The first thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth chapters rebuild Dongsheng City
Datong Prefecture, Shanxi Province.
This place has always been an important border town in the pre-Ming Dynasty, and the same was true in the Tang Empire. Whenever the word Datong was discussed by ministers in the capital, it was basically a discussion of military issues.
The headquarters of the Ninth Army, one of the sixteen armies of the Tang Empire, was established here.
In the headquarters of the Ninth Army, Lieutenant General Deng Xide, the commander of the Ninth Army, was thinking about the huge sand table. As the second commander of the Ninth Army and a new generation general in the army, he experienced fierce competition last year.
Only then did he receive the important task from His Majesty, serving as the commander of the Ninth Army.
And his Ninth Army, like the other sixteen armies of the Tang Empire, was not a simple field army, but a kind of theater command. The defense line it was responsible for included the border line of Datong Prefecture, and also included Shaanxi Province.
Northeastern defense line.
Because what this place faces is the main direction of the Tatars, the pressure is not small on weekdays, so the troops under its jurisdiction are not small.
Its main forces are the 6th Division and the 5th Cavalry Division, as well as the 18th Reserve Division and the 19th Reserve Division.
However, as the empire prepared to carry out the Battle of Hetao at the beginning of the year, the troops under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Army underwent great changes. First of all, the nearby 3rd Infantry Division and the 3rd Cuirassier Regiment were transferred to Datong Prefecture and were assigned to
Under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Army.
Immediately afterwards, the 1st Cavalry Division originally stationed in Youzhou City was also transferred over. After May, the 8th Light Cavalry Regiment stationed in Taiyuan was also transferred over.
Later, the 13th Infantry Division and other units gradually joined the army.
By the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Ninth Army already had two main infantry divisions, five reserve divisions, two cavalry divisions, one cuirassier regiment, six light cavalry regiments, and the seventh artillery brigade.
In addition, there is a temporary deployment, but it does not belong directly to the Ninth Army, but is still under the command of the Third Army and is used to fill the temporary brigade of the defense line.
The above are all combat units, and do not include the more than ten transportation groups that were temporarily recruited and formed under the management of the Logistics Department.
Of course, it is impossible for so many units to all go out to fight. Some troops need to be left to garrison the Great Wall defense line to avoid being beaten behind. The ones left behind are the three reserve divisions and artillery units, as well as the Third Army.
A temporary brigade supported.
It was determined that the troops to fight north were two main infantry divisions, two reserve divisions, two cavalry divisions, one cuirassier regiment, and six light cavalry regiments.
The total strength is about 60,000!
Sixty thousand people are currently located in Datong Prefecture and the northern area of Taiyuan Prefecture, but most of the troops preparing to participate in the war have already completed their assembly in advance and conducted relevant pre-war adaptability training.
Deng Xide received an urgent secret order of three hundred miles from Jinling City yesterday. In the secret order, the Holy Emperor had officially approved the Battle of Hetao and ordered Deng Xide to lead his troops to send troops to Hetao to severely inflict heavy losses on the Tatars and prepare for the empire's subsequent northern strategic competition.
strategic initiative.
This secret edict was handwritten by the Holy Emperor himself. There was no nonsense in traditional imperial edicts. It was a simple edict of several hundred words that said one thing: He was asked to find opportunities to severely injure the Tatars and annihilate the enemy's vitality.
, don’t care about gains and losses in land, don’t care about victory or defeat, just decisively and massively annihilate the enemy’s effective forces.
As for seizing the Hetao, the Holy Emperor didn't even mention a word about it!
As a senior military general, Zheng Xide's political sensitivity is naturally quite high. With only his military talent, in a system like the Tang Empire, it is no problem to be a regiment commander, brigade commander, or even division commander, but if he wants to be
In addition to excellent military talents, military commanders must also possess extraordinary political talents.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to climb up at all!
Deng Xide was naturally not a person who only knew how to fight. Although he was a good fighter, to be honest, there were not many people in the Tang Army who were more talented in military affairs than him, but they were certainly not few.
In this way, when he saw the secret decree of the Holy Emperor, he made a little guess and roughly guessed the meaning behind the Holy Emperor's words. It was just to seize the Loop, but the Tatars escaped, so there was no egg.
Use it, because people can fight back when they turn around.
Moreover, it is very difficult to defend the Hetao area. This place is easy to attack and difficult to defend. Whether it is the Tang Army or the Tatars today, it is actually very difficult to defend here for a long time.
But if we can severely damage the Tatars and directly kill their army, then they will not be able to fight back if they want to.
But it is not easy to destroy a large number of the enemy's effective forces.
Tatars are all born on horseback. Seeing an unlucky opportunity, they ran away in a matter of minutes. Why would they stand here and confront you head-on?
How to eliminate a large number of the enemy's effective forces is a bit difficult. The only hope is to control the banks of the Yellow River with thunderous force in winter, before the Yellow River freezes, and then lock the enemy in the river loop, and then force them to fight a decisive battle.
Let’s not talk about whether this can be successful.
If it fails, once the Yellow River freezes in winter, there is basically no hope of keeping the Tatars, as they can run away anytime and anywhere.
Deng Xide meditated on the sand table, thinking about the chips in his hand, and then thinking about how to use his chips.
The biggest bargaining chip he has now is fifteen thousand cavalry. If he uses it well, it is still possible to win this battle, but if he uses it poorly, the result will be difficult to predict.
After pondering for a moment, he called over the senior staff officers of the Army Staff Department and the senior generals in the army to prepare for a meeting. The main purpose was naturally to convey the combat orders from the Privy Council.
Along with the secret edict, there is also an imperial edict that can be disclosed in the military. After all, many words in the secret edict cannot be published. That is not good and can easily bring negative effects.
The generals here are all mentally prepared for the upcoming Battle of Loop. Otherwise, why would the Privy Council transfer them from other places? It's not just for fighting.
But how to fight specifically requires detailed planning.
The Privy Council's Operations Department did not give a detailed combat plan. They only gave operational requirements, requiring the Ninth Army to severely inflict heavy losses on the Tatars and seize the Hetao area. The specific method of fighting was the Ninth Army's business.
The Privy Council's Operations Department is not yet powerful enough to remotely command the Ninth Army's operations across thousands of kilometers.
In other words, when the combat order is sent to the Ninth Army, when and how to fight are actually the Ninth Army's own business.
Next, the generals of the Ninth Army discussed for a long time, trying to formulate a detailed combat plan. However, although many plans had been made before, when the matter came to a close, many things were still uncertain.
Although the overall battle plan has not yet been determined, Deng Xide knows that no matter what, it cannot be delayed for too long. He must end the battle before winter comes, and then when winter comes, he can choose to continue fighting, or he can choose
Return.
Therefore, when many generals of the Ninth Army began to formulate detailed combat plans, he had already ordered the troops to start gathering preparations. At the same time, he also asked the troops to speed up the construction of castles and prepare food and ammunition.
No matter how you fight, the front exit channel must be cleared first.
Previously, they had built several fortresses along the Yellow River, extending to fifty kilometers away. Now they needed to rely on these small-scale fortress groups and the Yellow River to establish effective and safe logistics supply lines.
At the same time, it is also necessary to move a large amount of food and materials stored in the rear to the front line in advance. For safety reasons, large-scale food and materials are not stored too close to the front line, but are placed in some big cities in the rear.
, such as in strategic cities such as Datong, Taiyuan, and Youzhou.
Only in times of war will they be deployed in large numbers to the front line.
As the saying goes, before the army moves, food and grass go first. Now that a large-scale war is about to begin, these large amounts of food, ammunition and other materials stored in the rear naturally need to be transported to the front.
Deng Xide's generals and staff did not delay for too long, because they also knew that time was tight. They spent three days formulating a detailed plan for this march based on many previous plans.
This plan is not too complicated. In fact, the Tang Army never likes to engage in overly complicated battle plans when fighting, especially large-scale battles.
If it is a battle at the battalion level, you can still see some complex and difficult tactics adopted by the commanders of the Tang Army, but at the division level, there are relatively few.
By the time they reach the military level, anyone who dares to come up with tactics that are messy and make people feel dizzy will definitely be dismissed directly.
Because when the scale of the troops reaches a certain level and the battle line spreads for tens of miles or even longer, the command will become very complicated and the communication delay will be very long.
At this time, the coordinated operations between troops will become very unreliable, and the battle will rely more on the strength of the troops themselves.
Therefore, in large-scale operations, the simpler the strategy, the better!
The same is true this time. The battle plan formulated by the Ninth Army headquarters seems to be dozens of pages thick, but in fact the core idea is very simple, that is, the cavalry will mainly attack and the infantry will mainly defend.
The reason why it is so detailed is because a lot of the content in it is not military content at all, but involves building castles and maintaining supply lines.
After all, if you want to fight north, the logistics line is the lifeline of the Ninth Army, and it cannot be overemphasized.
Most of these contents about building castles and maintaining supply lines are talking about Dongsheng City!
It was a city abandoned by Qian Ming many years ago!