Chapter 842 Thousand Riders Roll Hiraoka (I)

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For military men, it is a shameful idea to hope that the opponent will be defeated by time. But for politicians, as long as the result is what they want, it doesn't matter how to achieve it. Therefore, the silent rhetoric was only for the generals, and he did not explain the reason why the cabinet chose to go to war at this time.

As a matter of fact, the cabinet reform has met with strong resistance from all quarters only during the trial phase, and no one can say whether the situation will get completely out of control if it is fully implemented. In order to survive this most dangerous period, the Cabinet will undoubtedly have to exert its authority...... Under the political system of the Ming Dynasty, in addition to the full support of the emperor, it is necessary to make the government and the opposition honestly shut up and obedient.

The emperor naturally supports the masters, but if he wants to stop the mouths of the princes of the government and the opposition, even the emperor can't do it...... Not to mention Longqing, throughout the history of the dynasty, except for the murderous second ancestor, who could barely do it, no other emperor could do it.

The emperor can't do it, and he can't do it as a courtier. Then there is only one way to put the country into a low-intensity wartime state...... The biggest characteristic of this state of affairs is that it is strict in punishment and strict in law, and less discussion is more efficient. The cabinet can openly centralize power, and no one dares to say anything, and because it is not a full-scale war, even if it fails, it will not be unmanageable.

Of course, with the wisdom of Zhang Juzheng, who is silent and silent, it is absolutely impossible to insist on waging war just because of the need for reform...... That's a madman, not a reformer. As a matter of fact, after repeated deliberations, they believed that it was possible to win a local war at this time and reverse the passive situation of the Ming frontier defense.

First of all, now is the weakest stage of the Mongols in decades. In recent years, the Ming army has frequently attacked and smashed nests with small groups of cavalry, killed families, seized horses, and burned all the weeds in the border areas, causing the people of various Mongolian tribes to be miserable in winter and spring, and the population and property have suffered great losses. This method of cutting meat with a knife unconsciously weakened the strength of the Mongolian border tribes a lot.

On the Mongol side, I was troubled by the hostility of the Vultures...... This strong tribe is between the border of the Ming Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, and once he leads a large army into the Ming Dynasty as usual, he has to worry about whether he will be copied by the Wushen Department, or they will kick the royal court. Therefore, if the problem of the Wushen Department is not solved for a day, I will be stuck in my throat, and I will not be able to distract myself.

To add insult to injury, the Mongol tribes under Altan Khan's rule, such as Hohhot, where his court was located, and the adjacent Bansheng region, have been plagued by severe weather for almost five years...... The cold winter caused a large number of livestock to freeze to death, and the lack of rain in the spring and summer made it difficult to grow pastures, and the destruction of the Ming army caused great damage to the livelihood of the Mongols. In order to maintain the survival of the tribe, I had to forget my policy of 'treating the Han Chinese with kindness' and acquiesced in the Mongols' plundering of the Han Chinese in the area of Bansheng.

The crops of the Han people themselves were seriously reduced, and they were looted by the Mongol nobles, and life became more and more difficult. After the Longqing reform, Shen Mo instructed Huo Ji, the governor of Xuanda at that time, to ask the court to offer a reward, and the Youlu board to promote and upgrade people, so as to reduce my strength. After the imperial court was allowed to play, the reward quickly spread throughout the Bansheng region, making many people have the idea of returning south, and some people soon took action.

Among the first batch of Han people who returned, Bai Chun and other five people had their own tribes and were rich in livestock. So they came back with their hearts. The rest of the people who fled with their families and scattered were not a few, and the imperial court forgave them for their crimes, and granted Bai Chun and others a hundred households to live in a place of their choice...... Anyway, there is no shortage of places in the border area. In this way, those who were still waiting and watching were relieved and had the idea of returning to the south, which greatly shook the hearts of the people in the Bansheng area.

By all indications, this is the weakest period in 20 years. The senior staff members who were silently gathered in the Ministry of War unanimously judged that if they did not seize this opportunity, they would inevitably slow down in a few years, and then the Ming Dynasty would inevitably lose this hard-won initiative, and would no longer be qualified to wander between war and non-war as it is now.

Then overcome all odds to fight, win, give Daming a chance to change his fate, lose, and then lose......

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"Our strategy is," a silent voice echoed in the conference room: "Take the defensive position on the eastern front, actively defend on the central front, and make every effort to make a breakthrough on the western front!" As he spoke, the baton in his hand landed on the bend of the Yellow River in the map. There is the Hetao area of 'the Yellow River in the world, only one set of wealth'......

His firm finger made the blood in the room swell and breathe heavily. That's a 'reset'! There is nothing in this world that can make the blood of the Ming people more powerful than these two words!

Hetao refers to the area surrounded by the Yellow River on three sides, and is named because of its resemblance to a set. Due to its proximity to the Yellow River, the region has superior natural conditions. Thousands of miles of fertile fields, suitable for agriculture and animal husbandry, is a rare and rich land in the entire northwest. More importantly, it is separated by a river from the vast Mongolian Plateau in the north and the interior of the Central Plains in the south.

If the Central Plains regime occupies this place, it will block the river on three sides, and it will be difficult for the enemy to enter the country, and it will be easy for us to defend, so that the northwest border of 2,000 li can be stabilized at the minimum cost, so that the interior of Gansu and Shaanxi will not provoke sword soldiers. But if the nomads occupy the loop, the two-thousand-mile border will be opened, and the enemy will come and go freely, and our army will not be able to defend it, and it will not be able to stop its internal invasion.

Therefore, since ancient times, the Hetao area has been the main battlefield of mutual conquest between nomads and Han peoples. It is no exaggeration to say that the gains and losses of the Hetao are related to the safety and survival of the Ming Dynasty.

When the Yuan Dynasty destroyed the Ming Dynasty, Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang repeatedly sent troops to sweep, and drove the Mongol forces out of the Yellow River and rushed to Mobei. In order to strengthen his control over this place, Taizu placed Dongshengwei outside the river, and placed Fengzhou, Yunchuan, Xinghe, Zhenyu, Yulin and other guards, all of which were stationed with heavy troops to sanitize the Hetao and form a strong defense line to defend the southward movement of Mongolia. The Ming garrison won in the east, because the river was guarded, so that Yulin and Yansui were not affected by the military revolution, and they were hung for 60 years.

There is no doubt that the establishment of Dongshengwei has effectively inhibited the Mongolian crossing of the river. However, in the Battle of Jingyan, some Mongolian tribes supported Zhu Di and made many military exploits. After seizing the world, Zhu Di took the initiative to drop out of Dongsheng to extend Sui, and retreated the defense line for hundreds of miles to express his gratitude.

At that time, in Zhu Di's view, the Mongols had been beaten into grandsons, and they could do whatever they wanted, but they didn't expect that for their unworthy descendants, after losing the danger of the Hetao, they would cover thousands of miles with one side of the land, and they would have fallen into strategic passivity by nature. At first, the second ancestor Yu Wei was still there, and the Mongols did not dare to cross the Yellow River in the south, until the fourteenth year of orthodoxy after the 'civil engineering change', Dongsheng fell into the hands of Yexian. Forced by the situation, the Ming Dynasty withdrew all the guards west of Datong, such as Yulin and Yunchuan, and the shield north of the Yellow River was completely lost, losing the last barrier to prevent the Mongol tribes from entering the Hetao.

As a result, six or seven thousand miles of fertile soil in the set were all returned to Mongolia. The external danger is lost, and the Ningxia tun guards are preparing for the Nanhe, and the border trouble in Shaanxi is so difficult to find each other. The Mongolian tribes took advantage of the situation and began to enter the Hetao on a large scale, and relied on the Hetao to attack and plunder, so that the northern border defense of the Ming Dynasty was tight, and the border of Shaanxi was in vain, and the people of the eight counties were exhausted, and the border affairs of the Ming Dynasty were hopeless...... Therefore, 'Dongsheng did not defend it, and the barrier was withdrawn, which was a big mistake. As a result, the Hetao is no longer available, there is no danger to defend, and the daily affairs have been fighting for more than 100 years. This is already the consensus of the women and children of the Ming Dynasty, and the restoration of the Hetao has also become the lifelong wish of several generations of Ming monarchs and ministers.

In the Chenghua period, with the support of the scholar Li Xian, Wang Yue, who was in charge of the military affairs of Guanzhong, reconsidered the search for Dongsheng in order to make a big move, and the court discussed it. Later, the imperial court sent three generals out of the division, until the autumn of the ninth year of Chenghua, Wang Yue attacked the 'trap' in the red salt pond with light horses, captured more than 1,000 levels, and burned his tent and returned. Affected by this blow, all the Northern Yuan tribes in the set crossed to the north of the river, and the border troubles rested for a while.

However, this state of affairs only lasted about twenty years. During the Hongzhi period, Dayan Khan, the British lord of the Tatar tribe, who was called the 'little prince' by the Ming people, unified the Mongolian tribes, and his power increased greatly. Under his command and instigation, the Mongol tribes rose in momentum and frequently entered the Ming Dynasty, and the officers and troops could only take care of one and lose the other, tired of coping, and could not prevent the Mongol tribes from attacking.

In the period of Wuzong Zhengde, the Ming Dynasty started the right capital of the imperial history Yang Yiqing general system of Ningxia, Yansui, Ganliang military affairs, so Yang Yiqing asked to reinstate the Dongsheng, advocating that 'because the river is solid, the east is connected to Datong, and the west belongs to Ningxia, so that the river loop is fertile for thousands of miles, and it belongs to me for farming and grazing, then the right of Shaanxi can still rest on the shoulders. However, when Yang Yiqing had just reversed the passive situation of the war, he was dismissed because of his resentment of Liu Jin, and his proposal was put to bed. Since then, the northern Mongolian tribes have repeatedly invaded, gathering tens of thousands of people at every turn, killing and plundering very badly. It was not until the early years of Jiajing that the little prince died of illness and served as the governor of the three sides, and the Ming regained the initiative.

At that time, the Mongol tribes were divided and hostile to each other. After a comprehensive analysis of the situation, the Ming Dynasty wrote to the imperial court, requesting to send troops to the Hetao, and put forward a complete plan for the reset, which was considered feasible by the government and the opposition, and the Jiajing Emperor also supported it, so it set off a wave of re-enactment, and the nine-sided generals were all gearing up, vowing to restore the Hetao, and finish my golden ou! If at that time, the monarch and the ministers were virtuous, the generals were concentric, and after several years of full preparation, the power of the tart was greatly expanded, and Zeng Milling's plan was completely feasible. Unfortunately, the situation changed abruptly, and the capricious Jiajing suddenly hesitated before making a decision, fearing that once defeated, it would cause uncontrollable consequences. Yan Song, who was the first assistant at the time, seized the opportunity and instigated the emperor to shelve the proposal of 're-set', so as to hit the first assistant Xia Yan, who fully supported the proposal. Later, he instructed Qiu Luan to frame Zeng Miao, and pulled Xia Yan off the horse on the charge of 'courtiers befriending border generals'.

In the twenty-seventh year of Jiajing, the secretary of the military department and the governor of the three sides, Zeng Mi, was killed. In the autumn of that year, the Mongolian ministers led into Kou Datong and Xuanfu, and Yan Song repeatedly provoked Sejong with the border police, saying: 'This Xia Yan has been milled away from the side to provoke, so he retaliates. Jiajing then ordered Xia Yan to abandon the city. During this period, many ministers and governors and border generals were hit by the resumption, and the ministers of the DPRK and China who participated in the discussion of the reinstatement of the Hetao were all deposed......

At this point, no one in the DPRK and China dared to discuss the 're-arrangement', which deprived the Ming Dynasty of the golden opportunity to grasp the strategic initiative, and in addition, Jiajing, Yan Song and others lacked foresight and no way to deal with border affairs, and had a negative attitude towards the issue of the Mongolian ministries requesting tribute and mutual markets, and lacked flexibility, which made the situation on the border deteriorating day by day. In the autumn of the twenty-ninth autumn of Jiajing, Altan Khan gathered the Mongolian tribes to invade on a large scale, and Bo was close to the capital, Yan Song thought that 'defeat in the frontier can still be deceived, and defeat in the capital can not be concealed', so the army was not allowed to fight, and Ren Yuda looted near the Beijing division, and finally plundered away, which was to shock the 'Gengxu Change' at home and abroad.

Later, Altan Khan continued to send people to ask for tribute and mutual markets, and also showed his sincerity in improving relations with the Ming Dynasty, but because of the shame of Gengxu, it was difficult to let go, and they were all rejected by Jiajing. Since then, the border war has resumed and the captives have become increasingly fierce. Altan Khan led the Mongolian tribes to repeatedly invade the border, Ningxia, Gansu, Datong, Xuanfu, Yansui border towns have no peace, the border will die more and more, the people killed are even more invincible, and finally in the life of Jiajing, the northern Xinjiang has been shrouded in gunsmoke.

This situation did not change until Yan Song left office and Xu Jie took power. It can be seen that the failure of the Hetao has had an adverse impact on the defense of the northern Xinjiang of the Ming Dynasty. Although they were only middle- and lower-level officers at that time, they still remembered the high fighting spirit of the towns at that time, and only waited for an order to extinguish the high morale of the dynasty, and they also regretted the failure of the discussion and the murder of Zeng Milling.

Over the years, how many senior bosses, before they died, what they never forgot were not their children and grandchildren, but that they could not return to Hetaochuan in life, and they had no face to see Zeng Dashuai in death!

'Complex' has become a complex in the hearts of the Ming people because it has carried the long-cherished wishes of too many generations.

Therefore, as soon as Shen Mo proposed the 'reset', those rich people in the southeast were willing to pay the military expenses of their soldiers; therefore, as soon as Shen Mo proposed the 'reset', all the generals present could not hold it back, and they uncharacteristically competed for war!

"Lord Zhongtang, you must let the last general go! I used to work under Zeng Dashuai, and I know it very well! ”

"Ge Lao, you have to use the last general! Before my father died, let me swear to the sky that if there is a repetition in the imperial court, I must fight bravely, even if I am a pawn, I must stand on the battlefield of repetition! ”

"Lord Governor, you transferred me from Sichuan just to make a comeback, and I must be missing!"

"When it comes to smashing the nest and running, my old horse is the second, and no one dares to count the first in the Ming Dynasty, my lord, can you not take me there?"

Looking at the generals who were scrambling, he laughed silently, the military heart is available, the military heart is available!

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After the excitement of the generals calmed down for a while, Shen Mo smiled and said: "You are in a commendable mood to actively ask for battle, but the nine-sided front is long, and they have all gone to recover the Hetao, so who will guard the front line of Xuanda, and how will the Jingshi of Jizhen defend it?" After a pause, he said: "So, there must be a division of labor." ”

The generals suddenly held their breath and stared at the silence, hoping that he would point to themselves.

"To recover the Hetao, the strength of the garrisons on the three sides is not enough," Shen Mo said lightly: "For this reason, the imperial court has selected the front from the three major battalions of the Beijing army three years ago, filled with the southern army, and recruited recruits, organized into the ten battalions of the selection front, and spent a huge amount of money to train them. After training for a thousand days and using troops for a while, this time I will use them to support the three sides! ”

As soon as the silent voice fell, there was a buzz in the conference room, and the generals couldn't hold back again...... Qi Jiguang and Li Chengliang, the generals of the Xuanfeng Battalion, as well as the trilateral generals such as Liu Xian, Li Xi, and Jiang Yingxiong, naturally felt secretly happy. As for Wang Chonggu and Chen Qixue, the two trilateral governors, because they had known about it for a long time, they were still able to maintain their favor and not be shocked.

But the other two generals under the Governor's command quit and shouted, "Why let these guys who have never been on the battlefield be in the limelight, we won't do it!" ”

"Who said General Qi hadn't been on the battlefield!" Qi Jiguang was subtle, but Li Chengliang was not at a loss, and said-for-tat: "General Qi's reputation for winning a hundred battles is self-proclaimed?" ”

"That's in the southeast, fighting with bandits, what kind of ability is it?"

"Is the right guard also fighting with the Japanese in Wanquan?"

"Then it also depends on my old horse to lure the enemy, otherwise the Tartar is stupid, right? Head-on and hitting the car? ”

"Enough!" When the two sides quarreled, they silently slapped the case and shouted, which suddenly made the scene stagnate. He stared at Ma Fang and said, "Brother Dexin, did you lose a promise to me?" ”

"Ah......" Ma Fang suddenly felt bad, but that day, everyone was watching and the witnesses were present, so how could he rely on the debt, so he had to swallow and say: "Yes." ”

"I want you to promise me now to help Tan Butang keep Xuanda well." Shen Mo said word by word.

"My lord......" Ma Fang said depressedly, "You are too cunning......"

"What, isn't Lord Ma a spitting nail, going back on his word and getting fat?" Silence provoked him.

"Of course ......not," Ma Fang said dejectedly, "But defense has never been the strong point of the last general, without me, the Governor and Lao Yin can do a good job." The old man in his fifties and sixties begged like a child: "My lord, let me go to the Hetao." ”

"Brother Dexin." Shen Mo also softened his attitude, walked to the map, and said earnestly: "Look at it, where is the royal court of Alda, which is a day's journey from the Yellow River. And the Hetao is the hinterland that he has been operating for a long time, if no one can contain him, he will definitely lead a large army to cross the river south to support the Hetao tribes, and then a local war against the Hetao will evolve into a full-scale decisive battle with Alta. If it really gets to that point, the outcome is unpredictable, can the court withstand it? ”

Seeing that Ma Fang bowed his head and was silent, he continued silently: "In this battle, half of Jizhen's soldiers were withdrawn to support the three sides. Why don't you move your Xuanda troops, here's why. The imperial court needs to have a strong force to contain me in the direction of Xuanda. As soon as he dares to send a large army to cross the Yellow River south, you will immediately raise heavy troops and go straight to the city of Hohhot. If we can't take the Hetao, we will take Hohhot, which is a big victory, and it depends on whether I am willing to do this exchange! ”――

Partition -

There's another chapter. R