Chapter 548: The Grand Governor

"Ye Tao, this time are you going to go to the front to command the battle? Or is it co-ordination in the rear? ”.

"Does it make sense to go to the front? I don't need merit? Ye Tao said jokingly.

"Alright, I'll go to the front...... This is probably my last chance to command the army, and I can't afford to let it go. Tan Xiaopei said lightly.

"Your Majesty, why bother?" Ye Tao smiled bitterly and said, "According to me, Your Majesty, you don't have to leave Danyang. ”

"This can't be done, I talked to Zhuo Mang. There are six war zones in total, and we will do both of them. With you in the back, we can have a good fight. Tan Xiaopei is also particularly stubborn in this regard. In this regard, Ye Tao has nothing to do.

And then the final preparations began. Ye Tao was appointed as the governor of Dongping, commanding the entire army of Dongping. When Tan Xiaopei announced the appointment with great interest, the Manchu civil and military forces didn't know what expression to use to deal with. Tan Xiaopei is ready to lead his troops to the battlefield by himself, everyone knows this. Although this is indeed not very regular, but the lord of the country himself is a general, and he is still sure to control the battle situation, and with the assistance of elite soldiers, it is expected that there will not be too many accidents. But the position of the governor of the soldiers and horses was handed over to Ye Tao, and the lord of the country himself commanded the battle at the front, and threw the work of commanding and dispatching to others...... That's so unconventional. Although speaking of which, Ye Tao is indeed the most suitable candidate to serve as the governor of the capital, but the name is the name after all. The lord of the country gives his ministers a hand? It seems that there is no way to explain it. But Tan Xiaopei insisted on this point, and Zhuo Mang also agreed with such an arrangement, Ye Tao himself has always been indifferent, and this appointment was passed in such a daze.

The operation against Chunnan has also begun to enter the stage of detailed planning and design. The operation against Chunnan will be divided into six theaters of operations.

The Jieshan Theater is mainly the border area of Dongping, Chunnan and Xiling, and the task of the raider is only secondary, the most important thing is to monitor and contain Xiling, stabilize the border area, adapt to the environment, and further prepare for the future attack on Xiling. The situation in the Jieshan Theater was complicated, and there were high requirements for the troops' reconnaissance capabilities, mobility, and reaction capabilities, so after careful consideration, Ye Tao appointed Dai Yun as the commander-in-chief of the Jieshan Theater. In addition to the original border army and the Guan defense army totaling more than 60,000 troops, the strength of the Jieshan Theater supplemented the total of 45 battalions and 140,000 troops under the jurisdiction of the Northern Xinjiang Jingluo Prefecture. The troops under the Northern Xinjiang Economic Strategy Mansion are all very belligerent, and they have to break their heads in order to grab these places. However, except for the Chinese military battalion as the command center, it will inevitably be selected, and other troops are really uncertain. Dai Yun immediately ordered that a large-scale exercise of the whole army in northern Xinjiang be conducted in a month's time, and only then would the final troop selection be carried out. Unexpectedly, Chi Xianping also insisted on squeezing in, originally Liaojiang Jingluo Mansion was only used as a large rear to provide supplies, meat and other materials for the front, but Chi Xianping is not a fuel-efficient lamp, how can he be willing to do a big war without his own share? He was dead-faced, and on the grounds of strengthening the sense of identity of the Northern Liao armies and Dongping, he insisted that Tan Xiaopei agree and give Chi Xianping five battalions. This made the soldiers under Dai Yun's command angry, and the forty-four battalions were not enough, and they had to squeeze in a competitor. But there is really no way to talk about what Xiaopei ordered.

Then there was the Canal War Zone. After attacking Chunnan, in addition to cooperating with the friendly forces on the left and right flanks and steadily advancing, the more important thing is to ensure the smooth flow of the supply line of the canal. A large amount of supplies will enter Chunnan through the canal, and then be transported and deployed. Although Tan Weiming is not very talented in commanding operations, he has a resolute and steady temperament, has a sense of the overall situation, and is in command of the operation in the Canal Theater. The troops in the Canal Theater are mainly the armies under the jurisdiction of the original Canal Governor's Office, plus a forbidden army. In order to strengthen the command force of the Canal Theater, Zou Shuangwen, the former overseer of the Blood Qi Army, gave Tan Weiming as his deputy. Tan Weiming and Zou Shuangwen got together, and immediately began to strengthen the training, to give the troops a more suitable for combat mission redress, with Zou Shuangwen's resume in the Blood Qi Army, training methods emerge in endlessly, although the total of 110,000 troops under the Canal Governor's Mansion have been trained to be disgraced and complain, but at the moment of the war, everyone is not allowed not to work hard. "Sweat more in peacetime, shed a cup of blood less in wartime" is the loudest slogan of the Canal Theater.

The Central Theater naturally has Tan Xiaopei as the main general, and both the Forbidden Army and the Blood Qi Army are attached to this theater. The task of the Central Theater is to advance steadily, seek opportunities to carry out effective operations, and annihilate the main forces of the enemy's army. This kind of combat is very exciting, and Tan Xiaopei naturally likes it very much. The forbidden army has been separated from the blood qi army for many years, but it can't suppress the blood qi army's strong financial resources, and all kinds of professionals are gathered together, especially in training and combat, and they are not bound by conventional tactics. After Zou Shuangwen was transferred, the new overseer of the Blood Qi Army was still elected from within the Blood Qi Army, named Zhu Feng. Previously, Zhu Feng's position was the chief of staff and battalion chief of the Blood Qi Army. During the time when the Blood Qi Army was fighting in Northern Liao, he continued to train the new army in the base camp of the Blood Qi Army. Zhu Feng is only thirty years old now, and he is just a child from a second-rate family who was not very valued at all, but after entering the Blood Qi Army, he began to gradually show his talent. is now the out-and-out third-in-command of the Blood Qi Army, and the one ranked above him is Zou Shuangwen's deputy Luo Baijiang. However, Luo Baijiang is good at managing and coordinating the army, and he is a good hand at coordinating logistics, and he is inevitably a little poor in commanding operations. In order not to lose the prestige of the Blood Qi Army, Luo Baijiang volunteered to let Xian. In the eyes of the Blood Qi Army, although the position of Overseer sounds glamorous, it is exhausting to death, and the pressure is huge, and the name of the Blood Qi Army must not be damaged for the sake of any individual. No matter when and where, the Blood Qi Army must be the strongest army in the world based on the practicality of war. Naturally, the Central Theater is not only the Forbidden Army and the Blood Qi Army, the elites of the various families who occasionally appeared in the past are all from the dragon, and now there is no supply restriction by sea, and the number of people sent by each family has doubled. The luxurious equipment of the 50,000 elite clan soldiers, the rigorous training, and the high degree of internal unity and tacit understanding with the clan as the bond make these clan soldiers a powerful and heavy army group that can be completely relied on.

The Eastern Theater was personally led by General Zhuo Mang, and the most important combat force under his command was the Tianxuan Army, the Zhenning Army, which was changed from the defenders of Zhenning Pass. Since both the Tianxuan Army and the Zhenning Army were mainly infantry, in order to supplement the shortage of cavalry in the Eastern Theater, they simply transferred a total of ten battalions of 30,000 tribal cavalry from Yunzhou and Tianmeng City. The tribal cavalry of the Benwolf Plain, in addition to the equipment is not very consistent, allowing the soldiers to choose their favorite weapons, and the armor is also selected according to the financial resources and aesthetic preferences of each person and each tribe. Basically, the original six battalions of Benwolf were all armed to the teeth. The troops from Tianmeng City were not so luxurious, but they were basically armed with the captured cavalry equipment of the Northern Liao Forbidden Army, and their combat effectiveness was not bad at all. On the one hand, they are a little ashamed of their own side, but they also see their future from the cavalry of Benwolf Plain, their morale is high, and some of the leading tribal warriors even secretly ordered to fight beautifully, so that Dongping can see their importance. And the tribes of Tianmeng City can also take advantage of the situation to rise. There is another troublesome thing in the Eastern Theater, that is, it must fully cooperate with the naval division, so that it can carry out relatively complicated landing and infiltration operations. And this is also the reason why Zhuo Mang is in charge of this way. It is easy to say, but the landing operation is an extremely complex composite operation, and it requires a veteran general like Zhuo Mang to play it with ease.

The other two theaters are the East China Sea Theater and the Yazhou Theater. The East China Sea Theater is a purely maritime operation, with the exception of less than 20,000 marines, almost all of them are the main combat fleet, with a total of more than 100 Huya ships and other types of ships. By the time the war began, there should be more than thirty Tensyan ships and more than fifteen airship carriers. The East China Sea Theater will completely blockade the waters of Chunnan as soon as possible and annihilate all the naval divisions in Chunnan. Then he began to harass the coast with all his might, so that Chunnan could not concentrate all his combat power on the frontal battlefield.

The Yazhou Theater of Operations is completely carried out with the existing forces of Yazhou. Yazhou's current ground forces are very average, but due to the characteristics of the island, it needs to control a large area of sea, and its fleet and aviation strength are outstanding. Ye Tao's plan for Yazhou was to continuously carry out airdrop harassment in the early stage, use small groups of elite troops to continuously establish small base areas in locations that are easy to defend and difficult to attack, and carry out horizontal contacts, and after the frontal battlefield has established superiority and oppression, launch large-scale landing operations and open up a second front behind enemy lines. And when the time comes, there will also be sufficient ground forces to transport them by sea. Otherwise, just relying on the original more than 50,000 infantry and cavalry in Yazhou, it would not be enough.

Both the Yazhou and East China Sea theaters have their own air forces, and the combined scale of more than 200 airships is still relatively sufficient. In the four theaters of the frontal battlefield, Ye Tao tended to use air power together. Due to the involvement of a large number of mooring yards and airport construction work, Ye Tao promoted Lu Dan to serve as the chief officer of the air crew, and was fully responsible for the command and coordination of air forces. Each theater has a commander in charge of the command, and has two air teams and 24 airships, which is more than enough to undertake reconnaissance, support, and harassment work on the front line. And Rudan is in charge of all the rest of the air power, and he will soon have more than three hundred airships at his disposal. This is a terrible force, and a single bombing may be able to devastate a medium-sized city. Of course, Lu Dan's task is by no means easy, Chunnan also has a considerable number of airships, and the battle for air supremacy is also quite troublesome.

After allocating the forces and operational strategies of the six major theaters, Ye Tao began to coordinate the training and training of various armies, and the equipment of each army also had to be adjusted. Immediately, it was a headache to reserve supplies. At present, the combat strength of the various armies in Dongping is strong, but they need sufficient material support, and the daily consumption of various explosives alone is an extremely terrifying amount. In addition, the daily fuel consumption of airships, the communication equipment that must be laid to the front line at any time, and the massive telegraph lines and wires that accompany them, as well as various other technical equipment, are not a small amount. Equipment and wires are not enough, but oil bombs have a strict shelf life, and the potential safety hazards become more and more serious after being stored for a long time. Under Ye Tao's supervision, the entire Dongping war machine rumbled into action. After accepting the task, all units also conducted training in their original stations, and sent a small number of lead troops to various theaters to attack the forward stations and make some preparations, and there were not many large-scale transfers. But the military machine of the whole country was set in motion, and the atmosphere within the whole country changed. It is impossible not to feel this kind of change.

And although Chunnan now has a lord and a unified decree and command, he is definitely not ready to go to war with Dongping. While the lord of Chunnan is trying to mediate, he is also making preparations. Unless the lord of Chunnan is willing to give up his position as the head of the country and join Dongping, the bottom line of the negotiations between the two sides will be too far apart. Dongping's only goal now is reunification. And the lord of Chunnan obviously didn't realize this, and he also felt that wanting to destroy Chunnan, even for Dongping, was not so simple.

In August, border trade between the two countries was completely cut off, and even smuggling routes were gradually cut off. However, the businessmen in Dongping did not complain too much, a large number of materials were all purchased by the military, and many merchants were able to get large and small orders. The profits of the war always had to be shared by the whole country, and under Tan Weixin's control, Dongping's economy remained stable. After the autumn harvest, both countries withdrew their negotiators, and Dongping's army began to move. It is true that the mobilization of a million-strong army will take quite a long time. In particular, when the troops from the north get to the south, it will take time to adapt to the climate, water and soil. By the beginning of spring, the big war will begin.

Not everyone wants to see this big war begin. Now, the general trend of the world can be understood by anyone with a little brain. Dongping's unification of the United States is already unstoppable. Although Northern Liao lasted for several years with the efforts of Gao Senqi and other young Zhuang factions, once Ye Tao exerted his strength, a battle to destroy the country was divided into two parts, and the total did not last a full year. If it weren't for the surrender of the lord of Northern Liao, maybe there would be a big battle in Yanjing, and both sides would have to fight tens of thousands of people, leaving a ruined city. But the Northern Liao finally gave in. Now, as for how long Chunnan can hold out and how much blood Dongping can make, everyone has doubts now. A year? Or two years? Or is it longer? It is true that the strategic depth of Chunnan is much greater than that of Northern Liao, but Chunnan has to face the dilemma of fighting on two fronts, and it is even worse than a generation of ordnance and tactical thinking. During the year when Chunnan was actively preparing in Dongping, he was forced to constantly mobilize and assemble. Chunnan's current military strength has exceeded 2.2 million people, but Dongping's side, after Ye Tao completed the deployment of the general policy, insisted on this total force that seemed to be much less than Chunnan, and did not actively expand the army, and the meaning of calmness was very obvious. Among the young generation of generals in Dongping, many are clamoring for the destruction of Chunnan in eight months. And when this statement mentioned Tan Xiaopei and Ye Tao, Tan Xiaopei was obviously very interested, but Ye Tao didn't say a word, smiled faintly, but didn't say that it was nonsense. In the end, how long can Chunnan last? Many ministers of Xiling estimated that even if something happened, I am afraid that this war would not last more than two years. It's only been two years...... So, what about after that? How long can Xiling last?

It's not that Xiling didn't think about delaying such a process, and they also made various efforts. When Ye Tao was inspecting a combat warehouse, the oil bomb was ignited, and Ye Tao narrowly escaped the disaster, but he was also injured. But what followed was a torrent of revenge. Within a month, seven generals died for various inexplicable reasons, three cabinet ministers were assassinated, and four important military camps and fortresses were bombed in retaliation, with more than 6,000 casualties. Ye Tao's injury probably delayed Dongping's progress for less than a month at most, and Suo Zheng, as Ye Tao's representative, continued to do a good job. But Dongping's revenge made Xiling's political affairs suspended for half a month, and the death of those generals was even more widely implicated, and there was no one who could immediately take over, even if he reluctantly took over those armies, he was also panicked, and his combat power dropped a lot.

Being an enemy of Dongping, is it really worth the loss? The current Sun Boping is no longer just a pivotal issue in the Xiling Imperial Court, he can almost be half of Xiling's family. In the previous confidential meetings of the central government, he has been silent, but only expressed his meaning, Xiling and Dongping, financial resources, national strength, are no longer on the same level at all. It took many years for Xiling to bring all the armies under the direct control of the center, which indeed greatly strengthened Xiling's combat power, but also depleted Xiling's financial resources. Dongping's economic offensive against Xiling has made Xiling bear huge economic pressure in recent years, and its annual financial revenue has been declining. Xiling's Hubu Treasury now only has 24 million taels of silver, and he can't afford to fight a year's war. In fact, if it weren't for Sun Boping's efforts in recent years, opening up sources and reducing expenditure, and making great efforts in regulation and control, Xiling's finances would have almost gone bankrupt by now. Sun Boping's words, in everyone's hearts, are undoubtedly very weighty.

Even the Xiling royal family, even the Xiling country lord, did not have the confidence to persevere. You know, if you persist, you may be able to take charge of this country for four or five more years, but it will be difficult to stop the Dongping soldiers. When the time comes, the country will be ruined and the nation will be wiped out, and there will be no luck. And looking at the current life of the family of the lord of Northern Liao, although he is far away from power, he is still rich and superior. In particular, despite the restrictions, the Northern Liao royal family could still participate in the political life of Dongping after a few years, regardless of whether they were civil ministers and military generals. This promise was made by Tan Xiaopei at the court meeting, in front of hundreds of civil and military officials, and the crown prince Tan Weiming immediately agreed, adding another guarantee to this promise. Although it is said that it has been twenty or thirty years, the current children of the Li family, who are talented in military affairs, have entered the Blood Qi Army, and this time they will also come from the dragon to attack Chunnan. This kind of generous attitude made the Xiling royal family a little surprised. If you want to say that Dongping has a tradition of being a bad person, then no one believes it. A Dongping that cannot be decisive cannot have such a height as it is today. That's easy to explain, Dongping is showing his own strength, showing his attitude and methods of dealing with the royal families in the future.

Thinking of this, Xiling sent a secret mission of extremely high standard. After the mission arrived at Xunshan Pass, it flew directly to Danyang by airship. There will be no disturbance along the way, and no one will be able to find out about this contact between the two countries.