Chapter 115: The court discusses the route of troops

Zhuge Jin finally left, and before leaving, he still left Sun Shangxiang. After all, Sun Shangxiang is still nominally one of Liu Bei's wives.

Liu Hou felt that she was really a poor person, she became a victim of politics at a young age, and her lifelong happiness was ruined by her brother.

Liu Hou knew that even if she was allowed to go back to Dongwu, she would end up alone, so it was better to let her stay in Shuhan. After all, the atmosphere of the Shu Han Palace is relatively relaxed and free, there are not so many constraints, there are not so many rules, and with her own cover, she can live the life she likes.

Liu Hou chose a good day, solemnly welcomed her into the palace, and found a palace with a very good view for her to stay. For this reason, the world also praised the filial piety of the little emperor.

And after going through so many things, Sun Shangxiang's personality has also changed a lot, and he is no longer so public, and the whole person is depressed a lot. Hiding in the boudoir all day long and refusing to come out, I will never see the queen fan who led this team of female soldiers to swagger through the city and cause trouble everywhere.

Fortunately, the three queens were all military generals, and they loved martial arts, and they would regularly come to Sun Shangxiang to hunt, go on outings, and race horses, which made her gradually regain a little vitality. Otherwise, Liu Hou doubted that this former barbarian woman would die of depression.

In addition to Sun Shangxiang, Zhuge Jin still insisted on marrying Sun Luyu to Liu Hou. There are beautiful women to accept, Liu Hou is still very happy in his heart, plus Zhuge Liang and other ministers also strongly persuaded Liu Hou to agree, after all, it is a good way to consolidate the alliance with himself, so Liu Hou also agreed half-pushed.

In view of Sun Luyu's young age, the two parties agreed to wait until she was 16 years old before getting married. Although 16 years old is still too young for future generations, it is a normal age for marriage in this era, and if you are too old to get married, you will be laughed at as an old girl who can't get married. Follow the customs of the locals, in this regard, Liu Hou can't resist the ministers, and if you want to reform these customs, you can only wait until the world is settled and then take your time.

A month after the signing of the covenant, the material preparations were almost complete, but the route of the march had not yet been determined, and on this day, Liu Hou convened his ministers to discuss the route of the Northern Expedition, which was an expanded version of the brainstorming in the army.

The Shu army wants to attack Cao Wei in the north, generally speaking, there can be two paths, one is to start from Hanzhong, through the Xiegu Valley or the Meridian Valley or Chencang Road or out of the Qi Mountain, and attack Wuzhangyuan.

In history, Zhuge Liang did this six out of Qishan (in fact, only twice out of Qishan), this route is high and far, to cross the Qinling Mountains, the difficulty of marching and logistics transportation are very difficult. And there will be a lot of big levels along the way, which requires a strong ability to tackle tough problems.

However, if you take this route, the rear is stable, and there is no danger of being copied from the back road, even if it fails, it is enough to retreat, with the protection of lofty mountains and layers of checkpoints, it is difficult for the Wei army to pursue.

And Wuzhangyuan is only about 300 miles from Chang'an, which is very close, so as long as you can reach Wuzhangyuan, it is almost equivalent to threatening the hinterland of Wei.

The other route is the route that Liu Hou fooled Zhuge Jin before, which was what Guan Gong's Northern Expedition did back then. This route is close and much easier to walk, so you don't have to go over the mountains. After Xiangyang and then Nanyang, it will be close to Xudu, and you can receive the effect of smashing Huanglong. However, in such an important place, Cao Wei will definitely be heavily guarded.

In addition, Jingzhou is the junction of Shu and Wu, and both countries will garrison heavy troops here. At that time, Guan Gong was copied by Eastern Wu, which led to the failure of the Northern Expedition.

Due to the existence of two routes, there were two factions of people in the court meeting on this day, one faction supported the passage through the Qinling Mountains out of Qishan, and the other faction supported the attack on Xiangyang from Jingzhou to the north.

The faction that supported Qishan was represented by Deng Zhi, and those who supported the attack on Xiangyang were represented by Guo Youzhi, while Liu Hou and Zhuge Liang did not express their position for the time being, but patiently listened to the discussions of the ministers.

Deng Zhi, the word Bo Miao. A native of Yiyang Xinye (now Xinye, Henan). After the famous general Deng Yu of the Eastern Han Dynasty. He was first appointed by Liu Bei as the commander of Pi, and then promoted to the Taishou of Guanghan. Because of his honesty, rigor and achievements, he was recruited into the court as a scholar.

When Xu Jing and Wu Yi were in turmoil, they were re-demoted to Guanghan Taishou, and after Liu Hou entered Chengdu, he re-employed a group of officials who were belittled by Xu Jing, and this Deng Zhi was one of them.

"Your Majesty, Xiangyang has been a battleground for soldiers since ancient times, Cao Wei sent heavy troops to guard, and Nanyang, which can be said to be the hinterland of Cao Wei. If we go north from here, we can say that we will have a decisive battle with Cao Wei's main force at the beginning. The minister thinks this is inappropriate.

Although our army has strong attack power, after all, the number of people is too small, and if it falls into the siege of Cao Wei's army, I am afraid it will be difficult to please. Our firearms units, in particular, are heavily logistically dependent. Once they are encircled, cut off from supplies, and run out of ammunition and food, they will be worse in combat effectiveness than ordinary cold-weapon troops. ”

Deng Zhi raised his objections, and he tried to justify Qishan by telling Guò about the disadvantages of sending troops from Jingzhou.

As soon as his words fell, Guo Youzhi began to refute: "Lord Deng, we are not working to fight the enemy, so why?" Coming out of Qishan, the road is far away, the mountain road is rugged, and a lot of time is wasted on the road alone.

You must know that every day that the army goes out for an additional day, it will cost thousands of stones of food and tens of thousands of pieces of silver. To fight a war is to fight the economy, to fight money and food, and the territory that our country now occupies is still very small, and most of it is barren and sparsely populated, and the domestic economic situation cannot support us to carry out a protracted war.

Therefore, Yu Zhi believes that it is necessary to march from the shortest path and end the war as quickly as possible. Yu Zhijian yì, from Jingzhou to the north, took the initiative to find the main force of the Cao army, and quickly defeated the main force of the enemy, but the battle was decided. ”

Liu Hou appreciated Guo Youzhi's sentence "To fight the war is to fight the economy, to fight money and grain", Guo Youzhi has followed Liu Hou's southern expedition to the north in recent years, and his experience of this sentence is particularly deep.

However, Deng Zhi refused to admit defeat, he said: "It is precisely because China's economic situation is not very good at this stage and cannot support us to carry out a protracted war that Zhi proposed the goal of leaving Qishan and occupying Wuzhangyuan.

Zhi believes that now is not the time for a full-scale war with Cao Wei, but we can be proactive in the local area. We could occupy the counties of Tianshui, Nan'an, Anding, Wudu (present-day Chengxian County, Gansu), and Yinping (present-day northwestern Wenxian County, Gansu) in the northwest.

These counties are all located in remote areas, and they do not have a strong affiliation to Cao Wei, as long as the army arrives, they will surrender one after another. Even if we do not surrender, with the strength of our army, it will be effortless to attack. In this way, we can expand the land for thousands of miles.

Zhi believes that this year's goal is to end here, and we should first consolidate these newly acquired lands and turn them into a source of our soldiers and our granary, and then plot against the Central Plains in the coming year. ”

When Liu Hou heard this, his brows furrowed, this method is indeed a steady and steady method, Deng Zhi is a courtier who has become a member of the country. He put forward a short-term goal, he didn't want to be ambitious, and he didn't want to occupy the entire Wei State in one fell swoop, which has to be said to be very reasonable.

If Liu Hou hadn't mastered the firearms unit now, or even, if it wasn't for the fact that his firearms secrets had been leaked, it would have been okay to do so. But now it's not going to work, now everyone is rushing for time, if a large number of firearms are produced for Wei, the Shu army will be in trouble.

Therefore, Liu Hou was more inclined to rush for quick success, hoping to defeat the Wei army and break into the Central Plains, so that it could not calmly produce firearms.

After a round of debate between the two men, the other ministers joined in the discussion, and everyone in the court expressed their opinions and argued fiercely. There are three people who have not opened their mouths and watched coldly, the first is Bu Qi, he is a subordinate of Eastern Wu, his identity is embarrassing, and he doesn't know how to speak now.

From a strategic point of view, he supported the dispatch of troops from Jingzhou. However, if the Shu army gathers in Jingzhou, it will threaten Eastern Wu, and he cares about the old feelings and refuses to do anything unfavorable to Eastern Wu, so he has to keep silent, which is quite a bit of being in Cao Ying's heart in Han.

The other two people who haven't expressed their stance yet are Liu Hou and Zhuge Liang, these two bigwigs are both people who sit firmly in Diaoyutai, and they will not come out to summarize and make decisions until everyone has discussed it.

This issue was discussed at a morning court meeting, and at first Liu Hou listened to it with relish, but later Liu Hou was bombarded by these ministers and became a little dizzy. looked at the drip, it was not early, Liu Hou's stomach began to gurgle, so he looked at Zhuge Liang and said:

"Prime Minister, what is your opinion?" As soon as Liu Hou's words came out, the ministers who were arguing fiercely consciously stopped, and they all looked at Zhuge Liang in unison, waiting for the closing statement of the head of the hundred officials.

"Minister, support sending troops from Jingzhou to the north." After Zhuge Liang came out of the ranks, he arched his hand to Liu Hou and said his conclusion straight to the point.

"As for the reason, the adults have already said a lot just now, so I won't repeat them one by one. The minister only wants to remind His Majesty of two points, it is also this Northern Expedition, and there are two things to beware of: first, it is necessary to prevent the Eastern Wu people from copying the back road; Second, it is necessary to avoid being surrounded by the large army of the Wei army and limit the scope of action of our army. ”

Zhuge Liang's two clever plans are actually nothing new, they are all some hidden worries raised by the ministers during the debate just now, and he is just making a summary.

"Although the people of Dongwu have just signed a peace treaty with us, they unilaterally tore up the peace treaty and copied our back road. Therefore, His Majesty must leave enough men and horses in Jingzhou to garrison this time, and must not excessively draw Jingzhou's troops to the north. ”

"Well, I have to save it, I only took the Hong army from Chengdu to the north, and now none of the soldiers and horses stationed in Jingzhou will move, so that even if Dongwu comes to attack with all his might, there is no need to be afraid of them." Liu Houdao.

Most people in the court have enough understanding of the shameless Cheng dù of the Eastern Wu people, after all, this is a lesson in the blood that Guan Gong bought back with the shame of his life. Most of the people present were very much in favor of Zhuge Liang's reminder and Liu Hou's arrangement.