Although the cowardly Xue and the guards were both central guard troops, they had a clear division of functions. Cowardly Xue was responsible for the safety of the emperor, in charge of the defense of the palace and the ear, and generally did not go out to fight. The service pro-army was not only responsible for the security of the two capitals of the Yuan Dynasty, Dadu and Shangdu, as well as the garrison of the "hinterland" area, but also a standing elite army used by the imperial court to "control the light", which could be sent out to fight at any time.

The two are also different in terms of affiliation. Cowardly Xue was in charge of the cowardly Xue Chang and directly obeyed the emperor's orders. The guards are under the command of the envoys, except for the East Palace and the Harem Guards, all of whom are subordinate to the Privy Council, which is in charge of military affairs. Discrepancies in the recruitment of soldiers are also evident. The members of the Ti Xue were mainly from the Mongol tribes, and the soldiers of the guards were not only from the Han army, the Tanma Red Army and the new annexed army from the Central Plains and Jiangnan, but also the Semu people and the Mongol children in exile who were originally attached to the Mongol army.

According to the regulations of the Yuan court, the guards must be elite soldiers, with a total number of between 200,000 and 300,000, of which Han soldiers account for about two-thirds. Therefore, the guards became the backbone of the Yuan army, replacing the military status of the cowardly Xue as the "big middle army" of the whole army during the Mongolian period. However, with the fall of the Great Song Dynasty and the end of large-scale warfare, the military function of the guards was also weakened.

Therefore, in addition to defending the Beijing division and participating in important battles, the function of guarding the pro-army is also the work of Tuntian. And the guard pro-army of the tuntian is huge, in many areas of the Yuan Empire, among which the guard pro-army in the tuntian between the two capitals is very important, the scale is also very large, the imperial court allocated cattle, seeds, farm tools, set up tuntian officials to manage, water conservancy facilities construction, but the strange thing is that the benefit is not good, not only can not meet the supply of the guards, but also often need the central government's relief, allocate part of the military salary.

The state provides production tools, and there is a large number of cheap labor, but the income is not enough to spend, which is absolutely inconceivable in the eyes of today's people, but Yuxi Timur, who once commanded the army in the northwest, knows the doorway very well. During the period of Genghis Khan, Mongolia established a thousand-household system of military and political integration, which belonged to the people and served as soldiers during wars and dismounted for the people on weekdays. There are many advantages of the thousand-household system, but the most important thing is to save money, the country does not need to pay for raising soldiers on weekdays, and soldiers also bring their own weapons, horses, and equipment in wartime, basically without investment, which can save a lot of state funds and relieve financial pressure.

After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan reformed the military system, but still followed this system and formed a new military household system. As the elite of the country, most of the Mongolian army returned to the steppe after the large-scale war, and when it encountered a war, it was still called up and pulled out to fight. There are basically two different ways to form a guard army.

One is that according to military or political needs, the imperial court orders the selection and transfer of elite soldiers in the designated army, and gathers them in the capital to form a guard army; This also includes the creation of a new guard from the original Guard. The formation of the Han and Mongol guards was mostly in this way; The other is that the emperor authorizes a meritorious minister to recruit people of the same clan or the same kind to form a new guard; This method was mostly used in the formation of the Colored Eye Guard.

The former method was obviously influenced by the traditional military system of the Central Plains, and most of the dynasties that established the state in the Central Plains selected troops from the local government to join the Weijing Division. The latter method was influenced by the early Mongolian military system, which organized the guards in the form of a thousand Mongolian households, and the meritorious officials could recruit their own subordinates and implement management.

However, due to the large number of Han troops incorporated into the guards and pro-army, it was difficult to survive like the nomadic peoples such as Mongolia, and needed a large amount of grain and grass supplies and earned money to support their families, so they needed to be 'raised', so the imperial court formulated relevant policies to pay military salaries, as well as temporary subsidies, wartime allowances and war merit awards. For example, "business trips," such as escorting salaries and arresting fugitives, are all counted as "business trips," and there are subsidies for officers and men, and state subsidies for ceremonial occasions for officers and men, and wartime allowances include miscellaneous items such as equipment and rations for salt and vegetables before and after the start of the war; when fighting a war, a soldier's income can reach several times that of his peacetime income.

In the view of Yuxi Timur, the whole logic of the imperial court's behavior is fundamentally speaking, in fact, it does not treat the guards and pro-army as 'soldiers', but as 'watch dogs', feeding leftovers in peacetime, throwing bones in wartime, and then turning a blind eye to adultery and plunder, you can deal with the world's 'chaotic people', as for national defense, that is not to be considered, anyway, the Celestial Empire has a big frame of behemoths, and ordinary people really dare not challenge it. And the state will not pay for nothing, so let them achieve self-sufficiency in the fields so that they can use waste.

However, Yuxi Timur saw very clearly that there was an internal stratification in any political group, and the upper nobility could effectively realize it because of its many political and economic privileges. The same was true of the pro-guards army, where the Mongols, as the ruling class, and the privileged Semu people were free to seize the tuntian, encroach on public property, and enslave their officers and soldiers. The low-level Han officers and soldiers who guarded the pro-army were unable to get out under the constraints of the imperial court's military household system, and became increasingly impoverished under the exploitation of the upper classes.

It is said that 'it only takes three days to learn well, and it only takes three days to learn badly', and after the end of the large-scale war, after moving towards stability, the Mongols quickly became corrupt and degenerate, and the tricks of deducting military salaries and drinking soldiers' blood can be said to be self-taught, in addition to the legal deduction and other means of 'national recognition'. In the name of raising horses, they can ask all officers and men to 'crowdfund' and deduct the fixed amount every month. This silver was stored in the camp for the purchase of horses. The remaining money for the purchase of horses shall be reported to the Ministry of War at the end of the year for verification, and sent to the Ministry of Household for payment.

In addition, according to the calendar at that time, there were leap months in the year, which meant that sometimes there would be thirteen months in a year, so an extra month's military salary would be paid, but the imperial court felt that it would be a loss to pay monthly wages in this way, so it asked officers and soldiers to take out their own salaries to "buy insurance"...... In other words, no matter how many months of the year, the state only pays a monthly salary...... This is really not ordinary dogma and "frugality".

If these are considered 'legal' state deductions, the officers and soldiers guarding the pro-army will also face the deductions of generals at all levels, which is partly illegal, but it is also the most deep-rooted, and there are many ways. For example, when the generals lend money in their own troops, they directly deduct the military salary to repay the principal and interest, and there are also fake to fill the ordnance and deduct the soldiers' salaries to fulfill their obligations, and there are various ushers and office expenses to be deducted from the soldiers' salaries, which can be said to be the same as the Great Song Dynasty at that time.

There are also more bizarre methods. Everyone knows that military training is necessary to become a soldier, and this part of the money should also be paid by the state. However, the officers had to deduct the money spent on daily training from the soldiers' salaries. Under such a system, how can soldiers be willing to train? How dare you train? Put a few more arrows, and the money for half a month's meal will be gone.

As for the military training of the guards and pro-army, as the main force of the campaign, in order to ensure combat effectiveness, the imperial court still attached great importance to it from top to bottom at the beginning, and specially established a training system and trained diligently. In addition to the individual training of each department, they also had to concentrate on training and participate in the annual hunt of the Great Khan. But as the war decreased and the tuntian was transferred, the officers naturally wanted to reduce their training so that they could devote more time to production in order to increase production.

The top does not pay attention to it, and the bottom is more and more perfunctory, and the formation diagram is performed in the old style every year, without improvement, along with the old style, and the usual proofreading, although it is considerable, it is not practical to fight in the face of the enemy. Riding and archery these housekeeping skills are also trying to save effort, and they no longer train hard, and when the battalions are performing and testing, they know that what they have learned is not used, and they will inevitably be regarded as the same as the text, and they will be responsible for watching and watching.

Yuxi Timur believed that not only did he know that the combat effectiveness of the guards was seriously degraded, but he was also not ignorant of it. And the 'connivance' of the degeneration of this virtue that still turns a blind eye is, on the one hand, a problem of the training itself. On the other hand, it still comes from the positioning of this army by the imperial court, in the eyes of most people, the Mongolian army is the pillar of the country, the main force of the war, and the guarantee of invincibility.

Although the guards were numerous, they were only subordinate to the army, and could only be engaged in tuntian, escorting silver salaries, escorting prisoners, delivering money and food, arresting thieves, investigating smuggling, guarding, detecting traitors, and urging them. As the main force of foreign races, the Mongols are still uneasy in their hearts, especially the armed forces with strong combat effectiveness, which have to be guarded against secretly, and even the pro-army as the Great Khan's personal guard is forbidden to bring bows to work. Therefore, they are happy to see the weakening of their combat effectiveness.

Since this is the case from top to bottom, after more than 10 years of 'training', and as they wished, the current 300,000 troops are really undergoing military training, and those who can still fight when they are pulled out may not be able to survive, so they can only continue to be transferred piecemeal and short-term joint camp training. When the imperial court had abundant financial resources, the combat effectiveness of this kind of field army could still deal with the "law and order war", and when the imperial court's financial resources were in dire straits, it was a group of untrained "called Hanako" who stumbled to the battlefield.

In fact, this has already happened, and after the loss of Jiangnan, the financial situation of the Yuan Dynasty has deteriorated dramatically, and the subsidies issued to the guards and pro-army are decreasing day by day. In the past, the amount of military salaries paid could reach 6 or 70 percent, but now it is difficult to reach even half of it. The situation worsened as the imperial court conducted a hook examination, and the officers intensified their squeezing efforts to fill the shortfall. The currency reform made matters worse, as the newly discovered Yuan Zhi banknotes were exchanged for the old Zhiyuan banknotes at a ratio of one to five, which made the already poor families of guards and soldiers tend to go bankrupt.

As far as Yuxi Timur knew, the legal income of the soldiers guarding the pro-army was not at all comparable to that of ordinary yeoman farmers, and even the income level of tenant farmers could not be reached, and the "legal" living standard was similar to that of beggars, and if they wanted to improve slightly, they had to completely go to the road of "illegal" hooligans, beggars and hooligans, who were called soldiers, so their family life could only be supplemented by various illegal incomes. Under these conditions, whether it is military skills or military self-esteem, all are gone, but in fact, they are like city people, they can be described as undisciplined, without rewards and punishments, and they will leave when they see a thief.

At that time, the generals asked the imperial court to send guards to help the army, but of course Yuxi Timur, who knew the truth, was unwilling, and his arrival to participate in the war not only had to provide grain, grass and military salaries according to the custom, but also to pay war subsidies, and the imperial court did not bear it. At this time, the landlord had no surplus grain, and it must have been unwilling for 800 to let these 10,000 households pay; In addition, these guards who are already poor and cannot survive come to the Lianghuai area, which is still too rich, and they must try to improve it, which is tantamount to a disaster for the locality.

Thinking of all this, Yuxi Timur categorically rejected the generals' proposals and decided to rely on his own strength to complete the battle plan. He thought that if he planned carefully, he would be able to minimize the risks. Once his plan succeeds, he will not only be able to force the southern Korean army to retreat, but also obtain huge benefits and alleviate the predicament he is facing. If you can capture the little emperor of the Southern Dynasty alive, or conquer Lin'an, then you will make an immortal achievement.

Of course, Yuxi Timur also knew the risk of defeat he was facing, but at present, under the continuous attack of troops in the Lianghuai region by the Southern Dynasties, agricultural production along the river has been greatly affected, the grain harvest has failed, and taxes have been reduced. But the imperial court not only did not reduce or reduce taxes, but also increased taxes. In order to solve the immediate predicament, he could not help but kidnap the imperial court by waging a war in order to get through the difficulties, escape the difficulties of the hook examination, and alleviate the financial difficulties of the province.

In contrast, Yuxi Timur felt that the risk of crossing the river to the south was still worth it, who would make himself poor! Therefore, as soon as possible, the opposition of the generals continued, but he still made a desperate decision to carry out the established battle plan and concentrate the main force to cross the river. Of course, as a means of preparation, he also ordered the mobilization of the gradually Ding army of each department as a reserve to defend the key points, in case the Song army conquered the hinterland of Yangzhou and drove directly into the worst-case scenario......

…………

"Your Majesty, the latest information from the Bureau!" In the cold night, the door of the tent of the camp was opened, and Tan Fei entered the tent with a cold breath and said.

"Oh, what's changed?" Due to the lack of ability of Ying Xi, the director of the first room of the Imperial Front Office, Zhao Yu could only transfer the most important intelligence work to Tan Fei.

"Your Majesty, the Henan Station of the Secretariat has informed you that the 30,000-strong team of Wanhu Mansion stationed in Huaibei, Henan, north of the Yellow River, has moved to Huainan and has recently moved and assembled in the direction of Gaoyou; The troops of Wanhu Prefecture, the capital of Hebei Province, Shandong Province, were also moved to Gaoyou. They judged that there would be a big move on the Mengyuan side in the near future, and according to the news they heard, they were going to send aid to Yangzhou and encircle our army. As for the true intentions, we are still being investigated! Tan Fei said.

"Then where do you think Meng Yuan's attack direction is?" Zhao Yu listened and pondered for a moment, and then asked Tan Feidao.

"Your Majesty, my subordinates think that if Meng Yuan saves Yangzhou, there is no need to preach, and there is no need to gather such a large army. And according to the confession of the Meng Yuan messenger intercepted by our army recently, judging from the order to hold the city at any cost, their target should be Jiangnan. Tan Fei thought about it and analyzed......