When Li Xuan expressed his grand strategic vision, for many senior army officials, unlike the navy, their first thoughts were filled with great achievements, a name in history, glory and wealth.
The first thing those army bosses thought of was: the empire will continue to expand, expansion means war, and war means that they can continue to fight for His Majesty!
In this case, they don't have to worry about being like the founding heroes of many dynasties. After unification, they will be cooked to death by rabbits and dogs, and the birds will be hidden.
This world is so vast, and if His Majesty wants to conquer these areas, he will continue to use generals like them!
This is a good thing, a great thing!
A few days later, Hao Bainian, Li Chunjing and other four military commanders who were leading the army abroad learned the top-secret news. They all wrote secret documents and sent them back. The contents of the secret documents were similar, and they all talked about determination.
If they support the Holy Emperor's decision to open up new territories and expand the territory, they will be furious and want to conquer the world for His Majesty!
In fact, it is not surprising that these army generals, especially the senior lieutenant generals, would immediately think of things like rabbits dying and dogs being cooked, because this kind of thing has happened too many times in China's thousands of years of history.
Too much, Song's cup of wine released military power, Ming's Zhu Yuanzhang almost killed all the heroes, leaving Zhu Yunwen not even a capable general.
Therefore, people with a little bit of historical knowledge will worry about this issue: when the empire is completely unified, will they follow in the footsteps of the founding generals of the past dynasties and be cooked to death?
Those who serve in the Privy Council and do not control military power outside, such as Zeng Ziwen and Lei Wan, are all fine. Although they are also high-ranking army generals, to be honest, their prestige in the Tang Army is actually limited.
After the War Department, it was basically difficult to have any actual impact on the imperial power.
But Hao Bainian, Li Chunjing, Wang Chaohong, and Fang Xi are different from the generals who lead the army outside. They lead the army in battles all year round, even though Li Xuan has made many restrictions to prevent various accidents, such as the unified tax payment for military pay.
The Ministry directly deposits the money into the soldiers' accounts at the Royal Bank, and the military pay is distributed directly without going through the army's chief officer.
Another example is the strict restriction on local recruitment of troops. The power of recruitment has always been firmly controlled by the two agencies of the Cabinet, the War Department and the Navy Department. Even the recruitment power of the Guards is handled by the War Department, while the War Department and the Navy Department
The two agencies of the Admiralty are not filled by generals, but by civilian officials.
In addition, there are other less obvious restrictions, such as logistics unification. When the logistics supply of the entire army is unified by the logistics department, potential risks are also avoided.
Recruit training and recruitment are also the same. Recruit training is the unified responsibility of the Training Department of the Privy Council, and recruitment of soldiers is also the unified responsibility of the Operations Department.
The generals of the army do not have the above rights.
However, even if there are many restrictions, it is actually very difficult to truly restrict the generals from rebelling. The generals who lead the army outside generally have very high prestige and have strong control over their troops, and they also
You can give false orders, and the troops have various restrictions, but if you do it really cruelly, you can actually cause all kinds of chaos.
Li Xuan also took some precautions against this. Senior generals were transferred relatively frequently. For example, the previous generals at the two levels of army commander and division commander were rotated in order to prevent senior generals from being in the same unit.
Staying in office for too long creates deep-rooted influence.
Hao Bainian had previously served in the First Army for a long time, and later Li Xuan transferred him to the Third Army. After a period of time, Li Xuan was ready to transfer him again.
Of course, these are just some of Li Xuan's preventive measures, or systems.
What he wants is to completely form a fixed system to prevent his son or grandson from being able to control the situation in the future, especially after he dies.
As for himself, he is not worried about this kind of problem!
Speaking of prestige, who in the entire Tang Dynasty has as much prestige as him? This prestige is not only brought about by his status as emperor, but more importantly, he is the one who leads the empire to its peak step by step.
Various policies and military reforms have left a profound imprint on him, and many military generals, especially senior military generals, are almost all students of the Imperial Academy, and the students in the Imperial Academy can all be called
As a disciple of the Emperor, especially in the previous few periods, Li Xuan personally taught classes. It can be said that many senior military generals, including Hao Bainian, were personally led by him.
In this era, the relationship between teachers and students is far closer than the relationship between monarch and ministers!
Li Xuan does not have to worry about these problems, but his successor will inevitably worry about these problems, so Li Xuan can be considered as prepared for a rainy day, and has established various complete prevention systems from the beginning to avoid future troubles.
Not to mention what Li Xuan himself thought, but in the eyes of the top army generals, Sheng Tianzi clearly revealed his strategic vision for the future, indicating that the war is far from over, and this is enough!
Affected by Li Xuan's first revelation of the global strategic concept, without alerting outsiders, an Overseas Strategy Department was quietly established under the Privy Council Operations Department, including the West Asian Section, the Southeast Asian Section, the South Asian Section, the American Section, and the European Section.
Study the situations of various countries around the world and provide strategic support for the post-unification external expansion campaign!
In fact, it would be more appropriate to add the word "global" to this Overseas Strategy Department, such as 'Global Strategy Department', but the Overseas Strategy Department still cannot accurately describe Li Xuan's grand global strategic vision.
The Military Intelligence Department under the Privy Council has also officially opened various departments in Europe, America, South Asia, and West Asia to spy on all intelligence from various countries and carry out various secret activities. Instead of just setting up an intelligence station in Nanyang, it is basically not large-scale.
.
However, for the current Military Intelligence Department, the problem of intelligence spying on various countries is still relatively big. First of all, there is a lack of qualified intelligence personnel. Going abroad to spy on intelligence is completely different from spying on intelligence in Liaodong and Southwest China.
, not to mention other things, just because they look different is a big trouble, and it will be difficult to get in and spy on confidential information.
And if you go overseas, you must at least know the local language. You must master Spanish, Portuguese, etc. Nowadays, the colonies of these two countries are spread all over the world. If you know one of them overseas, you can solve most problems.
language problems faced.
But if you want to integrate into the European upper class society, travel extensively across Europe and spy on intelligence, you must also know Latin. Otherwise, you will not be able to read many books in Europe.
Well, the lingua franca of Europe these days is not English, nor Spanish and Portuguese, let alone German, English and French, but Latin.
The written texts and languages used by clergy, scholars, etc., who have widespread influence, mostly use Latin.
However, in East Asia, you will not encounter this problem. Appearance is not a problem, because they are all yellow people with yellow skin and dark eyes. And places such as North Korea, Fusang, and Annan are areas where Chinese traditional culture radiates. North Korea and Annan
In Japan, Chinese is widely used by the upper class. Well, they are proud to know Chinese!
The newly established departments under the Global Strategy Department and the Military Intelligence Department reflect the current strategic changes of the Tang Dynasty and the preparations for this.
Perhaps, it will take many years before the global strategy can be truly implemented, but Li Xuan has always been someone who needs to prepare for a rainy day. Now that he is ready, he can attack as soon as he wants, without the need for procrastination.
Compared with the Navy, which is only doing intelligence and strategic preliminary preparations, the Navy's actions are much faster. Now the Navy has begun to discuss how to build a powerful navy in the future global strategy.
Got it!
To this end, a group of senior naval staff within the Navy are already planning a three-year development plan or even a ten-year development plan.
In the ten-year development plan, the senior staff members clamored to have the fleet's main battleships reach 300, of which the total number of battleships would reach 100, and the number of cruisers would reach 200. As for frigates, patrol ships and the like,
Preparation excludes the scope of battleships.
Among the one hundred battleships, there will be fifteen first-class battleships, twenty second-class battleships, and sixty-five third-class battleships!
However, now, the Tang Navy does not even have a single battleship. There are only two third-class battleships under construction. It will take two or three years before they can be put into service.
The ten-year plan is too far away, but the three-year plan is close at hand, because the Holy Emperor does not leave much time for the navy. The Holy Emperor has made it clear that he will seize Malacca in the next few years.
There will definitely be a war with the Portuguese. In order to ensure sea control, the navy's strength must reach a certain level.
For this reason, during internal discussions within the Navy, in order to ensure the security of sea control at that time, even if it is only a minimum escort, the Navy must have more than five third-class battleships, twenty third-class cruisers, and the number of frigates
Just more.
Why do we need so many ships? Because they need to escort. The Portuguese are not stupid. They can't do it on land. If the fleet still can't win a decisive battle, they will directly attack the merchant fleet. Without the protection of warships, the merchant ships' own protective power is all.
, it is difficult to ensure safety.
At that time, if a merchant ship loaded with goods is casually sunk, it will be a loss of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of taels of silver. If it is unlucky enough to directly kill a merchant fleet, the loss will reach hundreds of thousands or even more.
One million taels of silver.
For this reason, before the internal discussions within the Navy ended, and before the formal fleet expansion plan was submitted to Shengtianzi, the Navy had already placed an order for three third-class battleships in advance!