After the plan to dispatch troops was formulated, the war machine of the Tang Dynasty was once again running at high speed.
It is not right to say that it is running again, because the war machine of the Tang Dynasty has never stopped. It is just a difference between running at a low speed or running at a high speed.
As the leader of this war machine, the New Army of the Tang Dynasty never stopped for a moment.
After the plan to send troops to Liping Mansion was finalized, all departments of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty began to prepare for it.
The two main infantry regiments began to conduct pre-war adaptability training, especially long-distance attacks. This is because in the next battle, they will continue to conduct mobile warfare instead of the previous passive defense or siege.
war.
They want to attack Liping Mansion, and Liping Mansion is just a target on their way. Their goal is to pass Liping Mansion, and then go south to Liuzhou Mansion, Guangxi. In this series of battle plans, the new army of the Tang Dynasty needs to fight and run at the same time.
It has been a journey of thousands of miles, but there must have been hundreds of miles, and these hundreds of miles are still covered in mountainous and hilly terrain. It is very difficult for ordinary people to travel, not to mention the difficulty for large armies.
This places extremely high demands on the troops' ability to conduct long-distance attacks, and also places extremely high demands on the soldiers' physical fitness.
Although the physical fitness of the soldiers in the new army of the Tang Dynasty is better than that of the Ming army due to good food, it is only a little stronger, especially the new soldiers, who have only undergone one month of nutritional supplements and physical training, so
They are stronger than when they first entered the barracks, but their strength is limited.
If soldiers want to significantly improve their physical fitness, they need at least three months or even more than half a year of continuous training.
As a result, the physical fitness gap between veterans and recruits in the new army of the Tang Dynasty is actually quite large. If nothing else, you can see it just by looking at the muscles.
Although some veterans are not tall and do not look tall, their muscles are very strong. They do not have eight-pack abs but have four-pack abs when they take off their clothes.
Physical fitness needs to be trained, and then marching in the field requires adaptive training for some combat tactics.
Although the two infantry regiments are the main force and the battalions they belong to are all veteran troops, at least half of them are new recruits.
There was no way, the new army of the Tang Dynasty needed to expand, and in order to allow the newly expanded troops to form combat effectiveness as soon as possible, Li Xuan adopted the old-to-new approach, transferring veterans, non-commissioned officers, and officers from the old troops to the new troops and becoming new troops.
The fighting core of the army.
Here, the importance of setting up deputies at all levels in the New Army of the Tang Dynasty is reflected. Whether it is an infantry platoon, a team, or a battalion, in addition to the full-time chief officer, there will also be a deputy.
When the army expands, if the principal officer is transferred to a higher position, the deputy officer can take over the principal position.
At the same time, you can also directly transfer deputies from the existing army, and then these deputies can completely form the framework of a new army on the spot.
Most of the newly formed 8th, 9th, and 10th infantry battalions, as well as the expanded troops of the original battalions, were created in this way.
Maybe the newly formed troops will not be able to improve their combat effectiveness for a while because they are filled with a large number of new recruits, but as long as they are given a month or two to train, they will soon have a qualified regular army.
After all, the core of an army is not actually soldiers, but senior non-commissioned officers and officers.
As long as they have the latter, giving them three months can completely turn new recruits into veterans, and then drag them onto the battlefield to fight.
While the new army of the Tang Dynasty was undergoing intensive training, other departments of the Tang Dynasty were not idle either, and were also preparing for the upcoming large-scale expedition.
After the Ministry of Taxation just established tax agencies in various places, they couldn't wait to start collecting taxes. In addition to agricultural taxes, they also did not forget commercial taxes and began to collect commercial taxes from businesses in Xingquan Prefecture. Although the amount of commercial taxes was relatively high,
The businessmen have great complaints, but the tax department says that this is a 'reasonable burden' that the businessmen should bear.
If you are not satisfied, you can come and find the Pirate Camp theory!
In fact, although the commercial taxes set by the Ministry of Taxation appear to be higher than before, they are still very light compared with later generations. These businessmen think it is high because they have not paid much commercial taxes before.
Even if they pay a penny too much, they feel it's too high and say it's miserable.
In this regard, Li Xuan's attitude was very tough: There is only so much tax, you have to pay it, and you have to pay it even if you don't.
If you businessmen want to do business on Li Xuan's territory, you have to pay taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes, you can close your business and change your profession, and Li Xuan won't care about you. But if you dare to engage in tax evasion, you are a subordinate of the Grain Collection Department of the Ministry of Taxation.
The tax inspection team will let you know what the consequences of tax evasion are!
In order to collect better and more taxes, the Grain Collection Department of the Tang Dynasty developed and expanded, and its personnel expanded from a hundred people in the past to more than three hundred people.
Among the more than 300 people, except for dozens of civilian officials, the rest are all members of the tax inspection team. According to tradition, the people in these tax inspection teams are all kinds of veterans, ruffians and other scum specially recruited.
, issued with cold weapons and even muskets.
There are more than two hundred members of the tax inspection team, and their traces can be found in the three counties of Xingquan Prefecture. In the past six months, they have made great contributions to the war of the Tang Dynasty and the expansion of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty. They actively and proactively adopted various methods.
Various methods were used to collect money and grain, and the process involved a lot of cheating. A total of more than a hundred houses of landowners and merchants who refused to pay taxes were confiscated, and eighteen tax checkpoints were guarded to prevent any caravan from getting through.
The cumulative confiscation of goods worth more than three thousand taels of silver can be said to be a remarkable result!
The hard work of the tax inspection team allowed the impoverished Tang Dynasty to raise an army of thousands of people.
These scumbags were even praised by the emperor of the empire, the eternal sage Li Xuan, saying that their work was excellent and efficient, and they had made great contributions to the healthy development of the Tang Dynasty's taxation and the expansion of the Tang Dynasty.
With the tax inspection team here, Li Xuan is not afraid of these businessmen evading taxes. As for whether the high commercial taxes will affect the commercial development in Xingquan Prefecture.
To be honest, Li Xuan really can't see any actual negative impact.
On the one hand, the business in Xingquan Prefecture was not very good to begin with, and after Xingquan Prefecture was captured by the Tang Dynasty, many commercial activities with the outside world came to a standstill.
But this is not important. To be honest, commercial activities these days do not have much effect. Although Xingquan Mansion is barren, as long as it does not suffer large-scale natural or man-made disasters, the food can still be self-sufficient. Apart from food, other
The merchandise honestly doesn't matter.
As for the various strategic materials needed by the Tang Dynasty, such as iron, copper, saltpeter, sulfur, etc., these are not within the scope of normal commercial activities. These are contraband, and it is impossible for ordinary merchants to take these things.
Sold in Xingquan Mansion.
What's more, those who need these things are not ordinary people, but the Tang Dynasty itself. These things were purchased at high prices. In order to attract more businessmen to transport these strategic materials, the tax also set up tax exemptions for these strategic materials.
category.
Therefore, overall, the large-scale implementation of commercial taxes may have an impact on merchants, but its impact on the operation of the Tang Dynasty is quite limited.
If the Ministry of Taxation has money, the Ministry of Industry will be able to build more weapons and equipment.
In recent months, the scale of transactions between Old Man Sun and the Tang Dynasty has become larger and larger. When the Tang Dynasty first conquered Xingquan Mansion, Old Man Sun was not afraid of death and transported a large number of strategic materials. That day was enough
He took away more than 3,000 taels of silver from the Tang Dynasty, and also said that he was already expanding the supply channels of goods, and the amount of materials supplied would further increase in the future.
Like Old Man Sun, there are many merchants who are not afraid of having their homes confiscated and exterminated. Although the quantity of goods supplied by others is not as large as that of Old Man Sun, it is enough to prevent their family from being confiscated and exterminated by the Ming Dynasty.
This made many people in the Tax Department of the Tang Dynasty murmur that they worked so hard to collect grain and tax, and most of the money they got was made away by profiteers like Old Man Sun.
But even if you complain, there is nothing you can do. Who asked the New Army of the Tang Dynasty to need these strategic materials for their operations, and there is still a large demand.
With money to buy supplies, various weapons naturally came out of the weapons workshop of the Ministry of Industry in a steady stream, and were then distributed to the new army of the Tang Dynasty.
After entering Xingquan Prefecture, the Ministry of Industry directly established many various types of workshops in Xingquan Prefecture. The types and scales of the workshops were much larger than those in Zhengtai County, and they also directly canceled the original workshops in Huangzhushan.
.
Today, Huangzhushan, the place where the Tang Dynasty started, has long been abandoned.
The many workshops established in Xingquan Prefecture, plus the workshops in Zhengtai County, are producing a large number of various weapons every day.
Relying on these weapons, the new army of the Tang Dynasty officially launched its march into Liping Mansion five days later.
On this day, Li Xuan was riding on a tall horse wearing a military uniform similar to that worn by Hao Bainian and others. Originally, he personally liked to wear his own modern general officer uniform, but the people below repeatedly said that military uniforms were related to Chinese etiquette.
Such nonsense, so Li Xuan also put on the officer uniform of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty when he was in military situations.
The military uniforms of the officers of the Tang Dynasty were based on dark blue. The right jacket had a lower tuck. The hem of the jacket was about twenty centimeters longer than the hem of the soldiers' military uniforms. The buttons were also made of metal copper buttons. The cuffs of the jacket were narrow, and
It is embroidered with several different horizontal stripes representing military ranks, and the colors of the collars are also different. Ordinary soldiers have no additional colors, lieutenants are white, and colonels are red. As for generals who have not yet appeared, they are
Use yellow.
He wears long leather boots and is also given a black cloak. Of course, whether to wear it or not is another matter.
Nowadays, Li Xuan is wearing the military uniform of a general, with a yellow collar. However, there is no rank mark on his cuffs, but a dragon pattern embroidered with gold thread.
Riding on the horse, he looked at the thousands of soldiers in the square, and then nodded slightly to Liu Balgou beside him. Liu Balgou immediately strode out, and at the same time spread out the proclamation in his hand and read it loudly: "The industry was founded and the first emperor was the emperor."
Collapse, I will inherit Dabao, inherit the ambition of the late emperor, and promote the power of the Tang Dynasty..." (Note)