Lin Zhe estimated that it would be difficult for Britain and France to launch a large-scale war against themselves again, even if a few generals or politicians were willing, it would be difficult to convince most of them in the country.

Under these circumstances, it would be a serious waste to continue to accumulate large quantities of troops in southern Jiangsu, so it was necessary to transfer troops from this region to the northern or western fronts.

The Chinese army has been waiting for the complete reunification of China for too long, if there is no attack by the British and French forces, according to the strategic plan of the Chinese army last year, this should have taken Zhili, completely captured the northern provinces, and then it was already to march to the western front, clean up the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Hunan army, the Zhenhu army, and so on, and then completely unify China.

Now, although it has been delayed by the attack of the British and French forces for more than half a year, but now that the threat of the British and French forces has been basically lifted, Lin Zhe is unwilling to continue to wait.

The longer we wait, the greater the uncertainty about the future, and according to the information we have received, many forces in the country are not waiting for death, but are using various methods to strengthen their power.

For example, the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which is still the biggest opponent of the Chinese army, has made a very big move in organizing and training a new army, and in addition to the four towns that were trained last year, they have also formed a new army in several towns.

There are also Zhenhu Army, Hunan Army and Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, these people are not idle, among them, the Zhenhu Army was a new army unit from the beginning, Lin Chengting has no other skills, but the ability to learn plagiarism is not weak, although limited by Jiangxi's limited wealth. However, in the past year or two, he has also successively organized and trained some new troops, and now the Zhenhu army has openly claimed that its new army has more than 20,000 troops. In addition, there are tens of thousands of auxiliary troops similar to the Chinese Army's Cooperative Defense Force.

After the predicament of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom led by Shi Dakai in 1856, it also slowly gained a firm foothold in the past two years. It has expanded rapidly through the early methods of coercing the displaced people, and since last year, it has been successively organizing and training new troops, and it is rumored that more than 10,000 new troops have been formed.

Relying on a large army of displaced people and tens of thousands of new troops, Shi Dakai not only firmly held Jiujiang and Hubei Province, but even sent troops into Sichuan, and has now occupied a small half of Sichuan, captured Chongqing, and approached Chengdu.

Obviously, this Shi Dakai wanted to offset the strategic dilemma in the east and south by expanding westward.

Zeng Guofan's Hunan army was not simple. In the past year or so, nearly 30,000 Hunan troops have completed the basic military system reform, following the example of the Chinese Army and the Manchu Qing Dynasty's newly built army.

These domestic forces were the objects that the Chinese Empire needed to exterminate, and it took too long. If you let them develop, you will have to pay a greater price to annihilate them in the future.

After several days of strategic meetings, the Joint Staff submitted the final strategic plan to Lin Zhe!

The core content of this strategic plan was to capture the three provinces of Shandong, Henan, and Zhili and completely destroy the Manchu regime. After taking control of the northern provinces, the foundation for the Chinese army's struggle for hegemony was thoroughly laid.

The second is to reinforce the direction of Guangdong, including reinforcements in troops and weapons. Strive to recapture Canton and, if possible, Hong Kong. At the same time, the region also needs to maintain pressure on the Zhenhu army in the west of the Jiangxi to ensure that the Zhenhu army does not suddenly move south to Guangdong. As a result, the Third Army and other units will be strategically passive.

The third is to continue to maintain a military presence and pressure on the Western Front, gradually encroaching on northern Jiangxi and eastern Hubei through small-scale operations, and compressing the space for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's activities.

According to the above-mentioned strategic plan, the detailed plan drawn up by the Joint Staff included that the Sixth Army could be transferred north to Shandong and the First Army could be reinforced to carry out the North China Offensive Strategy.

At the same time, the Second Army was dispatched south to reinforce the direction of Guangdong.

The Seventh Army continued to stay on the front line in Shanghai.

At the same time, the Fifth Army, which was originally stationed in Jiangyin, was transferred to Anhui, and then they would launch an attack on the front line of Hubei and Henan.

At the same time, in order to ensure that the hinterland will not be empty after the main force is sent to the front, the plan for the new formation of troops will not stop, and at the same time, these new units will remain in the provinces.

For example, the newly formed 13th Division, which was the last infantry division planned for expansion in 1858, is currently being trained in the Zhenjiang area, and then transferred to Jiangyin for long-term garrison.

In addition, five new mixed brigades will be formed in the following five places, which will be used to garrison various important places: the first mixed brigade will be stationed in Fuzhou, Fujian, the second mixed brigade will be stationed in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the third mixed brigade will be stationed in Taiping, southern Anhui, the fourth mixed brigade will be stationed in Yangzhou, northern Jiangsu, and the fifth mixed brigade will be stationed in Fengyang, northern Anhui.

For example, at the beginning, the first mixed brigade was prepared to be organized and trained in Fujian, and two infantry battalions were also trained in the early stage, but under the influence of the war with Britain and France, the military focused on the formation and training of the main division and the replenishment of the existing troops, so the training of the mixed brigades stationed in various places was temporarily stopped, but now that the situation is generally calm, the military naturally wants to restart the plan.

At the same time, the expansion of the new main force division will not stop; in addition to continuing the training of the 13th Division and the 2nd Guards Division, the military has now put forward a plan for the new 14th Infantry Division and the 15th Infantry Division, and these two divisions will still be organized and trained in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

At the same time, the strategic plan is also the first implementation of the garrison plan in the 1858 expansion plan formulated last year!

Last year, the Chinese Army planned to establish a local garrison directly under the Royal Army, which would be used to suppress the local area and serve as a reserve force for the front-line troops, but it was forced to stop due to the influence of the British and French forces.

This time, the plan is reintroduced, but it is different from the past.

The original plan for the garrison was to recruit new soldiers, but in the past year, many generals have complained about this plan, and their opinion is that although most of the troops of the Auxiliary Defense Force are weak in combat. But there are also some that can be played, so it cannot be generalized. In addition, even if this assistant defense force is bad, it is also a friendly army that fights with the Royal Army. Wouldn't it chill the soldiers of the Allied Defense Force if they were to be completely dismantled at the end of the war, and there might be some unnecessary troubles, such as mutiny, and the like.

Therefore, taking into account the problem of dealing with the follow-up auxiliary defense force, the garrison force plan also added the auxiliary defense force to it, and prepared to select some well-performing troops from the auxiliary defense force to be reorganized into local garrison forces.

According to the plan of the garrison. According to the size of the population area, in principle, a province will train about 10,000 to 20,000 garrison troops, and the garrison force will exist in the mode of a garrison company or garrison battalion, and the basic principle is that a company in a small prefecture and county, a battalion in a large city or a strategic place, and the above-mentioned multiple companies and battalions form a garrison regiment, and the garrison regiment is a basic tactical unit, which is solely responsible for the basic defense of a certain area, including suppressing possible rebellions and exterminating any local armed forces that are unwilling to take the initiative to disband. Including bandits, landlords' armed forces, local regimental training, etc., when war broke out, it served as a second-line force to assist the regular troops in frontal combat.

The administrative operations of a number of garrison regiments in a province are under the jurisdiction of the provincial garrison command, and the provincial garrison headquarters are directly under the jurisdiction of the general headquarters. The local government and the cabinet have no right to interfere, and if a certain unit is assigned to fight in coordination during a large-scale war, the operational command of the garrison regiment or the garrison division formed is vested in the field division or corps headquarters.

Garrison troops will be recruited mainly. At the same time, it will also accept the reorganization of some of the more elite auxiliary defense forces, and the weapons will mainly be based on old equipment in stock. Later, we will slowly change our outfits, at least to ensure that they are the same as the front-line troops in terms of light weapons. In other words, these garrisons will continue to be equipped with 1858 Linde rifles.

This garrison is completely different from the previous auxiliary defense divisions, and the most obvious sign is that the garrison is subordinate to the Royal Army in terms of establishment, that is, they are part of the regular army of the country, not just an army like the auxiliary defense force, and will be disbanded after the war.

Of course, the garrison force that is now in the preparatory stage is just in the preparatory stage, and it is estimated that it will take more than half a year to achieve initial results, so the local defense of various parts of the Chinese Empire is still in charge of the auxiliary defense force or simply the main division.

After Lin Zhe signed this latest strategic plan, the Chinese army was once again running rapidly, and the Sixth Army took the lead, after receiving the order, it quickly returned to Zhenjiang, and then crossed the river from Guazhou to Yangzhou, and then went all the way north along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to Shandong.

Just when the war machine of the Chinese army continued to operate, Lin Zhe also ushered in a rare period of free time.

In the past few months, he has been busy with various things, especially after the landing of the coalition forces in Shanghai, he has been worried every day, and now that the situation is clear, he is also relieved and returns his attention to internal affairs.

However, internal affairs are a trickle of water, and there are things every day, but there are not many things every day, unless Lin Zhe is so idle that he summons the minister to hold some imperial meeting every day.

When the affairs ahead were not so busy, Lin Zhe stayed in the harem for a longer time, especially in the past few days it was Li Huifei's due date, although he didn't have much affection for Li Huifei, but in the end, she was also her own woman, and she was still pregnant with her own child, which was close to giving birth Lin Zhe always had to care more about it.

Li Huifei is still a little unaccustomed to Lin Zhe's concern, she has a very weak sense of existence since she entered the palace, and she is also competing for favor and love with Fang Defei, it is completely a heaven and an underground, Lin Zhe has gone to her for the night only a handful of times, but she is lucky, just a few times she got pregnant.

After she became pregnant, she was taken to live by Mrs. Lin, obviously Mrs. Lin prevented other concubines from having any ill intentions towards Concubine Li Hui.

Under the protection of Mrs. Lin, she has successfully raised the fetus until now, and after the due date is approaching, because the child in her belly is Lin Zhe's second child, and there is a fifty percent chance that she will be Lin Zhe's eldest son, there are countless people in and outside the palace paying attention, and the doctors in the medical department of the palace department have long been prepared

Even the other people in the palace were a little nervous, Fang Defei, who had always been well-behaved and scheming in front of Lin Zhe, looked at the residence of Li Huiconcubine, who was full of people on the opposite side, and muttered in her mouth while drawing circles on the ground with her toes: "It must be a girl, it must be a girl!" (To be continued......)