On the second day of September, I was taking little Jinjun on a tour to send out some kind of false signal, when I received a warning from Yanbian in the north. About seven days ago, an enemy invader from outside the Great Wall had just stabilized its grip on Shuozhou on Yanshan North Road. It broke through from the Black Tuo Ridge in Yanbian to Shihe Town and successively captured the relatively empty Shuo County and Ma County. Yi and Baoda Zhucheng. At this time, the newly appointed Datong Defense Envoy Quan Shuo, Governor Shi, and Youlang General Qu Duan, had just led their troops to Jincheng, the seat of Yingzhou, and most of the areas under their jurisdiction were already under their control; and at this time, his subordinates could use The soldiers were nothing more than two border defense battalions accompanying them and one garrison battalion stationed in rotation, plus two thousand Zhuozhou United Soldiers retained for surrender and eight hundred local Tuhu archers. The enemy is the banner of the Tianbao Army, one of the six towns on Yunzhong Road, which is affiliated to the Western Army camp, and tens of thousands of people claiming to be on horseback are approaching. As a veteran of the two Northern Expeditions, Qu Duan did not passively defend in Jincheng County or retreat to Yanmen Pass to wait for reinforcements. Instead, he left behind his own banners and drums as well as a small number of stationed troops, dependents and Dodo Archer, Quan used a bluffing stance to temporarily calm people's hearts. On the other side, he personally led his team to sneak northward to actively attack. As a result, a decisive battle broke out in the Longmen Mountain area in the northwest of Yingzhou. First, the 2,000 Zhuozhou united troops, thought to be weak, were the vanguard, under the banner of the Huai army, and rushed to meet the enemy at the mountain pass. They were divided into four formations and took turns to engage the enemy according to the terrain. After several rounds of fierce fighting, the flanks were broken through and they were defeated, so they retreated. , and then turned into a rout under the enemy's pursuit, retreating all the way to Hunyuan River a few miles away. Then, Qu Duan started a firefight with the three battalions of his headquarters lying among the withered grass on the river, and the Tianbao army was in chaos on the spot and fled. Then he turned to fight again at the foot of Longmen Mountain, and defeated them in one go. Killed and captured a thousand each. The remaining enemy Tianbao Army retreated to Mayi County. At this time, the defeated United Army troops were reorganized and assembled, and joined in the pursuit midway. They killed the enemy and captured hundreds of them. From then on, they only entered the Kou Xi The army's momentum has been completely curbed. By the time the reinforcements from Yuzhou arrived, the Western Army had been defeated by Qu Duan's troops in another battle. The remaining cavalry scattered and escaped from the frontier, while the remaining troops were besieged in Mayi County. . "At least, with the snow falling outside the fortress, the retreat of the escaping Western troops was no longer a problem. Since then, the invasion of the Western Army, which may have corrupted the border area, ended in an anticlimactic manner due to the timely handling and countermeasures taken by the local garrison officer; however, this time the border police, while commending the relevant people, also reminded them to some extent. I want to step up the construction of the garrison force in Yanbian. At least as a forward springboard and outpost base for future attacks on the vassals outside the Great Wall, several major governors' offices, and even the northwest roads within the Western Army's sphere of influence, it requires sufficient long-term preparation and gradual management. As the saying goes, you can be an enemy. The principle that I can go as well as I come. In comparison, the advance of several partial divisions in Hedong was relatively smooth. Among them, Niangziguan, the last pass at Jingxing on the middle road, has been blown up by the engineering explosives transported by the army and has been declared to have changed hands; Feihuxing on the north road has broken through the natural and dangerous Black Wind Cut in the deep gorge, and has invaded Wutai Mountain and begun to sweep them away one by one. The remnants of the local Hedong Army. The one that has made the most progress is Baixing (Mengmenxing) on ??South Road. Lingchuan County, the gateway to Gaizhou, one of the four states in Shangdang territory, has been breached, but it has also encountered the strongest local resistance, as well as several Hedong troops from Huguan and Gaoping in the north, and even from the direction of Jincheng, the capital of Zezhou in the south. Counterattack violently. Therefore, under the attack of the Hedong Army who wanted to recapture it at all costs, the casualties of the vanguard army that turned to the defensive suddenly exceeded those in the early stage of the strategy. However, with the arrival of follow-up reinforcements and several batches of supplies arriving through the dangerous road of Baixing Yangchang Pass at all costs before the heavy snow closed the mountains and blocked the roads, the lightly-armed assault vanguard still faced difficulties first and then things easier. This place was gradually stabilized and embedded into the forward stronghold of Shangdang Basin. In this way, as long as they can persist in the spring of next year, the Huai army gathered in Hebei can use this as a springboard to comprehensively conquer the Hedong Road (most of today's Shanxi Province); from then on, they can cut off from Tongguan to the south It is more than two hundred miles away from Guanluo Throat of Baiyacheng in Huaizhou, and then goes north to enter the basins of Taiyuan and Jinzhong surrounded by mountains. Correspondingly, the Western Army, which was originally frustrated by Hebei and Henan, launched a wave of offensives from the Shangluo and Lushi lines on Shannan East Road. One of the troops invaded the Nanyang Basin and defeated Xiling, Neixiang, and Zhenping. In various places, there was a continuous battle with Gao Chong's Guan Nei Army outside Nanyang City. Thousands of people were killed and wounded before they could retreat; while other troops going south fell one after another and swept across Dengzhou, Junzhou, Fangzhou, and Tangzhou. , Suizhou, as well as the Guanghua Army, Junping Army, and Anhui ArmyThe army and many other important towns marched directly to Fancheng on the north bank of the Han River. Seeing that it had only been more than half a month, the defense battle of Xiangyang for the unknown number of times was once again imminent. But all this has nothing to do with me anymore. Wang Duanchen and his party have retreated to where to worry about and respond; and as the Peking Metropolitan Governor's Office, which occupies half of the north and needs time to slowly digest it, what needs to be prepared for is Those Western armies that had occupied most of the Nanyang Basin; especially when their well-established traditional defense line in the Southern Dynasties, the Xiangyang-Hanjiang River line, was blocked, they turned to break through Fangcheng to the east and Biyang to the southeast; and even At this point, they broke into the fringe areas where the Xinyang Army, Queshan Army, Yingchang Mansion, etc., adjacent to the western part of Huainan Road and the southern part of Henan Road, had relatively weak control and even had no control. However, the main problem now is that winter is approaching, and the Western troops who have traveled far and wide are reaching a limit in terms of maintaining the relatively long logistics supply line and replenishing soldiers, food and equipment. After all, as the turning point for their army to come from afar, the Guannai Road was actually a barren white land without any food or supplies. Therefore, according to the traditional pattern of the Northern Dynasties, they would switch to a pattern of dividing troops and supplies on the spot in the newly occupied Shannan Dao to rest their troops and morale, and even go out to search places to accumulate military supplies and materials for the coming year's campaign. ¡°But this will also be an opportunity for the Huai Army to launch counterattacks and local offensives in winter, mainly with highly mobile hunting cavalry and mounted infantry, disrupting the Western Army¡¯s local preparations and rest progress. In addition, on the parade route, my staff team presented the latest version of the "Preliminary Determination of Military Ranks and Official Ranks". After my approval and publication, both the army and local government will be unified into positions. There are three parallel categories: , official title and grade; The simplest position is the actual position and official position, which determines the corresponding rights and scope of responsibilities; in addition to the normal fixed establishment and term of office, special appointments and additional responsibilities , the first one is called dispatch, and it is also one of the reference standards for determining various service subsidies, job allowances, and special rations. The official rank/military rank determines the level corresponding to the service in the corresponding system, the class equivalent to the command power in the army; as well as the priority of submission or replacement under corresponding circumstances, as well as the most basic salary and salary , as well as the level of daily welfare benefits. The final level is above the most basic five categories and eleven levels of household registration, and represents a certain broad social status and honorary status. It is more similar to the existence of honorary positions and casual officials. It also plays a role in social interactions and public affairs. There are corresponding privileges and conveniences in the place. In addition, there is also a set of salary officer system that continues to maintain the status quo but is only used as an honorary title and will not be added in the future. It is divided into three categories: acting, guarding and trial. special existence. Since then, the relatively complicated and scattered civil and military officials, honorary positions, ministries, missions, titles, salaries, food and towns inherited from the previous dynasty, as well as special prosecutors and meritorious titles, have been temporarily unified into Something relatively simple. Among them, the official positions starting from the lowest agricultural officer and village chief are tentatively designated as twenty-nine levels, while the lowest official rank starts from the ninth rank to the third rank. The ranks are based on the previous civil and military casual officials and The meritorious service system was unified into fifty-two classes. Of course, I can also create some more avant-garde structures and titles to reflect more distinctive features; such as the arrangement of military divisions, brigade, regiment, battalion, and company, chief political commissar, instructor, instructor, commander, and even generals, captains, lieutenants, etc. of. However, in terms of today's productivity and social development level, most of them have nothing but a touch of cross-era style and a sense of advanced fashion that most people cannot understand, and then significantly increase management costs and the difficulty of relearning and using. of use. The main purpose of doing this, in addition to sorting out internal affairs such as conciseness and order, is to further clearly separate from the Southern Dynasty Liang in terms of political power system and status. The so-called customization of officials is also an important step and stage in establishing a new political power.