiers in the later modern warfare were trained, or what specific requirements they had for the soldiers.

However, after several years of experience in leading troops and fighting in battles, Luo Zhixue has gained some experience of his own.

In his opinion, when the two armies are fighting, the individual combat skills of the soldiers are not very important, because when fighting in large-scale formations, it doesn't matter if the soldiers' personal martial arts are stronger or weaker.

What really matters is the formation.

There is no army without an array. This is true for the army with cold weapons, and it is also true for the Chu army's current mixed army of firearms and cold weapons, and it is even more true for the Tenth Division, a new type of army that uses sudden-fire rifles.

Because the formation of the new army is thinner, there are often only three rows or two rows at all.

Once the formation is in turmoil, loopholes will appear and lead to the collapse of the entire battle line.

In order to form a formation and let the soldiers change the formation according to the orders of the officers, in addition to being familiar with the formation of the soldiers, it is more important to make the soldiers resolutely obey the orders.

If you are asked to take one step forward, you must never take two steps forward.

If you are asked to take two steps back, you will never stay where you are.

Only in this way can timely changes in the formation be maintained on the battlefield, and the complete formation can still be maintained.

This is very important.

Being able to change the formation in time and maintain the integrity of the formation means that you can flexibly move and change formations on the battlefield according to the situation, so as to avoid your own weaknesses from being caught by the enemy, especially the enemy cavalry.

You must know that in the many battles of the Ming army in the field before the Chu army, many times it was because of their own cavalry maneuvering, when the Ming army was forced to change formation, the Ming army did not change formation in time and did not respond properly. The cavalry seized the opportunity to go up and fight fiercely, which eventually caused holes in the entire formation, and was completely defeated after being pressed by the main infantry of the Chu army.

In addition to this, the soldiers are also required to be able to maintain their formation when they are hit by various long-range firepower from the enemy.

If one person was killed or injured in the front, the ones in the back row had to make up for it in time, and the comrades who were killed or injured in the front were still crying in pain, so they had to turn a blind eye and go straight up to make up for it.

And this requires very high discipline for the soldiers.

If the discipline is a little worse, it is easy for the soldiers to hold back and eventually lead to the collapse of the formation.

Before, when the Chu army trained new recruits, they placed special emphasis on discipline, but there were not many Chu army troops that could do this.

Not to mention the garrison army. Although the morale of the garrison army in the Chu army is higher than that of the Ming army, it does not mean that their discipline will be much better. If the casualties are slightly larger, those who should collapse will still collapse.

It can only be said that their ability to withstand casualties is stronger than that of the Ming army, but it is also limited.

In the main force, each army is different, and the gap is relatively large.

The powerful First Division is much better, as for other units, it is slightly worse, and some of the newly formed units are not even better than the garrison. For example, the Eighth Division fighting on the front line in Hefei, the performance Not very good.

The first division can become the number one trump card unit in the Chu army, and its combat effectiveness even surpasses the first guard division. It is not only because of their better equipment and better physical fitness of the soldiers, but because the soldiers in the first division Having trained longer and fought more, they are more disciplined and more resilient in the face of casualties.

Let's put it this way, the first division and the eighth division are fighting each other.

The casualties of the two sides in the early stage must be similar, because the weapons and equipment of the two sides are similar, and the lethality can also be similar.

But when the casualties reached a certain level, it would definitely be the Eighth Division that collapsed first, not the First Division.

When the eighth division's formation collapses, the first division will quickly expand its results, and finally win the entire battle, and the final casualty ratio will be exaggerated.

And now, Luo Zhixue's unit in front of him had been temporarily assigned the designation of the Fifth Mixed Battalion not long ago, and now it has been renamed the Tenth Division, hundreds of soldiers.

Luo Zhixue saw in them the shadow of the elite soldiers of the First Division.

No, not just Shadow, even better in discipline.

Although these soldiers did not seem to be as elite as the soldiers in the First Division, their personal combat skills, courage and other things were inferior, but they were better than the soldiers of the First Division in terms of discipline.

And this is enough!
Luo Zhixue stood up at this time, and the other senior army and navy generals who accompanied him to watch the exercise also saw the way.

This provisional Fifth Mixed Battalion, no, is something for the soldiers of the Tenth Division.

In the end, everyone, including Luo Zhixue, turned their attention to Brigadier General Ji Baolin, the former commander of the Fifth Mixed Battalion and now the deputy commander of the Tenth Division.

Luo Zhixue spoke first: "Ji Aiqing, this soldier trained well, it seems that you have worked hard and worked hard."

Hearing Luo Zhixue's personal compliments, Ji Baolin immediately stepped forward to salute, then bowed his head and said respectfully: "Sharing your worries is what a minister should do, it's not hard!"

Luo Zhixue chuckled: "I have also personally trained soldiers before, so it's not hard to stay on the training ground every day."

"Okay, don't say too many polite words, write down your experience in military training and let others have a look!"

Then he said to Xu Zhixian beside him: "You go back and organize another seminar, and conduct a special seminar on the training methods of the Fifth Mixed Battalion!"

After speaking, Luo Zhixue glanced at the other generals again, and then continued: "What are you discussing? Obey the order!"

"There is no army without formation, and the formation comes from discipline. Since ancient times, a strong army is an army with excellent military discipline!"

"And where does discipline come from? It is absolute obedience to orders!"

"Obeying orders is the bounden duty of a soldier. It is the most basic and core point!"

After Luo Zhixue made a simple speech on the spot, he once again emphasized the importance of obeying orders. The generals below, even the few generals on the navy side, lowered their heads and listened quietly.

People with a flexible mind have already begun to think about how to make achievements in this and get Luo Zhixue's approval.

After all, His Majesty is on this occasion today, and he brought up these things in a serious manner. This is tantamount to directly telling a group of generals that this is a shortcut to promotion and fortune. The attitude of a hero is definitely of great benefit.

Ji Baolin is also very aware of this point, so now he looks like he is listening respectfully, but in fact he is already smiling inwardly.

He didn't expect that a group of old-fashioned recruits he trained by mistake would attract so much attention from His Majesty.

In fact, it was not his original intention to train these soldiers to look dumb.

In the first half of the year, he was ordered to serve as the battalion commander of the Fifth Mixed Battalion, and explored various tactics of using sudden-fire rifles.

At that time, in order to be able to better explore the operation method and new tactics of the flintlock gun, the soldiers were prevented from taking some habitual actions of using the matchlock gun.

The soldiers in the Fifth Mixed Battalion were all fresh recruits, and the officers, especially the sentry officers, deputy sentry officers, captains and other officers in charge of the grassroots were all graduates assigned from the military academy.

To put it bluntly, it is a group of recruits and a group of novice officers.

These novice officers have not yet experienced actual combat, and their training is very rigid. They are basically trained according to the books, and they are executed very well.

There are detailed regulations on how far the company is when lining up, how much the angle of leg raising is, how far to walk a step, how many steps to walk when hearing a certain slogan, and so on.

In short, many rules and regulations have been formulated according to the book, and even the time required for soldiers to eat and take a bath has been stipulated...

Then as they practiced, these soldiers gradually became what they are now: they obeyed orders, but they lost their combat autonomy.

Once there is no officer to command, the soldiers will fall into extreme confusion, it is impossible to do what they want to do next, and they will not even escape...

If you ask him why he doesn't run away, he will say: I didn't receive the order to run away...

To put it simply, a group of elm-headed people who take it for granted have trained a group of soldiers who only know orders, and even form an instinct to obey orders, losing their combat autonomy.

(End of this chapter)