When Zhong Wuyan finished speaking of his suggestion, King Qi fell into deep thought. He has coveted the Song State for a long time, and this time the Song civil war is an excellent opportunity for him. And now that he has decided to send troops to the war, breaking his promise like this will also be a big loss to his personal prestige.

He still said to Zhong Wuyan euphemistically: "Queen, now that Suiyang has promised us such a great benefit, the widow agreed to Suiyang's request to help them attack Taoqiu from behind and pacify the civil strife in the Song Dynasty." If you break your promise like this, this will be a big blow to the prestige of the widow. ”

Hearing King Qi's words, Zhong Wuyan continued to persuade: "King, the conditions promised by Suiyang are nothing more than two points. One is to increase the annual tribute given to us by the Song State to ten times; The other is to cede Taoqiu to my Qi State. The geographical location of Taoqiu is too important, it is a hot thing, it is completely in our hands, it will definitely attract the hatred of all countries, and we must not fight for this place at will until we have enough strength to suppress the Zhao, Wei, Han, and Chu countries. And the other condition proposed by Suiyang, if we put a little pressure on Taoqiu, will they dare not accept it? In this way, if we do not send troops, we will be able to obtain sufficient benefits and avoid the original risks, which is not a good thing for our Qi country? ”

Hearing Zhong Wuyan say this, King Qi was finally moved. Although the hegemony is very important to him, he doesn't want to let himself end up like his husband for the sake of being the overlord!

He said to Zhong Wuyan: "The queen is really a widowed and virtuous helper! If it weren't for the queen, the widow wouldn't have figured out this complicated relationship. The queen can rest assured, the widow will go to the court, stabilize the courtiers first, and then announce that the messenger of Taoqiu will enter the palace, I think this time the little guy named Su Qin should know how to do it! ”

After King Qi agreed not to send troops to Taoqiu, Zhong Wuyan was relieved. On the way back, she met Xia Yingchun and said directly to her: "The king has promised me not to send troops to Taoqiu." It's good that you know this yourself, and don't spread this news out at will. ”

Xia Yingchun hurriedly agreed. When she wanted to continue talking to Zhong Wuyan, she found that Zhong Wuyan had already left.

When she returned to her palace, the servants hurried up to serve. And the one who was most enthusiastic about her was the maid sent here by Xia Yingchun to help Zhong Wuyan use the "holy water".

It is said that this "holy water" has the miraculous effect of smoothing the skin and delaying aging. Zhong Wuyan was also very curious, she personally opened this holy water to watch, but she couldn't see why. When Xia Yingchun's maid wanted to serve her and use it, Zhong Wuyan directly refused: "You can use this thing for yourself, I don't need this kind of thing." ”

Hearing the queen's resolute attitude, the maid was also a little panicked, the queen refused the "holy water", how could she explain to Concubine Xia when she went back?

Zhong Wuyan doesn't need a beautiful face, and it's not that she is self-defeating, but that she has a grand pattern herself, and she herself has enough self-confidence. She doesn't need to use her beautiful face to please the king, it is enough for her to have the talent to deal with national affairs! In order to be able to give full play to this talent, she needs to completely concentrate and focus on the national affairs of the Qi State, and as for other things, she has to put it aside!

With Xia Yingchun's help, and Zhong Wuyan's assistance, the King of Qi finally agreed to let Qi remain neutral during the Song civil war. In order to achieve this goal, Tao Qiu paid the same price as Suiyang, and needed to increase the tribute provided to Qi by ten times in the future!

For Dai Yan, although this approach is a bit humiliating and humiliating, it is a bitter fruit that he has to swallow now! Of course, he could be angry at the crown and domineeringly refuse Qi Guo's request, but this would definitely add many obstacles to pacifying the internal turmoil in the Song Dynasty. If the civil war drags on for a long time, dragging more other countries in, I am afraid the losses for the Song State will be even more serious!

Being able to send Qi Guo away first is the best news for Tao Qiu and himself!

When Dai Yan sent Su Qin as a diplomatic envoy to the State of Qi to conduct a diplomatic war, his training and army reorganization in Taoqiu was also carried out quickly and was quickly completed!

Although 100,000 people were mobilized to participate in the battle in just a few days, Dai Yan knew very well that the army was a product of organization, and if an army did not have a perfect organization, it would be completely impossible for it to give full play to its combat effectiveness.

Dai Yan has the vision of later generations, and at the same time has the experience of leading soldiers in this era. When he learned the unique art of war from Guiguzi, he already had his own unique idea about the planning of Taoqiu's army.

He does not intend to make much adjustment to the composition of the army at the grassroots level. Because in this era, the tactical level of combat is already very familiar, and the grassroots part of the army is completely born for this kind of battle, there is no need for him to replace it alive.

The basic composition of the grass-roots army is that there are five people in a team, and there is a team commander; Two soldiers are one, and there is one chief; Five tithes for a tun, set up a tun chief; Liangtun is a hundred-man team, with a centurion, and the centurion is also known as a hundred generals. In Dai Yan's view, most of the time those who personally command tactical operations on the battlefield and even fight bravely still rely on hundreds of generals, so the personal bravery and quality of hundreds of generals are the backbone of an army! In the past few years, Tao Qiu's long-term training of standing soldiers, of course, there will be no problem with the quality of the hundred generals, and the army composed of new recruits, the hundred generals must be composed of high-quality soldiers, so that he can feel at ease.

For the selection of 100 generals, Dai Yan still selected those outstanding chiefs and tun chiefs from the rangers who had followed him for many years, and even the standing army of Taoqiu, as a promotion. As for the most basic level of the new army, the commanders, chiefs, and tun commanders, he all competed in the new army, and selected soldiers with superb fighting skills from among them for promotion.

Because Taoqiu has military training all year round, and many of the newly recruited soldiers are students who have gone through primary and even middle school, the army construction at the grassroots level is very fast. However, in just a few days, he sorted out the grassroots level of the entire army.

For the infantry, five hundred people are five hundred, and the commander of five hundred is called five hundred masters, Dai Yan thought that five hundred was too ugly, so he changed five hundred to a brigade, and each brigade had a brigade commander. On the top of the brigade, there were originally two teams of 1,000 people formed by two 500 people, and the commander of the team of 1,000 people was called the commander of the thousand, but Dai Yan abolished the establishment of the commander of the thousand, and instead organized the five brigades into a division, with a division commander, and under the division commander, two other commanders were set up to assist the division commander. Five divisions are organized into an army, and the commander of the army is the general, that is, the general!

Taoqiu's originally trained standing army had almost 20,000 people, and if it was calculated according to Taoqiu's reorganized military system, it would be the size of two armies. Dai Yan split the two armies, which represented Taoqiu's absolute combat effectiveness, into eight parts, and incorporated them into eight new armies. In this way, each of the eight armies can guarantee that it has a standing army division with strong combat effectiveness, which can roughly ensure that the army of more than 100,000 people has strong enough combat effectiveness!

Dai Yan had high hopes for the newly reorganized eight armies, and each army was named by Dai Yan and asked the commanders of each army to discuss it themselves, and they all gave them unique names. Among them, there are the Longwei Army, the Tiger Ben Army, the Crane Control Army, the Thousand Niu Army, the Wolf Tooth Army, the Barbarian Bear Army and the Weisheng Army, these seven armies, Dai Yan in order to cultivate their sense of honor of the legion, even took matters into his own hands, together with the students of Taoqiu University, set up his own unique banner for these seven armies!

And in addition to these seven armies, there is also the most elite Xuanniao Army in the entire Taoqiu army! Destiny Xuanniao, descend to give birth to business! This is the origin of the name of the Xuanyao Army, it is not only the totem of the Xuanyao Army, but also the totem of the entire Taoqiu Army, Dai Yan hopes to be able to awaken the will to fight in the hearts of the Song people through the totem shared by the Song (Shang) people!

The eight armies newly organized in Taoqiu are all typical infantry. As for the cavalry who was far away in Xiangyi and was playing hide and seek with the Chu army, Dai Yan did not forget it. He gave Tao Qiu a special name for the only cavalry he has now: Tiger and Panther Cavalry!

Dai Yan's restructuring of the army only made some subtle changes in the army in this era, and did not change much. Because under the current pattern of cold weapon warfare, it is impossible for him to change the battle at the tactical level of the war in the world. The only thing he can use is to make the army more tightly knit and to unite the morale of the soldiers through totems such as military flags.

What has really changed a lot in the army is Dai Yan's new addition of an institution - the military counselor.

The military counselor is not a simple person, but a small-scale team. This small-scale team will be dispersed and stationed in various armies, and the source of the military counselor members are all outstanding talents who are loyal to Dai Yan and sent by Dai Yan to Guiguzi to completely learn the art of war in Guiguzi!

Dai Yan set up a military counselor, and he had high expectations for it from the beginning. This institution, Dai Yan basically built according to the status of the General Staff in later generations!

When it comes to the division of armies, many people will divide them into feudal armies, modern armies, and modern armies. Most of the people's perception of the combat effectiveness of these three types of armies is that the modern army is stronger than the feudal army, and the modern army is stronger than the modern army.

In fact, there is not much wrong with such a purely Western way of knowing. After all, the modern army eliminated the feudal army, and the modern army eliminated the modern army. However, the distance between the modern army and the feudal army is relatively far, and some people's understanding of them is extremely superficial. Some people even believe that as long as the establishment of the modern army is used in the ancient army, trained in a spear formation, and collectively "pierced to the right," the feudal army can be completely defeated in individual operations, but this is actually an extremely superficial and absurd understanding that arises from not understanding the difference between the feudal army and the modern army!

The feudal armies of Europe were actually knightly armies. In the Middle Ages in Europe, most of the wars that took place between nations and even lords were resolved through knights. The knights train every day, and the quality of individual soldiers is extremely high, and when it comes to combat quality, the modern army with peasants as the main force can be said to be unable to catch up!

But why were the feudal armies of Europe eliminated by modern armies? This was naturally due to the fact that new weapons such as firearms began to be used on a large scale, allowing a peasant to kill a well-trained knight with a musket in his hand. And the more important reason is that the scale of the war has expanded, and the war that was originally only called by knights is far from being able to support the intensity of that large-scale war!

For example, in medieval Europe, there were only a few thousand knights in France, and an army of this size was no problem playing with the surrounding lords in the Middle Ages, but once it began to fight the Hundred Years' War with England, and even participated in the Thirty Years' War in Europe, the army composed of thousands of knights was not enough at all. Therefore, large-scale conscription of peasants, with peasants as the main force, began to appear, and this is the modern army.

No matter how strong the knight's individual quality is, due to its high training cost, the number of troops that can get orders is relatively low. In a large-scale war, it is naturally unable to resist the modern army that is like a sea of people, and it is not a strange problem that it is eliminated.

If you want to talk about it carefully, the division between the feudal army and the modern army in Europe is somewhat similar to the chariot soldiers of the Spring and Autumn Period and the army that evolved to the present Warring States Period. According to Dai Yan's cognition, when the chariot soldiers are used well against the infantry, they actually have unique advantages. However, the final elimination of the chariot soldiers was actually similar to the reason for the final elimination of the European knights, all because the cost of training was too high, and in a large-scale war, it was no better than a peasant-based army!

This means that the army of the Warring States period is no longer any different from the modern army, except that it is not equipped with firearms! If you want to defeat the modern army, then the only thing to rely on is the modern army!

What is the difference between a modern army and a modern army? If the factor of weapons is removed, the biggest one is probably the special military organization that Dai Yan is copying now-the General Staff!

The watershed between the war between the modern army and the modern army was the famous Franco-Prussian War. In the Franco-Prussian War, the French army was a typical modern army, and it was the pinnacle of the modern army, after all, the soldiers trained by the military system laid down by the god of war Napoleon himself were really not built! France also relied on this modern army to show off its military might in its overseas colonies!

However, as soon as the modern army met the real modern army, the Royal Prussian Army, all its former glory was gone, and it faced the worst defeat of all! In the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussian army lost 104,000 people at the cost of only 9,000 people, and persuaded the remaining army led by the French emperor to surrender, which can be described as a rare brilliant victory in the history of the European war!

Looking at the reasons for Prussia's victory, in addition to its well-developed railway network, logistics and transportation are relatively smooth; The country has a universal compulsory military service system, and the number of troops that can be mobilized is larger than that of the French army; The additional armament used more advanced artillery, which was more powerful than the French army. The more important reason is that it has a real General Staff! It can be said that an army with a general staff is an army with the rudiments of a modern army!

The strength of an army is mainly composed of two parts. The first part includes the number of troops, the quality of individual soldiers, the ability of large corps to coordinate operations of multiple arms, weapons and equipment, and the transportation capacity and reserve status of logistical supplies. The second part includes military discipline, morale, all systems, the ability to make plans and control the course of war, which cannot be seen or touched.

If the first part of the army is compared to the torso of a man, then the second part is the head of a man, and the ability to make plans and control the course of war is undoubtedly the brain of man, which is embodied by the commanders of the army. In history, with the exception of a small number of commanders, such as Sun Wu, Sun Bin, and Bai Qi, there was no need for advice, the cadres were arbitrary, and all subordinates and staff did was to convey orders and ensure their implementation, so that they could win the war. But such a person is too difficult to appear!

Most commanders in the military are indispensable for counseling, and this consultation should be the result of the joint thinking of many knowledgeable and experienced soldiers. The team formed by these knowledgeable and experienced soldiers is the General Staff!

With an advanced General Staff, we will definitely be able to surpass our opponents in command and operations, thus forming a generation gap in combat effectiveness! And this is also the most important reason why the Prussian army defeated the French army, and the modern army killed the modern army in seconds!