The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

Xu Wei was worried that Wu Mian would blame Lin Youge again, so he said: "What's the use of Yuan Fu's talk now? Now, we should discuss how to deal with this group of pirates."

Goldman Sachs continued what Xu Wei said: "Your Majesty, we must not allow this group of pirates to continue to dominate Shandong. Now that they have taken Qingzhou, their ambitions are obvious."

"If we don't send heavy troops to destroy it while its foothold is not yet stable and strong, it will cause great trouble to me in the future!"

After listening to what the two men said, Emperor Jiahua frowned and remained silent.

Speaking of which, although Emperor Jiahua and the important ministers of the Great Chu Dynasty still did not know the details of the Yi army and only regarded it as a large-scale pirate, they had already taken it seriously.

However, Da Chu now not only lacks money and food for troops, but also does not even have available troops and horses.

The border troops of Dachu had their own tasks, mainly guarding the border and preventing foreign enemies from invading.

In addition, in recent years, the Peasant and Ming armies have emerged one after another in Dachu, and the several border armies squeezed out from the border have also been used to suppress the Peasant Army in Shaanxi, Henan, and Hebei.

If a few thousand border troops could defeat the "sea pirates" in Shandong, the Chu court could still squeeze them out.

The problem is that, judging from the current situation, Shandong's "sea pirates" probably have tens of thousands of troops and numerous guns.

To pacify it, as discussed by cabinet ministers last year, it would probably take tens of thousands of border troops and tens of thousands of local troops, a total of nearly 100,000 to achieve it.

Therefore, even if there is enough money and food at the moment, the Chu court cannot mobilize so many border troops at the moment.

In such a situation, Emperor Jiahua, who was mediocre in military ability, could not come up with any good ideas, so he looked at Chen Wan, Minister of the Ministry of War, and asked: "How does Grand Sima think the Shandong pirates should be pacified?"

Chen Wan served as governor of border provinces in Dachu for several times, and also served as governor of Shaanxi and Gansu. He had great military exploits, so he was transferred to the central government and became minister of the Ministry of War.

The structure of Da Chu is very similar to that of Ming Dynasty. The Minister of the Ministry of War controls part of the military power. It is the top three ministers on par with Tianguan of the Ministry of Personnel and Da Sinong of the Ministry of Hubu.

Chen Wan is tall, over sixty years old, with gray hair, but he has the majesty of an old general.

Hearing this, he cupped his fists and said, "Your Majesty, if we want to quell the Shandong pirates, the best strategy is to mobilize tens of thousands of border troops, supplemented by 100,000 local soldiers and horses, to destroy them with the force of thunder."

"However, the imperial court is now short of soldiers, horses, money and food. The most appropriate strategy is to first pacify the bandits in Henan and Hebei, free up soldiers, horses, money and food, and then destroy the sea bandits in Shandong."

Before Emperor Jiahua could judge whether Chen Wanzhi's strategy was good or not, Goldman Sachs spoke.

"Da Sima should know that the bandits in Hebei and Henan have not been pacified for several years, and they have resurrected after suppressing them. I don't know how long it will take to pacify them all."

"With this delay, who knows whether the Shandong pirates will attack Yanzhou and Jinan again? If they capture the entire Shandong, they may not be able to destroy them even if they mobilize tens of thousands of border troops."

After hearing this, Chen Wan asked back, "Can Mr. Gao Ge now produce tens of thousands of border troops and the money and food they need?"

Goldman Sachs said: "As long as we have enough money and food, we can mobilize tens of thousands of forbidden troops and border troops, why not?"

Imperial Guards?

Several people heard that Goldman Sachs placed the Forbidden Army in front of the border army, and they all understood what he was thinking - the border army is difficult to mobilize, but there are still 200,000 Forbidden Army in Xiangjing!
Although the 200,000 forbidden troops are just an imaginary number, there should be 100,000 forbidden troops, right?
Why not leave 50,000 to guard Xiangjing and send 50,000 to quell the Shandong pirates?

However, the expressions of Emperor Jiahua, Wu Mian and Chen Wan, the three people who knew the true situation of the Forbidden Army, changed slightly.

It is true that there are still 100,000 people in the Forbidden Army, but there may not even be 50,000 people among them who can actually be mobilized to fight.

As for those who can truly be called elites and are comparable to the frontier troops, there may not even be 20,000 soldiers.

This is a secret known only to the top few people who hold military power in the Chu State, and it must not be exposed. Because once it is exposed, the fact that the Chu State is weak inside will also be exposed. Gao Sheng originally suspected that there was a big problem with the imperial army. Otherwise, why didn't the court send the imperial army to participate in the rebellion when the bandits in Henan and Hebei had been rising for so many years?

He proposed to use the imperial army to quell the pirates, which was originally meant to be a test.

Seeing the expressions of Emperor Jiahua, Chen Wan, and Wu Mian, my heart suddenly sank, knowing that he had guessed correctly.

The Imperial Army of Chu cannot be used!
Xu Wei also sighed.

In fact, he had already expected this and didn't even bother to test it.

But now that this matter has been confirmed, I still feel that the state affairs are more difficult than expected, and I am afraid that the country will be overturned in ten or twenty years.

This Dachu high-level meeting ended here.

In response to the Yi army's capture of nearly half of Shandong, the Chu court was unable to come up with a response...
As time passed, news of the Yi army's capture of Qingzhou also spread to Henan and Hebei. The Nongming army who were still active in these two provinces were greatly encouraged after hearing about it.

Daming Mansion, thousands of people are resting in a forest near Kaizhou.

Most of these people were dressed in rags, like refugees, but there were also thousands of them wearing armor and even hundreds of firecrackers of various types.

A tall man was sitting on a stone, chewing coarse grain bread, frowning.

This person is Guan Cheng, nicknamed Mr. Guan, the leader of the Nongming Army who has been active on the borders of Hebei, Henan, and Shandong provinces in recent months.

Yes, he originally had the title of Great Chu Tongsheng and worked as a private school teacher in the countryside. However, due to various reasons such as government persecution, he was forced to revolt and raised a peasant army.

He fought in three provinces and had tens of thousands of people under his command at the height of his power.

It's a pity that because most of them are farmers, they don't have all the cold weapons, let alone firearms. When encountering local patrol camps and garrison troops, they can barely fight, but when encountering border troops, they can only run away, but they may not be able to outrun them.

Therefore, after several months of guerrilla fighting on the borders of the three provinces and successive defeats in the past month or two, Mr. Guan only has more than 3,000 people left.

But after going through so many battles, they have trained more than a thousand "elite soldiers" who can fight.

Unfortunately, in the face of the encirclement and suppression by the army, Guan Cheng, the leader, could not see a way to survive in the future, nor did he know how long they could hold on.

But he didn't dare to expose this worry - if he, as the leader, was not confident of surviving the encirclement and suppression by the army, the people under his command would be dispersed soon.

"Mr. Guan, I heard about a great news!" A dark and thin young man with an unattractive appearance entered the forest and came to Guan Cheng.

Guan Cheng asked: "What a happy event?"

He could not imagine that the current situation would bring any great joy to them.

The thin black young man said: "I heard that a large band of pirates appeared in Shandong. Last year, they first captured Denglai Prefecture and Qingzhou last month."

"The imperial court has suffered successive defeats at the hands of this group of pirates, and it is impossible to deal with them for the time being."

Guan Cheng's eyes lit up after hearing this, and he said: "Occupy the two prefectures of Denglai and Qingzhou? Doesn't this mean that we occupy half of Shandong?"

The dark-skinned young man didn't know geography, so he was stunned when he heard it. "Half of Shandong? Is there only six prefectures in Shandong?" (End of this chapter)