The Tang Dynasty expanded its army every day when there was nothing to do, which brought great difficulties to the overall operation of the Tang Dynasty, especially the tax department that provided food and salary support for the entire army, and even Alexander.
As the only institution in the Tang Dynasty with legal or illegal rights to collect taxes, the Taxation Department bore the financial pressure needed to maintain the operation of the entire Tang Dynasty.
And the annoying thing is that this kind of financial pressure is not just about money. In fact, silver has no direct effect on the operation of the Tang Dynasty. The role of silver is to purchase strategic materials from the outside world and
Pay salaries to officials and soldiers.
In addition to money, food and all kinds of miscellaneous materials are also needed, among which food is the most important.
To be honest, it is difficult to purchase bulk materials such as grain in large quantities through merchants, because the unit value of grain is not high, the transportation cost is extremely high, and the scale of transportation will be very large, and it is very easy to be seized by the Ming army.
.
In contrast, businessmen like Old Man Sun, who took great risks to trade with the Tang Dynasty, were more willing to transport goods that were easy to transport, had higher unit prices, and were also more profitable, such as saltpeter and sulfur, even if
Copper and iron are easier to transport than grain, and more profitable.
Because although Xingquan Mansion is barren, there is still food. The new army of the Tang Dynasty does not have a big shortage of food. On the contrary, the shortage of copper and iron used to make ordnance, saltpeter, sulfur, lead and other materials for making ammunition is very big. Basically
They all buy at double the price, and they charge as much as they want.
In addition, food can also be used to "eat the enemy". Therefore, in the past year of fighting the Ming Army, although the New Army of the Tang Dynasty encountered food crises several times, they were successfully resolved one by one, and all through "eating".
This method solves the problem, so the tax department's purchase list for outside merchants, although there are items like food, the purchase price is not high, just slightly higher than the ordinary market price outside.
In order to once again solve the food problem, especially the military ration problem, the latest edict sent by Li Xuan to Hao Bainian, Li Chunjing and others has made it clear that he hopes that the frontline troops can be self-reliant and eat as much as possible.
How much food can be transported to the rear?
After receiving Li Xuan's imperial edict, Hao Bainian was not surprised. As a senior general of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty and currently the highest-ranking general, he knew very well that the New Army of the Tang Dynasty had a fine tradition of "feeding on the enemy."
Even if there is food in the rear, transporting it over hundreds of miles is a huge hassle and causes huge losses.
There are also thousands of troops in Xingquan Prefecture, and it is impossible to transport the only food to Liping Prefecture at such a high cost.
In fact, without Li Xuan's explicit instructions, the First Infantry Regiment and Second Infantry Regiment on the front line had already adopted the policy of "feeding on the enemy."
Along the way, they also captured many Ming army granaries and obtained some food.
At the same time, because the tax inspection team of the Ministry of Taxation is busy with business, it has not expanded its business to the newly occupied area in the eastern part of Liping Province for a while. The military will also cooperate very well by sending troops to accompany the officials of the Ministry of Taxation to the occupied eastern part of Liping Province.
Military rations were collected from various places.
There are many ways to collect military rations. In addition to the formal "autumn tax", there are also other messy names, such as borrowing grain, directly sending troops to a landlord's grain warehouse to take away the grain, and then leaving an IOU. As mentioned above,
On such and such a day in such and such a year, a certain unit of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty borrowed so-and-so's kilograms of grain. So-and-so could go to the Tax Department of the Tang Dynasty with an IOU to get the grain back.
Sometimes they would directly come to the door and point their swords at the big landowners who had hoarded a large amount of food. They said that the army was in difficulty and hoped that they could show their patriotic spirit of supporting the army and donate some food.
This is considered relatively civilized. If the other party does not cooperate, the leading officers will shout: "You bold thief, how dare you harbor a false spy!"
"Search for me!"
"What? How dare you resist? Everyone, aim and shoot!"
With a burst of gunfire, most of these landowners finally chose to surrender, some surrendered while alive, and some surrendered after death!
No matter what, they will always be able to get back a large amount of military rations in the end, and they will also snatch back, no, they will confiscate some copper, iron, gold, silver and soft things.
Every time the troops went out to collect food, they would return with huge debts and leave behind a bloody storm!
In less than five or six days, the famous saying of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty: "Open the door, folks, we are the New Army of the Tang Dynasty!" spread from Xingquan Prefecture to Liping Prefecture, and was widely praised.
Many years after the rise of the Tang Dynasty, there would be a drama like this: several new soldiers of the Tang Dynasty politely knocked on the door of a big landowner and said, "We are the new soldiers of the Tang Dynasty." Then the big landowner happily entertained the new soldiers of the Tang Dynasty with food, wine and food.
The soldiers may have taken the initiative to help the new army of the Tang Dynasty avoid being pursued by the Ming army, but the big landowner died tragically under the sword of the Ming army, shouting "long live the Tang Dynasty" before he died.
The soldiers of the Tang Dynasty watched the landowners die tragically at the hands of the Ming army and the big villains. Finally, they brought the new army of the Tang Dynasty back to take revenge, annihilating the angry Ming army and avenging the tragic death of their fellow villagers. The fat of the new army of the Tang Dynasty was
The dragon flag was planted on the hilltop of this small village.
What, you actually suspect that what is said in this play is false, that the dead landlord was not killed by the Ming army, but by the new army of the Tang Dynasty?
How bold! The enemy spies who emerged there dared to slander the imperial soldiers and shake the foundation of the empire!
“Everyone has it!”
"aim!
"shooting!"
After the gunfire, the whole world was quiet for several seconds, and then the cheers of "Long Live the Tang Dynasty" rang out again from the crowd!
Naturally, the new Tang Dynasty troops don't know what the drama will say in the future. Now they only know that there are not enough military rations, not enough ordnance, and not even enough toilet paper to use in the toilet.
If they didn't send a food requisition team to collect food, and if the Ming army didn't come to fight, they would starve to death themselves.
While the food collection team was working hard to supply food to the New Army of the Tang Dynasty outside, the Second Infantry Regiment finally arrived at Liping Mansion City.
On that day, Hao Bainian and Li Chunjing, as well as more than a dozen other mid-level and senior military officers, held a two-hour discussion on how to successfully capture Liping Fucheng.
To be honest, it was not that difficult to conquer Liping Mansion, because at this time, the Tang Dynasty New Army already had two main infantry regiments outside Liping Mansion City. Together with other auxiliary troops, the total strength had reached more than 4,000 people.
These more than 4,000 people almost surrounded the entire Lipingfu City. How many Ming troops were there in Lipingfu City?
After the probing attack of the First Infantry Regiment the day before yesterday, it was initially judged that there were about 3,000 Ming troops in the city, but most of them were young and strong men without military uniforms. Even the regular troops wearing military uniforms, many were old, young and disabled.
Weak, combat capability is quite limited.
To put it bluntly, even the First Infantry Regiment alone was fully capable of taking Liping Fucheng, but the reason why Hao Bainian did not launch a general offensive in advance was because he wanted to avoid large-scale casualties.
When the military strength advantage is not large enough, although Liping City can be captured, certain casualties will inevitably occur, especially in such a difficult task.
The New Army of the Tang Dynasty had few troops and was quite concerned about the casualties of soldiers. If there were too many casualties, it would be very detrimental to subsequent operations.