The first thousand four hundred and one chapters hold high
Regarding the Army's accusations, the Navy also had different opinions.
Admiral Bao Yifen, the former chief of the Navy's military command department who has retired from active service and the minister on duty in the imperial study room, criticized the army unceremoniously in public: "This army is a group of uncles, and they are uncles who only take money and do nothing.
, with so much military expenditure every year, apart from occasionally beating up a few inconspicuous barbarian tribes, I haven’t seen them do anything!”
In the eyes of the navy, the Tatars, Chahar Tribe, Duoyan Sanwei and other enemies instantly turned into so-called inconspicuous barbarians, which made the army generals very angry.
Let’s not talk about others, but do you dare to say that the Tatars are just an inconspicuous barbarian tribe?
Come on, that is a powerful enemy with at least a dozen or two hundred thousand cavalry troops!
With this cavalry army of more than 100,000 and 200,000, looking at the entire East Asia region, apart from the Tang army that can beat them to the ground and finally withdraw westward in despair, who else can do it? Can your navy do this?
arrive?
But in the blink of an eye, the navy general said that if the Tatars just went to sea, these hundreds of thousands of cavalry would be nothing, and a salvo of our warships would be enough to hit them.
The key is, will the Tatars go to the coast or even go to sea to fight with the Tang Dynasty navy?
Won't!
The conflict between the Army of the Tang Dynasty and the Navy of the Tang Dynasty has been going on for a long time. There are countless scoldings every year, and Li Xuan comes to the side many times. However, Li Xuan has always held high the principle of "staying in the middle and not making any progress".
' slogan, turning a blind eye to the various conflicts and contradictions between the army and the navy.
The Holy Emperor Li Xuan had this attitude, and the other ministers in the court were naturally more accustomed to the quarrels between the army and the navy.
After all, everyone is a smart person. He can guess why the Holy Emperor turned a blind eye to the quarrel between the army and the navy.
Apart from striking a balance and preventing the army and navy from merging together, there is basically no other possibility.
After guessing the thoughts of the Holy Emperor Li Xuan, many ministers knew what to do. Many people even speculated that since the army and navy quarrel so fiercely every year, I am afraid it is still the army and the navy.
There is a tacit understanding among the navy.
Without the acquiescence and permission of the high-level generals on both sides, how could the quarrel be so fierce?
I'm afraid the two generals of the army and navy, who are openly at war with each other, may be good friends in private.
Li Xuan also knew about this, but he still didn't care. He didn't care what people thought in their hearts, and he didn't care if others saw his thoughts, but he just wanted to achieve a balance, even if it was just a superficial balance.
Although there seems to be a tacit understanding between the top brass of the Army and Navy, it is unlikely that the two sides will be able to collude when they have been openly conflicting for a long time and have even formed their own unique cultural heritage.
As we enter the end of the 21st year of Xuanping and a new round of fiscal budget is about to begin, the army and navy continue to quarrel, but no one has noticed that in this year's fiscal budget allocation, the amount of royal funds has greatly increased.
!
Royal expenses are the funds that the royal family obtains from the treasury every year, and are then directly transferred to the internal treasury. The annual expenditures of the royal family are all expenditures from the internal treasury, not from the national treasury.
As for the annual expenses of the royal family, that is quite a lot. The pure living expenses of the royal family are not much, and they only cost hundreds of thousands of yuan.
The annual expenditures of the royal family mainly include the administrative expenses of the royal family's internal institutions, the military expenses of the Guards, etc.
For example, the Royal Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institute of Technology, the Royal Youth Military Academy, the Survey and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy, and the Imperial Assets Section of the Hanlin Academy. Although these institutions have different names and different prefixes, one thing is the same, that is, they all belong to
It is a typical internal institution of the royal family. Although the officials serving in it are of high rank, they have their own system.
To a certain extent, the personnel of these royal institutions are more appropriately called royal employees.
Specifically, the most expensive ones are Hantong and the Guards. Other institutions either don't spend much money to begin with, or they have their own income and don't need much financial support.
For example, the Royal Assets Division is an expensive organization, but it all costs profits handed over by major royal enterprises, because in a certain sense, the Royal Assets Division is more like the group headquarters of many royal enterprises.
But an intelligence agency with a large number of personnel like Hantong spends a lot of money every year!
In addition, there is the Guards!
So far, the Guards has a total of three infantry divisions, one cavalry division, one artillery brigade, and one fleet.
The infantry, cavalry and artillery are all fully equipped troops, and the Guards fleet is also a fleet with battleships and frigates.
The total strength of all the Guards, including combat troops and civilian officers, reached 80,000.
It would be quite expensive to raise these 80,000 people.
Because of the continuous expansion of the Guards, the scale of Hantong is also getting larger and larger, and the royal funds spent every year are also getting larger and larger. But this year, when the army and navy are competing for the budget, the Guards are already outnumbered.
He quietly snatched away his own cake, which resulted in at least 20% more funding than in previous years.
As soon as the news was revealed, the army and navy were alerted, because their intuition told them that the Guards were about to start causing trouble.
Their guess was not wrong, the Guards were indeed preparing to cause trouble, or in other words, Li Xuan planned to let the Guards cause trouble.
The Guards have always been fully manned, and their equipment has always been equipped with the most advanced weapons. Nowadays, all kinds of land warfare weapons in the Guards are the most advanced. Even the battleships, there are basically seven or eight main battleships.
Steam engines were also gradually modified.
Most of the extra military spending will naturally be used to expand the military, while the remaining part will be used to pay for exercises and training.
The Guards has submitted a plan to deploy some of its troops to conduct long-distance maneuvers after the New Year. The long-distance maneuvers will be coordinated through trains and steam ships.
The destinations of the exercise are Henan, Hubei, Hebei and Guangdong, and a landing exercise will be conducted at Da Yuan Mansion on the way.
It is easy to understand the expansion of the army. The pace of expansion of the Guards has always followed that of the Army. Basically, when the Army expands, the Guards will follow suit. Therefore, in recent years, the size of the Army has become larger and larger, but so has the Guards.
It gradually expanded from 30,000 people to 80,000 people.
But when it comes to large-scale exercises, many of them just don't understand.
Such large-scale exercises cannot be carried out for no reason, even if it is to improve the combat effectiveness of the troops, because the cost is too high.
On the Army side, if you want to hold an exercise involving tens of thousands of people, you have to be careful with your budget. Many times, Army generals prefer to use combat instead of training!
No matter how you practice or train, it would be simpler and more straightforward to go directly to the northwest or northeast to fight the local barbarians!
Over the years, the Army has engaged in combat-based training and implemented a rotation system for its troops. Basically, the twenty main infantry divisions have taken turns on the battlefield. Their performance has been good or bad, but overall the Army is quite satisfied.
In fact, the Guards has always sent troops to fight abroad.
In order to maintain the combat effectiveness of the Guards, the Guards have always had the tradition of deploying some of their troops to fight on the front lines. In the past few years, a temporary brigade was even dispatched to the northeast and northwest at the same time, with more than one
Fifteen thousand people are fighting outside.
The designation of the First Temporary Brigade of the Guards has been in place in the northwest for many years. Even the brigade headquarters has been established for many years, but the Guards units inside are not fixed, and are basically separated by one year.
There will be a rotation!
Therefore, if there are no special needs, the Guards do not need to conduct large-scale exercises, which is a waste of money!
However, these are only the thoughts of the army and navy generals, not Li Xuan's thoughts!
The role of the Guards has never been to fight on the battlefield, but to defend against internal enemies, or to be more precise, to defend against the army or navy, or an insurrectionary army that suddenly rises one day.
There is no way, who makes Li Xuan more pessimistic and more afraid of death.
Therefore, when the size of the Guards was relatively small, Li Xuan concentrated the Guards in Jinling City. But now, as the empire's control expands and the strength of the army continues to increase, the strength of the Guards also continues to increase.
, the current military strength has reached more than 80,000, but there are still some shortcomings.
In this case, it is time to expand the army and then send part of the Guards to garrison in other places.
On the one hand, it is to reduce the defense pressure on the army, and on the other hand, it is to use the Guards to control several of the most important strategic areas: Kaifeng, the hinterland of the Central Plains, Tianjin, the site of the Fourth Battle in the north, Wuchang, the gateway to Huguang in the southwest, and Guangzhou, the important town in the south.
Li Xuan hoped to station a certain amount of Guards troops in the above-mentioned places to suppress local unstable forces.
Therefore, Li Xuan is preparing to expand the Guards, but before expanding the army, he needs to familiarize the Guards with long-distance combat capabilities and the ability to fight alone.
This is also the fundamental reason why Li Xuan conducted this large-scale maneuver exercise.
Because in Li Xuan's vision, the Guards in the future will mainly be stationed in strategic towns, and when encountering civil strife, they will often need to face rebels with stronger forces. In order to make up for the lack of troops,
The ability to maneuver quickly over long distances is very important, and the ability to fight alone is also very important.
The purpose of this exercise is to allow the Guards to master this ability, at least familiarize it with it a little bit, so that if they really encounter this kind of thing in the future, they won't have no experience at all.