Early in the morning, Zhang Dingbian walked out of the tent.

"Marshal!" When the two guards at the camp gate with copper armor plates on their shoulders saw him walk out, they couldn't help but immediately bow their heads and say hello to him.

Seeing this, Zhang Dingbian, who had always been very close to the corporaries, couldn't help but pat the shoulders of the two people.

However, when he photographed the small copper armor piece on the shoulders of the two people, he couldn't help but be stunned, and then looked at the pure gold armor piece on his shoulder.

This is a brand-new system issued by their king not long ago, that is, half a month after the departure of Wang Guangyang, the envoy of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

This small piece of armor that they carried on their shoulders was called epaulettes by their king.

And along with this epaulettes, they have never heard of a new system - the military rank system.

That is, the officers and men of the whole army will be divided into nine ranks from top to bottom. for generals, lieutenant generals, and major generals; Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel, Major; Sergeant, sergeant, corporal. Among them, the "will" of the upper third class wears pure gold epaulettes; The "school" of the third class wears sterling silver epaulettes; The lower third-class "taxi" wore brass epaulettes.

In addition, the epaulettes also use the number of five-pointed stars to distinguish the difference between the upper, middle and lower in detail.

Therefore, in this way, the lowest level of the army, Shiwu and other commanders, could not help but wear a copper one-star epaulette on their shoulders, that is, corporals. And so on, the platoon commander of thirty people often has the rank of sergeant; The commander of a team of 100 people is a sergeant.

And like him, Zhang Dingbian, who commands the five divisions and leads the army of 15,000 troops, the military rank is a one-star major general.

"Major General" To be honest, Zhang Dingbian didn't like such a title. Because of this title, it always feels like calling a hairy boy who is leading the army for the first time. Therefore, he really wanted to change his title in the military rank to general.

But when I thought that in the entire Chu army, only Xichuan Pingzhang Guo Yu and Jiangxi Pingzhang Zhao Weishi were awarded the rank of three-star general by their own king, and these ideas that seemed to be a little ambitious and ambitious couldn't help but be temporarily pressed by Zhang Dingbian in the bottom of my heart.

But it should not be said that when this kind of military rank system was implemented in the whole army, it was indeed greatly welcomed by the low-level non-commissioned officers, so that it suddenly replaced the former military and scattered official system.

The military rank system is very similar to the military rank system, that is, the rank of the loose official corresponds to the rank of the officer, and if there is no actual officer, it is a character without power.

But the difference is that the military officer is only awarded to those who have official positions, that is, the minimum is to lead 30 soldiers from the ninth rank platoon commander. Relatively speaking, the rank is much lower, and even as long as it is an "ordinary soldier" who is brave in combat and has beheaded himself, he can also get the rank of corporal.

And what makes the low-level soldiers even happier is that the benefits they have after getting the rank are not the same as the poor people who just add some small and scarce things to the scattered officials.

Receiving the rank of corporal, even if it is just a corporal, then from then on, the person also enjoys the privilege of being exempt from military service.

You know, the people who lived in ancient times, as long as you were not an official and had no fame, then you had to pay taxes to the state, and you also had to serve as a conscription.

Among them, "paying taxes and taxes" does not need to be said by me, and everyone knows what it means. As for "conscription", to put it bluntly, it is actually working for the state for free.

As for the conscription system, there is a very clear provision in the Tang law, that is, every Ding is obliged to serve the country for 20 days per year, of which if there is a leap month, then the number of days of service will be increased by two days. If, in the middle of the year, the government increases the number of days of service, it cannot exceed one month at most.

If the number of days of service is increased to twenty-five days, then the number of people who serve cannot be transferred out; At the end of the month, the people who serve in the service will enjoy the preferential tax reduction.

Such a system, at first glance, seems very humane.

But if you really think that this service system is humane, then you are very wrong.

There is a way to have policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom.

The imperial court stipulated that only when the additional number of days of service reached or exceeded 25 days could the serving civilians be transferred. The reverse means that as long as the additional number of days of service does not exceed twenty-five days, then the government does not need to bear the slightest responsibility to the people.

Therefore, in the local area, the officials would use the 24-day period as a time limit to exploit the people.

What's even more infuriating is that the days of service are not counted from the day you receive the order from the court to leave home, but from the day you arrive at your destination.

That is to say, if a person from the Daimyo Mansion is requisitioned to Bianliang to repair the river embankment, then the month he needs to spend back and forth on the road, as well as the expenses in this month, are all at his own expense, and this month is not counted as his service time.

His service time will be counted from the day he arrives at Bianliang to repair the river embankment.

So this is why when the former prime minister of Yuan and Mongolia took off the army and transferred 180,000 people to govern the Yellow River, he would force all the people on both sides of the Yellow River to rebel.

Because an ordinary country family simply cannot afford such a large cost of service.

Therefore, in ancient times, compared with the government's messy and exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the labor of the imperial court was the root cause of the ruin of homesteaders.

Therefore, the privilege of "exemption" offered by Zhang Shihua is really too great for the majority of low-level soldiers in the Chu army.

After all, in the Yuan and Mongolian eras, only a very small number of scholars and children of official eunuchs would enjoy the privilege of exemption from military service.

In this way, in order to get the blame for being exempted from military service, if you want to come to these Chu soldiers, they will definitely not be stingy with their lives to fight for the happiness and stability of the second half of their lives.

Therefore, when the military rank system was implemented in the Chu army, hundreds of thousands of Chu soldiers could not help but sharpen their knives and look forward to the advent of war.

A beheading, that's a place for exemption. In the face of this huge temptation, there are really not many people who can calm down.

However, compared with the Chu soldiers who were looking forward to the arrival of the war day by day, high-level generals like Zhang Dingbian were very indifferent at this time.

Because they knew that since their own king would implement this rank system in the whole army at this time, then a big war would definitely not be far away.

Therefore, in these days, even if the Chinese New Year is approaching, the Chu army still maintains a certain level of training.

"The next battle will be the time for my generation to make contributions!" Zhang Dingbian, who was inspecting the camp, thought so in his heart, but at this time, he already regarded himself as a member of the Chu army.

……

Minute by minute, time flies.

In just the blink of an eye, another year has passed, counting the days of the nineteenth year, but it is already the fourth year of the establishment of the Longfeng Imperial Court of the Great Song Dynasty.

Four years, if it is placed in peacetime, it is simply unbearable. But in this troubled world, it really seems that things are wrong and vicissitudes.

With the successive failures of the Three-Way Northern Expeditionary Army, the Longfeng Imperial Court, which had been "over Qilu in the east, Qin-Qin in the west, Fujian-Guangzhou in the south, and Youyan in the north", finally began to inevitably go downhill.

The rise of the Yuan court general Chakhan Timur could not help but make the power of the Longfeng court completely driven out of the north of the Yellow River. The Eastern Expedition and the Western Expedition, which once defied the world, are now also defeated one after another, and have become a turtle retreat defense, and no longer have the courage to swallow mountains and rivers that day.

However, in the end, it is separated by a big river, so for the chaos in the Central Plains and the north, Kang Maocai, who has guarded Chizhou in western Zhejiang for nearly a year, and Kang Maocai, who is also the left deputy commander of the former commander-in-chief, did not bother to know.

After all, there is still a matter of the Central Plains in the land of Jin and Hebei, and it is too far away from him.

Now, as the envoy of the Dushui camp under the public account of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Wuguo, and the left deputy commander of the general system in front of the tent, Kang Maocai's whole mind can't help but be placed on Tuntian and his neighbor in Chizhou, who is next to them, and Da Chu, who has already shown his covetousness to them.

And the reason why I say so. In addition to their Wu Guogong sending Wang Guangyang as an envoy, but they failed to reach any written alliance with the Great Chu, because at the beginning of the year, the Chu army sent 60,000 troops, and in one fell swoop took the Anqing Road, which overlooked most of western Zhejiang, and forced the Yuan court's guard Yu Que on the Anqing Road to death.

As the former governor of the Yuan Court Huaixi, the consolation envoy, and the marshal of the Marshal Mansion, he was a member of the second rank of the Yuan Court.

Kang Maocai naturally also knew Yu Que, the deputy envoy of Huaixi Xuanfu and the secretary of the Marshal's Mansion, that is, his former deputy.

However, unlike Kang Maocai, the "generalissimo" who surrendered to Zhu Yuanzhang because of his repeated defeats, Yu Que, who was also a member of the Marshal's Mansion and was also a Jinshi of the Yuan Court, had extraordinary loyalty to the Yuan Court.

Therefore, after Kang Maocai, the main general, surrendered, Yu Que, as his deputy, took Kang Maocai's place in the Yuan Court and became the last official force of the Yuan Court in Huaixi.

Therefore, from this point alone, it can be seen that in terms of personal ability alone, with personal strength, Yu Que, who has maintained and operated Anqing Road for several years, is undoubtedly higher than Kang Maocai.

Therefore, for such a capable old subordinate, Kang Maocai also wrote a lot of letters to him as an old boss after he sat in Chizhou. hopes that his capable old subordinate can surrender, so as to increase his voice in Zhu Yuanzhang's regime.

But what the result will be after that, it is self-evident.

As a rare scholar in the Yuan court, although Yu Que is not a Han Chinese, he has studied the Four Books and Five Classics and the way of the sage since he was a child, and Yu Que has been completely sinicized. For the Yuan court, it is naturally loyal.

Therefore, every time Kang Maocai surrendered, in the end, he was mercilessly scolded and ridiculed by Yu Que.

Therefore, over time, Kang Maocai didn't bother to pay attention to this old subordinate who was loyal to the Yuan Court. But not long ago, when he heard that Yu Que was besieged by tens of thousands of Chu troops, suffered more than ten wounds, and finally killed himself, and then his wife, concubine, son, daughter, nephew, and nephew also died for the Yuan court, Kang Maocai still couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness for the death of a rabbit and a fox.

Yu Que is capable, he knows this better than anyone else.

Although he is a serious literati, after so many years, Yu Que is definitely experienced in a hundred battles.

But such a person who has been through a hundred battles and is still very capable, but he only lasted for more than a month before he was attacked and killed by the Chu army. So sitting in Chizhou, the Tuntian soldiers under his tent are far inferior to the elite of Yu Que's subordinates, how long can he hold out under the attack of the Chu army?

"......" Whenever he thought of this, Kang Maocai couldn't help but feel a chill.

Therefore, as soon as he came, Kang Maocai couldn't help but take his guards and horses out of the city and go west to the river.

"General!" There is a water village on the Chizhou River, so when Kang Maocai came with his guards, the guards of the water village couldn't help but immediately greet him.

"Alright, no need to be polite. Let me ask you, what is wrong with the Chu army on the other side in the past two days? ”

"Back to the general's words. In the past two days, there have often been clippers of the Chu army on the river under the guise of searching for Tartars. These people, on the surface, are in the name of searching for Tartars, but in fact, they are secretly spying on the camp of our army's sailors.

In this regard, we will also do as you commanded, close the gates of the camp, ignore them, and do not conflict with them. ”

"Okay, you're doing a great job." Kang Maocai heard these words and nodded, "Grandpa Guo is now at war with Zhang Shicheng in eastern Zhejiang, and he really can't spare troops and horses to support us for a while." Zhang Shihua, the king of Chu, although ambitious, is a friendly army with our army after all.

As long as our troops do not take the initiative to provoke a war and do not give them a reason to invade our army, they will not take the initiative to invade our army. ”

"Hey." The water village guards responded when they heard the voice. But looking at that appearance, it is really listless.

However, seeing this, although Kang Maocai, as the main general, knew in his heart that this would greatly affect morale, he was also helpless.

Nowadays, the main forces of the Wu army are all deployed on the eastern and southeastern fronts, with Geng Bingwen guarding Changxing, Wu Liang guarding Jiangyin, and Tang He guarding Changzhou. The three elite soldiers and horses were all busy resisting Zhang Shicheng in eastern Zhejiang.

In addition, Hu Dahai was leading his troops to attack Zhuji on Shaoxing Road, and even Zhu Yuanzhang himself personally led his troops to fight on Wuzhou Road in eastern Zhejiang, which is Ningyue Mansion.

Among the Wu army, some of them stayed in Jinling, and the rest of the elite soldiers and horses were now busy fighting with Yuan Ting and Zhang Shicheng, and they couldn't get out of the way for a while.

So this is also the reason why, when he knew that Zhang Shihua moved to Nanchang, Zhu Yuanzhang would immediately send an envoy to come.

It was really because Zhu Yuanzhang was also afraid that the Chu army would attack him at this time.

However, because of the importance attached to Zhu Yuanzhang and the continuous campaign, the Chu army, which had just captured Jiangxi Province and Anqing Road, also needed a certain amount of time to digest and digest. Therefore, at this time, although Zhang Shihua had set eastern Zhejiang as his next strategic target, he did not have much strength, and attacked Zhu Yuanzhang when he was fighting on the eastern front.