Regarding the Army's tenacious attitude, even the Holy Emperor Li Xuan actually felt a little helpless.
Li Xuan is not saying that he wants to disarm the army. For a country whose native population is about to exceed 300 million, there are already millions of immigrants in various overseas territories, and they also indirectly rule tens of millions of indigenous people from all over the world. Overseas territories are all over the world.
For a huge empire on which the sun never sets.
It is still necessary to maintain a military force with a scale of more than one million people.
After all, there are too many places to control.
In Central Asia, hundreds of thousands of people are needed to fight the Tatars. In areas such as Baku, a certain number of people are also needed to deter the Ottomans. In the south, a certain amount of troops are also needed to deter the Safi Dynasty and the Mughal Dynasty. In the entire Central Asian war zone, there are few
It would take 200,000 people to settle the matter.
Then there are tens of thousands of people in North America. There are fewer people in South America, but there must be thousands of people.
India also needs 40,000 to 50,000 troops, central and southern Africa also needs tens of thousands, thousands of people in West Asia, thousands of people in Northeast Africa, thousands of people in Northwest Africa, and several thousand people in all parts of Europe combined.
Calculated this way, the number of troops used for foreign campaigns would be about 300,000.
Then various places still need a large number of troops to suppress civil strife, especially the local areas. It seems to be prosperous now, but the military has actually not relaxed its military high pressure on the local areas.
Within the mainland, the more important provinces actually have more troops guarding them. Ordinary people may not feel it, but in fact, the Imperial Army has stationed a large number of troops at every strategic location in the central and eastern provinces.
For example, the area around Jinling City has always been a heavily fortified area. Even though Zhenjiang and adjacent Yangzhou have never been attacked by outsiders and there have been no internal threats in a short period of time, the empire has always stationed heavy troops here.
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Zhengzhou in the Central Plains region is the core hub of the imperial railway network. Several major railway lines and more branch lines are established here. Therefore, the imperial army has always stationed heavy troops here.
The empire's one-million-strong army has about 300,000 combat-ready troops deployed on long-term expeditions, and about 100,000 more combat-ready troops stationed in various parts of the country.
Then the remaining more than 500,000 are ordinary troops. These ordinary troops are used by the garrison, and their main task is to suppress local areas.
How should I put it? In fact, the biggest enemy of the Imperial Army has never been the external enemy, but the potential internal enemy.
With the empire's huge territory and huge population, it is still necessary to maintain an army with a total strength of one million people, otherwise it will be impossible to arrange it.
But although Li Xuan did not ask the Army to disarm, he also wanted to ask the Army to reduce its expenses!
Today's military spends too much money. Last year's regular military expenditures reached more than 80 million yuan. Adding in additional war expenses, special funds, etc., this figure has actually reached more than 100 million yuan.
Li Xuan also wanted to suppress such a large amount of military expenditure.
However, Li Xuan's method of reducing military expenditure does not mean that the Army should disarm, but that the Army should reduce its expenditure as much as possible.
The Army talks about how to save money every day and engages in farming and breeding. But in fact, the Army has always been a prodigal and spends a lot of money.
Everyone in the empire knows this!
For example, when fighting on the front line, if you see a few natives at random, you will fire hundreds of rounds of grenades. Today's new howitzer shells are very expensive, right?
There is also the issue of military supplies. Don't think that Li Xuan doesn't know that every time the Army launches a large-scale campaign, it is basically a capital carnival, with a large number of military supplies orders pouring into major factories.
Regardless of whether they are used or not, they are all purchased and transported to the front line.
In the previous Second Indian Campaign, the Army purchased various military supplies worth tens of millions and shipped them to India.
The quantity of canned meat alone was enough to feed a hundred thousand troops for three years.
Shells and bullets pile up!
As for ordinary food, let alone ordinary food. There is not much food in the mainland, but there is a lot of food in the many overseas territories of the Tang Dynasty. The army spends a lot of money from Luzon, Banten, Ceylon, South Africa and other overseas local areas and even the Americas.
This overseas territory purchases food and transports it there.
It is said that the food transported from various places to India to supply the military for combat operations cannot be accommodated in many warehouses.
The most important thing is that it is said that these grains have not been eaten until now... and a lot of them have even been lost due to moldy rot and other reasons.
Not to mention these ordinary military supplies, even military horses, the Army has to ship thousands of miles from the mainland or Australia.
Forget about the horses for riding. Your army says that the cavalry’s riding horses must not be bad. They must use native horses or top-notch Arabian horses. That’s fine, I’ll transport them to you.
But if you have to use Arabian horses or northwest horses transported from the mainland to pull cannons and carts, then the cabinet will have objections.
It’s not that there are no horses in India. There are horses there, especially the Marwar horse, which is a mixture of Mongolian and Arabian horses. It is a pretty good horse, similar to the Central Asian horses bred in the Tang Dynasty.
There are also many other bad horses.
Even if there are no horses, there are still cattle and other livestock in the area.
Anyway, it's just used to pull carts and cannons. What kind of animals can't be used? It's really not possible. There are still a large number of local indigenous people. These people can also pull carts and cannons.
Why bother transporting a large number of horses from the mainland or Australia?
And if you are lucky, you can get thousands or even thousands of horses!
Needless to say the value of these horses, just the freight is extremely expensive.
Many people have long been dissatisfied with the army's prodigal behavior, especially the cabinet, which has been preparing a trump card to deal a harsh blow to the army.
This time, Xie Yiwei, Jia Wenbo, and Chen Lifu teamed up to trick the Army. Most of the fights they took were from the Army during the Second Indian Campaign and the Second Western Expedition.
Extravagant and wasteful behavior.
Although the Army was still dissatisfied, the evidence was brought out to slap them in the face. Even if the Army was unwilling, it had to give in in the end.
Otherwise, the cabinet will not only reduce the army's military expenditure, but also expose this matter and let everyone in the world know about the army's extravagance and waste.
If the people of the empire knew that they could only barely eat enough while farming all day long, and could not feed their family while working in factories all day long, the army men purchased countless grains, and the amount was so much that it became moldy and rotten.
I'm afraid the army's image among the people of the empire will also plummet.
This reduction in military spending can be regarded as a blow to the Army from Li Xuan.
Let the arrogant army soldiers over the years know that the empire's money does not come from strong winds and cannot be wasted casually...