Of course, there was a heated debate in the court around the question of which troops to send and who should be the commander to attack the Zhou State.

Of course, Xu Xuan and Wei Cen can't be stupid enough to directly name Li Zhenggu as the commander, because that will obviously immediately remind people of the deadlock between the three of them recently, and Li Jing will also see their intentions at a glance. Therefore, when playing this matter, Xu Xuan and Wei Cen wisely chose to avoid the question of where to send troops and horses and who should be the commander to attack.

A small number of officials believe that the former privy envoy Chen Jue and the Yan King Li Hongji failed in the Northern Expedition, led by the forbidden army with the Shenwu Army as the main force, as well as the soldiers and horses of Xuanrun Erzhou. Of course, it is still necessary to recover the two of them to conquer the Zhou State, and it is best to take Xuzhou City, which can be regarded as real revenge.

Naturally, this proposal was quickly rejected. Because the rebuttal put forward by the opposing side Xu Xuan and Wei Cen is more effective. The Shenwu Army has always been the main force in the six armies, but after several major wars, there are currently less than 40,000 soldiers and horses, and most of them are newly recruited recruits, so it is not suitable to fight. As for the soldiers and horses of Xuanrun Erzhou, they were the soldiers and horses of King Yan, and King Yan was ordered by the emperor to apply for a year, and he meditated in the fief for a year, so he naturally couldn't use it.

The above rebuttal is reasonable, but it is nothing more than two reasons, one is that Wei Cen is now the commander of the Shenwu Army, which is his baby bump, so he is naturally unwilling to fight, and the other is not difficult to understand, how could King Zheng and his party let their political opponent King Yan recover?

At this time, the most dramatic thing happened, Li Zhenggu, the spearhead of the actual target of this court meeting, actually took the initiative to stand up, and proposed to dispatch the Zhennan army with sufficient soldiers and food in Hongzhou Prefecture, and he was willing to go out with the army as the deputy envoy of the privy council and the secretary of the military department.

The Zhennan Army, the largest local army in the Southern Tang Dynasty, has as many as 150,000 troops on land and water, not because of how important its geographical location is, on the contrary, it is far away from the dangerous border, and the town in the south of the town is surrounded by Fenghua, Anhua, Zhaowu three towns handover, stretching from north to south for more than 800 miles, there are soldiers and horses stationed in strict and solid, Jiangxi four towns combined, a total of more than 300,000 soldiers and horses, can be described as extremely peaceful.

According to common sense, it is not an exaggeration to reduce the number of troops in half of the Zhennan Army, but in fact, the Zhennan Army has always had a number of 153,000 troops, but there is also a specific reason.

The reason is that the border line of the Southern Tang Dynasty in the hinterland of Jiangxi is very long, stretching for more than a thousand miles, Jiangxi is a place, originally there was Chu in the west, Wu Yue in the east, Han in the south, and a Fujian country in the southeast.

Moreover, there are not many complex terrains in Jiangxi, unlike the Chu land where Li Yuan is located, there are large mountains and valleys, dense forests and rocks, and peaks as high as dozens or even hundreds of zhang abound.

Therefore, if Jiangxi does not garrison heavy troops, once the situation changes, any bordering country rashly invades, and the Southern Tang Dynasty will definitely be difficult to stop. After the founding of the country, in addition to greatly increasing the strength of the Zhennan Army stationed in Hongzhoufu, the most important state capital in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Liezu Li Yu also set up three other sections in Jiangzhou, Raozhou, and Fuzhou, forming the trend of the stars and the moon, so as to ensure the tranquility of the hinterland of Jiangxi.

Of course, other countries are not stupid, since the Southern Tang Dynasty has deployed heavy troops in Jiangxi, even if there is a war, it will naturally not attack from here, which is obviously a suicidal practice.

As the saying goes, the old lady picks up soft persimmons and pinchs, and naturally she will not pick hard bones to bite when fighting, these practical problems are what any commander with a little common sense must consider, so after the founding of the Southern Tang Dynasty, there was almost no war in Jiangxi.

Since the land of Jiangxi has been peaceful for many years, and the Chu and Fujian countries have been destroyed, it means that the Zhennan army, which has a large number of soldiers and horses, has been recuperating for a long time, and these 150,000 people have been raised solidly under the support of the imperial court, and it is time to serve the imperial court and be loyal to the emperor.

This is Li Zhenggu's proposal to Emperor Li Jing.

As soon as Li Zhenggu's words fell, a series of consequences were triggered, Xu Xuan was surprised, Wei Cen remained silent, and Li Jing was also shaken.

It is true that the Zhennan Army is the soldiers and horses of the Duke of Weiguo, and now the party of King Zheng and Song Qiqiu of the Duke of Wei Guo are in a cooperative relationship, and it is not difficult to understand that Li Zhenggu has such a proposal, but there is such a thing at today's court meeting, Xu Xuan's intention is to transfer Li Zhenggu out of the capital, and he understands very well that according to the current state of empty treasury and lack of people, he will bump into the rising national situation

The Zhou State, this battle will definitely be a feather back, and the person who does not get the commander will be severely punished by the emperor and criticized by the whole country for the second defeat.

In Xu Xuan's assumption, after he and Wei Cen raised this matter, if Li Zhenggu had some brains, the best way to deal with it was to not say a word, so as not to be pushed to the forefront by them, he never imagined that Li Zhenggu would take the initiative to stand up and make suggestions.

was worried that Li Zhenggu would not be able to set up, Xu Xuan's heart was quickly ecstatic, and after glancing at Wei Cen, he found that Wei Cen was silent, showing a surprising determination, which made Xu Xuan puzzled, but after all, the excitement of success prevailed over reason, Xu Xuan did not have time to think about it, and was determined to continue to add fuel to the fire.

On the other hand, Emperor Li Jing has fallen into a tangle. If he can use the Zhennan Army to attack Zhou, this powerful army may really surprise him, but at the same time, he also knows very well that if the Zhennan Army really establishes a special honor, then Song Qiqiu, the master behind it, may take advantage of the situation to recover, which is not a good thing for Li Jing's country.

But Li Jing had to face a very realistic situation, Li Jinquan's rebellion and the Northern Expedition were defeated, and the forbidden army had been greatly injured, Xu Xuan and Wei Cen were not unreasonable, the Shenwu Army finally recovered its formation, and most of the recruits were not high in combat effectiveness, and fighting at this time was equivalent to sending them to death.

As for his eldest son, Yanwang Li Hongji, it is not because his will has not expired, but as a father, he is not willing to let his son fall into danger again.

Thinking of this, Li Jing suddenly became a little enlightened, and it was really a good choice to fight with the Zhennan Army.

First, regardless of victory or defeat, it is acceptable to him, and winning is of course a good thing for the Tang Dynasty, if Song Qiqiu wants to take advantage of the situation to return to the dynasty, he only needs to attribute the merits to others as much as possible, and defeat is equivalent to weakening the strength of the Zhennan Army, which is a heavy blow to Song Qiqiu, and secondly, he ordered the Northern Expedition of the Zhennan Army, and he can also take advantage of the situation to appoint and dismiss some civil and military generals An *** Zhennan Army, and gradually divide this stubborn disease that Li Jing has been afraid of for many years.

Li Jing naturally knew that Li Zhenggu had dealings with Song Qiqiu, but in recent days, King Zheng's party has split, and Li Zhenggu and Xu Wei can't hide it from each other, so even if Li Jing thinks that Li Zhenggu's proposal has the selfish intention to take the opportunity to promote Song Qiqiu's return to the dynasty, he also feels that this proposal may be beneficial.

So this controversy quickly came to a conclusion, Li Jing issued an order to approve Li Zhenggu's suggestion, appointed the privy deputy envoy Li Zhenggu as the commander of the northern camp, the deputy envoy of the Zhennan Army Jiedu Song Maha as the deputy commander, and the confidant Xiao Yan as the supervising military envoy, in addition to the selection of six generals from the forbidden army in Jinling to accompany the expedition, the Zhennan Army except for 20,000 soldiers and horses and 30,000 sailors to stay in Jiezhen, the rest of the 100,000 soldiers and horses were all on the expedition, Li Zhenggu and others immediately left Beijing and went to Hongzhou Mansion to make pre-war preparations.

And Xu Xuan also played the imperial court, and proposed that in order for the Zhennan army to defeat the heavy troops arranged by the Zhou State on the front line of Xuzhou in one fell swoop, it was suggested that the Privy Council should supply all the newly made armor blades to the Zhennan army, and as for the money and food needed, the Zhongshu disciples would try their best to raise it.

This move was greatly praised by Li Jing, who issued an order to suspend the replacement of equipment for the rest of the sections, and the Privy Council should fully support the Zhennan Army.

Should I say it or not, it just so happens that the Jiezhen that urgently needs to change clothes this year is the Wuchang army led by He Jingzhu and the Qinghuai army led by Liu Renzhan, and now they can only postpone it. Liu Renzhan was recently so angry with his good son Liu Chongzhi that he was bedridden, but He Jingzhu was greatly annoyed by the Wuchang military festival, and he had just been cut off 40,000 soldiers and horses, and now he had new injuries, He Jingzhu jumped like thunder and scolded Xu Xuan's ancestors for eight generations.

Now that the treasury is empty, and the war is about to start, it is not easy for Xu Xuan, the left minister, to raise money and grain, so he naturally hit the idea of the batch of money and grain sent to Langzhou by the imperial court, and soon he ordered someone to detain part of the money and grain, and after discussing with Wei Cen, he ordered someone to send the backlog of those tattered equipment in the treasury of the military department to Langzhou, not because he ignored that King Zheng was still trapped in Langzhou, and disgusted Li Yuan because of selfish impulses, but he did it on purpose.

In the eyes of others, Xu Xuan, who has always been loyal to King Zheng, would never do this, but this can just show the emperor that even if I, Xu Xuan, support King Zheng, since I am the left minister, I am an important minister of the Son of Heaven, showing that I will make a gesture of deep understanding and righteousness in order to fully support the emperor's military operations regardless of anything else.

And he dared to take the risk like this, also because he had the confidence, this time

After all, the Northern Expedition was the emperor's will, and Yuezhou near Langzhou had also placed 40,000 Yueshan troops, and now Li Yuan's Wuping army was recovering and did not want any war for the time being, and Li Yuan showed great loyalty in front of the imperial court......

Xu Xuan was extremely sure that Li Yuan would not rebound because of receiving this batch of rags, which would give the imperial court an excellent excuse to clean him up, on the contrary, he would only swallow his anger and obediently send back King Zheng Li Congjia.

All in all, this is Xu Xuan's most thoughtful and bold move in his own opinion, which not only achieved his selfish purpose, but also won the applause of the government and the opposition, and even Emperor Li Jing had to be impressed, praising Xu Xuan and saying: "Xu Qing is now acting much fairer, and he has the style of Fang Du. For the sake of the overall situation, it is really rare, and I am very pleased that Xu Qing is up to the task."

……

Li Yuan, who was far away in Langzhou, was completely unaware of all this, and this military operation against the Zhou State was a top-secret operation, and the imperial court did not publicly announce it. Because the imperial court did not want to leak the news before the military action, so that the Zhou State could take precautions, so as to ensure that the war was taken by surprise and completed. Therefore, the two officials who escorted the supplies to Langzhou did not know too many details.

Zhong Ming, a member of the household department, and Li Shouji, a member of the treasury department of the military department, as officials of the six specific departments, if they had not been responsible for raising money and food and allocating armor and blades to the Zhennan army, they would not have been able to give Li Yuan that little bit of pitiful news. Even if Li Yuan was told this news, it was actually not allowed, because it was also a secret of the imperial court.

It was the revelation of this news that made Li Yuan quickly judge that the imperial court would have the possibility of military action, if the Zhennan army guarding Jiangxi had military action, there were many neighboring countries around, and the target was really difficult to determine, but the most likely thing was nothing more than the Southern Han Kingdom, after the recent war, the relationship between the Southern Tang Dynasty and the Southern Han Dynasty had deteriorated in an all-round way.

But after thinking about it, something is wrong, he has asked Ying to recover Guiguan and go south to destroy the Han Dynasty, and the imperial court has also approved the expansion of the number of troops, is Emperor Li Jing so kind to transfer the 150,000 strong Zhennan Army to help in the war?

Thinking about it a little deeper, Li Yuan suddenly broke out in a cold sweat behind his back, is this to deal with himself?

However, Li Yuan soon realized that he was worried about the sky, if the imperial court really wanted to deal with him, it would not be so abrupt, at least the emperor's precious son King Zheng had not returned, not to mention that it was really a matter of reluctance to use the Zhennan army thousands of miles away to deal with him, and it was also a bit of a big effort, when the Yueshan army and the Wuchang army were decorations?

In short, since the party of King Zheng in the current court dared to transport this batch of tattered equipment to Langzhou, it showed that they were not worried that Li Yuan would be angry with the court and continue to detain King Zheng, since they were not worried, they must have their own confidence, otherwise how could they do this?

Li Yuan didn't want to bother with these things, and treated them with determination, and then strengthened the local defense, sooner or later it would come to light, his father-in-law Zhou Zong had been transferred to the head of the household department, and he was indispensable for raising money and food, at least he would write a letter to explain the matter.

The money and food sent this time were deducted, and a batch of tattered equipment was given, which was a good excuse, if the imperial court needed Wupingjun to assist in the battle later, he could use this tattered equipment as a temporary prevarication, and no one had anything to say.

Li Yuan has been thinking about his own problem over and over again now, that is, how to quickly find a way to make money, not to make money, but to make a lot of money, a lot of money.

Especially when this batch of tattered equipment came, Li Yuan's willingness to do so was even stronger. I just want to complete the recent expansion of the Wuping Army and various military ideas, after all, Wuping can only rely on itself, and there is no other way.

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