On November 27, the 25th year of Wanli, the vanguard of 10,000 officers and soldiers of the Beijing battalion set off first under the leadership of Chai Guozhu, the deputy chief soldier of the Imperial Border Pingyu, and the remaining 40,000 main troops will set off under the leadership of Li Chengliang and wait for equipment and supplies to be prepared.

This time, Li Chengliang also got the highest official rank of a military general - Admiral, a position that can be slightly compared with the civil official and the same level.

And before this position, only the current Zhennan Hou Xiao Ruxun had gotten it, so Li Chengliang could be regarded as having achieved his long-cherished wish, and he was still very happy.

It would have been a pleasure.

According to the regulations after Tumubao, the army should let the civilian officer be the commander, and the military general can only be the chief general of the army, but not to mention that Xiao Ruxun had been treated as an exception before, Li Chengliang's age is there, the seventy-year-old veteran goes to the battle, who can be more qualified than Li Chengliang among the civil officials except Zhao Zhigao?

So the civil officials thought about it, and decided to give him the title of Admiral and let him lead the troops to fight by himself, in order to show the court's trust and comfort to the old ministers and veterans, it was originally good, but when they were discussing whether to grant Li Chengliang the title of Admiral and appoint him with a separate power to command the army, suddenly a civil official sighed-

"Xiang envoy Xiao Zhennan is here, why worry about the north not being broken? Why is it that the veteran still needs to take command of the seventy years of the expedition?'

When this sentence was spoken, Li Chengliang's face darkened at that time.

Xiao Ruxun has been the first general of the Wanli Dynasty in the Ming Dynasty for several years, and Li Chengliang's first contribution to the border commander at that time was also overshadowed by Xiao Ruxun's overly brilliant record.

Li Chengliang has guarded Liaodong in the northeast for many years, but he has not been able to make Liaodong less thieves and reduce the pressure on the Jurchens and Mongolians, but they have fought more and more.

His credit is getting bigger and bigger, but the situation in Liaodong is not much better, so some people keep putting forward his sin of "raising self-respect and ill-intentionedness" to bring him down.

Compared with Xiao Ruxun's record of destroying the two countries in three wars, it is indeed a lot inferior, even if nothing else, the record of annihilating 200,000 Japanese robbers in one war is enough to make Xiao Ruxun famous in history.

However, Li Chengliang's exploits have to be added with a big question mark, and people will always question whether he is "harboring evil intentions", whether he indirectly caused the Jurchen to rise, and eventually led to the sinking of Shenzhou.

Compared with Xiao Ruxun's record that he can't find fault, Li Chengliang, the former No. 1 general of Wanli, is no longer very valuable, but at this time Xiao Ruxun is not in Beijing, but in the southernmost wilderness of the empire, Burma "Frontier", so Li Chengliang, who should have been recuperating at the age of seventy, went out again.

The civil official did not want to express his dissatisfaction with Li Chengliang, but expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that the imperial court decided to leave Xiao Ruxun in Burma.

Because this resolution did make many civil officials dissatisfied at that time, it was the Liao civil officials and the backer Wang Xijue behind Li Chengliang who single-handedly promoted this matter, and Xiao Ruxun obviously couldn't pee in the same pot with the Liaodong department.

He also beat Li Rusong in North Korea and punished a lot of Liaodong cavalry, which was regarded as offending the Liaodong faction, so the civilian faction that did not deal with the Liaodong faction at that time admired Xiao Ruxun very much and wanted to win him over.

However, at that time, the strength of the Liaodong faction was not small, and it could even compete with the Jin faction, so Xiao Ruxun still went to Shizhen in Burma, and there was no way to return to the capital to take up a position, which made many other factions very dissatisfied.

Time has passed, the leaders of the Liaodong Department have taken a back seat, Wang Xijue went home, Li Chengliang was semi-house arrest in Beijing, the Liaodong Department was in a slump, and the court could probably be seen as a-for-tat confrontation between the Jin Department and the Jiangnan Department.

In a few days, the Jiangnan system will also be divided, the famous Donglin Party will be born into the world, the Jiangnan Department will be separated from the Zhejiang Party and the Chu Party, the Qi Party will appear in Shandong, the Qin Party will be in Guanzhong, and the eunuch Party will be in the future.

Looking at the chaos of the political situation in the late Ming Dynasty and the political struggle between civilian officials, we can quite see that the rudiments of the political struggle between political parties in Europe, the United States, Taiwan and other places today are just a shell with a feudal imperial system and a name with the people, and the essence is the same.

Now, the political struggle between the factions has begun to see its strength, and the civilian officials of each faction are also supporting their spokesmen in the army for the sake of the interests of their own factions, and strive for great military success for the factions.

Li Chengliang's great exploits can pull up the foundation of the Liaodong faction and make the Liaodong faction unscrupulous for a long time, if the hostile faction can support Xiao Ruxun, it is also a hole card.

For more than three years, they have never given up the idea of recalling Xiao Ruxun, and sometimes they can even get some cooperation from the emperor, but the opposition forces are also extremely large and strong, such as the forces of the Xungui group, they definitely don't want the emperor to use Xiao Ruxun to rectify the Beijing camp.

Who knows if Xiao Ruxun and them are wearing a pair of pants? His father and family have already left Beijing City and returned to their hometown and place of work, and they have long had nothing to do with Jingying and have left the circle of nobles.

Such a person cannot be trusted.

Of course, Li Chengliang is absolutely unwilling to see Xiao Ruxun come back, so his last hope of making a comeback is gone, the waste of Jingying is a waste, but even if it is a waste, it is also his Li Chengliang's last hope, and he absolutely cannot accept the end of his last hope being wiped out.

However, those civil officials still keep mentioning these things.

"Xiao Zhennan used 40,000 soldiers to break the 200,000 Japanese invaders, completely solved the problem of the Japanese invaders, and wiped out the Dongwu Kingdom with 30,000 soldiers, and lifted the border troubles for more than ten years. If Xiao Zhennan is here, I don't have to worry about it! ”

A civil official put on a compassionate look, which made Li Chengliang extremely unhappy.

"Who's to say it isn't? Xiao Zhennan used his troops so sharply, fighting in the south and in the north, fighting dozens of battles of all sizes, how could he have been defeated once? If Xiao Zhennan was left behind to train his troops, why would he be where he is today? It is not impossible to go north to the grassland, and the ancestor of the restoration of the ancestor is also the work of the ancestor! ”

A civilian official glanced at Li Chengliang with rather disdainful eyes, and then quickly moved away.

This made Li Chengliang blow up.

What do you mean by that? The old man has been fighting for the south and north of the Ming Dynasty for decades, and there is no merit and hard work, when the old man was bleeding on the battlefield, his surname Xiao has not yet been born! His father also wants to call him a junior in front of the old man, let alone him? How dare you insult me like this?! ”

Relying on his age, Li Chengliang lowered his head and didn't dare to make a sound, and in the end, Zhao Zhigao frowned and said-

"General Li has worked hard for the country, so you can't talk nonsense! Xiao Zhennan was far away in Burma to defend the southern frontier, and at this time he was fighting against Franco, and the war in the north could only be entrusted to General Li. ”