I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 314 The key to the problem

Jiang Bin also knelt down, "Father, please go back to the capital to handle state affairs. We have children here, and we will make sure that little Mongolian prince never comes back!"

With Jiang Bin taking the lead, all the generals in the room knelt down.

Although many people do not believe Jiang Jiangong's calculations, their attitude must be made clear at this time.

The main reason was that the fact that the emperor personally led the army to fight had caused PTSD among the civil and military officials of the Ming Dynasty. Not only the civil officials were afraid that the Tumu Fortress incident would happen again, but the military officials were also afraid.

Moreover, Zhu Houzhao was different from others. If there really were such a large number of Mongols moving south, in their opinion, the best way to deal with it was to defend the city.

Zhu Houzhao's attitude was clearly that he wanted to go out of the city to fight. To be honest, they didn't want that. Not many teams were willing to go out of the city to fight the Mongols. After all, the risks of defending a city and going out of the city to fight were completely different.

Therefore, whether from a political or military perspective, letting Zhu Houzhao stay on the front line was not the best choice.

The attitude of the generals made Zhu Houzhao feel like he had been hit by a blow, and he felt dizzy.
"Jiang Jiangong! What do you think?" Zhu Houzhao looked at Jiang Jiangong, hoping he could speak for him.

Jiang Jiangong also began to avoid Zhu Houzhao's gaze, "General, our military supplies are insufficient. We need a large amount of food and wages to boost morale, and a large amount of equipment and supplies to cope with various consumption. Now these are insufficient, and these things have a fixed amount every year, so we need the general..."

"You've gone through so much trouble, and you want me to go to the rear, right? Do you want this general to escape from the battlefield?" Zhu Houzhao slammed the table hard and said.

"Soldiers are the courage of the general, and the general is the soul of the soldiers. The morale of the new army's soldiers lies in me, general. If I hide far behind, the new army's soldiers will be greatly affected. How much combat power can they exert at that time?" Zhu Houzhao said angrily.

Jiang Bin looked as if he wanted to say something but hesitated. He really couldn't argue with Zhu Houzhao about this.

Jiang Jiangong also looked like he had a headache. Zhu Houzhao's words were not wrong, but Zhu Houzhao also obviously exaggerated his own role. In his opinion, the combat effectiveness of the new army mainly depended on its weapons and equipment and peacetime training.

"We can't ask the officials of the court to provide us with so much food and military supplies based on a guess, and the officials of the court will not give us so much food and military supplies for this reason," Jiang Jiangong said carefully.

This is indeed a very realistic issue, and other generals also persuaded Zhu Houzhao that this was just a speculation.

"I don't care about any speculation. This general has stayed in the border town for so long, reorganizing the border troops and familiarizing himself with the terrain. Isn't it just for fighting the Mongols? If there are more Mongols, this general will be scared and flee. How can this general face the people of the world then?" Zhu Houzhao simply didn't listen to the advice.

"But our current military supplies and food wages are not enough to cope with the consumption of a war of this scale. This is a very realistic problem," Jiang Jiangong reminded.

Zhu Houzhao also had a headache after listening to this. He understood what Jiang Jiangong meant. If he was in the capital, he could urge the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of War to provide money and equipment. However, if he was not in the capital, the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of War might not necessarily listen to him just by issuing imperial edicts remotely.

Wars are fought on logistics, and if logistics are insufficient, half the battle is lost. Zhu Houzhao suddenly realized the crux of the problem. What he should strive for most now is Zhu Houxuan's support.

After all, he was planning to pull all 9 new troops to the front line, and the Mongols would usually move south in September or October, which was at least a month away. The logistics of the new army had always been supplied by the Royal Group. If Zhu Houxuan did not support him, the new army would be out of food in less than a month.

Moreover, Zhu Houxuan is now the Prince Regent, and he has recently had a tight grip on the Ministry of Revenue. With Zhu Houxuan's means, it should not be a big problem for him to get a batch of food and salaries from the Ministry of Revenue.

The more Zhu Houzhao thought about it, the more it made sense to him. He suddenly felt that there was no point in arguing with the people present. They couldn't persuade him anyway, and they had no way to solve the problem of food, wages and supplies, so arguing with them was a complete waste of time.

Zhu Houzhao snorted coldly, ended the argument, and went back to write a letter to Zhu Houxuan.

All the generals present breathed a sigh of relief. Although they failed to persuade Zhu Houzhao today, they still had one or two months to persuade him.

However, they are not completely powerless now. Documents stamped with the seal of the mighty general were sent to various military towns in the nine borders.

The document ordered the military garrisons in the nine border areas to increase the scope of their night patrols on the grasslands, collect as much information as possible about the movements of the Mongols on the grasslands, and capture as many Mongolians alive.

There was also an order to shelter Mongolian fugitives, as well as the heads of Su Xingdong and Huo Yu.

These orders caused ripples in the nine borders of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, in real history, the Ming border troops tried every possible means to obtain the heads of the Mongols, because the economic reward for each Mongol head was enough to make people greedy. The reward for a head in ordinary years was dozens of taels of silver. The peak time was during the Gengxu Rebellion, when the Mongols invaded Beijing. The court raised the price of an enemy head to 120 taels of silver.

The purchasing power of 120 taels of silver was enough to buy several servants and maids.

However, the difficulty of obtaining Mongolian heads was an objective reality, so all kinds of crooked ways emerged, such as trading with the Mongols in exchange for real Mongolian heads and killing Han people who escaped from Mongolian tribes.

The most outrageous thing is that they also figured out how to make fake Mongolian heads. The method is to find a group of beggars or fools, lock them up, shave their heads regularly, corrode their teeth with oxalic acid regularly, and then cut them off and use them as Mongolian heads. This does not consume much food, and it is not easy for the Ministry of War's Examination Office to detect the truth.

Those who were more daring would target the real Mongols, but they did not take the initiative to hunt on the grasslands. Instead, they set their sights on the envoys sent by the Mongols. A team of envoys must have at least 10 to 20 people. If they killed them all, the reward alone would be several hundred or even a thousand taels of silver, not to mention that their military merits could also be promoted by one or two levels.

And there was no risk. Whenever the Mongolian envoys came knocking on the gate, they would be invited in with a smile, then dragged to some deserted corner and killed, and the bodies would be disposed of without anyone noticing. If anyone asked about it, they would say they had never seen it. Anyway, there was no way to investigate such things in that era.

This cut off the information exchange between Mongolia and the Ming court for a long time, and to some extent also increased the intensity of the border war between the two sides.

At the same time, Yao Fuyou, a former clerk of the Ministry of Revenue in the capital, stopped a familiar clerk of the Ministry of War with a smile on his face, wanting to find out something.
(End of this chapter)