Having gone through two major battles and countless small battles, Li Yanqing already has rich combat experience, and he knows very well the truth that 'if you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools'; if you want to exterminate this chaotic bandit, you must not only attach importance to the other side tactically, but also make full preparations for combat, including soldier training, material preparations, and the morale of the army, morale, and the people.

Li Yanqing has been extremely busy these days, Zhou Ping came back to help him do a lot of things, many civil dispute cases he left to Zhou Ping to deal with, Zhou Ping is more experienced in dealing with various disputes, Yang Ju's scholarly anger is still a little heavier, Li Yanqing continues to let him deal with the internal affairs of the county government, including various reports to the state, as well as urging taxes, managing county schools, setting up charities and other miscellaneous matters, Li Yanqing himself put most of his energy on suppressing bandits and preparing for war.

In the afternoon of this day, fifty medium-sized warships arrived in Jiayu County, large and small warships docked at the wharf of Jiayu County, blocking the wharf tightly, all kinds of warships were available, such as car boats, multi-oarled boats, sculled wooden boats, squid boats, etc., mottled in color, new and old, but all the ships were not new ships, but the Great Song Dynasty sailors who were participating in the encirclement and suppression of the remnants of the Fangla army picked up some old ships and sent them to the local township soldiers.

Of course, for the Great Song Dynasty Water Division, the black-hearted Dragon King is a small river thief they disdain to take action, that is the matter of the local government, the imperial court allowed the local formation of township soldiers, just to exterminate a small group of mountain bandits and water thieves, only like Fang La, who fought hundreds of thousands of people at every turn and captured most of the rebel forces in the south of the Yangtze River, is the enemy that the imperial court forbidden army and the Great Song Water Division deal with.

Therefore, the warships given to Ezhou by the Great Song Dynasty Navy Division are all small warships, only one fifty percent new thousand-stone warship, or an old ship built twenty years ago, and the other warships are all small and medium-sized warships between 300 and 500 stones, which also seem very old, at least ten years old.

Although the warship was not powerful, Li Yanqing still boarded this old ship of a thousand stones with great interest, this is a three-story ship, although it is twenty years old, it is still much stronger than ordinary civilian ships, not afraid of collisions, the deck is wide and flat, the joints are fine, and the two sides of the three-story building are small windows, which are conducive to shooting with crossbow arrows.

At this time, a shipwright came out of the cabin below, and Li Yanqing asked, "How is this ship?" ”

The shipwright smiled: "This ship has no traces of any fighting, it is estimated that it has been soaked in water for twenty years, and it has been overhauled twice, and the most recent overhaul should have been a year or two ago, and the overall quality of the ship is very good, and another layer of paint will do." ”

At this time, the shipwright added: "Maybe the county gentleman hasn't seen it yet, this is a car and ship!" ”

Li Yanqing was suddenly surprised and delighted, and he also said that there was only one unique Diao Dou flagpole, which turned out to be a car and boat, "Where can you see it?" ”

"The county gentleman will go to both sides to take a look, and both sides are equipped with rotary paddles."

Li Yanqing walked quickly to the side of the ship, just now he was blocked by the boat next to him, he didn't see it on the shore, he looked down from the side of the boat and saw that there was a row of runners like windmills at the draft below, with a diameter of about one meter and a half, there were twelve in total, and there should be corresponding twelve runners on the other side, and the two wheels on the left and right were a group, called a car, this is a car of twelve cars, and twenty-four people need to step on it below, and the boat will go fast on the river.

The vehicles and ships are a large number of new power warships that appeared after the Northern Song Dynasty, from small boats to super large ships, and among the 50 ships sent this time, at least 15 are car ships, mainly medium-sized warships with four vehicles.

Li Yanqing suddenly remembered an important question, and turned back to ask Liu Fang, "How did these ships get sent?" ”

"It's the boat that Wang Zhizhou sent more than 200 boatmen to Jiangning to pick up!"

"What about these boatmen?"

"The lowly officials arrange for them to eat in the county, and if the county magistrate wants them to stay, the lowly officials can talk to them."

Boatmen are necessary, and Jiayu County can also recruit some, but the number is not enough, and he really needs to keep some boatmen down.

Li Yanqing nodded, "If they are willing to stay, I can promise fifteen yuan a month for three months." ”

"Let's talk to them!"

Li Yanqing hurriedly instructed him again, "Go back and let them drive the boat to the water barracks, and it is not in a proper way to stop on the dock." ”

"Ignorance, understood!" Liu Fang took two officials and hurried to the city.

Li Yanqing had visited the ships for an hour before turning around and heading to the naval barracks, where he had set aside half a day today to learn about the state of combat readiness, and in addition to the ships, of course, he also had to learn about the training of the naval forces.

The naval camp is a temporary construction of a simple water barracks, located about two miles east of the wharf, it uses a semicircular small inlet to build, the inlet is very common along the Yangtze River, generally the riverside lake and the Yangtze River are connected as a whole, like Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake is two giant inlets.

There are three inlets in Jiayu County, the location of the water military camp is the smallest inlet, it was originally Shayang Lake, due to the continuous cofferdam of human beings to make fields, Shayang Lake is getting smaller and smaller, now the water surface area is only more than 700 acres, and the Yangtze River is connected as a whole, for the general naval camp, here is still too small, hundreds of ships can not be crowded, but for the local naval army with only 50 warships, it is almost enough.

The mouth of the Yangtze River is about a mile long, and these days hundreds of people have laid two rows of thousands of wooden piles at the mouth of the lake, and left a gate for boats to enter and exit the inlet, and a wooden sentry tower has been built on each side of the gate to monitor the river.

The wooden stakes are very densely beaten, and even small sampans are difficult to get through the gaps, but the water ghosts can sneak in, Li Yanqing specially ordered that the wooden stakes be wrapped with two fishing nets, and if you are not careful, the water ghosts will be entangled in the fishing nets and die.

Not only that, there are also sentinel boats patrolling back and forth day and night in the inlet, and even if the enemy water ghosts are lucky enough to sneak into the water camp, they will be discovered by the patrol boats in time.

The naval barracks were set up on the shore, and 120 large tents were set up, surrounded by barracks around the entire semicircular inlet, although the barracks were very small, they were exactly the same as the normal barracks deployment, and they did not cut corners at all.

Of course, now the ships have just arrived in Jiayu County, and the navy has not yet been fully activated, only the five hundred sailors who have just been recruited have been stationed, and once the ships enter the water camp, then the training on the river will also begin.

Li Yanqing entered the barracks from the gate of the camp on the shore, the barracks on the shore were very large, there were two open spaces in the east and west for training, at this time Zhang Hu was taking five hundred newly recruited naval soldiers to practice marksmanship, and Li Yanqing, two hundred township soldiers in the city, let Zhang Bao take command, and Yang Guang was too hanging, not suitable to be a commanding soldier.

In fact, Zhang Hu is not suitable to be the head of the naval army, he almost does not know water, but Zhang Hu trains soldiers well, he is very disciplined, and he can train an army that can fight in a short period of time.

The most suitable general in Li Yanqing's heart to be the leader of the navy is Zhang Shun, but the time is not yet ripe, he can only find a replacement for the time being, but unfortunately there is no suitable candidate for the time being, see if he can pick out two prestige and capable soldiers among the five hundred sailors to serve as the left and right governors.

"Kill!"

The five hundred soldiers shouted at the same time, and a cloud of dust was stamped under their feet, and the momentum was very spectacular.

Li Yanqing saw that Zhang Hu and the soldiers were training intensively, so he didn't bother, but came to a big tent at the edge of the barracks.

This is a large camp tent, twice as large as other camp tents, into the big tent, only to see that it is full of all kinds of utensils, wooden barrels, clay pots and large wooden basins, which are filled with raw materials for making gunpowder, saltpeter, sulfur and wood powder, here is the temporary gunpowder workshop, Li Yanqing needs to use to suppress the bandits The earth-shaking thunder is produced here.

In the middle is a large table that is long and long, Hao Da and Hao Er are sitting at both ends of the table engrossed in wrapping the fuse, Li Yanqing stepped forward, took out a pig iron shell that shook the sky from the wooden basin, and asked with a smile: "Is this iron shell a little thicker?" ”