In the royal study, the atmosphere was quite stagnant, as if the air had stopped flowing.
The empress pursed her red lips tightly, her pretty face was tense, and her bright eyes were full of anger.
Sitting on the side are four ministers, including the Prime Minister of Military Affairs, the Prime Minister of Literature, the Marquis of Dingjun, and the Grand Master.
Wen Xiang was also furious, gnashing his teeth at one moment and humming in anger at the other.
Prime Minister Wu looked gloomy and remained silent.
Marquis Dingjun's eyes widened and he stared at the Grand Master. At this time, the other party was looking at the document sent by King Mu from Zhaolie Mansion, and the empress asked them to circulate it to each other.
After reading the two civil and military figures, one was furious and the other was as dark as water. Marquis Dingjun understood that the situation in Zhaolie Mansion was very serious!
Therefore, he looked at the grand master closely, waiting for the other person to finish reading, and then take it over and take a closer look.
"Oh! What a sin!" The Grand Master lamented, and the wrinkles on his face were twisted, showing that he was extremely sad in his heart.
While lamenting, the Grand Master reached out and handed the document to Marquis Dingjun.
Marquis Dingjun quickly took it and looked at it carefully.
After reading it quickly, he was stunned. Apart from the shock, his heart kept sinking, as if it had sunk into his stomach!
The document contains a total of three pieces of information.
The first is that when King Mu arrived at Zhaolie Mansion, he discovered that the Lijiang River had burst its embankment thirteen days ago, but the government government waited until seven days to report it. As a result, the victims were everywhere, starving and dead, and the situation became extremely serious. p>
Furious, King Mu wanted to kill Magistrate Zhaolie as a warning and severely punish Magistrate Zhaolie. However, when he arrived in Yanle County, he discovered that Magistrate Zhaolie... had disappeared!
After investigation, he understood the specific process.
It turns out that on the day of the breach of the embankment, the three highest officials of Zhaoliefu Yamen, the magistrate, the tongzhi, and the general judge had all made decisions and should report them immediately.
Three days later, Tongzhi got the news from nowhere and found that the prefect had not reported it. He went to question it, but was brutally killed by the prefect.
After that, the magistrate continued to conceal the matter and failed to report it. After another four days, the magistrate noticed something was wrong and realized that the magistrate's disappearance was related to the magistrate. He immediately informed the garrison captain and went to question him together, but found that the magistrate had disappeared. It was not until this time that news of the dam break in the lower reaches of the Lijiang River began to be sent to Zhanjing.
The second piece of news was that the lower reaches of the Lijiang River had burst its embankments after only five days of heavy rain, which was unbelievable. Therefore, the general magistrate sent people to check a few days ago and found traces of someone digging the embankments.
It can be seen that this natural disaster is probably a man-made disaster!
The third piece of news is that over the past ten days or so, the flooding in the Lijiang River has intensified. From the beginning it flooded several counties, to now, most of Zhaolie Prefecture has become a vast ocean.
As a result, the victims were everywhere, and the number was huge, nearly one million.
In order to survive, many disaster victims were beguiled by others and joined the Panlian Mountain Bandits, causing the bandits to expand rapidly, from the previous 200,000 to 500,000.
Fortunately, the rain has subsided slightly and the flooding has stopped expanding. With the government's full-scale disaster relief efforts, more victims have been prevented from becoming rogues.
But now, the Panlian Mountain bandits are on the right, watching eagerly. King Mu only has more than 10,000 soldiers and horses. Even if he mobilizes the garrisons from the surrounding counties, the number is only 20,000 to 30,000, which is simply impossible to deal with. Therefore, he asked the empress to
Dispatch soldiers and horses from the northern garrison town to suppress the bandits.
If the Panlian Mountain bandits are allowed to take advantage of disasters to increase their power, they may grow into a behemoth in time and become difficult to kill.
Holding the document tightly, Marquis Dingjun did not expect that in just a short period of time, Linzhan would look like this.
The chaos of the Southern Barbarians, the violent floods, and the continuous bandit disasters... It is true that misfortunes never come alone. Is it possible that God cannot see it and still stand today?
No, there must be some young person who is making trouble in secret!
Otherwise, there would be no traces of human excavation on the Lijiang Dam!
When Marquis Dingjun was in confusion, he heard the empress's voice.
"I plan to dispatch 300,000 soldiers and horses from the northern garrison to suppress the bandits. What do you think, dear ladies?" Although her face was calm, it was still possible to hear that the empress' voice was no longer cold, but a little angry.<
/p>
Prime Minister Wen frowned and said, "There are 500,000 mountain bandits. Isn't it not enough to only dispatch 300,000 troops to suppress them?"
"No," Wu Yingying said, "Although the bandits are large in number, their combat power is not strong. If three hundred thousand are used properly, they can be wiped out."
He knew that Linzhan must not start a vigorous war at this time, let alone fall into the quagmire of war. He must fight quickly with minimal losses, otherwise, he will fall into the trap of Chixinmen.
It will also give Da Li an opportunity to take advantage of.
Marquis Dingjun nodded and agreed that if he had only needed 150,000 yuan when he was young, he could have defeated 500,000 bandits.
"Then Chi Dusi will lead 300,000 troops to suppress the bandits!" the empress said firmly.
Chi Dusi was the second in the martial arts examination in the first year of Zhanqing. His full name was Chi Yuanwu. He was a fourth-rank official and commanded 400,000 soldiers. He was in a garrison town in the north. He was cautious and had extraordinary strategies.
An excellent candidate for gangster missions.
Prime Minister Wu and Marquis Dingjun nodded at the same time. The Grand Master never had much opinion, and Prime Minister Wen could only suppress his words and remain silent.
After discussing the matter of suppressing the bandits, Prime Minister Wu took out a letter from his arms, handed it to the Empress, and said, "Your Majesty, this is an urgent report from Southern Xinjiang from Lieutenant Zhu Shou."
Seeing that everyone turned their heads and looked confused, the Prime Minister continued, "The war in the south is urgent. Zhu Shouwei said in the letter that the southern barbarians knew they were outnumbered and sneaked into the forest to ambush them. The dense forest was vast, so Zhu Shouwei said.
The number of soldiers and horses under his command gradually decreased, with only more than 10,000 people left. After they dispersed, entering the dense forest was like a fish entering the deep sea, and no trace of the barbarians could be found."
Everyone couldn't help but frown after hearing this.
The situation in the northern border is unfavorable, but I didn’t expect that the southern border is not going well either.
The empress frowned and asked, "My dear friends, how should we deal with this situation?"
Before Minister Wen could say anything, Prime Minister Wu took the lead and said, "We should send troops, but not too many."
First of all, the more troops and horses there are, the more food and grass will be needed, which will be a big burden for Linzhan.
Secondly, when fighting in the forest, no matter how many soldiers and horses there are, it is useless.
After all, there are many mosquitoes and barbarians are cunning, so only elite soldiers can be effective.
"Well," Dingjun Marquis Fu Xu said, "it is not advisable to have too many soldiers and horses, and they have to disperse into the forest. It is best to have only a few thousand in each team."
"Thousands of people, do you mean three thousand or five thousand?" Wen Xiang snorted and retorted.
He finally got a chance to speak out. These two people are singing and singing together. Do you really think that since he has never led an army, he doesn’t understand strategy?
"Three thousand can do it, five thousand can do it, the key is that the general must have extraordinary strategies to deal with the ambush from the dark, and can find the traces of the barbarians and win the victory in a short period of time." Wu Xiang said calmly. p>
"That's right." Marquis Dingjun echoed.
Prime Minister Wen suddenly choked, but before he could speak, the Taishi beside him frowned and said, "It's hard to find a general who leads a mere thousands of people, but also has an extraordinary strategy!"
Wen Lian hurriedly answered, "Exactly, the high-quality generals are unwilling, and the low-quality generals do not have such ability, what's the explanation?"
He glanced at Prime Minister Wu and Marquis Dingjun with a proud look in his eyes.
There is no solution to this situation.
As long as generals with good strategies are at least fourth or fifth grade, they can control 100,000, or even hundreds of thousands of people. Who would be willing to let them lead thousands of people to fight guerrillas in the woods?
As for low-grade generals, there may be some who do have extraordinary strategies, but their reputations are not obvious. Who can find them?
Just when Wen Xiang was secretly proud and happy that Wu Xiang and the two slapped themselves in the face, Ding Junhou suddenly said, "I know some of such people."
Everyone couldn't help but be surprised and looked around quickly. Even the empress was a little confused.
Is there really someone with extraordinary strength within Linzhan who cannot be reused?
Faced with everyone's doubts, Marquis Dingjun said slowly, "A member of the first class of Taijiangyuan!"
