After Song Kun returned, the 4,000 people under his command who had suffered in the Mekong River for two years were promoted to one level and expanded to 50,000 troops, and Song Kun was promoted to the general army, becoming the tenth general soldier under Yang Chao.

At the same time, Yang Chao contacted the Zheng family, sent another 30,000 people to the Mekong colony, and selected a group of officials, headed by Huang Chong's son Huang Yuan, Yang Chao thought that Huang Chong had been operating there for more than two years, and it would be easier for his son to integrate in.

So Huang Yuan became the first governor of the Mekong River.

With the appointment of this group of officials, the colony can be regarded as officially opened, and this is also the third year of Yang Chao's plan, a year that requires the colony to be self-sufficient, after this year, Yang Chao does not plan to feed here, they have to operate independently.

March.

Four months have passed since last year's war, Yang Chao's army has expanded to 800,000, except for the new commander-in-chief Song Kun commanding 50,000 people, and the artillery commander Hu Quan commanding 30,000 people, the strength of the other general troops has exceeded 50,000, especially Li Wuliu of Shandong and Wang Pu of Guide, each of whom commanded an army of 150,000, and Zhao Kang's cavalry has also expanded slightly, with 60,000 cavalry.

Shandong deployed 360,000 troops, Zheng Yongwang's 80,000 troops defended Fengyang and other prefectures, Sun Changfu 60,000 troops sat in Huaiyang and Huaiyang, and the total strength of Jiangbei reached 500,000.

Although Jiangnan's troops were only 300,000, they were enough to overwhelm Hong Chengchou.

Therefore, Yang Chao felt that it was time to launch an offensive.

Song Kun was anxious to fight, but Yang Chao felt that he had too many recruits, and he had not fought the Qing army for two years since he returned from the Mekong. Worried that he wouldn't be able to adapt to today's recruits. So he asked him to replace many men to defend Zhejiang and Gannan. With many men as the main force, he crossed the sea to attack Guangdong, and together with Xie Fei, launched a general attack on the Hong Chengchou Department in Guangdong.

Marked by the reconquest of Guangdong, Yang Chao planned to decide to start the counteroffensive phase against the Manchus, and temporarily unable to capture the heavily guarded Manchu henchman Beizhili, so he would start from all sides and gradually cut off the wings, and Guangdong would bear the brunt of the attack, which was more important than Huguang, the production center of Jiangxi's flank. Because this is the rear of Yang Chao's ruling area, after taking here, you can go all the way to the sea without threat.

It's a pity that Yang Chao couldn't personally participate in the first battle of this counteroffensive, because Yang Chao's second round of reform began.

The first step of reform is considered military reform, it has been done from the beginning, establishing discipline, regular training, and the military is on the right track, and the current army is completely a complex machine, as long as it is constantly supplied. She will keep going until she crushes all her enemies.

The second step is economic reform. The core was the establishment of banks, the replacement of copper coins with silver bills, the clearing of acres of land, the taxation of landlords, and the collection of commercial taxes. The second step was also successfully completed, silver bills completely replaced copper coins, and greatly promoted circulation, and through the issuance of bonds, a large amount of money was produced, and commerce was stimulated to be much more prosperous than in the past. Therefore, commercial taxes have also grown rapidly, accounting for nearly 30% of the government's finances, but it is still far from the proportion of more than 50% in the Song Dynasty, and even 70%.

The third step is the reform of the administration of officials, in order to improve the quality of officials, increase the intensity of anti-corruption, and send supervisors to strictly enforce the law as the core, and the current effect is also beginning to bear fruit, although every month officials are found to be corrupt and raid the house, but compared with the past situation of no officials and no greed, it is much better, the people are praised, and even the gentry class who are more and more dissatisfied with Yang Chao have to admit that the rule of officials is new.

After these three steps, the first round of reform has been completed.

Next is the second round of Yang Chao's reform, the second round of reform is the deepening reform stage, from now on, Yang Chao will be divided into three steps, also in three years, to complete the following goals:

The first step is to thoroughly form a strong and efficient government.

The second step is to thoroughly reform outdated economic systems and methods.

The third step is to completely change the education imperial examination system of the Ming Dynasty.

This round of reform has one less military content than the previous one, because the military system seems to be successful at present, and there is no need for innovation, only minor tinkering with the times, so the focus is on political and economic reform.

To build a strong government, it is not simply to use officials as officials to maintain stability, as in the past, but to build a political institution that can really play a role, and through this institution to penetrate into all aspects of society, in order to truly gather the strength of the whole country.

Politics and military affairs are connected, and the most important thing is people.

In this regard, Yang Chao plans to open the door to the imperial examination, and there are more than 10,000 scholars in the army, excluding those soldiers who are barely literate and do not have enough knowledge, and there are still nearly 10,000 high-level intellectuals, and officials are selected among these people.

The content of the imperial examination is divided into three sections: criminal law, accounting, and the art of war, and officials are selected from the criminal section, household section, and military section at the prefecture and county levels.

As for the more senior officials, Yang Chao does not intend to directly use the imperial examination method to select, Yang Chao has always believed that directly pushing a literati with strong writing ability to the appointment of a central-level official is a very nonsense and irresponsible system.

Therefore, Yang Chao decided that all officials have to start from the state and county level, and they can't be like before, the actual work is handled by the officials and masters, and the officials are only controlled.

These officials who have passed the imperial examination to enter the prefecture and county and other grass-roots positions will then undergo a strict examination method, and only those with outstanding political achievements can be promoted, and those with too poor political performance and poor reputation may be dismissed. As for the content of the examination law, of course, it is linked to the respective specialty, and the household department depends on the tax collection work, the military department depends on the conscription training work, and the criminal department of course depends on the local public security situation, including the crime rate and the case closure rate.

However, the Ming government is divided into six departments, from the central to the local is basically this set of systems, it should be said that it is still relatively comprehensive, Yang Chao through the scientific examination to consider the criminal department, household department and military department, as well as the rite department, the official department and the engineering department did not carry out the imperial examination selection, the officials of these three departments naturally have another selection method.

Yang Chao believes that the law of the criminal department, the finance of the household department, and the art of war of the military department can basically be assessed through examinations, but the human resource management ability of the civil department, the various technical abilities of the engineering department, and the understanding of the etiquette system and education are not easy to distinguish the high and low through simple examinations.

Engineering, civil science and etiquette are of course indispensable, but Yang Chao intends to select social talents.

Needless to say, the most important thing in this position is the ability to manage and design large-scale projects, such as how to design and manage the construction of a canal, the construction of a port, and so on.

Obviously, a master like Bai Lei who has managed tens of thousands of people to carry out engineering construction is very suitable, he may not be proficient in reading the four books and five classics, or he may not be so gorgeous in moral articles, but this ability to manage large-scale projects is more valuable than articles.

Therefore, Yang Chao has already chosen someone in his heart, and the white craftsman who built the new Jiangkou wharf and managed the restoration and construction of Nanjing City is obviously the best candidate.

The department is to select talents, this is a kind of human resource management, obviously the most suitable is those who manage hundreds of guys, the big shopkeeper who dominates the world is suitable, of course, it may also be the owner, these people have a huge industry in their hands, with dozens or hundreds of stores, how to select talents, naturally is the top priority, the most suitable.

Therefore, Yang Chao intends to send invitations to these shopkeepers and those who are directly involved in the management, inviting them to participate in the imperial examination, as long as they have a certain level of writing and have managed a large number of people, they can participate in the imperial examination, of course, the bottom line is 100 people, less than 100 people are not qualified to participate.

What about the rites, the rites of the Ming Dynasty are strange, he has three main tasks, the first is to control various etiquette systems, such as royal funerals and other things, such as the emperor's enthronement, sacrifice to heaven and earth, etc., but he also takes into account the management of schools at all levels, the power of the imperial examination, and finally is responsible for receiving foreign guests and sending envoys to the vassal state.

The control of the etiquette system is still very late to understand, very in line with the name of this department, the management of educational institutions and examinations, there is a bit of a bull's head is not right, taking into account diplomacy is a kind of chaotic mandarin duck spectrum, but if you understand the concept of the ancients, it is not strange.

For ancient countries, the word "rite" represents not only politeness, but the big etiquette, or the system, from the organization of funeral ceremonies, to the organization of the operation of the country, Confucianism is attributed to the etiquette system, and education is the selection of talents for the country, is the most important content of the management of the country, and it is not strange to attribute it to the Ministry of Rites. Moreover, for the country, the imperial examination involves the fate of tens of millions of people, and even the fate of the country, and the importance of this examination is no less than the ceremony of holding a sacrifice to the heavens.

As for the supervision of diplomacy, this is the Confucian understanding of diplomacy, for them, the most important thing in foreign exchanges is not to insult the national body, as for whether there will be a loss of interests is only secondary, so it is necessary to send these ministers who know etiquette to send envoys, so that Fanbang can see what Chinese etiquette is.

However, the examination for the Ministry of Rites was somewhat difficult, and Yang Chao did not want to really hand over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the most important department in later generations, to a group of old masters, Yang Chao believed that the most suitable diplomats in China were those who knew the art of war, not Confucian masters who were full of etiquette.

Therefore, the selection of the Ministry of Rites only needs to consider education, anyway, Confucius was the representative of teachers in later generations, and his greatest contribution was precisely the educational concept of education without class, rather than those idealized governance programs.

As a result, Yang Chao's etiquette examination was only open to all teaching gentlemen, who were generally talented people who had failed the imperial examination many times, and worked silently while teaching for a living. These people may not be doing very well, but there are still some teaching experiences, although they are not very brilliant, that is, they are enlightened to children, etc., but they are better than people who have no experience at all. (To be continued......)