Chapter 318: Twelve Guards of the Imperial Army

In mid-April, Li Yuanhui returned to Hefei by boat, and the generals who stayed behind or returned early went out of the city to greet him.

Li Yuanhui met with everyone, encouraged them, and then returned to the general's mansion.

Led by the Princess of Qi, all the female members of the palace were waiting in the inner courtyard. When they saw Li Yuanhui come in, they all bowed and saluted, except the Princess herself.

"Meet His Highness King Qi."

Everyone said in unison, and Murong Jiayin looked straight at Duan Jin behind Li Yuanhui, and then looked at the young man in the other direction. She recognized his identity at a glance, her younger brother Murong Kexie. At the moment, Murong Jiayin felt a little excited, and then she looked at Li Yuanhui.

"Your Highness, you have worked hard on the journey."

Li Yuanhui said: "It's not hard work, but I have to trouble the princess to manage the household for me."

After exchanging pleasantries, Li Yuanhui visited his two sons, Li Chengdao and Li Cheng'an, respectively, and then spoke to several women in the backyard before returning to the main courtyard to rest.

Murong Jiayin took Duan Jin to the courtyard on the other side. The two used to have a very good relationship and could be considered good friends and card-playing partners.

The relationship is a bit awkward now.

However, both of them are smart people and will not try to show off as soon as they arrive.

Although Dayan was destroyed, Murong Jiayin's status and symbolism as Li Yuanhui's legally married wife remained unshakable. Now that she had given birth to a legitimate son, her status was even more solid than a rock.

Duan Jin now has no status and is not even a concubine. Although Li Yuanhui will make arrangements for her sooner or later, he will definitely not let her affect the status of the principal wife.

Even if Murong Jiayin was not there, Duan Jin would not be able to take the position of princess.

Therefore, apart from emotional factors, there is actually not much conflict of interest between the two people. Instead, there is a lot of complementarity.

Because Great Yan was destroyed, both of them were essentially remnants of Great Yan. One represented the old royal family, and the other represented the Xianbei nobles. They were on the same line.

So the conversation between the two was relatively amicable.

That night, Li Yuanhui stayed in the princess' courtyard. After the two of them had dinner, Murong Jiayin formally thanked him: "Thank you, Your Highness, for bringing Vajra to Jianghuai."

Li Yuanhui said, "You and I are husband and wife, there is no need to be so polite and talk about thanking or not."

Murong Jiayin said: "If it weren't for your Highness, I don't know how long Vajra could have lived."

Li Yuanhui did not explain after hearing this. Some things could not be explained clearly. With his father's style of doing things, the collateral branch of the Murong family might be fine, but it was hard to say for the direct branch.

After a night of love, Li Yuanhui still got up very early. After breakfast, he immediately summoned a group of staff and generals from various departments.

He then announced the personnel adjustments and appointments he had carefully considered along the way, and proposed to move his seat of government from Hefei to Shouchun.

First of all, Shouchun is a big city, and it has many more functions than a city like Hefei which is almost a pure military fortress.

Secondly, if something happens in the Xuzhou direction, we can directly start from Shouchun and advance eastward along the Huai River.

At the same time, it also made it easier for Li Yuanhui to govern Yuzhou.

Naturally, everyone had no objection. In fact, as a pure military fortress, Hefei was naturally not as prosperous as Shouchun.

And from the current practical needs, moving to Shouchun is reasonable.

At the same time, in view of the large size of the current army, Li Yuanhui also discussed the issues of military organization and command system with the staff of Zhenjun Mansion.

Currently, Li Yuanhui, as the General of the Zhenjun Army and the commander-in-chief of the military of four states, actually controls an army of about 200,000.

This number is after a round of layoffs, and the scale is still huge.

Among them, the navy was about 40,000 people, and the cavalry, light cavalry and heavy cavalry together were less than 20,000, about 18,000 people. The rest were mainly infantry.

At present, the entire Tang Dynasty occupied half of the world, and the total number of troops was about 500,000, which means that Li Yuanhui was in charge of 40% of the Tang Dynasty's troops. At the same time, he also controlled a large area of ​​plains that was conducive to agricultural production.

Whether it is Huainan, Huaibei or the Central Plains, they are all densely populated plains.

Even so, Li Yuanhui felt that the number of troops should be reduced appropriately, but the specific method of reduction still needed to be discussed.

While Li Si was considering these issues, Chang'an was also thinking about how to strengthen control over the army, how to maintain stability, and how to continue the war.

As if it was destined, the two proposals of the military household system and the equal-field system were proposed by a man named Yuwen, Yuwen Chengye, the Minister of War and Co-Prime Minister.

These two systems were quickly recognized by Li Yuan.

The Fubing system, in simple terms, divided the country into several military offices, each of which was responsible for recruiting soldiers from its own region. The government distributed land to military households through the equal-field system, exempting them from taxes, in order to ensure that the military households provided military strength for the court.

The equal-field system is just as the name suggests.

Males of adult age and middle-aged men over 18 years old are granted 20 mu of permanent land and 80 mu of land for each household. Old men, the seriously ill, and the disabled are granted 40 mu of land for each household. For industrial and commercial persons, the land granted is reduced by half of that for males, and widows and concubines are granted 30 mu of land for each household. If the above-mentioned persons are the heads of households, the land granted is reduced by half of that for males. When they are old, 50 mu of land for each household is taken back, and when they die, all the land for each household is taken back by the government and distributed separately.

Although Li Yuan thought this strategy was good and conducive to social stability, there was no way to implement it immediately.

The previous dynasty of Great Yan basically implemented a combination of tribal system and recruitment system. In the later period, the tribal system gradually disappeared, and the recruitment system was basically the main system. However, the army still retained the influence of the major Xianbei tribes.

This influence still existed in the Tang Dynasty, but it was not the main problem.

The main problem is that there is not enough land in Guanzhong to be divided.

This has to be said that in history, when the Northern Zhou Dynasty implemented the military system, Guanzhong had experienced war and was in ruins, with nine out of ten households being deserted.

There are large tracts of land that can be used to implement the fubing system.

But now Guanzhong is full of powerful families.

And because Emperor Xuan of Wei strongly promoted tree planting in Longshan, Ziwuling and other places during his reign and banned excessive logging in order to consolidate water and soil, Guanzhong is still a land of abundance, and because of decades of management by Dayan, it is quite prosperous.

The most important thing is that the war for the Li family to seize Guanzhong did not last too long. Chang'an also opened its gates and surrendered the city, and all the noble families in Guanzhong surrendered to the Li family.

Therefore, the impact on Guanzhong’s organizational structure and ecology is minimal.

When a noble family surrenders to you, you must protect their interests, right? When the new dynasty was first established, everyone was very tactful and paid the land tax.

But if you just take over other people's land, isn't that a bit too much?
Besides, most of the soldiers already have land at home and are from good families.

However, Li Yuan soon turned his attention to Yu, Xu, Jing, Yan and other places.

This strategy is not very suitable for Guanzhong at present, but because of the wars in Yuzhou, Xuzhou and Yanzhou, the people have been displaced and even there are not many powerful people left.

After all, the refugee rebels' main strength is sometimes the fortress, because only the powerful fortresses have food.
This objectively resulted in large tracts of farmland in Yuzhou, Xuzhou, Yanzhou and other places being ownerless.

It is suitable for the court to take it back and then distribute it.

Although the equal-field system was difficult to implement in Guanzhong, it did not hinder the establishment of military governments.

As a result, Li Yuan's reform of the military system was officially put on the agenda.

Left and Right Guards, Left and Right Brave Guards, Left and Right Military Guards, Left and Right Mighty Guards, Left and Right Leading Guards, Left and Right Golden Guards.

The Twelve Guards Army officially stepped onto the stage of history.

(End of this chapter)