Regarding the Battle of Guangzhou, everyone in the Tang Dynasty, including Li Xuan himself, was extremely concerned about it, and at the same time they were quite cautious. They were afraid that a defeat under the walls of Guangzhou would shake the current good situation of the Tang Dynasty.
There are many reasons why we are worried about losing the war in Guangzhou. First of all, Guangzhou is different from many inland cities. Although Guangzhou is also a traditional city, its commerce and trade are extremely developed and the water network is dense. The city is built on
The north bank of the Pearl River is the Baiyun Mountain, and the western area is also the Pearl River and its tributaries. Only in the east is there a relatively open area.
At the same time, the city also borrowed water from the Pearl River to build a complete moat system.
In such a place with a dense water network, it is actually more troublesome for an army like the King's Division of the Tang Dynasty, which has an army as its core, especially a field army, to attack, and many of its advantages cannot be brought into play.
However, the Ming army had a strong navy. In the past few months, the Ming army's navy had been firmly controlling the sea in the Pearl River Basin. Although the Tang navy had tried to launch water wars, it could only be in some small-scale battles.
Taking advantage of the battle, once the main force of the Ming Navy was dispatched, the Tang Navy would have to avoid the battle.
Because the Ming Navy did not compete with naval guns at all, well, although the Ming Navy had more naval guns than the Tang Navy!
What the Ming navy did was to swarm forward, engage in hand-to-hand combat, and use fire ships to attack, which made the entire Tang navy quite helpless!
There are not enough ships, not enough naval guns, and not enough sailors. Even with the performance advantages of naval guns, we can't defeat it. In the end, we can only rely on land-based forts to defend.
Long before Zhaoqing was established as the capital, the Tang Dynasty had already decided to build a fort in the dangerous Antelope Gorge in the east of Zhaoqing City to protect the important areas of the capital.
Antelope Gorge is one of the small Three Gorges of the Xijiang River. The current is rapid and the water is whirlpooled. This is because the Xijiang River in the urban area of Zhaoqing is a thousand meters wide. However, after reaching the Antelope Gorge, it is only two to three hundred meters, and its water depth is average.
Forty to fifty meters, and the deepest point can even reach seventy or eighty meters.
This kind of terrain is almost a natural waterway pass!
Especially after the Tang Dynasty established its capital in Zhaoqing, in order to prevent enemy troops from moving north along the Xijiang River from the sea, building forts to guard the Xijiang River became a top priority.
After the capture of Zhaoqing, the construction of a fort here was put on the schedule, because there was no need to face threats on land at first, because there were no Ming troops in Zhaoqing or even nearby areas, and the Tang Army was firmly in control.
Therefore, when the ground threat is not great, the early stage of the project is mainly to install artillery and guard the river.
Therefore, the construction of the fort is relatively fast. The only troublesome thing is to provide the artillery needed for the fort. In this regard, the navy and the army worked together to actively retire some of the seven-pound heavy artillery equipment time, so as to equip some of the artillery to Antelope Gorge.
On the fort.
Up to now, this fort has deployed three 1,200-pound heavy artillery (nine-pounders). In addition, the several 500-pound artillery pieces that have always belonged to the artillery force of the Datang Army have also been placed in the fort, thus realizing the field artillery battalion.
The establishment of all equipment with 800 kilograms and 1,200 kilograms of heavy artillery simplifies the logistics pressure.
The artillery deployed in Antelope Gorge has enough range to completely cover the entire river, and its seven-pound heavy artillery can even hit the other side of the river.
In order to protect these artillery and prevent the enemy from attacking the fort from land, the Tang Dynasty stationed an entire reserve battalion and two garrison battalions here, plus a full battalion of artillery troops and
A few other auxiliary troops, the above-mentioned units were reorganized into the Antelope Gorge Independent Regiment directly under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council.
Relying on the Antelope Gorge fort, the Tang Navy repeatedly repelled the Ming Navy's attempts to move up the river!
However, although this can ensure the safety of the Xijiang River water surface in Zhaoqing area, the Tang Dynasty Navy is still unable to obtain control of the water surface of the Pearl River Basin. This also results in the inability to utilize these dense water networks for both logistics and operations.
You also need to avoid the dense water network to avoid being attacked by the Ming Navy.
Therefore, the attack on Guangzhou City was greatly restricted!
In addition to the complicated geographical situation of Guangzhou City itself, it is also related to the strong will of the Ming army in Guangzhou City to defend the city!
Wang Yue, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, collected almost all the troops he could fight and stored them in Guangzhou City. It was initially estimated that there were at least 20,000 Ming troops in the city, and Hao Bainian judged that most of them were regular troops.
Secondly, they also knew that the Ming army in Guangzhou had obtained a large number of muskets and artillery. These guns and artillery were imitated and outsourced. You have to ask them how they knew. The Ming army directly put these heavy artillery on the city.
Where is the head?
Those 12-pound naval guns were even bigger than the largest artillery pieces in the Imperial Army of the Tang Dynasty. With such large artillery pieces placed on top of the city, anyone who was not blind could see them.
It is not surprising that the Ming army was equipped with muskets, because in the past few times when they conducted fire reconnaissance and launched probing attacks, the Ming army on the city had already used a large number of muskets to fight back. However, Hao Bainian did not know how many muskets the Ming army had.
knew.
The troops and horses were strong, and there were a lot of artillery. More importantly, the Tang Dynasty's navy was not strong enough to completely block the material transportation channels of Guangzhou City. Whether it was food, weapons or even soldiers, the Ming army was able to transport it to Guangzhou City through the Pearl River.
This situation has never happened in many previous tough battles. It can be said that the Tang Dynasty King's Division has fought so many tough battles, but this time in Guangzhou, the Ming army had the greatest advantage.
What's more, in fact, the Ming army's will to defend the city is relatively firm. Guiyang has been defended by seven or eight thousand remnant soldiers from last year to now. The entire central Guizhou has fallen into the hands of Tang thieves, except for the Ming army in Guiyang.
The army can proudly say: Guiyang is still holding on.
Many other cities were basically defended, such as Liuzhou and Wuzhou. These two places were defended by the Ming army for a long time, and the Tang Dynasty paid a heavy price to conquer them.
But even if the Battle of Guangzhou is not easy to fight, the Imperial Army of the Tang Dynasty still has to fight it, because only after the city of Guangzhou is captured can the gate of Xijiang be completely closed to prevent the superior Ming navy from attacking Guangdong from Xijiang.
At the same time, after capturing Guangzhou, the Tang Dynasty King's Division was able to free up its main force, the First Army, for subsequent expansion operations.
Because of the existence of Guangzhou, the main force of the First Army was unable to move, and the Third Guard Brigade was also unable to move. This situation directly resulted in the Tang Dynasty King's Division being unable to capture the northern and western areas of Guangdong. It was not that Li Xuan did not want to capture it.
These places really cannot mobilize enough troops, and it is already very rare to be able to barely maintain the strategic initiative against Shaozhou Prefecture.
Therefore, from the perspective of the overall military strategy, Guangzhou must be captured, and it cannot be delayed for too long!
In addition, in terms of political and economic impacts, the sooner we capture Guangzhou, the better. These days, Guangzhou is the only major commercial port in the south, and foreign sea trade is very prosperous. If we capture Guangzhou, we can completely open up the relationship between the Tang Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty.
Maritime trade with the outside world not only obtains a large amount of valuable strategic materials, but also provides abundant tariff revenue.
Although the Tang Dynasty has taken over the western coastal areas of Guangdong, Hepu Port in Lianzhou Prefecture is also considered a relatively traditional foreign trade port, but its commercial influence and port throughput are incomparable to that of Guangzhou.
.
Today, Hepu Port in Lianzhou Prefecture is just an import channel for strategic materials for the Tang Dynasty and does not have the status of an industrial and commercial center.
Of course, even though Hepu Port is only a small port, it is still very important to the Tang Dynasty. Through this port, the Tang Dynasty can finally get direct contact with those maritime merchants and open the door to purchase saltpeter and sulfur.
, steel and other strategic materials.
Like Hepu Port, there are other small ports along the western coast of Guangdong. These small ports more or less provided some strategic materials to the Tang Dynasty.
Even a waterway like the Xijiang River that was double blocked by the Tang Dynasty Navy and the Ming Army Navy could not be completely blocked.
Those bold maritime traders ignored the warnings and obstructions of the Ming Navy and went directly up the river, transporting a large amount of supplies to Zhaoqing and Wuzhou, and then purchased a large amount of local specialties from Zhaoqing and Wuzhou before sailing along the river.
Next return to Guangzhou.
Even though the Tang and Ming armies fought to death, they still could not completely cut off the Xijiang waterway, forming a very special Xijiang trade system!
It is worth mentioning that at this time, the ships that could still ply the Xijiang River, except for a few ordinary shipowners who were bold and bold, actually had one or more dignitaries from the Ming Dynasty behind them for most of the shipowners.
Of course, in fact, these powerful people themselves know this, because these powerful people will not interfere in these vulgar affairs. They are all presided over by the children of the side branches and even the domestic slaves.
At least Wang Yue himself didn't know that the shipping company in which his family owned more than half of the shares was the largest shipping company on the Xijiang River. This shipping company directly shipped to Zhaoqing enough to last tens of thousands of troops for a month.
The required saltpeter and sulfur directly or indirectly created a tax revenue of at least 10,000 taels of silver for the Tang Dynasty's finances.
The owner of this shipyard in Wuzhou is also the guest of the Wuzhou tax official!
However, these small-scale trade and transportation are far from enough for the Tang Dynasty that has developed to its current scale. If it wants to obtain a real economic engine, Guangzhou must be captured.