In the Ming Dynasty, the strongest people in the limelight today are not those cabinet bigwigs, nor is it Wang Yiqi, who is also the secretary of the Nanjing Military Department with the title of the crown prince, but the governor of the six provinces, the prince Shaobao Zhang Yue.

And the reason why Zhang Yue is so awesome is naturally not that he is a big official, after all, he is at best a feudal minister, and in the official system of the Ming Dynasty, it is the real boss who enters the cabinet.

The reason why Zhang Yue is in the limelight is so strong that even Emperor Zhengde has tolerated it a lot and turned a blind eye to Zhang Yue, naturally because of the army under his command!

As the first to emulate the puppet Tang thief army to establish a new army, and also the most successful one, Zhang Yue's Governor had more than 60,000 people at its peak, and this is not all the troops under his command.

In fact, in addition to supervising the standard, the army under his command also trained troops in various places, and then there were local guards who were driven by him to work as workers and peasants.

Even in Nanchang, Hengyang, Changsha and other last autumn and winter battles in many battles suffered heavy losses, but at that time Zhang Yue still had a large number of troops, and in the past few months, Zhang Yue used various means to recruit troops from Sichuan, Huguang and recruited a large number of soldiers to supplement his supervision and training, and rebuilt the previous army of the supervision of the standard in the battle of Hengyang and Changsha, the right army, and supplemented the heavy damage of the rear army of the standard.

By August, Zhang Yue's supervision standard in terms of troops, in fact, has recovered to the level of the same period last year, the total strength is about 50,000 people, but the number of recruits is large, and the guns are also seriously insufficient, after all, Zhang Yue's supervision is actually the same as the Tang Army, recruits are easy to replenish, but guns are more difficult to replenish.

In addition to restoring the supervision standard to 50,000 people, Zhang Yue also reintegrated the training army in various places and unified it into the Huguang training army, following the example of the supervision standard, which set up a total of five armies, and the number of training troops was also quite large, with more than 40,000 people.

The total strength is nearly 100,000, but more than half of these 100,000 recruits are recruited, and there are actually only 40,000 or 50,000 people who can fight.

However, the reason why Zhang Yue was able to afford such a huge army after losing Hunan and Jiangxi, and at the same time, Fujian was not under his jurisdiction for a long time, was naturally not because of how much money Emperor Zhengde gave him, in fact, in the four years of Xuanping, Emperor Zhengde gave Zhang Yue less than 500,000 taels of silver for military expenses, but raising an army was at least a few million a year, and where this money came from, Zhang Yue naturally used various means to loot from Sichuan, Hubei and other places.

Why was Zhang Yue able to recruit troops and collect military funds in Sichuan, because although Zhang Yue is still the governor of the six provinces, his dispatch is different from the past.

His dispatch has been changed to supervise the military affairs of Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Huguang, and Sichuan, and in short, he replaced the former Fujian with Sichuan.

After all, although Emperor Zhengde was guarding against Zhang Yue, and Zhang Yue always lost battles, he directly lost northern Hunan and northern Jiangxi in the autumn and winter of last year, and lost more than 100,000 main troops and ordinary guards, but he did not admit that in the current Ming Dynasty, only Zhang Yue was left who could fight with the puppet Tang thief army.

The strongman mentioned here is not actually to say how good Zhang Yue's level of commanding and fighting is, in fact, he is not a qualified general, and Zhang Yue himself has never personally commanded troops to fight against the puppet Tang thief army, but because of his ability to train the army.

After all, Zhang Yue is still a civil official, a politician, not a general, and his strength is that he can continuously use various powerful means to recruit troops, collect military funds, and then train soldiers.

Without Zhang Yue carrying it on Huguang's side, the puppet Tang thief army would have been killed in the north of Huguang and even Henan.

Wang Yiqi also did the same work as Zhang Yue, but Wang Yiqi's means were much worse than Zhang Yue, relying on a prosperous Jiangnan, this day was still bitter, even a real new army could not be trained, only to get out of the Jiangnan New Army, if there was no support from the border army of 20,000 or 30,000 people and the new army in the north, it is estimated that even Jinling would be lost.

However, Wang Yiqi can support the overall situation in Jiangnan, and this ability is naturally there, and this person has the same advantage as Zhang Yue, that is, he fully delegates power to his subordinates and does his best to provide support.

In the past year, in addition to organizing and training the Jiangnan New Army, Wang Yiqi has invested a lot of money and food to support Yu Dayou.

Fujian is now also Wang Yiqi's defense area, although this Yu Dayou said that he has a Shang Fang sword, but in essence, he is still a subordinate of Wang Yiqi, and Wang Yiqi also attaches great importance to the thief army under Yu Dayou.

Fujian has been able to resist the puppet Tang thief army for more than two years, and Yu Dayou has contributed a lot, because in addition to using Nanao Island to contain the puppet Tang thief army, the Ming army can only rely on Yu Dayou's thief army to resist.

In the past two years, although the Ming Dynasty still did not dismantle the guards on the surface, in fact, up to Zhengde, down to Zhang Yue, Wang Yiqi and others, they have quietly begun to throw the guards aside to play the new army.

Zhengde organized and trained a new-style Beijing camp in Beijing, organized and trained new armies in Beizhili, Shandong, Henan and other provinces, Wang Yiqi organized and trained the Jiangnan New Army in Jiangnan, and Zhang Yue was not to mention, there was basically no trace of guards in his regular army.

In this process, although the guards still exist, they are actually no longer involved in the front-line battles, except for a few elite soldiers who have been drawn out, the rest are farming in their respective guards, or participating in some auxiliary military tasks, such as escorting baggage, assisting in defending the city, and so on.

Among the many new armies that have been trained, the most successful and the strongest in combat effectiveness is Zhang Yue's superintendent, and the next is Yu Dayou's thief army.

Although Yu Dayou's thief army is not large, with less than 15,000 people so far, it is not badly equipped, the guns are complete, and even the nine-pound heavy guns purchased from foreigners.

In terms of equipment alone, it is actually almost the same as the Tang Army before the reorganization.

If it weren't for the Broken Thief Army, the Tang Army would have marched into Fujian a long time ago, and it would not have dragged on until now.

Even if it is now marching into Fujian, the Tang Army is also cautious, and the strength of the newly established Third Army is not weak, with one infantry division and two mixed regiments, with a total strength of more than 25,000 people.

At the same time, the Datang Army also coordinated with the navy, and also asked the navy to send a fleet to assist in the war.

In the face of the many big moves of the puppet Tang thief army, although Yu Dayou, who was in Fuzhou, did not know the detailed situation, he could guess that the puppet Tang thief army was going to make a move against Fujian.

Therefore, he has been frequently traveling to and from Zhangzhou, Shaowu Mansion, and Fuzhou Prefecture recently, just to urge the Ming army to be prepared.

But even so, he didn't have much confidence in the upcoming big war, and he had the same deep understanding of how strong the puppet Tang thief army was.

The last time the puppet Tang thief army attacked Zhangzhou, although he didn't personally go into battle to fight, but when he brought a large army from Fuzhou to Zhangzhou, what he saw made him know deeply that the current puppet Tang thief army was more powerful than the previous two years.

The pseudo-Tang thief army is getting stronger and stronger, which naturally makes him not have much confidence in the upcoming battle.

At this time, he received a letter from Wang Yiqi, Wang Yiqi said that the pressure on the front line of Anqing and Jinling was huge, and the thief army was frequently mobilized, and it seemed that he had made a big move to the east in advance before the arrival of autumn and winter, so he sent a part of the thief army to Nanzhili to assist in defense.

But Yu Dayou is not stupid, naturally it can be seen from Wang Yiqi's superficial words, Wang Yiqi asked him to transfer the main force to the south of the Yangtze River, as for Fujian, a poor and remote place, let it be left to the puppet Tang thief army.

After all, the current Fujian is a huge salient, once the puppet Tang thief army is killed from the north of Fujian, it is enough to surround the thief army of more than 10,000 people and tens of thousands of guards in the huge encirclement of Fujian.

As the army most valued by Wang Yiqi, the Broken Thief Army naturally did not want to see the Broken Thief Army surrounded, and finally ended up with the same fate as the Hengyang Ming Army and the Changsha Ming Army, and was surrounded and annihilated.

Wang Yiqi wanted Yu Dayou to lead the army back to defend Jiangnan, on the one hand, to be able to jump out of the encirclement, and on the other hand, to keep Jiangnan.

At the beginning, the two armies of Hengyang and Changsha were completely annihilated, not to mention Zhang Yue, even Wang Yiqi and even other important ministers of the Ming Dynasty and even the emperor Zhengde were all saddened by this, that is 60,000 real main force elites.

Although they didn't know how much money Zhang Yue spent on training this 60,000 army, they estimated that there was no four or five million taels of silver, so they didn't expect to be able to train this 60,000 army, after all, although Yu Dayou's thief army was smaller in number and poorer in equipment, it also cost millions of silver before and after.

Zhang Yue had a lot of capital, lost 60,000 main forces, and tens of thousands, and took advantage of the spring and summer months to breathe a sigh of relief, and trained tens of thousands of troops in one go, and Zhang Yue's ability, Wang Yiqi thought that he couldn't do it, or he didn't dare to do it.

If he, Wang Yiqi, is the same as Zhang Yue, regardless of the consequences, it is possible to earn tens of millions of taels of silver to train the army in the prosperous land south of the Yangtze River, but does he dare Wang Yiqi?

Don't dare!

If you really want to do this, being impeached by hundreds of officials is actually not a thing, and it is nothing to endure the anger of people and gods, even if it is hung in the pillar of shame of history for hundreds of thousands of years, it is actually nothing, but he Wang Yiqi is afraid that he will do this, and the Ming Dynasty will be completely crossed when he turns back!

You must know that Jiangnan is the base camp of the civil officials of the Ming Dynasty, and if you scavenge for money and raise the army in the nest of these civil officials, isn't this directly looting the money of these civil officials and gentry, and this will kill them.

If you really want to force them, it is not impossible for these Jiangnan gentry and the civil official group behind them to collectively surrender to thieves.

For them, the Ming Dynasty can die, but the family wealth must be preserved, and this official still has to be the official!

It's a big deal that Lao Tzu will pay taxes to the pseudo-Tang in the future, and he can still be an official on the pseudo-Tang side!

Why did Wang Yiqi make such a conjecture, because he knew that many people thought so!