By the way, there were objective and realistic reasons why the dispute between Nanyang and Yangzhou in the previous year represented the pro-war and pro-peace camps.
For example, according to the data before the Jingkang Rebellion, in the entire south of the Yangtze River, except for a small number of garrisons in the Suzhou and Hangzhou areas, the rest of the places basically only had some scattered garrison troops and local soldiers. According to the organization, the total number was about 20,000 to 30,000 people.
And according to the general view these days, the Southeast has no military tradition.
Well, this kind of regional discrimination is probably that people in the Yangtze River Delta cannot be the backbone of China, and the Osaka Division is the shame of the Imperial Army. I don't know why, but it is very popular and even has become the mainstream of public opinion. For example, Li Gang and Hu Yin, the typical southeastern officials who hold the right to speak in the court, like to blacken themselves every day, and often write letters saying that only the troops in the northwest can be considered a strong army and so on.
So at this time, what exactly did it mean for you to lead tens of thousands of troops to Yangzhou and even cross the river?
Starting from scratch? Building an army from scratch? And using people from the southeast to form an army? Can such an army recover Hebei and bring back the two saints?
To put it bluntly, the reason for going to Nanyang was to attract the remaining Western Army troops, the highly qualified soldiers from the Northwest, and the war horse trade with Qingtang area.
With the skeleton of the Western Army, we recruited high-quality soldiers locally and exchanged them with our Tibetan compatriots for some excellent war horses. This is what it means to fight against the Jin army.
Of course, Zhao Jiu didn't believe that there was a gap in the quality of soldiers between the northwest and the southeast. As an engineering graduate, he didn't have the habit of regional discrimination.
Moreover, in actual operations, on the issue of the quality of soldiers, Emperor Zhao now feels that the refugees from Hebei and Hedong may be more suitable. These people have a natural desire to fight, and using them as soldiers can effectively avoid affecting local production.
However, no matter what, if one wants to resist the Jin, especially if one wants to push back within ten years, one cannot ignore the Western Army and Guanxi.
Otherwise, Emperor Zhao would not have come to Nanyang despite his many shortcomings.
Now back to the present, it is already autumn, the Jin army has retreated for several months, Chang'an has been recovered, Guanxi seems to be pacified, and even Wanqi Xie has been successfully recruited. Zhong Xiang has returned and been promoted... That's right, Zhong Xiang accepted the messy official position of Dongting Lake Pacifier given by the central government, and promised to help Emperor Zhao to eliminate Li Xiaoyi, the bandit who was running around near Dongting Lake... What he said sounded like the truth, but no matter what, Wanqi Qing has made a contribution!
But Emperor Zhao wanted to control the Western Army, did he do it?
Of course not.
The reason is very simple. Two generals, one named Qu Duan and the other named Wang Xie, took the lead in controlling the situation in Guanxi after the rebellion. Wang Xie controlled Fengxiang Prefecture, the three most important prefectures in Guanxi, Jingzhao Prefecture, Fengxiang Prefecture, and Yan'an Prefecture, while Qu Duan controlled Jingzhao Prefecture and Yan'an Prefecture.
And the natures of these two people are completely different.
Among them, Wang Xie was the one who went to Hanzhong and persuaded Zhao Jiu to go to Chengdu. After that incident, Zhao Jiu had already sentenced him to death in his heart and asked him to go to Fengxiang, hoping that he would not harm Hanzhong and affect the whole country.
But Qu Duan was different. Although he was born in a humble family, his father was a guard in front of the emperor who died in battle. He was appointed as an official at the age of three and was good at writing since he was young... The Western Army had a saying specifically about him, which was 'Qu Da is a man who is both civil and military'.
In other words, this guy is a typical general of the Western Army, and one of the "own men". It is precisely because of this that, in the process of retaking Chang'an, this guy killed Liu Xiliang, a commander of the same level, and reported that this guy was a deserter, and the central government believed it; then this guy took advantage of the battle between two armies in Chang'an and launched a surprise attack, destroying and annexing the two armies together, and the central government also accepted it.
Not only that, the central government also appointed him as the governor of Yan'an Prefecture at the suggestion of Yuwen Xuzhong... This was basically the treatment Li Yanxian received after he recaptured Shanzhou.
However, now that Chang'an has been recaptured, many things have become clear. The Central Government has learned that Liu Xiliang is not a deserter at all, but a hero who has just recaptured Fengxiang and is preparing to recapture Chang'an! How could Qu Duan kill him, annex his troops, and then attack Chang'an?
In Chang'an, the central government knew from the beginning that one of the two warring armies was under the banner of the Song Dynasty, because the leader of this rebel army was appointed by Li Yanxian of the neighboring Shanzhou, and he could not wait to present the credit for retaking Chang'an through Li Yanxian. But how to say it? In this day and age, it is indeed difficult to distinguish between the rebel army and the bandit army, so the court did not pay too much attention to Qu Duan's actions.
However, the Central Committee also learned another thing now. After Qu Duan defeated the two armies at the same time, he captured the leader of the rebel army and surrendered, but beheaded the leader of the rebel army who had Li Yanxian's appointment document in his possession...
After these two incidents broke out, the whole court was in an uproar. Even Emperor Zhao, who had always been lenient towards military generals, didn't know what to say.
Besides, of course Zhao Jiu knew that the Western Army was full of bastards, and the better they were at fighting, the more bastards they were. Han Shizhong, Zhang Jun, and Wang De were all Western Army soldiers, and they were all bastards too. A few days ago, Wang De was making a fuss because the old Taiwei Yang Weizhong had returned, and he was worried that the military power of the central army in the imperial camp would be taken away. As a result, the old Taiwei Yang took the initiative to request to go to the southeast to protect the empress dowager after only a few days of arrival. Now he is the commander-in-chief of the rear army of the imperial camp...but these people are bastards at the same level as a bastard like Qu Duan!
And the most important point is that Emperor Zhao did not see how Qu Duan showed a military level comparable to that of his bastard! He fought a battle with the Jin army and did win, but it was his subordinate Wu Jie who led the troops independently.
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