My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 478 The calm before the storm

In this way, with the tacit approval of the entire Chang'an court and even the two empress dowagers in the Eastern Palace, Liu Rong finally put alcohol production on the agenda.

But this process was not very smooth.

First, there is the issue of allocation.

——Even as the most basic vested interest in medical alcohol, there are huge differences within the military over the distribution plan of medical alcohol.

Some high-ranking generals who were meritorious officials or came from aristocratic families believed that medical alcohol was made from grain, and the yield was extremely low.

Even without considering the cost of the production process, just based on the price of the raw materials: food, and the final conversion rate, medical alcohol is an absolute luxury and a precious medicine.

In addition, under Liu Rong's intentional or unintentional control, the production process of medical alcohol became more difficult and the output dropped sharply.

This has resulted in medical alcohol becoming an absolute 'scarce commodity', whether from the perspective of raw material costs or production cycle, production difficulty, and time and labor costs.

Therefore, "rare items" like this, which have limited production, high cost, and can play a significant role in the process of treating casualties on the battlefield, should be supplied to middle and senior officers first.

It sounds nice - priority supply.

But to put it bluntly, all of them are reserved for cadres, and the lower-level soldiers can forget about it.

Of course, there is also a small group of military generals who have some sense and can tell the difference between the important and the unimportant, and they believe that the provision of medical alcohol should not vary from person to person.

On the battlefield, no matter who is injured, as long as he can be saved and can be saved by alcohol, medical alcohol should be used.

After all, when it comes down to it, when it comes to the battlefield, it is the lower-level soldiers who charge into battle, it is the lower-level soldiers who risk their lives, and it is also the lower-level soldiers on the front line who have the highest casualties.

As for generals, especially middle and senior generals, they basically rarely come into close combat with the enemy.

For example, in the current Han Dynasty military system, the lowest-ranking "cadre" is: sergeant.

Normally, the sergeant, or Wu Bai, would have four soldiers under him besides himself.

These four soldiers are basically all from the same hometown as the sergeant - at least from the same county.

They are bound together by their place of origin and by the life and death ties they share on the battlefield.

As the leader of such a five-man combat team, Wu Bai naturally has to fight hard on the front line with every soldier under his command.

They were blinded by killing and had disrupted their organization. They were no different from ordinary soldiers - just soldiers with more combat experience.

The second level: the squad leader, under whom are two "fives", that is, two five hundred, plus a total of eight soldiers under their command.

In battle, the squad leader is almost the same as a soldier. He still has to charge and hack.

At most, he would take some time to observe the situation on the battlefield around him, and then shout: Team A, don't rush out so far, Team B, catch up quickly!

Going up one level, you reach the third level: the garrison commander, who commands five "squads", a total of fifty-five soldiers - forty soldiers, ten sergeants, and five squad leaders.

At this level, he does have some flavor of a commander, but it does not mean he can just wave his hand and order his soldiers to charge while he watches the show from the rear.

The head of a garrison is almost always the leader of the soldiers in a village or even a county. He has to be the leader among the children since he was young!

The people under his command are all his younger brothers who he has played with since childhood, and some of them even follow him around.

Therefore, the garrison commanders were usually the elite backbone of the Han army.

Either you have superb archery skills, able to hit the target from a hundred paces away, or you have the strength to pull a crossbow!

Either you are physically strong and have a strong fighting spirit, or you charge recklessly into the battlefield!
Therefore, the most valuable backbone of the front-line combat organization, but also the one with the highest casualty rate, is the village chief who commands more than 50 people.

Going up one level, you reach the centurion commander, also known as Qu Hou.

According to the "ten-five system" of the Han Dynasty today, which is commonly known as the two-five system by the people, Qu Hou has two garrisons under his command.

When one reaches the level of Qu Hou, he has a bit of the flavor of a "little general".

——After the strategic and tactical orders from superiors are issued, the Qu Hou and other officials can often listen in at the central military tent.

Although it is unlikely that they will be able to speak up and participate in discussions, at least they can receive military orders face to face and understand their superiors' military programs on the spot.

During war, Qu Hou would follow the military orders received from his headquarters and command the two garrisons under his command on the battlefield, maintaining a gap so that they could take care of and cover each other, and then launch an attack on the target or garrison the target area.

Going further up, there are teams with five "Qu" in their jurisdiction, and the chief officer is also called: Sima.

This level is the lowest level of middle-level generals who truly have wartime command authority.

Normally, the commander of a team, Sima, would start to pay attention to the deployment of his troops.

For example, among the five musics under his command, there will often be at least one mixed bow and crossbow music. If conditions permit, it will be directly divided into one bow music and one crossbow music - two bow and crossbow music, to provide long-range firepower.

At the same time, there will be at least two infantry songs, responsible for frontal charge/defense, and a "central army song", responsible for defending the central army, controlling the overall situation, and guarding the military flag.

Look, doesn’t it have a bit of a sense of being a separate unit, facing the enemy alone?

In addition to these basic arms, scout units will also be set up at the 'team' level.

Normally, a group of 500 people would have two scout squads, or twenty elite scouts.

In wartime, scouts often lead the charge, constantly expanding their side's battlefield vision and engaging in combat with enemy scouts.

That is to say, in most cases, the first battle in a war is a chase between scouts from both sides.

The goals of both sides were surprisingly consistent: to annihilate, or at least repel, the enemy's scouts, blind the enemy's "eyes", and give the enemy less battlefield information, thus providing more favorable tactical conditions for their side.

Going up further, you reach the level of captain who is in charge of two "teams".

A colonel is a real general.

When meeting his superiors, he calls them "this humble general"; when meeting his subordinates, he calls them "this general". He always refers to himself as "so-and-so". He is most likely a captain.

Further up the rank is the commander who commands five military commanders, also known as a "bu".

In unofficial occasions, Captain So-and-so is often referred to privately as: Army So-and-so.

For example, since Emperor Gaozu, there has been a group of human performance art enthusiasts lurking in Feihu Trail: the Feihu Army, whose official organization is the Feihu Duwei.

The Xiliu Camp, which Zhou Yafu once relied on, as well as the Jimen Army and Bashang Army of the same period, all had the same official organizational names: Xiliu Duwei, Jimen Duwei, and Bashang Duwei.

Before Liu Rong established the Yulin Army and Huben Army, for nearly fifty years, the Han Dynasty had only two armies, with "army" as the official name of the organization.

——The Southern Army, and the Northern Army.

It is precisely this organizational level that is superior to the duwei and bu, and naturally has a higher organizational ceiling, that makes the xiaowei department of the northern and southern armies the only "super-staffed xiaowei" in the Han Dynasty.

In ordinary armies, five men form a squad, ten men form a deputation, fifty men form a garrison, a hundred men form a band, five hundred men form a team, and a thousand men form a school. However, the school lieutenants of the southern and northern armies, without exception, all commanded four "teams" of five hundred men each, for a total of two thousand men.

Moreover, the southern and northern armies themselves also broke away from the upper limit of the organization of the duwei and the department with five lieutenants under their jurisdiction, and at their peak they reached eight and six colonels respectively.

It is no wonder that the soldiers who were not in the right position secretly complained: The number of people in the Southern and Northern armies is several times that of ours, how can they not be strong?

In fact, it does.

——The Southern Army, whose military strength reached its peak during the reign of Empress Dowager Lu, had a maximum of six colonels, each of which had an excess of 2,000 soldiers, for a total of 12,000 people.

As for the Northern Army, it is now at its peak. It has eight schools under its jurisdiction, a theoretical establishment of 16,000 people, and in fact there are even thousands more auxiliary troops.

Ordinary armies were organized in multiples of 2525. Even the captain, who was theoretically at the same level as the Southern and Northern armies, had a staff of no more than 5,000 men.

Even these 5,000 people cannot be fully staffed most of the time.

Closer to home.

After understanding the current structure of the Han Dynasty's military officers and command system, it will become clear to the Han Dynasty's military generals about the distribution and supply of medical alcohol.

——The senior generals who were born into noble families believed that scarce supplies such as medical alcohol should only be guaranteed to senior officers above the rank of captain.

Because most mid- and low-level commanders are highly replaceable, their importance to their own command system on the battlefield is far less than that of senior generals.

Therefore, instead of using the scarce medical alcohol to save privates, sergeants, squad leaders, garrison commanders, and marquis generals, it is better to keep it to save captains and lieutenants.

Liu Rong naturally scoffed at this distribution suggestion.

——That is true;

But in principle, colonels and captains will not go to the battlefield!
At the level of captain, his job is basically to find a hill or a hill at the rear of the army, ride on horseback to observe the official situation, and then respond and give command.

It's even more exaggerated at the level of captain - as long as the war situation is not bad to a certain extent, the captain will most likely not leave the central military tent!
Right in the central military tent, he stared at the map, wrote and drew, hummed and hawed, gave orders, and then coordinated the overall situation!
Should we give such people - those who shout "charge" while staying at the rear to watch the show, command and coordinate the overall situation - to reserve the medical alcohol that is most needed on the front line and also needed for flesh wounds?

Don’t you want to be embarrassed?!

It was another suggestion of "preferential treatment" that Liu Rong reluctantly accepted.

——Medical alcohol will be supplied first to the village chiefs and Quhou who are of certain importance and have a higher probability of casualties.

The reason is not difficult to understand: the squad leaders and platoon leaders below the garrison commander are no different from the soldiers themselves.

In any brutal battle, it was not uncommon for soldiers to be promoted twice on the same day to fill the vacancy left by a squad leader who had been killed in action.

The Sima, Xiaowei and Duwei above the rank of Qu Hou have, to varying degrees, been separated from the close combat sequence and instead focused more on the command system.

Reserving medical alcohol for them is basically like preparing a little blue medicine for eunuchs - pure for taking off your pants and farting.

Of course, there are also suggestions that are absolutely fair and just, but not very cost-effective: treat everyone equally, no matter who is injured - whether it is a soldier who is only responsible for himself, or a captain with 500 soldiers, they should be eligible to use medical alcohol when necessary, and there should be no priority order.

This plan is actually what Liu Rong wants to achieve the most.

Unfortunately, this was the feudal era of ancient China more than a hundred years before Christ.

There is a famous saying among later generations: All beings are equal above me, and all beings are clearly divided into classes below me.

In today's Han Dynasty, this situation is definitely more serious.

——It is natural that the classes below me are clearly divided.

However, above the self, all beings are by no means equal, but rather the class divisions become increasingly strict and cruel as one goes up.

As for why you ask?
Because only in this way, when I climb to a high position, others will stop talking to me about 'all beings are equal'!

I am now a middle-level executive, and I respect the senior executives like gods;

When one day in the future I reach the top, won’t I become a god too?
It is in this kind of consistent maintenance from top to bottom and from inside to outside that the social classes of this era have become increasingly "clearly divided", like layers of oil floating on the water, never blending.

Therefore, equality of all beings, no matter at which level, cannot be achieved in the current Han Dynasty.

Whether it is social status or the relationship between superiors and subordinates in the military;

Whether it is the hierarchy in the court or the chain of contempt among local county officials.

Therefore, the distribution plan of medical alcohol was finally determined as follows: first provide it to Quhou, then to Tunchang;
In addition, each captain's unit reserves three portions in case of unexpected accidents to middle and senior officers such as the captain, colonel, and Sima.

In addition, if there is anything left, it can be used on squad leaders and sergeants. In principle, it can also be used on low-level soldiers.

But as we all know, in principle it is possible, but in practice it is mostly not possible.

Either the supply is insufficient or the remaining quantity after reservation is insufficient - you can't find any fault with it.

Liu Rong had no choice but to accept this.

——When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Even when moving to a new village, one still has to abide by the customs of that village. How much more so when moving across more than two thousand years to the era before Christ?

Even if change is necessary, it can only be done quietly, step by step, and little by little.

It is unrealistic to become fat in one bite.

If you take too big a step, you'll end up like Qin Shi Huang, who accidentally hit his balls.

In the process of preparing medical alcohol, naturally, many edible alcohols were produced that did not meet medical standards but had a much higher alcohol content than the current Han Dynasty edible alcohols.

This part of defective medical alcohol became the only way for Han soldiers to keep warm and keep themselves warm during the Battle of Gaoque.

In this way, relying on a set of expensive warm clothes made of mink and fur, as well as the banned item in the army: strong liquor, Liu Rong basically completed all the contributions that the Chang'an court could make to this battle.

What remains is that the food and fodder must be shipped first before the troops move forward - the logistics and supplies must be shipped first.

With more than 100,000 combat troops, several times more logistics and support personnel, and the large-scale movement of hundreds of thousands of people, it is naturally difficult to completely conceal the situation.

But that’s okay;

It takes time for the news to reach the grassland.

The news had to pass through Shangjun and Daibei, be sent to Munan, and then go around again to Gaoque, which took more time.

At the moment, the most important thing for the Han family is to race against time with the Xiongnu Right Wise King in Munan: Luandi Yizhixie...

(End of this chapter)