Zhu Youzhen no longer believes in the military talents of the two civilian officials, Fan Yixuan and Wang Yingxiong.

Therefore, he could only transfer these two civil officials from Yungui, saving them from intervening in the war as a high-ranking official who was a governor and a scholar.

Moreover, Jinyiwei's recital also mentioned more than once that Fan Yixuan and Wang Yingxiong's blind command caused Zeng Ying and Yang Zhan to lose many opportunities to destroy the enemy.

But after transferring Fan Yixuan and Wang Yingxiong, Zhu Youzhen still had to choose a commander who could coordinate the troops and horses of all parties.

Zhu Youzhen originally liked Qin Liangyu, after all, Qin Liangyu had a very high prestige in the southwest, and the civil and military officials and even the Tusi in the southwest respected him very much.

It is naturally best for Qin Liangyu to command the wars in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Huguang, and Guangdong.

But now that Qin Liangyu is old, Zhu Youzhen doesn't want her to be tired anymore, so he has to retreat and choose Ma Shiying, the secretary of the military department and a scholar of Wuyingdian University, as the supervisor to lead the military and political affairs of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi, Huguang, and Guangdong.

Ma Shiying can coordinate the forces of all parties and coordinate the relationship and even the rear arrangement, but he is still a little inferior in tactical command, so Zhu Youzhen decided to let Li Yan assist Ma Shiying in the battle against Zhang Xianzhong in the battle of Yungui in the capacity of the left squire of the military department and the governor of Yungui.

Li Yan is longer than Ma Shiying in terms of military strategic command, both in terms of actual combat experience and personal talent, and Li Yan has been in the peasant army for a long time, and the main army of the Ming Dynasty that participated in the Yunnan-Guizhou war is the peasant army's extermination army, the Guards Army's Gaojie Department, etc., and the enemy's Zhang Xianzhong department is also from the peasant army.

Therefore, Li Yan, an official who should be regarded as having a better understanding of the peasant army, can help Ma Shiying to know himself and his opponent in terms of tactical command, and in terms of coordinating internal forces, Gao Jie's troops can get along better with the exterminating army and the official army.

In addition, Li Yan and Ma Shiying are now colleagues who have worked together in the military department for two years, and their personalities and tempers are almost the same.

However, nominally, Ma Shiying is still the supreme commander.

Fan Yixin and Wang Yingxiong, as the local armed forces of Sichuan, may have been useful before the fall of Sichuan, but now that Sichuan has all fallen into the hands of Zhang Xianzhong, Zhu Youzhen does not need their control of the local base in Sichuan to mobilize the masses to resist Zhang Xianzhong.

And let Fan Yixuan go to Liangguang to raise grain and grass, Zhu Youzhen also has his own considerations.

In his opinion, Fan Yixuan must have hoped that the official army would recover Sichuan, so it was impossible for him not to be unsuccessful in raising grain and grass.

And Wang Yingxiong, as a cabinet scholar who was deposed during Chongzhen's fifteenth year, has now been reinstated, Zhu Youzhen naturally cannot easily depose him, so he has to be transferred back to the capital as an adviser, so that he, the emperor, can understand the real situation in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan more clearly through Wang Yingxiong.

It's just that Zhu Youzhen deliberately eliminated redundant government and used his official position prudently, so he could not let Wang Yingxiong serve as a cabinet scholar, and in the future, in Daming, those who served as cabinet scholars would be in charge of administrative power, and they should not be involved in the military.

Since the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the Xingping Gaojie Department has been placed by Zhu Youzhen in the Susonghang area to deter the Jiangnan Shi clan in addition to participating in a battle to exterminate Liu Liangzuo, but now it is going to be transferred to Guizhou, Zhu Youzhen does not know whether this steel knife that has been hidden in the gentle and rich township for nearly three years has rusted.

But in any case, we can only count on this little bit of men, in the case that the main forces of the Guards cannot be mobilized.

Zhu Youzhen's request to Ma Shiying and Li Yan was that they did not care about the loss of cities and territory, but they must drag the enemy as much as possible, prevent them from advancing eastward, and threaten the rear of the Ming Dynasty, at least until the Ming Dynasty once again crushed the Qing army's attempt to move south one day in the future.

Gao Jie's Fifth Guards Army has also been replaced with the latest equipment, firearms are equipped with Chongzhen 19-type flintlock guns, artillery equipment Chongzhen 19-type infantry field three-jin guns, six-jin guns and twelve-jin guns, the most important thing is three-jin guns and six-jin guns, after all, the southwest is mostly jungle and mountainous, and large artillery is not very practical.

The Fifth Guards Army was the first to arrive in Nanjing, and after a period of training in Nanjing, it began to set off for the southwest.

And Zhu Youzhen also summoned Gao Jie during this period and gave some instructions.

Ma Shiying actually didn't want to leave Nanjing to go to the southwest at this time, after all, now the Manchu Dynasty knew that the first assistant Fan Ge had the intention of being replaced by His Majesty, and he Ma Shiying was undoubtedly a strong contender for the next first assistant, but now he suddenly wanted him to go to the southwest to command the war, and he was not in a very good mood.

However, Zhu Youzhen also knew what these bureaucrats meant, so he also directly proposed that the first assistant be selected for military merit and political achievements in the future, regardless of seniority and previous official positions.

Ma Shiying also realized that if he made a meritorious achievement in this war against Zhang Xianzhong to attack Yungui in the south, it would help him become the first assistant in the future, so he also began to actively prepare for the war in the southwest.

"Yang Zhan's performance in the southwest war is very outstanding, it is a rare general, and Li Yan has seen the first glory in the Huguang war, you must make good use of these two generals when you go to the southwest, maybe they can unite to deal with Li Dingguo, you as the commander is not brave and good at fighting nor is it far-sighted, but how to use the generals, some people say that this Yang Zhan is quite domineering, arrogant, not to put other generals in his eyes, after you go to the southwest, if Yang Zhan is offended, you must be tolerant, I'd rather offend others for him, but follow his temper, and everything will have to wait until the war is settled, understand? ”

Zhu Youzhen said to Ma Shiying very seriously, he is not worried about anything else now, he is afraid that an official like Ma Shiying, who is good at officialdom intrigues, will start infighting again as soon as he arrives on the battlefield, and now Yang Zhan and other landlord armies and the officials and troops in the southwest of the Ming Dynasty are two mountains, and now there is another mountain from the peasant army such as Gao Jie and Li Yan.

If Ma Shiying, as the coach, does not coordinate well, but pulls a group of fighters to achieve some of his own goals, such as becoming his own political bargaining chips, and even leads to the loss of the war.

Because Zhu Youzhen knew that Ma Shiying was very good at such methods, in the original history, he was the governor of Fengyang, so he won over the four towns of Jiangbei to suppress the Donglin Party and control the political power of the Southern Ming Dynasty in one fell swoop.

As Ma Shiying really did, Zhu Youzhen didn't mind slashing the boss, so Zhu Youzhen specially promised Ma Shiying and Li Yan that they could play secretly, so as to achieve the goal of both integration and division.

Ma Shiying knew what Zhu Youzhen was worried about, so he could only ask Zhu Youzhen to rest assured, after all, he also knew that his biggest political opportunity to go to the southwest was to establish military merits, not to win over his own forces, because no matter how much he tried to win over the forces now, it was impossible to deter Zhu Youzhen today.

Zhu Youzhen can only hand over the war in the southwest to Ma Shiying, including the military and political affairs of Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Huguang, Guangxi, and Guangdong, and he can concentrate on preparing to deal with the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the turbulent undercurrents within the imperial court.

Li Ruolian, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, was assigned by Zhu Youzhen to be in charge of the intelligence affairs of the war in the southwest, and he was responsible to Ma Shiying to share the pressure of Wu Mengming, the commander of the Jinyi Guard.

Wu Mengming was only responsible for intelligence affairs against the Manchus and the Zheng clan in the south, while Dongchang continued to be responsible for picketing unstable factors in the country.

(End of chapter)