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When Xu Zhixian took Changcha with him, other senior civil and military officials in the Chu Empire were also idle.
Minister of Counsel, Industry Feng, is currently inspecting the Daye Industrial Base in Daye. He will inspect core factories such as Hantian Arsenal, Hantian Machinery Factory, and Daye Iron Works in Daye, urging subordinate factories to steadily increase production capacity and ensure Supply of various military products.
Especially in the Hantian Arsenal, the construction of the production line of the 2-year-old Suifa rifle was urged.
Counting Yuan Gaofeng, three of the top officials in the Chu Empire, namely the Minister of Counselor, had already gone out for inspections.
There are only seven counselors in the Chu Empire, and there are only five people in the civil service system: Guo Quanshu, who is in charge of civil affairs and internal affairs, and is also the minister of the Ministry of Civil Affairs; Qin Gaolin; Yuan Gaofeng, who is in charge of industrial and commercial economic affairs, and also serves as the Minister of Industry; Chen Xingkai, who is in charge of taxation and financial affairs, and also serves as the Minister of Taxation; in charge of agriculture, forestry, livestock and fishery, infrastructure, people's livelihood relief, education and other affairs, and also supervises the Ministry of Ethics and Education Song Zhang of Shangshu.
The remaining two are Xu Zhixian, the military chief of staff, and Wei Kaifu, the military and political minister.
Generally speaking, Xu Zhixian was in charge of military order affairs, and Wei Kaifu was in charge of military and political affairs.
One is in charge of fighting and the other is in charge of construction.
Three of the seven counselors in the Dachu Empire have gone out for inspections, and only four are currently staying in Beijing to handle government affairs.
This immediately increased the work intensity of these four people.
These were also noticed by Luo Zhixue, so on the fourth day of July, Luo Zhixue issued an order to specially transfer Huang Chengxuan, the Minister of Finance, Zhang Xu, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, and Song Jingwei, the left minister of the Ministry of Personnel, due to the busy work of the Counselor. A total of ten people including Sun Tianhong, deputy director of operations of the General Staff Department, walked into the palace to assist in important military and political affairs.
Luo Zhixue has been planning this for a long time.
On the one hand, the current minister of state has too much power and needs certain checks and balances.
On the other hand, the work of the current Councilors is too busy. These Councilors are not only counselors in name on military and political matters, but they really need to take turns to be on duty in the palace 24 hours a day, and when emergencies occur Process it as soon as possible.
At the same time, in addition to taking turns on duty in the palace, they also have extremely arduous duties.
In the past, when the seven people were in Gyeonggi, they were fine and could barely make arrangements to come over. Now, three people were arranged to go out of Beijing for inspection. When only four people were left, it was difficult to rotate.
At the same time, the Counselor has no other deputies. At most, there are only a few low-level rotating officials who are transferred from various yamen to handle ordinary paperwork.
And Luo Zhixue is really worried that the four ministers who are currently staying in Gyeonggi will be exhausted to death...
So taking this opportunity, Luo Zhixue directly promoted the system of assistant ministers and assigned a deputy to those ministers.
These assistant ministers are not in charge of multiple affairs like the counselor ministers.
Their daily work is still their essential work, but they need to be on duty in the palace on a rotational basis. When they are on duty, they act as the deputy to the Minister of Counselor to handle affairs, so as to reduce the workload of the Minister of Counselor.
From the perspective of power checks and balances, these ministers can also check and balance the power of the ministers to a certain extent, preventing the ministers from having too much power and making it difficult to effectively check and balance other than the imperial power.
However, using the Assistant Minister for checks and balances is just a precaution.
The best person to check and balance the Minister of Counselor is the Minister of Counselor himself!
As for the seven ministers, they represent different interests and have different ambitions. At the same time, their political status is at the same level. No one can say that their status is higher.
As a result, conflicts naturally arise.
Luo Zhixue is very good at creating mountains.
First, they separated the military from the political affairs, creating many conflicts between the civilian officials and the military.
They also instituted the system of ministers and made some adjustments in the affairs they were in charge of, and then caused conflicts among their ministers.
Even within the military, there are internal conflicts now.
For example, the Army is very dissatisfied with the generous treatment of the Guards...
The Navy, on the other hand, is also very dissatisfied with the fact that the Army spends an absolute majority of its military expenditures, leaving only a little bit of silver dregs for the Navy.
The generals of the garrison division were also particularly unhappy with the superiority of the generals of the main division.
Recently, some generals in the garrison division, including some who have a greater interest in the garrison division, have been calling for reforms in the garrison division.
How to reform?
Just expand the garrison division into the main division.
Today's garrison divisions are typical second-line troops in the Chu army system. Their tactical organization and equipment are all those of the traditional army, that is, the set of sentries in the Ming army camp. There are even many newly formed garrison troops, among which The military uniforms of the generals are still those of the Ming army...
Over a long period of time, many generals of the garrison division were naturally dissatisfied and tried to promote the reform of the garrison division and enhance its combat effectiveness.
Among them, Huang Guangmao, commander of the West Route Army, and several major generals in the garrison, mainly Wang Dazhuang, Ma Dapao, An Yongduo and others, as well as Chen Yongfu, He Renlong and others who were among the senior generals who had surrendered, were all there. Be proactive about this.
Previously, the two and a half kilogram field guns were assigned to the garrison division, and their promotion was indispensable.
How should I put it, people also have progressive ideas.
However, they also knew very well that with the current situation of the Chu Empire, it was impossible for the garrison to be reorganized into the main division on a large scale.
This is unrealistic. After all, the size of the garrison is equivalent to that of the main force. With so many people having to be converted into the main force, a huge number of guns and armors are required.
Nowadays, the main divisions are not fully equipped, and many main divisions are still extremely short of guns, especially artillery. How can it be possible to equip the garrison with the guns and artillery that are in short supply on a large scale.
At the same time, they are unlikely to expect to be directly transferred to serve in the main division.
They know their own affairs, but their abilities are still flawed. Otherwise, they would not be sent to serve in the garrison. If they were really asked to command a main division, they would have to be blinded first.
After all, the tactics of the main division and the garrison division are completely different, and it is difficult for the generals of the garrison to adapt to and effectively command the main force.
And since this was the case, they set their sights on improving the combat effectiveness of the garrison division itself.
For example, equip more field artillery, replace some of the muskets with matchlock guns, replace some messy short robes with standard two-hundred-pound short robes, and equip with more armor.
These can effectively improve the combat effectiveness of the garrison.
Especially artillery!
Once the garrison itself is equipped with long-barreled field artillery on a large scale, it will gain a huge advantage in fighting the Ming army.
At that time, without the help of the artillery unit of the main division, they will be able to fight against the large number of battalion sentries and garrison soldiers in the Ming army alone.
Artillery, this is the biggest factor that determines the outcome of both sides in the current war.
It's just that the field artillery production capacity in the Da Chu Empire seems to be very large, but the demand is even greater. The main force is waiting to use it. At the same time, the navy's warships are also waiting for a large number of long-barreled artillery to be used.
The number of long-barreled artillery that can be freed up for the garrison is naturally not that many.
This also led to conflicts between the garrison and the main force.
There are many contradictions within the military, contradictions between the military and the civilian system, and contradictions within the civilian system, and some of them were even deliberately created by Luo Zhixue.
For Luo Zhixue, a powerful Chu Empire is certainly his pursuit, but a Chu Empire that belongs to him is his real pursuit.
Therefore, in any matter, consolidating his own power is his first priority.
Therefore, he would allow or even intensify the occurrence of conflicts, just to prevent his ministers from clumping together and restraining and balancing each other.
That day, when all the ministers under him were as close as a family, he would have trouble sleeping.
The Assistant Minister is a product used for checks and balances.
Of course, there is no need to explain these considerations to the ministers.
After the establishment of the Minister of Assistance, Luo Zhixue struck while the iron was hot and once again made some changes to Gyeonggi's administrative agencies, establishing two new ministerial-level agencies:
The Ministry of Water Resources is responsible for flood control, water conservancy and irrigation and other matters.
The Ministry of Transportation is responsible for transportation, including land transportation, water transportation, etc., as well as official road construction and other matters.
These two agencies actually had related Water Conservancy Bureau and Civil Affairs Bureau before. Now Luo Zhixue just expanded these two agencies and merged some other agencies, and finally created the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Transport.
As a result, the number of ministerial agencies under the Dachu Empire's Government Affairs Council was increased from the previous nine to eleven, in addition to six independent departments and bureaus.
In the process of adding the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Transport, Luo Zhixue also made some adjustments to the functions of the original ministries and departments to make each other's functions clearer.
And this adjustment was Luo Zhixue's last large-scale change before the Eastward Campaign, or even before he captured Jinling City and moved the capital.
In the subsequent Eastward Campaign, and even before moving the capital, Luo Zhixue will not make too many changes to the existing government system. He will focus on using all his strength in the Eastward Campaign.
And while Luo Zhixue was sitting in the south making final preparations for the eastward campaign, the Forbidden City in the north was in panic!
Dongli once again detoured through Mongolia and attacked south, and was about to reach the capital!
It is nothing new in recent years for the eastward captives to detour through Mongolia and enter the country to plunder.
Since the captivity of Huang Taiji, he gradually conquered Mongolia and began to use Mongolian cavalry to bypass Mongolia and enter the country to plunder.
In the second year of Chongzhen's reign, he broke through the Great Wall from Xifengkou and plundered a point in Beizhili, making huge gains.
From then on, Dongdu especially liked to take a detour to Mongolia and go south when he had nothing to do.
In the seventh year of Chongzhen's reign, Huang Taiji led his troops around Mongolia and reached the Xuanfu area. Thanks to Huang Taiji's attack, the Ming court was forced to mobilize the troops from the Central Plains to encircle and suppress the bandits and go north. Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng and others were able to break through the siege, otherwise they would have been defeated earlier. They were surrounded and suppressed by officers and soldiers.
In the eighth year of Chongzhen's reign (last year), the bandits came again and invaded the Hetao area, and also plundered the Taiyuan area of Shanxi Province.
The first three times he detoured to Mongolia and went south, he gained a lot, which made Dongdu more determined to detour south to Mongolia.
No, this year after Huang Taiji imitated Luo Zhixue and formally proclaimed emperor in Shenyang, he sent troops to detour to Mongolia again. This time their ambitions were even greater. They wanted to break through the Great Wall for the second time and penetrate into the hinterland of Northern Zhili to plunder.
In June, after Mingting noticed the danger, he also made corresponding arrangements and tried to take strict precautions.
But I didn't expect that the Dongfeng army was coming with a fierce force. They were defeated again and again, and they had already broken through the outer Great Wall, reached Xuanfu, and were approaching Yanqing City...
This seems to be separated by the Great Wall from the capital, but it is less than a hundred kilometers away from the capital.
Under such circumstances, Chongzhen and other monarchs and ministers in the capital, who still had thoughts about the Chu thieves in the south, had already focused on mobilizing troops and generals to prepare, trying to drive out the Dongjiu who entered the pass.
It's just that the pressure in the south is also great, and it's not easy to mobilize troops and generals.
After several rounds, only the troops in Shaanxi and Henan can be mobilized.
Mainly because now the bandits have been almost wiped out, and at the same time, the Chu bandits have no intention of moving north on a large scale. The main force of the Ming army in the direction of Shaanxi and Henan seems to be fighting frequently with the Chu army all day long, but It's all a small fight.
In addition, the Ming Dynasty is basically starting from the Chu bandits to make big moves along the Yangtze River, especially the Jiujiang line. Its strategic goal is probably to advance eastward. The pressure on the northern line is not so great.
Originally, the Ming court was already preparing to mobilize northern troops to go south to Jiangbei and even northern Jiangxi to support Shi Kefa.
Now that the East and South are conquering, the Ming court no longer cares about the south. Anyway, the south is fought with guns, and the Ming army in Shaanxi, Henan and other directions does not have many guns, so it will also give away people.
It would be better to transfer to Northern Zhili to fight against the Eastern Capture.
Therefore, in late June, Chongzhen issued an order to Hong Chengchou, asking him to quickly speed up the lord's force to go north to rescue the capital.
Transfer orders were also issued to Zuo Liangyu, Wu Sangui and other generals who held real power.
At the same time, the post of governor of the three sides was taken over by Sun Chuanting, the governor of Shaanxi who had done a good job before, and began to take charge of the military affairs of the three sides.
And what about Zuo Liangyu, Wu Sangui and many other powerful generals?
Naturally, the other generals didn't talk nonsense and followed Hong Chengchou northward.
But Zuo Liangyu and Wu Sangui are different.
Zuo Liangyu is now very happy to be the local emperor in Ye County. He has tens of thousands of troops under his command. With a heavy army, he is now less interested in ordinary civil servants.
Even if the current governor of Henan was in front of him, he would have a tougher tone, but he would not really dare to do anything to him.
Even the former Chen Biqian and the newly appointed Wang Jiazhen who were in charge of the war on the Eastern Front, when they passed by Henan some time ago, saw Zuo Liangyu, although they still acted like I am the boss, but well, they only have the air. , did not really dare to attack Zuo Liangyu, and even the war in the Central Plains direction was said to be dominated by Zuo Liangyu.
Such Zuo Liangyu naturally does not want to go to Beizhili and Dongluo to fight to the death.
Now he was happily playing in Henan, focusing on accumulating more guns and troops, but he had no intention of actually fighting anyone.
However, he had to ignore the imperial court's dispatches, so he submitted a memorial saying that his legs were ailing and unable to travel far, so he sent a capable general under his command to lead five thousand troops northward to rescue the capital.
Zuo Liangyu had an army of 30,000 to 40,000 men, but only 5,000 troops were sent north.
Wu Sangui was even more straightforward. He had no plans to go north!
Anyway, Dongdu did not break through Shanhaiguan to enter the customs, but detoured through Xuanfu and entered the customs. This is none of their business, Guan Ning's soldiers...
Anyway, the Dongluo invasion is just a wave of people fleeing, and it is impossible to capture the capital. As long as it is delayed for a few months, it will basically return to its original state.
So Wu Sangui openly agreed to go north, but he dilly-dallyed along the way and continued his great work of raising money and food...
As for Dongdu, whoever likes to fight is the one who makes fun of him!
————
Chapter 321: Field artillery goes north
When Xu Zhixian led people to inspect the Ruichang front line, other senior civil and military officials in the Da Chu Empire were not idle either.
Yuan Gaofeng, Minister of Counselor and Minister of Industry, is currently inspecting the Daye Industrial Base in Daye. He will inspect core factories such as Hantian Arsenal, Hantian Machinery Factory, and Daye Iron Works in Daye, and urge subordinate factories to steadily improve. production capacity to ensure the supply of various military products.
Especially in the Hantian Arsenal, the construction of the production line of the 2-year-old Suifa rifle was urged.
Counting Yuan Gaofeng, three of the top officials in the Chu Empire, namely the Minister of Counselor, had already gone out for inspections.
There are only seven counselors in the Chu Empire, and there are only five people in the civil service system: Guo Quanshu, who is in charge of civil affairs and internal affairs, and is also the minister of the Ministry of Civil Affairs; Qin Gaolin; Yuan Gaofeng, who is in charge of industrial and commercial economic affairs, and also serves as the Minister of Industry; Chen Xingkai, who is in charge of taxation and financial affairs, and also serves as the Minister of Taxation; in charge of agriculture, forestry, livestock and fishery, infrastructure, people's livelihood relief, education and other affairs, and also supervises the Ministry of Ethics and Education Song Zhang of Shangshu.
The remaining two are Xu Zhixian, the military chief of staff, and Wei Kaifu, the military and political minister.
Generally speaking, Xu Zhixian was in charge of military order affairs, and Wei Kaifu was in charge of military and political affairs.
One is in charge of fighting and the other is in charge of construction.
Three of the seven counselors in the Dachu Empire have gone out for inspections, and only four are currently staying in Beijing to handle government affairs.
This immediately increased the work intensity of these four people.
These were also noticed by Luo Zhixue, so on the fourth day of July, Luo Zhixue issued an order to specially transfer Huang Chengxuan, the Minister of Finance, Zhang Xu, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, and Song Jingwei, the left minister of the Ministry of Personnel, due to the busy work of the Counselor. A total of ten people including Sun Tianhong, deputy director of operations of the General Staff Department, walked into the palace to assist in important military and political affairs.
Luo Zhixue has been planning this for a long time.
On the one hand, the current minister of state has too much power and needs certain checks and balances.
On the other hand, the work of the current Councilors is too busy. These Councilors are not only counselors in name on military and political matters, but they really need to take turns to be on duty in the palace 24 hours a day, and when emergencies occur Process it as soon as possible.
At the same time, in addition to taking turns on duty in the palace, they also have extremely arduous duties.
In the past, when the seven people were in Gyeonggi, they were fine and could barely make arrangements to come over. Now, three people were arranged to go out of Beijing for inspection. When only four people were left, it was difficult to rotate.
At the same time, the Counselor has no other deputies. At most, there are only a few low-level rotating officials who are transferred from various yamen to handle ordinary paperwork.
And Luo Zhixue is really worried that the four ministers who are currently staying in Gyeonggi will be exhausted to death...
So taking this opportunity, Luo Zhixue directly promoted the system of assistant ministers and assigned a deputy to those ministers.
These assistant ministers are not in charge of multiple affairs like the counselor ministers.
Their daily work is still their essential work, but they need to be on duty in the palace on a rotational basis. When they are on duty, they act as the deputy to the Minister of Counselor to handle affairs, so as to reduce the workload of the Minister of Counselor.
From the perspective of power checks and balances, these ministers can also check and balance the power of the ministers to a certain extent, preventing the ministers from having too much power and making it difficult to effectively check and balance other than the imperial power.
However, using the Assistant Minister for checks and balances is just a precaution.
The best person to check and balance the Minister of Counselor is the Minister of Counselor himself!
As for the seven ministers, they represent different interests and have different ambitions. At the same time, their political status is at the same level. No one can say that their status is higher.
As a result, conflicts naturally arise.
Luo Zhixue is very good at creating mountains.
First, they separated the military from the political affairs, creating many conflicts between the civilian officials and the military.
They also instituted the system of ministers and made some adjustments in the affairs they were in charge of, and then caused conflicts among their ministers.
Even within the military, there are internal conflicts now.
For example, the Army is very dissatisfied with the generous treatment of the Guards...
The Navy, on the other hand, is also very dissatisfied with the fact that the Army spends an absolute majority of its military expenditures, leaving only a little bit of silver dregs for the Navy.
The generals of the garrison division were also particularly unhappy with the superiority of the generals of the main division.
Recently, some generals in the garrison division, including some who have a greater interest in the garrison division, have been calling for reforms in the garrison division.
How to reform?
Just expand the garrison division into the main division.
Today's garrison divisions are typical second-line troops in the Chu army system. Their tactical organization and equipment are all those of the traditional army, that is, the set of sentries in the Ming army camp. There are even many newly formed garrison troops, among which The military uniforms of the generals are still those of the Ming army...
Over a long period of time, many generals of the garrison division were naturally dissatisfied and tried to promote the reform of the garrison division and enhance its combat effectiveness.
Among them, Huang Guangmao, commander of the West Route Army, and several major generals in the garrison, mainly Wang Dazhuang, Ma Dapao, An Yongduo and others, as well as Chen Yongfu, He Renlong and others who were among the senior generals who had surrendered, were all there. Be proactive about this.
Previously, the two and a half kilogram field guns were assigned to the garrison division, and their promotion was indispensable.
How should I put it, people also have progressive ideas.
However, they also knew very well that with the current situation of the Chu Empire, it was impossible for the garrison to be reorganized into the main division on a large scale.
This is unrealistic. After all, the size of the garrison is equivalent to that of the main force. With so many people having to be converted into the main force, a huge number of guns and armors are required.
Nowadays, the main divisions are not fully equipped, and many main divisions are still extremely short of guns, especially artillery. How can it be possible to equip the garrison with the guns and artillery that are in short supply on a large scale.
At the same time, they are unlikely to expect to be directly transferred to serve in the main division.
They know their own affairs, but their abilities are still flawed. Otherwise, they would not be sent to serve in the garrison. If they were really asked to command a main division, they would have to be blinded first.
After all, the tactics of the main division and the garrison division are completely different, and it is difficult for the generals of the garrison to adapt to and effectively command the main force.
And since this was the case, they set their sights on improving the combat effectiveness of the garrison division itself.
For example, equip more field artillery, replace some of the muskets with matchlock guns, replace some messy short robes with standard two-hundred-pound short robes, and equip with more armor.
These can effectively improve the combat effectiveness of the garrison.
Especially artillery!
Once the garrison itself is equipped with long-barreled field artillery on a large scale, it will gain a huge advantage in fighting the Ming army.
At that time, without the help of the artillery unit of the main division, they will be able to fight against the large number of battalion sentries and garrison soldiers in the Ming army alone.
Artillery, this is the biggest factor that determines the outcome of both sides in the current war.
It's just that the field artillery production capacity in the Da Chu Empire seems to be very large, but the demand is even greater. The main force is waiting to use it. At the same time, the navy's warships are also waiting for a large number of long-barreled artillery to be used.
The number of long-barreled artillery that can be freed up for the garrison is naturally not that many.
This also led to conflicts between the garrison and the main force.
There are many contradictions within the military, contradictions between the military and the civilian system, and contradictions within the civilian system, and some of them were even deliberately created by Luo Zhixue.
For Luo Zhixue, a powerful Chu Empire is certainly his pursuit, but a Chu Empire that belongs to him is his real pursuit.
Therefore, in any matter, consolidating his own power is his first priority.
Therefore, he would allow or even intensify the occurrence of conflicts, just to prevent his ministers from clumping together and restraining and balancing each other.
That day, when all the ministers under him were as close as a family, he would have trouble sleeping.
The Assistant Minister is a product used for checks and balances.
Of course, there is no need to explain these considerations to the ministers.
After the establishment of the Minister of Assistance, Luo Zhixue struck while the iron was hot and once again made some changes to Gyeonggi's administrative agencies, establishing two new ministerial-level agencies:
The Ministry of Water Resources is responsible for flood control, water conservancy and irrigation and other matters.
The Ministry of Transportation is responsible for transportation, including land transportation, water transportation, etc., as well as official road construction and other matters.
These two agencies actually had related Water Conservancy Bureau and Civil Affairs Bureau before. Now Luo Zhixue just expanded these two agencies and merged some other agencies, and finally created the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Transport.
As a result, the number of ministerial agencies under the Dachu Empire's Government Affairs Council was increased from the previous nine to eleven, in addition to six independent departments and bureaus.
In the process of adding the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Transport, Luo Zhixue also made some adjustments to the functions of the original ministries and departments to make each other's functions clearer.
And this adjustment was Luo Zhixue's last large-scale change before the Eastward Campaign, or even before he captured Jinling City and moved the capital.
In the subsequent Eastward Campaign, and even before moving the capital, Luo Zhixue will not make too many changes to the existing government system. He will focus on using all his strength in the Eastward Campaign.
Use all the power
