"The guards are far too lax."
"I only saw a few scattered guards; there were no yamen runners or patrolling soldiers."
Given the current size of Luzhou City, a city like this should have 3,000 garrison troops plus a prefect to govern the area; this is the standard configuration for the imperial court.
If a position is special, it can be guarded by other powerful armies, such as the Fengling Army.
Liu Feng walked through the entire city of Luzhou without seeing any place resembling a military garrison.
Are the troops all stationed outside the city?
"General, you may not know this, but Qingzhou has always valued family culture."
“In Qingzhou, in addition to the regular army, most families have some private armies.”
"However, these families don't have many private soldiers, at most no more than five hundred."
"Therefore, in wartime, the combined forces of these city troops and the armies of various families far exceed the garrison of an ordinary city."
Song Gaoyan explained.
"Huh? There's such a tradition?"
"But even a family's private army serves as a guard, set up to protect the family's trade routes, right?"
Liu Feng had already guessed the general idea.
Song Gaoyan nodded.
In fact, taking the entire system of the Dali Dynasty as an example, at the beginning of the founding of the country, the court issued unified orders, but now, the connection between the various regions and the court has gradually weakened.
The system has also developed its own characteristics in each state.
Just like the cities east of Qingzhou, it's a long and difficult journey for them to do business. Even if the prefect doesn't allow it, there's nothing they can do; they still have to recruit a large number of guards.
Therefore, under such circumstances, it would be better to let them recruit private armies.
They can be used in wartime, so why not?
In fact, this cannot be blamed on the decline of the imperial court's ruling power.
Unfortunately, given the current situation, this is unavoidable.
Just like Liu Feng's Tiger Roar Army, what can the imperial court do if it forbids it? Are they just going to wait for the city to be breached by the enemy?
Therefore, allowing powerful clans to maintain their own private armies was a precedent set when the Dali Kingdom was founded.
What the imperial court wanted was control over the local area. As long as the prefect was appointed by the court and could collect all the taxes and grain, that was enough.
If the imperial court were to support all these troops, how much silver would it cost?
With constant wars with neighboring countries, the imperial court would not be able to support an army of several million.
Therefore, having local powerful families privately recruit soldiers was simply a special tactic.
"If that's the case, then there should be quite a few soldiers in the four cities to the east of Qingzhou."
"Using commerce as a springboard, we must draw out all the soldiers from the entire eastern part of Qingzhou, just like a wick absorbing oil."
"The Tiger Roar Army was initially given only three thousand slots, but in reality, the Tiger Roar Army now has more than four thousand members."
The Tiger Roar Army's strength was almost one-third of the entire population of Zhengde County.
This ratio is alarming compared to other cities in the Great Li Kingdom; it's practically a case of the entire population being mobilized for war.
This approach has advantages, but more disadvantages. The main one is that in Zhengde County, more than 80% of the people who can farm and do other things are women and the elderly.
Under normal circumstances, it is most appropriate for ten people to support one soldier.
However, on Liu Feng's side, it was almost three people supporting one soldier.
As a result, although a large amount of fertile land had been reclaimed in Zhengde County, no one was cultivating it.
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