Everyone, including Li Xuan, had long been looking forward to crossing the Lanjiang River and marching into Xingquan Mansion.
In the past, it was because they were weak and there were tens of thousands of Ming troops on the other side of the river blocking the way, but now, the situation is different.
Through today's daytime battle, the main force of the Ming army was completely lost. Not only were the more than 2,000 Ming troops at Ferry No. 2 defeated, but at noon, the Tang army at Lanjiang Ferry, which the Ming army crossed the river to attack, was defeated.
The main force sent troops to pursue the lower reaches of the Lanjiang River, that is, due north. They wanted to catch up and defeat the more than a thousand Ming army guards who had crossed the river from Ferry No. 3.
In addition to the more than a thousand Ming army at No. 3 Ferry that needed to be defeated, troops were also sent to the south at No. 2 Ferry to continue pursuing the Ming army that was defeated by Hao Bainian in the morning.
There are many remnants of the Ming army staying in both directions. If they are not completely defeated in time, they may cause trouble to the new army of the Tang Dynasty in the future.
But these are follow-up small-scale battles and will not affect the overall situation.
From the moment Song Zhiwen ordered the retreat, the Second Battle of Lanjiang came to an end. More than half of the tens of thousands of Ming troops had been lost, and only a few hundred of the three thousand recruited soldiers who were the main force were left.
Even though Song Zhiwen still has more than 2,000 guard soldiers and almost the same number of young men under his command, these cannon fodder troops are definitely no match for the new army of the Tang Dynasty. As long as they cross the river and defeat these few thousand Ming army remnants, then
The entire Xingquan Mansion is within easy reach.
Another very important point is that after destroying tens of thousands of Ming troops, it will be impossible for the Ming troops to gather large-scale forces to attack again in a short period of time.
After this battle, Xingquan Mansion's own strength had been exhausted, and even the garrison soldiers from the surrounding counties had been annihilated.
If the Ming army wants to gather a large army to attack, it is no longer enough to rely solely on the strength of Xingquan Prefecture or even several surrounding prefectures and counties. It must be led by the governor of Guizhou and gather tens of thousands of troops to attack.
For such a thing, just political wrangling would waste a lot of time, not to mention the difficult mountain roads in Guizhou. By the time they gathered from all over the country and arrived at Xingquan Prefecture, it would be several months later.
These few months have been enough for Li Xuan to bring the entire Xingquan Mansion under control, and use the population and materials of Xingquan Mansion to once again expand the Tang Dynasty's new army on a large scale.
Relying on one Zhengtai County, the Tang Dynasty could pull out an army of nearly 4,000 people. If it relied on the entire Xingquan Prefecture, which had a population of more than 30 people, it was completely impossible to pull out a new Tang Dynasty army of 10,000 people.
possible.
From a military perspective, the time is ripe to attack Xingquan Mansion!
From a political point of view, the Tang Dynasty has been established for several years. Even if it was spent playing house games in the previous one or two years, it cannot stay in the ravine all the time.
Not only Li Xuan yearns for the prosperity on the Qinhuai River in the south of the Yangtze River, but Fang Dongquan and Chen Tufu also yearn for the outside world. They can't wait to get out of the mountains, out of Zhengtai County, and see the vast world outside.
Crossing the river and attacking Xingquan Fucheng has become the consensus of Li Xuan and many generals, but how to fight? After the battle, how to deal with the Ming army's larger counterattack?
In response to this, Zeng Ziwen proposed a series of response plans. After occupying Xingquan Prefecture, he immediately began to expand the army and recruit new soldiers from the entire Xingquan Prefecture. This time the expansion of the army was to expand the new army of the Tang Dynasty to more than 10,000 people.
!
In addition to the expansion of troops, Zeng Ziwen and other generals also put forward some suggestions for improving existing weapons, such as equipping larger caliber heavy muskets and battalion artillery.
These improvement suggestions had already been put forward at the previous post-war summary meeting.
After every large-scale battle, the New Army of the Tang Dynasty would always hold a post-war summary meeting to discuss the gains and losses of the battle, and this has gradually become a tradition of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty.
In today's post-war summary meeting, there were not too many major issues. After all, although the battle was difficult, the performance of each unit was actually good, and there were no major flaws.
However, although the unit's performance is good, it does not mean that there are no shortcomings.
First of all, for the first time, the troops felt inadequate with the existing performance of the muskets. Logically speaking, the performance of the muskets equipped by the New Army of the Tang Dynasty is already considered top-notch in contemporary times, but there are still many problems, such as the rate of fire being too slow.
, and the ignition success rate is too low.
Facing a large-scale enemy charge, you are powerless!
Li Xuan is naturally aware of this problem, but he also knows that this problem cannot be solved for a while, because the muskets of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty have basically squeezed out all the potential of contemporary technology, from ammunition to muskets.
There is not much room for improvement in the design.
The only thing that can improve and significantly improve the performance of the musket is the firing mechanism, which is to replace the matchlock firing with a flint firing.
But this involves a seemingly inconspicuous problem, but in fact it is currently unsolvable, and that is the spring.
The most important technical difficulty of the flintlock gun is this small spring, and this thing requires very high steel-making technology. With the current technical capabilities of the workshops under the Ministry of Industry of the Tang Dynasty, it is simply impossible to produce it.
Without a spring, the flint firing mechanism cannot be made, and the existing matchlock gun cannot be upgraded to a flintlock gun. Naturally, it will be difficult to improve the performance of the existing musket.
The generals also knew about this and proposed another solution, which was to continue to increase the caliber of the muskets to obtain greater range and power to counter the thicker and more bulletproof guns that may appear in the Ming army in the future.
's shield.
When Li Xuan heard this proposal, he thought it was feasible. The existing muskets of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty were not very large in caliber, only fourteen millimeters. It can only be said that they were slightly larger than the Japanese iron cannons and the shotguns equipped by the Ming Dynasty, barely.
It can be considered a medium-caliber musket.
However, at the same time, the caliber of muskets equipped by Europeans was much larger, especially the Spanish muskets, which could reach 20 mm, and were very effective against heavy plate armor.
When the Ming army charged before, they had already used a large number of thick giant shields and even push shield carts to fight against the Tang army's muskets. Is it possible that they will use larger and thicker giant shields in the future, even if these giant shields
The same goes for poor mobility.
Li Xuan decided to be prepared first and build a batch of 20mm caliber heavy muskets first!
After deciding to build a batch of heavy muskets, Li Xuan also wanted to improve the existing artillery!
Through this actual combat, Li Xuan discovered that the existing six artillery pieces of the artillery team, no matter which Italian cannon weighed 800 kilograms, or the five 500 kilogram artillery pieces, were still too heavy and could not move quickly.
The fatal flaw of mobility.
Although these artillery pieces have excellent range and power, they are all front-loaded cannons and are still too heavy.
When Li Xuan saw those antique bowl-mouth cannons of the Ming army, he felt that his side must also have an artillery that could accompany the infantry in rapid maneuvers.
Last night, when Hao Bainian led his troops to reinforce No. 2 Ferry, it was because the artillery was too heavy that reinforcements could not be made quickly. As a result, when Hao Bainian led his troops into battle, they were unable to receive artillery support and could only rely on hand grenades and pure bayonet charges.
And this is also the main reason why Hao Bainian's troops suffered a lot of casualties!
The New Army of the Tang Dynasty must have a light artillery that can accompany the infantry in combat at any time, and it is a light artillery directly under the jurisdiction of the infantry battalion.
It must be directly carried by horses and other livestock, so that soldiers can carry it in an emergency. It cannot be pulled by multiple horses like the current six cannons. In an emergency, or in mountainous or muddy areas,
It won't be able to move.
After arriving on the battlefield, to be able to maneuver along with the infantry formation, this requires the soldiers to be able to push the artillery away.
Under the premise of meeting the requirement of rapid maneuverability, other performance data can be as good as possible.
In addition to these two, there are other suggestions, such as equipping more spearmen with armor, but these are minor and the impact is not as big as the first two.
After this day's post-war memories ended, the New Army of the Tang Dynasty was operating quickly again!
The more severely damaged units began to accept new recruits from the rear on a large scale and replenished the lost muskets and other weapons.
Try to restore the new army of the Tang Dynasty to its previous combat effectiveness, but it is impossible to get there as soon as possible, at least not until the new army of the Tang Dynasty launches the cross-river battle.
The recruitment and training of new soldiers takes time, and the production speed of weapons is also limited.
And this time cannot catch up with the cross-river operation planned by the new army of the Tang Dynasty.
In order to strike while the iron is hot, Li Xuan decided to cross the river very quickly, just five days later!
These five days are the time for the new army of the Tang Dynasty to finally resume replenishment, and they can replenish as much as they can!
In the next two days, Li Chunjing, the battalion officer of the Second Mixed Battalion who led the army to pursue the enemy at No. 3 Ferry, pursued and defeated the Ming army, killing more than two enemies and taking more than 500 prisoners. The remaining hundreds of Ming troops were completely defeated.
The prisoners were escorted back that day.
Fang Xitong, the First Mixed Battalion who led the army to pursue the remnants of the No. 2 Ferry, sent someone to report that the remnants of the Ming army in the south had been completely defeated, and many of them had become stragglers, making it difficult to pursue them one by one.
In this regard, Li Xuan could only ask them to put these stragglers aside first. Anyway, some stragglers would not affect the overall situation. At most, they would only cause some trouble to local public security, and then let the bandit camp slowly sort out and eliminate them.
Now, Li Xuan has set his sights on Zhengtai County!
Before officially crossing the river to attack Xingquan Fucheng, he still had to capture Zhengtai County!
For this reason, he sent an order to Fang Xitong, asking him to immediately lead his troops to Zhengtai County and capture Zhengtai County. In order to catch up with the cross-river battle in a few days, Li Xuan only gave him two days.
Not long after, when Su Jiakang, who was in Zhengtai County, heard that a large number of puppet Tang rebels had arrived outside the city, and that they were ready to attack the city, he couldn't stand and fell down on his chair.
His eyes were filled with despair.
He was still mumbling: "What should I do, what should I do?"