The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 49 The Army’s Ambition

"You came."

Qi Ziruo, the eldest princess of Le'an of Qi State, saw Song Wenru hiding behind several children. She raised her head weakly, showed a smile, winked at her, and motioned for her to come closer.

"Mother..." Song Wenru hurriedly took a few steps forward, tightly holding her mother's bone-shape hand, tears streaming down her face, and she was speechless and choked.

"How have you spent these years?" Qi Ziruo raised his other hand with great effort, trying to wipe away the tears on his daughter's face, but in the end he was weak and his arm hung down weakly, "Wen Ru, Have you ever...hated me?"

"No..., I don't..." Song Wenru looked at her mother with tears in her eyes and said with sobs: "My daughter has never...never complained about her mother, let alone had... any hatred towards her mother. My daughter is unfilial..."

"Alas..." Qi Ziruo looked at his tearful daughter and felt a softness in his heart, "Back then, when you insisted on... marrying that young officer who claimed to have a bright future, I knew..., I knew , you will be in this situation... You have suffered a lot in these years, right?"

"My daughter didn't... endure hardship."

"Where is your child?" Qi Ziruo looked up and asked softly.

"He served in the Army and is now in India..."

"Huh...? Why...how did he join the army?"

"..." Song Wenru looked at her weak mother, tears streaming down her face.

"Alas... these young men who are eager to make contributions!" Qi Ziruo let out a long sigh, but a vague figure of a heroic officer suddenly appeared in his mind.

"I am serving in the army and my time is unpredictable. As a result, I will not have too much time to see Her Royal Highness the Princess."

"It's okay! I'll wait for you."

"If His Majesty doesn't allow it..."

"This is my business. I will go and talk to my father about it myself, and I will not let him get in the way."

"Okay, when I have achieved success in the army, I will come to Chang'an to find you."

"In that case, I'll be waiting for you in Chang'an.

In the blink of an eye, more than 40 years have passed, and that heroic young man has passed away long ago. In order to pursue his great military achievements, his bones were buried in the African wilderness.But she never thought that her daughter would fall in love with a young officer who was eager to make a contribution more than 20 years ago. Regardless of her own strong opposition, she left home and married him.

Why are these passionate men so obsessed with fighting on the battlefield and obsessed with expanding their territories, but they leave behind all the poor women who are waiting for them infatuatedly? ——
November 11, General Staff Building.

"...After careful deduction and careful planning, in response to the large-scale military intervention in Persia, the General Staff has drawn up the following force composition: First, the Navy will deploy 3 troops from the North Sea Fleet, the Home Fleet, and the Indian Fleet before the end of March next year. A special expedition fleet was formed with 26 ships to go to the Persian region to undertake various combat tasks such as maritime blockade, landing cover, expulsion of external maritime forces, and control of the sea in the Gulf. The fleet includes [-] main warships and four armed reconnaissance and liaison ships. Ship, three supply ships, a hospital ship and a maintenance ship, the fleet commander is served by the Indian Fleet Commander and Naval Cavalry Admiral (Admiral) Chu Yunling."

"1. The Army will deploy two regiments of more than [-] officers and soldiers from the mainland, Xuanhua (today's Timor Island), and Kaihua (today's Java Island), from Shunguo, Weiguo, Luzon (Zhengshi), Ha Tien, The five vassal states of Champa mobilized seven battalions of more than [-] officers and soldiers and assembled in Guangning before the end of January. Later, they went to India by naval ships and requisitioned commercial transport ships, together with a regiment of the Bangladesh garrison and a regiment of the Cochin garrison. regiment and a regiment of the Ningyang Garrison Army, with a total of more than [-] servants, jointly formed the Persian Expeditionary Force, and the commander was Fu Weirong, commander of the Nanyang Garrison and Army Zhenguo General (Lieutenant General)."

"[-]. The Indian Mozhou Garrison and the Indian Xizhou Garrison mobilized ten battalions of more than [-] servants, together with more than [-] Karat Khanate cavalry infantry, to form the West Route Army. The commander was the Mozhou Garrison. The commander-in-chief, Army General Mingwei (Brigadier General) Sun Youpeng, is in charge of attacking Kandahar from the Balu area to cut off the retreat of the Afghan Gilzai people, and at the same time penetrate our Qi military power into Afghanistan."

"..."

"After this battle, the strength of the Army will expand a bit more." Gu Jihong, Chief of General Staff of the Navy and General Zhenguo (Lieutenant General), while listening to the military deployment plan being read out on the stage, looked at the Deputy Chief of the Navy, Piao Cavalry General Zheng Debeng muttered in a low voice: "The three shelf regiments are fully established, plus the garrison in Persia after the war, this almost adds more than [-] troops, expanding the size of the entire army by a fifth." "More than that. Here!" Zheng Debeng glanced at Peng Huiming, the army chief and hussar general who was sitting diagonally opposite, and whispered: "Their army is lobbying in many ways, hoping to imitate our navy's model and establish joint army headquarters in various Southeast Asian vassal states. They want to bring the army in their hands into the unified command system in order to expand their army influence."

"Oh?" Gu Jihong glanced at the army general opposite, with a teasing look on his face, "The army is unwilling to succumb to our navy after all!... Whenever it encounters a hot overseas issue, it will use all its strength to Strive to expand their influence.”

In the more than 80 years since the founding of the Qi State, in addition to being invaded three times by the Spanish Philippines and the Dutch East India Company when it first took over Hanzhou, as the Qi State's naval strength grew rapidly and it then took control of the sea in the South China Sea, its homeland was again There is no threat of any foreign invasion.

In the later period, when it was conducting the Nanyang Campaign, seizing Luzon, and trying to capture Annan, the enemies it faced were relatively weak. Moreover, Qi State also adopted multi-party divisions and gradual encroachment, and rarely implemented large-scale corps. Combat, this has caused the expansion of the Qi Army's scale to be relatively slow.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that Qi State had insufficient population resources in its early days. It could not frequently dispatch tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of huge troops like the Qin State in the mainland.In addition, decades ago, in order to quickly accumulate population, Qi State spent large sums of money on immigration activities every year, which forced the government to invest limited fiscal revenue in the most critical naval construction.Therefore, the State of Qi has always adhered to the "big navy, small army" model of army building, giving priority to the navy in terms of various resources, thereby strengthening the navy's strength and defending the enemy from outside the country.

After gradually controlling Nanyang, Annan and parts of India, Qi State selected a large number of local indigenous people to establish servant troops, using them as cannon fodder for Qi State's continued colonial expansion, driving them to conquer all directions and use barbarians to attack barbarians, thus reducing precious resources. Army consumption.

When a foreign war breaks out, the Qi State will often use a small number of elite land forces as the core, supplemented by a large number of indigenous servant troops as the main force. With its ferocious firepower and surpassing the opponent's weapon generation gap, it can easily defeat the enemy in front of it.If the scale of the war expands, Qi will recruit a large number of troops from vassal states to accompany the war.

Under the influence of various factors, the expansion of the Qi Army's size was extremely slow. It took more than 2 years to increase the size of the army from 30 to more than [-].

You must know that during this period, whether it was the Qin State on the mainland or various European countries, the size of their armies was all famous for their large numbers. More than 30 years ago, in order to compete for European hegemony, France maintained a standing army of more than 20 to 30 people all year round. During the Nine Years' War, the total strength of the French Army even reached 9, accounting for one-third of the total strength of the European armies during the same period.

Tsarist Russia carried out military reforms during the period of Peter the Great, and established a new army of 1710 infantry regiments and more than 42 troops in 6.In the following years, this force was expanded to 10,000+.At that time, Peter the Great's idea of ​​​​building an army was to expand the army based on the standard of removing one person from every 100 people to serve for life.In 1722, the total population of Tsarist Russia was more than 1600 million, which was enough to provide him with an army of more than 10 and a navy of tens of thousands.This ratio was very high before industrialization, comparable to the highest standards of the Roman Empire - well, it deserves to be called the Third Rome.

The European country that showed a greater willingness to use its troops was Prussia. After Frederick William I succeeded to the throne in 1713, he cut royal expenses by three-quarters, and all the money saved was used to build the army.Prussia's annual treasury revenue was only 700 million silver dollars, and 600 million was spent on the army.As a result, the size of the Prussian army more than doubled to 4 by 1720 from less than 8 when he took over.During this period, the entire population controlled by Prussia was only 220 million, and the proportion of military and civilians was as high as 3.8%!

Of course, for the Qi Army, although they are all extremely eager to expand the scale and increase the influence of the army, they are not as crazy as Prussia, disregarding the limitations of national strength and establishing a large army.

However, over the past 80 years since the founding of the Qi State, from occupying the mainland of Hanzhou, to controlling the Nanyang Islands, and then colonizing India, Africa, America and other places, such a vast territory has only more than [-] army troops, right? The quantity is too small.

Of course, each overseas territory can recruit a large number of servant soldiers, and there are also a large number of local soldiers on rotation. On the surface, it can indeed maintain the basic security of these territories and the commercial interests of the empire.But don’t forget, there is a saying that goes beyond reach.Once a remote overseas territory seeks independence and breaks away from the rule of the empire under the instigation of some careerists, the army will be unable to counter the rebellion in a timely manner, which will inevitably lead to an unpredictable empire crisis.

Therefore, the Army's small calculation is to increase the number of Army personnel to 15 in the next ten to [-] years.In this way, we can actively promote the colonial expansion of the empire while effectively safeguarding the territorial integrity of the empire.

"General Peng, is it possible for Qi State to lead an army to conquer Persia this time?"

After the military deployment meeting of the General Staff, the emperor's military attaché, General Mingwei (Brigadier General) Teng Xiguang, took two steps and came to the side of the Army Chief, Hussars General Peng Huiming, and asked softly as he walked.

"Our Qi State's more than [-] troops are well-trained and have sufficient food and equipment. Facing those barbaric and ignorant Afghan tribal armed forces with backward weapons, we can annihilate them in Persia with one blow." Peng Huiming said with confidence. .

"That's very good!" Teng Xiguang nodded and said, "His Majesty hopes that this expedition will not only help the Safavid dynasty restore the domestic ruling order, but also build up the prestige of our country of Qi and demonstrate the strong combat power of our country. To frighten the Ottoman Empire and Tsarist Russia, and to use our diplomatic mediation to persuade the two countries to withdraw from their territory in Persia to show off their momentum.”

"General Teng, please report back to Your Majesty. Our army will go all out to live up to His Majesty's expectations."

"Commander Peng has such confidence, and His Majesty must be pleased with it." Teng Xiguang said with a smile: "By the way, Your Majesty has a personal request. Please ask Commander Peng to find a benevolent and brave captain in the Indian garrison. Lieutenant), named Li Yanliang, will be transferred back to the homeland to meet with His Majesty in Chang'an."

Hearing this, Peng Huiming was stunned for a moment, then nodded and responded: "I will immediately order the Indian garrison to handle this matter as quickly as possible and recall Captain Renyong to Chang'an as quickly as possible."

Li Yanliang?
Could it be some anonymous royal child?

(End of this chapter)