I want to be emperor

Chapter 224: The Peak of Centralization: Minister of Counsellors

There are two major courts in the newly born Great Chu Empire, namely the Military Affairs Council and the Government Affairs Council.

And these two courts are a court in name, but neither has a dean or a vice dean, they are all in vain, and there are people in charge of the Great Inspectorate, the Grand Trial Court, the Judicial Yuan, and the Imperial Academy very different.

How should I put it, the capital censor of the Great Inspectorate is only the second rank, and the ministers of the Ministry of Industry and others who are nominally belonging to the Government Administration Council are also the second rank.

Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and the Grand Inspectorate are actually equal institutions, and there is no question of who is superior and who is inferior.

At the same time, on the surface, Luo Zhixue directly governs the two courts, but in fact, it means that Luo Zhixue continues to directly govern more than a dozen ministries in the two courts.

In addition to other agencies, there are more than 20 central agencies under the direct management of Luo Zhixue, and this is only temporary. In the future, Luo Zhixue plans to split the Ministry of Industry and other ministries of the Government Affairs Council, and plans to set up several more ministries of government affairs .

Then in the future, Luo Zhixue may directly manage more than [-] central organizations.

At present, the highest administrative bodies in each locality, currently the prefectures, and in the future, the provinces will also report directly to Luo Zhixue.

If there are more than a dozen provincial-level institutions in the future, there will be more than 40 institutions directly managed by Luo Zhixue.

All the affairs of these institutions will eventually be brought together to Luo Zhixue, and Luo Zhixue certainly cannot handle so many affairs by himself.

And this requires Luo Zhixue's long-planned system to lighten his own work and at the same time firmly control power.

This is Luo Zhixue's long-planned participation system.

The system of participating in affairs is a system formulated by Luo Zhixue after referring to the cabinet system of the Ming Dynasty and the military aircraft department system of the Qing Dynasty, and comprehensively considering their advantages and disadvantages.

Luo Zhixue will select some of his courtiers and give them the "important tasks of entering the palace as counselors".

These courtiers don't even have an official job title...there is only one dispatch that is not considered a dispatch!And describing it as the minister of affairs is just to make it easy to remember...

Because there is no such thing as a minister of affairs, and at the same time, there is no rank, no quota, no salary, and no fixed office location. The ministers of affairs are all part-time jobs.

Only a word from the emperor is needed to come and go, and it is only a word from the emperor to use anyone.

In addition, there is no distinction between these ministers of affairs, and they do not belong to each other.

Moreover, each minister of counselors is in charge of different aspects of affairs, and it is inevitable that a minister of civil affairs ministers will dictate military affairs.

To put it simply, Luo Zhixue is going to find five or six people, let them each take charge of a large area of ​​affairs, and let them be directly responsible for themselves, so as to make their work easier, and at the same time strictly limit the authority of these people, and can withdraw them at any time.

Let's not talk about the good or bad of this system, and don't talk about how it will evolve in the future, but this is already the best power check and balance method that Luo Zhixue can think of.

After all, Luo Zhixue didn't intend to direct the power down, but he was too busy, and at the same time, he was worried that there would be a situation where the powerful officials could not lose their tails.

In the end, the Minister of Counseling who chose such a name was not right and wrong, and came and went based on Luo Zhixue's words appeared.

On September [-], after Luo Zhixue promulgated the new official system, he issued an imperial edict to recruit Xu Zhixian, Minister of Staff, Wei Kaifu, Minister of Military and Political Affairs, Yuan Gaofeng, Minister of Industry, Chen Xingkai, Minister of Taxation, Guo Quanshu, Minister of Civil Affairs, and Du Yushi Qin Gaolin had a total of seven people accompanying him as counselors for important military and political affairs.

And these seven people are also known as ministers of counselors by the outside world.

And when all the officials learned about the specific affairs that the Minister of Counseling was in charge of, they all tacitly regarded them as ministers similar to the cabinet ministers of the Ming Dynasty.

Because the imperial decree issued by Luo Zhixue has stipulated in detail the scope of affairs in charge of each courtier. Xu Zhixian is in charge of army building, combat, training and other affairs, and Wei Kaifu is in charge of personnel, military discipline, assessment, recruitment, military and civilian affairs, etc.

In addition to being in charge of a bunch of factories affiliated to the Ministry of Industry, Yuan Gaofeng is also in charge of people's livelihood and economic affairs. Simply put, he is in charge of all internal development matters, which is a lot of responsibility.

The emergence of the minister of counselor system allowed Luo Zhixue to manage dozens of organizations directly and at the same time handle things well.

After finalizing the new official system and implementing the minister system, Luo Zhixue's reform of the political structure of the nascent Great Chu Empire can be regarded as initially completed. Although there are many other tasks in the future, they can all be taken slowly.

After all, the framework has been laid, and then it is enough to fill in the content.

Therefore, after finalizing these general frameworks, Luo Zhixue also drove the generals and local officials gathered in Hanyang City back to the station.

The current situation is tense and there are so many things to do. If you should go back and do things, go back and do things. What are you doing in Hanyang City every day?

After so many civil and military officials left one after another, Hanyang City returned to normal. On the [-]th of September, Luo Zhixue held the first council meeting.

All seven Ministers of Counseling were present, and Luo Zhixue didn't discuss too many things with them during this day's meeting. It was nothing more than the improvement of some details, mainly to let them adapt to the transformation after the founding of the country.

On the second day, that is, September No. 19, Luo Zhixue also held the first high-level military meeting after the founding of the country.

Five ministers and two directors, Li Chengtong, commander of the first division, Dong Mingjie, commander of the fourth division, and Li Dongshao, commander of the guard division, attended the meeting.

But this time the meeting was not just a casual discussion, but a formal discussion on the matter of crossing the river and attacking southern Chu.

At the beginning of the meeting, Major General Xu Zhixian, Minister of Staff and Chief of Staff, began to introduce the current situation of the Rural Protection Army and the situation of the Ming Army to everyone in detail.

"At present, our army has controlled the northern Chu area and most of the Nanyang Prefecture area, and also controlled parts of the Eastern Sichuan, Hanzhong, and Central Plains areas."

"In the north, we control most of Nanyang Prefecture. Currently, only Ye County is still under the control of the Ming army in Nanyang Prefecture. The rest of the counties are already under the control of our army."

"On the Nanyang front line, we have the second main division and the first garrison division. The above two divisions are enough to protect Luyang Pass and Yuzhou."

"In the west, in addition to controlling the Yunyang Prefecture and the Jiangbei area of ​​Jingzhou Prefecture, we also controlled the two places of Xunyang and Pingli in the Hanzhong Prefecture of Shaanxi; Shangnan in the Xi'an Prefecture; and Daning and Dachang in the Sichuan Kuizhou Prefecture .”

"In the entire western front, we have three garrison divisions, the second garrison division, the third garrison division, and the fourth garrison division, and an independent artillery battalion. Recently, the fourth garrison division of our army is planning to attack Wushan County."

"In the east, we have fully controlled De'an Mansion and Huangzhou Mansion. The [-]th Infantry Brigade under the [-]rd Division is stationed in the Sanguan area of ​​Yiyang, and the [-]nd Infantry Brigade of the [-]st Division is stationed in the Huangmei area of ​​Huangzhou Mansion."

"In addition, the newly formed fifth garrison division has moved to defend the Macheng and Luotian areas. The battalions under its command are stationed at various passes in the Dabie Mountains, such as Yinshan Pass and Songzi Pass, south of the Three Passes of Yiyang and north of Susong. To assist the [-]nd Infantry Brigade in combat."

"On the southern front, there is no fighting for the time being. Our army has the third garrison division on the front line of Jingzhou Prefecture, and the first infantry brigade of the first division on the front line of Hanyang Prefecture. The newly organized fourth division has two mortar battalions. Formed into the Sixth Garrison Division and the Guards Division."

"The Yangtze River Fleet of the Navy is currently stationed at Hanyang City Wharf!"

"After the continuous expansion and reorganization of the army in the past few months, the main force of our army currently has five main divisions, six garrison divisions, and one cavalry brigade. In addition, there are three mortar battalions and two independent field artillery posts. .”

"All the garrison divisions are fully staffed. For the time being, only the first division is fully staffed in the main division. The second division currently has 7000 soldiers. However, there are only [-] muskets and [-] field guns weighing two and a half catties; The division currently has [-] soldiers, [-] muskets, and [-] field guns weighing two and a half catties."

"For the time being, the fourth division only has four thousand recruits, one thousand muskets, and six two-and-a-half-pound cannons."

"The Guards Division currently has 4000 soldiers, [-] muskets, and [-] two-and-a-half-pound cannons."

"The main force still lacks soldiers and equipment, and at the same time, there are a large number of recruits and serious shortage of training."

Listening to Xu Zhixian's words, Luo Zhixue also flipped through the documents in his hand, which listed the personnel and equipment of each unit in detail.

Luo Zhixue had already estimated that most of the main force lacked strength, equipment, and poor training. The main force of their rural protection army was expanding too fast. In just a few months, it expanded from a few thousand to Tens of thousands of people.

This is not a garrison force, it can be used directly after reorganization. The newly expanded main force needs to recruit new recruits and build guns. It is too difficult to expand the main force by tens of thousands in a short period of time. possible.

So don't look at the establishment of five main divisions in the Rural Protection Army, but in fact only the first division is fully staffed, and the others are missing arms and legs, and many soldiers in the main force have training The time is too short, even in the First Division, where the Fourth Infantry Regiment is newly expanded.

All of this was caused by too short a time and too fast military expansion.

There is no good solution to this, but to continue to let the arsenal bury itself in the production of weapons and equipment, let the soldiers step up their training, and then leave the rest to time.

And then Xu Zhixian introduced the current known situation of the Ming Army, but he didn't go into details about this aspect, because the current Baoxiang Army doesn't quite understand the situation of the Ming Army, not the intelligence gathering ability of the Baoxiang Army. Bad, but the Ming army is too chaotic.

The Ming army system is very complicated. There are battalion sentry soldiers mainly recruiting soldiers, battalion sentry soldiers composed of ordinary guard soldiers, ordinary guard soldiers, and various young and strong civilian husbands directly recruited by governors from all over the country. The county warriors and the like are so messy that it makes people feel dizzy, and it is impossible to know how many soldiers there are on the other side.

And the most disgusting thing is, you see that there is a Fubiao directly under a certain governor in front of you. You may think it is an elite soldier, but when you go up and beat it, you will find that these are just a group of temporary recruits...

Then I saw a group of guard soldiers under the general of a certain guard. I thought it was just a group of scumbags from the guard, but when I went up to beat them, I found that they were all elite recruits with the name of servants.

Before the collection of detailed information and actual contact, it is actually difficult for the generals of the Xiangbao Army to figure out whether the Ming army on the opposite side can fight...

Not to mention that the generals of the Baoxiang Army couldn't figure it out, even Hong Chengchou and Yang Sichang didn't know how many soldiers they could fight.

The only good thing is that the Ming army on the opposite side still doesn't have too many artillery pieces, especially long-barreled artillery pieces.

And this also gave the rural protection army the confidence to launch an offensive across the river!

(End of this chapter)