When Zhao Laoqi, Minister of Staff of the Senate and Minister of the Patrol Police, took Lin Ziran's will and went to Beijing to prepare for the relocation of the capital, the actions of the Jingzhou Front in the central and northern areas of Jingzhou were also very rapid.

The huge Jingzhou Front Army was already divided into three routes, all the way to the eastern area of Jingzhou, all the way to the eastern peninsula of Jingzhou, and all the way to the northwest along the Jinghe River.

Among them, the enemy army in the eastern peninsula is weak, and there are actually very few troops sent in the past, only one cavalry division and one infantry division, and at the same time, a small number of local garrisons and local officials have no intention of resisting.

However, it was still the easiest of the troops, and there was basically no decent resistance wherever it went, and in many places the garrisons often surrendered outright, and in some places even before the arrival of the Imperial Army's troops, they had already taken the initiative to change their flags.

There are not many troops going to the northeast region, only the two main forces of the Sixth Army and the Third Cavalry Army, and the combat scope of this army actually includes the entire vast area on the north bank of the Jing River.

In the northern part of Jingzhou, there are no military fortresses or large-scale cities, and the terrain is also flat, so the operation is relatively smooth.

A little more troublesome were the troops advancing along the Mirror River in the northwest.

Pingnan Prefecture has already sent a large number of troops to this area, and according to reliable information, Pingnan Prefecture has sent heavy troops to Zhenbei City, which is only 30 kilometers away from Pingnan Prefecture on the banks of the Jinghe River in Jingzhou.

This is not tens of millions of people, but more than five troops, and they are still gathering the original Jingzhou troops in the northwest area of Jingzhou to move closer to Zhenbei City, and the combined strength of the two is probably 70,000 or 80,000 people.

They built a fortified defense line several kilometers wide and several kilometers deep around the mountains of Zhenbei City and the surrounding area, including the entire Zhenbei City.

Why did the Pingnan Prefecture Army gather heavy troops here and establish a defensive line

Because this is the north of the town

Zhenbei City has been an important military pass in the northwest of Jingzhou since ancient times, located on the south bank of the Jinghe River, there are high mountains to build forts, and if artillery is erected on the forts, the Jinghe River can be blocked.

To the north and south of the town is a rare mountainous terrain in Jingzhou, although the army can barely pass, but it must be a lot of trouble, and the logistics and transportation will be more troublesome.

Of course, for the freshly baked Daheng Imperial Army, even if it is difficult to pass through a mere mountainous area, it will not become too much of a problem, and it is a big deal to bypass it.

The crux of the matter is the fort in Zhenbei City, which can block the Mirror River.

This also meant that the Imperial Army could not go up the river and the supply fleet could not pass through, which was very uncomfortable for the Daheng Imperial Army, which was extremely dependent on railways and rivers to transport huge logistical supplies.

It is not a problem for tens of thousands of troops to infect Zhenbei City, but how to solve the logistics of these tens of thousands of troops after bypassing

Rely on horse-drawn wagons for supplies

This is not a matter of tens of kilometers or even one or two hundred kilometers, but a supply line of hundreds of kilometers all the way north.

The use of horse-drawn carriages to maintain a supply line of four or five hundred kilometers or even more is beyond the current Daheng Imperial Army.

In the past two years, the Logistics Department of the Daheng Imperial Army has come to a most basic conclusion through many practical examples.

With the huge material consumption of the Daheng Imperial Army, people eating horses and chewing plus a large amount of ammunition, from the nearest material transfer station to the front line by horse-drawn carriage, the critical distance is maintained at most about 150 kilometers, beyond this distance, the logistics will not be able to maintain the normal supply of ammunition to the front-line troops.

And this distance is gradually shortening as the army is equipped with more and more artillery and machine guns.

This is also the main reason why the large-scale battles of the Great Heng Imperial Army in the past two years have been concentrated along the railway line or along the coast and along the river.

Because the large-scale operation of the Great Heng Imperial Army requires excellent transportation to maintain, whether it is rail or ship, but one of them must be there.

Otherwise, it will be difficult to organize a large-scale campaign with more than 100,000 or 200,000 people in battle.

In the battle of the southern front of Jingzhou, what was the distance between the material strategic transit station in the rear and the front-line troops

The farthest troops were only fifteen kilometers, and the closest was only five kilometers.

And how much in the Battle of Jingshi

Relying on the railway, the material transfer station was directly set up in the suburbs of the southern part of Beijing

There is no railway in the northwest of Jingzhou, which also means that strategic transportation needs to rely on the Jinghe waterway, and if the Jinghe River cannot be opened, the troops will not be able to penetrate into Pingnanzhou at all.

Therefore, for the army of the Daheng Empire, if it wants to enter Pingnan Prefecture, it must use the Jing River as a strategic transportation supply line, it must control the banks of the Jing River, and it must conquer and control the northern city of Zhenbei.

The Pingnan Prefecture was obviously aware of the importance of Zhenbei City, and since the end of the Battle of Jingshi, they have continued to increase their troops in the city.

Now the intelligence says that there are about 80,000 people there, but after a while, there is a high probability that the number of troops in this area will exceed 100,000.

In the face of the heavily guarded defense line of Zhenbei City, the Jingzhou Front of the Daheng Imperial Army also had a certain amount of pressure.

This pressure is not something else, but the supply of ammunition

After the end of the Jingshi Campaign, the Jingzhou Front Army had actually exhausted the ammunition that had been hoarded before the launch of the entire Northern Expedition, and a lot of ammunition was replenished in the middle.

At present, the ammunition supply of the Jingzhou Front is basically maintained by the ammunition that has been continuously transported in the past month or two.

In this case, the Jingzhou Front Army shrank back in the fight.

But no matter how difficult it is, it still has to be fought, and the previous battle of Jingshi was even more difficult, and it was not a hard attack, and the same is true of the current Zhenbei City.

Moreover, this Zhenbei defense line is much easier to fight for the Jingzhou Front, because Zhenbei City, to put it bluntly, is actually a military fortress, not a large city with a huge population.

The city is very small, with about 100,000 permanent residents, and the overall scale is not as good as that of ordinary county towns.

The small size of the urban area and the small number of civilians mean that complex street fighting can be avoided

As for movement warfare or positional warfare in the field, this thing is what the Daheng Imperial Army is good at, and it is a big deal to consume some more shells, and a few more heavy artillery pieces to come over.

Under the heavy artillery, all the defense lines have to kneel

It's not like a street battle, this cannon passed, and the house collapsed, but the enemy still used the ruins to hold on, and there were many buildings, the terrain was complicated, and many times even the enemy couldn't figure out where it was, forcing the Imperial Army to play the combat mode of gradually advancing, capturing and clearing a piece in the Battle of Beijing.

That is to say, the enemy's will to resist is not strong, otherwise, even if it is so steady, it is estimated that the casualties will be very large.

But Zhenbei City, this kind of seems to be a fortress, but in the eyes of the generals of the Daheng Imperial Army, it is no different from attacking the field defense line, and even the enemy army is shrinking more densely, which is easier to fight.

But this ease is also based on the premise that your own artillery is large enough

For this reason, the Jingzhou Front had already transferred the only two 150-mm cannon regiments to the front line of Zhenbei City by ship.

However, the Jingzhou Front felt that the firepower was still weak, and they wanted to get the 200-millimeter artillery outside the north of the city.

However, the army's own 200-millimeter train guns could not go, and there was no railway there

As a result, the army found the navy and asked them to provide 200 millimeter fire support

After hearing the army's request, the navy was also very embarrassed