The Ming government decided to divide the Sichuan and Shu regions into three parts administratively, but militarily it was completely possible to unify them.
Because of the complex ethnic situation in the area south of the Minjiang River, as well as the existence of Dali and Southeast Asia, including the Ming Dynasty's future business goals for Dali and Southeast Asia, the establishment and long-term existence of the Sichuan-Shu Corps had practical significance.
The future goal of Su Haisheng and the Qilu Corps under his command is to enter into the Western Regions, Tubo, and Qiangtang areas together with the Hexi Corps under Jiang Liangping. In response to the military forces of various ethnic groups in this area, there is also a unified and complete Western Liao Empire. military war.
The ultimate goal is to seize the defense line on the western border for the Ming Dynasty and establish a sufficient buffer zone to protect densely populated areas.
The 200,000 troops of these two corps will be the main maintenance force on the western frontier of the Ming Empire in the future. They will be the country's barrier and an important presence to enhance their influence in Central Asia. They cannot stay in the Sichuan and Shu regions for a long time.
The future mission of the Henan Corps and Jiangxi Corps that existed in the Jiangnan region at the same time was mainly to maintain the military presence of the Ming Army in the southeastern coastal mountainous and Lingnan regions, ensure the stability and stability of the Jiangnan region, and also to control the South Vietnam region. Expand business.
In this case, the existence of the Sichuan-Sichuan Corps is of great significance.
In the future, the Sichuan-Sichuan Corps should be stationed and defended in various state capitals along the Minjiang River. The troops should be garrisoned locally and in some key military areas. The main force is responsible for deterring and maintaining the stability of the Yunnan-Guizhou province. Whenever there is a military conflict crisis, they should attack immediately.
Later, Su Yonglin arranged for the Ministry of Finance to attend the meeting and let the Ministry of Finance attend the meeting to discuss the necessity of establishing the Sichuan-Sichuan Corps.
Before the Sichuan-Shu Corps, the Ming Army already had seven corps: Henan Corps, Hebei Corps, Yanyun Corps, Qilu Corps, Liaodong Corps, Hexi Corps, and Jiangxi Corps. If the Sichuan-Shu Corps is established, it will be the eighth corps.
It is not a simple matter for the imperial court to allocate funds to raise troops.
In particular, the pay of the Ming army was relatively high. In addition to the military pay and benefits a soldier received, there were also many direct and indirect supporting military benefits. Taken together, the military expenses of raising a regiment were quite considerable.
If you want to increase the number of soldiers in a corps, you need to increase the proportion of military expenditures allocated by the finance.
Of course, finance has raised many questions and difficulties in this regard, which is obvious.
However, in terms of the Privy Council, Sun Tzu Yi directly pointed out that the Yellow River Project is about to be completed, which will reduce a large part of fiscal expenditures, and with the recovery of agricultural production in the Yellow River Flood Area, future fiscal revenue will only continue to rise, not decrease.
Therefore, the government can definitely increase military spending to help the country raise troops.
They have talked a lot about the necessity of the existence of the Sichuan-Sichuan Corps. After the Privy Council talked about it, the General Staff Headquarters also joined in to talk about it. After the General Staff Headquarters talked about it, the Ministry of Military Affairs also joined in to talk about it.
Lin Jingchun, who had just returned to Zhongdu to report on his work, was planning to go south again. He was naturally a little unhappy when he attended this meeting at this stall. However, facing this situation, he knew that the Ministry of Finance must allocate this money.
"It is not easy for the court to make money. Once the army takes action, the money will flow out like running water. If you don't feel sorry for me, I still feel sorry for you. I have no objection to the Sichuan-Sichuan Corps, but your ministries should do their audit work properly. You shouldn't spend any money on it." Don’t spend your money indiscriminately, otherwise I will never make it easy for you during the year-end review.”
Ending with the non-threatening threat of Lin Jingchun, the central court of the Ming Dynasty basically decided to prepare the eighth corps, which was the Sichuan-Shu Corps.
Su Yonglin began to order the Privy Council and the Military Affairs Department of the Fuxinghui to make preliminary preparations, and asked these two departments to prepare for military personnel issues and come up with a plan.
Then Su Yonglin began to make preparations for adjustments to another aspect of army construction.
Army number issue.
For a long time, the corps-level designations of the Ming Army were based on the regional title of the area where the corps was established.
The lower-level military-level designations can even be traced back to some of the designations formed during the Liberation Army, such as the Xuanjia Army, the Tianxing Army, the Wu Yi Army, etc.
The numbers at the division, brigade, and battalion levels below are numerical numbers that have no symbolic meaning but are just convenient for statistics.
Su Yonglin had the idea of changing the regional designation to a numerical designation quite a long time ago. Compared with the regional designation, which is more regional, the numerical designation has less symbolic meaning, and does not have the symbolic meaning of the regional designation. A matter of regional consciousness rather than national consciousness.
However, in the early days of the founding of the army and the founding of the country, Su Yonglin didn't have much time to take care of these things, so he had always arranged them according to convention. But now that the Ming Dynasty is about to dominate the world, many things should indeed be changed.
In fact, it was not just Su Yonglin who had this view. Some people in the Privy Council and the Central Military Affairs Department of the Renaissance Association also suggested that regional designations might arouse regional awareness within the army and be detrimental to the formation of national consciousness and the harmony of the army.
Sun Tzu Yi mentioned this issue in his work report to Su Yonglin.
Not only that, the Privy Council also proposed some interesting bills.
For example, a series of army building work such as recruitment, training, assessment and distribution, etc., will be fully brought under the control of the Central Privy Council, and national recruit recruitment centers and recruit training camps will be set up in various areas directly under the central government in the Zhongdu region.
This work was originally the work of the Privy Council in name, but due to actual circumstances, power was still delegated to each corps in the name of the Privy Council, and trained by the recruit training department under the logistics department of each corps.
Generally speaking, the Privy Council authorizes the Corps to recruit soldiers, and the Corps conducts recruitment operations in the garrisoned areas. After recruiting a certain number of new soldiers, the Corps itself is responsible for training, selection and assessment, and the Privy Council is responsible for military expenditures.
The advantage of this is that it makes it easier for each corps to quickly replenish its troops nearby. In the past, when wars were more frequent, this was of practical significance.
However, with the stabilization of the domestic situation and the great improvement of traffic conditions in various places, as well as the regional problems that have arisen within each corps, more and more people feel that this is not a good idea.
The first to realize this problem were the Renaissance organizations within each corps.
They found that due to the influence of objective factors, more and more new soldiers in a regiment came from the same area.
Although this can make it easier for soldiers to unite, it can also easily lead to the phenomenon that some fellow villagers cling to each other within the army and have a clear distance from their comrades in other areas.
The conflicts between them are not obvious, but if this situation continues to develop, there may be risks in this regard, which is not conducive to the unity of the army.
After this situation was reported to the Ministry of Military Affairs, it attracted the attention of the Ministry of Military Affairs and Su Yonglin.
Considering the issue of regionalization within the army, although soldiers will receive revolutionary education before entering the corps, and revolutionary education within the army continues, the natural closeness between fellow villagers is difficult to eliminate.
Over time, it is easy to create some regional factions in the army. Even if the soldiers do not have any subjective regional conflicts, it will inevitably give other conflicts a regional flavor.
The regionalization of the corps was definitely not a situation Su Yonglin wanted to see, and it was very unfavorable.
In the feudal era, due to the need to defend themselves against foreign officials and the powerful central government, clan ties and regional ties became an important consensus among people in a region. Problems such as transportation barriers were also one of the reasons for this strong identity.
This consensus is far stronger than national identity. It has a long history and is deeply rooted. It is very detrimental to the long-term stability of the country.
Su Yonglin knows that if we want to eliminate this identity at the local level, we need stronger productivity and stronger technical capabilities to connect all parts of the country together with development and production to achieve true interconnection.
However, given the current state of the Ming Dynasty, it is difficult to completely solve this identity from the development and production levels, but it is not difficult to weaken this identity through proper propaganda and education.
As a top priority, this situation within the military must be changed.
This problem has been raised many times before to be solved, but it has always been difficult to take action due to practical problems. Now the domestic situation is basically stable and it can be solved.
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