In Yang Congyi's plan, gatherings like this will be held every two months.

Nowadays, almost none of these commanders in Jinan and Hejian have undergone formal military training, and he must take advantage of the time when there is no major war to gather them together and give them a good military lesson.

In the past, the vast majority of these commanders were righteous heroes or copycat leaders, and they had no opportunity or conditions to learn military theories, and very few people could understand the classic military works such as the Seven Books of the Martial Arts, so it was imperative to train them.

After so many years of contact with the soldiers in the army, Yang Congyi found that in order to improve the combat effectiveness of the troops as soon as possible, it is not enough to train the military formation and strengthen physical fitness, the most important thing is to awaken their thinking ability and unify their thinking, especially operational thinking. It's just a wanton drain of troops and financial resources.

Yang Congyi taught them to study martial arts theories and analyze battle examples, not to let them become military commanders one by one, but to let them understand the specific strategy of each war, so that they can also adapt to changes and assist other troops in the event of losing the commander's command on the battlefield, or use everything that can be used to strive to achieve the predetermined strategic goals of war.

If Xin Qiji succeeded, it would be impossible for his Hedong army to transfer out of the plains east of Taihang Mountain, because in the future, Datong Mansion and Taiyuan Mansion would need them to defend against the invasion of northern grassland forces.

The more than 200,000 troops stationed in Jinan Mansion, Hejian Mansion, and Daimyo's Mansion are almost all the combat troops that the Great Song Dynasty can mobilize, and it is still up to them to recover Yanjing and expel the Jin forces in the future, so from now on Yang Congyi must train them well, no matter what their background is, for the current Great Song Dynasty, they are the absolute main force in the Great Song army.

When the north and the south were divided, Li Xianzhong brought all the 100,000 forbidden troops from the most upright and best-equipped Great Song Dynasty to Jiangnan, stationed in Jiankang and Zhenjiang, and the 50,000 elite forbidden troops of the Ma Junsi Division, who were stationed in Ezhou at that time, also went to Jiangnan.

In that predicament, there were still hundreds of thousands of Jin troops to the west of Hangu Pass and north of the Daimyo's Mansion, and it was impossible for the imperial court that had just moved the capital to Bianjing without an army to defend it, so in the end it could only let Wu Gong divide his troops to garrison Luoyang, Ruzhou and Xiangyang, and Yang Congyi contracted his troops to garrison the Daimyo Mansion and Jinan Mansion, and transferred 50,000 elites from the Daimyo's Mansion army to garrison the periphery of Bianjing, which was assigned to the direct command of the Imperial Department and the Privy Council, and guarded Bianjing.

Although some troops were recruited every year after the capital was moved, the imperial court was too poor, and it was very difficult to raise more than 200,000 troops, so in five or six years, the newly recruited troops were only twenty or thirty thousand, and most of them were added to the forbidden army under the command of the palace front division, and the Northern Expeditionary Army had almost no new recruits.

Not only did the Northern Expeditionary Army not replenish new soldiers, but also lost a large number of veterans.

If it weren't for Yang Congyi, who came out of Bianjing this time and personally went deep into the front-line troops, he would not have known that the shortage of vacancies in each army was so serious.

After understanding this situation, he understood why the 100,000 Northern Expeditionary Army went north to Yanjing and Laizhou in the end.

In the past few years, the imperial treasury was empty, the army was poor, the soldiers were hungry, and they had to fend for themselves, leaving the barracks to work again in farming, Yang Congyi could understand, but now the imperial court's finances have gradually improved, and the military rations and salaries are also allocated according to the establishment, and the empty establishment is still so serious, he doesn't understand!

Therefore, when the first meeting of generals was discussed, he raised the issue of this vacant quota, and strictly ordered that all armies must recall veterans or recruit new recruits to fill the vacancies within half a year, and repeatedly told them that fighting a war depends on people, and that using empty troops to fight a war is harmful to others and themselves, and to harm the imperial court, and warned the commanders of all armies that if they check again after half a year, and there is a false report on the establishment, they will be directly demoted and transferred!

On the issue of empty salaries for the army, Yang Congyi participated in the verification in front of the Lin'an Palace, but at that time, the verification was the forbidden army in the rear, and it was difficult to use them when the war really started, plus the world was peaceful, so the imperial court basically didn't care about the empty salaries of those troops, but in the end, because of the power struggle, all the dozens of forbidden armies that ate empty salaries were revoked.

Now the situation of the Northern Expeditionary Army is different from that time, a few years ago, the imperial court was in a plane crash, and every time it was not possible to allocate food and salary in full, it is understandable that hungry soldiers left the army and went to cultivate the fields and cultivate the land to support themselves, so Yang Congyi gave the armies half a year of grace time.

Just when Yang Congyi was actively reorganizing the army, Shen Jin and Zhang Xiaoxiang, who got the money, also began to build weapons manufacturing workshops in various places, and recruited and trained weapons manufacturing craftsmen on a large scale.

Five million taels of silver per person was enough for them to recruit many craftsmen, purchase a lot of materials, and make countless weapons and equipment.

When preparing for the construction and expansion of larger armament workshops in the two places, all kinds of masters and giants who have been trained for many years by the Yidu Mansion Construction Institute finally came in handy, and they were awarded official positions by the government to deeply participate in the preparation of the workshop, and of course, they will also play a vital role when they really start manufacturing weapons and equipment in the later period.

Yang Congyi is the deputy envoy of the Privy Council, and his order also requires the natural representative of the Privy Council and the imperial court, so he allocated funds to ask the Daimyo Mansion and Shandong to prepare for the construction of workshops and the manufacture of weapons and armaments, they will not refuse, and it is impossible to refuse, everyone knows that once the Northern Expedition is successful again, their official positions will not only be prosperous, but they will even be able to leave their names in history, and they can prepare logistics supplies for the Northern Expeditionary Army and participate in the Northern Expedition.

Therefore, from the second half of the sixth year of Beiding, Jingbei and Shandong, with the Daimyo Mansion and Yidu Mansion as the center, were full of vitality everywhere in the bleak autumn wind, and the city was in full swing inside and outside the city.

The official road connecting the main prefectures and counties of Shandong is expanding on the hardened road, and the official road leading to Hejian and Daimyo in Jinan is also preparing for hardening and expansion.

The test results of the hardening of the official road in Shandong greatly stimulated the surrounding state capitals, and the squires of the Daimyo Mansion who had a wait-and-see attitude towards the hardening of the official road asked people to see and appease the envoy Zhang Xiaoxiang, asking him to follow Shandong's example and harden the official road pavement of the main states and counties of the Daimyo Mansion, and the required materials and labor costs, they can come out!

At that time, Yang Congyi had nowhere to spend a huge amount of money, so he asked Yang Siniang to go to the Daimyo's Mansion to discuss road repairs.

In the end, the merchants of the Daimyo Mansion represented the Daimyo Mansion, and Yang Siniang represented the merchants of Jinan Mansion, and the two sides jointly contributed money to repair the official road from Jinan Mansion to the Daimyo Mansion, and the merchants paid for it, and the government was responsible for the construction.

On the sixth day of November, after more than a month of preparation, the expansion and hardening project of the official road from Jinan Prefecture to Damingfu was divided into six sections and started at the same time.

At the same time, Yang Siniang took a large amount of cash and joined forces with local businessmen to invest in several large-scale cement manufacturing workshops in Jinan Prefecture to ensure cement production for hardening official roads.

Three months later, after the hardening of the main official road in Shandong, the hardening of the official road from Jinan to Hejian Province began to be built.

After another half a year, the hardened official road leading from Hejian Mansion to Daimyo's Mansion also began to be built, this time also with the donation of two mysterious merchants.

With the emergence of hardened official roads, land transportation has been unprecedentedly developed, and merchants from all over the country began to set up their own fleets, which require large and stable four-wheeled carriages to transport goods, and this kind of carriage is produced in only one place, Shandong Yidu Fu Pingyi Carriage Racecourse.

This carriage and horse farm is naturally Yang Siniang summoned other businessmen to invest and prepare together, she only needs to contribute money and technology, and other affairs have co-investors and government help, as for whether she can make money, she is not worried at all, because everything she does is in accordance with Yang Congyi's meaning, Yang Congyi doesn't want to have so much money in her hand, she wants to spend it all, and by the way, she will not refute and refuse.

Now she is no longer an official of the imperial court, nor is she the son of the Tang family with a mission, she went north to Jinan Mansion, she just wants to live easily, money is not important to her, as long as there is companionship.

After continuously investing in various workshops in many places and donating to build several official roads, Yang Siniang still has a lot of money in her hands, so at Yang Congyi's suggestion, she began to invest in mining.

At the same time that Hejian Province began to build hardened official roads, several coal mining sites she invested in were also started in Hejian Province, according to Yang Congyi's vision, these mined coal could not only supply the garrisons of Hejian Province and Jinan Province, but also be transported to Jiangnan by sea for grain.

Hejian Mansion, Daimyo's Mansion, Zhending Mansion, Hedong and other places, where there is coal and iron ore, Yang Congyi has a map in his hand, he knows very well, but he can't be sure which ones can be mined now and which ones can be used.

After thousands of years of development, to the Great Song Dynasty, the iron-making and steel-making technology has developed very well, so compared with the surrounding countries, the Great Song Dynasty is not short of iron, and can even be used for export, the amount of steel in the Great Song Dynasty can meet the demand, but the more this kind of thing, the better.

Compared with the Jin army, the shortcomings of the Song army are in the war horse, and if the problem of the war horse is not solved, it will always be at a disadvantage.

But Yang Congyi doesn't have that much time, so he has to make up for his shortcomings in other ways.

Building roads, mining, and building all kinds of workshops are his tricks to deal with the dilemma.

As for whether this trick will work, it will take time to verify, and he has been planning for many years and is very confident in it.