"Zhao Yong, you set the start time of the attack in April, if you can't launch the attack at the scheduled time, ahead of schedule or lagging, but the army has been assembled in place, do you force the attack, or cancel the cancellation plan?" Zhao also questioned the Privy Council's plan.

"Your Majesty, my subordinates didn't think about it." Zhao Yong honestly admitted.

"Besides, after the Western Route Army arrived at Huining Mansion, you planned to use the strategy of besieging the city to send reinforcements, if the enemy reinforcements arrived first, or wandered away from the battlefield and refused to enter the hub, how do you deal with it, do you wait indefinitely?" Zhao Ta's voice rose up.

"Your Majesty, according to past experience, when the imperial capital is besieged, troops are often quickly mobilized to relieve the siege, and the predetermined plan should be realized!" Zhao Ren saw that Zhao Yong was stammered by His Majesty's question, and hurriedly relieved him.

"Should?! There should be a lot of things, but you are not a vulture, nor are you a complete face, how can you expect that they will definitely transfer troops to relieve the siege, maybe they will rely on the city to defend and contain the Western Route Army, maybe they don't believe that you can break through the city, the battlefield is changeable, how can you take it for granted so much. Zhao Ta didn't give Zhao Ren face, and even he was involved in it and reprimanded, "And you, as the head of a hundred officials, should focus on strategy, rather than dwelling on the details, in order to be comprehensive and safe." ”

"Your Majesty, your subordinates are worried!" Zhao Ren couldn't answer the emperor's rhetorical question, he had also been on the battlefield, of course he knew this truth, a battle is often difficult to distinguish the winner from the end, and no one can predict what unexpected events will happen.

"Experience is a good thing, but everything from the past is a classic, and it is copied without alteration. If you don't know how to innovate, you can't succeed! Zhao Ta looked at the two and said, it should be admitted. The battle plan drawn up by them wasted a lot of effort and drew on a lot of successful experience. He also knows that the first thing that comes to mind is often the experience that comes to mind, the established solution, the example of success or failure.

But drawing conclusions based solely on these factors may be time-saving and labor-saving, but often not optimal. The thinking material provided by experience, however valuable, is limited in its ability to guide the future. Problems do not simply repeat themselves, and history does not simply repeat itself, which is an important reason why it is often difficult to achieve success in strategic plans based on historical experience.

"Your Majesty, we have used these experiences to defeat the Dangxiang people, the Khitans, and the Jurchens. The Northern Expedition is a major national event, and it should be taken safely. Zhao Ren was robbed of a few words by the emperor, and said after thinking about it.

"Hehe, do you mean that our glory today is not easy to come by, or it is better to be conservative, and not to ruin my reputation because of unauthorized changes?" Zhao Tan smiled and said, seeing Zhao Yong and Zhao Ren nodding their heads in unison and continued, "But Qin, Han, Tang, and our Great Song Dynasty have all achieved glory at the beginning of the founding of the country. Why is it only two lifetimes short, and only a hundred years old? ”

"This is because any stall that is not chaotic and how brilliant it once was, cannot be kept on time alone. So not only does it need to be saved. There is a greater need for innovation. We should not only seek stability, but also need to seek change. This is the core of the strong vitality of strategic thinking, and abiding by the ancestral family law cannot guarantee the eternal prosperity of a country. And blindly applying the experience of past victories cannot guarantee victory in every battle. Zhao Tan didn't wait for the two to answer, and asked himself.

As an example of Zhao Ta, a person in the previous life, who knew more than modern people about sticking to the old system and losing the war. One of them he still remembers. In the XIX century, the Prussian army was defeated at the Battle of Jena. Among Napoleon's captives was an inconspicuous junior officer - the later world-famous military strategist Clausewitz. He summed it up brilliantly: the defeat of the Prussian army, which was not only an example of stylistic obsolescence, but also of an extremely unimaginative conformism.

Clausewitz attributed the Prussian army's defeat to mid- and high-ranking officers, who rarely recognized that the character of the war had changed, while following the successful lessons of the past. In the same way, the Jurchens suffered many crushing defeats in their encounters with the Song army, and it was impossible not to make changes in response to the change in the tactics of the Song army and the emergence of new weapons, in order to win strategically and tactically.

It is in this sense that you can say that strategic thinking is comprehensive thinking, overall thinking, and long-term thinking, but you cannot say that it is balanced thinking, reconciliation thinking, and compromise thinking. Once the creative nature of strategic thinking is lost, the most vital and innovative part of this thinking is lost.

"Your Majesty, what should we do?" After Zhao Ren and Zhao Yong looked at each other, they saluted together.

The question is raised here, and Zhao Ta can't help but answer, how can we ensure continuous and continuous progress? Zhao Ta taught the two of them another lesson from how to make strategic plans, organize campaigns, and tactical actions.

If, in general, the will of the state is usually expressed as the will of the leader who represents the executive power of the state, then the real enterprising of the leader is first of all the ideological progress, no matter how great success or how much failure is suffered, the thinking subject can also maximize the subjective initiative and achieve the transcendence of experience and tradition. Only in this way can we produce thinking results that are truly valuable and guide practice.

Wide is boundless, and what should be done if one is strictly blamed for the loss of the other? They think that decision-makers don't need to think about what the national interest is, that the rulers of the country are omnipotent, that other countries have the same understanding of reality as their own, and that the state and the people are the same subject. But in practice, it is difficult for them to question the numbers and speculations of the specialties of each department. A good decision-maker is not a one-size-fits-all decision maker who approves or suspects, nor does he correct the details on behalf of the department, but is good at quickly grasping the big picture and the essence.

If all factors are taken into account, the decision-making center will be 'overloaded', and it will be difficult to make decisions in a timely manner, and miss the favorable opportunity to make a move or the opportunity to avoid risk when it is unfavorable. Therefore, decisions that take all factors into account are inevitably inefficient, and the strategy must be simplified.

The planner should not instruct the besieging troops on how to blast, cover and assault in battle, but he will make it clear where to strike. He will not think about artillery preparation, concealment and standby, infiltration in advance, and even the supply of combatants in the same detail as a commander in a campaign, but he should give the principle of striving for victory and the principle of great coordination between capture and management, military and political and economic in the coming stage of victory.

At present, Zhao Ren and Zhao Yong, as the military and political leaders of the Great Song Dynasty, the next step is to organize and formulate strategies according to the principles formulated by the emperor, first, to speed up the pace of war preparations; Second, we must be prepared to deal with emergencies. Plans are developed taking into account the occurrence of various complex situations. With regard to the correct plan, it is necessary to use the method of killing chickens with a knife, not to delay or delay, but to kill them with a hammer, and to come up with several sets of auxiliary cases, so as to be prepared. Enterprising is the eternal pursuit of the main body of strategic thinking. Only by preparing with both hands and being hard with both hands can we forge ahead and finally grasp the course of the development of events.

Of course, it is not easy to make changes, since Taizong's two Northern Expedition failed, the Great Song Dynasty has long been accustomed to formulating strategies from the position of the weak and the passive defender. They realized that the grand theory of the world was vulnerable under the iron hooves of thousands of people, and the nomadic people's ambitions to go south were difficult to defeat by thousands of troops, and the unity of the world and the family and the country made the generals have no loyalty and no will to die in the internal friction and corruption. Zhao Ta's years of painstaking management have gradually reversed this situation, today's Great Song Dynasty is a big country in the region, and it is also an important chess player in the whole world, and today's strategy should no longer be waiting, passive, marginal, and resentful, but take the initiative to design, take the initiative to layout, create opportunities, and grasp the initiative of war, rather than waiting.

Of course, there must be a price to pay for change, which includes the fact that you can take out the corresponding strength in order to bear the corresponding price. In the early years, when Zhao Ta was in the early stage of entrepreneurship, the capital was very small, he won it, but he couldn't afford to lose, so he had to be careful and keep his foundation. And today's Great Song Dynasty is no longer the Great Song Dynasty of twenty years ago, a failed Northern Expedition almost buried the entire dynasty, and the current Great Song Dynasty can withstand a failure in terms of manpower, material resources and financial resources. At this moment, since you are determined to do it, you must dare to bear the loss, and you can't look forward and backward because of the original calculations......

Listening to your words is better than reading a book for ten years. Zhao Ren, who was taught a lesson by the emperor, pondered the taste, and dared to feel that he had wasted half a day and did a thankless thing, and they did everything that the people below did. And the battle plan they made in the house was fortunately not implemented, otherwise not only the emperor would not be satisfied, but the people below would have to scold their plan for being unrealistic and dreaming.

After figuring out the key, the formulation of the battle plan went much more smoothly, and they sent the questions to the departments of the Privy Council and the departments of the Shangshu Province to solve the problems like the emperors, and the departments and departments broke down the problems and handed them over to the armies below to find ways to solve them. The tasks and plans were broken down layer by layer, and the two of them only needed to review and summarize the plans sent by each ministry, formulate their own plans, and report the situation to the emperor so that he could make a final decision according to the changes in the situation.

At the same time, according to the needs of the operation, the various armies also took various reasons to move to the predetermined assembly areas, carried out targeted training, manufactured equipment, tested new tactics, and learned new tactics. At this time, the Jin State was wary of the frequent movements of the Song army and gathered on the border between the two countries, and while stepping up preparations for war, it carefully tried its best to avoid letting the Great Song find a reason for war...... (To be continued......)