Perhaps it was because of the fact that after being bitten by a snake for ten years, 3,000 people of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division entered Burma, and in the end, only 1,000 people fled back in embarrassment, which left a deep impression on the Army.

You must know that few of the people killed and wounded in the Fourth Infantry Division were killed or wounded because of the battle, and in fact, this unit of the Fourth Infantry Division has never fought any enemy after entering Burma.

More than 2,000 people died in battle, all of them were non-combat attrition!

This example almost made the Imperial Army fearful of the rainforests of Burma and Annam.

Over the past few years, the empire has expanded in many directions almost simultaneously, and even went to the islands of the South Seas to colonize, but it has not expanded to areas such as Annam and the peninsula such as Burma.

This is really disgusted by this place on the peninsula.

If it is not really necessary, and it is fully prepared, the Imperial Army will definitely not easily step into this quagmire again.

However, Li Xuan is still more concerned about the Guangning Coal Mine, which the businessmen hope very much!

The time is not yet ripe for a large-scale dispatch of troops south.

But sometimes, if you want something, you don't have to have to carry out a large-scale invasion, and you can also do it through other means.

The army went south on a large scale, and it was easy to get into a quagmire, but there were other methods, such as using the navy to land directly along the coastline of Annam, and then directly killing Thang Long, the capital of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of Annam, to smash Huanglong directly, and then forcing the local princes to sign a covenant under the city and get hands on the Quang Ninh coal mine and the surrounding areas.

It doesn't even have to be in the name of ceding land, it only needs to get the right to mine and the right to protect the garrison, and now the empire is not interested in large-scale immigration to Annam, all the empire needs is coal.

As for the coal, for those natives, it is useless, and it is too troublesome to use it as firewood, and the empire can get the coal of Quang Ninh without a large-scale invasion.

Therefore, it is not necessary to use tens of thousands of troops to climb that quagmire.

After Li Xuan had this thought, he explained to the army and navy, asking them to pay more attention to the direction of Annan and find an opportunity to get their hands on Quang Ninh.

There is a lack of interest on the part of the Army, and the Army has no special demand for coal, at least in the eyes of the Army generals, there is not much demand for this time and a half.

Moreover, the task of the army is also very important, to guard the Hetao and Fengzhou River areas, to strengthen the defense of the northwest region, and at the same time to prepare for the Northeast Campaign, which means that it is difficult for the army to allocate a lot of energy to the south.

Therefore, apart from promising that it would deploy no less than one main division and two reserve divisions in the border areas, and move south to cooperate in the war at an appropriate time, the army did not give much promise.

On the contrary, the navy side is more active!

Because the Navy got the news, the research and development of the high-pressure steam engine at the Royal Institute of Technology has entered the final stage of tackling key problems, and it is expected to get a test machine in the next few years, and then it will be officially mass-produced, and then the Navy's warships will be able to equip these steam engines.

The higher the quality of the coal used in the steam engine, the better, and if it is high-quality anthracite, it is even better.

At the same time, he also said that at present, only high-quality anthracite coal has been found in Quang Ninh in the whole of East Asia, and if the navy wants to use anthracite coal in the future, I am afraid that it will only be able to get it from this Quang Ninh coal mine.

In order to allow future steam warships to use the top-quality anthracite, the navy actually did not need to be ordered from above, and it had long been determined to obtain the Quang Ninh coal mine.

The navy has this meaning, and coupled with the vigorous promotion of the industrial and commercial circles, sending troops to Annam is almost a foregone conclusion.

For this reason, several large enterprises, especially the Southern Coal Company, which is directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, have approached the navy and offered to provide some help.

As long as the navy is willing to send troops, the Southern Coal Company is willing to sponsor 30,000 yuan of various materials to the navy for use as logistics materials for operations.

The navy naturally knew why the Southern Coal Company was in such a hurry, because the Southern Coal Company had long set its sights on the Quang Ninh Coal Mine, and had already carried out small-scale development in the Quang Ninh Coal Mine.

The Southern Coal Company, and the Northern Coal Company, are currently the two largest coal companies in the empire, and the two sides are fiercely competing around the coal market, and the Southern Coal Company, relying on the Jiangxi Pingxiang Coal Mine and other chaotic coal mines, is already difficult to compete with the Northern Coal Company, which owns the Tangshan Coal Mine and some of the Shanxi Coal Mine.

What's more, the Southern Coal Company has also received news that the top management of the empire is already preparing to hand over the coal resources in the Northeast to the Northern Coal Company for mining.

Although both the Southern Coal Company and the Northern Coal Company are state-owned enterprises wholly owned by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, even if they are state-owned enterprises, they are commercial companies and have fierce competition with each other.

Last year, in order to seize the private coal market in the south of the Yangtze River with Shanghai as the core, the Northern Coal Company made a big price reduction for honeycomb coal, and sold it directly at a 5% discount, forcing the Southern Coal Company to follow up with a price reduction.

In the end, in addition to allowing the people in the Jiangnan area to enjoy a wave of cheap coal, both sides suffered a lot of losses, and finally under the interview of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, the two sides canceled the price war.

However, what is even more interesting is that after the battle between the two sides ended, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises set up an 'Eastern Coal Company' and granted the company the right to mine several coal mines.

Of course, even the coal companies directly under the three major state-owned enterprises combined, occupy only six or seven percent of the share in the domestic coal market, and the rest are snatched away by almost hundreds of private coal companies, large and small.

Now, in order to develop, the Southern Coal Company has set its sights on the Quang Ninh coal mine, and this is why it has sponsored the navy to send troops.

The navy originally wanted to build this coal mine, but now that the Son of Heaven has instructions, it is better, as for the support of the Southern Coal Company and the like, it doesn't matter, no matter how poor the navy is, it is impossible to put down its position to fight for businessmen because of the tens of thousands of yuan of sponsorship from commercial companies.

Unless, they smashed down hundreds of thousands of taels of silver!

The navy has a mind, and the army also has a promise to give a certain amount of cooperation, although judging from the army's statement, although the army will deploy three divisions of troops, but don't expect the army to work hard, it is difficult to say whether they will take the initiative to cross the border.

After all, as soon as this unit moves, it will have to spend countless military expenditures, and it is not known how much non-combat attrition it will have to endure when it moves southward on a large scale, and the army will not easily go south if it is not necessary.

Therefore, if you want to send troops to Annam, the main force will have to be the navy.

It is necessary to fight, but how to fight has not yet formed a unified caliber within the navy.

There are many reasons why there is so much controversy.

First of all, the current situation in Annam is more complicated, and today's Annam is a north-south opposition, with a Mo dynasty in the north and a Li dynasty in the south, and these two dynasties have successively expressed their submission to the empire, and both blame each other, and then want to get the support of the empire to destroy each other, so as to unify Annam.

And the empire, how can it be interested in caring about the civil strife of the barbarians, the empire feels that the Nanyang Peninsula will still be taken down in the future, and before the empire takes the Nanyang Peninsula, the Nanyang Peninsula will naturally be as chaotic as possible, and there must be no big forces, so for the Northern and Southern Dynasties of Annam, the empire recognizes it.

Now if the empire wants Guangning, then it will have to fight the Northern Dynasty, that is, the Mo Dynasty, which may excessively reduce the strength of the Northern Dynasty, and then let the Southern Dynasty go north and finally unify Annam.

And this situation is something that the empire absolutely does not want to see!

The empire needs to maintain a balanced state in the Annam region, but the southern dynasty is not allowed to unify Annam, and at the same time, the empire does not want to fight with the southern dynasty in person, the imperial army hates to fight in the broken places of the peninsula, and the imperial army would rather fight with the Tatars on the steppe than fight with the monkeys in the jungle.

The former is still fighting openly, and the latter can't even find the enemy, and then he died of illness for no reason.

If the empire is unwilling to end up in person, then it cannot weaken the power of the Northern Dynasty too much.

In addition, the navy was also worried that if the navy directly launched a landing and attacked Thang Long, there was no certainty that it would be able to force the Thang Long side to quickly sign a covenant under the castle, and that the war might be prolonged.

If the war is protracted, then it will be a big trouble, and in the end it may cause a change in the south and the DPRK, and in the end, it will lead to the complete end of the army.

Although the army is only cooperating now, the situation has really deteriorated, and the Son of Heaven will definitely not be indifferent, and he will definitely order the army to send troops.

At that time, the army will definitely scold the navy for being a group of mentally retarded, and a small natives can capsize, and in the end, they will have to save the army.

Not to mention, after the army is personally killed, the navy will lose a lot of face and interests in this war, and more importantly, after the army is personally killed, it is very likely that it will fall into a long-term operation in the future.

Thus destroying the balance between the north and the south of Annam!

It's not that the army can't send troops, if the army makes up its mind, it can go south to kill Thang Long in minutes, and the crux of the problem now is that the army feels that there is no need for this, especially when the empire's strategy and the army's internal strategy are all going north and west, the army is unwilling to go south to fight any peninsula.

Unless the Son of Heaven explicitly asks the army to go south, otherwise, don't expect the army to take the initiative to go south to Annam.

Fighting Annan will not do the army any good, and it will also fall into a quagmire.

But if the situation deteriorates, the army will definitely send troops, and there is no way to do it if it is unwilling!

As soon as the army is dispatched, then there is basically nothing to do with the navy, and after the army goes south, it may have to fight the Northern Dynasty first, and then the Southern Dynasty.

Because there are many restrictions, the high-level officials on the navy side are also quite entangled in how to seize Quang Ninh.

The most important thing is not the question of whether you can beat it or not, it is not a problem at all!

The question is how to fight, which is in the best interests of the empire and the navy!