It was late at night, and the candlelight in Chuzhou Governor's Mansion was still flickering.
It's a bit strange to say that Zhang Zhao attaches great importance to cavalry, and there is also a style of cavalry shooting in Liangzhou, Hexi. Liangzhou's horses have always been among the best cavalry in the world.
But since Zhang Zhao's campaign in Anxi, the cavalry under the Yongliang army had never fought any long-distance raids.
Basically, they fight very unskilled cavalry to cover the large corps. When encountering the enemy, they combine infantry and cavalry to defeat the enemy.
The only one that could be called a long-distance attack was actually the time when Ma Shacai traveled 500 miles from Liangzhou to Lanzhou.
Therefore, on this night, Ma Shacai proudly shared his experience of attacking Lanzhou with all the generals watching.
But soon, everyone, including Ma Shacai himself, gradually felt that his experience was not useful here.
That attack was due to Ma Sha, but it was a difficult attack to cross the Hongchi Mountains in winter and go through untold hardships, with more than one-third of the laggards left behind.
But this time, after taking a look around, Li Cunhui found that although it was almost four hundred miles from Chuzhou to Yangzhou, the road was so easy to walk!
From Chuzhou to Yangzhou, the main transportation artery is the Grand Canal-Hangou built during the period of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty. Since it is a man-made canal, the Hangou is built straight.
In addition, it was the main means of transportation, so both sides of the canal were extremely prosperous. The Southern Tang Dynasty court also built galloping roads on both sides of the canal that could accommodate three carriages.
What's even more amazing is that this Chi Road is still maintained and the road condition is very good.
Zhang Zhao personally went out and ran for more than ten miles and found that the smoothness of this road could not be compared with the cement roads of later generations, but in the Asan Kingdom, it could be called an expressway.
Thinking of this, Zhang Zhao felt depressed for Li Jing for a while. These were the troubled times of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms!
You are crazy to build such a straight, wide and smooth road, and it also penetrates your own heart from the edge!
This is simply like telling others to hit me from this road, very quickly! You can knock me down very quickly.
No wonder Guo Rong asked General Han Lingkun to attack Yangzhou in history. Han Lingkun had already entered the city, but the officials and people of the Southern Tang Dynasty didn't know yet.
Because it was too magical, Zhang Zhao even thought for a while that there was some kind of fraud in it?
But a group of military generals discussed with him for half a night at the Governor's Mansion in Chuzhou, and finally everyone came to the conclusion that there was definitely no fraud. The attack on Yangzhou was so simple, and the Southern Tang Dynasty was so easy to fight!
All right! In this case, Zhang Zhao was not polite. He looked around and looked at the new generation Murong Nobunaga, Li Cunhui, Gao Huaide, and Hu Guang.
The older generation such as Bai Congxin, Ma Shacai, Qiongre Duojin, Huang Yingda, and Yao Yuanfu.
Of course there are more pink young people like Zhao Yanjin, Zhao Kuangyin, Wang Shenqi, Hou Renbao and Feng Jiye.
"How is the mobilization of elite cavalry going?" Zhang Zhao asked.
Zhao Pu, who was in charge of the Wangyi Division, quickly stepped forward and replied: "The soldiers were very excited when they heard that there was a big mission. Each person is worth five guan of money for selecting the front. We have already informed you that there are at least fifty ranks of officers. It has also been made clear to the flag (team).”
Instead of giving five guans worth of money, you should give 'consumption coupons' worth five guan money. This thing is much better than giving money directly. It can save expenses and promote consumption.
Of course, the most important thing is the indicator of rank. In Zhang Zhou, everyone who licks blood from the edge of a knife knows the benefits of rank.
And now the rewards for rank officials are not given to everyone who wins, they have targets.
What exactly is it like? How many results were obtained? The difficulty of battle formations, etc., have all been quantified in detail.
To be more specific, everyone deserves merit for winning a battle, but not everyone can be rewarded with rank officers. The number of rank officers was roughly limited before the war.
If you want to win a rank, you have to work harder than others, because there are only so many, and if you rank too low, you won't get your turn.
However, in Zhang Zhou's army, not only for winning battles, but also for losing battles, one can also be rewarded with rank officers.
For example, those who cut off the rear, those who hold on to the isolated city, and those who buy time for the main force to defeat the many with a small number. Even if they lose the battle, they will still be rewarded by rank officials, and the rewards are often very high.
well! Zhang Shengren couldn't afford the rank and file of the Qin people's army, so he created a smaller version of the military officer to let the brave men of the world fight to the death for him.
However, in this attack on Yangzhou, 15,000 people were given to fifty officials, which was really a bit small.
But this was accurately calculated by Wang Yisi, the Ministry of War, and the Privy Council. The attack on Yangzhou was only worth this.
But Zhang Zhao still felt a little uneasy. These fifteen thousand men were his lifeblood, and nothing could go wrong because the soldiers' morale was low.
"Add a little more. I will add a hundred more rank officers to make the soldiers do a better job. If we can defeat the main force of Southern Wu south of Yangzhou, we will add another hundred and fifty!"
Although the number of military-level officials was basically fixed before the war started, Zhang Zhao was the emperor and he could increase it through gifts.
While taking the order, Zhao Pu thought about the cheers of the grassroots officers and soldiers below, and couldn't help but secretly give the emperor twenty-four likes.
Since the end of the dynasty, many emperors have been thinking about how to let his favor reach the soldiers beyond the military governor, and how to let the soldiers know that to live a good life, they cannot rely on the military commander, but on the emperor.
Now this problem has been solved by Enga, a military-ranked official of Emperor Shao Tomorrow.
The most important meaning of enga is that the favor comes from the top. This not only allows the grassroots officers and soldiers to know where the favor comes from, but also invisibly reduces the intensity of the Jiedushi's favor to the soldiers.
After all, no matter how much money you give, how can you compare to a military-level official who has money for life, guaranteed children and grandchildren (can enter civil and military official schools), who does not kneel before officials, and who is wronged and can go to the sky to listen through special channels? What about?
Zhang Zhao indeed had this consideration, and he also knew clearly that his descendants would probably turn military-level officials into a corruption-stricken area.
But he can't control that much. He must first establish the rules of this country.
Zhang Zhao was even considering whether to create the official position of Inspection Department, which started with Zhuangzong in the later Tang Dynasty but spread all over the world in the Ming Dynasty.
After retiring a considerable number of military officers, they were sent to various places.
Become a little overlord in the countryside, catch thieves, smugglers, and train rural soldiers, especially to suppress places like Anxi, Hezhong, Lingnan, Annan, and North Korea.
However, Zhang Shengren is still a little hesitant at the moment. Although the little overlord is small, he is no better than the civil servants when he is a fish of the common people, so he must be cautious.
With his thoughts swirling, Zhang Zhao quickly made a decision, appointing Bai Congxin as the commander of the rear army and commanding five thousand cavalry as backup.
With Murong Nobunaga as the front army commander, Li Cunhui as the vanguard officer, Ma Shacai and Yao Yuanfu as deputy vanguards, they set off at three o'clock in the morning the next day and headed straight for Yangzhou.
The reason why there is such a rush is because since there is such a thing as a galloping road along the river, it means that the speed of spreading news is also very fast.
I am afraid that the news that Chuzhou has been breached has begun to spread southward.
.
.
On the day when the army was preparing to launch a surprise attack, Zhang Zhao had to do another thing, which was to deal with the Southern Tang military land issue in Chuzhou.
The common people in troubled times do not have high demands. Zhang Zhaozhi won great support from them when he announced the abolition of harsh policies such as Bo Zheng and military fields.
"Shura Martial God"
As for the military fields left over, even if some people's fields have been occupied for less than ten years, no one dares to come forward and ask for them. As long as the government does not harm them, they are satisfied.
The rough report Zhang Zhao received also shocked him. In the four counties of Chuzhou alone, the military land reached a terrifying figure of more than 400,000 acres.
You must know that in later generations, Huai'an City, where Chuzhou is located, had only more than five million acres of cultivated land. In this era, it is probably only about one million acres at most, and it is probably not available yet.
This means that the military fields of the Southern Tang Dynasty should account for half of the cultivated land in Chuzhou, or even higher.
How to dispose of so much land? Should some of it be given back to the people? Or is it used to reward military merit? Or simply as a royal village?
How to maximize its effectiveness is a very particular matter.
