There were two major courtyards in the new Chu Empire, namely the Military Affairs Academy and the Government Affairs Academy.
These two courts are one court in name, but they do not have positions such as president or vice-president. They are all in name only. They have people in charge of the Grand Inspectorate, the Grand Trial Court, the Judicial Yuan, and the Hanlin Academy. Very different.
How should I put it? The Imperial Censor of the Grand Inspectorate is only a second-rank official, while the ministers of the Ministry of Industry and others who are nominally affiliated with the Government Affairs Council are also second-rank officials.
Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and the Grand Inspectorate are actually equal institutions, and there is no question of who is superior and who is inferior.
At the same time, on the surface, Luo Zhixue has direct jurisdiction over the two academies, but in fact it means that Luo Zhixue continues to have direct jurisdiction over more than a dozen ministries and agencies within the two academies.
Including other agencies, there are more than 20 central agencies directly managed by Luo Zhixue, and this is still temporary. In the future, Luo Zhixue also plans to split the Ministry of Industry and other government affairs departments, and prepare to establish several more government affairs departments. department.
Then there may be more than thirty central agencies directly managed by Luo Zhixue in the future.
At present, the highest administrative agencies in each locality, currently the governments, and in the future, the provinces will also report directly to Luo Zhixue.
If there are more than a dozen provincial-level institutions in the future, then there will be about forty institutions directly managed by Luo Zhixue.
All the affairs of these institutions will eventually be summarized by Luo Zhixue, and Luo Zhixue will definitely not be able to handle so many affairs by himself.
This requires the system that Luo Zhixue has planned for a long time to ease his own work and at the same time firmly control power.
This is the participation system that Luo Zhixue has been planning for a long time.
The service participation system is a system formulated by Luo Zhixue after referring to the cabinet system of the Ming Dynasty and the military aircraft department system of the Qing Dynasty, and integrating their advantages and disadvantages.
Luo Zhixue will select some ministers and give them "important duties as counselors in the palace."
These ministers don't even have official job titles...there is only a mission that is not a mission! And describing it as a counselor is just for easy memory...
Because there is no position of Counselor at all, there is no rank, no quota, no salary, and there is not even a fixed office location. Counselor Ministers all work part-time.
It only takes the emperor's words to come and go, and it only takes the emperor's words to use anyone.
In addition, there is no distinction between these ministers and they are not subordinate to each other.
Moreover, each minister is responsible for different aspects of affairs, so it is inevitable for a civilian minister to dictate military affairs.
To put it simply, Luo Zhixue is going to find five or six people, let them each be responsible for a large number of things, and make them directly responsible for himself to make his work easier. At the same time, he will strictly limit the authority of these people and can take it back at any time.
Let’s not talk about the quality of this system, nor how it will evolve into in the future, but this is already the best way to check and balance power that Luo Zhixue can think of at the moment.
After all, Luo Zhixue does not intend to directly delegate power, but he is too busy, and at the same time he is worried about the situation where powerful officials will not be able to lose power.
In the end, the Counselor who chose such an unfair name and came and went based on Luo Zhixue's words appeared.
On September 17, after Luo Zhixue promulgated the new official system, he issued an imperial edict to recruit Xu Zhixian, Minister of General Staff, Wei Kaifu, Minister of Military Affairs, Yuan Gaofeng, Minister of Industry, Chen Xingkai, Minister of Taxation, Guo Quanshu, Minister of Civil Affairs, and the Grand Inspectorate. Qin Gaolin, the censor, and a total of seven counselors accompanied him to attend to important military and political affairs.
These seven people are also called counselors by the outside world.
And when the officials learned in detail about the specific affairs that the counselor was responsible for, they all tacitly regarded them as ministers similar to the cabinet ministers of the Ming Dynasty.
Because the imperial edict issued by Luo Zhixue has detailed the scope of affairs of each minister, Xu Zhixian is in charge of army construction, operations, training and other affairs, and Wei Kaifu is in charge of personnel, military discipline, assessment, recruitment, military and civilian affairs and other affairs.
In addition to being in charge of a bunch of factories under the Ministry of Industry, Yuan Gaofeng is also in charge of people's livelihood and economic affairs. To put it simply, he is responsible for all internal development matters. This is a huge responsibility.
The emergence of the minister-counselor system allowed Luo Zhixue to handle matters while directly in charge of dozens of institutions.
After finalizing the new official system and implementing the ministerial council system, Luo Zhixue's political structure reform for the new Chu Empire has been initially completed. Although there are many other matters later, they can all be taken slowly.
After all, the framework has been laid out, and now it’s just a matter of filling in the content.
Therefore, after finalizing these general frameworks, Luo Zhixue drove the generals and local officials gathered in Hanyang City back to their bases.
The current situation is tense and there are so many things going on. If you should go back and do things, go back and do things. Why do you stay in Hanyang City every day?
After many civil and military officials left one after another, Hanyang City returned to normal conditions. On September 18, Luo Zhixue held the first staff meeting.
All seven ministers attended. During this day's meeting, Luo Zhixue did not discuss much with them. It was just about improving some details, mainly to let them adapt to the changes after the founding of the country.
And on the next day, September 19, Luo Zhixue also held the first high-level military meeting after the founding of the country.
A total of ten people attended the meeting, including five ministers and two directors, as well as the First Division Commander Li Chengtong, the Fourth Division Commander Dong Mingjie, and the Guards Division Commander Li Dongshao.
This meeting was not just a casual discussion, but a formal discussion on crossing the river to attack Chunan.
At the beginning of the meeting, Major General Xu Zhixian, Minister of Staff and Chief of Staff, began to introduce in detail the current situation of the Baoxiang Army and the Ming Army.
"Currently, our army has taken control of the northern Chu region and most of the Nanyang Prefecture, as well as parts of eastern Sichuan, Hanzhong, and the Central Plains."
"To the north, we control most of the areas in Nanyang Prefecture. Currently, only Ye County in Nanyang Prefecture is still under the control of the Ming army, and the other counties are already under the control of our army."
"On the Nanyang front line, we have the main second division and the first garrison division stationed. The above two divisions are enough to protect Luyang Pass and Yuzhou."
"In the west, in addition to controlling the Jiangbei area of Yunyang Prefecture and Jingzhou Prefecture, we also control Xunyang and Pingli in Hanzhong Prefecture in Shaanxi; Shangnan in Xi'an Prefecture; and Daning and Dachang in Kuizhou Prefecture in Sichuan. ."
"In the entire western front area, we have three garrison divisions, the Second Garrison Division, the Third Garrison Division, and the Fourth Garrison Division, as well as an independent artillery battalion. Recently, the Fourth Garrison Division of our army is planning to attack Wushan County."
"In the east, we have fully taken control of De'an Prefecture and Huangzhou Prefecture. The Fifth Infantry Brigade under the Third Division is stationed in the Sanguan area of Yiyang, and the Second Infantry Brigade of the First Division is stationed in the Huangmei area of Huangzhou Prefecture."
"In addition, the newly established Fifth Garrison Division has moved to the Macheng and Luotian areas, and its battalions are stationed at various checkpoints in the Dabie Mountains south of Yiyang Sanguan and north of Susong, such as Yinshan Pass, Songzi Pass and other places. At the same time, Assist the 2nd Infantry Brigade in combat operations."
"On the southern front, there is no war for the time being. Our army has the 3rd Garrison Division stationed on the front line in Jingzhou Prefecture, the 1st Infantry Brigade of the 1st Division on the front line in Hanyang Prefecture, the newly established Fourth Division, two mortar artillery battalions, and the new Organized into the Sixth Garrison Division and the Guards Division."
"The Navy's Yangtze River Fleet is also currently stationed at Hanyang City Pier!"
"After the continuous expansion and reorganization in the past few months, the main force of our army currently has a total of five main divisions, six garrison divisions, and a cavalry brigade. In addition, there are three mortar battalions, two independent field artillery posts, etc. ."
"All garrison divisions are fully manned. For the main division, only the first division is fully manned. The second division currently has ten thousand soldiers, but only three thousand muskets and twelve two-and-a-half-pound field guns; the third division is fully manned. The division currently has seven thousand soldiers, two thousand muskets, and six two-and-a-half-pound field guns.”
"The Fourth Division currently only has four thousand recruits, one thousand muskets, and six two-and-a-half-pound cannon."
"The Guards Division currently has four thousand soldiers, two thousand five hundred muskets, and twelve two-and-a-half-pound cannon."
"The main force still lacks soldiers and equipment, and at the same time there are a large number of new recruits and a serious lack of training."
Listening to Xu Zhixian's words, Luo Zhixue also looked at the document in his hand, which detailed the soldiers and equipment of each unit.
Luo Zhixue had already predicted that most of the main force lacked troops, equipment and poor training. The main force of their rural protection army was expanding too fast. In just a few months, it expanded from a few thousand to Tens of thousands of people.
This is not a garrison force. It can be used directly after reorganization. This newly expanded main force needs to recruit new soldiers and build guns. It is too difficult to expand the main force by tens of thousands in a short period of time. It is not possible at all. It's possible.
Therefore, despite the fact that the Baoxiang Army has now established five main divisions, in fact, only the first division is fully staffed. The others are missing arms and legs, and many of the soldiers in the main force have been trained. The time is too short, even in the First Division, where the Fourth Infantry Regiment has just been newly expanded.
All this was caused by the short time and the rapid expansion of the army.
There is no good solution to this. The only option is to continue to let the arsenal focus on producing weapons and equipment, let the soldiers step up their training, and then leave the rest to time.
Next, Xu Zhixian introduced the currently known situation of the Ming Army, but he did not go into too much detail in this regard, because the Baoxiang Army currently does not understand the situation of the Ming Army, and it is not the Baoxiang Army’s intelligence collection capabilities. Bad, but the Ming army was too chaotic.
The Ming army system was very complex. There were battalion sentry soldiers who were mainly recruited soldiers, there were also battalion sentry soldiers composed of ordinary guard soldiers, there were also ordinary guard soldiers, and then there were various young and strong civilian men directly recruited by governors from various places. County braves and so on, the mess is so messy that it makes people confused, and it is impossible to figure out how many combatable soldiers there are on the opposite side.
And the most disgusting thing is, you see there is a fubiao directly under the governor in front. You may think that they are elite soldiers, but when you go up to fight, you will find that they are just a group of civilians recruited temporarily...
Then I saw a group of guard soldiers under a certain guard general. I thought they were just a bunch of scumbag soldiers, but when I went up to fight them, I found that they were all elite recruiters with the title of servant.
Before collecting detailed information and without actual contact, it was actually difficult for the generals of the Baoxiang Army to figure out whether the Ming troops on the opposite side could fight...
Not to mention that the generals of the Baoxiang Army were confused, even Hong Chengchou and Yang Sichang themselves couldn't figure out how many fighting troops they had.
The only good thing is that the Ming army on the opposite side still doesn't have many artillery, especially long-barreled artillery.
And this also gave the Baoxiang Army the confidence to launch a cross-river offensive!
