When the emperor's decree arrived in Guangxi in an urgent manner, Gao Shishi had just had a cordial conversation with Zhang Ren, the governor of Guangxi.

Zhang Ren's Gu poison has been basically lifted, but he was poisoned too deeply before, and he was so sick that he almost died, so he was very weak until now, and he shouldn't have left Guilin easily.

However, Gao Pragmatic's decision to ask for Annan still made him break out in a cold sweat, and he didn't care about Miss Ali's warning that he should not be tired, so he rushed to Nanning to meet Gao Pragmatic in person.

Gao was very surprised by his visit, and after a conversation, he realized that Zhang Ren came because he was worried.

He was not very worried that the Mo Dynasty would be able to fight in Guangxi, but was worried that Gao Pragmatic was "rejuvenating the division because of anger", underestimating the complexity of Annan, which led to heavy losses.

Zhang Ren asked Gao if he knew if he knew the request made by Zhang Jing, a famous minister at the time of Jiajing and the former governor of Liangguang, when he received Emperor Jiajing's request to conquer Annan in the south.

Of course, Gao Pragmatic knew that although he planned for Annan for only a few months, he still did a lot of homework in these months and did not change his usual style of "calculating too much".

Zhang Jing's report to Jiajing at that time said that it was very troublesome to fight Annan, "There are six ways for Annan to march into the army, 300,000 yuan for soldiers, 1.6 million yuan for one-year-old salaries, and more than 700,000 yuan for boats, market horses, utensils, and military expenses. ”

What does that mean? There are six ways to fight Annan, but it is necessary to mobilize an army of 300,000 people, and the annual military expenditure is 1.6 million taels, plus shipbuilding, buying horses, building weapons, and rewarding the army, and there are more than 700,000 taels, which together cost 2.3 million taels of silver a year.

Besides, the other party is waiting for work with Annan, and we have a great disadvantage, so we can't afford not to pay attention.

The last one can be ignored for the time being, because during the period of time between the Song Shu and the Holy Decree, the Mo Dynasty has already mobilized the army to the south, and the war with the Li Dynasty is about to start.

However, for the previous ones, especially the various figures mentioned by Zhang Jing, Gao Pragmatic has different opinions.

First of all, it is said that 300,000 troops are needed to fight Annan. This is a typical style of fighting with the mentality of the Heavenly Empire, just like when Emperor Yang of Sui conquered Goryeo, did he really need a million troops to fight Goryeo? Did Tang Gaozong Li send a million troops when he destroyed Goryeo?

There is no need at all, in fact, whether it is a million army or 300,000 troops, to a large extent, it is for the leader of the Celestial Empire.

Look at our Heavenly Empire, it's awesome, it's hundreds of thousands of troops at every turn, overwhelming, and the momentum is like a rainbow, isn't it just like having fun to settle you small states? So it's actually more of a face-saving need than an actual need.

Of course, the troops that Zhang Jing could mobilize at that time were mainly guards, and the combat effectiveness of the guards was ...... Probably the main thing is to make up the number of people to make the army look more unstoppable, and to really start fighting, it is still one by the family, the second by the squad army, and the third by the toast.

However, according to the proportion, the families of each general together did not exceed 20,000 at most, the squad army was about 20,000 or 30,000, and the Tusi could transfer Zhang Jing at that time was about 20,000 or 30,000.

In this way, the 300,000 army mentioned by Zhang Jing, the part that can really be counted as having combat effectiveness, is only 70,000 or 80,000 people, and the rest of the soldiers and horses have little practical significance at all except for wasting food and salary and wasting transportation capacity.

And Gao Pragmatic has now won the absolute support of the Cen and Huang families, and promised heavy profits and generous remuneration, and gave them logistical support, Guixi and Guinan Tusi can attack with all their strength, and it is not a problem to mobilize 50,000 elite wolf soldiers.

The 5,000 families mobilized by Gao Pragmatic have also been put in place, and to a certain extent, these 5,000 families are the "experimental troops" created by Qi Jiguang, Liu Xian, and others with high pragmatic money and efforts -- the main direction of the test is the degree of firearms with a higher proportion than Qi Jiajun.

Although Gao Shishi has always had doubts about his command ability, he has no doubts about Qi Jiguang's training ability, and he feels that the combat effectiveness of this family guard regiment itself is reliable, and as long as he does not command blindly, there should not be any major defeats and losses.

As for the so-called blind command, Gao Pragmatic feels that the biggest blind command is to love to divide troops.

Love to divide the army is really the characteristic disease of the Ming Dynasty, the battle of Salhu in history, although the Eight Banners of Jianzhou are in the highlight moment, but if the Ming army does not divide the troops randomly, it is actually completely necessary to fight - Liu Wei's department alone almost broke the teeth of the Eight Banners, and at that time Liu Wei did not wait for the Sichuan soldiers he was used to, but took the troops allocated to him by the imperial court to go to battle.

It can be seen that the division of troops is really worthy of the taboo that the Red Dynasty Taizu has emphasized countless times, but it is Nurhachi's "let the people come a few ways, I will only go all the way" style of play, which is the same idea as the Red Dynasty Taizu's "concentrate troops and break each one".

So in terms of troops, Gao Pragmatic felt that he had enough in his hands now, and he didn't need any 300,000 troops at all - although he had money, he didn't dare to say that he could support the 300,000 army on an expedition.

Since it comes to money, Gao Pragmatic and carefully talked to Zhang Ren, in general, he thinks that Zhang Jing's financial account is also problematic, at least compared with the situation he is facing now, it is completely inconsistent.

First of all, the first one, the 300,000 army is gone, and only 50,000 or 60,000 troops are left to support, which does not need to be explained.

Then, for these 50,000 or 60,000 troops, the Tusi wolf soldiers are not paid, only the highly pragmatic family members are paid, and the salary standard is relatively high. However, the highly pragmatic family troops are also paid in peacetime, and in wartime it is only a part of the increase, plus the reward after victory, even if the final total amount is doubled, the impact on the high pragmatic is not great.

At present, the regular salary of the Gao family is four taels a month, a typical high salary, if the reward is included, the total amount of final expenses is doubled, that is, eight taels, how much is a month? Forty thousand taels.

Low or not? It's definitely not low, it's quite high, it's close to 500,000 taels a year. But in fact, the increase is only more than 200,000 taels, how can he not get this money?

Therefore, the monthly expenses calculated by Gao Pragmatic are 100,000 taels of silver, even if the war is fierce and the loss is relatively large, it is better to calculate an additional 50,000 taels, it is only 150,000, and he can still support it - he has only been more than half a year away from his departure, and he never thought that this battle would be fought for more than a year, what he wants is to fight quickly, so the military salary must be enough, and it will not even drag down Jinghua, the great thing is that Jinghua suspended its expansion during the war.

And the other 700,000 taels in Zhang Jing's account, Gao Pragmatic simply ignored it - he had ships, horses were not lacking, weapons were prepared in advance, and rewards were ...... This money has already been calculated into the military salary.

Zhang Ren was also a little stunned after listening to Gao Pragmatic's analysis, why did the imperial court need such a large expenditure to fight Annan, and Gao Pragmatic came to fight so much less all of a sudden?

But he can't say that the highly pragmatic analysis is unreasonable, because this account is really clearly calculated, and the only question is whether these 50,000 or 60,000 people are really enough.

After all, Zhang Ren fought with Liu Yaozhi before, and his idea was also to encircle and suppress the army, rather than Gao Shiji's current elite attack, so he was still a little suspicious for a while.

In his heart, naturally an army of 300,000 sounds more awesome......

Gao pragmatic smiled and said nothing, he knew that Zhang Ren's thinking of the others had long been outdated, and if he looked at Qi Jiguang, he knew that now was not the time to engage in crowd tactics. When the tactics of the sea of people were in full force again, they had already entered the period of industrialized mass production, and now, it was the period of elite combat, just like those colonists in Europe, a few hundred people could destroy a big country, so now it has begun to enter the era of quality.

Zhang Ren finally failed to convince Gao Pragmatic, and could only sigh and wish Gao Pragmatic good luck.