Chapter 140: Five Women: Zhao Yu Is a Piece of Tang Monk's Flesh!

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This time, Zhao Yu was not only preparing to expand the Divine Engine Army into five armies—Front, Rear, Left, Right, and Center—he also had even larger expansion plans in mind.

Zhao Yu planned to station several hundred thousand troops in the areas surrounding Dongjing Bianliang, in order to establish the Four Garrisons.

The so-called Four Garrisons imitated the Han dynasty's Three Garrisons system, building auxiliary commanderies and expanding the army to protect the capital.

Based on the terrain around Dongjing Bianliang, Zhao Yu chose Chanzhou as the Northern Garrison, Yingchang as the Southern Garrison, Xiangyi County as the Eastern Garrison, and Zhengzhou as the Western Garrison.

These four locations were close to the capital region, strategically positioned, and easy to defend but hard to attack. Besides defending the capital region, they also allowed for the rapid deployment of troops at any time—to wage war against Western Xia, against the Liao, and against the Jin dynasty that had yet to be born.

The first person to propose the Four Garrisons idea was neither Seeing Zhang Dun nor Ceng Bu, but Cai Jing.

Cai Jing had always wanted to become Chancellor, and he also wanted a hand in military affairs.

But the trouble was, Zhao Yu knew Cai Jing was talented, yet he also knew Cai Jing had no bottom line in his actions. The key point was that Zhao Yu did not want to walk the old path that led to the Jingkang Humiliation. Therefore, Cai Jing had to be strictly limited in his use.

Based on this, Zhao Yu only let Cai Jing manage the economy, and did not let him touch anything else—especially military affairs. In military matters, Zhao Yu trusted Seeing Zhang Dun and Ceng Bu far more.

But Cai Jing did not know what Zhao Yu was thinking. He assumed Zhao Yu simply did not know he also had talent in military affairs, so he drafted the Four Garrisons military plan for Zhao Yu, hoping to use it as a foothold into the military sphere.

Setting everything else aside—if the Jingkang Humiliation had occurred when the Zhao Song dynasty possessed a complete Four Garrisons system, how could tens of thousands of Jin troops have entered the realm as if it were an unguarded land?

More critically, Zhao Yu had to learn from the historical lessons of Zhao Ji's campaign to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, when Song field armies could not defeat the Liao in open battle.

The Imperial Army at the founding of the dynasty was a large-scale, relatively combat-capable central force that played a vital role in maintaining Zhao Song rule and resisting foreign invasion.

But after Zhao Kuangyin died, the Imperial Army slowly changed its character, eventually becoming what it was now—capable of doing anything except fighting. No one could even say for certain how many Imperial troops the Zhao Song dynasty actually had, yet it had to spend enormous sums on military expenses every year.

Given this, reform of the Imperial Army was imperative.

Zhao Yu's thinking was simple: since the Imperial Army was no longer usable, recruit people who could fight to form a new army. Since ancient times, wherever strong soldiers came from, that was where he would go to recruit.

The Divine Engine Army was born precisely in this way.

But the Divine Engine Army's numbers were too small. Even after expansion, the main army numbered only 25,000 troops, and with the auxiliary army included, only 75,000 at most.

This number of troops was fine for small-scale conflicts, but clearly insufficient for destroying Western Xia, destroying the Liao, and destroying the Jin dynasty that might be born.

One had to remember that, under the plans of Zhao Yu and his ministers, the war to destroy Western Xia could break out at any moment.

Moreover, once the Zhao Song dynasty launched a war of national annihilation against Western Xia, the Liao would certainly not stand idly by. Therefore, the Zhao Song dynasty would inevitably have to fight a major war, possibly even a one-versus-two war of national annihilation.

If it truly came to that, the Zhao Song dynasty could only deploy troops from across the entire realm.

But the problem was that, historically, Zhao Ji had done exactly this when recovering the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun.

At that time, there were the Northwestern Imperial Army troops scattered across the Six Circuits of Shaanxi, the even more scattered Capital Region Imperial Army, Hebei Imperial Army, and Jiangnan Imperial Army, plus the Xiang Army and the Xiang Army. At the peak, several hundred thousand Song troops were amassed along the Song-Liao border.

Yet the Northern Liao at that time had only a mere tens of thousands of troops.

However, the result of the engagement was that several hundred thousand Song troops were utterly defeated by 20,000 Liao troops and sent fleeing home.

There were many reasons for such an ugly defeat.

First of all, those Song troops had never met each other in peacetime, nor had they ever cooperated. Their combat habits, living habits were completely different, and they could not even understand one another's languages.

It was as if local independent regiments from various regions had been hastily cobbled together to face the Liao's fully manned, well-trained, superbly equipped 20,000-plus elite cavalry, who were resolved to fight to the death.

Moreover, fighting on Liao territory meant the Song army was the visitor, knowing nothing of the geography, terrain, or local customs.

The outcome was easy to imagine.

Later generations have summarized it thus: the late Northern Song army could certainly handle local pacification operations within its own jurisdiction, and could even handle years of fighting against Western Xia's elites. But once they were gathered in numbers of tens of thousands or over a hundred thousand, the Song army could no longer fight, and its combat power plummeted.

Why could the Song army of that era not fight battles above ten thousand men?

Beyond the military system problems of that Song army, the most important reason was that the Northern Song dynasty of that time did not cultivate campaign-level commanders capable of directing large-scale army group operations.

No matter how high their rank, the generals of that Northern Song dynasty could never directly command more than 5,000 troops under them.

And that was only the number on paper. In reality, due to reasons like ghost soldiers on the rolls, they might not even have half that number.

This meant that while those generals were nominally "army commanders" or "division commanders," their actual combat command ability was at best that of a "regiment commander," or possibly only a "battalion commander" or "company commander."

Once these generals were dragged to the front lines to participate in large-scale battles of tens of thousands, when they needed to devise strategies and deploy formations, they had no idea what to do. Because their daily work had always been that of a battalion or company commander, suddenly being handed an army group's overall command left them completely at a loss. They couldn't even read a map, so naturally they could only be beaten black and blue by the enemy.

The root cause was still that the Zhao Song dynasty of that time did not trust its generals and insisted on using civil officials to control the military.

This meant that whenever the Song army gathered for a national war, a large number of generals would assemble with their respective forces, and then a civil official would be placed in command to direct operations.

If the commander-in-chief was someone like Fan Zhixu, a pure scholar who could only talk about warfare on paper, then even a hundred-thousand-strong army would be defeated in moments by a few thousand Jin troops. If it were someone like Li Gang, who understood a bit of military affairs, the defeat would simply come a little later.

Why, even under the command of civil officials like Li Gang who understood a bit of military affairs, did they still suffer defeat?

It was because their authority was too small, leaving them no room to command.

Whenever a major battle was to be fought, it was the civil officials on the court who knew nothing of military affairs that ran things. Sometimes, when the enemy fled like a beaten cur, they would not let you pursue; sometimes, when it was clearly an enemy trap to lure you in deep, they would still force you to engage.

Examples like this were far too numerous during the Two Songs period; indeed, far too many great generals met their downfall for precisely this reason.

With such bloody lessons before him, how could Zhao Yu possibly fail to establish the Four Garrisons and create four large army groups capable of fighting major battles?

Thus, although Ceng Bu had some hesitation, worrying that the problem of surplus troops, which had only just been barely suppressed, might resurface, with Seeing Zhang Dun's support, Zhao Yu still issued the imperial edict to build the Four Garrison New Armies.

It is worth noting that, according to plan, the equipment of these Four Garrison New Armies was still primarily old-style gear (the Zhao Song dynasty's gunpowder weapons and Divine Crossbows did not yet have the production capacity to equip so many troops at present), but their organizational structure followed the new army model—that is, all adopted the dual-commander system designed by Li Lin and the new system of using civil officials as army supervisors.

Both the Four Garrison generals and the Four Garrison supervisors were personally selected by Zhao Yu.

Northern Garrison general: Zhong Pu; supervisor: Sun Lu;

Western Garrison general: Wang Zhan; supervisor: Zhang Xun;

Eastern Garrison general: Gao Yongnian; supervisor: Fan Chuncui;

Southern Garrison general: Wang Min; supervisor: Sun Lan.

These Four Garrison supervisors had all fully proven themselves in a series of northwestern campaigns—each was both civil and martial in ability. Zhang Chun had also analyzed them one by one and concluded that their abilities and loyalty were all without question.

As for the four generals, apart from the veteran Wang Min, the other three had all, in history, either died for their country in battle or hanged themselves rather than endure humiliation. They were all great generals who feared neither death nor hardship and were skilled in warfare, absolutely capable of shouldering great responsibilities. And the veteran Wang Min was a fierce general who, with only two thousand poorly equipped Song troops under his sole command, had fought to the death without surrender and ultimately held off an attack by several tens of thousands of combined Xia-Tibetan forces.

Among these eight men, naturally Seeing Zhang Dun's close associates predominated. Sun Lu and Zhang Xun, for instance, were both die-hard confidants of Seeing Zhang Dun, and the latter was moreover Seeing Zhang Dun's brother-in-law.

This also made it convenient for Seeing Zhang Dun to command these Four Garrison New Armies in battle in the future.

However, Zhao Yu did not hand all of these Four Garrison New Armies over to Seeing Zhang Dun, nor did he hand them all over to the New Faction.

Fan Chuncui was the fourth son of Fan Zhongyan and the fourth younger brother of the newly appointed Old Faction Chancellor Fan Chunli—a true-blue Old Faction man through and through.

During the Empress Yuanyou era, the Western Xia invaded Jingyuan Road; Fan Chuncui dispatched General Qu Zhen to reinforce the area. Qu Zhen raced three hundred li and decisively crushed the Xia army at Qulü, destroying Hengshan, forcing the Xia forces to retreat. Moreover, while serving as governor of Qingzhou and Yanzhou, Fan Chuncui actively constructed fortresses and garrisons, strengthening border defenses and contributing to the consolidation of the Northern Song's northwestern frontier. He possessed considerable military talent.

Sun Lan's elder brother was Sun Jue, a minister of the Empress Yuanyou era, who likewise had little fondness for the New Policies and belonged to the Old Party.

In his early years, by a twist of fate, Sun Lan came under Zhang Dun's command, offering strategic advice for expanding the southern frontier at Meishan. At the time, he demonstrated outstanding military acumen, earning great merit for the southwestern expansion during Emperor Shenzong's reign. Later, he was transferred to the northwest, where he continued to perform excellently.

Regarding Zhao Yu's plan to expand the army by hundreds of thousands, the conservative Old Party naturally advised against it, and voices even emerged urging Zhao Yu to abandon the Qingtang region and cultivate goodwill with the Western Xia.

In Feng Xie's memorial "On the Three Prefectures of Huang, Kuo, and Xining," he argued that Qingtang was barren land, not worth the enormous resources required to occupy it; better to abandon it entirely, conserve the people's strength, cultivate peace with the Western Xia, and ensure mutual coexistence. In short, it was merely the old argument of the territorial abandonment faction.

Feng Xie spoke nonsense with his eyes wide open, calling the fertile lands, populous regions, and immensely promising transportation corridors of the Qingtang Tubo regime "barren land," deceiving the emperor and provoking Zhao Yu's anger.

Zhao Yu stripped Feng Xie of all offices and exiled him to Hainan, never to be reappointed.

Zhao Yu then issued an edict warning all ministers of the Zhao Song dynasty: repeatedly altering state policy was most harmful to the people; anyone who dared attempt to change the Zhao Song's established policy would be the dynasty's greatest traitor, and he would show no mercy to traitors. He reiterated once more that this dynasty would never deviate from its established course.

Seeing Zhao Yu was determined to turn internal conflicts into external ones, resistance was futile. Moreover, Zhao Yu had appointed Fan Chuncui and Sun Lan as the two chief supervisors, and sent literati loyal to the throne as military supervisors deep into the army—clearly still relying on them heavily, not fully swayed by the New Party. Thus, the Old Party reluctantly abandoned their opposition and supported Zhao Yu's decision, lest he grow furious and eliminate them all.

The Four Auxiliary New Armies have now begun construction, and with Zhang Dun and Ceng Bu, two experienced veteran ministers, overseeing operations, progress has been very smooth.

But in Zhao Yu's view, one critical issue remained unresolved.

The issue was this: the Divine Mechanism Army had Li Lin to guide its ideology, but the Four Auxiliary New Armies lacked such conditions.

Thus, Zhao Yu ordered Li Lin to compile a "Guide to New Army Ideology," grounded in loyalty to the throne and patriotism, for the literati assigned as military supervisors in the Four Auxiliary New Armies to study, with their examination scores serving as a major criterion for their promotions.

"How is the compilation of the 'Guide to New Army Ideology' progressing?" Zhao Yu asked Li Lin.

"It is completed. Your servant will review it once more, then present it to Your Majesty for printing," Li Lin replied.

Zhao Yu nodded.

At this moment, the food had been served. Zhao Yu and the five women sampled the authentic Northeastern cuisine.

Indeed, the authentic Northeastern cuisine was truly extraordinary; Zhao Yu and the women praised it endlessly.

Zhao Yu's favorite dish was Di San Xian—he ate nearly the entire large plate himself.

Yet, while Di San Xian was delicious, after eating it, Zhao Yu felt intensely overheated!

This was normal: he had consumed large quantities of tiger meat and deer meat; any ordinary man eating so much would inevitably become overheated.

Zhao Yu looked at the five women and asked: "Why are you all unaffected?"

Wang Wen, the Chief Physician of the Imperial Medical Bureau, answered for the women: "Tiger meat is supremely yang, deer meat warm and heating. Women, especially pregnant women, should not consume much of it. I had already warned the imperial consorts not to overindulge. But Your Majesty is male; consuming more is beneficial, not harmful, so I did not stop you."

Zhao Yu said to Wang Wen: "You've made me suffer—quickly come and quench my fire!"

"Yes!"

As she spoke, Wang Wen walked toward Zhao Yu, loosening her robes. Her eagerness made it hard to believe she had not planned this in advance.

Surprisingly, Wang Wen did not hoard the spoils. Arriving beside Zhao Yu, helping him undress, she said: "Your Majesty consumed so much—send a few more to assist me."

No sooner had she spoken than over a dozen of her subordinates—Directors, Medical Officers, Medical Assistants, and Scribes—rushed over, as if they had been waiting for this moment.

In no time, Zhao Yu was swallowed by a sea of women…

The five women did not even lift their eyes; they continued eating and drinking as before.

There was no choice: in the harem, Zhao Yu was the only man, and to many women, he was nothing but a piece of monk's meat—any opportunity to take a big bite, they would seize.

After all, had they not been the same once?

Now that they had tasted the meat, they ought to let others have a sip of the broth…

…

…

I intended to write about Meng Xiang or Liu Qingjing, had laid all the groundwork.

But at the final moment, after much hesitation, I dared not touch this thing too many cannot accept.

Sigh!

(End of Chapter)