In Hami City, Lu Yuzhi was not wearing a military uniform, but a long robe and casual clothes. He was lying on a recliner, but he did not follow him, but half-squinted at the scene outside.
The place where he is located is not the tallest building in Hami City, but it is the strongest building: the main building of Hami Railway Station.
The building materials used in Hami Railway Station are made of reinforced concrete transported from the mainland. It was designed with the intention of serving as a military victory base, so it was built extremely solidly. Even if it is directly bombarded by heavy artillery, it cannot be damaged.
What actual damage is caused by the building?
The headquarters of the Western Expeditionary Army was set up in the train station.
Lu Yuzhi was lying on the balcony, looking at the city of Hami outside, but what came to his mind was the scene from Yuanjing.
Last month, before this year's Western Expedition was launched, he returned to Jinling City once under orders, mainly to present this year's Western Expedition plan to the Holy Emperor face to face.
Lu Yuzhi's plan for the Western Expedition was also very simple, not too complicated, that is, just build iron and kill them, and kill them wherever they go.
It's simple and crude, but it's very effective. At least the Tatars can't do anything about it.
Lu Yuzhi is no longer worried about the Tatars in the Western Regions. He has now begun to plan how to capture the entire Western Regions.
The Western Region is very large, and Hami City and Turpan City are just two cities. Although the war between the Tang Dynasty and the Tatars mainly revolved around these two cities, it is definitely not that the Western Region is just that.
Big.
In fact, the Western Region is very large. Controlling Hami City and Turpan is just the beginning. Later, this will be the core of the strategy, and then the entire Western Region will be deeply controlled, and it will also extend to the north.
Well, in fact, the large area in the north of the Western Region and west of the Empire's Hefeng Province is still under the control of the Tatars. Of course, this control is very weak. The main reason is that there are still a large number of Tatar tribes there.
Nomadic, but does not have a large-scale garrison.
His mission, Lu Yuzhi, was to capture the Western Region, which was not just as simple as defeating the Tatars in Hami City and Turpan City.
It is just a prerequisite to defeat the Tatars in these two places and capture these two cities.
Now in his opinion, as the iron construction is progressing smoothly, it is estimated that they will be able to attack Turpan City next month. No matter how hard the Tatars jump, they will not be able to defend Turpan City.
At that time, after taking these two cities, we can no longer build the railway as slowly as before, because going west from here, there are no strategic cities anymore, and some are just small and medium-sized cities.
.
More importantly, after crossing the Yili area, you will reach the vast Kazakh plain!
In such a huge plain location, the protagonist of the war must be the cavalry unit.
For this reason, the battle in the Central Plains west of Turpan should return to the traditional war model, with cavalry as the main force. As for the infantry and artillery units, they can only be fiddled with later.
Because the coverage of the battle will be very large by then, and the Tatar cavalry is too mobile. If the Tang cavalry wants to kill the Tatars, it must also carry out large-scale maneuvers. When the time comes, the infantry and artillery units will follow.
It's normal not to come up.
But as a result, the cavalry troops on hand are not enough!
Two cavalry corps and several independent cavalry regiments, a field cavalry force of more than 30,000 people!
It was impossible to conquer the entire Hakes Plain with such a small number of people. Lu Yuzhi thought that he would write to Jinling to prepare more cavalry troops.
The Tang Empire did not have no cavalry troops. In fact, there were many. The total number of cavalry troops in the entire army was over 100,000, and this refers to the number currently maintained.
If necessary, the Tang Army was able to expand the size of the cavalry force to 200,000 or even 300,000 in a short period of time.
After all, today's Datang Empire has no shortage of war horses. It has a large number of grassland areas and horse farms. The number of horses maintained by the official and private parties is very large. As long as there is a need, the military can recruit many horses in a short time.
One hundred thousand horses participated in the war.
As for the cavalry, although it is too late to train in a short period of time, the Tang Dynasty military has a complete retired mobilization system. It only needs to recruit the retired cavalry again, and it can recruit at least 200,000 cavalry, and then carry out several months of training.
Restorative training can bring back a cavalry army of hundreds of thousands of people.
This is not only true for cavalry, but also for infantry, and even artillery can pull out a large number of them in a short time.
Because of the retirement and mobilization system, the Empire's army and navy retire nearly 100,000 soldiers every year, and there are at least one million retired veterans among the civilian population, and these veterans have retired within ten years, and
It remains in reserve status and can be re-recruited and serve at any time.
There are also sufficient supplies of war horses, guns and other supplies.
The only thing that limits the Tang Army from expanding its scale to more than one million or even two million at any time is military spending!
In fact, for so many years, the Tang Empire never recruited veterans once.
Even after the Western Expedition started last year, the Army did not recruit veterans to replenish their ranks, but extended their retirement years.
Soldiers who were originally scheduled to retire from the combat units had their retirement extended by one year. This year, this group of soldiers who have overdue service are voluntarily applying to extend their service. Soldiers can continue to stay in the army to fight if they wish.
In this way, without the Army recruiting retired soldiers, it has completed the mobilization of troops participating in the war.
The national strength and system of the Datang Empire ensured that the Datang Empire could mobilize a large number of troops at any time when necessary.
But when is it necessary?
Western Expedition?
Lu Yuzhi was also a little unsure. He wanted more cavalry troops, but he didn't know whether the empire would conduct a larger-scale mobilization and recruit retired cavalry.
But these are not things he needs to consider. Anyway, he will send the application report. How to gather the cavalry to send it to him is not something he needs to worry about.
The subsequent battles in the Kazakh plains were destined to be dominated by cavalry, but in the Western Region, infantry and artillery were still important.
And even if the city of Turpan is captured later, it does not mean that the entire Western Region is captured.
However, in the future, it is estimated that no one will stop the Tang Empire from controlling the entire Western Region.
Because the Western Region is such a large area now, to be honest, except for the Tatar army and the Tang army, there are not many civilians in the area at all.
The population of the Western Regions was originally quite large, and the original Turpan Khanate was also a khanate after all. But since the Tatars first killed these people several times, and then gathered the remaining people together and used them as cannon fodder.
Cannon fodder, craftsmen, craftsmen, especially with the continuous western expedition of the Tatars, the people here were also gradually moved to Central Asia by the Tatars.
The only remaining population was concentrated in Hami City and Turpan City. The vast Western Region area outside was actually deserted.
After all, the Tatars had planned to abandon the Western Regions a long time ago, and the remaining army was only to contain the Tang Army and prevent the Tang Army from easily entering the Western Regions, but they themselves had already begun to move.
Nowadays there are not even many people, so naturally there is no so-called resistance or control.
But even if the vast Western Region is already deserted, Lu Yuzhi still needs to cooperate with the civil affairs department to control the issue. These are not trivial matters, and they will definitely contain a lot of power when the time comes.
Wulihan and others who are now in Turpan City still don't know that their opponent Lu Yuzhi is already thinking about how to control the entire Western Region and how to fight in Central Asia in the future.
Nowadays, they are still worried about how to resist the attack of the Tang Army!
Hami City was not far away from Turpan City. Although the Tatars resisted and harassed continuously, the Tang Dynasty people continued to build iron at a very fast speed.
It doesn't take long for the construction to reach Turpan City.
Wulihan and other Tatar generals discussed and discussed, but in the end there was no way.
They didn't dare to face a head-on confrontation, and they didn't dare to stay and defend. As for sending troops to destroy the iron, they had already tried it. More than 30,000 main cavalry attacked, and they lost several thousand cavalry, and finally destroyed more than ten kilometers of iron.
Iron, as a result, it took more than ten days to repair it.
It's useless in the end.
After much discussion, they decided to leave!
It can't be beaten anyway, and iron can't be destroyed. What else can we do if we don't leave now?
However, their decision to retreat was not purely for the sake of leaving. They were preparing to retreat to the mountains in the southwest.
In that kind of place, the Tang Dynasty people would not be able to repair the iron quickly. Only then would both sides be able to resume the traditional war mode that the Tatars are familiar with.
As a result, the Tatars in Turpan left in a way that left Lu Yuzhi speechless.
When the Tang Army was still more than 80 kilometers away, they ran away first!
You must know that there were actually quite a few Tatar troops in Turpan at this time. There were two armies, more than 30,000 infantry and artillery, and more than 30,000 cavalry, for a total of 60,000 troops.
In addition, there are more than 10,000 craftsmen in the city.
As for cattle, sheep and livestock, there are even more.
With so many people and supplies, they left at will without any ambiguity. Lu Yuzhi was unable to pursue them even if he wanted to send out cavalry.
Now that the Tatars have all run away, what else is there to say? Continue to march and take over the city of Turpan, which has been destroyed and turned into ruins by the Tatars.
Then Lu Yuzhi personally led 30,000 cavalry to continue westward in pursuit, while the other troops, after resting and recuperating, also continued to advance to maintain the logistics line for the cavalry troops, and at the same time divided their troops to go south to the southwest region.
Although Datang has so far declared that it has won the Western Region, the two sides still have not had a truly large-scale decisive battle.
This time, the Western Expedition, which has lasted for more than a year, is just the beginning!
The main force of the Tatars on the Eastern Front, especially the cavalry troops, are still in good condition now. They have only lost a few thousand cavalry after all calculations. Today, the main force of the Tatars on the Eastern Front still number more than 100,000, including
The main cavalry force is more than 50,000!
If Lu Yuzhi is slightly careless, the Tatars will be able to pounce on him, and it will only take a matter of minutes for the Western Region to change hands again.