Song Yi

Chapter 430
The military lawyer replied loudly: "Those who commit crimes by taking stolen goods, those who have more than ten horses, will have a hundred rods and three years in prison."

Du Wenhao was stunned, turned his head and said in astonishment: "Even there is no death penalty for corruption and bribery? What happened?"

"Reporting to the general, there is no corruption, there is bribery, and there is one hundred rods per foot; one horse is added to the first class, and fifteen horses are twisted."

"That's more or less the same. Commander Guo, you sent the soldiers back to Yi without authorization. According to the law, you can stick one hundred sticks, and if you add fake people to embezzle the monthly salary, you can stick one hundred sticks. There are two hundred sticks in total. I guess you don't want this back. Inside Whether the internal organs can still be used is up to you. Say it or not?"

Guo Ce's body trembled, but he still bowed his head and remained silent.

Du Wenhao rolled his eyes and said: "Commander Guo, I know you have concerns. This fake number of soldiers, fake monthly salary, embezzlement, one hundred sticks, and the addition of the two will not make you alive anyway. It's better to throw away the pawns and save the car, and die." Open your mouth, and others can help you take care of your family, right?"

Guo Ce shook his body, and slowly raised his head to glance at Du Wenhao.He was amazed at the sharp eyes of the young general, this was exactly what he had in mind.

Du Wenhao said: "Tell me what's going on, maybe I can show mercy and spare your death."

A gleam of joy flashed in Guo Ce's eyes: "The general is serious?"

"There is no joke in the army!"

"Okay! You can trust the general with a humble job. Let me tell you!"

Guo Ce sighed: "When I came, the roster of soldiers given to me by my predecessor was this number. There was a vacancy of more than 150 people. I didn't declare and fill it up. I still got paid as 500 people. This is the monthly salary of more than 150 people who were falsely paid. Divide it into three parts, one part will be handed over to the commander of the military headquarters, and one part will be shared among the brothers in the battalion. The remaining part will be divided into three parts. , The first portion of each team, divided equally according to the number of people."

"Hey, it's really fair. Falsely claiming the number of soldiers and claiming a private share of the monthly salary, how courageous! Aren't you afraid of the king's law?"

Guo Ce said dejectedly: "I knew that this matter would be exposed sooner or later, so I thought that everyone would do this anyway, so I wouldn't be unlucky enough to be hit. I didn't expect to be hit."

Du Wenhao's heart trembled: "What are you talking about? Everyone is saying that? What do you mean? You said that this is also the case in other armies?"

Guo Ce nodded: "If the general doesn't believe it, you can investigate it yourself. Some battalion vacancies have falsely claimed more people than us! It's been like this for decades!"

Du Wenhao's head went crazy, and many things that he hadn't been able to figure out suddenly became clear in an instant! ——Why did the Song army concentrate its superior forces to fight against Xixia, but they were still defeated repeatedly? It turned out that the so-called superior force of the Song army was largely just an advantage in the imaginary number of the army designation. In fact, these troops were not full.The imaginary numbers in terms of numbers are offset by these vacancies, and the real numbers are not superior to Xixia.

Immediately, it was absolutely wrong, I only came into contact with the army now, didn't the emperor know about such a thing?Besides, the last time I led the [-] imperial army to the west, it was actually [-], and there was no shortage of personnel. What's going on?

Du Wenhao turned to look at Xu Huaqiang, the captain of his personal guard: "Is that so?"

Xu Huaqiang nodded slowly: "General, this is basically the case."

"Then why was there no shortage of five thousand forbidden troops last time we went west?"

Xu Huaqiang laughed and said, "The general didn't count each one. How do you know that there are no vacancies? It's just the number of people who listened to their reports. The vacancies are vacancies, but it's not as outrageous as their army. The troops with a small number of personnel have been reduced. The army we went to the expedition at that time was shortly after reduction, so although the new shortages that appeared later were not reported, the shortage is not too serious."

"How much is actually missing?"

"I don't know about this either. There were two armies at that time, with a total of 5000 people. I only know that our battalion was short of a dozen people."

"As the commander of the battalion, have you also received the monthly salary for the number of vacancies like them?"

Xu Huaqiang was a little embarrassed, and knelt down on one knee and cupped his fists: "I'm sorry, General, I was wrong, but this is a common practice in the army, and there are military commanders above me. They were removed and replaced. But the general can investigate, the vain monthly salary of our battalion vacancies was all used to supplement military expenses and provide additional pensions to the families of the fallen soldiers. These are well documented, and the final general did not fill his own pockets!"

Du Wenhao nodded: "I believe in you. You followed me in the bloody battle in the Western Regions and saw your loyalty and fearlessness with your own eyes. You will never lose your righteousness for such a small gain. Get up."

"Thank you, General!" Xu Huaqiang got up and stood aside.

Du Wenhao asked the commanders and envoys of the three armies who followed him one by one, and he also blushed and admitted that there was a lack of staff in their respective armies, and they received false monthly salaries.It's just that the amount is different, and the purpose is different. Most of them say that they are used to subsidize military expenses, and there are accounts to check.There are also a few who are ashamed and admit that they are private.

I heard that most of the false monthly salary was used for army building. Although it was just an increase in the blessings of officers and soldiers, this was barely acceptable to him.

Since this is a common phenomenon in the military, it is unfair to say that the law does not blame everyone, and that it can only be changed from the system, and one person cannot be punished too much.Du Wenhao sighed, and said to Guo Ce and Yan Bing who were kneeling on the ground: "Okay, you guys get up first!"

After the two got up, Du Wenhao looked around the senior generals of the three yamen, and said in a deep voice: "A considerable number of soldiers in the army have been transferred to do business. , The combat effectiveness is greatly reduced. How can such an army win the battle? It must be rectified! This is the task entrusted to me by the empress dowager, and it is also the duty of this general. But how to solve these problems requires the concerted efforts of all the generals. About I will give you three days to think about how to deal with these problems. You will be given three days to put your suggestions in writing and hand them over to me within three days. After three days, I will hold a meeting of commanders and envoys of various armies to conduct special research. These questions. Do you hear me?"

"The last general takes orders!" All the generals knelt down on one knee and bowed to each other and replied.Hearing the voice, he felt a little lack of energy. Obviously, Song Shenzong was determined to reorganize the army at the beginning, but the effect was still not satisfactory. They were still generally skeptical about whether the young Sanya inspected Du Wenhao's ability to rectify these chronic problems.
Du Wenhao naturally heard this, and felt a little heavy in his heart.Continue to inspect the next station with a group of generals.

The second stop is the county's Xiang Army, the third command (battalion) of the Bridge Road Army.

Since they were making a surprise inspection temporarily, the group of people rode their horses to the gate of the barracks, but they did not see any soldiers on duty at the gate of the barracks.Shaking the reins and riding the horses in, the huge barracks was deserted, except for a few people sitting in the shade of a tree in the far corner to enjoy the cool.

Du Wenhao shook the reins and rode his horse over, and saw clearly that there were four or five gray-haired old soldiers, with hunched backs, sitting on a stone bench drinking a bowl of tea and chatting.Seeing Du Wenhao and others coming in, although they didn't know each other, they were frightened when they saw that Du Wenhao was wearing the military uniform of a second-rank general, and the rest were also high-rank generals.

Du Wenhao asked: "Where is your commander?"

"Master Commander..., where is Master Commander?" The old man turned around and asked the other veteran soldiers.

One of the younger ones bowed and said, "I went to the county government to discuss cleaning up the river."

"Right!" Several old men nodded together.

Du Wenhao frowned: "Where's the deputy commander? Where's the head of each capital, the head of the team?"

Several old men got together to return to Yi for a while, bowed and replied: "The deputy commander has led the people from the two capitals back to Yi and left, and it is estimated that they will be back in ten and a half months. The other three capitals are being cleaned up. One of the river courses is building post roads, and the other is working in the yamen."

Du Wenhao couldn't laugh or cry: "Working in the yamen? Aren't there yamen servants in the yamen? Why do you ask soldiers to work as errands?"

"Hey, what the general said is very true. It's just that the master of the yamen said that he was too busy, so he used it temporarily. This has been temporarily used wave after wave, and there is no end. The governor of Kaifeng came back a while ago. Three people have been dispatched to serve."

Du Wenhao looked around the pits and pits, overgrown with green grass and piled up with all kinds of sundries, and asked, "Don't you usually practice soldiers and horses?"

The old soldier bowed to him with a smile: "General, our troops are so busy that we don't even have time to get them all together. How can we practice? Besides, we've all trained for the battle, and we need the imperial army to do it What?"

This old man dared to speak out because of his old age. Du Wenhao asked, "How many people are there in your battalion? I'm asking about the actual number."

The veteran soldiers did not seem to be hiding anything at all, bowed and said: "The total number of soldiers is five hundred, but actually only three hundred are zero."

"The nearly 200 people in the void also receive a monthly salary?"

The old soldier glanced at Du Wenhao, and then turned his head to look at the people behind him. Seeing their blank faces, he bowed and said, "I've received it, and the monthly salary will be shared with the officials."

Du Wenhao nodded: "Thank you, old man, for speaking out."

After leaving the Xiang army barracks, Du Wenhao inspected several surrounding forbidden army barracks like a horse on horseback.The results obtained are similar to the previous ones.

When it was almost dark, he led the generals back to the capital with a heavy heart.

When he got home, he lay on the bed sullenly, but Yingzi ignored him when he asked him to eat.

Pang Yuqin came, sat by the bed and asked, "Sir, are you in trouble?"

"Ah."

"Can you talk about it? Let's talk about it and figure out a solution together, maybe it won't bother you."

"You still don't understand!" Du Wenhao regretted the words as soon as he uttered them. He raised his head to look at Pang Yuqin. I briefly talked about what I saw and heard about the Forbidden Army outside the city and the Xiang Army. At the end, I said: "My Great Song Army is like this. As the highest leader of the Sanya, I really feel bad, and I don't know how to change it. Seeing I want to fight Xixia, but I have no soldiers to use, so I feel depressed."

(End of this chapter)