Li Xuan was very clear about the difficulties faced by heading north to Huguang. This was why Li Xuan resolutely suppressed his troops to continue attacking northward in the previous months, and instead allowed them to rest and reorganize.
If we had continued to launch attacks in the past few months, we would have been able to capture cities and seize territory and kill many Ming troops. However, the troops heading north were already at the end of their strength, and many of them were understaffed and lacked artillery and muskets. This could
A temporary victory is certain, but it is easy for accidents to occur after the offensive power is exhausted.
What if after the troops heading north are exhausted, tens of thousands of Ming troops appear and come to kill them?
Don't think that this kind of thing is impossible. In fact, this kind of thing is very possible. The Ming army is not a fool. After suffering so many defeats, no matter how stupid the Ming army general is, he can still fight against the puppet Tang thief army.
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Nowadays, the Ming army in Huguang and even in Fujian and Jiangxi have learned to be smart. They will never fight with the puppet Tang rebels in the wild unless it is absolutely necessary. Even if they want to fight, they will at most concentrate their superior forces to form an ambush.
Just like the ambush of the Second Army headquarters outside Xingquanfu City, that battle was one of the few, and could even be said to be the only victory, among the many field battles between the Ming Army and the Tang Army.
Even the original Ming army suffered more casualties than the Tang army, but from a strategic and tactical perspective, the Ming army at that time was considered a victory.
In addition to concentrating superior forces to lay ambushes, what the Ming generals like most now is to defend the city and wait for the puppet Tang rebels to take the initiative to attack. They can use the fortified city to offset the firearms advantage of the puppet Tang rebels, and at the same time buy time for the rear.
Because even with the combat power of the Tang army, it was not an easy task to conquer a city that was heavily defended by the Ming army.
Either it will cost a lot of casualties, or it will take a lot of time.
And these are what the Ming army is happy to see.
Based on the above difficulties, Li Xuancai suspended the continuous offensive on the Huguang front, and instead allowed the troops to rest and recuperate, and equipped the troops with more firearms, especially artillery for sieges.
After several months of hard work, the Tang Dynasty has initially completed the reorganization of six infantry divisions, five temporary regiments, and two mixed regiments. From infantry to artillery to heavy equipment, all are fully staffed.
Even because new recruits are constantly training and replenishing the troops, Li Xuan even set up three supplementary brigades. The biggest task of these supplementary brigades is to continue to train the recruits who have just come out of the recruit camp, so as to provide the main force on the front line at any time.
To provide additional troops, their establishment does not belong to the main divisions, but directly belongs to the Privy Council for training and command.
Because recruits must be supplemented for frontline troops at any time, the deployments are relatively close. The first supplementary brigade is deployed in Shaozhou Prefecture, Guangdong, the second supplementary brigade is deployed in Liping Prefecture, Guizhou, and the third supplementary brigade is deployed in Liuzhou Prefecture, Guangxi.
The soldiers in this supplementary brigade are all recruits who have just completed recruit training, and apart from the officers and non-commissioned officers who serve as instructors, there are no other backbone veterans. To a certain extent, this is an advanced version.
boot camp.
This kind of supplementary brigade does not undertake main combat tasks on weekdays. At most, it is stationed in the rear, covering supply lines, suppressing bandits, etc. Unless the frontline army is defeated miserably, otherwise they will not go to the battlefield.
Most of their equipment is second-line equipment. Although it is said that they have swords, spears, bows and arrows, and even muskets and artillery, they are all second-line equipment. Most of the artillery is bowl-mouth cannon, general cannon, and muskets captured from the Ming army. They are all part of the first-line troops.
The used old muskets and armor are in poor condition, and most of the swords and spears are also of poor quality.
The only thing worth mentioning is that although this kind of supplementary brigade is called a brigade, it actually has more people than an infantry brigade, but it has a complete range of arms. It is simply a scaled-down version of an infantry division, or a mixed brigade.
Specifically, it has two supplementary regiments, a baggage regiment, an artillery battalion, a cavalry battalion and various auxiliary troops. If it is full, the number will probably reach nearly 10,000.
But not only the soldiers are all new recruits, but even the grassroots officers are mostly rookie officers who have just graduated from the martial arts school.
This kind of supplementary brigade is, in fact, to a certain extent, an alternative choice made by Li Xuan because today's new recruits have too little training time, but the troops are tight and the time is even tighter.
Currently, the recruits in the new barracks only have one month of basic training, and this time is actually not enough for a soldier to complete all the training. Therefore, after the existing divisions and regiments were reorganized, Li Xuan began to improve the soldiers' ability.
It's training time.
It is not advisable to directly increase the training time in the recruit camp, because the Tang Dynasty did not have enough time for the recruits to train for three months before going to the battlefield, especially when the large-scale northward campaign to Huguang was imminent.
So the Supplementary Brigade was created, which was half a new barracks and half a regular army establishment.
Beginning in October of the second year of Xuanping, the process of recruiting and training soldiers in the Tang Dynasty will change. Taking the Army as an example, the Army Department directly under the cabinet will first recruit qualified soldiers from within its jurisdiction, and have a number of soldiers.
There are mandatory requirements, such as being required to be 1.5 meters tall, lift 80 kilograms, march 15 miles an hour, be physically strong, free from any disease, and be at least 16 years old and no more than 25 years old.
In addition, there is another rigid condition, that is, those who join the army must be from farmers, rich families, urban residents, or even children from other industries. Their wealth must be clean and they must not be gangsters. They must also be local village chiefs and patrol chiefs.
Guarantee from any one of the three tax collectors.
The above-mentioned articles can basically wipe out half of a hundred young adults, and one of the guarantee regulations is enough to wipe out any non-farmer, because the city's business people can't find a village chief to support them.
They guarantee it because there is no administrative system like a village in the city, let alone a village chief.
With such strict recruiting conditions, in fact, after more than a year of recruitment, the three provinces of Guangxi, eastern Guangdong, southeastern Guizhou, and central China have basically been exhausted of qualified soldiers.
However, the Tang Dynasty is still continuing to expand, so there will always be new recruits.
After these recruits are successfully selected, they will be picked up by civilian officers of the Army Department, and then organized into platoons, teams, battalions, etc. based on the administrative establishment of towns and counties, and then handed over to the Privy Council Training Department.
The Training Department will send these selected recruits to recruit camps in various places. Currently, there are three recruit camps in Guangdong, three in Guangxi, and two in Guizhou.
In the recruit camp, they will first receive nutritional supplements, physical training, queue training, and basic combat skills training. They will also receive basic cultural courses, mainly learning Ming Dynasty Mandarin, as well as some simple common words and arithmetic.
After completing one month of basic training, according to personal wishes, talents, and learning abilities, they will be divided into detailed arms, such as musketeers, spearmen, sword and shield soldiers, archers, baggage soldiers, engineers, artillery, cavalry, etc.
After that, they will be sent to the local supplementary brigade to continue training. In the supplementary brigade, they can conduct live-fire training, imitate the combat of the regular army, and even occasionally have actual combat tasks: suppressing bandits, suppressing rebellions, escorting transport convoys, etc.
The training time in the supplementary brigade varies. Infantry, baggage troops, and engineers have the shortest time. After completing two months of training in the supplementary brigade, they can wait to be assigned to the main forces.
Ordinary artillery is a technical branch, so the learning time will be extended to three months.
As for cavalry and archers, this is not possible, because these two arms have too high requirements for personal ability. It will not take a few months to train a cavalry or archer, so the training time of these two arms is not long.
It was only three months, but in reality, if the cavalry and archers on the front line had not suffered massive casualties and were in urgent need of supplements, this training period would have been extended by two months.
After all, the cavalry generals on the front line did not want to have only a novice cavalryman under their command who had just learned how to ride a horse and could not even charge with a large force.
If the supplementary brigades are also included, then the training of new recruits of the Tang Army is relatively formal. The training time for non-technical arms is three months, the training time for ordinary technical arms is four months, and the training time for high-tech arms is six months.
Such a long training time can only be achieved when the situation is relatively stable and there are no large-scale threats from the outside.
Li Xuan would not have done this if he had not completed the reorganization tasks of six divisions and several temporary regiments and mixed regiments.
The only thing Li Xuan thought about was that if the losses of the follow-up frontline troops were not large, the training time of the supplementary brigade could be extended. By then, the training would last for a year and a half, and some officers and non-commissioned officers would be transferred from the old troops to serve as the backbone.
Who dares to say that these supplementary brigades cannot go directly to the battlefield?
Even if the training has not been completed, they can still perform some simple tasks in the rear. When an emergency situation arises, they can be directly recruited to fight. This is much better than training in the recruit camp for several months.
This can be regarded as an alternative method of military expansion devised by Li Xuan.
Now there are three unsatisfied supplementary brigades stationed in the rear, which can largely free up the main force to focus on frontline operations. For example, after the first supplementary brigade is stationed in Shaozhou Prefecture, the First Infantry Division, the king's division of the Tang Dynasty, is absolutely
The main force can be freed immediately, and then launch a northward battle.