Lu Ming

Chapter 454
"Li Jichun, are you convicted?"

"My lord, I will be convicted at the end."

The middle-aged man kneeling in the hall had a calm face at the moment, as if he was willing to be beaten or punished.

And Zhang Zhongqi, who was sitting behind the public case, with the corners of her mouth upturned at the moment, pretending to be the coercion of the Qingtian master, asked with a little playfulness: "Wen Shijian, Wu Shizhan, look at the adults who went to the disaster in Yongping, Li Jichun, what are you doing?" Kneeling here today, do you feel half ashamed?"

In ancient times, due to the lack of communication technology and social management, the government was unable to extend its tentacles to all cells. Therefore, in the construction of the military system, in order to decentralize power and check and balance, including the Song and Ming Dynasties, all adopted the "use of literature to control the military, The principle of size matching".

The so-called size system is actually a shrunken version of the military feudal system: the governor can only directly order his own supervising battalion, and the governor must order the rest of the province's troops through the commander-in-chief.

In the same way, the chief soldier can only command his own town mark, and to give an order to a certain unit, he must go through the deputy generals in the middle.

This is the principle of the feudal system: the next floor cannot be directly managed, the monarch can only go to the feudal lord if he has something to do, and the vassals below only listen to the feudal lord, and have nothing to do with the monarch.

Although China's feudal system has been different from the West since the Han Dynasty, the core rules are still the same-the emperor and the court cannot control the peasants in the countryside, and the clan landlords who are similar to feudal lords are the masters of the peasants. The imperial power does not come down to the county", which actually interprets this core idea of ​​the feudal system.

In this regard, the West has done more clearly: the king can only fight against the big feudal lords at the level of dukes, and the knights (squires) class below the dukes obey their own lords.

Once there is a war, it is usually the Marquis of such and such, the Earl of such and such who takes a group of vassal knights under him to participate in the battle, and the king can only issue orders to the level of the great nobles.

Go back to the government office in Yongping City.

According to the above principles, theoretically speaking, the cross-travelers cannot control the general Li Jichun.This person's immediate boss is the General Soldier of Shanhaiguan. If he wants to kill him, he should report it to the imperial court, and Chongzhen will finally decide on this person.

But right now is not the norm.Yongping City had just been recovered, and the people who traveled through the city implemented a "military government" system, and they could kill anyone at any time——Li Jichun resisted stubbornly, and was punished by the Heavenly Soldiers for the Tartars. It was as simple as that.

So General Li Shen, who is kneeling in the hall now, is actually hanging by a thread, and will be dragged out to be slaughtered at any time.

"You kneel here today, do you feel half ashamed?"

After hearing the mocking question from the hall, Li Jichun kowtowed first, and then replied with a still expressionless face: "My lord, when the city was broken that day, the last general's more than twenty personal soldiers had all died in battle. If you say you are incompetent, then I admit it; if you say you are ashamed, you really don't have it. If an ant steals a life, but the last general surrenders after the battle, what is the crime?"

"This is new!" Yao Jianshe, the station manager of Tianjin Station, who was sitting beside him laughed, and said to this soldier with the concept of future generations: "According to this, it's fine to kill all your own soldiers. Then your 2000 guards Can't the city army be deployed?"

"It's really a display." Li Jichun smiled wryly when he heard the words, knelt on the ground and cupped his hands at the green-coated official who couldn't tell his rank: "My lord, let me know."

"Since the year of Apocalypse, the court's affairs have been tense and wasteful. Yongping, which seems to be the last general, has never encountered a war in a hundred years, so the military funds allocated by the Ministry of War are less than one year. Among them There are still a lot of decaying waste.”

When Li Jichun said this, a trace of embarrassment slipped across his face: "Even Mr. Zheng, the soldier who hanged himself, every time he goes to ask for the army's salary, he has to get enough as a rule."

"All the spare money that the general eats on weekdays is spent on these soldiers." When Li Jichun said this, the muscles on his face twitched, seemingly extremely distressed: "Just that little money is enough to support these soldiers. "

"Yongping has been in peace for a hundred years, and the military equipment is desolate and the equipment is rotten. In fact, most of the two thousand city guards are civilians recruited temporarily by wealthy households in the city."

"The soldiers under the command of the last general don't even have a decent fat jacket on weekdays. When they saw the wolf-like Tartar soldiers, they scattered on the spot. Only the last general and his own soldiers fought back for a while. My lord, all the personal soldiers died , full of kindness and righteousness, the last general has tried his best, and the last general has no shame. Even if he meets the emperor, the last general will say the same thing."

When the people across time heard this, no one spoke for a while.

Yes, for an army to complete its military missions, at the very least, it must ensure that the soldiers are fed, clothed, and equipped with basic training and basic weapons.

So again, the first step in the downfall of any regime is always financial issues.

The fundamental reason why the Ming army was unable to defeat foreigners in the middle and late stages was that the rentier classes, such as the gentry and relatives of the emperor, were greedy for a large amount of government taxes.

The so-called 600 million taels of military expenditure for the Ningjin defense line each year, in fact, more than half of it has been "sedimented" in the bureaucratic system of the capital before leaving the capital.

If things go on like this, the generals will not have enough military expenses, and if the military expenses are not enough, they can only take the road of embezzling ordinary soldiers and raising elite soldiers and family members.

Then on the battlefield, when encountering all the Tartars who are all soldiers, the large army has no choice but to break up-how much money can be used to do as much as possible, the logic is correct, there is nothing wrong with it.

In fact, how did the important garrisons of Ji Town, including Santunying and Zunhua, break through the city bloodlessly when the Tartars broke in?Sorry, the soldiers opened the city by themselves.

Why did the soldiers open the city?Because these people can't get paid.

Not long before the Houjin army entered the customs, Chongzhen had just cut some of the military expenditures of the towns on the nine sides, and laid off some soldiers by the way.

Then the gates of the capital, Santunying and Zunhua, the core defensive areas of Jizhen, the number one town in the world, were opened by laid-off soldiers.

There is a reason why later governments care about the employment rate, because once the number of unemployed people rises, society will fall into turmoil.The opening of the Zunhua Santun camp and the laid-off postman Li Zicheng are all vivid examples, including Li Zicheng's core cavalry, which is also composed of laid-off frontier troops from Gansu and Shaanxi.

Li Jichun, who was kneeling in front of the crossing crowd at this moment, was actually the same kind of person as the tens of thousands of generals of the Ming Dynasty, who were always suffering in the vicious circle of insufficient military expenditure.It's just that this guy was unlucky, and the Tartars attacked Yongping City after entering the pass.

After listening to Li Jichun's argument, Zhang Zhongqi, who was sitting in the hall, waved him to go down, and then several traversers began to exchange opinions.

In real history, Chongzhen did not spare Li Jichun afterwards.After the Tartars withdrew, all the descendants of Yongping, including a few minor officials, were killed by Chongzhen's order.

In the eyes of the time-traveling people with the thinking of later generations, soldiers who have exhausted their strength in the war do not need to bear the infinitely high moral requirements of ancient times.

In the wars of later generations, governments of various countries also allowed troops to surrender when they were wounded or surrounded, and they had to find ways to replace them afterwards, without any psychological barriers.

What the time-traversing people are discussing now is mainly about Li Jichun's arrangements.

According to Zhang Zhongqi's opinion, there is no need to waste resources on a person like Li Jichun. The whole family will be assigned to the Philippines under anonymity, and a whole reclamation team will be sent to the natives.

Two intelligence community figures, however, had different ideas.

After King Qin's operation this time, the crossing people will start a series of layouts in the north.In this case, a northern general who has been pinched will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the entire layout.

Cao's forces are all in the south right now, which is completely blank for the north. Now is the time to establish a network to recruit troops.

After the opinions of the two parties were presented, Qian Tieshan and Du Dewei remained silent.They are pure soldiers, they pat their butts and leave after the battle, and they won't get involved in such things.

Although there is a nominal head Zhang Dongdong in the Northward Delegation, but when it comes to their respective professional fields, it is still up to the individual.

Now that the two sides disagree, this matter can only be shelved temporarily, waiting for the big boss behind to make a decision.

So General Li, who was waiting outside, was passed in again, and then Zhang Zhongqi told him to "go back behind closed doors and think about your mistakes", and I will let you know when there is news.

After Li Jichun left, the news was sent back to Tianjin and Dayuan by telegram, and then everyone broke up and went to find a place to rest.Today, we have been fighting continuously for a day, and everyone is exhausted.

That night, there was a small episode.The sentry sent out to monitor Luanzhou City sent a message: the remaining 400 Tatar cavalry in the city have been dispersed into a dozen scattered teams, and they have begun to bypass Yongping and run to Yanshan in the north.

After receiving the news, the people who traveled through did not take any action, let him go, but there were only 400 people.In the middle of the night, the soldiers who had fought fiercely for a day were sent to disperse and chase the enemy, not to mention whether they could be caught, there was no need for this at all.

The next morning, the troops who had a good night's rest got up one after another, began to pack their bags, and prepared to set off.

The most important thing in the luggage is the head.

After being marinated overnight by the residents of Yongping City, the heads that were captured yesterday have all been packaged this morning.

As for the number of heads, the crossing crowd got 550 in Santunying, 400 in Qian'an, 300 in Luanzhou Road, and the most in Yongping. Including A Min and others, the total is 1400. The appearance is not good, and the civil servants don't admit it, and now the crossing crowd has a full 2500 heads on hand.

This was an achievement that was enough to make Man Chao drop his tongue, eyeballs and big teeth in shock.

However this is not enough.

This time, the Houjin troops stationed in several cities of the Ming Dynasty totaled 5000 people.In addition to the 400 people who ran away last night, there were a full 2000 Eight Banners soldiers in Zunhua City, which was fighting against the Ming army.

These 2000 people are also fat—if they can be caught.

So here we go to pack our bags.Amin has already sent a messenger to Zunhua yesterday, and the people who travel through the world can't judge what will happen in the direction of Zunhua now, so it is better to leave early.

(End of this chapter)