Liu Ji, whose name is Bowen, is a native of Nantian, Qingtian County, Chuzhou Road. As an important advisor of Zhu Yuanzhang, he was regarded by later generations as the "talent of Wang Zuozhi" who was the founder of the country and the article that was handed down to the world.
During this period, the leaders of the peasant rebel army led by Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng quickly changed to the head of the armed separatist regime.
This also quickly shifted the focus of the struggle south of the Yangtze River from resisting the rule of the Yuan Dynasty to competing with each other for the right to subsistence and the right to development. Liu Ji's strategic thinking was gradually formed in the course of the war.
So, what are Liu Ji's strategic thoughts? And what results have been achieved?
1. Build and consolidate base areas
Zhu Yuanzhang has always opposed the doctrine of rogue gangsters, which does not pay attention to the construction of base areas, and long before crossing the river, he began to select a base area with a relatively good natural and mass foundation as the strategic support for the peasant war.
After the capture of Jinling, in order to accumulate the necessary manpower, material resources, and financial resources to support the long-term war attrition, Liu Ji suggested that Zhu Yuanzhang devote his main energy to the construction and development of the base area.
After Zhu Yuanzhang's army captured Jinling, Liu Ji focused on expanding the scale of the base area centered on Jinling, and suggested that the western front should mainly strengthen the city defenses of Taiping, Wuhu and other places.
The eastern front was from the Yuan generals Dingding, Zhang Shicheng and the landlord armed Zhang Mingjian successively captured Zhenjiang, Jiangyin, Changzhou, Taixing, Yangzhou and other places, which made Zhu Yuanzhang's originally scattered and isolated base areas develop from points to lines, and then formed a connected territory with Jinling as the center.
Then, taking advantage of Chen Youliang's busy internal power struggle and Zhang Shicheng's defection to the Cheng Yuan Dynasty to seek the rank of Taiwei, he launched an attack on the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty entrenched in the southeast of Jinling.
It successively captured Ningguo (now Xuancheng, Anhui), Jixi, Xiuning, Huizhou (now Shexian, Anhui), Chizhou (now Guichi, Anhui), Jiande, Pujiang, Wuzhou (now Jinhua, Zhejiang), Zhuji, Quzhou, Chuzhou (now Lishui, Zhejiang) and other places.
The scope of the base area will be further extended to southern Anhui and western Zhejiang. This not only brings a large amount of new land, population and other material resources, but also greatly enhances its own strength.
Liu Ji suggested that Zhu Yuanzhang actively seek Ningguo, Huizhou, and western Zhejiang, which was a key move to expand his own strength, and greatly changed the status quo of inverting the strength of his main opponents.
However, at the same time, the general separation of social subjects from the means of production in turbulent times determines that the strength of political power in turbulent times is not fully reflected in constants such as population and land, but to a large extent in variables such as the degree of close integration between people and land.
In view of this, Zhu Yuanzhang emphasized the importance of "today's army is pragmatic and earnest, the use of degree is urgent, and the way of financial management is not to precede agriculture". In February of the eighteenth year of Zheng (1358), Kang Mao was appointed as the envoy of Yingtian, specializing in the implementation of the military tun near Longwan and the repair of water conservancy.
In November of the same year, the Wanhu Mansion was set up to manage the militia, and the militia was simply selected to be used as a militia, "ploughing when the farmers are farming, practicing when they are idle, and using them when they have things", and promoted a more productive and efficient paramilitary organizational model to the civilian level.
Thanks to the great attention of the ideology and the effective measures in reality, the situation of lack of grain in the area ruled by Zhu Yuanzhang has been significantly improved, and by the twenty-third year of Zhizheng (1363), the Tun army near Longwan can get more than 15,000 stones every year, and in addition to meeting military needs, there is still a surplus of more than 7,000 stones for backup.
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Sheng, a Confucian scholar who recommended Liu Ji, Ye Chen, Zhang Yi, and other Wang Zuozhi to go out of the mountain, put forward to Zhu Yuanzhang the famous suggestion of "building a high wall, accumulating grain, and slowly becoming king." Starting from the three aspects of "building a high wall," "accumulating grain," and "slowly becoming king," he gave a general method and path for expanding strength and speeding up the construction of base areas.
At the same time, however, Zhu Sheng's proposals also have obvious inward-looking and passive characteristics, and whether they are "building a high wall," "accumulating grain extensively," or "slowing down the king," all of them point to the priority of internal development and consolidation, but there is no way to answer the questions of the main opponents deliberately breaking the course of their own development, developing outwardly to expand their base areas, and preparing for military struggles in advance.
Therefore, Zhu Sheng's suggestion is essentially synonymous with "Taoguang and obscurity". But in the turbulent times, it is difficult to find a stable development environment for himself even if he compromises, not to mention that Chen Youliang, Zhang Shicheng and other major opponents are in a period of rapid expansion and development at this time, and it is impossible to sit idly by and watch Zhu Yuanzhang's development and growth.
In this sense, although Zhu Sheng's proposal of "building a high wall, accumulating grain, and slowing down the claim to be king" has general characteristics, it also lacks consideration for the particularity of the times, and it can be regarded as the ideological product of Zhu Yuanzhang's combination of the general guiding law of "taoguang and the cultivation of obscurity" with the special situation of the peasant war revolution at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.
After that, Zhu Yuanzhang absorbed the reasonable suggestions of Liu Ji and other important strategists and summed up two major principles for the construction of base areas: First, the militarization and preparation of base areas should be limited to the people's bearing capacity.
During the march into western Zhejiang, Liu Ji immediately suggested that Zhu Yuanzhang order Deng Yu to stop building the city, and explained to Deng Yu the reason that the construction of the city should be defended and not harmed, so that he could consciously make a balance between "thinking (the people) so resting" and guarding against external military threats.
Second, the development of base areas should be based on the preservation and even expansion of the interests of the majority of the people. Everywhere Zhu Yuanzhang's army went, he either opened warehouses to help the poor, or encouraged the people to rebel and fight for the landlords' land, and during this period, he also put forward the slogan "The mountains and rivers are dying of China's land, and the sun and the moon reopen the Great Song Dynasty" to swear an oath to the subordination of the Longfeng peasant regime and the inheritance of the peasant revolution.
In order to get the peasants to support the cause of the uprising, in addition to giving the people visible material benefits such as land, it is also necessary to reduce the tax burden, develop industry and commerce, and promote agricultural production to make the profit cake within the base areas bigger.
Its methods, such as announcing the abolition of the old tax rate of "10 taxes and 1 tax" in the Yuan Dynasty and replacing it with "15 cents and 1 cent of taxes", reducing the circulation cost of commodities, abolishing the "village grain" system, which had been criticized quite a bit before, and beginning to transform military logistics in the direction of "self-sufficiency," are all manifestations of expanding the cake of overall interests and catering to the will of the people.
Liu Ji suggested that Zhu Yuanzhang allocate military forces in a more reasonable space and region to avoid the dispersion of troops. At the beginning of Zhu Yuanzhang's occupation of Jinling, he did not have a border with Chen Youliang in the territory, but because of his close proximity to Zhang Shicheng, both sides had an urgent need to expand the outer space to win a safe buffer zone.
During this period, Zhu Yuanzhang concentrated his forces mainly in the direction of the eastern front, and in the repeated struggle with Zhang Shicheng, he gradually established a strong defense line along Jiangyin, Taihu Lake and Changxing, so that Zhang Shicheng "did not dare to go out of Guangde on foot, and did not dare to go to the Great River, Shangjin and Jiao".
After the eastern front was stabilized, Liu Ji suggested that Zhu Yuanzhang start to march into southern Anhui and western Zhejiang to further enrich his own strength.
During this period, Zhu Yuanzhang relied on the relative advantage of the dragon and phoenix regime in the north and the Yuan army "not being able to use a horse and only turn to the left of the river", and only deployed part of the troops to deal with the potential threats on the eastern and western fronts, and transferred most of the military forces to the southeast battlefield to annihilate the Yuan army stationed in various isolated strongholds.
Relying on the relative superiority in military strength, in less than two years, Liu Ji and other assistants Zhu Yuanzhang successfully occupied parts of southern Anhui, western Zhejiang, and eastern Zhejiang. The rational allocation of military forces was an important reason why Zhu Yuanzhang was able to achieve rapid territorial development.
2. Strive for the initiative in passivity
The peasant war led by Zhu Yuanzhang was waged under the condition that the enemy was strong and we were weak, which determined that in the vast majority of cases, it was in a strategic defensive and passive position. In order to gain the strategic initiative, it is also necessary to accelerate the tilting of the balance of strength between the enemy and us by winning those battles that have a major impact.
Liu Ji assisted Zhu Yuanzhang from the height of military strategy to overcome military passivity and realize the victory of a weak army over a strong army. First of all, we have grasped the intentions and tendencies of the main opponents in terms of values, thinking patterns, and personality characteristics.
Second, through such means as "inviting troops to ambush and take troops," the strategic intentions of the main opponents were broken, and some of the strengths of the enemy and our own strength were changed. Thirdly, it is to take advantage of the contradictions and difficulties of the opponent and adopt the method of simultaneously emphasizing military and political affairs to completely reverse the strategic passivity.
Accurately analyzing the opponent's strategic intentions and destroying them in advance is the prerequisite for striving for the initiative in strategic passivity. In the twentieth year of Zhizheng (1360), Chen Youliang killed Xu Shouhui to stand on his own and attacked Yingtian in a big way.
In the face of sudden and dramatic changes, Zhu Yuanzhang's intelligence was not enough to support strategic decisions. In this regard, Liu Ji put forward the idea of grasping the strategic intentions of the main opponents through values, thinking patterns, personality characteristics, etc., and then simulating and reversing the basic trend of the development of the situation, so as to provide a basis for Zhu Yuanzhang's own decision-making of the leadership group.
Liu Ji realized that it was necessary to accurately grasp the opponent's strategic intentions. First, focus on the core figures of the enemy regime. This is because strategic decision-making is usually not made by the people at the bottom or by ordinary soldiers, but by a small group of people at the center of political power.
At the same time, although important figures within the regime can exert influence on strategic decisions, their influence on strategic decisions is also different due to the different levels of decision-making power, and the opinions of the leaders of the regime are undoubtedly crucial.
Secondly, the potential decision-making tendencies of the main opponents are comprehensively analyzed from the aspects of values, thinking patterns, and personality characteristics. When he talked to Liu Ji and other ministers about his strategic decision of "Chen first and then Zhang", he said: "Trying to hold on to the two Kou, people have persuaded me to attack Shicheng first, thinking that Shicheng is close and friendship is a little farther."
If you hit the friendship first, then Shicheng will take me behind, and this is also a plan. However, I don't know that friends forgive and plagiarize lightly, Shicheng is cunning and cowardly, friends forgive Zhijiao, Shicheng is small, Zhijiao is good at making trouble, and small is not far-sighted. ”
During the discussion, Zhu Yuanzhang mentioned Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng's "good life" and "no long-term plan" interest concepts, "arrogant" and "small" character traits, as well as the ideological and behavioral patterns of "plagiarism and lightness" and "cunning and cowardice", etc., which basically accurately portrayed the portraits of Chen and Zhang.
On this basis, Liu Ji also made a prediction on the general trend of the development of the situation: If Zhang Shicheng is attacked first, Chen Youliang, who is "proud of his good deeds", will definitely come to attack Yingtian, and then he will not be able to get rid of the dilemma of being attacked on both sides and being "tired of responding to the enemy, and doing things difficult".
On the other hand, if Chen Youliang were attacked first, Zhang Shicheng, who was born as a small businessman, would definitely first consider waiting and watching or only dispatching a small-scale army out of interest considerations, and then decide the degree of his own troops according to the development of the war situation between Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang.
In view of this, Liu Ji and others boldly put forward the strategic decision of "Chen first and then Zhang", and the focus of breaking the strategic passivity was also shifted from fighting against Zhang to weakening and even defeating Chen Youliang.
The outbreak of ancient warfare needs to be carried by a specific battlefield space, and terrain conditions are an important part of the selection of combat forms and the design of combat styles, which determines that the use of land is applicable in most cases.
At the same time, a strong army usually has a greater relative advantage than a weak army in the selection of battles, the time of contingency, and the comparison of local forces, and a quick victory over the opponent is their basic demand; if a weak army wants to break the enemy's attempt and defeat the strong with the weak, it has to pay more attention to the natural condition of terrain, and take advantage of the geographical advantage to artificially seek a change in the local balance of forces, and even defeat the opponent.
In May of the twentieth year of Zhizheng (1360), Chen Youliang led ten times the strength of Zhu Yuanzhang, and brought more than 100 huge ships and hundreds of warships such as Mingjianglong, Saiduanjiang, Knockdown Mountain, Jianghaiao and hundreds of warships to conquer Taiping, an important town in the upper reaches of Yingtian (after Zhu Yuanzhang conquered Jinling, Jinling was renamed Yingtian).
and sent Zhang Shicheng to march at the same time and attack Zhu Yuanzhang from east to west. This caused an uproar in Yingtian City, some offered a plan to "plot to surrender to the city", some suggested that "Zhongshan has the king's spirit to run to it", some proposed to "restore peace first" and then resist step by step, and some persuaded Zhu Yuanzhang to "ambush the troops and attack him".
After listening extensively to the opinions of the masses, Zhu Yuanzhang summoned Liu Ji into the secret room alone to discuss countermeasures with him. During the discussion, Liu Ji proposed: "The one who lifts after the way of heaven wins, and it is advisable to ambush the soldiers and attack them in a gap, so as to dominate the enemy and become the king." ”
He suggested that Zhu Yuanzhang adopt the method of luring the enemy into going deep and leading Chen Youliang's army to "ambush and attack" at the foot of the Heavenly City.
Longwan (the name of the ferry, one of the six crossings along the river in Nanjing, and also the only way for Chen Youliang to attack Yingtian) and other ferries along the river "narrow waterways, only accommodate three boats", complex terrain conditions are an ideal place for ambush operations, which can not only reduce their own casualties, but also deprive Chen Youliang of the maneuverability of the giant ship, turning passive into active.
Third, Chen Youliang was complacent and eager to win at this time, so that "luring the enemy to go deeper" had the possibility of realization; Fourth, a quick victory over Chen Youliang can further aggravate Zhang Shicheng's wait-and-see mood and avoid falling into a passive situation of fighting on two fronts.
Liu Ji's suggestion was adopted by Zhu Yuanzhang. But at the same time, Zhu Yuanzhang believes that Chen Youliang's complacent and eager mentality only has the possibility of implementing the "ambush invitation", and does not have the certainty of realizing it.
In order to maximize the transformation of possibilities into certainty, and also to completely annihilate Chen Youliang's army as much as possible so as to quickly improve the strategic passive situation, Zhu Yuanzhang advocated that we should also give full play to the role of "human strategy" and make the situation develop along a pre-set path under the guidance of people.
For this reason, he took advantage of the relationship between Kang Maocai and Chen Youliang, and instructed Kang Maocai to "send an envoy to surrender and make an appointment with internal response", which on the one hand could completely dispel Chen Youliang's vigilance and concerns.
On the other hand, it can allow Chen Youliang to give up the agreement to send troops with Zhang Shicheng in the face of the temptation of interests, and to advance lightly against the enemy, so as to create conditions for the final military annihilation (of course, "sending an envoy to surrender by fraud, and making an internal response" is just a way to exert subjective initiative).
Under Zhu Yuanzhang's active planning, Chen Youliang really hit the plan, and Zhu Yuanzhang's army achieved the major result of "killing and drowning the dead, capturing more than 20,000 people", and Chen Youliang himself was only spared. The balance of strength of Zhu and Chen began to tilt partially.
In September of the twenty-third year of Zhizheng (1363), he, Liu Ji and other generals summed up the experience of the victory of Poyang Lake, and said: "The time is not as good as the location, and the location is not as good as the people. Although Chen Youliang's soldiers are strong, everyone is of one mind, and they are suspicious from top to bottom, and they have been defeated for many years without success, and they cannot maintain their prestige...... That's why it's broken for me."
Although the above statement does not deny the important role of time and location in winning a battle, it also believes that the role of time, place, people, and people in the overall situation should be divided into "disintegration" and "collapse", the former is usually manifested as gradual and quantitative change, while the latter is manifested as subversion and thoroughness.
Therefore, from the perspective of reversing strategic passivity and seizing strategic initiative, Zhu Yuanzhang gave his own understanding and interpretation of "time is not as good as geography, and geography is not as good as people".
So how can we fundamentally change the strategic balance between the enemy and the enemy through the method of "harmony"? Liu Ji believes that the first thing is to pay attention to the changes in the internal contradictions of the enemy regime, and take this as a prerequisite for military conquest. Political clarity is a prerequisite for military victory, and conversely, military successes and failures will also have a negative effect on politics.
As far as strategic commanders are concerned, they should not only pay attention to their own strategic limitations, but also pay full attention to the changes in the "people" within the enemy regime, and use this as an opportunity for conquest. After the defeat in Longwan, Chen's situation began to become difficult.
The political crisis caused by the military fiasco continued to escalate, not only the upper echelons of Ming Yuzhen who established himself as king in Shuzhong, but also the dissatisfaction of the lower echelons caused by the perennial campaign of "military supply of 100 million".
In June of the twenty-first year of Zhizheng (1361), Li Mingdao, who surrendered to Zhu Yuanzhang, told the true situation of Chen Youliang's internal division and the rebellion of his relatives: "Youliang killed Xu Shouhui, the soldiers were all centrifuged, and the government decrees were different, there were many people who abused power, and the brave generals such as Zhao Pusheng were afraid to kill him, although there were many people who were not useful. Liu Ji promptly suggested that Zhu Yuanzhang personally conquer Jiujiang Chen Youliang in order to further weaken his strength.
War is not only a comparison of military strength and economic strength, but also a contest between manpower and people's hearts, and the support of the people can provide strong psychological and spiritual support for military conquest, which in turn will act on the elimination of objective forces.
Therefore, unlike in the strategic defense stage, which strives to completely annihilate the enemy, during the Battle of Jiujiang, Liu Ji reminded Zhu Yuanzhang that he should distinguish between opponents and flexibly use various means such as military strikes and political persuasion, except for Chen Youliang himself and his staunch supporters, who still need to insist on annihilating by force.
For the other forces under his rule, political persuasion should be insisted on as the main means, even if the opponent stubbornly resists or surrenders and rebels, Zhu Yuanzhang also advocates showing the necessary political sincerity in exchange for the understanding and support of the vast majority of the class. Otherwise, not only will it be easy to have an unfavorable situation such as "Fei Liu", but the occupied territory may also be regained.
Liu Ji and others formulated the slogan for Zhu Yuanzhang to gather the hearts of all the people, swore the political purpose of "Nashun and the people", and also announced when they occupied Longxing (later renamed Hongdu, now Nanchang, Jiangxi) and other places: "According to this, the Chen family has made it very difficult for the people to supply the needs of the army, and now I know the disadvantages."
(Since then) the military needs to supply 100 million, and they will not be related to Raul and so on. These "people" policies not only caused a huge sensation at the level of the people, but also contrasted sharply with the previous policies of Chen Youliang's rule, and expanded the people's dissatisfaction with Chen Youliang's regime.
After that, Chen Youliang brazenly launched the decisive battle of Poyang Lake, which was "angry at the growing situation of his territory", which, from the perspective of the campaign, was manifested as an attempt to reverse the strategic decline through the victory of the decisive battle, but in terms of the process and outcome of the decisive battle at Poyang Lake.
To a large extent, however, it confirms the fact that a single military effort is not enough to regain the strategic decline that has been lost in the hearts and minds of the people, that the attitude and will of the people play a tremendous role in influencing the victory or defeat of a war, and that the "people" factor plays a key role in winning the strategic initiative.
3. "Win with more" and "Wait for the time to move"
After defeating Chen Youliang, Zhu Yuanzhang's army surpassed other major competitors of the same period in terms of political, economic, and military strength, and for the first time since the start of the army, it had the initiative in an overall sense.
But at the same time, after experiencing the transformation of strength and weakness with Chen Youliang, Liu Ji also deeply realized that strategic superiority is not enough to ensure victory in the war, and gaining superiority without preparation for victory is not a real advantage; Conversely, an inferior army is well prepared and can defeat the strong with the weak.
Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang discussed the reunification plan with Liu Ji, Chang Yuchun and others, and the monarchs and ministers gave a response idea of "waiting for the time to move". At the beginning, Liu Ji and others proposed, "Now the south has been decided, and there are more than enough troops, so they will go straight to the Yuan capital...... The capital is both grammatic, there is a tendency to break the bamboo, take advantage of the victory and drive for a long time, and the rest can be built and carried down".
Zhu Yuanzhang pointed out that this was a manifestation of the enemy's rash advance in terms of campaign tactics, and even more committed a principled mistake in guiding strategic issues into campaigns, pointing out that "the land must not be overwhelmed, and the people must not be intimidated by the masses." He believed that the reason why he has always been able to win since the beginning of the army is that he has been prudent in "facing a small enemy as if it were a big enemy."
If it is really as Liu Ji and Chang Yuchun said, "We must rely on the merits of the First World War to take advantage of the momentum of breaking bamboos", then Liu Futong's action of organizing the Northern Expedition of the Three Route Army to the Central Plains would not have failed.
He then said: "He has the opportunity to die, and I hold on to the way of victory, I will be blessed, for the perfect move" "The art of war is calculated by the temple to win, and the winner must be counted as much", Liu Ji and Chang Yuchun's long-drive and direct-entry combat plan emphasizes the initiative at the campaign and tactical level, and should be unified under the certainty of the strategic level, which also draws a clear line from the view that strategic victory depends on campaign victory.
Zhu Yuanzhang, Liu Ji, Chang Yuchun and other monarchs and ministers finally unified their thinking, and their strategic actions always revolved around the theme of how to increase the certainty of war.
In terms of the timing of the launch of a strategic offensive, it is advocated to "wait for the time to move." After the fall of the Longfeng regime, the original military barrier across the north no longer existed, and after that, whether it was to attack Zhang Shicheng first or the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains, it would face the risk of potential intervention by a strong enemy or even the expansion of the front.
Based on the basic judgment of the Northern Mengyuan armed group (mainly Wang Baobao, Polo Timur, Zhang Sidao, Li Siqi and others) that "wisdom is equal, mutual enemies are bound to change", the coping strategy of "waiting for the time to move" was proposed, and the core was to take advantage of the trend of "there will be changes" to raise troops to "merge and work down" to achieve the goal of using less force and making more contributions.
It can be seen that "waiting for the time to act" is not the same as passive standby, but contains the general logic of how to look at the period of strategic opportunities: that is, in the face of the inevitable strategic opportunities, we should wait and see, prepare in advance, and take advantage of the trend; If a strategic opportunity arises by chance, it should also be decided and seized.
Of course, there is no separation between inevitable and accidental opportunities, such as inevitable strategic opportunities are often characterized by accidental events; In the same way, there will be inevitable factors at play behind the fortuitous opportunities, and these need to be based on the correct recognition of strategic opportunities.
The actual situation was also as Zhu Yuanzhang expected, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, among the main landlord forces, Polo Timur and Kuangkuo Timur were involved in the struggle for imperial power in the palace, and they fought with each other and had no time to take care of the south, which created favorable conditions for Zhu Yuanzhang to eliminate Zhang Shicheng.
Later, Timur fought with Li Siqi, Zhang Sidao and others because of personal grievances, ignoring Zhu Yuanzhang's Northern Expedition, and even refused to obey the edict when Emperor Yuan Shun personally mediated and issued the order of "marching troops in four ways and arresting with horns". In the absence of foreign aid, Emperor Yuan Shun finally had to abandon the capital and flee north.
In the planning of strategic offensives, we insisted on "winning by many." Generally speaking, war has two opposing attributes: risk and opportunity, and the acceptance of risk and the preference for grasp are different, forming a variety of war guidance styles of military strategists throughout the ages.
This is true not only when there is a strategic disadvantage, but also when it is strategically superior, and this is particularly evident during the period of the War of Reunification. Its specific connotation is as follows: First, the contingency and risk of war can be estimated to a large extent.
When Liu Ji, Chang Yuchun and others proposed to adopt a "long-distance drive" type of combat plan, Zhu Yuanzhang expressed different opinions on the grounds of accident and excessive risk: "He (Wang Baobao, Li Siqi, Zhang Sidao and other big landlords armed with Emperor Yuan Shun) Fang Xuanjiao, in solidarity, how can he drive the clouds for a long time, and must rely on the merits of the first battle to take advantage of the momentum of breaking bamboo?" ”
He added: "Yuan Jiandu for a hundred years, the city must be solid, if as Qing said, the suspension of the division is deep, can not be broken, stop under the fortified city, the salary is not continued, the reinforcements are four sets, there is no battle, there is no basis for retreat, and it is not my benefit." ”
During the discussion, he first cited the enemy's defensive deployment and the operational shortcomings of our side's "difficult to continue to feed." On this basis, he pointed out that "the troops are fortified in the city, and there is no basis for advancing and retreating" is the biggest risk point of the "long-distance drive" type plan.
He believes that if we fail to correctly estimate and objectively view the contingent and risk factors, and if we do not take measures to actively prevent and properly defuse them, once "the suspense is deepened, it cannot be broken immediately," not only will the process of national reunification be easily blocked, but other even more unfavorable situations will appear.
It should be said that Zhu Yuanzhang's above-mentioned analysis is accurate and realistic, and in essence it is a process of rationally estimating and predicting the contingency and risk of war after comprehensively considering the enemy's situation, our situation, and the battlefield environment.
Secondly, Zhu Yuanzhang formed a unified understanding with Liu Ji, Chang Yuchun and other monarchs and ministers, and the accident and risk of war can be avoided to a large extent. Whether it is during the attack on Zhang Shicheng, "take the pass first, Taizhu counties and counties, cut Shicheng's elbows."
The main intention of the proposal is to resolve the overall risk by "cutting its wings" during the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains, and then to create conditions for "smashing its heart".
The reason why Zhu Yuanzhang was able to conquer Dadu in less than 10 months is inseparable from his careful layout of the battlefield, careful selection of targets, and deliberate avoidance of major risks in the overall situation.
Thirdly, even if there are some uncontrollable accidental factors on the battlefield, the losses can be controlled within a certain range through advance preparation and effective handling. During the attack on Shandong, there was a situation where Wang Xuan's father and son surrendered and rebelled, and the snakes and rats were at both ends.
In this regard, Zhu Yuanzhang once ordered Xu Da to take various methods such as dismissing the army, mixing personnel, and transferring senior generals to Yingtian to minimize the impact of similar situations.
To sum up, it can be seen that Zhu Yuanzhang was highly concerned about the important role of strategic planning in winning or losing a war, and regarded "temple calculations" as the main means to avoid the contingency of war and increase certainty.