After Lord Long withdrew from the battlefield with his own soldiers and other Chinese generals, this also brought a huge problem, that is, the remaining Ming army completely lost its command center.

In the era of underdeveloped communications, the operations of the troops, especially such large-scale operations, are extremely dependent on the flag, and the commander-in-chief of the two sides is even more important.

This is not only used to motivate morale, but also has an irreplaceable command role, the handsome flag is in, which means that the subordinate generals and soldiers can find the backbone, they can see their own commander when they look back, but if they can't see the handsome flag when they look back, then it means that the commander has run away.

Yes, not to die, but to run!

Because in the ancient army, there is nothing after killing the main general, come to a sentence and shout that so-and-so is dead, and then the enemy army will collapse, people are looking at the handsome banner to fight, as for whether the main general is dead or not, the ordinary soldiers below really don't know, it is impossible for you to say that the enemy's main general is really dead.

But if the banner falls, it really means that the Lord is going to die or run.

At this time, the troops are equivalent to losing their command, and the fate of a unit without unified command is predictable.

Just like the previous Ming cavalry, they just lacked a unified command, and dozens of cavalry basically fought separately, and the fight was extremely chaotic, and no one listened to anyone, and this was actually a nominal commander.

However, this commander was only temporary, and those cavalry did not trust or even obey him, and when the battle came, this Ming cavalry general could not command the other Ming cavalry under him at all, and could only command the headquarters and a small part of the cavalry.

With the nominal commander for unified command of the Ming cavalry, now that the main infantry of the Ming army has completely lost its commander, it is conceivable what kind of chaos will happen next.

And the key thing is that as a civilian official, Lord Long did not make detailed arrangements for retreat like other professional generals, such as withdrawing that force first, and then withdrawing that force.

He simply gave a retreat order, as for how to retreat? Please, this official is a genius in the imperial examination, and there is no problem at all if you ask me to memorize the Four Books and Five Classics and write an eight-strand article.

But you asked me how to retreat, the brain show amused you, how could Lao Tzu learn those rude martial arts things, it's just insulting!

Get out of the way, don't get in the way of your escape!

Lord Long left in despair and sadness, leaving behind nearly 20,000 Ming troops whose defense line had collapsed!

And the defense line of this Ming army has completely collapsed, and it has lost its unified command, and several front-line generals have tried to reorganize, whether it is to resist or escape, but in this case, even if Zhao Zilong, Zhang Fei and other famous generals are taken out, I am afraid that the situation will not be irreparable.

The efforts of some of the high-ranking generals of the Ming army on the front line turned into a futile effort, and in the end, seeing that the situation was completely irreparable, they could only follow Lord Long and retreat first with their own soldiers, as for those ordinary soldiers, they couldn't control the life or death of these people at this time.

Anyway, for these high-ranking generals, in fact, ordinary soldiers are cannon fodder, not to mention that more than half of the troops are temporarily recruited young men and people, just take away the real core, that is, their respective personal soldiers.

With the retreat of many high-ranking generals of the Ming army with their own soldiers, the complete collapse of the Ming army was staged.

In less than a moment, there was no organized resistance of the Ming army on the entire front, whether it was senior generals or ordinary soldiers, they all hated their parents for giving them two legs and not running fast enough.

The collapse of the Ming army on the whole line is also a test for the new army of the Tang Dynasty, because they want to keep these Ming troops as much as possible, whether it is to kill them or capture them, they need to keep them as much as possible, otherwise, after these routs flee to the north, it is very likely that they will be reorganized by the Ming generals.

When the time comes, these routs will be reorganized, and although the morale will not be too high, it will always be troublesome.

Therefore, when the Ming army completely collapsed, the new army of the Tang Dynasty also made corresponding tactical changes, from the previous dense and incomparably dense, the infantry phalanx with the infantry battalion as the basic unit quickly dispersed, forming a small phalanx with the team as the basic unit, and then began to hunt and capture the Ming soldiers.

Well, it's basically shouting while chasing after it; Disarm and don't kill, kneel and don't kill.

In the case of the complete collapse of the army, many Ming soldiers who could not escape, in order to save their lives, would throw down their swords quite decisively, and then kneel on the ground and choose to surrender.

There will even be some middle and low-level officers who lead dozens or hundreds of people to collectively choose to surrender, and even during and after the surrender, they will also help the Datang New Army maintain the order of the prisoners.

This is due to the tradition of the Tang New Army has always treated prisoners preferentially, and many Ming army prisoners who surrendered to Cheng were mixed well in the Tang New Army, and many officers of the Tang New Army were actually Ming Army officers who surrendered to Cheng in the early days.

And the most typical representative of this is Zeng Ziwen!

In the mouth of the senior officials of the Ming Dynasty, Zeng Ziwen had already become a big traitor, and he actually betrayed the imperial court and took refuge in the puppet Tang thief army, and turned around to become a member of the puppet Tang thief army to fight against the Ming army.

Such Zeng Ziwen is the most dazzling guiding light in the eyes of many Ming army officers who have the heart to surrender or are forced to surrender.

With Zeng Ziwen's example, they will think that it may be a good choice to surrender to the puppet Tang thief army, which is not a general of the Zhu dynasty, and it is also good to be a general of the Li dynasty.

Surrendering after a rout, and then joining the enemy army to fight against the friendly forces of the past, this is not an unacceptable thing for many Ming armies, well, not only for the Ming army, but in fact for the vast majority of ancient armies.

Datang New Army is no exception!

The reason why the Datang New Army has not yet surrendered on a large scale is because the Datang New Army has not yet encountered such a major rout, and once it does, and the Ming Army can guarantee their lives, it will be a matter of minutes to switch to the Ming Army.

As the Ming army began to surrender one after another, the number of Ming troops captured by the Datang New Army also began to break records.

Two thousand, three thousand......

By the time the total number of surrendered Ming troops exceeded 5,000, the Datang New Army could not even allocate enough manpower to take these prisoners, because at this time the Datang New Army was still in a state of battle.

The troops are chasing the fleeing Ming army ahead, and it is unlikely that too many men will be assigned to watch the prisoners and clean up the battlefield!

In the end, the task of sheltering, guarding prisoners, and cleaning the battlefield could only be handed over to the 5th Infantry Regiment, which had not participated in many battles before.

The rest of the troops continued to pursue and defeat the fleeing Ming army, and at the same time began to spread out in other directions to maintain vigilance and preparedness around them.

Pursue the enemy army, contain prisoners, clean up the battlefield, and at the same time have to maintain the realm of the surrounding area, so that the new army of the Tang Dynasty, which has more than 10,000 people, feels that they are not enough, and the scene is chaotic for a while!

There is no way, the troops are already too scattered, and the tasks are heavy, at this time, even Li Xuan, the commander of the whole army, is busy and dizzy, and he feels extremely troublesome when commanding, and even the same order appeared and passed on to the embarrassment of the two armies.

Fortunately, it is now in the final stage of the battlefield, not the most intense period of fighting, so there are no too serious consequences.

However, the difficulty of command in such a chaotic situation also gave Li Xuan the idea of finding a way to improve the command system, especially the means of communication.

At this time, he is extremely nostalgic to be able to have a radio command system, if there are dozens of walkie-talkies, then how wonderful it would be, even if there are no walkie-talkies, but if there are wireless telegraphs, it would be good!

Unfortunately, this idea of his was not destined to be realized, at least not until he lit up the radio technology tree.

The walkie-talkie thing only appeared in the later World War II period, and the military wireless telegraph that can move with the troops was also used on a large scale during the First World War.

Before this, many generals were trapped in a backward command system!

For this reason, many methods have been thought of, among which the most effective short-distance battlefield command method is undoubtedly the traditional flag command, and the slightly long-distance command can only be transmitted through the herald.

If the flag language is commanded, it is simple, and to popularize the flag language, it is not only necessary to have a large number of professional flag language soldiers, but also middle and low-level officers must also understand the flag language.

However, the popularization of heralds in large numbers is more troublesome, because it involves a long-standing problem: the shortage of horses.

In an army, the war horses ridden by the heralds are often the best, basically on the same level as the war horses ridden by senior generals.

For example, in the modern Japanese army, the most priority among them is the war horse, which is the priority to supply the cavalry of senior generals and heralds, and then it is the turn of artillery and cavalry.

In Li Xuan's central army camp tent, the task of transmitting orders to subordinate troops was the responsibility of the personal guard battalion, and in this big battle, there were more than 20 heralds who specially transmitted orders for Li Xuan's command center.

In the subordinate troops, there will also be many professional heralds, if the total number is counted, in the Datang New Army, professional heralds can reach more than 100 people.

More than 100 people were constantly running between various units, conveying all kinds of military information.

And these more than 100 people represent the need for more than 200 or more horses!

Especially for long-distance command transmission, in order to hurry up and ensure that orders can be delivered on time, the heralds often take turns riding two or even three horses.

Without such an efficient command transmission system, it would have been impossible for Li Xuan to effectively command the new army of the Tang Dynasty, which was scattered all over the place, and the number had expanded to more than 10,000 people.

However, even if the existing scale of the herald army still can't satisfy Li Xuan, if the scale of the new army of the Tang Dynasty continues to expand in the future, and the territory occupied will become larger and larger, it is necessary to have a systematic command transmission system, which is commonly known as the post station.

Without a post station system, it would be difficult to effectively command troops that were growing in size and on a growing territory.