Gou was a member of the imperial family in the late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 1097: Preparing for the Battle of Liaodong
Qianqing Palace. There are many people coming to Qianqing Palace today, and it is very rare that there are only two people from the cabinet among them, one is the chief minister Wen Tihen, and the other is the cabinet minister Wang Jinwu.

Apart from them, the rest were basically military generals, including the Right Chief Counselor Wu Xiang, Zuo Liangyu, Cao Wenzhao, Cao Bianjiao, Huang Degong, He Renlong of the Chief Counselor's Office, Li You, the admiral of the Beiyang Navy who had just arrived in the capital from Shandong, Li Xin, the governor of Shandong, Gao Jie, the general of Jizhou Town, Zhou Anmin and Zheng Hongkui who had just returned from Europe, etc.

In addition, there are Lu Xiangsheng, the former governor and provincial governor of Henan, and Sun Chuanting, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu who has just been summoned to the capital. The last person is Chen Qiuyu, the Minister of War.

A huge map was hung on the wall. Wang Jinwu was holding a thin stick in his hand, pointing at various locations on the map and explaining. Standing next to him was Wu Xiang, who supplemented Wang Jinwu's narration. Everyone, including Emperor Zhu Shenzhui, stood in a circle, listening to Wang Jinwu and Wu Xiang's explanations with solemn expressions, their eyes fixed on various locations on the map.

"Your Majesty, everyone!" After nearly half an hour, Wang Jinwu finally finished speaking. He put down the thin stick in his hand and said loudly: "What I just talked about is the current situation in Liaodong, Mongolia, and Korea, including the military strength of the Jiannu and the situation between the enemy and us. Do you have any objections? Feel free to speak frankly."

"I have a question!" Lu Xiangsheng said as soon as he finished speaking, and at the same time looked at Zhu Shenzhui.

Seeing Zhu Shenzhui nodded slightly, Lu Xiangsheng asked: "Where did Ningshanhou get the information about Jiannu's troop deployment? Where did he get the information about the Mongolian Khorchin tribe? Is this information true?"

Wang Jinwu replied, "Since the first year of the Yongming reign, the Ming Dynasty has continuously sent spies to Liaodong to conduct in-depth investigations and collect intelligence. This was handled by the Jinyiwei, and this action has never been interrupted. Moreover, after Shandong opened the sea, we took advantage of the convenience of maritime trade and obtained some intelligence sources through Korea and Liaodong. In addition, the Jiannu were short of supplies in Liaodong in recent years, and through some smuggling channels, the Ming Dynasty bribed some of the Eight Banners nobles and collected a lot of information from them. This can be confirmed by General Zhou, General Li, and Lord Li."

After Wang Jinwu finished speaking, Zhou Anmin expressed his approval. Although Zhou Anmin is no longer the commander of the Jinyiwei, this matter was arranged by him at the beginning. The Jinyiwei has been effectively executing it over the years. Moreover, although Zhou Anmin is no longer in charge of the Jinyiwei in name, in fact, the Jinyiwei's external intelligence is still under his control.

Considering that the Jinyiwei had too much power and jurisdiction, Zhu Shenzhui had long planned to split the Jinyiwei. In the future, the Jinyiwei will be divided into three parts. One part is an external agency, similar to the CIA of the later Eagle Sauce, the other part is internal, similar to the FBI, and the remaining part will be merged with the current Police Department to become a new police agency, equivalent to the Dali Temple.

Zhou Anmin is still in charge of the external agencies of the split Jinyiwei. Without the name of Jinyiwei, and as an external intelligence system, Zhou Anmin does not have to worry about the bad reputation of Jinyiwei. This is also a good thing for Zhou Anmin.

After Zhou Anmin approved of the intelligence about Liaodong, Li You and Li Xin also explained the sources of the information about Liaodong. With their assurances, and Wu Xiang's statement that the General Staff had already summarized and verified the intelligence, although it could not be said to be 100% accurate, it was roughly correct.

As for the Mongolian side, there is no need to mention it. When Lu Xiangsheng learned that the news of Mongolian Khorchin came from Agudamu of Chahar, he immediately stopped asking any questions.

Although the true identities of the Tengger brothers had never been publicly announced, it was impossible for someone at Lu Xiangsheng's level to not know some rumors. It had long been reported that the emperor and his wife in Mongolia were once husband and wife, and the reason why Zhu Shenzhu was able to raise an army to quell the rebellion and seize the throne as an ordinary member of the royal family was because of the support of the Tumed tribe.

Otherwise, why was Zhu Shenzhu the only one who could accomplish this when there were so many royal families in the world? Moreover, the current Ming Dynasty is not the Ming Dynasty at the beginning of its founding. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there was the King of Sai. Zhu Di was able to raise an army to defeat Emperor Jianwen because he had military power and had experienced many battles. After Zhu Di, the royal family of the Ming Dynasty had long lost its real power, and even the princes could not leave their fiefdoms. Except for the rebellion of Prince Ning during the Zhengde period, it was impossible for the princes to revolt.

Zhu Shenzhui did it with his low-ranking status as a royal family member. And did he get all these elite soldiers and generals from nowhere? How did he train such an army over such a long period of time? And where were they stationed? All these can't help but make people think about it. In addition, after Zhu Shenzhui entered the capital, in addition to the new army he controlled, he also had many Mongolian guards around him. Even now, there are many Mongolians in the palace guards. In this way, don't you understand?
Therefore, the true identity of the Tenger brothers was no longer a secret to the top leaders of the Ming Dynasty, but everyone knew it and kept it to themselves. Now that he heard that the news from Khorchin came from Chahar, Lu Xiangsheng immediately understood that this was the source of the emperor's intelligence, and the one who sent this information to the Ming Dynasty was the prince named Agudamu.

Seeing Lu Xiangsheng nod and then say nothing, Wang Jinwu looked around and saw no one asked any more questions. He looked at Zhu Shenzhui, who nodded slightly. Wang Jinwu immediately said, "Since the old slave Nurhaci started his rebellion in the 46th year of Wanli and the outbreak of the Battle of Sarhu in the 47th year of Wanli, the Liaodong Jiannu have been causing trouble for our Ming Dynasty for nearly 30 years. The Jiannu occupied Liaodong, occupied our Ming land, plundered our Ming people, killed our Ming soldiers, enslaved our Ming people, and even attacked the Great Wall and marched straight to the capital, burning, killing, looting and committing all kinds of evil. If we don't do it, it will be a great worry for our Ming Dynasty!" "Since the Wanli, Taichang, Tianqi, and Chongzhen dynasties, our Ming Dynasty has not solved the problem of Liaodong. Now our Ming Dynasty's holy emperor is in power, he has quelled the civil strife, stabilized people's livelihood, and restored production. The country has shown signs of revival. But the Liaodong Jiannu has not been eliminated, and they are still eyeing our Ming Dynasty covetously. It is difficult to rest assured if such a great enemy is not eliminated. Today, Your Majesty has summoned you all here, determined to fight to pacify Liaodong and completely solve the problem of Liaodong!"

Wang Jinwu's voice was firm and resolute. After he said this, everyone present knew that the emperor had specially gathered them together today, laid out a map of Liaodong, and introduced the current situation in Liaodong, and he must be planning to send troops to Liaodong.

After all, over the years, after the recovery, the Ming Dynasty's national strength has greatly increased and there are no financial problems. In addition, after the reform of the military system and the adjustment and training of troops in various places, although the number of troops in the Ming Dynasty on paper is much smaller than before, in fact, the military strength of the Ming Dynasty has not weakened, but has become stronger.

The number of Ming troops has varied since the founding of the country. When the Ming Dynasty was founded, there were a million troops in the country. During the Yongle period, the number of Ming troops reached its peak, with a force of up to 2.8 million. This was mainly because Emperor Yongle Zhu Di expanded the number of national troops by launching several northern expeditions against Mongolia. After Yongle, the number of Ming troops began to decline from the peak, especially after the Battle of Tumu, when the Ming army suffered heavy losses. After that, the total number of Ming troops basically remained at around 900,000.

During the Chongzhen period, the national army had a strength of approximately 800,000 troops. However, due to local rebellions and banditry, the number of troops on paper increased dramatically to 1.2 million in order to quell the rebellions.

However, there are not many of the so-called 1.2 million troops who are truly usable. It can even be said that there are less than half of them. Excluding the military garrisons in the nine borders and Liaodong, the troops that can actually fight only add up to a few hundred thousand people in the country.

After Zhu Shenzhui solved the problem of bandits one by one, he freed up his hands to start reforming and reorganizing the army, and at the same time vigorously solved various problems in local guards. After all these years of hard work, the number of soldiers on paper in the Ming Dynasty finally remained at only 600,000, and the number of soldiers who were dismissed or reorganized was almost more than double this number. But in fact, the number of soldiers who were actually dismissed was not that many, because there were corruption phenomena in the Ming Dynasty army before, such as eating empty salaries, etc., and there were many problems in local guards, and many military numbers were fictitious.

After squeezing out all the water and distributing the military salaries and re-registering them through the Royal Banks that are now spread across all the provinces of the Ming Dynasty, the remaining ones are the 600,000 people.

Although the number of these 600,000 people is far less than that during the reign of Chongzhen, their fighting capacity is different. If we say that the army of the Ming Dynasty was a group of hungry and cold people who scattered in a hurry on the battlefield, the current Ming Dynasty army has not recovered to the peak of its heyday, but it is not far from it.

Especially as the most powerful new army in the army, the size of this army has expanded from the initial to nearly 170,000. Except for the 30,000 new troops stationed in the capital, the rest of the new army has gradually replaced the original border troops and garrison troops of the Ming Dynasty. In terms of local security, it has also gradually shifted from the garrisons to the police department after the establishment of the police department. From this point of view, it is also one of the reasons for the actual reduction in the number of Ming Dynasty troops.

The transformation of the army and the gradual recovery of its combat effectiveness, coupled with the military expenditures and material preparations accumulated over the years, gave the Ming Dynasty the confidence to continue the battle in Liaodong.

Although Zhu Shenzhui has been implementing a military and economic blockade of Liaodong, the Jiannu's life has become increasingly difficult over time. Moreover, after Agudamu took control of Chahar, the support the Jiannu received from Mongolia has been weakening. But even so, it is impossible to trap the Jiannu to death and let them completely self-destruct. If this is the case, if the Jiannu tear off their skin and continue to plunder in Liaodong for a few more years or even more than ten years, and grit their teeth to hold on, will the Ming Dynasty just sit there and wait?

Zhu Shenzhui was not so naive, and would not pin all his hopes on the possibility of the enemy's collapse. And who can tell what will happen in a few years or even a dozen years? After so much time, anything can happen. Now the Jiannu has become weak to a certain extent. In addition, Dorgon monopolized the government with the so-called regent of the emperor's uncle and colluded with the Empress Dowager Bulbutai in private. Hauge, the eldest son of Huang Taiji, had fallen out with Dorgon. The two sides occupied Korea and were at loggerheads, and a civil war broke out.

Under such circumstances, how could the Ming Dynasty sit idly by? It naturally had to take the opportunity to send troops to completely resolve the Jiannu problem. This is what Wang Jinwu said about deciding Liaodong with one battle.

(End of this chapter)