Nowadays, the recruitment conditions of the Tang Army are not low. Soldiers need to be selected from a large population. Since Zhili Fourth Road has a large population, there will naturally be a lot of soldiers that can be selected.
In fact, the current Zhili Sidao area has provided at least 30% of the army's military resources for the empire!
As such an important recruitment area, the Army Department of the Cabinet naturally set up quite intensive recruitment sites here, and the Army also set up numerous recruit training camps here.
After these recruits complete training, the batch with relatively good performance will be sent to serve in the major infantry divisions, while the batch with relatively poor performance will be assigned to various reserve divisions.
Therefore, no matter from which aspect, the importance of the Zhili Fourth Road to the empire is beyond doubt, which is why the empire stationed heavy troops here.
The entire army's front-line field troops and reserve divisions, these two regular armies combined, have a total strength of nearly 700,000 people. The ratio of front-line field troops and reserve divisions is about one to one.
And this total force figure is actually quite terrifying.
Because the above-mentioned troops, regardless of whether they are front-line field troops or reserve divisions, they are actually full-time troops!
Even though the military has launched vigorous military colonization and self-reliance, the pressure on military expenditures is still quite heavy.
Many of the military's plans have not been implemented. Many troops have used old iron-cast five-pound artillery pieces for many years, and their barrels have reached the end of their lifespan, but they have no money to replace them.
Because most of the military's expenditures are used to pay soldiers' salaries, and a small part is used to replace flintlocks and equip grenades, and other army aspects cannot be taken into consideration.
The Army's life was hard, but the Navy was very happy. The fleet expansion plan for the 7th year of Xuanping was almost completed. They immediately proposed a new round of fleet expansion plan for the 10th year of Xuanping.
Not long after Li Xuan returned from a private visit in Weibo, he frowned slightly when he saw the fleet expansion plan.
Li Xuan believed that the navy should continue to expand, but the expansion he supported did not mean blindly building ships without caring about other aspects.
Starting from this year, we will start construction of more than ten battleships, more than twenty cruisers, and thirty frigates at the same time every year. Within five years, we will build a huge fleet of battleships with a total of more than 300 battleships!
What a joke.
Not to mention how much it will cost to build, are there so many slipways that can be started at the same time? Even if it is built, can your navy find so many officers to command it and so many sailors to drive it?
Moreover, the title of this plan at the beginning was "Navy Supplementary Plan". When Li Xuan first read the title, he thought that the Navy was just making a small fuss, building a few battleships or something to supplement the lineup, but he did not expect that the people in this Navy were
Trickery.
Building three hundred new capital ships is called supplementary?
Your navy doesn’t have dozens of capital ships in total right now, okay?
If the title of the book had something like three hundred battleships, he probably wouldn't waste time reading it and would just type it back!
Even now, he just glanced at it briefly and was too lazy to write any instructions. He just gave it to Admiral Lei Wan and said, "Take it back, correct it, and send it up!"
Li Xuan's reaction was naturally within the expectations of Admiral Lei Wan. As one of the only two admirals in the navy and the minister on duty in the imperial study room, he had been working in the imperial court for many years, so he naturally knew what the Holy Emperor would be.
react.
But it doesn’t matter if you don’t agree. If you don’t open your mouth like a lion, how can you get meat to eat!
As the saying goes, the price is all over the sky, and the money is paid back when you get it!
Our navy has said it wants three hundred capital ships. Your Majesty, you can just give us a discount in half. One hundred and fifty ships is also acceptable to our navy. But if that is not possible, one hundred or fifty ships are also acceptable.
If that doesn't work, our Navy would be happy to approve thirty ships!
Well, that's right, the bottom line for the generals of the Navy is thirty capital ships, roughly five or six battleships, about ten cruisers, and a dozen frigates.
But you can't be so honest when planning. The person who made the plan asked Admiral Lewan what number he wanted. Lewan initially said two hundred ships, but as soon as he spoke, he changed his mind to three hundred ships.
Now that the plan has been rejected, it doesn't matter, I'm working on one, and next time I write a hundred and fifty ships or something, and then it's rejected, then it's a hundred ships, then fifty, and finally thirty.
The whole process is a routine. It seems like bargaining with the emperor, but in fact it is just to gain sympathy, because the navy does have its own plan, so in the end the navy will stick to the bottom line and will not let go until thirty battleships are killed.
The previous bargaining process was actually a buffer with the Holy Emperor. If he foolishly said thirty ships and the Holy Emperor directly rejected it, then the trouble would be big.
What Lei Wan has to do now is to go back and revise one or two things, and then come up with some new things and submit the new plan. After repeating this several times, when the Holy Emperor is annoyed by the noise, he will just say forget it and get out of here.
Go, stop chirping, their navy's goal has been achieved.
Li Xuan actually sees this kind of routine of the navy, and sometimes he is quite helpless. He also knows the reason why the minister likes to do this. It is just that he is afraid that the numbers will be too harsh at the beginning, but in the end it will be too much.
Neither side can get down the stairs.
At that time, either the Holy Emperor will bow his head, or the navy will bow his head!
And it is impossible for the Holy Emperor to bow his head. It is impossible in this life. If the Holy Emperor bows his head and admits his mistake, the whole world will be destroyed, because in that case, it is almost equivalent to the destruction of the political theory foundation of the Tang Empire.
Everyone can take up swords and guns and say that he is the chosen one to rebel.
It is impossible for an emperor to issue edicts to punish himself every day, and it is impossible to maintain his sanctity, and it is not in line with the theoretical basis of the Tang Empire.
In the Tang Empire, there was no such thing as the emperor and the scholar-bureaucrats co-ruling the world. This was serious political incorrectness and would be targeted by Hantong's hawks and dogs.
The political theories promoted in the Tang Dynasty newspapers in recent years mainly include two points:
The first point is that the land of the world is not the king's land, and the shores of the land are not the king's subjects. To put it simply, no matter what, it belongs to the Holy Emperor, no matter who is the subject of the Holy Emperor.
The second point is that ‘the emperor is not a human being’.
That’s right, he’s just not a human being!
As for why I say this, it involves one thing that the Tang Dynasty Daily has been doing in recent years, which is to deify Li Xuan!
In the early years, it was said that the emperor was ordered by the sky and would live forever, but now, the official propaganda has directly changed to the son of the sky.
It is said that Li Xuan is the son of heaven, born from the essence of heaven and earth. Naturally, he cannot be an ordinary person. He is a god, the only god in the human world!
Li Xuan is greater than the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, and is even a higher level God Emperor than the Five Gods in mythology!
Therefore, Li Xuan is not a human being!
He is God!
Li Xuan, who is not a human being, naturally cannot make mistakes. Those who made mistakes were all the officials. They deceived the superiors and deceived the inferiors, which led to many tyranny. Their target was not the Holy Emperor, but the treacherous officials.
Qian Zuili, the Minister of Taxation of the Tang Dynasty and the Minister on Duty in the Royal Study Room, is currently the biggest traitor in the world. Countless landlords and businessmen are eager to eat his flesh and drink his blood!
In the face of a deified emperor, many things cannot be handled in the usual way of getting along with monarchs and ministers. If admonishment was done in previous dynasties, it would be normal and even considered a period of time.
Good story.
But in the Tang Dynasty, if you catch Li Xuan and scold that minister, saying that Li Xuan made a mistake here or there, the consequences will usually not be good.
Because it actually has nothing to do with right or wrong, but everything to do with political correctness!
When you want to give advice, you have to say it is the fault of other ministers, and you must not say it is the fault of the Holy Emperor!
This is not about pleasing the emperor, but because the political environment of the Tang Dynasty was like this!
Behind this, what it actually represents is the unprecedented concentration of imperial power!
China has thousands of years of history. Although it was already a monarchy during the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, the imperial power was always too great. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, nobles were in power. Before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, aristocratic families were in power.
After the Song Dynasty, although the imperial power was further concentrated, the literati class replaced the previous aristocrats and aristocratic families and became a new class that mutually restricted the imperial power.
This class reached its peak during the Ming Dynasty. Even powerful men like Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di were killed over and over again, but in the end they still had to compromise with the civil servants.
The later Emperor Zhengde was also a very awesome person, but he was so awesome that he was thrown into trouble by those civil servants in his early years, and almost died.
Emperor Zhengde, who has been in power for more than 40 years, still cannot suppress the civil servant group when it comes to establishing a prince!
It can be seen from this that over thousands of years of history, the imperial power has not been centralized too much!
But this situation has undergone earth-shaking changes in the Tang Dynasty!
Beginning in the Huang Zhushan era, Li Xuan expanded the Hanlin Academy through the expansion of the cabinet, and regarded the Hanlin Academy as the secretarial agency. At the same time, he established independent institutions such as the Army Privy Council, the Naval Command, the Supervisory Office, and the Supreme Court to balance and divide the general public.
The power of various institutions within the Tang Dynasty, and directly grasped the power in their hands.
This resulted in the concentration of imperial power in the Tang Dynasty reaching an unprecedented level in China for thousands of years!
This is not just about Li Xuan’s power, but about imperial power!
If we just talk about Li Xuan, then with Li Xuan's current prestige, he can actually firmly control this country without any extra means.
But why did he still do this? Because he wanted to institutionally establish the centralization of imperial power.
To ensure that after his death, the Tang Empire can remain a complete unified country instead of falling into pieces!
There is no reason for Li Xuan to worry about this problem. Although he is still very young, the territory of the Tang Empire is getting larger and larger. Even if steamships and telegraph communications may appear in the future, making governance easier, many problems will still arise.
If he dies in a few decades, it is very likely that he will fall apart like the Mongol Empire!
Now, he is starting to take precautions to ensure that after his death, this huge empire will still be a complete empire. The high degree of imperial centralization is actually, in other words, monarch centralization.
The core is not about how much power the monarch holds, but how much power the central government holds to avoid local divisions!
Imperial centralization is the goal that Li Xuan has been pursuing in recent years, and many things that happened in this process actually serve this goal. .