It's late autumn, and the sun is no longer blazing a few months ago, but lazily giving warmth to the world. It's a sunny morning, and the weather is so comfortable that it's refreshing. It's a great day for a picnic.

In the wilderness outside Paris, a large group of people are enjoying the warmth of autumn at this moment.

Soldiers in flat-topped tubular caps and blue shirts, rifles on their shoulders, marched slowly forward under the guidance of officers and drummers.

They don't move fast because they have to keep their formations neat, but their uniform pace, movements, and uniforms still make people feel the power and pressure of the military machine.

After walking for some time, Lucien-Leflair stopped, then made a gesture and ordered the soldiers to unfold.

The soldiers quickly formed a three-row horizontal line with the soldiers in the middle of the column as the axis, and years of training made it as easy for the soldiers to do this most basic formation change as it was to eat and drink.

After the soldiers had switched formations, Lucien paced back and forth a few steps to check the formation, then nodded lightly in satisfaction. Then, the command was called.

"Forward!"

The first platoon of soldiers raised their guns forward, and then the third platoon of soldiers marched forward at the same neat pace.

Lucien Leflair followed up on the edge of the line at the same pace. As he walked, he looked at the target in the distance, mentally estimating the distance, and his footsteps did not stop for a moment.

As the distance grew closer, he felt as if he had gone back years in a trance. His ears seemed to ring the unrelenting gunfire of his comrades-in-arms who were still in Algeria at the moment. The roars and cheers made even his face suddenly tingle, as if he was constantly being scraped by the desert sand in the storm.

The scarecrow in front of you. It looks like the Arabs with their headscarves.

No! He shook his head gently, now it's not in Algeria, it's in peaceful Paris!

Not letting the confusion of thoughts disturb the judgment, and when he felt that the distance was right, Lucien stopped, and with it the drummer's trumpet, and the soldiers stood still.

"Ready!" Lucien shouted.

With this password. The standard rifles in the hands of the soldiers, MLE1842-type smoothbore guns, were raised at the same time.

"Aim!" The Lucien-Leflair saber is pointing forward, pointing ahead.

The soldiers squinted their eyes and began to aim their guns at targets dozens of meters away.

After a moment's pause. Lucien-Leflair swung his saber down and issued the final order.

"Fire!"

The soldiers in the first row pulled the trigger at the same time, which drove the hammer on the body of the gun, which then ignited the fire cap. In an instant. Almost every musket made a loud noise at the same time. The white mist rising from the muzzles of each gun also instantly enveloped the entire horizontal team.

"Bang!" Dozens of guns sounded almost like a loud roar due to the almost simultaneous salvo fire.

The half-crouched soldiers, who had already fired, stopped paying attention to the front and carefully reloaded their guns, while the soldiers in the back waited intently for new orders.

"Ready!"

"Aim!"

"Fire!"

Another new salvo.

In this era, even though firearms have been improved over many years, the hit rate of rifles and guns is still relatively regrettable. Therefore, in order to pursue the maximum damage to the opponent, the line tactics emphasizing formation and salvo fire became necessary for the infantry.

Looking at the performance of his subordinates, Lucien nodded slightly.

Very good. It's much better than before, and finally has a little bit of what an army should look like.

But. What needs to be said is still to be said.

"Don't worry about training, training is to save your lives as much as possible! If you don't train enough, when you actually go into battle, you will easily lose your movements and make all sorts of fatal mistakes. The gunpowder in the firing slot did not lead to the main charge, the flint was used and forgot to be replaced, the muzzle residue accumulated too much, etc., etc., etc., all of which were enough to kill you! Lucien looked at his new subordinates with a very serious look in his eyes, "I am training you strictly now, just to save your lives when the time comes!" Unless you feel that you don't have to go to war in your life, then give me a good listen and execute it well! Does anyone think so? ”

In front of the company commander's lecture, everyone listened respectfully, and it was obvious that everyone was very convinced by the new company commander's words.

"Very well, it seems that you still remember that you are a soldier, a soldier who may go to war at any time." Lucien nodded.

After the shooting training, Lucien decided to move on to the next step.

"Get on the bayonet!"

The soldiers took their bayonets from their bodies, loaded them on the body of the guns as fast as they could, and waited for Zuihou's order.

A moment of silence seemed like a century, but it seemed like just a moment.

"Charge!"

With this roar, the soldiers let out their own shouts, and then rushed towards the opposite target like a tidal wave of guns.

Lucien, on the other hand, stood still, silently relieved as he watched his subordinates rush farther and farther away.

God knows how much effort it took to transform these soldiers and make them obedient!

Unlike Prussia, which had a universal compulsory military service system in which young people had to serve in the army for a short period of time when they reached their old age, France at this time had a system of combining compulsory and substitute soldiers - France did not require every young man to serve, and allowed the young man who was drafted to pay for someone to serve for him (as is the case with the average middle-class family), and the service was longer. Engels once half-mockingly called this French army a "semi-mercenary".

The Franco-Prussian military system has its own advantages and disadvantages, and the Puguo system can ensure that its youth are basically trained, and then it can retain a large reserve and reserve corps in addition to the regular army; The French system ensures that soldiers and officers have sufficient combat experience and excellent combat skills.

In the case of a skirmish or a medium-sized war, the quality of the soldiers can lead to the victory of the smaller side. However, in a large-scale all-out war, the excellent quality of a small number of soldiers may be able to obtain a relatively good casualty ratio in the engagement, but it cannot withstand the surging army of millions of enemy countries.

And most of the people in Lucien's company are substitute soldiers, and many of them are veterans who have served for many years. If it weren't for his bravery and personality that he liked the soldiers, I am afraid that he would not be able to suppress the non-commissioned officers and veterans in the company.

Lucien has always firmly believed that the foundation of an army in any era is strict military discipline, so since he took office, he has swept away the procrastination and fatigue of his predecessors, strictly disciplined his subordinates, and practiced many times according to his own standards.

Although there were not many people who directly disobeyed the order, many of them either deliberately procrastinated, or pretended not to understand the order, hoping to resist in this way.

But how can they hide these tricks from Lucien, who has been in the army for many years? Soon, Lucien shattered their illusions. He did not directly deal with those soldiers who disobeyed his orders according to military discipline, nor did he use his position to physically punish the soldiers, but let them fight with himself one by one and allowed them to resist, and soon beat the few soldiers who provoked the head to the point that they could not stand up. It's strange to say, after being beaten up by him like this, those soldiers were convinced, and they executed orders more smoothly than anyone else.

After the leaders were subdued, the remaining soldiers no longer dared to procrastinate, and the orders of the new company commander, Lucien Leflaire, soon became the common norm for the whole company.

If all that Lucien received at the moment was the awe of the soldiers, it was only later when the soldiers learned that he was an Algerian battle hero, and that he had been suppressed by his superiors for his outspokenness, and had only recently been reintegrated into the army.

Moreover, although he was so strict that he was not close to the people during the training in peacetime, the new company commander was very kind and caring to the soldiers in peacetime, not only did he not scold and beat the soldiers arbitrarily like the commanders of other companies, but he was very concerned about the soldiers' suffering, and sometimes even paid for the soldiers who encountered emergencies.

It is therefore not surprising that Lucien-Leflaire was soon loved by the soldiers.

Lucien, who was loved by the soldiers, was a strong, upright and upright man with a pure military spirit, and quickly established a good reputation among the officers of the regiment - of course, this was not only due to his charisma, but also to the fact that he paid his bills quickly and never defaulted when he lost money playing cards in the officers' club.

The rumor that Lucien-Lefleur had recently inherited a large inheritance from his uncle, and then spent a lot of money to buy it off and returned to the army, was not regarded as a source of jealousy, but rather made people admire him somewhat.

Once, while the officers were drinking together, his battalion commander even teased him.

"Dear Lucien, what do you think? Obviously they have already inherited a large inheritance, so why should they return to the army? If I had gotten a lot of money like you, I would have left the army a long time ago. ”

"The army is my home, and I don't want to go anywhere but here." At that time, Lucien replied with a serious expression, "Whether I am rich or poor is just a matter of days, and this is where I belong, and I want to thank God for giving me the opportunity to return to this big family." ”

His words won the applause of the audience, and everyone raised their glasses to the real soldier.

Speaking of which, the new officer in the regiment had only one flaw: after the evenings, he rarely got together with the other officers or went out for fun. However, after learning the reason, everyone laughed at this "shortcoming".

"My wife is pregnant, and I want to spend more time with her."

In this way, Lucien Leflair returned to the army extremely smoothly. (To be continued......)