Chapter 510 Bringing Water
Seeing the older boy stumbling over his words, Li Yuanhui suddenly recalled the time when he was reciting texts in primary school.

This child is really working hard, but talent varies from person to person.

However, Li Yuanhui did not originally want him to endorse the book. After learning that Li Chengping had been holding the "Tao Te Ching" in his hand for the past few months, he considered that he had passed this hurdle.

"Not bad, pretty hardworking."

Li Chengping felt relieved after listening to Aye's comments. He hadn't felt so relaxed in the past few months.

He gets a headache every time he opens the "Tao Te Ching" now.

At noon, they had a picnic outside and asked someone to catch some fish from the Luo River. After lunch, Li Yuanhui took his sons to fly kites for a while, and then returned to the city when it was almost time.

Once back in Luoyang, there were endless military and political affairs to deal with.

There was one win and one loss in the Jianghuai and Hanoi battlefields. The results were different, but the amount of follow-up work that needed to be done was equally much.

Guo Fenghe, the Chief Clerk of the King of Qi and the Acting Minister of the Left, had already gone to Jianghuai with the King of Qi's imperial edict to comfort the troops and stabilize the people's hearts.

Cao Fu, the Junior Supervisor of Construction, is in charge of rebuilding the river bridge. The army stationed in Hanoi is strengthening fortifications in various places and is prepared for a long-term confrontation with the Han army in Hanoi.

On the other side, the Han army also built several garrison cities with Fangtou as the core on the other side of the Qi River, and was also prepared to deal with the Tang army in the long term.

Li Yuanhui also had another very important job, which was to reward the heroes who participated in the destruction of the Western Wei Dynasty.

The two commanders, Li Yaoshi was given the title of Duke of Wei, with a fief of 2,000 households, while Lü Qin was given the title of Duke of Jing, with a fief of 1,800 households.

Xu Qiande, who performed outstandingly in this battle, was conferred the title of Duke of Yuzhang County, and his deputy Fu Weixue was conferred the title of Duke of Hanshou County.

As for the Battle of Hanoi, Zhu's fief of Wujun was increased by 300 households, making it 1,800 households. His five sons were also given official titles.

Chang Yanheng, Zhang Jian, Xiao Shizhi, Chen Zhen, Liu Fuwei, Huang Junhan, Murong Sanzang and others were all given additional fiefs, but none of them were promoted to higher positions. After all, compared with others' achievements in destroying a country, Henei had fought for so long, and the result was only the recapture of Henei County.

There is no comparison between the merits of recovering old territory and destroying a country.

Although from a global perspective, the Luoyang troops' fight against the Northern Han was an extremely important achievement, but there is no way it is as glorious as the achievement of destroying a country.

As a result, Li Yaoshi and Lu Qin were conferred the title of Duke of the State, Xu Qiande was conferred the title of Duke of a County, and even the young and brave general Fu Weixue was made a Duke of a County. This made the generals of the Tian Ce Palace jealous.

Who doesn’t want the credit of destroying a country?

If we destroy the Western Wei, or even a small army, we can get such a huge reward, then what if we destroy the Eastern Wei?
As a result, a group of generals began to get restless.

Some people even directly proposed the idea of ​​destroying the Eastern Wei during the meeting.

After all, it is still a bit difficult to destroy the Northern Han, but everyone still thinks it is more realistic to fight against the Eastern Wei.

Although the Eastern Wei took the opportunity to enter Chaohu Lake and seize Wankou, Wanxian and other areas along the Yangtze River in Lujiang County, this was based on the fact that the Tang army's defense was weak and the main force in Luoyang could not be split to fight against the Northern Han. Soldiers and navy from various states and counties participated in the battle to destroy the Western Wei.

This allowed them to get a bargain.

But if we make an effort, it should be no problem to deal with the Eastern Wei, right?

After all, who among you hasn't fought against the Eastern Wei? The Jianghuai Army got its start by fighting the Eastern Wei. How can we not know what kind of people in Jiangdong are?

Why are we still fighting against the Northern Han? Why don’t we go and deal with the Eastern Wei? We can also destroy that country.

Among them, the most enthusiastic were General Liu Fuwei of the Left and Right Wuwei Guards and the Left Weiwei Guard.

Liu Fuwei, also known as Liu Yuanqing, changed his name to Liu Fuwei because Li Xuanqing ascended the throne and became emperor, so he had to avoid taboos.

The ten Zhechongfu under his Zuoweiwei lost half of their military strength in the Battle of Hanoi. Although he was brave, he rarely gained an advantage in the battle with the Northern Han Dynasty, so he thought that the soft persimmon in the south could be squeezed first. As for Zhu Deyu, Zhang Jian, Chang Yanheng, Chen Zhen, Zhang Zhen'e, the real Jianghuai generals, they maintained a more cautious attitude and were not instigated by their subordinates.

Li Yuanhui himself did not express his opinion. This means that the commander-in-chief does not want to fight. The army is made up of people, and after experiencing long-term and high-intensity confrontation, people need to rest and recover. So the soldiers below do not want to fight either.

Therefore, Li Yuanhui said during the meeting, I understand your desire to make progress, but now we have just fought with the Northern Han for so long, let's take a break.

The generals naturally had no objections, nor did they dare to have any, because the soldiers below and the commander above did not want to fight.

Although the generals wanted to improve themselves, they also knew the importance of things. As for forcing the emperor to abdicate, or the idea of ​​rebelling against the superiors, they dared not even think about it, fearing that if they did, they would be dealt with by the soldiers below.

Li Yuanhui could understand the generals' desire to improve, so after pacifying everyone, he really began to let Li Yaoshi, Li Qinglian and others start to formulate a plan to attack and destroy the Eastern Wei, and plan the strategy first. As for this matter, Li Yuanhui had considered it, but the Tang Dynasty was fighting four relatively large local wars at the same time. It took time to repair and recover.

As for the soldiers from the prefectures and counties who participated in the expedition against the Western Wei, they returned to their respective bases after receiving their merits and rewards.

Each guard post also had to begin recruiting new soldiers to make up for the losses suffered in the war.

Luoyang can directly control the four guards. According to Chang'an's plan, all twelve guards, including the Left and Right Wuwei and the Left and Right Weiwei, will add five Zhechoufu, and the total number of people will be expanded to 20,000.

Li Yuanhui had no plans to continue expanding the army, because the current number of troops was already very large. The six Tiance armies and the new army had 40,000 people, and these people were fully unemployed soldiers who needed direct financial support.

If the 100,000 soldiers of the Weifu Army were not completely independent from production but were tied to the land, Li Yuanhui would have had to raise the tax rate by ninety years just to support these 100,000 soldiers.

In this financial situation, if we want to expand the size of the army, we have to resort to aggressive military tactics and squeeze it to the extreme. Of course, we can't do that.

In comparison, he is still prepared to take the elite route.

Although the military system was created by the Tang Dynasty in this time and space, it seems to be able to be maintained in the short term and can inspire the combat effectiveness and organization of the soldiers, but in the long run, it is bound to escape the vicious cycle of land annexation.

This is why Li Yuanhui wanted to establish a new army, taking the route of professional elite troops. He wanted to walk on two legs, so that even if the Fubing system collapsed in the future, there would be no one available. Of course, he probably wouldn't see that day.

Li Yuanhui was very satisfied with the new army's performance in its first battle and gave it the title "Japan-supporting Army", but only retained a strength of 5,000 men.

Xu Qiande and Fu Weixue were still appointed as the left and right commanders.

The reason for reducing the size of the Japanese army was to achieve a balance.

Xu Qiande, Fu Weixue and a group of young generals had too little experience and were far inferior to the generals of the six Tian Ce armies.

For example, when Zhang Zhen'e was already the camp leader, Xu Qiande was still a captain who was promoted out of turn.

Although the Beiwei Army is a heavy cavalry, it has been led by Zhang Zhen'e and Luo Shixiang for many years, which is a trust. But you can't let Xu Qiande lead 20,000 troops just because he has made a contribution. After all, Zhu now only has ten Zhechoufu and more than 10,000 troops under his control.

As a person in a higher position, you have to learn to keep things balanced.

If he was directly allowed to lead 20,000 troops, the mentality of this group of people would be affected. It would not be conducive to unity.

So after Li Yuanhui thought about it, in addition to allocating 5,000 people from the new army to form the Pongri Army, he also allocated another 5,000 people to form the Tianwu Army, with Xie Shufang and Yang Xianguo as the left and right commanders.

The remaining 10,000 people were directly under his command, and he formed a personal guard army, with Zhang Zhen'e as the left wing commander-in-chief and Yu Zhongheng as the right wing commander-in-chief. Dou Xianjun, the governor of Henan, also served as the guard.

There are three chief officers in the Imperial Guard, a relative by marriage, a cousin, and a childhood friend.

After Yu Zhongheng stepped down, Li Yaoshi took over as Sima of Tiance Palace and Zhonglingjun.

Although he resigned from his post as governor of Qingzhou and was granted the title of Duke of Weiguo, this position was still not considered a demotion for him.

Even Pharmacist Li felt relieved after receiving the appointment, because it meant that he had returned to the center of power in Luoyang Bafu.

(End of this chapter)