This third infantry regiment is where he has the confidence to relaunch the offensive, although this infantry regiment now has too many recruits, and its combat effectiveness is no longer comparable to its peak state, but it is the only regular infantry regiment under his command, if he doesn't count on this regiment, what other troops can he hope for, is it difficult to count on those auxiliary troops or garrisons?

In addition to the Third Infantry Regiment, there are indeed other units under his command, including the Fourth Garrison Regiment, half of the Baggage Regiment, and auxiliary troops such as Ruo** soldiers and cavalry, but in addition to the Third Infantry Regiment, artillery and cavalry can only be regarded as support forces, and the original Baggage Regiment is only two battalions, and there are more recruits in these two battalions, because many veterans have been transferred to the Third Infantry Regiment.

In addition, the tasks of the baggage troops of these two battalions are also very heavy, because they have to shoulder the task of escorting materials near the front line, and the material transportation in the Tang Dynasty has always been the rear transportation to the people's transportation, escorted by the capture battalion or garrison, and the material transportation near the front line is delivered to the baggage troops for escort.

Unless the enemy is completely surrounded for a storm, or simply surrounded by the enemy, the baggage troops generally do not participate in the front-line battles, because they have to maintain supply lines.

The fourth garrison regiment, which was able to participate in the front-line battle, failed to capture new Ming prisoners in Guizhou, so it was difficult to replenish the soldiers, although the Privy Council took great pains to send a part of the garrison from Liuzhou to reinforce, but it was only restored to the scale of 2,000 people, and the full strength of a garrison regiment in the Tang Dynasty division was 3,000 people, and the combat effectiveness of the fourth garrison regiment, which was missing one-third, was also relatively weak.

Fortunately, the Third Army supported a garrison regiment, but this garrison regiment could not be taken to participate in the front-line battle, because the huge Liping Mansion could not only rely on the local capture camp to maintain the situation, you must know that there are still many small units of the Ming army left here, in addition, most of the northeastern Guizhou has fallen into the hands of the Ming army, and now the Tang Army can only resist on the side of Zhenyuan Mansion, and because of the lack of troops, it has asked for help many times.

In order to prevent the Ming army from killing down from the northeast, Fang Xitong also had to transfer two battalions of garrison troops to the north to strengthen the local defense, not to be able to counterattack the Ming army, but to stabilize the local situation and prevent the Ming army from rushing down.

In this case, after his generosity in Liping Province, he could only leave three battalions of garrison to garrison, and there were about 1,000 people who were worse than the garrison, and even the slightly tougher bandits and landlord armies could not defeat the bandits.

So in the end, there were not many troops that he could assemble to attack Li Binh, only about 6,000 men, and these 6,000 men were already the most and most elite troops he could use under his command.

Among these 6,000 people, the 3rd Infantry Regiment is the core!

Early the next morning, Fang Xitong led the 6,000 army to the east to Xingquan Mansion again, because he was almost ambushed by the Ming army last time, so this time he was very cautious when he went east, and sent a large number of scouts to reconnoiter to avoid crashing into the ambush circle of the Ming army again, but caution does not mean that the speed of the march is slow, in fact, the speed of his march is still quite fast.

The puppet Tang thief army in Liping Mansion moved, and they came towards Xingquan Mansion in a big way, this news was soon learned by Tan Rong, but he also expected this, and he had already left enough troops to deal with it!

There were more than 35,000 remaining troops in Xingquan Province, but 20,000 of them were ready to deal with the enemy in Liping Province.

Immediately, he sent a fast horse to order the front-line army to resolutely intercept and block the puppet Tang thief army, and not let them get close to Xingquan Mansion City.

And all this, Wang Danxu and others in Xingquan Mansion City don't know yet.

In the era when there was no wireless communication, after a city was completely surrounded, it was almost cut off from the outside world, even if occasionally a fast horse could take advantage of the black and speed to break through and report, but this way is actually not very safe.

This Xingquanfu city is not very big, and the Ming army is not all infantry, and there are cavalry under the hands of others, although there is no large-scale cavalry force like the northern border army, but there are still some scattered cavalry, and it is still possible to blockade and intercept these fast horses.

I didn't know that the friendly troops on the periphery had already launched a large-scale offensive for Wang Danxu, who was launching a large-scale offensive, and still let the troops defend to the death step by step, while saving food as much as possible.

Even in order to supplement the shortage of food, Wang Danxu had already reluctantly ordered the slaughter of horses and other livestock in the army, and as for the chickens, ducks, pigs, dogs and other livestock in the city, they had already been killed.

Horses and other livestock in the army are very valuable materials, and to put it mildly, for the Tang Dynasty, the value of a soldier is far less than that of a horse.

But now that they are trapped in the city, the horses are no longer needed, so it is better to kill them for food.

When Wang Danxu tried his best to prolong the holding time in the city, when Fang Xitong led his army into Xingquan Mansion, it was about twenty miles west of Jingzhou Prefecture.

Chen Keqiao was in a pretty good mood, and even had a meal of wine with a few middle and senior officers, which was captured from the Ming army's transport team.

Since the troops were stationed outside the city of Jingzhou, the life of the Fourth Army was not too nourishing, first intercepting a transport convoy sent from Jingzhou City to Xingquan Prefecture, and then intercepting two convoys from the hinterland of Huguang to Jingzhou.

There was a huge amount of food and all kinds of military supplies seized, and together with these materials, they also captured more than 200 prisoners of war of the Ming army and guards and more than 1,000 people.

The Fourth Army happily accepted grain and other materials, which greatly reduced the logistical pressure of the Fourth Army, and even now even if the Fourth Army is cut off from the supply line, it can support half a month with the grain reserves alone.

Those Ming prisoners naturally followed the previous way, and they were persuaded one by one to supplement the garrison, and the Minfu was even simpler, allowing them to join the baggage transport troops of the Tang Dynasty.

Relatively speaking, whether it is the Ming army or the Tang army, these people are more urgently needed, after all, a large army is fighting abroad, the demand for materials is very large, in Xingquanfu, Jingzhou more than 60,000 Ming troops, Zhang Yue in order to supply the more than 60,000 troops to fight, but in the rear of at least more than 30,000 people.

And this is because of the inland war, at the same time, most of the baggage required by the Ming army is food, and the rest is relatively small, if it is a battle, according to the length of the road, the 60,000 troops need at least 100,000 or even more people behind them to supply.

In the case of the Tang Dynasty, because a large number of artillery and muskets are installed, the demand for ammunition is relatively large, and the logistical pressure is also greater.

And this is also the reason why the Tang Dynasty Wangshi tried his best to launch an offensive along the Xijiang River when he went south, hoping to rely on the water transportation of the Xijiang River to solve the logistics and transportation problem.

After successively defeating several transport teams of the Ming army, those transport teams of the Ming army may have received the news, and finally did not dare to set off from Jingzhou City to Xingquan Mansion or come to Jingzhou from the hinterland of Huguang.

If they don't come, Chen Keqiao is too lazy to care, and his strategic goal is not to capture some supplies, but to cut off the supply lines of the Ming army in Jingzhou and Xingquanfu, as long as this strategic goal can be achieved, everything else is secondary.

Now that the supply lines of the Ming army in the two places have been completely cut off, Chen Keqiao is also too lazy to move, and is bent on letting the troops rest and recuperate in order to maintain the best condition.

What do you do to stay in such good shape?

Naturally, they are waiting for the Ming army in Xingquan Mansion to come over!

Whether it is the large-scale strength of the Tang army or the Ming army, it is basically impossible to hide from the other party, because the movements of thousands or even tens of thousands of people are too large to hide, and more importantly, although there is no large-scale cavalry on both sides, it does not mean that both sides lack reconnaissance cavalry.

The Tang Dynasty Wangshi, a partial secession regime, can produce hundreds of cavalry, and the Ming army will naturally not lack these hundreds of cavalry.

In addition, another very important reason is that the army marches in these years were all marches on foot, and if they marched short and medium distances, they marched long distances

Unless the situation is urgent or the distance is not far, it is difficult to walk 20 kilometers a day.

Of course, this is only limited to normal marching, if it is a light and rapid march, theoretically it is possible to walk 50 kilometers a day, and if it is replaced by an ancient distance unit, it is possible to travel 100 miles a day.

But this is only theoretical, in practice no general will do this, unless it is a simple march, there is no enemy waiting for them in front, not afraid that the soldiers' physical strength will be exhausted, and there will be a large-scale drop, non-combat attrition.

There is no need to worry about the mass exhaustion of livestock!

If a person grits his teeth, he can walk dozens of kilometers, but the horses pulling cannons and ammunition carts can't do it, and if he walks dozens of kilometers a day, more than half of the horses of the artillery unit will die.

Moreover, the battles in these years were all hand-to-hand combat, not like the armies of later generations, when they fought with their fingers and pulled the trigger, soldiers needed to wear armor and then line up for hand-to-hand combat.

After running wildly for a day, without sufficient physical fitness, the soldiers put on dozens of pounds of armor and couldn't even stand steadily, and they were still fighting!

The speed of the troops is slow, but the speed of the scouts is not slow, so it can often appear, and the scouts have already run several times to report the letter, and the enemy troops are still moving slowly dozens of miles away.

Now the more than 10,000 Hu Guangming troops who have come from Xingquan Mansion are that they have not returned to Jingzhou for two days after they have just set off, and Keqiao has already learned the relevant news, and according to his judgment, it will take several days for the two sides to contact each other.

And in the past few days, he decided to do nothing, and let the soldiers sleep after training!

He's ready to play a game of ease!