For the Tang Dynasty, which had weak national strength and was extremely short of various resources, including population, it needed external expansion to obtain more resources and population.

However, external expansion requires maintaining a strong army!

Of course, the army is not only used for expansion, but also for the encirclement and suppression of the Ming Dynasty!

Therefore, the Tang Dynasty needs a strong army!

However, the contradiction came, because the Tang Dynasty was weak and weak, and it was unable to maintain a large army with its own resources.

Even the current scale of the Tang Dynasty is an extremely heavy burden for the Tang Dynasty, although the Tang Dynasty has not yet established a perfect budget system, but from the perspective of various expenditures on the part of the Ministry of Taxation, the current various revenues of the Tang Dynasty, including taxes, seizure of the Ming Dynasty officials, clans and government industries, various gentry, landlords, businessmen and other groups of people who oppose or even armed confrontation, Almost more than ninety percent of these various incomes are turned into military salaries, weapons, ammunition and other military supplies.

Spanning two provinces and effectively controlling multiple state capitals, less than 10% of the Tang Dynasty's fiscal revenue was used to maintain the operation of government agencies and improve people's livelihood.

This is almost impossible for a traditional feudal dynasty, whose administrative expenses usually account for about three or four percent of the fiscal revenue, and the administrative expenses of a few inefficient regimes will even account for more than half of the fiscal revenue at first.

However, the Tang Dynasty is in its infancy, and the administrative institutions themselves serve the army, plus the various people who joined the Tang Dynasty in the early days, in addition to the lowest level of administrators and soldiers, most of the middle and upper-level officials and officers came with the purpose of glory and wealth, to put it bluntly, these people are a group of careerists.

Careerists, on the other hand, tend to see things farther than ordinary people, so they can endure the current hardships and even work without paying.

All they want is power and the glory and riches of the future!

At present, the middle and senior military officers and officials in the Tang Dynasty have high salaries on the surface, but very few people can really receive full salaries, even if they take only a small part, more than half, and the rest are either in arrears or directly returned to the Ministry of Taxation in the name of donations.

His Majesty Li Xuan, the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, has also said in public more than once that the Tang Dynasty is currently in the most difficult period of entrepreneurship, and hopes that all the Aiqing can share weal and woe.

Of course, the money is not given, but the superficial honors such as official hats and titles will still be given, and Li Xuan is very generous about this.

Basically, every time the army wins a big victory, it will give out a few titles, not only the generals, but also some civilian officials.

However, even if the Tang Dynasty has tried its best to open up sources and reduce expenditure, in order to free up more military funds to maintain the expansion of the army and fight, it is still not enough for the Tang Dynasty Division, which is already huge to tens of thousands of people.

And this is also the reason why the current Tang Army still advocates 'eating the enemy', which is of course due to the fact that the logistics supply line is too far, but more importantly, the Tang Dynasty simply does not have so much surplus food to supply the army.

If you don't send food later, the army can't go without food, so you can only eat the enemy.

Its main sources are all kinds of booty, including the booty of the Ming army, the grain and gold and silver stored by the local Ming Dynasty government after conquering a city.

In addition, there is really no way, and troops will be directly sent to the countryside to collect food!

Of course, now the Tang Dynasty has gradually embarked on the right track, and it cannot be the same as directly 'collecting grain' but will be more civilized, using the way to buy or borrow.

However, whether they bought or borrowed, they just left a note, on which a book was written: A certain unit of the Tang Army borrowed a certain amount of grain and a certain number of livestock from such and such a hand, and agreed to repay it after one year or ten years.

Or a certain unit of the Tang Army purchased some grain and livestock from so-and-so, and so-and-so could go to the relevant yamen of the Tang Dynasty to get a chair with a melon document in hand.

But can these people really go to the relevant institutions of the Tang Dynasty to receive silver?

Just kidding, can you find out where the relevant yamen of the Tang Dynasty is? What kind of organization is it?

Then you were in a hurry and went directly to the tax department to ask for money, but what did you think of the tax department of the Tang Dynasty? ATM? Who knows whether the strip in your hand is true or false, and you want to take the silver? What a big dog, he actually deceived our Tang Dynasty official mansion yamen, come on, beat the official out with a stick!

If you say that you have the official seal of such and such a unit, and the private seal of a certain general and leading officer, it is not so easy to deny, but even so?

Want to get silver? Simple, go to the man who took your grain or gold and silver?

The military and government of our Tang Dynasty are separated, and our tax department doesn't care about the affairs of the military, and we can't manage it!

What, since you dare to go to the troops to ask for borrowed food back?

I'm sorry, the army has been transferred, our battalion commander has already been transferred, that's what the previous battalion commander did, you let me, the current battalion commander, pay for it, what are you kidding, guards, drive them out!

It's over, the battalion commander didn't forget to sneer: Just kidding, our Tang Dynasty Wang Shi borrowed food, how could he have paid it back!

In order to collect food, the troops of the Tang Dynasty Division basically tried their best, although the detailed routines used by each unit may be different, but they all have one thing in common: they bought or borrowed, and they never planned to repay the money and grain!

In order to have enough to eat, the Tang Dynasty has already done such a shameless thing, but he still can't afford to raise so many troops!

Therefore, many generals of the Tang Army are trying their best to improve the combat effectiveness of the existing troops, and they can't afford to raise ten people, so I will raise one person, and then use this one person as ten people.

Therefore, you often see that the Datang Army fights more with less, this is not because the generals of the Datang Army are overconfident, but there are really not so many troops!

Therefore, if Chen Keqiao can solve the shortcomings of the current regiment-level phalanx tactics, it will be very obvious to improve the combat effectiveness of the Tang Army.

Therefore, everyone is also very interested in Chen Keqiao's statement that there is a way to solve the defects of the regiment-level phalanx tactics.

At this time, I only listened to Chen Keqiao and said: "There is only one solution to the problem of excessive quality requirements for the troops, and it can be done, that is, to strengthen the training of the troops, as long as the training is sufficient, the quality of the troops will naturally be improved, and it is not necessary for the five battalions in the infantry regiment to be able to achieve this quality, in an infantry regiment, as long as one infantry battalion can achieve the quality required by this phalanx!" ”

Chen Keqiao continued: "As for the problem of too shallow defensive depth, Chen believes that it is appropriate to add one or two battalions to these assault troops to strengthen the defensive depth of the assault troops, so that the problem of too weak defensive strength has been solved!" ”

After Chen Keqiao finished speaking, everyone's reactions were different, and many people felt that Chen Keqiao's method could effectively solve the shortcomings of the current regiment-level phalanx, and at the same time protect the advantages of the current regiment-level phalanx, so that the combat effectiveness of the Tang Army would be greatly increased in the future!

But some people think that these two solutions of Chen Keqiao are unrealistic, strengthen training?

To put it simply, the most lacking time in the Tang Dynasty Division, and it takes a lot of time to strengthen training, in the past, the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty Division, especially the musketeers and musketeers, can go to the battlefield after three months of training, and they can become backbone veterans after a battle.

But if you want to train them to be soldiers who can successfully carry out this tactic, you also need at least half a year of special training, and you will do nothing for half a year, only training? This is unrealistic for the current frequent wars and extremely tense use of troops by the Tang Dynasty.

The original intention of their regimental phalanx was because their own troops were small, and they wanted to expand the width of the battlefield with as few troops as possible and increase the firepower of the front rows.

If they continue to increase the number of troops in the regimental phalanx, then what is the point of them engaging in these regimental phalanxes?

It's better to use the original battalion-level phalanx tactics!

Chen Keqiao's solution seems to be achievable, and after discussing it in detail, everyone can really solve the shortcomings of the current regiment-level phalanx tactics.

But the two solutions proposed by Chen Keqiao themselves carry almost unsolvable flaws!

Strengthen training, this is impossible, the Tang Dynasty Division is now using troops everywhere, it is impossible for a unit to do nothing, just train in the training camp for half a year or even more than a year, otherwise, the current training of recruits in the Tang Army will not be only one month, but a complete three months.

Isn't that time pressing!

In addition, there is also a problem of cost, a unit does nothing, training for half a year or even more than a year before it can be sent to the battlefield to fight, how much does it cost, the soldiers have to eat, and there is more to eat, and at the same time, these soldiers also need to receive salaries.

Otherwise, do you think these soldiers would endure such hard training and cruel military law constraints, and then die for Li Xuan to be shot?

Although they are just cannon fodder soldiers, they are not stupid, they are not attractive enough, they will not stupidly come over to you as a soldier in the Tang Dynasty!