"Hehe, they're all drama spirits!" Zhao Hao received the battle report of Zhao Mengjin's recovery of Xuzhou, and laughed after reading it.

After receiving the news that the enemy defending Xuzhou had abandoned the city and fled in a hurry, Zhao Mengjin immediately broke away from the brigade and led only part of the staff and the battalion of Zhisi to rush to Xuzhou in the starry night under the escort of the cavalry regiment of the First Army, and ordered the two armies to speed up the march. After he arrived in Xuzhou, he immediately summoned Qian Lin, the commander of the first cavalry division, to inquire about the battle.

In fact, Qian Lin was also in a dream for easily getting such a great credit, and she couldn't figure out the key to it. He was ordered to rush to Xuzhou to pin down the enemy and prepare to prevent the entry of the Hararu guards in the event that the imperial guards failed to stop them. After the 1st Cavalry Division reached Xuzhou, the enemy had already retreated into the city, so they camped five miles south of the city and sent a guard force in the direction of Fuli.

In the evening, the scouts found that there was an enemy brigade out of the west gate in the city, and it was unclear where and what the purpose was, so Qian Lin ordered the scouts to continue to monitor the movements of the enemy army, and ordered the whole army to enter a state of combat readiness to prevent the enemy from attacking at night. When the troops were assembled, scouts reported what appeared to be a riot in the city, with fires in many places accompanied by shouts of fighting. Before Qian Lin could figure out what was going on in the city, the scouts who had monitored the enemy troops out of the city told him to return to the city.

Qian Lin couldn't figure out the situation even more, so he could only let people closely monitor the movements in the city, but at this time, the city was already in chaos, and the shouts and cries of the city could be heard for miles outside the city. The turmoil lasted for nearly two hours, and when the west gate opened again, the enemy army poured out of the nest and turned to the north, and the march was extremely fast, as if fleeing for his life, and even Qian Lin was too late to transfer troops to pursue.

Here Qian Lin is still thinking about what the enemy army is going to do when he goes out of the city, hey! The east gate suddenly opened, and hundreds of people poured out of the city gate. He hurriedly sent troops to surround him, and dispersed the crowd and sent troops into the city to investigate, so as to prevent the enemy from cheating. After the forward team entered the city, they found that the city was in a mess at this time, the shops along the street were looted, the roads were full of killed people, the official offices and warehouses were set on fire, the defenders of the city were all evacuated, and there were still scoundrels who took advantage of the fire to loot.

Only then did Qian Lin wave his troops into the city, ordered people to extinguish the fires in the city, sent troops to patrol and suppress the streets, and those who took the opportunity to make trouble were corrected on the spot. After dawn, they went out to reassure the people, check the losses, compensate the people killed by the rebels, rescue the wounded, and resettle the displaced people. At the same time, he urgently reported to Zhao Mengjin, asking for instructions on the next move, and asked him to go to Xuzhou as soon as possible to preside over military and political affairs.

After Zhao Mengjin arrived, he conducted a thorough investigation, and in the turmoil, more than 2,000 people were killed or wounded, more than 400 houses were burned, and seven or eight out of ten shops in the city were damaged. The wealthy families suffered the heaviest losses, almost no escape, and their valuables were looted. After the fire in the treasury was extinguished, the gold and silver were all plundered after counting, and there were more than 50,000 stones of edible grain, 10,000 horses of silk, and other sundries were not lost, and the books and books were robbed.

Later, the scouts sent also found out that the enemy army did not go to Yingtianfu after withdrawing from Xuzhou, but went to Peixian. The sentinels sent to the direction of Fuli found that the enemy corpses were all over the valley in Jiagouji, and the stench could be smelled for ten miles, and our troops had all evacuated and did not know where to go for the time being. Zhao Mengjin immediately reported the situation in Xuzhou to the camp, and immediately readjusted the defense after the arrival of the First Army and the Fifth Army, and recovered the counties and towns around Xuzhou.

After Zhao Yu saw it, he figured it out, and it was clear that the enemy generals who stayed in Xuzhou found that Haraluwei had been completely annihilated in Jiagouji, and the Song army that had withdrawn had gone and returned, so he realized that he had been tricked. After the annihilation of the Hararu Guard, they were terrified, not wanting to live and die with the city, but also fearing that they would be punished for abandoning the city and fleeing. Therefore, he directed and acted in this play to escape the crime.

For the wonderful performances of Tang Gu and the others, although Zhao Yu regretted that he could not include them in the list of group annihilation, it was also a blessing for him to occupy Xuzhou without blood.

Tactically speaking, as one of the three support points of the Huaibei battlefield, Xuzhou was quickly recovered, which led to the collapse of the 'iron triangle' defense system of Fuli and Yingtianfu, so that the enemy army could not reinforce each other, while its own side could easily join forces to flank any other node. Strategically speaking, the importance of Xuzhou's geographical location is undoubted, not only as a barrier between the two Huai, but also so that the Jiangdong region no longer faces the threat of Mengyuan. At the same time, Xuzhou will also become an important support point for the Huaidong defense system, and then become a bridgehead and logistics supply base for the Song army's northward advance.

So from the overall situation, the enemy abandoned the city and fled, and Zhao Yu was not particularly concerned, after all, the benefits far outweighed the disadvantages. But he is still a little sour in his heart, those 'drama spirits' in his backyard are also when you sing and I appear on the stage when he leaves Beijing for a personal expedition, and when there is no Ansheng, and their performances are much more clumsy than those of Meng Yuan, which makes people feel extremely ridiculous.

Zhao Yu was actually very confident in seizing the Lianghuai and Huaibei regions. As early as when the strategy was formulated and the campaign began, he had already 'delegated power' and handed over the free play of several generals, and he commanded the campaign more as a decision-maker and coordinator. And his mind is more focused on the positioning and development of the newly acquired land.

After the Shaoxing Peace Conference, the Great Song Dynasty had actually lost its topographical advantage. Because the Monk Yuan north of Dasanguan, Shangluo and Qinzhou and other places were ceded, and the terrain in this area was mainly mountainous, and the Jin people mastered this area, which was equivalent to making the terrain that was originally conducive to the battle of the Great Song army become a logistical weakness of the Song army.

On the Eastern Front, it was also because Haizhou and Sizhou were ceded that the Song Dynasty had to conquer these two places every time the Eastern Front sent troops, and then faced the counterattack of the main force of the Jin army. The desolation of Huainan also made it difficult to replenish, and it was particularly easy to be counterattacked. In the later Longxing Northern Expedition and Kaixi Northern Expedition, although the Southern Song Dynasty had a good start, it quickly fell into passivity because of this. The most typical example of the impact of Huainan's desertion on logistics is Duanping's entry into Luo.

In the operation to recover Liangjing, although the base camp of the Southern Song Dynasty army was not far from Fengluoyang, the logistics could not keep up, and finally led to a failure. To paraphrase the proverb, "The ministers are about to fight to the death, why did Your Majesty surrender first?" The Shaoxing Peace Conference seriously destroyed the military strength of the Southern Song Dynasty, so that when the Southern Song Dynasty monarchs and ministers wanted to recover the Central Plains in the Northern Expedition, they had to encounter all kinds of difficulties. When the Jin State finally fell, it ushered in a more powerful Mengyuan, so that the Lianghuai region was still frequently plunged into wars, and the economy could not recover, and finally exhausted the last bit of blood of the Great Song Dynasty.

Therefore, Zhao Yu thought that whether it was in the consolidation of the two Huai, or even the continuation of the Northern Expedition, the restoration of the economy of the two Huai was the main task in the next period of time. But he also knew that there were many difficulties he faced, because the war that lasted for a hundred years had led to great losses in the population. In this era, people are the most important productive forces, and nothing can be done without people.

Zhao Hao's idea is to migrate from the densely populated areas of the south of the Yangtze River to the two Huai, so as to fill the lack of population in the two Huai, and at the same time relieve the dilemma of 'more people and less land' in the south of the Yangtze River. It is easier said than done, because the two Huai are currently at the military frontier and war will break out at any time, and in addition, this area is not only a barren land that is uncultivated, but also water conservancy facilities have been seriously damaged.

Therefore, if we want to attract the population to the two Huai, it is not enough to rely on rhetoric and coercion, and the most effective way is to benefit and let people develop spontaneously in the two Huai through 'profit' to immigrants. Zhao Yu asked the imperial court to make a plan to start implementing it after the war was over, and Lu Xiufu and other important ministers who stayed behind convened all the ministers to discuss the matter and formulate relevant policies. However, before the policy was introduced, it caused a storm in the government and the opposition, not only the officials of the DPRK and China impeached Lu Xiufu and others who presided over the matter for misleading the country, but also instigated the students to stop the queen mother's car to drive the book, and the officials and gentry in the opposition also participated......

The first to be attacked was Ma Zheng. Cavalry is suitable for long-range mobile combat in the plains and wilderness, and is the main assault force in the army. In a sense, it was impossible to become a feudal military power without a strong cavalry. In other words, the development of cavalry is directly related to the prosperity and weakness of military movement. The military weakness of the Song Dynasty was closely related to the lack of a capable cavalry.

At present, the Central Plains is close at hand, Zhao Yu understands that if he wants to seize the Central Plains, and even Mo Nan and Northeast China, he must always have a strong cavalry as the foundation, and it has become a top priority to ensure that there is a stable source of war horses, and the best way is to raise horses by himself, so it is also urgent to formulate horse politics. After the Han Dynasty, Ma Zheng has always been the founding government of the Central Plains Dynasty. In order to solve the problem of lack of horses, the Song Dynasty also made several changes to the horse policy, but it was nothing more than oscillating between 'official raising' and 'people's raising'.

The Song Dynasty also set up a supervisor to raise horses, but the result was not only high cost and high consumption, but also required a large amount of land and officers and soldiers, coupled with poor management, the survival rate of horses was extremely low, the horse breed was inferior, and most of them could not be used as war horses, and the lack of war horses remained the same. After moving south, there are many water networks in the south of the Yangtze River, which is not conducive to the galloping of war horses, and the climate and environment are not conducive to horse breeding, so the government-run horse farm basically exists in name only.

The core content of the 'people's raising' is basically the 'horse protection law' in Wang Anshi's reforms, and the core content is to abolish the animal husbandry superintendents, distribute the horses of the state-run horse farms to qualified farmers for raising, and at the same time exempt horse breeders from taxes and labor, and the government also gives subsidies. At first glance, it sounds like a pretty good policy, this is a move to seek the country, and I want to live with horses and farmers, but unexpectedly, the people will be overwhelmed later. Because once the horse dies of the epidemic, tens of thousands of dollars will be compensated, and the general well-off family will go bankrupt, so "everyone thinks that having a horse is a disaster", but it caused a lot of public sentiment, and then it was also deposed.

Therefore, no matter how the imperial court formulates Ma Zheng, there are pros and cons, so in the plan to develop the two Huai, Ma Zheng has become the focus of controversy, but Zhao Yu knows that it is not simple, but the drunkard's intention is not to drink......