The role of the supplementary brigade is becoming more and more important in the Tang Army system. It not only trains new recruits, but also suppresses local areas and maintains rear supply lines.
To sum it up, this is actually a supplement to the previous reduction of garrison troops and capture of pirate camps. After all, each main force now has its own combat mission, and the battle line is gradually shifting to the north. It is impossible to say that something happens in the rear.
Deploying frontline troops to come back for suppression makes it even more impossible to leave the main force, which has cost a lot of money to build, to stay in the rear.
However, this, coupled with the reorganization of mixed regiments and main divisions, has also allowed the size of the Tang Army to continue to increase. The current total strength has reached 130,000. If the entire establishment is completed by the end of the year, it will
It will be expanded to 150,000 people.
And such a large-scale professional army put great financial pressure on the Tang Dynasty!
The people from the Taxation Department made excuses that were not worth mentioning, saying that the current military expenditure was too heavy and that the current Tang Dynasty's finances were simply unable to support it.
Of course, people from the tax department still dare not say that they will stop the expansion of the army. Their idea is that they hope that the military can reduce some costs. For example, can the salaries of soldiers be lowered, especially those who occupy the salary?
Damn it, an ordinary soldier can eat rice every day and eat meat every few days. Small landowners in the private sector are not so extravagant!
If this continues, this year's fiscal deficit will reach more than 5 million taels, which is higher than the 4 million taels expected at the beginning of the year!
But Li Xuan has always ignored the tax department’s advice!
And he also knows that although the financial problem is very tight and it is not feasible to maintain it for such a long time, it is not completely bankrupt yet!
Although the fiscal revenue is not enough, the Tang Dynasty's income does not only rely on taxes. The confiscation of homes is also a major source of the Tang Dynasty's finances. Last year, the pseudo-Mingjing Palace was raided, but it contributed hundreds of millions to the Tang Dynasty.
There are ten thousand taels of silver.
Many other random inspections also contributed a lot of money to the Tang Dynasty!
Moreover, the Datang Dynasty currently has several other additional financial resources. The first is the Datang Salt Service Company, whose annual profit is at least one million taels of silver!
The Tang Dynasty implemented a government-operated salt system. Whether it was production, transportation or sales, it could only be carried out by the Datang Salt Company. In addition to the salt tax directly levied by the tax department, the salt company's net income
Profits can also be used.
Then, many factories under the Ministry of Industry are also continuously generating profits. Those factories targeting the private sector, such as textile factories, steel factories, etc., are all big profits.
Even if it is an arsenal, they take so much money from military expenditures every year. In addition to conducting research and development, expanding scale and other reproduction, the remaining profits need to be turned over.
The many factories of the Ministry of Industry are actually quite profitable when put together, earning over one million taels of silver every year.
Other income, plus the extravagant wealth gained from confiscating houses, could keep the Tang Dynasty running. Otherwise, the Tang Dynasty would have gone bankrupt long ago with less than 10 million taels of tax revenue alone.
But even so, other people in the tax department and even the cabinet are worried. The income from the factory and the salt industry are fine. They are considered fixed incomes, but the income from house confiscation is not stable.
Moreover, most of the proceeds from house confiscation came from the newly occupied areas!
And this means that once the frontline army fails to expand its territory, the income in this area will be greatly reduced. This is an income of millions of taels. Once it is gone, I am afraid that even the soldiers' salaries will not be paid.
Go down.
In response to the concerns of the cabinet officials headed by the Ministry of Taxation, Li Xuan was helpless. What could he do? He was also helpless!
Although fighting requires a lot of effort, if we don’t fight, the Tang Dynasty will be doomed!
No matter how difficult it is, the army must be maintained and the war must continue.
What Li Xuan now hopes is that in this year's autumn and winter offensive, the army can open up the situation, capture Nanchang, and finally occupy the entire Jiangxi. In this case, not only the strategic situation will be greatly eased, but the financial pressure can also be alleviated.
After capturing Nanchang, the Army of the Tang Dynasty can go wherever they want. If they advance westward, they can besiege the entire southern Huguang army of more than 200,000 in Hengyang and Changsha. If they advance eastward, they can enter South Zhili and seize it.
Jinling.
Now is the most important period before the autumn and winter offensive. He does not want financial pressure to affect the performance of the frontline troops, so the tax department and other cabinet officials will not publish the information, and at the same time, he will try his best to supply the frontline troops with supplies.
.
Even in order to concentrate resources, Li Xuan significantly reduced the investment in military resources in Guizhou and Guangxi. Even Huguang and Guangdong themselves only maintained the minimum supply, and then invested almost all strategic resources in Jiangxi.
Tens of thousands of civilians travel between northern Guangdong and southern Jiangxi every day, transporting large amounts of materials to the front line by river boats, or simply by using wheelbarrows or even carrying them on their shoulders!
After these materials arrive at Ganzhou, the most important material transfer station, they will be escorted by the Navy's Ganjiang Squadron. At the same time, various important strongholds along the way, especially Wanan, are stationed with the Fifth Mixed Regiment and supply ships.
The team passed through the Gan River and went all the way to Taihe County, which is only a few dozen miles outside Luling City, Ji'an Prefecture. This is also the headquarters of the Second Army of the Tang Army and the most important frontline base.
At this time, Taihe County has completely turned into a large military camp, with more than 15,000 troops of the Tang Dynasty King's Division stationed in it, and thousands more troops stationed in nearby areas.
The nearly 10,000 ordinary people in the city were all used by the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty to build various fortifications and create various strategic materials.
After all, many things cannot all be transported from the rear. Some things can be solved locally at the front line, such as food, military uniforms, cold weapons, arrows, etc.
Even for ammunition and even guns, we will try our best to stand on the front line and recruit craftsmen to build them on the spot.
From Guangdong to Taihe, this is a very long supply line. In order to supply the Second Army for operations, the Logistics Department mobilized more than 50,000 civilians. And this is on the premise that there are waterways available for use in some sections of the road. If it is all
Taking the land route would require at least double or more civilian labor.
This is also the reason why the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty placed the autumn and winter offensive in mid-September, after the frost, because before and after the frost, it is the autumn harvest season in Guangdong and Guangxi. During this autumn harvest period, everything has to give way to the autumn harvest.
Those peasants need to go home to collect food!
After the autumn harvest, the people in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, and even in southern Jiangxi, would be free, and the Tang Dynasty could recruit people on a large scale to transport supplies.
Another advantage of this is that if you attack after the autumn harvest, you can get the autumn taxes collected by the local government. When you raid the local rebel households, you can also confiscate a large amount of grain, thereby alleviating the huge demand for military grain.
In late August, all units of the Second Army were already ready!
All units of the Second Army are fully staffed and have sufficient ammunition, especially artillery shells that are expected to consume a relatively large amount of money. They have prepared enough artillery and artillery bases to fight three large-scale battles.
On the eighth day of September, the angel of the Hanlin Academy arrived in Taihe, carrying the secret edict. He read out the secret edict to Li Chunjing and several other senior generals of the Second Army, ordered the Second Army to launch an authorized attack in mid-September, and clearly stipulated that this time
The strategic goal of the campaign: capture Nanchang and enter Dongting Lake!
After Lieutenant General Li Chunjing received the imperial edict on behalf of the generals, he immediately held a strategic meeting of the Second Army, began to deploy the tasks of each unit in detail, and scheduled a general offensive on September 14th!
When the time for the general attack was determined, in order to avoid being noticed by the Ming army and also to confuse the Ming army, Li Chunjing did not immediately move the army northward, but ordered the fourth mixed regiment to march northwest.
What is the northwest direction?
It’s Fuzhou Prefecture!
As soon as the Second Army moved, the Ming army in Luling City received relevant intelligence and panicked!
Today's Ji'an Prefecture is the forefront of the confrontation between the two sides. The Tang Dynasty King's Division deployed tens of thousands of main troops here, and the Ming Army was not to be outdone and directly deployed more than 50,000 troops in Ji'an Prefecture City-Luling City.
, and at the same time, nearly 10,000 troops were deployed in Jishui in the rear!
Moreover, the strength of these 60,000 Ming troops cannot be underestimated. Among them are 5,000 governors and 3,000 border troops.
There are many supervisors and border troops under Zhang Yue. Over the past year or so, Zhang Yue has trained nearly 40,000 supervisors, and the imperial court has sent an additional 20,000 frontier troops to him.
However, the situation in Huguang was more tense before, so most of these troops were deployed in the Huguang area, operating Hengyang and Changsha like iron barrels. In the Jiangxi direction, the Ming army had relatively fewer troops. Now in that direction
The Ming army had 10,000 supervisors, 6,000 frontier troops, and a mess of guard soldiers. There were more than 100,000 young men and women recruited temporarily. As for the specific number of hundreds of thousands, well, it was still the same as before. Zhang Yue himself did not
Know how many there are.
Not to mention those guard soldiers and young men, as the main force, the supervisors and border troops, there were fully half of them in Ji'an, which shows that the Ming army attached great importance to Ji'an.
It’s impossible not to take this seriously. Once Ji’an is lost, the next step is not only for the puppet Tang thief army to go north to Nanchang, but also to bypass Nanchang and Dongting Lake. After all, no one stipulates the direction of the puppet Tang thief army’s attack.
They must follow the Gan River north to enter Dongting Lake, and then enter the Yangtze River. They can completely break away from the Gan River, and then march directly northeastward into South Zhili.
Of course, they still don’t know that as the firearms level of the Tang Army has gradually improved, ammunition consumption has also increased significantly. If this supply line of several hundred kilometers is separated from inland water transportation, the logistics will be difficult enough to make the Datang Privy Council Logistics