Although the Tang Dynasty is still expanding its army, with the population base of some prefectures and counties in southern Huguang and southern Jiangxi, the military-civilian ratio is slightly lower than before. However, the Tang Dynasty is still expanding its army. In the past six months, the Tang Dynasty
Large-scale conscription has also begun in southern Huguang and southern Jiangxi, so the final military-civilian ratio will remain relatively high.
After all, war is the most important thing for the Tang Dynasty now. If it can arm one million troops, it will definitely not arm only 990,000 troops!
It's a pity that although the population increased and taxes increased, it was still not feasible for the Tang Dynasty to expand its army on a large scale because there was no money!
Now the army's military expenditure alone exceeds 10 million every year. If the army expands again, it will exceed 15 million or more every minute. Therefore, Li Xuan clearly knows that the frontline troops are not enough, but he can only endure it.
At most, there are only two supplementary brigades, but the main force has not been expanded at all!
Even though the Autumn and Winter Campaigns have been launched, the current main expansion direction of the Tang Army is still not to expand the size of the main force, but to continue to reorganize the existing main force.
Currently, among the six infantry divisions and eight mixed regiments of the Tang Dynasty, only one infantry division and three mixed regiments have been reorganized. The other units are still in their old formations.
The reorganization of the existing troops will actually bring about a problem, that is, the same 10,000 people will now cost more than the 10,000 people in the past!
In the final analysis, this is still a trade-off between combat effectiveness and scale!
The Army of the Tang Dynasty mostly wanted quality, because the total number of young people under the rule of the Tang Dynasty was so large. It was impossible to keep a large number of young people in the army endlessly. If there were more people in the army, they could farm and work.
The number of young people is less.
The young men who farmed and worked actually contributed to the expansion of the Tang Dynasty, and they did not necessarily have to go to the battlefield to contribute.
Where did the guns and cannons of the Imperial Army of the Tang Dynasty come from? How did the required ammunition come from, and how did the food come from? It was not contributed by the workers and farmers in the rear.
However, sometimes wars cannot be solved by quality, quantity is also important!
And here, how to grasp the balance is Li Xuan's problem.
Because of the capture of Nanchang, what can be expected is that the Tang Dynasty King's Division will face counterattacks from the Ming army in Jiangxi in the future, and the places where troops are needed will become increasingly blocked, especially if they plan to march into southern Zhili.
The Army suggested adding an infantry division. If one infantry division was not enough, at least a mixed regiment should be expanded. However, in the end Li Xuan rejected the Army's suggestion.
Although the main force of the army is still insufficient, it is barely enough. As for marching to the south of the Yangtze River, it will not take a month or two. Even if Jiujiang is captured, the Tang Dynasty King Division will need to make sufficient preparations to at least build an army.
Only after the Yangtze River Fleet is established can we say we can march to the south of the Yangtze River. Otherwise, if the Ming Navy's navy moves towards Jiujiang, the army logistics line of the Tang Dynasty King's Division will be destroyed.
For a modern army that relies heavily on logistical supply lines to maintain operations, maintaining the security of logistical supplies is more important than conquering cities and territories.
Therefore, the army still has time. Of course, the more important thing is that Datang has no money and cannot expand the army even if it wants to!
So Li Xuan rejected the Army's suggestion!
However, after rejecting the Army's proposal for large-scale military expansion, Li Xuan still did not give up the idea of expanding the Army. He just shifted the direction of military expansion from the Army to the Guards.
The current Guards has begun to assume the defense of almost half of Guangdong, and in the future, as the 6th Infantry Division moves north, the 1st Mixed Regiment will also enter Fujian to fight. By that time, almost the entire
The defense of Guangdong must be left to the Guards.
The current strength of the Guards is still too small, with only six infantry battalions in total. Even though the infantry battalions of the Guards are almost twice as strong as the army's infantry battalions, each battalion has a thousand people, but the Guards
The total strength of the army is still low.
To this end, he plans to expand another infantry battalion to the Guards!
Then we will increase investment in the navy and let the navy build a Yangtze River fleet based on the Ganjiang Squadron at Poyang Lake to fight against the Ming Navy.
Although the Tang Dynasty controlled Nanchang, the Ming navy now entered Poyang Lake in large numbers. If the Tang army wanted to successfully enter the Yangtze River, it was necessary to defeat this Ming navy.
When the navy began to make ambitious plans to build the Yangtze River Fleet, Li Chunjing from the Jiangxi direction was not idle. Before he could wait for the additional troops from the rear to come up, he took advantage of Zhang Yue to go north with some of the supervision standards, and the Fuzhou Ming Army
They could only protect themselves but had no chance to attack. In addition to leaving the Fifth Mixed Regiment to garrison in Fengcheng, they led the Fifth Infantry Division and other main forces of the Second Army northward to Nanchang.
When Li Chunjing arrived in Nanchang, the Tang Army's strength in Nanchang had exceeded 20,000. At this time, even if Zhang Yue mobilized 100,000 troops to counterattack, there would be little hope.
After Li Chunjing arrived in Nanchang, he sent small-scale troops to start clearing other places near Nanchang, such as Jing'an, Jianchang in Nankang Prefecture, and even De'an in Jiujiang Prefecture.
The Ming army in these places were basically local troops, and there were no main forces such as Zhang Yue's supervising troops. Therefore, although they only sent a few thousand people to attack, they successfully captured these places.
The Sixth Infantry Division also marched quickly, and soon took a boat all the way down the Gan River. It first arrived in Ganzhou, then in Luling, Ji'an, and finally stationed troops in Linjiang Prefecture. Then the Sixth Infantry Division officially joined the Second Army.
order of battle.
It can be seen from this that the combat deployment of the Second Army of the Tang Dynasty was actually carried out along the Gan River. Lin'an, Fengcheng, and Nanchang were all cities along the Gan River.
At the same time, it can be seen that the Tang Army actually has no interest in Fuzhou now. If the Ming Army likes to defend it, let him guard it!
But if the Ming army in Fuzhou dares to go south, then the Fifth Mixed Regiment in Fengcheng and the Sixth Infantry Division in the direction of Lin'an will go directly eastward, capture Fuzhou, cut off the supply line of the Ming army in the south, and finally destroy the 60,000 Fuzhou soldiers.
How many armies were destroyed in the wilderness!
Of course, the Ming army in Fuzhou also knew very well that they could barely defend the city, but going out to fight in the field was asking for death. If it was not possible, they would never take the initiative to leave Fuzhou and go south.
What's more, they know that there are still a large number of puppet Tang rebels in Ganzhou, Luling and other places in the south. The Tang Army has deployed supplementary brigades in these two places. Although these supplementary brigades have poor combat effectiveness, they are all
There are some new recruits, but the Ming army doesn’t know about them.
They only know that these places are also garrisoned by the puppet Tang bandits, and it is not easy to attack them!
Even if they go south to attack Luling or even Ganzhou, how can they solve the distant supply line? Can tens of thousands of people attack a city garrisoned by a supplementary brigade?
A bit difficult!
Now Li Chunjing's goals have been placed in Nankang Prefecture and Jiujiang Prefecture. Although the Navy stated that the Yangtze River Fleet is currently weak and cannot defeat the Ming Navy in Poyang Lake for the time being, the Navy
It's the navy, it's the army.
When the Army fights a war, since when have we ever listened to the Navy’s nonsense?
Besides, when the army attacks Nankang Prefecture and Jiujiang Prefecture, it does not necessarily require the cooperation of the navy. At worst, they can just march directly from the land!
Zhang Yue also knew this very well, so he had returned from Fuzhou with a large number of supervision standards a long time ago, and then personally sat in Jiujiang to deploy the defense lines in Jiujiang and Nankang.
Only the defense of Fuzhou and the east of Poyang Lake has been handed over to the Southern Zhili side. Anyway, there are still a lot of troops there, not to mention the guards, but there are still a lot of troops in Yingtian Mansion.
There are thousands of border troops. In addition, South Zhili has also begun large-scale recruitment and training of new troops in the past two years. Although there is no unified name, they all add up to pull out an army of tens of thousands equipped with guns and artillery.
It is still possible to recruit troops.
Anyway, South Zhili was not Zhang Yue's defense area, so he ignored it and let the adults in South Zhili have a headache, while he himself was prepared to defend Jiujiang!
This is not only because Jiujiang is over, the puppet Tang rebels can take the opportunity to enter South Zhili, but also because if Jiujiang is over, Wuchang Prefecture will also be over, and Wuchang Prefecture is Zhang Yue's base camp.
Almost the entire Dubiao New Army's guns and artillery were manufactured in Wuchang Prefecture!
For the Dubiao New Army, Jiangnan can be doomed, but Wuchang Mansion must not be doomed!
Zhang Yue was determined to defend Jiujiang, and all kinds of defense work would naturally not be left behind. But this time, he even learned the lesson from the loss of Nanchang and determined that the guardsmen were not only unusable, but also useless.
unusable!
His military expenses were already very tight, and the performance of the guardsmen had made him not only disappointed, but even deeply distressed.
Therefore, when he deployed the defense in Jiujiang, he directly kicked all the guardsmen back to Wuchang. Why did he let them go back to Wuchang?
Forcing them to go to Wuchang to work as workers in major workshops making guns and cannons was Zhang Yue's desperation to indirectly eliminate the guardsmen, letting the guardsmen do the work, and the ordinary guardsmen did not have to fight.
Of course he was very happy! Zhang Yue saved military expenses and was able to get a large number of young laborers to make guns and cannons for him.
Of course, while some people are happy, there will naturally be objections. Zhang Yue's actions will attract a group of people to impeach him for tampering with the military system, but Zhang Yue no longer cares about this.
Anyway, from now on, don't expect him to give these guards a penny of military expenses. If you don't want to starve to death, just work for me honestly, otherwise, you won't even get food!
The subsequent defense of Jiujiang will be exclusively handled by the new Dubiao Army!
At present, there are already 8,000 new Dubiao troops here, and the number is still increasing every day. Song Zhiwen, who is behind Wuchang, trains a large number of new soldiers for Zhang Yue every day, builds a large number of guns, and then gives them to Zhang Yue.
Yue sent it.
According to Zhang Yue's own estimation, as long as 20,000 new troops are stationed in Jiujiang, Jiujiang cannot be said to be as stable as Mount Tai, but it will definitely be able to sustain it for a long time. If the puppet Tang thief army wants to win, it will not have to pay a heavy price.