So after arriving at Xunzhou Prefecture, the main army led by Li Xuan stopped to rest, and at the same time sent partial divisions south to control other places in Xunzhou Prefecture, such as Guixian and Hengzhou in the south of Xunzhou Prefecture.
In addition, a partial division should be sent north to assist the temporary first regiment in capturing Guilin Prefecture and the subsequent march eastward to Pingle Prefecture.
At the same time, the middle and senior officers of the Tang Dynasty Royal Division stayed with Li Xuan almost all day long, constantly discussing how to launch the Wuzhou Campaign and how to capture Wuzhou.
After all, Wuzhou is a tough guy. If you rush over and attack directly, you will most likely get a bloody blow. Many people think that this will be a protracted siege, at least Zeng Ziwen of the Operations Department and a group of combat staff.
After analyzing the situation in Wuzhou, they all agreed that if they directly launched a strong attack, the first army would be almost crippled by the time Wuzhou City was captured, so they very carefully proposed a siege strategy to Li Xuan.
In order to avoid a large number of casualties in the critical battle!
Although Li Xuan was still hesitant about this, he also knew the importance of the First Army, but it could not be compromised easily.
But besieging the city is not a good thing!
Because besieging the city will definitely take a lot of time. In this way, the Ming army will have more time to gather troops. For example, troops from Guangdong may continue to reinforce. In addition, Huguang, Jiangxi and even Fujian
All the Ming troops might come over.
After being held back by Wuzhou, the Tang Dynasty King's Division will most likely face more and more Ming troops, and the pressure will become greater and greater by then.
In addition, a very important point is that it is already the end of the first month. Although the weather is still relatively cold, the rain has obviously begun to increase. By February, the Guangdong and Guangxi regions will enter the real rainy season.
February is pretty good, but when we enter March and April and into summer, the rain will really fall non-stop.
Rain naturally has a great impact on war, whether it is an army in the era of cold weapons or an army in the era of hot weapons.
For cold weapon troops, the bowstrings of bows and arrows will be unable to use due to moisture, and the march of the troops will also become extremely difficult.
It is not a good season for the King of the Tang Dynasty who uses a large number of firearms. If it rains for half a month or even a month, the muskets of the King of the Tang Dynasty will turn into fire sticks, and even the artillery can no longer be used.
use.
And this will quickly reduce the combat effectiveness of the Tang Dynasty King!
Therefore, in the previous battle plan, the attack on Wuzhou was scheduled from January to February. After Wuzhou is captured, the large-scale offensive will be suspended because it will have entered the real rainy season at that time.
There may not even be a sunny day,
Therefore, unless the Ming army's defensive strength in Zhaoqing and various parts of Guangdong is not strong and they can be defeated by just sending small-scale troops, otherwise, the troops will not carry out large-scale military operations again.
The next round of large-scale military operations should be after May or even June, after entering midsummer.
However, Wei Yan withdrew all the Ming troops from Wuxuan and Xunzhou Prefecture, and all retreated to the shore of Wuzhou, so that the Ming troops on the Wuzhou side greatly increased to 50,000 or 60,000 people.
This will greatly increase the difficulty of fighting Wuzhou!
In order to avoid heavy casualties from a strong attack, the attack on Wuzhou must be postponed for a while, and we can take advantage of these few days to capture the surrounding areas first.
Of course, although the attack on Wuzhou City is postponed, this does not mean that the army will stay in Xunzhou City. In fact, the army led by Li Xuan only stayed in Xunzhou City for less than three days and separated into two small groups.
After diverting troops, they set off again, first taking over Pingnan County along the way, then officially entering Wuzhou Prefecture, and continued eastward along the Xun River.
Finally, they arrived all the way to Teng County. This Teng County was obviously abandoned by the Ming army, and there were no troops to defend it. After taking Teng County effortlessly, Li Xuan found that this Teng County was also completely empty.
After taking Teng County, Li Xuan ordered the First and Second Baggage Regiments to use this place as a transfer station to transfer supplies to the front line. In other words, this place was set up as a front-line material supply battle.
Because 25 kilometers from Teng County is Wuzhou, and the army can arrive in a short time. The logistics department's transportation team without any self-protection force is no longer suitable to continue to move forward. Instead, it needs the armed logistics force of the army.
, that is, the two baggage groups are responsible for the transportation of the last section of materials.
As for Li Xuan, he continued to lead his army eastwards!
When Li Xuan led his army to continue marching eastward, pointing towards Wuzhou City, the troops of the Tang Dynasty King's Division in other directions also continued to launch offensives!
For example, after the Third Army marched westward, the journey was extremely smooth. Basically, it was able to conquer every place it went. It never fought any decent battles and basically wiped out the few local Ming soldiers easily.
The army defends the army.
This is because there are no Ming troops in western Guangxi, and only some of them were annihilated and captured when the guests arrived. The remaining state capitals naturally relied on a small number of regular troops and some young men to defend the city. How could this be blocked?
As for the Third Army, which has more than 8,000 people living there.
Therefore, the Third Army's westward march is almost an armed march, which is simpler than the Second Army's military operations in Guizhou. After all, there is Guiyang in Guizhou!
Now the Second Army is also stationed under Guiyang City, but it probably won’t be able to capture it for a while!
The westward march is going smoothly, and it is expected that it will not take long to capture many prefectures and counties, and even fight all the way to Lianzhou Prefecture.
The operation in the north was relatively smooth. The temporary first regiment had already controlled many places in Guilin Prefecture, leaving only the city of Guilin Prefecture. They then waited for a main infantry force sent by the First Army.
After reinforcements from the battalion and a garrison regiment, totaling about 3,400 people, they were already preparing to launch a general attack on Guilin Fucheng.
Generally speaking, except for Wuzhou in the east, which is not easy to crack, other places in Guangxi are facing the attack of the Tang Dynasty king's army. There is basically no resistance. It may be too much to say that it is a rumor, but it is said that
There is not much problem with armed march.
However, the operations in other directions went smoothly, but they failed to make Li Xuan and many of the middle and senior generals of the First Army happy.
Because when they finally arrived at Wuzhou City, they couldn't help but laugh when they looked at Wuzhou City, which was extremely tall and had various fortifications built like hedgehogs!
Seeing the dense and perfect defenses of Wuzhou City, Li Xuan became a little depressed. Are these Ming soldiers all craftsmen? How did they turn Wuzhou City into this horrible state in just a few months?
Looking from a distance, you can see that the Ming army has used the pontoon as the core and arranged iron chains to directly block the Xijiang River. And through the telescope, you can vaguely see the cannons placed on the side of the city wall facing the river.
Yes, it is not the small-caliber bowl-mouth cannon that is common in the Ming army, but a cannon. Preliminary judgment is that it weighs at least 500 kilograms.
Then there are many defenses up and down the entire city wall of Wuzhou City that are obviously temporary arrangements!
For example, there are sharp bamboo pieces inserted under the city wall, and there are obvious gun emplacements on the city wall. In front of these gun emplacements, you can see obvious accumulation of sandbags. Needless to say, this must have been learned from the king of the Tang Dynasty, because the Tang Dynasty
Master Wang liked to pile sandbags in front of the artillery position as a bunker.
At first glance, the Ming army standing on the top of the city was not young and strong, but a regular army, maybe even a relatively elite regular army, because many of them were wearing armor.
Where did the Ming army in Wuzhou City get so many artillery pieces, and a lot of heavy artillery? Could it be that they moved all the naval guns from the Guangdong Navy to the top of the city?
Looking at the heavily guarded Wuzhou City, not only Li Xuan frowned, but a group of middle and senior officers from the Tang Dynasty Royal Division around him also frowned.
Just by looking at these city fortifications, you can tell that Wuzhou City is not easy to fight!
"Come down and let the army build the camp!" Li Xuan has completely given up on using a quick battle to defeat Wuzhou City. Since he can't win a quick battle, he naturally has to make other preparations.
, at least this camp must be built to prevent the Ming army from coming out of the city to attack.
According to rumors, Wang Yue, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, claimed that there were 100,000 troops in Wuzhou City. Li Xuan would definitely not believe this number, even if it was doubled.
Although intelligence reports that there may be 60,000 to 70,000 defenders in the city, there are not that many regular Ming troops in the entire Guangdong and Guangxi regions!
There must be many young men and civilian men here who were temporarily recruited. These Ming army generals always like to include young men and civilian men in their total military strength.
He estimated that the real regular army in the city was only 50,000 at most!
In fact, Li Xuan still thought too much about the garrison in Wuzhou City. In fact, the total military strength in Wuzhou City is just over 50,000, of which about 20,000 are young men recruited temporarily. These young men
Although they also distributed weapons, the weapons in their hands were only simple spears, swords and the like, and their combat effectiveness was only slightly stronger than that of the refugees.
In other words, Wang Yue's regular army only numbered more than 30,000 people!
The combined strength of 30,000 regular troops and 20,000 young men is actually similar to the army assembled by Guizhou Governor Zhu Zhihai. The only difference is that Zhu Zhihai's army was divided into the North Road and the West Road, and Wang Yue's army
The fifty thousand people below huddled together in Wuzhou City!
Of the 30,000 regular troops under Wang Yue, about 15,000 were brought back by Wei Yan from Wuxuan, Xunzhou Prefecture and other places. The remaining several thousand were originally from the garrison in Wuzhou, and the remaining 10,000 were
Even the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, Wang Yue, was transferred from Guangdong, led by Guangdong Deputy General Shen Xiyi.
Among the 10,000 Guangdong guest soldiers under Shen Xiyi's command, 3,000 were specially recruited from the coastal areas of Guangzhou. Their commander was Yu Dayou, the commander of the Guangdong capital!