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At the end of the first year of Tianjian, the Hua Kingdom and the Xia Kingdom turned against each other due to the bloody incident in Zhenzhou, and their bilateral relations dropped to a freezing point. Comparable to this season, both countries gathered large armies at the border. Although the smell of gunpowder was very strong and there was a danger of it breaking out, war did not break out in the end - God forbid!
The headquarters of the Fifth Army in Yunzhong has recalled the 36th Brigade of Xu Qing. After all, it is a long way from Yunzhong to Zhenzhou, with deserts, grasslands, swamps, and Mongolian tribes of all sizes and unpredictable intentions. The weather is cold, the terrain is complex, and the people are sinister. Without the right time, location, and people, the odds of winning such a battle are not high. Guan Zhongyong discovered this problem in time shortly after the 36th Brigade set off, and urgently sent an order to recall the 36th Brigade that had not yet left Xuande County, and corrected the mistake.
At the end of the year and before the New Year, the 36th Brigade returned to work, ready to face more severe tests.
This winter is the most comfortable winter Di Lie has experienced in the past five years. He doesn¡¯t have to go anywhere, he just stays in the palace. I reviewed memorials during the day and worked hard at night. The emperor seems to be the most respected person in the world, but in fact, he has a more miserable life than the officials below him - at least from the first to the fifteenth day of the new year, all government offices are closed and they have a holiday to celebrate the festival. Only he, the emperor, never has a day off. , we still have to worry about farming issues across the country in the spring of next year.
China has been an agricultural society since ancient times. Agriculture is the first of all industries. Without agriculture, it will be unstable. Agriculture was stable for a new empire. Only when the country is stable can agriculture develop. The country needs to develop, which is a top priority. Regarding how to develop agriculture, Di Lie felt that the combined development of agriculture, sideline industries, animal husbandry, and fisheries, which he had already tried to implement when he was in Tianshu City, was a good way.
In this regard, Liu Erping, the head of the household department, is in trouble. He is an expert. Although this person does not know a few words and looks like an old farmer, in fact he is an old farmer from the inside out, but he is definitely a down-to-earth agricultural expert - what the empire wants is such a practical and experienced expert. "There are thousands of grains in the book", can't you really get food by chewing the Four Books and Five Classics? If this poetry book is thrown into the field, it is worse than a pile of dung. Manure can fertilize the field. What does the poetry book care about?
Di Lie is considering establishing a Farmland and Water Conservancy Department under the Ministry of Household Affairs. Specifically responsible for this area, let Liu Erping be the director.
In addition to spring plowing, another major event is war. For an empire to rise, it only needs two things - farming and fighting!
? If the country is compared to a moving carriage, farming war is the two wheels of the carriage. Holding a sword in one hand. Holding the plow with one hand, using the sword of the empire to defend the plow of the empire, we will continue to open up a wider space for the survival and development of the empire.
so. China is not afraid of war, but the Chinese army is eager for war. The war will start in the coming spring.
At this moment, on Di Lie's desk, there are four plans to attack Xia, respectively from the General Staff, the 12th Division, the 14th Division, and the 21st Division. The latter three plans came from the border frontline troops respectively. Based on the position of their own troops and compared with the enemy's military strength, they proposed their own strategies and submitted them to the court.
The 21st Division stationed in Huanzhou is closest to Xingzhou, the seat of Xingqing Prefecture, the capital of the Xia Kingdom. If you follow the Lingzhou River and go up the river, you can reach the foot of Xingzhou City in only three hundred miles. Therefore, Zhao Zhe, the former commander of Huanzhou and now the commander of the 21st Division, proposed the following strategy: use the Zhejia Army, Jinning Army, and the 12th Division to contain the Xia Northeast Frontier Army; use the 14th Division of Yan'an Prefecture , the 15th Division to contain the Xia Army's Jianing Military Division's Youzhou and Yanzhou forces; the 21st Division and the 13th Division (Class A Division) can first defeat Weizhou, which is close at hand, and quickly launch an attack Xiping Prefecture, Jingzhou, and finally Xingzhou, annihilating Dangxiang in one fell swoop.
The plan proposed by Fu Xuan of the 14th Division is very similar to that of Zhao Zhe. The only difference is that the main attack will be carried out by his own division and the 13th Division. The main attack direction is to break through Hongzhou first, then pull out Youzhou, break through the Iron Gate Pass of the South Gate of Xia Kingdom, and then Advancing westward along the northern line of the Great Wall, crossing the Yellow River, occupying Huaizhou, and finally reaching Xingzhou.
The above two are step-by-step and steady plans to eliminate summer. The advantages of these two solutions are stability, but the disadvantage is that they are slow, and can even be said to be long and delayed.
You must know that Xixia and Song have been fighting for hundreds of years, and 90% of the wars were fought on this front. You call me today, and I'll call you back tomorrow. Today's village's surname is Song, if not, tomorrow's surname will be Xia. During the reign of Emperor Shenzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, Prime Minister Zhang Dun vigorously built fortresses, "building two cities on the Haoshui River at the mouth of Shimen Gorge, and named them Pingxia City and Lingping Village. Then Huanqing, Fuyan, Hedong, and Xihe all built cities one after another, and expanded In this situation, the Xia people were stunned and did not dare to move."
The countermeasure adopted by the Xia State was to build fortresses against fortresses and build fortresses on a large scale. In the past thirty years, the border between Song and Xia was a flat shuttle-shaped land of no more than a thousand miles horizontally and a hundred miles vertically. Hundreds of villages were spread across it, with forts crisscrossing it, forming a very dense border.??Complex defense in depth system. The fights between the two countries always revolved around these small and large villages, and they were rarely able to invade Fuzhou.
Compare the combat strength and troop deployment of our country and Xia's country according to the general staff, as well as the follow-up of logistics supplies. If more than 50,000 troops are dispatched according to the above two plans to attack the Xia Kingdom along the Song Army's previous march route, just to remove these dense strongholds along the way, and then attack city by city, and finally reach Xingzhou, it will be the fastest. Six to eight months, this is still a very smooth situation. If the Xia army counterattacks fiercely and fights back and forth for the stronghold, fighting a tug-of-war like it did with the Song army in the past, then it is possible even if it drags on for a year.
??The time required to clean up a country whose capital is only four hundred miles away from our army is actually longer than the time required to kill thousands of miles and completely destroy the Jin Kingdom! Di Lie was really shocked by this, and at the same time he was filled with emotion. This small country also has its own way of survival! No wonder it has been able to maneuver among the three kingdoms of Liao, Song and Jin for a hundred years. It is indeed reasonable for a small country with a small population and a tenacious national character to fight against the Song Dynasty.
The Song Dynasty could not destroy this country in a hundred years, but the Hua Kingdom was able to defeat it in one year. This in itself was enough to defy the heavens, but Di Lie and the staff were not satisfied. The current Xia State is not in the period of Li Yuanhao, and the military strength of the Hua State is not comparable to that of the Song State's Renzong period. At present, the country is newly established, with hundreds of wastes waiting to be done, spring plowing is about to begin, and there are millions of homeless people who need to be resettled, and no amount of food is enough. When an army goes on an expedition, the biggest loss is food. Fifty thousand troops, fighting for a year, plus the possibility of additional troops There is simply not enough food in the national warehouse.
According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the national defense grain reserves are barely enough to support an army of about 50,000 for a three to four-month war. This was due to the strong grain support received from the Song State during the Northern Expedition, and the support of the accumulated reserves after the Jin State was destroyed, and a large amount of grain was seized from the Jin State's warehouses.
Three months! Four months at most! This is the deadline for China's war to conquer Xia. Obviously, if we proceed step by step, remove the strongholds one by one, and advance step by stepnot to mention seizing the city and erecting the stronghold, the time spent on the road alone is probably more than three months. Such a tactic will definitely not work!
In front of Di Lie, there are two choices: 1. Launch a local war, fight one or two battles, and impose minor punishments and severe punishments to make Xia suffer some hardships. Temporarily give up the idea of ????destroying the Xia Kingdom in one battle, recharge your batteries, and wait for the next year, when the food and wages are sufficient, the troops and horses are strong, and then you can strike again.
2. Fight now, and fight as far as Xingqing City, to completely solve this century-old scourge in the northwest of the Central Plains. Then the country can calm down and develop in peace and prosperity for more than ten years.
Should war come first or develop first? One-and-done or slow-cooked fish?
As a horse-riding emperor who started out with military adventures, Di Lie resolutely chose the former - three months is three months! Either don¡¯t fight, or fight a big one!
Of course, military adventure does not mean reckless attack. Di Lie will not ignore reality and forcefully go to war. He needed a strategy that was different from the plans proposed by Zhao Zhe and Fu Xuan; he needed a brand-new strategy that was different from all previous Song and Xia battles; he needed a surprise attack strategy that was unimaginable and unpreventable by the Xia State.
The General Staff Headquarters has already researched the strategy that Di Lie needs. The only thing lacking is the generals who can implement it and turn the strategy on paper into real actions.
There is also a plan on the imperial case, which was sent by Yue Fei of the Twelfth Division. I wonder if this originally the number one general in the Southern Song Dynasty has any unique insights, or is it similar to Zhao and Fu?
When Di Lie unfolded the memorial, he glanced at it inadvertently. He was stunned for a moment, and his eyes suddenly focused. Only halfway through, he slapped the table and laughed: "What a Yue Pengju! He is worthy of being rated by historians as the most offensive spirit among the generals of the Southern Song Dynasty." General! It¡¯s a coincidence, it¡¯s a coincidence!¡±
The guards on duty outside the palace heard the sound of clapping and hurried in. When he saw that nothing happened, he bowed and left.
Di Lie racked his brains with Yue Fei's memorial and the General Staff Headquarters, and polished it for nearly a month before finally putting the completed plan together - the two plans were surprisingly consistent.
Di Lie stared attentively for a long time, his eyes gradually became firm, he slapped the imperial case hard, and shouted loudly: "Press the pen to draw up the decree."
On the twenty-second day of the first lunar month of the second year of Tianjian, Emperor Hua issued an order to establish the Western Expedition Army. With Yue Fei as the commander-in-chief, Zhe Keqiu, Xu Huiyan, Zhang Xian, Liang Xing, Fu Xuan, and Zhao Zhe as deputy commanders, three Class A divisions were assembled: the Eighth Division, the Ninth Division, and the Twelfth Division; and one Class B division. : Twenty-first Division; a total of four divisions plus two garrison brigades, more than 52,000 troops. From the east of Hengshan to the thousand-mile border south of the Yellow River, we will launch a war of subjugation against the Xia Kingdom.
The first battle of the founding of China, the Battle of the West, is about to begin.
Yue Fei will also usher in the most glorious moment of his life and military career. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to Qidian to vote for recommendations and monthly votes. Your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile phone users please go to m. to read.)