Since the last Battle of Lanjiang Ferry, Li Xuan has been preparing for the next Ming army attack. To this end, he occupied almost the entire Zhengtai County and used all the resources he could find in Zhengtai County to expand his army.
They even paid high prices to purchase various military strategic weapons such as iron, copper, saltpeter, sulfur, and lead from bold businessmen such as Old Man Sun, and also purchased a large amount of other cloth, grain, and salt.
For this reason, the Tang Dynasty spent all the nearly 20,000 taels of silver they had accumulated over the past year. Not only was the cash spent, but they also sold off the many soft goods, calligraphy and paintings obtained from the house raids at low prices, just to
Purchase more strategic supplies.
And after paying such a high price, the materials obtained were quite generous. Using these materials, in the past three months, the workshops of the Ministry of Industry of the Tang Dynasty have been working almost at full capacity. In just three months, they have completed
These supplies were completely consumed.
You must know that since the Tang Dynasty moved to Xikou Village, the weapons workshop of the Ministry of Industry has expanded several times. The total number of craftsmen and ordinary workers combined has reached nearly a thousand.
In the past three months, this 1,000-person Ministry of Industry weapons workshop has built a total of five 500-pound artillery pieces, more than 800 muskets, 1,000 grenades, and three spears with fine steel spearheads for the New Army of the Tang Dynasty.
More than a thousand rods were used to convert the captured cotton armor of the Ming army into more than 300 pairs of cotton-iron armor.
There are also a large number of other cold weapons such as bayonets and waist knives.
There are also a large number of consumable supplies such as gunpowder, bullets, cannonballs, bows and arrows.
If you add in the various weapons that were in existence before, as of today, three months later, the new army of the Tang Dynasty has barely reached its full strength.
Each of the four infantry battalions has two fully-manned musketeers, and the two mixed battalions each have a musketeer team. There are ten musketeers in total, with a total of one thousand musketeers.
The newly formed grenadiers were also equipped with muskets and grenades.
The artillery team has one 800-jin Italian cannon and five 500-jin battalion cannon.
Even the baggage team has hundreds of more vehicles used to transport baggage.
The only thing that is not satisfied is the cavalry team, because there is no way to collect so many qualified war horses in Zhengtai County. Currently, there are only a hundred horses in the new army of the Tang Dynasty that can be ridden.
Li Xuan's guard took up more than 20 of them. Yes, Li Xuan had upgraded his guard to mounted infantry. This was not to lead them to charge, but to take them when they were defeated.
You can take him to run faster.
In addition, the two mixed battalions are each equipped with five cavalry.
Then there are the mounts of officers above the squadron.
In the end, there were less than seventy horses left for the cavalry, but the quality of these seventy horses was the best.
The horses used by other officers and Li Xuan's guards could only be regarded as rideable, and were mainly collected from the private sector.
However, the more than 60 horses in the cavalry can barely be regarded as war horses. Most of these war horses were captured from the Ming army.
From weapons to ammunition, from soldiers to officers and troop training, Li Xuan thought that he had exhausted all his efforts, and this new Tang Dynasty army of 3,800 people now looks decent, at least
He is quite impressive during training and exercises.
However, most of these 3,800 people are new soldiers, and nearly 2,000 people have never been on the battlefield.
Whether this can be used in a real war depends on whether God will give it face.
If we can fight a few small battles first to let these new recruits see blood and boost their morale, they should be ready for the decisive battle with the Ming army. But now that the Ming army has arrived in tens of thousands, Li Xuan is a little bit
He was worried that his new recruits would not be able to withstand the huge pressure on the battlefield.
When it was discovered that another five thousand Ming troops had arrived on the east bank of the Lanjiang River, bringing the total number of Ming troops on the east bank of the Lanjiang River to ten thousand, Li Xuan had already stepped up the alert of the entire army and sent more scouts to secretly cross the river. Twelve
Monitor the movements of the Ming army on the other side of the river constantly.
If the Ming army of tens of thousands wanted to do something, the movement would definitely be huge, and it would be almost impossible to hide it from the scouts.
As for the Ming army occasionally sending small-scale troops to other places, this may be hidden from the surveillance of the scouts of the new army of the Tang Dynasty, but this is not important. Dozens or hundreds of Ming troops sneaked away without affecting the overall situation.
Even if they want to send hundreds of people to cross the river secretly from other places, the New Army of the Tang Dynasty has deployed manpower for monitoring at several other ferries suitable for crossing the river, and the first mixed battalion and the second mixed battalion are upstream and downstream.
Well, once the Ming army moves to cross the river, they will directly intercept it.
It was almost impossible for the Ming army to cross the river secretly and on a large scale.
Regardless of whether it is a partial division or the main force, if the Ming army wants to cross the river, it must first pass the new army of the Tang Dynasty!
In addition to strengthening the monitoring of the Ming army, Li Xuan also ordered the troops to step up targeted defensive combat training.
As for the fortifications, there is no need to repair them now, because in the past three months, Li Xuan has asked the auxiliary troops, especially the more than 400 Ming troops from the garrison camp, to dig holes and repair the walls every day.
Today, the approximately 500-meter section of the Lanjiang Ferry that is suitable for crossing the river and landing is completely covered by the parapet of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, and the parapet has been built higher and higher. It used to be only one meter or two meters, but
Now, all parapets have been built to more than three meters.
This is almost a city wall!
On the parapet, there are six forts of different sizes and more than twenty arrow towers.
In the distance of more than thirty meters from the parapet to the river, many obstacles were placed to block the Ming army's advance. Many sharpened wooden poles and bamboo poles were laid on the river, and there were many obstacles placed on the river beach.
Numerous stallions and other objects.
Those bamboo poles and wooden stakes were used to delay the landing of the Ming army, so that we could have more time to shoot the Ming army who were still on the raft and had not yet landed.
The purpose of distance horses and other objects was to prevent the Ming army from charging in formation and force the Ming army to actively disperse their formation.
This distance of more than thirty meters is enough to be the burial ground of the Ming army. Once a fight breaks out, the blood of the Ming army will be enough to stain the entire river beach!
The first parapet and river beach fortifications are just the first line of defenses. Fifty meters away from the first parapet, there is a second ring-shaped parapet.
This was a precaution. If the Ming army broke through the first parapet defense line, the new Tang Dynasty army would withdraw to the second ring parapet and continue to resist.
Such defenses were not considered weak even during World War II.
If there were a few more heavy machine guns from above, all 10,000 Ming troops would probably be knocked down by the machine guns before they even landed.
Today's Lanjiang Ferry has become a veritable fortress!
However, the new army of the Tang Dynasty was well prepared, and the Ming army on the opposite side was obviously also well prepared. They have been busy since arriving, and they also came up with some strange things.
At a glance, you can tell that these things are weapons specifically designed to target the New Army of the Tang Dynasty!