Lu Chengyu thought about the "eight flavors" of Song Taizong's "Pingrong Ten Thousand Arrays", but praised "Pingrong Ten Thousand Arrays" on his lips.

Song Taizong was very happy and took the Golden Tiger Talisman from the Privy Council; There is only one golden tiger talisman, which is engraved with the emperor's jade seal and seal; The generals of the unified army held the Golden Tiger Talisman and the endorsement of the imperial court, and went to the place where they should go to the Golden Tiger Talisman and the deed in the hands of the local garrison; You can command your armies in battle.

The emperors of the Northern Song Dynasty directly controlled the establishment, mobilization, and command of the army.

Under the emperor, the military power was divided into three: the Privy Council was in charge of the military registration and the tiger charm, the three yamen were in charge of the army, and the ministers were in charge of the army, each with its own division.

The Privy Council is the highest military administrative organ of the imperial court, and directly adheres to the emperor's will to dispatch the national army: in charge of military affairs, military defense, border preparation, and the government decree of the army, as well as the guards on duty, and the internal and external prohibitions on the recruitment, review, relocation, cantonment, rewards and punishments.

The presiding officer of the Privy Council is the Privy Councillor and the Privy Vice-Counsellor, which is equivalent to the Ministry of Defence in later generations.

The three ya, that is, the front division of the palace, the division of the guard horse army and the division of the guard infantry army, are divided into the national forbidden soldiers and box soldiers.

The prefects are the commanders, the deputy envoys, and the governors, and the officials of the three yas are lower in status than the privy councillors.

The Privy Council and the Sanya respectively hold the power to issue troops and manage the troops, and check each other.

The leading (marshal) minister commands the armies of the various divisions stationed in the same place in peacetime, that is, the army stationed in the same place is subject to the dual control of the three yas and the chief (marshal) ministers in peacetime.

During the war, the army was transferred by the Privy Council, and the emperor temporarily sent a commander (leading minister) to lead the army with the titles of capital deployment and recruitment envoy.

Song Taizong held the Golden Tiger Talisman in his hand and watched it for a long time, and handed it to Lu Chengyu and said: "The horse was previously the commander of Liu Min, who was ordered by me, and now Liu Min has died in the chaos; I then ordered the horse to be the envoy to the northwest, and Wen Tongxiao to be the deputy envoy; Grant a talisman to command the armies of the Northwest! ”

Lu Chengyu and Wen Tongxiao both thanked Song Taizong and stood under the Danqi to listen to the emperor's teachings.

Lu Chengyu had a lot of associations in his heart: he made up a beautiful lie in front of Zhao Guangyi that Liu Min died in the chaos of the army; Zhao Guangyi believed it at the time, but still let Lu Chengyu find the body.

Lu Chengyu disguised an innocent girl who died in the chaos as Liu Min, and the eunuchs Zhou Shaozong and Duan Li inspected and reported to Song Taizong; Song Taizong really believed that Liu Min was dead and relieved.

Lu Chengyu thought about his fooling Song Taizong, and couldn't help but laugh secretly; But when he remembered that Song Taizong was filial to him and Wen Tong, he felt a sense of guilt in his heart.

Lu Chengyu and Wen Tongxiao, the two fellow scholars of the year, gathered by chance in the Qingshichuan Horse Husbandry Supervisor; Lu Chengyu's purpose was to meet Liu Min, while Wen Tongxiao was only invited by Qin Feng, who was imprisoned; sent his subordinate Sakura Garden to Chengdu Mansion to ask Ma Xiao, a general under Lu Chengyu, to escort military horses to the imperial court.

At the beginning, the vision of the two was very simple, that is, to personally send the war horse to Bianjing; But the situation did not evolve according to their will.

The two of them sent them directly to the hands of Yang Ye, the assassin of Daizhou in Yanmen Guan, and added officials to the two of them; Lu Chengyu was promoted from the rank of 5th rank to the 3rd rank of appeasement and disposal envoy, and Wen Tongxiao was promoted from the 7th rank of Zhixian to the deputy envoy of the 5th rank of pacification and disposal.

Lu Chengyu and Wen Tongxiao didn't expect it to be so easy to be promoted to the rank of knight, the previous Wen Tongxiao had worked in the county magistrate for many years and was still a seven-rank official; I didn't expect that the escort of the military horses would soar after coming to the capital.

The two happily led the crowd to escort 2,000 military horses to Yanmen Pass, but they didn't expect to kill Xiao Duli, a concubine of the Liao Dynasty; The glorious victory of Li Chonghai and Xiao Tzuai, who captured the unified army.

Now Lu Chengyu and Wen Tongxiao have been appointed by the emperor as "Northwest Recruitment Envoy and Deputy Envoy", you can't stop it when you're really lucky.

At this time, the Northwest Front, since Cao Guangshi was martyred; The imperial court sent Wang Xian, Li Jilong, and Tian Renlang to lead the forbidden army to deal with Li Jiqian.

Cao Guangshi had inspected the capitals of Yin, Xia, Sui, Fu, Feng, You and other prefectures before his death, and there were three strong forces of the imperial court within the five continents - the Zhejia Army, the Yang Family Army, and the Chongjia Army.

Lu Chengyu held the Golden Tiger Talisman issued by the imperial court in his hand, and then commanded at will.

The military system of the Northern Song Dynasty court was that the soldiers and generals were separated, and the soldiers would not be specialized; The army can be divided into three parts: the forbidden army, the box army, and the township army.

The Xiang army and the township soldiers were relatively weak in combat effectiveness, and the forbidden army, which was the main force in the army, was also divided into three parts.

One is the Hebei Forbidden Army, the second is the Northwest Forbidden Army, and the third is the Central Forbidden Army.

As for the southern routes, all the forbidden armies were combined; There are also fewer of them in any of the three parts.

The Northwest Forbidden Army was called the Western Army by the imperial court because it was stationed in the northern part of Shaanxi Province and fought against Liao and Xia for a long time, so it maintained strong combat effectiveness for a long time.

The Western Army was the cradle of the famous generals of the Northern Song Dynasty: Yang Ye, Zhi Kexing, Yang Yanzhao, and Chongshi Dao were all leaders of the Western Army.

The famous troops in the Western Army include the Fuzhou Zhejia Army, the Linzhou Yang Family General, and the Qingjian City Seed Family Army.

The generals of the Western Army are generally inherited from generation to generation, and their combat power is much higher than that of the ordinary Song Army, which "does not know the soldiers, and the soldiers do not know the generals"; However, the military discipline of the Western Army was poor.

The Western Army can fight hard and dare to sacrifice, which is already famous all over the world.

Shaanxi Fourth Road began to operate from Song Taizu, except for the Fourth Route Army, the rest of the soldiers, strong, bow and arrow club, and the Western Xia, Qingtang Zhuqiang entangled for a hundred years; It is a team that dares to go deep into the Hanhai Gobi for more than 1,000 miles to do field battles, and has made great contributions to the expansion of the territory of the Great Song Dynasty.

The Zhejia Army, the Yang Family Army, and the Seed Family Army have served the imperial court for several generations, and there are many scenes of men living less than thirty and leaving a bunch of widows to live together; Traditional dramas such as "Mu Guiying in Charge" are not groundless.

The Zhejia Army, the Yang Army, the Chongjia Army, and the Zhulu Western Army were accustomed to mountain warfare, and showed strong combat power against Liao, Xia, and even later Jin; Such an army naturally has its pride and traditions; The people of Qin Long, the Han style and Tang Yun emphasize righteousness and light life and do not diminish.

However, in the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty, due to the indiscriminate use of high-level personnel, the Western Army was dismantled everywhere in Bianliang, Hebei, Hedong, Shaanxi, and even Jiangnan.

Later, although the brothers Wu Jue and Wu Ling picked up the embers, the Western Army no longer had the world's reputation and merits.

There is a lot of controversy among historians about the content of Wang Anshi's reforms, but one thing is undeniable; Wang Anshi's greatest achievements were not in the economy and politics, but in the military.

Since Wang Anshi's reform, the military reform of the Song Dynasty, especially the military reform in the northwest region, has become the focus of the reform.

In a sense, the northwest military town of the Song Dynasty was a "special zone" for Wang Anshi's reform; The Northwest Army had independent command and command power, and the combat quality and general quality of the soldiers also improved day by day with the deepening of the reform, and finally gradually reversed the passive situation of the Song Dynasty in the Song-Xia War. And for the Song Dynasty to create a rare elite division, unfortunately all these achievements were eliminated because of the final defeat of the Northern Song Dynasty and the debate on the rights and wrongs of Wang Anshi's reform.

Zhao Kuangyin, Taizu of the Song Dynasty, established the Song Dynasty, successively eliminated the separatist regimes in various places, and unified the Central Plains and the vast areas in the south; Only the Xiazhou Li group and the sixteen states of Youyun occupied by the Liao Dynasty in the north have not yet been recovered.

During the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty, two large-scale attacks on Youzhou ended in failure, and the Li clan of Xiazhou united with the Liao Dynasty to resist the Song Dynasty in order to protect their independence.

After Li Jiqian's death, his son Li Deming led the party soldiers to attack Tubo and the Song Dynasty many times, and further grew up.

In the fifth year of the reign of Renzong Jingyou of the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Jiqian's grandson Li Yuanhao broke away from the Song Dynasty and proclaimed himself emperor; Go to the Song Dynasty to change the title to the Yuan, "Heavenly Rites, Law Yanzuo", the founding name "Great Xia", and the historical name "Western Xia".

In the second year of Yongxi in the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Jiqian sent an envoy to Yinzhou, pretending to make an appointment with Cao Guangshi, the inspector of the Song capital, to booby trap Cao Guangshi; Fraudulently used Cao Guangshi's banner to attack Yinzhou.

Subsequently, after claiming to be the envoy of the Duzhi Fan and the right to know the difficult army, the tribal chiefs such as the Eight Army, the Luo Yu, the Wei Xiba, and the Zhi Yu all added the state assassin history.

In March of the same year, Li Jiqian attacked Huizhou; Set fire to the city of Huizhou.

When Song Taizong learned of Li Jiqian's tyranny, he sent Tian Renlang, the prefect of Qinzhou, and Li Jilong to send troops to attack Li Jiqian.

The head of the party tribe, Zhi Luoyu, and his younger brother were buried in battle, and they were executed by Tian Renlang's Song army.

In April of that year, Tian Renlang's army approached Suizhou (present-day Suide County, Shaanxi); Hearing that Li Jiqian led a large army to attack Funing, he said happily: "In the past, the party members often led the rabble to attack and harass our borders, and they advanced when they won and left when they lost, and they could not find their lair. Now Li Jiqian has gathered tens of thousands of people, coming with great momentum, and using all his forces to attack a lonely city. Funing is small but very strong, and it will not take half a month to be unbreakable. I waited until Li Jiqian was tired, and sent a large army to attack and kill, and sent 300 strong troops respectively to intercept the return of Li Jiqian's army, and Li Jiqian would definitely be captured by us. ”

After Tian Renlang's deployment was completed, he deliberately showed laxity to Li Jiqian; The appearance of drinking and gambling in the army.

However, Wang Yu, the deputy general of the Song army, deliberately framed Tian Renlang to slander Taizong, and Song Taizong heard that the three ethnic villages in Hexi had fallen; So Tian Renlang was summoned back to Beijing to be imprisoned and interrogated.

Tian Renlang said: "The minister has already set a strategy to capture Li Jiqian, and at this time, the emperor recalled me, so the plan was not realized. ”

Tian Renlang then said to Song Taizong: "Li Jiqian is well aware of the situation in the northwest and is very popular with the people in the local area; It is hoped that the emperor will give him preferential treatment and invite him, or give the local tribal chiefs generous benefits; They were asked to arrest Li Jiqian. Otherwise, he will be a great plague in the future. ”

Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty pardoned Tian Renlang's capital crime, exiled him to Shangzhou, and ordered Wang Yu and others to march into Li Jiqian.

Wang Yu led his men from Suizhou to the Turbulent River. , Li Jiqian heard the news and withdrew the army besieging Funing and fought fiercely with the Song army, losing more than 5,000 troops; His subordinates were seriously killed, and all the tribes were attacked, so Li Jiqian led the Tibetan tribe to abandon Yinzhou and flee......

At that time, the situation in Xia, Yin, Yu, Jing, and Sui Prefectures was so complicated, and the imperial army was engaged in a tug-of-war with Li Jiqian.

After Song Taizong and the ministers of the court analyzed the complicated situation, they retreated and dispersed.

After Lu Chengyu and Wen Tongxiao retired from the Imperial Palace, they each rode a horse to the Dayang Silversmith Department of Daxiangguo Temple.

Halfway down, Lu Chengyu saw more than a dozen people walking in front of him, and hurriedly said to Wen Tongxiao: "Brother Wen, it seems to be Liu Min coming over there, let's get off the horse and meet ......."