Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 984 Preparing for war
Nowadays, Yuan Xi's military force composition is very mixed. Except for a small number of Youzhou soldiers who were brought over by him personally, most of the others are newly recruited soldiers.

There are mainly two parts. One is the Jizhou Qingzhou soldiers brought by Zhuge Liang, which are mainly infantry troops. The second is the Jianghuai soldiers recruited by Lu Xun, which are mainly naval troops.

Among the soldiers under Zhuge Liang, the Jizhou soldiers came from Yuan Shang's remnant army, and the Qingzhou soldiers were taken over after Yuan Tan's death. Most of the soldiers on these two sides came from the Yuan family, and Zhuge Liang also conducted many army trainings during this period. Military discipline is relatively decent.

The situation on Lu Xun's side was very complicated. Shouchun was located in the center of the Jianghuai River, and there were refugee deserters from all sides. In addition to Chen Deng's Xuzhou soldiers, there were also Yuzhou Jiangdong deserters, and Huang Zu's defeated troops. There were even some Shanyue people who escaped from Yuzhang.

Lu Xun received Yuan Xi's order to recruit troops, so naturally he would not be picky, so he organized all these people to train together.

To be fair, Lu Xun in later generations was very good at running the army. In the Battle of Yiling, he relied on his 20,000 private soldiers as the mainstay, and defeated Liu Bei in the worst defeat in his life.

But in the final analysis, Lu Xun still used the way that nobles treat the people of the family, the superiors favoring the lower classes. The reason why he was able to train private soldiers and make everyone use their lives was that in addition to winning people's hearts, he also gave many practical benefits.

Lu Xun was able to do this because the Lu family he supported was a large family in Jiangdong. As one of the four major families, the Lu family had vast hectares of fertile land and the rich were conservative. Naturally, they could pay tens of thousands of slaves and win a lot of money. Their loyalty.

In this life, Lu Xun left the family. Although he was entrusted with important tasks by Yuan Xi and sat on one side as the governor of Jianghuai, in the final analysis, he was just a subordinate of Yuan Xi. The allocation of food, grass and baggage must be in accordance with the military laws designated by Yuan Xi's army. act.

Yuan Xijun's previous method of ensuring combat morale was to attach equal importance to ideological reform through labor education and salary. This approach actually cost a lot of time, money and energy for a single soldier, so Yuan Xi originally used Youzhou and Xuzhou as the two prefectures. With all his strength, he can only support more than 10,000 soldiers.

The tens of thousands of soldiers trained by Lu Xun were fine when defending on the Jianghuai defense line. After all, they did not take the initiative to attack, and the soldiers could not say anything. But with the arrival of Yuan Xi, who ordered the soldiers to march to Jiangxia in Yuzhou and the north bank of the Yangtze River, it was inevitable that It is necessary to encounter the situation of taking down the city.

Lu Xun hesitated and said: "Now the Jiangdong navy is very anxious to attack Lukou. It is said that General Guan is also having a hard time resisting. If we withdraw our troops, will we be criticized for not saving them?"

The best solution is to disarm, but Yuan Xi cannot do this now. He must maintain a considerable number of troops to maintain the balance of power between Jiangdong and Cao Cao.

The Jianghuai area where Lu Xun was located was prosperous, but after all, it only had two counties in Yangzhou. As the navy expanded day by day and reached 20,000 to 30,000 people, problems gradually began to arise.

Lu Xun knew that he had made a mistake, so he quickly informed Yuan Xi, who immediately sent Zhuge Liang to stabilize the situation.

Zhuge Liang didn't figure out how to manage the Jianghuai soldiers at first, so he tried to use the method of managing the Ji Qing soldiers, but found that it didn't work. Only then did he realize the complexity of the Jianghuai soldiers. The method of reeducation through labor has been found to have little effect.

In front of him, Guo Jia, Zhuge Liang and Lu Xun, and the three great counselors were all present, but their expressions were not very good. Guo Jia was not good at running an army, Zhuge Liang and Lu Xun were too young and had little experience. The three of them were actually facing the current predicament. I can't seem to think of any immediate solution.

Yuan Xi said: "I believe General Guan can stop it."

But now the ratio of personnel is completely reversed. There are only two veterans among the ten people. Although the veterans have high positions, the eight recruits are linked together to work in secret, resulting in little effect in the education.

He thought again and again and said aloud: "Re-adjust the plan."

Reflected in the desires of the soldiers, many surrendered soldiers were increasingly dissatisfied with Yuan Xijun's military discipline that prohibited the massacre of the city.

"Shrink the defense, postpone the expansion, and transfer all the unstable soldiers back to Shouchun to reorganize the army. When the reorganization is completed, we will go into battle again."

Yuan Xi sighed. With his later experience, he could not even think of a once and for all solution, let alone a few people who were limited by the times.

After Yuan Xi heard Zhuge Liang come over and explain the situation, he couldn't help but have a headache. This is the disadvantage of blindly expanding the army. As the number of people increases, the difficulty of management increases.

This mentality is a limitation of the times, and it is difficult to change for a while. Later generations of famous generals like Li Shimin almost caused a mutiny among his subordinates because they banned the massacre of the city. In the end, Li Shimin had to compensate the soldiers with private treasures to calm down the riot, not to mention The late Han Dynasty was an era when the world was in chaos and everyone was in danger.

In this era, massacres of cities were actually the norm. Most of the soldiers' income, including goods and women, came from massacres. Without these desires, the morale of most armies would not be maintained.

At this time, the surrendered soldiers who had tasted the benefits of massacre in the city inevitably started looting. Most of Lu Xun's generals were surrendered generals received from Yuan Shu, and it was almost impossible to restrain them, even if After Lu Xun intervened as a supervisor and used military law to deal with a group of people, the situation continued to deteriorate, and there were even small-scale deserters.

Liu Bei, the only one who did not massacre the city, actually suffered a lot for this. He lost Xuzhou and Yuzhou in the early stage, which was actually related to this factor. If the soldiers' desires were not satisfied, their morale would naturally be low, and they would be more likely to mutiny. and rebellion.

Previously, the Youzhou soldiers used the indoctrination method of veterans leading new recruits. Among the ten people in the group, there were eight veterans and two recruits, or even a higher ratio. In this way, during the labor education, the eight people had the dominant say, and the other two Naturally, it is not easy to resist and oppose. After all, people have a herd mentality, so they can be gradually transformed.

This is so because the proportions of people have changed drastically.

Thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of soldiers are not of the same order of magnitude in terms of management. Not only are their salaries stretched, but there is also a lot of noise among the sergeants. In addition, the Jianghuai area does not have the conditions for large-scale labor education, so it is not good The signs gradually emerged.

"I will write to him personally and explain this to him."

"Don't force it. The soldiers are like this. Going into battle will only cause chaos."

"The habits of soldiers and bandits must be changed, otherwise even if we conquer the country, the whole world will be just a bigger den of bandits."

"And now is the most critical moment. Cao Cao and Jiangdong may not be of the same mind. The Jianghuai area to Jingzhou is already the key to the world's situation. Every battle is related to the division of power territory."

"We need to discuss carefully how to obtain the greatest benefits in the next dispute."

"Please tell me who we should eat so that we can benefit the most." The three of them began to ponder, and Lu Xun hesitated: "If we want to take over the world as our goal, we must first weaken Cao Cao's strength, right?"

Guo Jia also nodded in agreement, "But the most difficult thing about Cao Cao is that he has many advisers, and he himself is also extremely difficult to deal with."

"To deal with Cao Cao, we must seize every possible opportunity to attack him and prevent him from having any hope of becoming more powerful."

Yuan Xi looked at Zhuge Liang. Zhuge Liang understood. He thought for a moment and said, "I agree with what Mr. Fengxiao and Boyan said."

"But I think there is a premise here."

"If Jiangdong can join forces with us, at least he won't hold us back."

"But Liang feels that the current Jiangdong is not only unable to do this, but will actually undermine all our actions."

"If we attack Cao Cao with all our strength, and if Jiangdong attacks the banks of the Yangtze River with all his strength, I'm afraid we will be in dire straits immediately."

Guo Jia said: "Kong Ming's statement is very interesting. Judging from your tone, it seems that Jiang Dong will definitely break up with me first?"

Zhuge Liang said seriously: "That's right."

"According to Sun Quan's thoughts, it is very likely that he will do this."

"Even Liang can be sure that this is the path Jiangdong will inevitably take."

"Because from Sun Quan's perspective, his ambition is not necessarily to seize the world. It is possible that he could seize the Jianghuai region and be satisfied."

"From the fact that he never fought with Cao's army from beginning to end, and didn't even train the infantry, it can be seen that he didn't have any strong ideas about plotting the Central Plains."

"If this is the case, Jiangdong has only one enemy from beginning to end, and that is us."

"And he feels that now we have to deal with Cao Cao with all our strength, and we don't dare to fall out with Jiang Dong, so as not to fall into the trap of attack from both sides, so he will give in to them."

"The risk of attacking Jiangdong is indeed extremely high. Now Jiangdong already has 100,000 navy troops, but we only have more than 20,000. We can maintain our strength. It is impossible to defeat Jiangdong on paper."

"If I were a Jiangdong counselor, that's what I would think. After all, they dare to attack Jiangxia from the Yangtze River waterway, which shows that they are confident."

"If we take the initiative to attack them, we might even give them an excuse. If we have colluded with Cao Cao, I'm afraid the emperor's edict will be sent to Xudu soon to prepare for the battlefield in Jiangdong."

After listening to Zhuge Liang's words, Guo Jia and Lu Xun had to admit that Jiang Dong might really think so!

Although in the eyes of the two of them, this was actually an extremely short-sighted behavior. Sun Quan wanted to share the world equally with Cao Cao, but Cao Cao had to agree. But was Cao Cao that kind of person?

If Yuan Xi is destroyed by Cao Cao today, I'm afraid Cao Cao will send troops to attack Jiangdong tomorrow!
At this time, Yuan Xi slowly said: "I only ask one question."

"How many years do you think it will take if I want to attack Cao Cao first and deal with Jiangdong's harassment at the same time?"

Guo Jia, Zhuge Liang, and Lu Xun spoke out one after another.

"fifteen years."

"Twelve years."

"Twenty years."

Yuan Xi then said: "If Cao Cao is here, how many years will it take for me to destroy Jiangdong first?"

The three of them were silent now. They discussed it for a long time, and finally Guo Jia said: "It's hard to say."

"If Cao Cao's offensive can be blocked, Jiangdong can be overthrown in as little as five years or as long as eight years."

"But during this period, we may be attacked from both sides and destroyed."

Yuan Xi nodded and said with a smile: "It's pretty much what I thought."

"The question is, which one do you think is better?"

(End of this chapter)