In January, the battle of Beijing and Tianjin had been fought for three months.

The goal was in sight, but it was never possible to move forward, and anxiety began to spread among the troops.

This kind of emotion is understandable, everyone knows that they are here to fight Beijing, but Beijing is right in front of them, it seems that it is at their fingertips, but there is nowhere to put it down, the more the goal is about to be achieved, but it cannot be achieved, the more anxious people are.

This greatly affected the morale of the army. Zhou Lang quickly noticed these phenomena, not only the soldiers, but also the officers. The soldiers had a bad temper and there were many fights.

At this time, they need to hope that the situation in Beijing will not improve for a while, but it will be going well in other directions.

Hong Jiu pointed to the Northern Expedition by land, and almost did not encounter any decent resistance in the Jianghuai region, and fought until Xuzhou, which was a slightly decent battle, but that's all, the city was broken, the enemy fled, and there was no intention. After breaking through Xuzhou, he has entered Shandong, and at his speed, he will take about the same time as Xu Da to attack Shandong.

The current Qing army may not be as strong as the Mongol soldiers at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, but the current Great Zhou army is definitely stronger than Xu Da's Ming army in terms of military concept and equipment level. The difference is nothing more than a slight inferiority at the level of generals, and Hong Jiuzhi himself feels that he is not as good as Xu Da.

When Beijing encountered obstacles all the way, Zhou Lang continued to distribute the victory report of the Jianghuai Road in the army and began to publicize it.

Now it is necessary to make the soldiers and officers understand that the fight against Beijing is not a short-term goal, and it is necessary to prepare for a long-term siege.

Zhou Lang wrote a notice for the officer to read to all the soldiers, telling everyone how difficult it was to attack Beijing, and that the Manchurian Eight Banners had entered the customs five times before taking advantage of Li Zicheng and taking an empty city for the last time, telling them that no one had ever breached the city from the front.

After talking about the difficulties, tell everyone that the land Northern Expeditionary Army has reached Shandong, if someone feels that they can't beat Beijing, then they will be replaced by the land Northern Expeditionary Army, and I believe that Hong Jiuzhi, who has attacked thousands of miles all the way, will be happy to take over the siege.

Using the method of agitation to boost morale can only have a temporary effect, and it can only cure the symptoms but not the root cause. Zhou Lang understands very well that once there is pressure in this dense group, emotions are contagious, and the overall depressed atmosphere is more difficult to improve than the occasional unhappy mood of individuals. The consequences of long-term depression are unimaginable, and employees jump off the building from time to time in later generations, which is the reason. There are also those glamorous financial industry professionals, who will also behave irrationally in the constant overtime. Japan, a developed country, has a much higher suicide rate than poor countries, not because it is unable to survive, but because of the general repression of collective life in Japan.

There is only one solution, and that is the leave system.

Zhou Lang found that he has been constantly innovating and improving various systems, but he will always find that there are still many things that need to be improved, and he has always ignored the problem of soldiers' mental recuperation. The reason why this problem has been ignored is mainly that there is no vacation system in the Western army in this era, and if there is one, it only exists in the officer class, and ignores the soldier class.

Zhou Lang immediately reformed the system, and the result was naturally some opposition from the officers, who did not dare to strongly protest, Zhou Lang's prestige is increasing, and he is a founding monarch, as long as he is not confused, he can often maintain his rule by prestige. The officers just advised, the main concern is the problem of troops, now that the war is going on, you put the soldiers on vacation, who can predict the consequences.

Zhou Lang's attitude was unquestionable, and the officers could only cooperate and discuss a leave system together. But the rotation system they proposed made Zhou Lang not satisfied, and they planned to rotate the whole according to the establishment, referring to the plan that Zhuge Liang implemented in the Shu army in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Zhou Lang didn't know if Zhuge Liang took into account the mental factors of the soldiers back then, but Zhou Lang felt that this way of rotating according to the establishment may also have a good effect on physical fatigue, but as for the problem of mental depression, it may not have any effect.

Repression comes more from collective life, and Zhou Lang hopes to temporarily let soldiers out of collective life and rest as individuals for a while. Therefore, Zhou Lang proposed to take the soldiers as a unit, and let each unit arrange for the soldiers to leave the battle, go to the rear and disband directly, and come back to report according to the time.

The officers thought it was dangerous, and could the disbanded soldiers still be able to be gathered? Now it's a war, and what if there are soldiers who are afraid of fighting and use it to escape from the army?

Zhou Lang told them that it was a problem within the scope of military discipline, and that those who violated military discipline naturally had a way of dealing with it, and that they should not mix all the problems together, and in the end they would not be able to sort it out, and as a result, they would be accommodating and tolerant of maladministration again and again, which is also the common mentality of Chinese officials. Zhou Lang still thinks that sometimes it is more appropriate to use a scalpel to consider the problem, rather than rising to a philosophical level to consider specific problems. Otherwise, it will be a mess that will not be disassembled, and there will be no need to do anything.

After discussion, everyone finally made a way to let a quarter of the soldiers take turns on vacation, which is still advocated by Zhou Lang, according to the officer's point of view, they want to put a tenth at a time, but then the whole unit is rotated and I don't know when it will go. If you don't see any hope of your own rotation, and instead make the soldiers complain, the system is problematic. The one-month vacation time was also the result of Zhou Lang's efforts, and the officers felt that it was enough to let the big head soldiers rest for a few days. If it's just a break, then there is no need to take a vacation, now most people are resting, only the artillery is fighting. It's not about recuperating the body, it's about relaxing the mind, and a longer vacation will have an effect.

Soon the temporary leave method was worked out and distributed to the whole army, starting from the grassroots level, and roughly a quarter of the soldiers were arranged for each team to take leave. Of course, these people could not be disbanded directly, but gathered together, arranged for the construction officer to lead, and then followed the controlled line of communication, all the way to Tianjin. There was no time for them to go home, the mode of transportation in this era did not allow it, and the German army in the early days of the war in the Soviet Union could still enjoy holidays, because of the efficiency of modern transportation, and in this era, if Napoleon's army had the ability to carry out vacations in Moscow, they would not have escaped from Russia in embarrassment.

Therefore, these soldiers could only let them go to the rear, that is, Tianjin, and then announced that they were disbanded on the spot, and asked each soldier to come to the Tianjin camp to assemble on the specified day. Allowing the soldiers to enter and exit freely in Tianjin City and the safe areas near Tianjin, Zhou Lang also wrote a tour guide to the soldiers with his own feelings, telling them that there are places worth going to in Tianjin, recommending some famous temples, recommending everyone to go fishing by the river, eating snacks in Tianjin, going to the opera garden to listen to the opera and so on. As it turned out, he was indeed self-inflicted, because most of the soldiers did not enjoy their personal lives after they were disbanded, but still got together and went to the kiln.

After the introduction of the leave system, the effect was better than it should have been, and the spirit of the soldiers who did not have their turn to take leave began to stabilize, because they had expectations and began to think more about what they were going to do when they were on vacation, instead of thinking only about fighting a war before, but there was no progress.

The mental condition of the army was rapidly recovering, and the officers found that the loss of a quarter of the strength did not seem to have as great an impact on the outcome of the battle as imagined, the place that should be held could still be held, the artillery had lost a quarter of its strength, and the shelling that should have been there did not stop, and ten people in an artillery team were responsible for one cannon, and there were three fewer people, and the others could share the burden, and they were willing to rotate it, and there were no complaints. At Zhou Lang's suggestion, the order of vacation was decided by lottery, and if it wasn't his turn, he could only blame bad luck. Anyway, there will always be a turn, and if there is hope, there will be no irritability.

By the time the first wave of soldiers returned from vacation to rotate, Hong Jiuzhi's army had already achieved considerable results in Shandong, opened the canal, and established stable communication with Zhou Lang. Hong Jiuzhi's troops really also had mental problems with soldiers, and Zhou Lang was able to recommend the leave system to Hong Jiuzhi, of course, this is not a suggestion, but a request, an order.

Hong Jiuzhi tactfully advised Zhou Lang, or complained. His troops could not afford to take a vacation. From Guazhou all the way to Tianjin, it took more than three months, the main battles were more than 30,000 soldiers in charge, the battle attrition was serious, although only 1,000 people died directly in battle, but due to injuries, illness, especially as many as 3,000 people died due to illness, and thousands of people were not in good health and could not participate in the battle, there were more than 20,000 soldiers left in his hands, which was already one-third less than before the Northern Expedition, and a quarter of the soldiers had to be taken on vacation, how could this battle be fought?

Hong Jiuzhi also suggested that if his soldiers could be allowed to participate in the siege of Beijing, instead of continuing to attack Shandong as planned, the army would be allowed to recuperate.

I still want to come to Beijing.

The excuses are true, but so is the reality. Zhou Lang had to consider a practical problem, that is, Hong Jiuzhi's troops, the problems encountered were different from his own side, he fought all the way, even if the Qing army was vulnerable, it was not easy to walk, from the mouth of the Yangtze River to Tianjin on foot, the journey was two thousand miles, and the Long March of 10,000 miles was one-fifth. Their problems are mainly physical exhaustion, or physical and mental exhaustion.

Zhou Lang thought about it, Hong Jiuzhi was indeed looking for an excuse to come to Beijing, who didn't want to participate in the battle to destroy the country, but Zhou Lang took into account the reality of their troops, and it was indeed time to recuperate.

Of course, they can also be arranged to recuperate in Shandong, such as Jinan, which is good, and they can take a hot spring.

But Hong Jiuzhi wanted to come to Beijing and participate in this great war to destroy the country, and his officers and soldiers probably also wanted this honor. Even if Hong Jiuzhi was just an excuse, Zhou Lang could allow them to be so careful.

Moreover, they fought from the south to the north, paid such a great price, and achieved so many results, according to secular concepts, they deserved the honor of attacking Beijing, and their efforts deserved to be rewarded.

So Zhou Lang issued an order, allowing Hong Jiuzhi to lead his troops north, as for the task of attacking Shandong, it was transferred to the auxiliary troops, and if it could be forced to land, it would be forced to land, and if it could not be forced to land, it could not be forced to attack, and there was no clear consideration of combat performance.

Not only that, but half a month later, when Hong Jiuzhi led his troops to arrive at the city of Beijing, Zhou Lang inspected them in a high-profile manner, asked them to walk in front of all the barracks in front of Beijing, arranged for soldiers to hold high various banners, and invited the troupe to play drum music, making the atmosphere very lively.

Zhou Lang wanted to give them enough honor for the troops that had penetrated the territory of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.