Chapter 655
Although the little emperor did not carry out military reforms without hiding it, Ying Jieyan did not expect that he would have such a big battle. It can be said that it overturned the tradition of the Song Dynasty that followed the three hundred years and risked offending the entire Shilin to improve the status of the warrior. He also knew that the little emperor had always been cautious in doing things, and there must be a reason to take such a big risk this time, so he wanted to find out the root cause.
Zhao Bing was not stupid either. Of course, he understood the old man's voice-over. He knew that if he wanted to carry out military reform, he had to get the support of several gentlemen and persuade the ministers in the court. He knew that from the day they became their masters, they had formed a community with him, and they could be the person they trusted and rely on the most, so he did not intend to hide it from them, and then expressed his thoughts.
He was wandering around and had no long-term plans at all. Zhao Bing was the same, and he also countered the moves by chance. Everything was done to save his life. He defeated the Yuan army several attacks and quelled the liran. It can be said that he had already gained a foothold in Qiongzhou. Then he could not act like a blow or a blow to the west, but had to have a long-term plan.
"Restoring the country" is not a question. All work must be done around it. But it is not just Zhao Bing, but everyone knows that if you want to restore the country, you will never succeed overnight. It may take ten years, eight years, or even longer. Perhaps many people will find it difficult to return to Bianliang for the restoration of their lives. So since you cannot eat a fat man in one bite, you must have a plan and move forward step by step towards the goal.
The basis for restoring the country is the economic foundation. Strong economic capabilities are the foundation for all countries to establish a foothold and provide guarantees for strong military strength. The other is of course the army, which is the fundamental force for realizing the plan. At present, only by establishing a sufficiently powerful army can we maintain the base and maintain economic development, and only after accumulating enough strength can we fight out.
Of course, Zhao Bing didn't want to do this. If he said that he would want to defeat Dadu and Kublai Khan tomorrow, he would have to bear too much pressure, not only because he was just a descendant of the Zhao family, but he was also the lord of the people. However, the objective laws would not be broken by subjective wishes. He faced the most powerful enemy of the Han people in Chinese history. It would be no easy task to defeat them, otherwise the War of Resistance Against Japan would not have been fought for more than ten years. On the contrary, the situation at that time was a hundred times better than that of himself. It was similar to Wanwan, but they had been shouting for decades, but they still shouted.
Compared with the Mongolian Yuan, the current state of the country is not mentioned in terms of population, region and economy, even the army itself is hard to match. If you can win these battles, it does not mean that you can still win in the future. Because his army still has many fatal shortcomings. If it is not changed, it would be good not to defeat the Mongolian Yuan and not annexed by others.
First of all, the current Song army, in addition to being inferior to the Yuan army, has not only partial advantages in equipment, but also lag behind in conventional weapons. Now, in addition to consumables such as arrows, most of the armor and weapons, and even warships are maintained by seizures, and they are all more about repairing and not manufacturing. The production of weapons such as muskets and artillery is still very low, and there is still a long way to go to form combat effectiveness.
On the other hand, the quality of the Song army officers and soldiers was also a problem. Of course, Zhao Bing did not dare to expect them to have knowledge and awareness. Instead, the physical fitness and training of the soldiers were difficult to meet the standards of qualified. When the General Administration Army was first established, he found that the volunteers and the officials who were allocated to him were unable to march. The main reason was that they were in a semi-starved state. In addition to being in a state of recklessness, they were also unable to raise enough military rations due to poor logistics and supply work, which often resulted in short supply.
When facing the risk of food being cut off, Zhao Bing also found that more than half of the soldiers were weak and looked like idiots and could not stand coaching. Zhao Mengjin and Liu Zhu had asked him more than once to draw soldiers who could be trained to form another army to ensure concentrated diet training, while the others were under the supervision of each team. Of course, there was no question of training, and they only took on military chores and acted as cheerleaders during war to boost their momentum.
When he was in Yashan, Zhao Bing discovered that the suggestions put forward by Zhao Mengjin and others were common phenomena. Even the Huai Army, which was the main force, was the same. The strong soldiers selected could only barely eat enough, and the other officers and soldiers could not starve to death. This is why his situation immediately changed after hunting whales and distributing the meat to each army.
After moving to Qiong, Zhao Bing kept asking the imperial guards in front of the palace to carry out training. In fact, he was raising troops. He was good food and drink to supplement nutrition and restore physical strength every day. He was in a secondary position. As a result, he did not dare to put them on the front line during the previous defense battle, but used them as a reserve team to prevent them from being defeated by one blow and causing major trouble.
Everyone knows that the standards of modern and modern military generally refer to troops equipped with hot weapons, strict military discipline and a complete logistics support system. Although Zhao Bing is working hard to ensure that officers and soldiers eat well and drink well, and formulates food standards and a series of related systems, due to poor logistics and supply work, many soldiers' miscellaneous tasks have been added, and training time has been occupied.
According to Zhao Bing's observation and statistical reports, general troops take up about ten days a month for collecting food and grass, transporting, harvesting and processing raw grain, etc., and a commanding soldier often allocates one-third of his manpower to work frequently. This makes it difficult for many new recruits to get sufficient training, and they cannot even distinguish the orders. This is just in the absence of war on weekdays.
Although there were organized civil servants who helped to transport food and grass and transport military funds during the war, this was barely guaranteed supply with the short transportation distance of local operations and the assistance of local governments. Once they left the island, they were very difficult to fight. This time, the Northern Expedition Army encountered this time. Wen Tianxiang repeatedly reported that the logistics could not adapt to military requirements, and the general public would mostly avoid them. The old regime had collapsed, and the new regime was difficult to establish, so it was impossible to effectively recruit civil servants to follow the army, resulting in many difficulties in transporting food, fodder, materials, etc. The seized materials could only be destroyed on the spot, or allowed the people to move them away, and it was difficult to transport them back to Qiong.
Therefore, during this military reform, Zhao Bing specially established a logistics department in charge of logistics, and established a complete logistics support system for peacetime and combat affairs, so that the army can obtain basic living, training and combat supplies under any conditions. He even thought about adopting commercial operations and subcontracting some work to some capable and capable merchants.
In addition to these, there is another problem that cannot be ignored or ignored. Most general soldiers of the Song army are peasant children. They are docile, disciplined, hard-working, obey commands, and have strong plasticity. As long as they are strictly trained and appropriate incentive mechanisms, they can quickly become qualified soldiers. The biggest problem is the officer.
The former officer replenishment and selection system of the Song army has disappeared with the defeat. Take the general army formed by oneself as an example. Grassroots officers are based on trust rather than appointing them. Many of them were still villagers, gentry, and landlords who were farming with hoes a few days ago, but when they picked up swords and guns, they became generals who led their troops to battle.
Many people have mastered basic military skills and ability to organize combat in continuous training and short-term training classes. Of course, some of them have a certain military foundation or talent for leading troops, and can only accumulate experience in continuous actual combat and management of the troops, but this is still difficult to change the overall decline of the army. By judging others by oneself, the situation of other armies is better, Zhao Bing feels that there will not be too big a difference.
Similarly, the quality of senior officers is also very worrying, and the business of the command organs above the battalion is extremely unsound. The operation and sand table education on the map can be said to be completely lacking, and the exercises of command posts and staff business are completely ignored. There is neither a specific operation plan nor a complete combat order. Therefore, when the army arrives in battle, it will inexplicably have problems, forming a strange phenomenon that officials are inferior to soldiers.
Many of the staff members of the chief officers of each army have no military background, but are mostly the private officials of the chief officer. Often, very important positions are handed over to some outdated officers or literati who are not aware of military affairs. The military leadership department does not have specialized training, and those participating in the army and senators do not know how to manage personnel and calculate the consumption of supplies. As for the officials in some auxiliary departments, they are more just a mess, and even have no common sense of managing items and inspecting items.
In addition, the command and coordination system of the Song army was disordered and almost unruly. According to the procedures of the military command system, Zhao Bing, as the emperor, just issued an order to the Privy Council, but he had to command over the level. For some major battles, he not only had to plan in advance, but also commanded himself when launching a battle. Not only did he command over the level of the army, but he even directly ordered to the battalion level. In special circumstances, he had to take the battle personally.
It was precisely because Zhao Bing personally inquired about everything that the chief officers of each unit did not dare to make their own decisions, or asked for instructions to carry out the matter in order to ease responsibility. As a result, officers at all levels did not dare to disobey and were willing to follow it, which led to the generals in the front lacking the awareness of independent combat and the ability to adapt to the situation. He also became famous as a god of military use and wise and brave. But he knew that this was extremely abnormal. Now that the few soldiers in the land are too narrow, he can still take care of it, but what about the future?
Zhao Bing was very clear about the current situation. After he won the battles in succession and the Northern Expedition Army swept Guangdong and Guangxi, when Kublai Khan used troops to Annan and Japan, the Yuan army would no longer easily use troops to Qiongzhou, but would take a defensive stance. This led to a rare gap. He would use this period to complete the transformation of the army and build the actively defensive Song army into an attacking army.
However, although we all know that any powerful army in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad must not fight without teaching; all talented military strategists know that governing the army first must first cultivate and train military cadres and talents. An important task of the Ministry of War this time is to establish a military academy to train officers, lay the foundation for the strategic transformation of the Song army, and achieve the goal of enhancing combat effectiveness.
Zhao Bing's plan is to use two years to complete rotation training for grassroots officers of the Song army to improve their tactical command capabilities; middle-level and senior officers complete training for combat organization, command and synthetic combat; and to educate ordinary soldiers on patriotism and loyalty to the emperor and military discipline, and to complete basic training for military branches, proficient in the weapons of their own troops, and strengthen coordinated training with other troops.
Then, in one year, some troops were expanded and replaced in a planned manner, and several legions were built that were fully used for hot weapons, and then they began to carry out local counterattacks, launch a series of small battles to annihilate the enemy's living forces, and gain practical experience; after two years, all the main forces were replaced, and coordinated training of various military branches and campaigns of large legions were carried out. They waited for an opportunity to launch a large counterattack and launched a full-scale battle to restore the country...
Ying Jieyan listened to the little emperor talking, and suddenly felt that he was not his master, but his Majesty's student. His ideas were very clear, the purpose of military reform was extremely clear, and the proposal was also operational. There were many novel vocabulary and unique insights that he had never heard of before, and the departments set up were also very targeted, which made people feel refreshed, which was obviously a bit of thought.
Let’s look at the model of the New Army Training Camp placed on the Little Emperor’s desk, and there are new army formation and training plans piled up next to it. Ying Jieyan can only see from the distribution map of the New Army military camp model. This camp is not only vast in area, but also has complete functions, divided into living areas, teaching areas and training areas. The martial arts field alone has three sizes, covering all majors of four military branches: insurgency, cavalry, baggage, and artillery, and is equipped with a special training area. There are also guns and cannon shooting ranges outside the camp.
It was said to be a military camp, but Ying Jieyan was an old driver. He could see through the conspiracy of the young emperor at a glance. This was clearly a martial art that he had long been talking about. His Majesty bypassed the court in the name of starting a new army, and prepared to work alone. He cultivated new types of military talents, and replaced the middle and lower-level officers of the current army with these disciples of the emperor while changing clothes, and then broke the mountaintops in the army, and firmly held the power of the general in his own hands.
Chapter completed!