Chapter 556: Entering Jingzhou and copying the back road
All the way north from Guilin is Jingzhou, Huguang. Although this section of the road is difficult to walk, it will not block the Fourth Army for more than a month.
Even if the mountain road is difficult to walk, there is not much heavy equipment these days. At most, it is a few artillery pieces. No matter how difficult the mountain road is, if you send more people, the artillery can resist it.
What really hindered the progress of the Fourth Army was not the terrain, but the Ming Army!
The tens of thousands of Ming troops who entered Guilin from Huguang did not engage in direct confrontation with the Fourth Army. Instead, they attacked the Fourth Army's supply line in secret, causing Chen Keqiao quite a headache.
The thousands of men under him stopped and stopped along the way, and sometimes they even had to turn around and go back to pursue the Ming army. There was no way to march at full strength.
Fortunately, Li Xuan later sent him reinforcements. After the Sixth Infantry Regiment, the First Battalion of the Liuzhou Independent Regiment and the Sixth Garrison Brigade arrived in Wuzhou, he was finally able to lead the main force northward with sufficient troops in hand.
He left behind a regular battalion and a reserve battalion of the Sixth Infantry Regiment, and a garrison regiment of about 4,000 troops, and then headed north with the remaining main force of about 7,000 men.
As for the troops left behind, his request was very simple. Don't chase the tens of thousands of Ming troops who were scattered to attack the supply line. Instead, focus on guarding a few important cities, such as Guilin Fucheng and several key cities on the supply line, and then send troops to escort the supply troops.
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As for the Ming troops who attacked some small county towns, they just let them go. Anyway, it didn't matter if they lost a few small county towns. What's more, in many counties in Guilin Prefecture, the Tang Dynasty had not established a truly stable rule.
The garrison left in Guilin Prefecture is about 4,000 people, commanded by Colonel Zhou Yibao, the deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, and is stationed in Guilin Prefecture.
Although he has 4,000 men under his command, the task of maintaining such a long supply line and guarding several important cities in Guilin can be said to be quite arduous. After all, among the 4,000 men under his command, there is only one infantryman.
The battalion and a reserve battalion are regular troops, and the remaining three thousand people are the garrison. These garrison troops are just surrendered troops of the Ming army that have surrendered for less than a month. If there is a real fight, they cannot be relied on.
Therefore, being in charge of Guilin Prefecture, he on the one hand vigorously established and strengthened the local banditry camp in Guilin Prefecture, and also requested the Privy Council to send some more troops to Guilin for coordinated operations to encircle and suppress the nearly ten thousand Ming army active in Guilin Prefecture.
Unless these tens of thousands of Ming troops are killed, they will always threaten the supply line of the main force of the Fourth Army. From Wuzhou to Jingzhou, Huguang, this supply line is quite long, and it takes a long time to walk.
On land, it is impossible for the Fourth Army's troops to send heavy troops to protect the transportation troops at all times.
After all, if less troops are sent, for example, only dozens or hundreds of people are sent, it is very likely that the Ming army will directly swallow them up. But if heavy troops are sent, will important strongholds such as Guilin Fucheng, Yongfu, and Yining still be defended?
After accepting Zhou Yibao's request for help, Li Xuan did not think about it for long and quickly approved the plan. However, the reinforcements he planned to send were not regular troops or garrison troops, but armed forces independent of the army: catching thieves.
camp.
There is no way. Now the Tang Dynasty needs troops in almost every direction. People everywhere say that the troops are insufficient. Not to mention the regular army cannot be mobilized, even the garrison brigade Li Xuan cannot be mobilized.
This of course does not mean that Li Xuan does not have any troops on hand, but that they cannot be used easily.
In addition to the troops under the four armies currently fighting abroad, Li Xuan currently has the Guards, the Third Garrison Brigade, and the Liuzhou Independent Regiment on hand. As for the Fifth Infantry Brigade, this has not yet been formed and will not be formed for the time being.
Calculate.
Of the two newly established garrison brigades, the sixth garrison brigade has been dispatched to the Fourth Army, and the seventh garrison brigade has also been included under the jurisdiction of the First Army according to the original plan, and was dispatched in early April.
In the central and western regions of Guangdong, this group is in the Gaozhou and Leizhou areas, and is preparing to join forces with a reserve battalion under the First Infantry Brigade. It is now collecting ships everywhere to prepare to cross the Qiongzhou Strait and land in Qiongzhou Prefecture.
Of course, the Ming army is not stupid. The Guangdong navy is already well prepared in the Qiongzhou Strait. Whether it can successfully cross the sea is still a question mark.
The reason why there is a question mark is because the Qiongzhou Strait is not wide. If you are lucky, you can sneak across the sea to the shore in a small sampan, but if you are unlucky and happen to be caught by the Ming Navy, then don't say
If the login is successful, I'm afraid not many people will survive.
No matter whether they can attack Qiongzhou Prefecture or not, the coastal areas as large as Leizhou Prefecture, Gaozhou Prefecture and Lianzhou Prefecture require troops to be garrisoned, and because the Ming army can use the navy to land everywhere, the number of troops cannot be too small.
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The Sixth Guards Brigade and the Seventh Guards Brigade have gone their separate ways. Now Li Xuan only has two battalions of the Guards and the Liuzhou Independent Regiment left on hand, and the Third Guards Brigade can be mobilized.
The Third Garrison Brigade also has a planned battle plan, which is to cooperate with the First Army to attack Guangzhou. It is currently undergoing final training and will go south to Guangzhou soon.
The Guards are Li Xuan's life-saving troops. Unless he personally conquers or the enemy reaches Zhaoqing Mansion, otherwise, the Guards will never be used easily. Even if the entire Guizhou is lost, this Guards will not
Will be used easily.
The Liuzhou Independent Regiment originally had three battalions. One battalion has been strengthened and given to the Fourth Army. Now there are only two battalions left. And if nothing unexpected happens, one battalion will have to be transferred to Guangzhou in the future to shoulder the important task of attacking Guangzhou City.
, As a result, he only had one battalion left on hand, which could be regarded as a reserve force with less than 500 people.
Under such circumstances, how could he send this battalion to the Fourth Army?
But it was no good in Guilin to let the Ming army continue to cause trouble like this. There was no other way, so Li Xuan could only make up his mind to capture the bandit camp.
Is the combat effectiveness of the pirate camp strong? It is definitely not strong. If they really fight, with the same number of people, they probably cannot defeat the tax inspection team. They will definitely not be able to defeat the regular guard troops of the Ming army, but the pirate camp
After all, Mian still holds a weapon and has undergone certain training. The army is still slightly stronger than the young and strong civilians.
Moreover, in some areas that have been controlled for a long time, relatively large threats have been basically eliminated, and these pirate camps do not have too much task pressure.
Some time ago, Li Xuan also reduced the size of the anti-theft camp and the tax inspection team. However, even if it was downsized, the scale of the anti-theft camp was still relatively large. After all, every county has a small number of anti-theft camps.
There may be dozens of people, or as many as one or two hundred people.
Finally, he issued a transfer order to allocate capture and robbery camps from Liuzhou, Wuzhou, Xunzhou and other Guangxi prefectures, especially the prefectures whose city gates have been at peace for a long time. Not all of them, but only two or three hundred people from each prefecture.
people, and finally raised a bandit camp of about 1,500 people, preparing for them to go north to Guilin to reinforce Zhou Yibao's battle.
When Zhou Yibao heard that his reinforcements turned out to be just a group of bandit campers, he was naturally extremely disappointed, but there was nothing he could do about it. It was better to have reinforcements than no reinforcements. Let the bandit camp capture the bandit camp!
In order to quickly reinforce Guilin, these pirate battalions came on transport ships from the Logistics Department and the Navy. The first batch of nearly 500 pirate battalion troops composed of Xunzhou Prefecture and Wuzhou Prefecture arrived quickly.
Guilin Prefecture, the name given by the Privy Council to these five hundred people is the No. 1 Pirate Capturing Camp in Guangxi, to distinguish it from the Pirate Capturing Camps in various places, because the Pirate Capturing Camps in various places usually have the name of a place and then add a Pirate Capturing Camp, such as the Zhengtai County Capturing Camp.
Stealing camps, arresting and stealing camps in Wuzhou Prefecture, etc.
The subsequent force composed of the two other state capital's anti-theft camps will also be called the Guangxi second anti-theft camp and the third Guangxi anti-theft camp.
After the first bandit-catching camp in Guangxi arrived, Zhou Yibao went to see their condition in person. After seeing it, he issued a strict order that the bandit-catching camp should not be used for field operations, and could only be used for escort tasks and could only be used to defend the city.
There was no other reason. Their strength was so bad that Zhou Yibao doubted that even if they were fighting to defend the city, they would not be able to defeat the Ming army's garrison soldiers.
However, although the strength of Guangxi's No. 1 Bandit Capture Camp is so bad that it makes Zhou Yibao want to go crazy, there are still 500 people. In the eyes of outsiders who do not understand their strength, these 500 people are fake Tang thieves.
military.
Now the Ming army has some fear of the puppet Tang rebels. Even if it is a small place defended by a few hundred people, it will gather thousands of people to fight.
If these five hundred people are released into Wuzhou City, hundreds of Fourth Army troops can be released directly. Squeeze a little here and a little there. Zhou Yibao thinks that after the other two pirate camps have arrived in Guilin,
He should be able to have a thousand-man mobile force on hand, with a regular infantry battalion as the core. At that time, it will be time to take the initiative.
While Zhou Yibao was racking his brains in the rear to ensure the supply line of the Fourth Army, Chen Keqiao also led his troops to officially enter Jingzhou, Huguang.
On the first day after entering Jingzhou, the forward troops under his command captured the city's infantry and headed straight for Suining. But where was the place after Suining? It was Jingzhou City, the base camp where the Huguang Ming Army entered Xingquan Prefecture.
The Huguang Ming Army fighting in Xingquan Prefecture passed through and entered Xingquan Prefecture from here. At the same time, this is also an important logistics base for the Huguang Ming Army, and there is no other.
The grain, grass and weapons transferred from Huguang and other places and even southern Zhili and other provinces traveled a long way to be collected and distributed in Jingzhou, and then transported from here to Xingquan Prefecture for the tens of thousands of Huguang Ming troops.
The strategic location of Jingzhou City is so important that Chen Keqiao could naturally see it at a glance, so after he led his troops into Huguang, he did not go there and just went straight towards Jingzhou City!
The local Ming army quickly drove the puppet Tang rebels into Jingzhou, and reported the news to the rear that the troops were directed at the city of Jingzhou. It didn't take long for Zhang Yue to know the news.
As a military governor of the four provinces, Zhang Yue immediately darkened his face when he heard the news!