When Andre, who claimed to be the representative of the British king, stood in front of the horse-drawn railway, estimating whether a horse could be used as 20 or 25 horses for pulling goods on such iron bars, Zhu Youzhen was sitting on a wooden ceremonial platform in the playground of the Army Military Academy.

On the playground below the ceremonial platform, the non-commissioned officers and students of the Army Military Academy, centered on the class, are standing there in the order of their daily training. Compared with the new army in the barracks of the university, the more than 1,000 non-commissioned officers and cadets here are obviously more orderly.

Zhu Youzhen, who was sitting on the podium, looked at these silent and upright non-commissioned officers and students, and suddenly felt like he was in the opening military training period of the university in the future.

He shook his head and expelled the nonsense in his head, and then nodded to Mao Yuanyi beside him, signaling that the vice principal, who was also the vice principal of the Army Military Academy, could get up and announce the graduation ceremony of the first batch of cadets of the Army Military Academy.

Originally, this graduation ceremony was supposed to be held a few months ago, but because of the war between Lin Dan Khan and the right-wing Mongol tribes, some of the cadets of the military academy were urgently transferred to the front-line troops, so this graduation ceremony has been extended to this day.

Only about 129 students have completed the six-month course and graduated from the first batch. Among them, about 56 cadets were urgently recruited to the front-line combat units. In the war, 11 students died and 14 were injured, and although the casualty rate was as high as 4 percent, Zhu Youzhen still felt that it was worth it.

At least on the battlefield, none of these cadets who graduated from the Army Military Academy fled to avoid the war. It was precisely because of the leadership of these cadets that the Ming army, which was temporarily formed from the armies of various frontiers, did not have the phenomenon of large-scale rout and desertion as in the Liaodong battlefield.

In this regard, civilian officials such as Yuan Chonghuan, who once did not attach importance to the military academy education system, as well as the generals in the border armies of Xuanhua and Datong, have also begun to slowly change their attitudes. These cadets are far inferior to the so-called warriors in the army, both in terms of mental outlook and organizational discipline.

Even those generals who have been trained since childhood may not be weaker than the cadets in terms of tactical command, but their grasp of the overall situation and their mutual cooperation in combat are also not the opponents of these cadets.

Of course, a large part of the reason is that there are many contradictions between the generals in the army, and they are wary and suspicious of each other, so they cannot focus all their energy on fighting against the enemy.

In the nearly 6 months of living together, the cadets have established the most basic relationship of trust with each other, so they will not sit back and watch their allies fight alone. In addition to the relationship between these cadets and the senior commanders of the wartime base camp, there is also a teacher-student relationship established in the school.

Therefore, the reorganized Ming army under the command of the wartime base camp was the first time that it broke the gap between the territory and the gateway in the Ming army, and became a new-style army established by the friendship of teachers, students and classmates.

Although this army has not yet fully formed its own consciousness, in terms of its organization and discipline, it has far surpassed the old Ming army and the Mongol army, which was still in the tribal military system.

The war that defeated Lin Dan Khan not only brought great prestige to Chongzhen, but more importantly, the army generals who had always been resistant to military reform had to temporarily stop fighting.

Since the imperial court had a large army in its hands that was large enough to defeat the Mongols, the generals of these armies immediately realized that the imperial court still had enough force to subdue them.

Especially the soldiers of the Ming army in Xuanhua and Datong who witnessed this war, they did not want to be the chicken in the imperial court as an example of killing chickens and monkeys. Moreover, after several months of reshuffling of the General Staff and the wartime base camp, the generals of these two border towns also found that the force in their hands was probably less than that of the Mongolian right-wing tribes now attached to the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, in just one month, the generals of the border towns from Jinzhou to Lanzhou sent congratulatory messages to the capital to celebrate the victory of Fengzhen, and made some oaths of allegiance to Chongzhen in the congratulatory messages. Only then did Zhu Youzhen feel that the pressure to carry out the reform of the military system was much less.

He was in a somewhat relaxed mood, and then he thought about holding a graduation ceremony for the first batch of cadets of the Army Military Academy. On the one hand, it is to thank and reward these cadets for their outstanding performance on the battlefield; On the other hand, it is also to cultivate the sense of honor of the non-commissioned officers and students in the army officer school, so as to change the phenomenon of civility, nobility and military cheapness that exists in the reality of the Ming Dynasty.

One of the most solemn parts of this graduation ceremony is the knife awarding ceremony, in which Zhu Youzhen will personally award the graduation command knives of the Army Military Academy to 118 graduates of the first phase and 11 outstanding cadet representatives representing the cadets who died in battle.

The style of these command knives was personally selected by Zhu Youzhen, who abandoned the knife style commonly used in the Ming army, nor did he adopt the Japanese-style * style, but referred to the command knife used by the honor guard of the three armed forces at the military parade in later generations.

These command knives are 95 centimeters long, 81 centimeters long and 25 centimeters wide, and the knife shape is straight. The steel used for the blade is all folded and forged steel, for which a small hydraulic forging hammer has been developed.

The command knife is composed of four parts: the blade, the handguard, the handle and the scabbard, the scabbard is made of shark skin, the handle is made of brass, the outside is hand-wrapped in genuine leather, and wound with gold and silver decorative thread. There are two types of gauntlets, one is a gold dragon and the other is a silver tiger head.

There are a total of 17 knives in the Dragon Gauntlet, six of which will be awarded to the six best students among the graduates, while the remaining 11 will be awarded to the 11 students who died in battle, and the command knives of the other Tiger Head Gauntlets will be awarded to the rest of the students, and each command knife will be engraved with the name of the student who was awarded the knife.

Zhu Youzhen, who stood on the stage and repeated the knife giving action 129 times, felt that his arms were a little numb in the end. However, the students who were given the knife all seemed very excited, and they couldn't put down the command knife in their hands. This made Zhu Youzhen, who was a little tired, feel that this effort was not in vain.

After the graduation ceremony, Chongzhen talked with the administrators of the Army Military Academy for a while. During the meeting, the director of academic affairs, who is in charge of the daily work of the Army Officers' Military Academy, reported to Chongzhen: "... Now that the school has more and more teachers and students, and nearly 700 new students will enter the school next month, it is clear that the campus in the city is not enough.

Although the Fengtai camp has been built with a contour, the student dormitory has not yet been completed. Weather like this is obviously not suitable for new students to stay in the open air.

However, the minister heard that the area of the Naval Academy is vast, but the number of cadets is only a few hundred, and many places are idle. Therefore, the minister wants to ask His Majesty's permission to let the Naval Officer Academy lend some school buildings to the school, and then move there after the completion of the new campus in Fengtai Daying. ”

Looking at the surrounding military academy instructors nodding their heads, Zhu Youzhen hesitated and didn't agree immediately, he asked instead: "How is the school system of these cadets arranged in the military academy now?" ”

Soon after, someone reported to him that "the general subject cadets selected from the army are still six months old." The period is extended to eight months for cavalry scientists, one year for trainees in topographic surveying and two years for artillery and staff officers.

In addition, the adult cadets who apply for the civilian examination to enter the military academy are three years of school, and the junior cadets aged 12-14 are six years old. At present, the latter two types of cadets account for about one-tenth of the total number of cadets in military schools. ”

Zhu Youzhen lowered his head and thought for a while, and finally agreed: "It's okay, let the Naval Officer Academy set aside a part of the area for you to use, but after the construction of the Fengtai camp is completed, you must remember to return the school building to others..."

When Chongzhen left the Army Military Academy with Wang Chengen and his attendants, he ran to the Siyi Pavilion. I'm going to meet the representative of the British Crown from England.

According to common sense, for such envoys from distant overseas vassal countries, they should first go through the process of identity verification by the Ministry of Rites, and then arrange personnel to teach these Yi people the etiquette of going to the court to meet them, and finally to submit their credentials.

However, the officials of the Ming Dynasty had heard of the Franciscans, and knew that Spain and the Dutch had never heard of the Kingdom of Britain. The officials who received the report were very suspicious that the Yi people had fabricated a non-existent country and used it to defraud them of the benefits of the tributary trade.

If it was before Wanli, for these Yi people who wanted to cheat and gain benefits, the Ming officials would probably turn a blind eye, after all, it was a good political achievement to pay tribute, which showed that my Ming government was harmonious and prestigious.

But now, the treasury is empty, and the Ming Dynasty really can't afford to play this kind of national policy of caring for distant people. Therefore, the officials of the Ministry of Rites casually stuffed this report into a corner, and did not take him seriously.

However, the Chinese captain who accompanied Andre came through another channel and passed the news to Chongzhen. Zhu Youzhen didn't think that this envoy was really a messenger sent by the British king, after all, he had never heard of this incident in his history.

He didn't want to be made fun of by future generations with a letter forged by a businessman. However, he was very keen to make contact with the Englishman, for the English were now not only enemies of Spain, but soon they would also be enemies of the Dutch.

For the Ming Dynasty, an emerging power ready to challenge the European order was obviously easier to deal with than the Dutch and the Spaniards. And the fact that the British now have a weak presence in Asia also determines that the British are more likely to become maritime allies of the Ming Dynasty.