According to Hao Bainian's order, the northward route of Sun Shuangxi's detachment is not from the direction of Chenzhou, but will bypass Chenzhou and go north like the main force of the previous 1st Infantry Division.
Because he wants to lead his troops back to the combat order of the First Infantry Division as soon as possible to prepare for the subsequent decisive battle!
He had already received intelligence from the military headquarters. The intelligence stated that the Ming troops in the direction of Changsha and Hengzhou were gathering, and were likely to continue moving south, and then besiege the main force of the First Infantry Division. Through this intelligence, combined with Hao Bainian's order,
It was not difficult for him to guess that a super war was about to break out.
As for the specifics, it depends on the final actions of the troops on both sides, but judging from the current actions of both sides, a war is almost inevitable.
Because the headquarters of the First Army could not judge how the Ming army would proceed in the future, so Hao Bainian could only mobilize troops as quickly as possible and make complete preparations to face the battle.
This is why we gave up the attack on Chenzhou first. There are at least tens of thousands of Ming troops in Chenzhou city now. If we include the young men they recruited temporarily, there are probably 14,000 to 5,000 men.
If the Tang army wanted to attack Chenzhou City, it would either have to pay heavy casualties to conquer it quickly, or waste a lot of time to slowly defeat it.
Both of these were unacceptable to Hao Bainian. Otherwise, he would not have come up with such a complicated plan just to attract the Ming army from the city.
Therefore, in Hao Bainian's strategic plan, Chenzhou City was kept as it was, and the temporary fourth regiment was allowed to continue to watch. As long as the Ming troops in the city did not take the initiative to rush out, the temporary fourth regiment would not take the initiative to attack.
The main force of the First Infantry Division, including Sun Shuangxi's troops, began to assemble. Of course, before the assembly, Hao Bainian was leading the troops to attack the Ming army in the direction of Guiyang Prefecture.
In the end, Hao Bainian's goal was to concentrate the power of two infantry divisions to face the Ming army heading south from Hengzhou and Changsha!
While Hao Bainian led the First Army troops to continue fighting against the Ming Army in Huguang, the First Supplementary Brigade also acted as the former robber camp and garrison brigade. They, the new recruits, were training while performing some unforgettable tasks.
Important tasks include garrisoning Shaozhou Prefecture and Yizhang City, and also maintaining the supply line for safe areas in the rear.
As for the crisis supply line near the front line, it has nothing to do with them. If it is not absolutely necessary, the superiors will not let them participate in the battle.
After all, the supplementary brigade is strictly speaking, it is just a training force. Its core purpose is to provide supplementary troops for the frontline troops and be responsible for specific combat tasks. That is not their mission.
In the previous series of battles between the 1st Infantry Division and the temporary 4th Regiment, although the losses were relatively small, they also suffered some losses of soldiers. However, the 1st Infantry Division always maintained its full strength. These
Where do the additional troops come from?
Naturally, they are all drawn from the First Supplementary Brigade!
The First Supplementary Brigade also continues to accept recruits who have completed basic training from several recruit camps in Guangdong, allowing the First Supplementary Brigade to always maintain a full training staff.
It is precisely because of the continuous supply of new recruits from the supplementary brigade that the 1st Infantry Division and the temporary 4th Regiment can always maintain full strength and continue to fight.
In particular, the soldiers from the supplementary brigade not only received complete basic training in the recruit camp, but also received training close to actual combat in the supplementary brigade. Their overall quality is much better than in the past when recruits were directly drawn from the recruit camp.
In view of the good effect of the supplementary brigade, Li Xuan wanted to set up a fourth supplementary brigade. Unfortunately, the Tang Dynasty's financial capacity was no longer able to establish another supplementary brigade while supporting the existing army size.
Already.
You must know that the soldiers of the navy and army of the Tang Dynasty, whether they are regular troops or supplementary brigades, are completely off-duty professional troops. With the current population base and financial capacity of the Tang Dynasty, they can support nearly 100,000 people.
The army is almost at its limit.
This is no longer a limitation on ordnance production, but a financial limitation.
Of course, if we do not pursue quality as before, but only pursue quantity, and significantly reduce the treatment of soldiers and the quality of equipment, then we can expand the army by many more people, but the combat effectiveness of such an army is completely inadequate, otherwise the Tang Dynasty would have
The garrison and pirate camps will no longer be eliminated.
At present, the core of the Tang Army's army building is relatively clear, that is, to maintain a certain scale and then improve the combat effectiveness of the existing troops as much as possible!
An army of one hundred thousand, if used well, is barely enough. Next, the main task of the Tang Army is to continuously improve their equipment level!
A very important point is to continue to increase the proportion of guns and artillery equipment. Currently, an infantry division is assigned only one artillery battalion, with a total of twenty-four artillery pieces, and the artillery in the artillery battalions of many infantry divisions is only three pounds of shotguns.
The situation was unable to meet the artillery needs of the Tang Army.
According to Li Xuan's own plan, within the next year, the artillery battalions directly under each infantry division of the Datang Army will be expanded into artillery regiments, and the number of artillery pieces in each regiment will need to be expanded to more than fifty. To this end, the Army's
There is even a detailed plan for the artillery regiment. In the future, the artillery regiment will have three artillery battalions, one field artillery battalion equipped with seven-pound artillery, and three teams, each team equipped with six seven-pound field guns, two
A field artillery battalion equipped with five-pound artillery also consists of three teams, each with six five-pound artillery pieces.
In this case, an artillery battalion will be reduced to eighteen artillery pieces, but an infantry division will have three such artillery battalions with fifty-four artillery pieces.
This will greatly increase the artillery power of the infantry division!
At the same time, the pike regiments under the infantry division also need to be gradually reorganized into musketeers. At the same time, more importantly, the number of musketeers must be greatly increased. The optimal ratio is that the ratio of musketeers to pikemen is one to one.
Calculated in this way, even if the infantry unit still has heavy armor, swords, shields, and archers, the number of musketeers in an infantry division needs to be increased to at least about 3,000 people, plus the baggage troops, throwing
With grenades and cavalry, the number of troops equipped with muskets in an entire infantry division will reach nearly 6,000!
And this standard will be three times higher than the current level of less than 2,000 people!
To put it simply, the core goal of the Army of the Tang Dynasty in building the army in the next year is to double the number of artillery and triple the level of muskets. This is not so easy to achieve.
Why would Li Xuan rather increase the number of guns than increase the number of troops? Because the money to recruit, train and support an ordinary soldier is definitely much more expensive than a musket.
It takes at least three taels of silver to raise a soldier for a month, and the price of a musket is only about three taels of silver!
The cost of raising a soldier for a year is enough for the Tang Army to purchase twelve muskets, and this does not include settlement and training expenses.
When the manpower cost exceeds the cost of firearms, Li Xuan will naturally tend to increase the number of firearms and equipment and postpone the expansion of troops!
So even though Li Xuan wanted to expand the army in his heart, after seeing the financial report from the Ministry of Taxation, especially after seeing the financial budget submitted by the Ministry of Taxation for the three years of Xuanping, Li Xuan decisively gave up on continuing to prepare for the establishment of a new army.
troops, even just the idea of a supplementary brigade!
While the war in Huguang continues to break out, various departments of the Tang Dynasty in Zhaoqing are already preparing for various tasks next year.
Especially the financial budget work is the top priority!
Because how much money you have can do as many things as you want!
On December 30, at the end of the second year of Xuanping, the Ministry of Taxation officially submitted the fiscal budget for the third year of Xuanping!
This fiscal budget of the Ministry of Taxation includes a revenue budget and an expenditure budget. However, the gap is quite large. In other words, the fiscal expenditures in the three years of Xuanping will far exceed the fiscal revenue.
According to estimates from the Ministry of Taxation, in the third year of Xuanping, the Tang Dynasty was based on the current main control areas, that is, Guizhou (excluding the northeastern region of Guizhou occupied by the Ming army), Guangxi, and Guangdong.
The Tang Dynasty provided central fiscal revenue of approximately nine million taels of silver.
Among them, Guangdong is the largest. Guangzhou alone will contribute nearly one million taels of tax revenue. This is because Guangzhou is an important sea trade town and an agricultural town in the Pearl River Delta. There are relatively large agricultural taxes, commercial taxes and even customs duties.
In terms of tax types, the bulk was still the land tax in the feudal dynasty, that is, the agricultural tax in the Tang Dynasty, which accounted for about 40% of all fiscal revenue in the Tang Dynasty.
However, even though agricultural taxes account for a relatively large proportion, it can still be seen that the Tang Dynasty's tax revenue did not entirely rely on agricultural taxes, because the second largest tax category under agricultural taxes, that is, commercial taxes, accounted for 10%
Twenty-six, which is only 14 percentage points less than the agricultural tax. The Ministry of Taxation predicts that in the three years of Xuanping, the tax revenue collected by the Tang Dynasty will reach more than two million taels of silver.
In addition, there is another major source of taxation, which is the salt tax, of which the salt tax is even more critical. Like all feudal dynasties, the Tang Dynasty also implemented an extremely strict salt monopoly system, and in order to ensure the income of the salt industry,
The Tang Dynasty established the Datang Salt Company under the Ministry of Commerce, and set up branches in various provinces and prefectures to be responsible for the production, transportation and even sales of salt.
Except for salt companies, all private salt production, salt transportation, and salt sales are criminal activities that are severely cracked down!
In other words, the Tang Dynasty competed with the people for profit, well, to be more precise, it competed with the salt merchants!
As for the salt merchants who refused to accept it, they immediately ransacked their homes and exterminated their families!