They did not know the true meaning of the revolutionary actions initiated by the Ming Dynasty.
They only thought that this was because their conspiracy was exposed, so all the forces in the Guanzhong area that were aligned with the Southern Song Dynasty would be purged by the Ming State, and the Ming State's rule in the Guanzhong area would be greatly strengthened.
"Sure enough, Da Song will never have the chance to return to Guanzhong easily."
Wu Lin was very reluctant to confirm that his prediction was correct. The Southern Song Dynasty had lost its best and last chance to easily return to Guanzhong.
After losing this opportunity, if they still want to advance into Guanzhong, they must pay a huge price, use huge forces, and launch a Zhuge Liang-style Northern Expedition to Guanzhong with the backing of the fiscal taxes of the entire Sichuan-Shu War Zone.
It is true that the current Shu Road is easier to walk than when Zhuge Liang was still there, but it is definitely not that easy to walk. It can only be said that relatively speaking, their conditions are better. The Shu Road is still the same Shu Road, and the natural chasm has not changed. thoroughfare.
Wu Lin felt very sorry and complained bitterly to Wang Yan, expressing her dissatisfaction with the court's decision-making both inside and outside her words.
But both he and Wang Yan knew that the Southern Song Dynasty court did not have the confidence to launch a proactive strategic attack.
Especially before the huge banditry on the Jiangnan West Road in their homeland has not been quelled, they have no confidence to launch a strategic offensive. The use of troops on two fronts has always been a taboo for military strategists.
But when will the banditry on Jiangnan West Road be quelled?
The Ming Dynasty was stabilizing Guanzhong and strengthening its rule at an unimaginable speed, but the Southern Song Dynasty was limited to civil strife and could not do anything.
Is there anything more embarrassing than this?
Wu Lin helplessly turned her gaze to the southeast, where Jiangnan West Road was located, thinking that she could wait until the banditry on Jiangnan West Road was completely quelled.
Even if Wu Gong is young and Qi Fang is despicable, at least Yao Zhong still has military talents and is known for his bravery. He can definitely win a big victory, right?
Wu Lin thought so, and of course all the Song generals who participated in this battle also thought so. They never thought they would lose a battle.
For example, Wu Gong.
Wu Gong, who was unable to continue fighting because he was cut off from the food route, returned to his station full of anger. After learning from his experience, he carefully summed up his failure experience and came up with two golden rules for marching operations.
First, food and grass are everything.
Second, you are not afraid of opponents who are like gods, but teammates who are like pigs.
He obviously regarded Qi Fang as a pig-like teammate, but he didn't expect that compared to Qi Fang, who could barely maintain the situation, Shao Hongyuan was actually a pig.
The situation on Jiangnan West Road was greatly ruined. The entire situation was so bad that it was irreversible. Almost the entire Jiangnan West Road had fallen. This situation shocked Wu Gong.
Where is the bandit army here?
This is clearly a rebel army with a strong base and rebellious actions!
But after receiving the order, Wu Gong was still in a dilemma.
After returning to the station, Wu Gong reorganized the army while supplementing the insufficient military strength. Before receiving the second order to send troops, he had re-expanded the Ezhou army to 50,000 people.
Xiangyang has always been the top priority for the Song Army's defense of the north. It can be called the barrier of the Jinghu Theater in the Southern Song Dynasty. At least 20,000 defensive troops must be deployed here, and the level of elites is also the highest.
Therefore, after Wu Gong was ordered, the army that could be used to quell the rebellion was only 30,000.
Not all of these 30,000 people can be used, at least some must be left to stay at the Ezhou base camp. In this way, there will be less than 30,000 soldiers available for fighting on the front line.
Compared with the scale of Tian Shizhong's 60,000-strong battle, the scale of Wu Gong's army was now much smaller, and many local officials breathed a sigh of relief.
Despite this, the scale of logistical support required for an expedition of 25,000 soldiers is also quite large.
In order to ensure that the 25,000 soldiers marched along the way, the local governments needed to deploy almost 70,000 civilians to transport military supplies, including food, for the army. They also needed tens of thousands of carts, livestock, ships, etc. supplies.
Before the army sets off, the logistics troops will set off to build food stations, temporary military camps, emergency military supply points, etc. for the army.
The government at the starting point of the army needs to organize manpower to prepare everything in advance for the army. It needs to calculate the time for the army to arrive at the temporary military camp, the number of people arriving, the food and tents needed, etc., and then prepare it in advance so that it can be taken on site after the army arrives.
If this is not done well, local officials will have to consider how long they can wear the official hat on their heads.
After exceeding the local area, the local government within the march route must also organize manpower and material resources to prepare food depots, temporary military camps, and emergency military supplies supply points for the army, and have everything ready.
If you don't serve these soldiers well, they will be killed when they get angry.
An army is made up of people, and they need to eat, drink, and eat. Every day's progress consumes an astronomical amount of wealth.
At the same time, the logistics force itself is also a human being and needs to eat, so the residential camps, food supplement camps, etc. used by the logistics personnel also need to be built and require expenditure.
Although their treatment has been squeezed, squeezed, and squeezed again and again, they can't be given absolutely nothing, they still have to be given a little bit.
A little bit of more than 70,000 people gathered together is also a huge number.
Perhaps in order to vent the financial difficulties caused by this kind of expenditure, the officials and armed men waved whips and began to beat the people at the official order, forcing them to contribute people and some even provided materials to beg thieves for the country. Contribute your all.
The people cried to heaven and earth, wives and children were separated, families were broken up and people died.
They were dressed in rags, and under the supervision of fierce armed men, with their heads hanging down and their eyelids drooping, they squeezed out the little strength left in their already very dry bodies, "contributing to the peaceful progress" of the Song army.
At this cost, the path forward for the relatively complete army was paved.
There is no doubt that every war is a test, torture, and even ravage for the areas where the army departs, the areas it passes along the way, and the areas where war breaks out.
However, as the general, Wu Gong does not need to consider the suffering of the people. He only needs to determine the total number, determine the date, determine the location, and then accept the results. Nothing else is important.
There was no such link in the military education he received.
Wu Gong only needs to pay attention to the discipline and rigor of the army and ensure that every soldier follows him to the front line of the war to sweat and sweat, and does not desert midway and run away home.
He needs every soldier to give everything for his glory and wealth, so he cannot tolerate his stepping stones being out of his control at all and bringing him uncertainty.
He strictly supervised his soldiers, often using bloody killings to deter those with evil intentions. To a certain extent, Wu Gong controlled the soldiers with fear.
But at the same time, Wu Gong inherited the experience of commanding troops from Wu Jie and told him that he should "relax" the army appropriately and allow the soldiers to "take a vacation" to feel refreshed and vent the accumulated resentment in their hearts. Repeated several times, the soldiers will become a cold weapon that cannot be separated from the general.
They will get used to this cycle of [fear - resentment - vent - fear], and gradually become addicted to it. They will be completely succeeded by the general and become a war weapon with strong combat effectiveness, high discipline and strong animality.
This kind of army is the most useful.
Since Wu Gong led the army, he has been trying to train his army into such a type of war weapon.
For this reason, he carefully used this method of controlling the army and achieved good results.
At least when he announced that he was marching to fight against the thieves, his soldiers did not feel much resistance. Instead, they quickly focused their thoughts on "how many benefits can be gained after defeating the rebels".
There are even dedicated officers to guide the soldiers to think about what will happen after the war, how much money they can plunder, how many women they can plunder, and how much "reward time" they can get after the war to do whatever they want and experience the supreme happiness in the world.
They believed that even the emperor would be envious of what they did during those days of doing whatever they wanted.
For that reward, everything is worth it.
Then they laughed together.
Even the most terrifying devils will bow down to this scene and admit that they are not as terrible as them.
For humans, the most terrifying thing is always humans themselves.
However, Wu Gong's dispatch of troops was more or less gentle.
The reason why I say gentle is because this road is not always difficult to travel by land.
This time Wu Gong sent troops to march by water. He followed the Yangtze River all the way eastward to the Hukou area, then went south from the Hukou area into Poyang Lake, and then entered the Ganshui River from Poyang Lake, and went all the way south to Nanchang. .
Such an advance can successfully bypass the difficult and rugged mountain road on Jiangnan West Road and reduce the difficulties and costs of logistics and transportation.
Using waterways to transport supplies, even if you need to take a detour, is absolutely safe, and it can also avoid the tragedy in Tian Shizhong before, and avoid being taken back by the rebels and directly destroying their hometown.
Unless the rebels can raise a navy that can fight the Song army in a short period of time.
When it comes to the navy, the Southern Song Dynasty really had no one to fear - except the Ming Navy.
In the previous wars between the Ming and Song dynasties, the main force of the Ming Navy's navy moved south in large numbers, defeating all the Song's offshore navy in one go. The entire Song's offshore navy was wiped out, and its strength was greatly damaged. It was almost in a state of collapse. It has not recovered even one-tenth of its original strength. scale.
However, the navy in the Jinghu Theater belongs to the Neijiang and Neihu Navy. The ships are relatively small and have strong maneuverability. They are not the same system as the outer sea navy, so they are still intact.
Of course, this was not the march route and method decided by Wu Gong, but planned by the Privy Council, which single-handedly planned this battle.
Because of the failed experience in previous battles, Zhao Hao and the Privy Council learned from the pain and not only planned the battle zones for the two armies, but also planned the march routes and combat objectives for the two armies.
The Privy Council required that the two armies must fight according to the Privy Council's plan and were not allowed to play freely.
Once they exercised their freedom, even if they won the battle, the Privy Council would still question the two men after the war.
This suggestion was put forward by Shi Hao. Shi Hao believed that Wu Gong and Qi Fang were not powerful generals and had no experience in commanding large armies to achieve large-scale victories. They just had to use them. Therefore, in order to ensure safety, the Privy Council should directly conduct tactical guidance and comparison. good.
To this end, Shi Hao gathered all the "people who know the military" in the Privy Council. They looked at the map of Jiangnan West Road day and night, looked up the military books day and night, read through the military books, and then made tactical plans on the map and on the sand table.
Through maps, sand tables and military books, a group of paper military strategists with no actual war experience formulated detailed tactics for the army, including when to arrive where, how long it would take to conquer a city, etc., all had detailed plans.
Shi Hao thought this was foolproof.
Frontline generals don't need to think wildly, they just need to carry out their tasks. They are not decision-makers, but executors. If they execute resolutely, everything will be fine.
During the entire planning process, a Privy Council editor named Yu Yunwen expressed disapproval of this behavior.
He said that this kind of behavior is just talk on paper and divorced from reality. If you want to plan tactics, you should go directly to the front line and conduct on-site inspections before formulating tactics.
I don’t know how long ago these pictures and materials were, and I don’t know if there is any difference between then and now. It is very irresponsible to make tactical plans like this.
He also gave an example that although Zhuge Wuhou was not a professional general, he visited the front line in person every time he fought and inspected the local terrain, hydrology, and climate before making decisions. He also made detailed plans in advance in case the tactics failed. What to do plan, tell the generals what to do.
Therefore, the Shu Han army under his command never suffered a major defeat. Even if the strategy failed, it could still protect itself and retreat smoothly according to the planned plan. The main force was not lost and it could launch an attack again next time.
Relying on such excellent strategic and tactical planning, although Zhuge Wuhou launched five attacks and failed to achieve the goal, the main force of the Shu Han army was still there, and he was able to retreat every time. The Wei army pursued the victory but lost troops and generals. This is the importance of excellent planning.
But now they only made an offensive plan and a logistics plan, without any strategic plan for how to retreat in case of failure, nor any contingency clauses for emergencies. They did not give the generals any power to adapt to changes. This is very inappropriate.
However, Yu Yunwen was a low-key person in the Privy Council and was not qualified to participate in planning tactics, so no one paid attention to him and just thought he was talking in his sleep.
Yu Yunwen felt very anxious because he could not just watch the Privy Council make mistakes again and again, so he found an opportunity to meet Shi Hao alone through his relationship with Lu You, who was admired by Shi Hao, and planned to give him advice.
Lu You didn't know much about military affairs and had only a partial understanding of many issues. He was still studying and didn't quite understand the significance of Yu Yunwen's actions.
"The Prime Minister has made a decision and the army has been prepared. What's the point of saying it now?"
Yu Yunwen said seriously: "Whether it is meaningful or not is a matter for others to judge, and whether to do it or not is my business. Wu Guan, thank you for fighting for the opportunity to meet the Prime Minister for me."
Lu You nodded.
He has always admired Yu Yunwen's military talent. He would ask him for advice when he had questions that he didn't understand. He would patiently explain and benefited a lot from him. What he did now was only a negligible reward.
So Yu Yunwen was able to get a stick of incense to meet Shi Hao alone and discuss matters.
He talked eloquently and told all his worries about the war and the hidden dangers of the war in great detail.
"Victory and defeat are common matters for military officers. I believe that just because I have failed once, I cannot stop planning in case of defeat, and do not give generals the power to adapt to changes. In the past, because there was no plan, the army was completely wiped out after the defeat.
If there is a good plan, even if the army cannot achieve its goal, it can retreat immediately and achieve the results like Zhuge Wuhou, then it is still possible to launch another attack without running out of troops. "
Shi Hao thought in his heart that what Yu Yunwen said was reasonable. This middle-level official of the Privy Council was somewhat capable, but he had military talent but not enough political vision.
All wars are not just wars, they are also politics.
Shi Hao couldn't afford to lose this battle, and neither could the Southern Song Dynasty.
"Binfu, what you said may make sense, but you have to know that in this battle, Song Dynasty cannot accept any other outcome except victory. We have no other way except victory."
Yu Yunwen didn't understand.
"Victory and defeat are common matters in military affairs. Prime Minister, it is wrong to refuse to accept any other result except victory. It will cause trouble."
"But if I can't win, I will be the next Zhang Jun."
Shi Hao sighed, looked at the shocked Yu Yunwen, and said with a wry smile: "I have a grudge with Zhang Jun, but I never thought of letting him die. As a result, a bunch of stupid people forced Zhang Jun to death and destroyed all the room for our generation. No more…I have no room for it.”
Yu Yunwen was silent for a long time, and then asked in a slightly hoarse voice: "But it is really dangerous to do this. Prime Minister, think twice."
"Binfu, as an outsider looking at internal affairs, you will feel that many things seem to have countless choices and possibilities. But when it is your turn to become an insider, you will find that you often have no choice."
Shi Hao looked up to the sky and sighed: "I have no choice."
Looking at the sad Shi Hao, Yu Yunwen suddenly felt a sense of déjà vu——
This is Shi Hao's last choice.
Although Shi Hao could not follow Yu Yunwen's advice, he felt that Yu Yunwen was a talented person, so he promoted him to a position in the Privy Council where he could participate in discussing war strategies.
Other than that, he didn't do anything else.
No matter what you do, it's the same.
The decision made by Shi Hao, who had no choice, and the Privy Council, who had no choice, made Wu Gong feel helpless.
As a Sichuan-Sichuan border general, this was the first time he fought under such strict restrictions. Any performance was restricted, otherwise he would be punished.
It's really a bit unaccustomed to fighting with chains on like this.
However, he still chose to obey the order, taking advantage of the Southern Song Dynasty's naval advantage, bypassing the hilly and mountainous areas, heading straight to Nanchang, and directly confronting the main force of the rebels.
He hoped that the arrangement of the Privy Council was correct and that it was a plan made by a group of people with real military talent and experience, rather than a plan made by a group of laymen as a matter of course.
In the other direction, Qi Fang also set out from Lin'an and led 20,000 forbidden troops to attack the Jianchang Army.
Of course, Qi Fang felt that the number of people was too small to form an effective deterrent to the rebels, so he asked Zhao Gou for some authority, hoping that he could temporarily recruit troops in Quzhou and Xinzhou to expand before arriving in the war zone. military power and improve deterrence.
Of course, he promised to withdraw as soon as the matter was over. After the war, these temporarily recruited peasant soldiers would be disbanded and let them go home. This would not cause any more trouble to the court and would not require the court to increase military expenditures. This was just a one-time event. sexual.
So he requested a temporary conscription quota of 20,000 men.
Zhao Gou did not make a decision himself, but simply conveyed his request to the Privy Council for them to decide.
What else can Shi Hao do?
Of course I accept it!
if not?
If he refuses, what if Zhao Gou becomes unhappy again and prevents Qi Fang from leading his troops?
After finally gathering two armies to attack Jiangnan West Road, Shi Hao had already blocked his official career and career. If he failed for some ridiculous reason, Shi Hao would regret it for the rest of his life.
So before Qi Fang led his army to set off, the Privy Council ordered Quzhou and Xinzhou to each be prepared to temporarily recruit 10,000 troops and prepare enough rations for 40,000 troops for at least two months.
No matter what, we must satisfy the army. If the army is not satisfied, just wait and see!
With such assurance from the Privy Council, Qi Fang happily led his troops and set off.
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ps: It is customary to ask for votes during the double monthly pass period~~~
