The Navy also has different opinions on the Army's accusations.

Admiral Bao Yifen, the former head of the Navy's Military Command Department and the Minister on Duty in the Imperial Study, who has retired from active service, unceremoniously criticized the army in public: "This army is a group of uncles, and they are also uncles who only take money and don't do anything, and they take so much military spending every year, except for occasionally fighting a few inconspicuous barbarian tribes, I haven't seen them do anything!" ”

In the eyes of the navy, the Tatars, the Chahar Division, the Duoyan Sanwei and other enemies instantly became the so-called inconspicuous barbarians, which made the army generals angry enough.

Others don't talk about it yet, but the Tatars, do you dare to say that he is just an inconspicuous barbarian tribe?

Come on, that's a strong enemy with at least a dozen or two hundred thousand cavalry troops!

With these cavalry troops of more than 100,000 or 200,000, looking at the entire East Asian region, except for the Tang Army being able to beat them down and finally retreat westward, who else can do it? Can your navy do it?

But in the blink of an eye, the admiral of the other navy said that if the Tatars had just gone to sea, these hundreds of thousands of cavalry would be a fart, and a salvo of our warships would be enough.

The point is, will the Tatars go to the coast or even go to sea to fight with the Tang Navy?

No!

The contradictions between the Datang Army and the Datang Navy have a long history, and there are countless scolding battles every year, and there are many times when they come to Li Xuan's side, but Li Xuan has always held high the slogan of 'staying in China and not sending out', turning a blind eye to all kinds of conflicts and contradictions between the army and the navy.

The Holy Son of Heaven Li Xuan has this attitude, and the other courtiers in the court are naturally more accustomed to the quarrels between the army and the navy.

After all, everyone is a smart person, and he can guess why the Holy Son of Heaven would turn a blind eye to the quarrel between the army and the navy.

Apart from striking a balance and putting an end to the merging of the army and navy, there is basically no second possibility.

When they guessed the thoughts of Li Xuan, the Son of Heaven, many ministers also knew what to do, and even many people were speculating that the army and navy quarreled so fiercely every year, and I am afraid it was still the common tacit understanding of the army and navy.

Without the acquiescence and permission of the high-ranking generals on both sides, how could they quarrel so fiercely.

I'm afraid that the two army and navy generals who are openly fighting are still friends in private.

Li Xuan also knows this, but he still doesn't care, he doesn't care what people think in their hearts, and he doesn't care if others see what he thinks, but he just wants to achieve balance, even if it's just a balance on the surface.

Although there seems to be a tacit understanding between the top brass of the army and navy today, it is unlikely that the two sides will be able to join forces after a long time of public contradictions, and even when they have formed their own unique cultural heritage.

As the end of the 21st year of Xuanping entered the new round of the budget, the army and navy continued to quarrel, but no one noticed that in this year's budget allocation, the amount of royal funds has greatly increased!

The royal family's expenditures, which are the funds that the royal family receives from the treasury every year, are then directly credited to the inner treasury, and the annual expenses of the royal family are spent from the inner treasury, not from the treasury.

As for the annual expenses of the royal family, it is a lot, and the living expenses of the pure royal family are not much, and they are only hundreds of thousands of yuan.

The annual expenses of the imperial family are more the administrative expenses of the imperial family and the military expenses of the guards.

For example, the Royal Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institute of Technology, the Royal Youth Military Academy, the Survey and Statistics Department of the Hanlin Academy, and the Royal Assets Section of the Hanlin Academy, although these institutions have different names and different prefixes, one thing is the same, that is, they all belong to typical imperial institutions, although the officials serving in them are also ranked, but they are self-contained.

To some extent, the personnel of these royal institutions are more appropriately called royal employees.

Specifically, the most expensive ones are the Han Tong and the Guards, and other institutions either don't spend much money in the first place, or they have their own income and don't need much financial support.

For example, the Imperial Assets Division, this institution itself is also very expensive, but it spends all the profits paid by the major royal enterprises, because in a certain nature, the Imperial Assets Division is more like the group headquarters of many royal enterprises.

But an espionage agency with a large number of personnel like Hantong spends a lot of money every year!

And then there's the Guards!

So far, the Guards Army has three infantry divisions, one cavalry division, one artillery brigade, and one fleet.

The infantry, cavalry, and artillery were all fully manned, and the Guards fleet was also a fleet with battleships and frigates.

All the Guards, including combat units and civilian officers, combined with a total strength of 80,000 men.

These 80,000 people are raised, which is also quite expensive.

Because of the continuous expansion of the Guards, the scale of the Hantong is also getting bigger and bigger, and the annual expenditure of the royal family is also getting bigger and bigger, and this year, when the army and navy are competing for the budget, the Guards have quietly snatched their own cake, at least 20 percent more than the previous year's funds.

As soon as the news came out, it aroused the alarm of the army and navy, because their intuition told them that the Guards were going to start making trouble.

They didn't guess wrong, the Guards were indeed preparing to make trouble, or Li Xuan was planning to let the Guards make trouble.

The Guards have always been fully manned, and the equipment is also prioritized with the most advanced weapons, and now all kinds of land weapons in the Guards are the most advanced, even if it is a battleship, basically seven or eight main warships have been modified with steam engines one after another.

Most of this extra military expenditure is naturally used to expand the army, while the remaining part is used as the cost of exercises and training.

The Guards submitted a predetermined plan to deploy a part of their forces to conduct long-distance maneuvering exercises after the Chinese New Year, and the long-distance maneuvers would be coordinated by trains and steam ships.

The targets of the exercise are Henan, Hubei, Hebei and Guangdong, and a landing exercise will be conducted in Dayuanfu on the way.

It is easy to understand the expansion of the army, the pace of expansion of the Guards has always followed closely with the army, basically the army has expanded, and the guards will follow the expansion, so over the years, the scale of the army has become larger and larger, but the guards have gradually expanded from 30,000 to 80,000.

But many of them just don't understand engaging in large-scale exercises.

It is impossible for such a large-scale exercise to be conducted for no reason, even for the purpose of enhancing the combat effectiveness of the troops, because the cost is really too great.

On the side of the army, if you want to conduct an exercise of tens of thousands of people now, you have to be careful in planning, and many times the army generals are more inclined to train with war!

What kind of practice, what kind of training, directly pull to the northwest or northeast to fight with the local barbarians, it is simpler and crisper!

Over the past few years, the army has practiced training on behalf of combat and carried out a rotation system for troops, and basically the 20 main infantry divisions have been on the battlefield in turns, and their performance has been good and bad, but on the whole the army is quite satisfied.

In fact, the Guards have only always sent troops to fight abroad.

In order to maintain the combat effectiveness of the Guards, the Guards have always had a tradition of sending some troops to the front line to fight, and in the past few years, even in the northeast and northwest at the same time, a temporary brigade was dispatched, and more than 15,000 men were fighting outside.

The number of the first temporary brigade of the Guards has been hanging in the northwest for many years, and even the brigade headquarters has been established for many years, but the Guards troops inside will not be fixed, and they will basically be rotated every one year!

Therefore, if there are no special needs, the Guards do not need to engage in any large-scale exercises, a waste of money!

However, these are just the thoughts of the army and navy generals, not Li Xuan!

The positioning of the Guards has never been to go to the battlefield to fight, but to guard against internal enemies, or more precisely, against the army or navy, or against the sudden rise of an insurrectionary army one day.

There is no way, who makes Li Xuan more pessimistic, and he is more afraid of death.

Therefore, when the size of the Guards was relatively small, Li Xuan concentrated the Guards in Jinling City, but now, with the expansion of the control of the empire and the continuous increase in the strength of the army, although the strength of the Guards has also continued to increase, the current strength has reached more than 80,000 people, but it is still somewhat insufficient.

In this case, it is also time to expand some of the army, and then send a part of the Guards to garrison in the field.

On the one hand, it is to reduce the defense pressure of the army, and on the other hand, it is also to use the Guards Army to control several of the most important strategic areas: Kaifeng, the hinterland of the Central Plains, Tianjin, the place of the four wars in the north, Wuchang, the southwest gate, and Guangzhou, an important city in the south.

Li Xuan hoped to garrison a certain number of guards in the above-mentioned places to suppress the local unstable forces.

Therefore, Li Xuan is preparing to expand the Guards, but before the expansion, he wants to familiarize the Guards with the ability to fight at a distance and the ability to fight alone.

This is also the fundamental reason why Li Xuan engaged in this large-scale maneuver exercise.

Because in Li Xuan's vision, the future guards are mainly stationed in strategic towns, and when encountering civil strife, they often need to face more powerful rebels, in order to make up for the lack of troops, the ability to quickly maneuver over long distances is very important, and the ability to fight alone is also very important.

The purpose of this exercise is to let the guards master this ability, at least one or two familiarity, and if they really encounter this kind of thing in the future, they will not even have any experience.