Therefore, Yang Sichang is a very strategic person, and he is indeed much more clever than Emperor Chongzhen and his courtiers in the past, who were busy with headaches and headaches.

And Emperor Chongzhen has never listened to someone systematically analyze the situation for him from a strategic height, so when he heard this, he felt a sense of surprise, and he said with emotion: "I only hate to use Qing too late!" ”

So after the strategic idea is completed, what specific implementation strategy does Yang Sichang have?

In view of the characteristics of the peasant army's scattered and mobile operations, Yang Sichang proposed a plan of "spreading the net on all sides" by combining the mobile advance of the main corps with the assistance of the local corps, steadily and steadily, and taking the camp step by step. In fact, we can see that this plan is very similar to Wu Shigong's full-court pressing and zone defense.

According to this plan, the prime ministers of the five provinces and the governor of Shaanxi will respectively lead the reinforcement troops and the trilateral strong brigade as the main force to raid and exterminate the large peasant army in the Central Plains and the northwest; The local corps in the four governors' districts of Shaanxi, Henan, Huguang, and Fengyang are holding on to their own areas on the one hand, and on the other hand, they are cooperating with the main force corps in encirclement and suppression.

In addition, the local corps under the jurisdiction of the six governors of Yansui, Shanxi, Shandong, Yingtian, Jiangxi, and Sichuan, as the "six corners," are the six corners of the great net, and are mainly responsible for strictly guarding their own areas and assisting in encirclement and suppression accordingly. Yang Sichang thought that once the deployment of the network was completed, it would only take three months to completely wipe out the entire peasant army.

As far as the military plan is concerned, the "ten-sided net" is still quite tight, but many basic conditions are required for serious implementation. First of all, it is necessary to have sufficient and capable troops, otherwise the net is big and thin, and it will not be possible to achieve real results by relying only on empty shelves.

Therefore, it is necessary to increase the number of troops. According to Yang Sichang's deployment, the two main armies of the prime ministers of the five provinces and the governor of Shaanxi were each increased by 30,000 troops. The two governors of Huguang and Henan each increased their troops by 15,000, and the two governors of Fengyang and Shaanxi each increased their troops by 10,000, and in addition to the ancestral tombs of Fengyang and Chengtian (now Zhongxiang, Hubei) each added 5,000 special defense troops, bringing the total number of additional troops to an astonishing 120,000.

Up to now, together with the original number of troops in the Central Plains and Northwest Theaters and the "Six Corners" region, the number of troops used in the 10-sided network has exceeded 200,000. Mobilizing such a large number of troops to complete a general campaign was extremely rare in the history of the Ming Dynasty, and in terms of numbers alone, it was at least enough to compete with the peasant armies of all stripes.

But here's the problem: at the end of the Ming Dynasty, when the military system was corrupted, these hastily recruited troops. How much combat power is there? Only God knows.

Of course, after the increase in troops, it is necessary to increase salaries, and after careful calculations, the household and military departments need to increase military salaries by a total of 2,880,000 taels. Another astronomical amount. And this huge expense is really nerve-wracking.

Emperor Chongzhen once ordered the family of his relatives to donate in the past, but was generally resisted. Those officials and nobles have no desire to be anxious about the country at all. Even the squires who were in the war zone were reluctant to donate. Emperor Chongzhen couldn't help but complain: When the thief comes. and became their own. How can you be so stupid?

But Emperor Chongzhen didn't have to take fifty steps to laugh at a hundred steps. Even he himself is also a miser by nature, and would rather have his country ruined than give the money from the treasury to help. See here. I couldn't help but think of the notorious Wei Zhongxian again. When he saw that the treasury was empty, he took out his family wealth to pay for the military salary of Liaodong. I can't tell whose ideological realm is higher.

Then everyone is unwilling to pay, and the huge military salary can only be squeezed from the people. Therefore, Yang Sichang proposed his famous Jihua of "expropriating salaries", and in addition to the Liao salary, he added grain to Liuhe per mu, and each stone was converted into eight dollars of silver, totaling more than 1.92 million taels of taxes in the world. In addition to the so-called "overflow land" -- that is, the re-verification of taxable land -- and other items, the annual increase in the national distribution totals 2.8 million taels.

Emperor Chongzhen and Yang Sichang thought that the long pain was better than the short pain, but they didn't expect that this increase was not added to the heads of the gentry at all. But all of them were added to the local people. In addition, the local government indiscriminately collected and consumed funds, and finally looted more than 10 million taels from the people.

What is even more terrifying is that this "extermination of wages" was temporarily set up for the purpose of completing the great campaign of "ten-sided netting," so the "ten-sided net" was not completed for a day, and the temporarily set up "exterminating salaries" continued day by day.

Maybe Emperor Chongzhen and Yang Sichang also understood this, but they couldn't take care of it anymore. In order to exterminate the peasant army, the two of them were already red-eyed.

To solve the problem of increasing troops and salaries, it is necessary to solve the problem of employing another general. In particular, whether or not the prime minister, the governor, and the 10 governors of the four corners of the country were able to effectively control the army, use tactics in a mobile manner, and take the initiative to take encirclement and suppression as their own responsibility and bravely annihilate the enemy was the key to the success of the entire campaign.

For the ten governors, because it involves comprehensive personnel arrangements, it is inconvenient for Yang Sichang to interfere, so he can only continue to use the original incumbent officials. Among them, Sun Chuanting, the governor of Shaanxi, is the deepest and the most spicy, and the combat effectiveness of his department is also the strongest; Secondly, such as Yu Yinggui, the governor of Huguang, Zhu Dadian, the governor of Fengyang, and Wu Fu, the governor of Shanxi, are also old and capable.

The key to the selection of the prime minister and the governor is of course the key to the selection of the prime minister and the governor. Hong Chengchou has served as the governor of Shaanxi for many years, and his experience and ability are obvious to all, so naturally there is no need to talk about it. After Lu Xiangsheng was transferred to the post of governor of Xuanda, the post of prime minister was taken over by the mediocre and incompetent Wang Jiazhen, and at the moment of the war, it is obvious that it must be replaced.

Considering the actual situation at that time, it was certainly the best plan to repatriate Lu Xiangsheng, because after all, he had many years of experience in exterminating the peasant army, and his talent and courage were the best in the DPRK and China. But Yang Sichang was not interested in Lu Xiangsheng, half of it was due to disagreement in personality and temperament, and maybe a little jealousy, and the other half was due to partisan disputes.

Yang Sichang and his father Yang He were both removed from their official positions during the Apocalypse because they were dissatisfied with Wei Zhongxian's dictatorship, and their relationship with the Donglin Party was not bad. However, during the period of serving as Yongping and the governor of Shanhai, because someone in the jurisdiction was the former servant Guo Gong who moved to Qian'an, he was included in the "reverse case" and complained about grievances, he also felt that Guo Gong was indeed wronged, and he asked the court for his life. Guo Gong was not pardoned because of this, but he himself was notorious for overturning the case for the eunuchs

The Donglin Party hated the people who tried to turn over the "reverse case" the most, and they all regarded them as treacherous, and since then Yang Sichang has been put into a separate book. And Yang Sichang is a person who is round on the outside and square on the inside, and would rather fight against the Donglin Party for a trivial matter to the end, and never give in.

And Lu Xiangsheng came from the family of the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River, and was deeply influenced by science, but he was a member of the Donglin faction. He was very dissatisfied with Yang Sichang's tenure during the mourning period and his suggestion to be sent up, and he expressed it from time to time. In this way, the two most outstanding military talents of the time could not work together.

Therefore, party strife is indeed misleading!

So Yang Sichang chose Xiong Wencan, the governor of Liangguang. Xiong Wencan became famous because he had appeased the famous pirate Zheng Zhilong, who had been rampant at sea for many years, during his tenure as governor of Fujian, and later pacified Liu Xiang, a large number of pirates in Liangguang. Therefore, Emperor Chongzhen has always paid great attention to this military talent who has repeatedly performed miraculous feats, and specially sent his cronies and eunuchs to Guangdong to conduct on-the-spot investigations against him in the name of going to Guangxi to purchase medicinal materials.

There are also some stories about Xiong Wencan's appointment:

Xiong Wencan didn't know that the eunuch had come to inspect him, but he was still very courteous, giving a large number of gifts, and holding a feast, and drinking for ten days.

One day at the banquet, the eunuch deliberately brought up the topic, talking about the Central Plains Liukou can never be peaceful, and no one is willing to do their best for the court.

And Xiong Wencan drank a few more glasses, and then he got carried away, he patted the table and said: "It's all the ministers who have misled the country!" If I, Xiong Wencan, go, how could I let those rats run rampant so far? ”

So the eunuch immediately got up and said, "I didn't go to Guangxi to procure, but I was ordered by the emperor to investigate Xiong Gong." Xiong Gong is really a talent in the world, and it is not enough to be a thief. Be prepared, there will probably be an edict in the near future. Xiong Wencan was so frightened that he woke up, and the author believes that he must have had a big stool face at that time.

When Xiong Wencan left the relatively comfortable Liangguang and embarked on the dangerous road of the prime minister of the five provinces. When passing by Lushan, he visited a monk he knew, monk Kongyin. So there was an interesting conversation between the two.

Monk Kongyin asked, "You made a big mistake. Do you think that the soldiers you will have will be enough to kill the thief? ”

Xiong Wencan shook his head and said no.

Monk Kongyin asked again: "Is there a general under his command who can be entrusted with great responsibilities, take charge of the party alone, and win without bothering to command?" ”

Xiong Wencan shook his head and said nothing.

So the monk Kongyin said: "Neither of them can deal with thieves, and the emperor is especially famous and heavy, once it is ineffective, isn't he going to kill his head?" ”

Xiong Wencan stood for a long time before asking, "How about using the method of appeasement?" ”

Monk Kongyin said: "I expected that Your Excellency will use Fu, but the Liukou is different from the Haikou, please be cautious. ”

Therefore, Xiong Wencan came to serve as the commander-in-chief of the theater with the purpose of focusing on Fu, which is at least inconsistent with the original intention of Jihua, who is "spreading the net on all sides". The commanders have their own opinions, which will inevitably have an adverse impact on the implementation of Yang Sichang's plan.

Not only that, for example, Sun Chuanting, who has a relatively rigid personality, was very disapproving of Yang Sichang's "ten-sided net" from the beginning. Sun Chuanting believed: "There has always been a thief, Zhang is out of all directions, and if he is trapped, he will return to Qin, and the land of thieves will be beneficial to Qin Ming." If the encirclement and suppression are scattered, "the thieves will be located in the whole Qin as a cave, and the six corners on all sides will be an empty net."

Sun Chuanting's view is not unreasonable, but the starting point is to consider the local interests of his own Shaanxi province. Similar localist sentiments were also quite common in the governors and Fuzhong, and also brought quite a lot of hidden dangers to Yang Sichang's warfare. (To be continued......)