A few days after the victory celebration, Roland threw himself into farming.

Sitting in the office, the ticking sound outside the window is non-stop, as if it is raining. It was the sound of melting snow, and when he was in the countryside for the New Year, he liked to lie by the window and watch the long ice prism under the eaves turn into transparent water droplets, dripping little by little. I don't have that kind of leisure at the moment, but it's nice to write a plan and listen to the sound of the earth's recovery.

As a rule of thumb in previous years, it would take about a week for the snow to melt, but it would take at least a month for the overland route between the town and the fortress to pass. Roland can imagine what happens to a dirt road without hardened pavement and drainage when the snow and ice melt. If he succeeds in taking the fortress of Changge, the first thing he will do is to build a hardened road between the two places that can be used by carriages.

However, the issue of army building is still a priority to be resolved at present. Without a reliable and strong army, it was impossible to defeat the fortress army at a numerical disadvantage. Transforming the militia into a regular army was only the first step, and the specific establishment, rules and disciplines, and rewards and punishments were his headaches.

Although I played military chess when I was a child, I have long forgotten it all at this moment. After some thought, Roland simply decided to make it up himself. Anyway, he is the creator of a new type of army, and no one can find out if the setting is unreasonable.

As a result, the establishment of the First Army in the border towns was quickly released: with the army, division, battalion, team, and group as the overall framework, five people in a group (considering that an artillery gun needs at least five people to operate), ten groups for one team, and ten teams for one battalion. As for the number of divisions and corps, he decided to consider them later. Given the overall level of operations of this era, as long as there were two or three battalion-sized troops, it was enough to defeat the vast majority of opponents in a field battle.

Once the most basic framework was set, Roland let out a long breath.

The following rules and disciplines were much simpler, except for the clichés that must obey military orders at all times, obey their superiors, and not flee from battle, and not betray, etc., Roland's first discipline was to prohibit looting and disturbing the people.

The evils of indulging in the raids of his men are numerous, and the bad effects on the local population will not be remedied for years. This is why he insisted on using civilians as a member of the army.

When the nobles responded to the liege's call to go on a campaign, it was impossible for them to refrain from plundering after defeating their enemies, or rather, the main reason they were willing to follow the lord on the expedition was to plunder the wealth and territory of their opponents - including, of course, the innocent civilians in the domain.

As for mercenaries and bandits, not to mention. It seems to be fierce and fierce, but in fact they can only fight with the wind, and at the same time, robbery is also a big source of their income, and military discipline is meaningless to these people.

Only an army of civilians does not treat other civilians as lambs to the slaughter. Of course, discipline and severe punishment alone are not enough, as the days go by, the greed in the heart will always continue to amplify with one victory after another. Therefore, incentives must be kept up with the means to put an end to looting and other disciplinary violations.

In order to make the reward motivating enough, Roland decided to release the ultimate killer weapon - military merit award. As long as you make great contributions in battle, you can be awarded a field. The source of the land Roland has been thought of, and it is the land to be cultivated between the border town and the fortress.

This was definitely a huge prize in an era when 90% of the land belonged to the aristocracy. Once he has permanent birth, these people will cling to him, and anyone who tries to overthrow him will be met with the fiercest resistance from the gainers.

The people are driven not by words and whips, but by tangible benefits. In other words, as long as they can always represent the fundamental interests of the people under their rule, no one can shake their dominance.

Unlike traditional fiefdoms, Roland limited the area of land granted to between a few acres and a dozen acres, which could be used to build his own houses, buy serfs or hire farmers to take care of the fields, but could not establish an industry. In comparison, a knight's territory is close to two thousand acres, which is equivalent to a small village. The income from the estates operated above provided the knights and squires with their combat needs, such as the purchase of weapons, armor, and horses.

Such a small area of land reward will not arouse strong resistance from aristocratic interest groups, but also weaken the independence of the recipients, in Roland's view, it should be a retirement pension, which can ensure that soldiers also have a stable income after retirement.

At the same time, in order to strengthen the centralization of power and avoid the situation that "the servants of the servants are not my servants", the people who grant the fields only have their own rights, but have no autonomy. That is, the land still enforces the laws, regulations, and systems of the liege's domain. In a sense, they are more like farmers in later generations.

After transcribing these tentative ideas one by one, Roland stretched. Next, he can finally devote himself to the field he is good at—the research and development of weapons.

As the pace of musket manufacturing accelerated, it was a waste of manpower to continue to have pikemen to protect the musketeers, who had to be able to fight independently in hand-to-hand combat.

The solution is simple, it is to add a bayonet to the gun. Roland didn't expect his troops to take the initiative to launch a white-knuckle charge against the enemy, but only had the strength to fight when the opponent jumped over the wall and the artillery failed to completely destroy the enemy's courage.

The bayonet is not difficult to make, and if you pursue simplicity, it is a sharp cone. The key was the way the bayonet was connected to the gun: the original bayonet was a thin wooden rod wrapped around the hilt, which could be inserted directly into the barrel. The advantage is that it is easy to make, and the disadvantages are also very obvious, you can't shoot in white-knuckle combat, and it is particularly laborious to pull it out after the battle.

Roland intended to produce an improved second-generation bayonet, the casing bayonet. There is a folded angle at the end of the shank, which is connected to an iron casing. The inner diameter of the casing is slightly larger than that of the barrel, and it has a tongue and groove, and only a piece of iron bar needs to be welded to the barrel for the tongue and groove to be embedded to fix the blade. The blade is a triangle, with a V-shaped cross-section, and all three sides are open, which does not affect the extraction after being pierced into the body, and at the same time will leave a wound that is difficult to heal.

The casing bayonet is slightly higher than the barrel after installation, which has some effect on ammunition loading, but it is simple enough to facilitate mass production compared to folding bayonets. Just make a sample and let the smithy make it yourself.

For the bayonet to work in real combat, the key is to train soldiers how to use it.

Roland didn't know anything about it. Fortunately, he still remembered that the chief knight once boasted that any military weapon could be used in a decent way, so he simply asked him to teach the musket team how to fight bayonets.