Because of being in the south, the Tang Dynasty has always been very short of horses.

The lack of horses will definitely affect the operation of the troops, and it will not only affect the cavalry, but also the artillery and baggage troops.

In order to solve this problem, the Tang Dynasty also adopted a variety of methods.

On the one hand, it is to increase the breeding of southwest horses, although the southwest horse is not very suitable as a passenger horse, and even the horse is not very suitable, but it is still more suitable as a horse, in addition to the absence of other options, the use of the southwest horse as a horse or even a passenger horse is also an emergency measure.

At present, the Tang Dynasty has expanded the original horse farm in Guizhou on a large scale, and in addition, it has set up horse farms in Hunan and Guangzhou, mainly for large-scale breeding of southwest horses, and at the same time, it has also begun to try to breed Mongolian horses.

However, this still can't fundamentally solve the situation of the lack of horses in the Tang Army!

At present, the full-time cavalry of the Tang Army, including the cavalry battalions of various infantry divisions, the cavalry teams of mixed regiments, and the reconnaissance cavalry under the jurisdiction of various infantry regiments, the total number of cavalry is only more than 6,000.

Most of the horses used were Mongolian horses captured from the Ming army, and a small number were collected from the people.

Of course, this is not to say that there are only more than 6,000 horses in the Tang Army, in fact, the total number of horses owned by the Tang Army has exceeded 20,000, most of which are pulled horses, which are used to pull cannons, ammunition trucks, supply carts, and some horses.

However, this is still far from enough, in order to make up for the shortage of service horses, the current Tang Army is also from the civilian requisition of a large number of mules, donkeys and other livestock for logistics transportation.

In addition, a large number of people were used to transport supplies, and whenever the army launched a fierce battle on the front line, there would be countless people in the rear pushing wheelbarrows to transport countless supplies.

This situation became even more obvious after the Second Army crossed the river, and after the Second Army crossed the river, there was no way to use the river for river transportation, and most of the logistical supplies of the Seventh Infantry Division and the Guards Provisional Brigade were transported by land by horse-drawn carriages and wheelbarrows.

But now the cavalry threat of the Ming army is very large, which forces the Second Army to use a large number of carriages, but the horses are insufficient, which will give the Royal Institute of Technology a seemingly very contradictory design requirements.

Since a large number of goods were transported and it was necessary to defend against the onslaught of cavalry, it was also necessary to use a smaller number of horses.

In the end, the students at the Royal Institute of Technology pondered and directly proposed a solution that surprised Li Xuan, that is, to directly use the railroad carriage.

The volume of wagons pulled in this way is large enough, and it is fast!

But when the army asked, how long would it take to lay the rails? How big is the investment? And then the Royal Institute of Technology said that if it is a hundred kilometers, it will be at least three million taels.

And then the army is completely speechless, three million? With that money, our army would have already planned to build two more infantry divisions and go directly to Henan, and we were worried about what logistical supply lines would be attacked.

The railroad couldn't be built, and the senior students at the Royal Institute of Technology were not interested, so they casually asked a few juniors to design a few horse-drawn carriages for the army to choose.

There are two kinds of plans, one is the two-wheeled carriage, and this plan was vetoed by the army as soon as it was proposed, the two-wheeled carriage has to be designed by you, and now our army uses a large number of two-wheeled carriages, although it is convenient to use, and the road is not picky, but the transportation volume is too small, and when transporting at the same time, it is difficult to transport some relatively large materials, such as artillery shells, especially 24 catties and 48 catties of grenades, this thing is big and heavy, and it is difficult to load a large number of two-wheeled carriages, and the number of horses is not low.

The latter is a four-wheeled carriage, the carriage itself has a huge cargo capacity, of course, how much to load, to see how many horses pull, here to focus on the explanation, ancient China, not only there are two-wheeled carriages, in fact, four-wheeled carriages have always been, and the application is also very extensive, in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period as a chariot not to say, later four-wheeled carriages are mostly used for freight, but rarely used to carry people.

Of course, since it was a carriage designed by the Royal Institute of Technology, it was naturally not a traditional two-wheeled or four-wheeled carriage, and the appearance looked similar, but the interior design was completely different.

Whether it is a two-wheeled carriage or a four-wheeled carriage, it is borrowed from many of the designs given by the Royal Institute of Technology to the railway carriage, including the spring shock absorbing structure, the steering structure made of high-strength steel, and even the wheels, which are specially designed iron structure wheels with large wide sides.

Of course, they only designed the carriage chassis, and what to do on the chassis was the army's own business, and the students of the Royal Institute of Technology were too busy to make such a mess.

During the test, this prototype car only used two horses to pull a whole carriage of goods, and because the wheels are wide, it has a relatively good passability on complex roads.

And this kind of carriage is very stopping, when it encounters a cavalry attack, it stops directly, and then the carriages are close to each other, and the groom doesn't even need to get out of the carriage, he can directly rely on the carriage to shoot back.

After the people from the Army Logistics Department saw it, they immediately decided that they would want this kind of four-wheeled freight carriage, not too much, and five hundred of them first!

Of course, the two-wheeled carriage will continue to be used.

After all, four-wheeled carriages have relatively high requirements for roads, and some roads that cannot be passed can only use two-wheeled carriages.

However, even with four-wheeled carriages and two-wheeled carriages, the main means of transportation of the Tang Army is still unicycles!

Nowadays, the wheelbarrow used by the logistics department of the Datang Army is also a high-tech product, designed and developed by the Royal Institute of Technology, and the style is no different from the traditional wheelbarrow, but the size of the wheel, the size of the body, the position of the loading goods, etc., are carefully calculated, so that the cart is more labor-saving.

At the same time, there are also wheelbarrows that specialize in transporting shells, such as 48-pound grenades, which are very heavy, and the wheelbarrows used to transport such shells need to be specially designed.

To put it mildly, where there is no river transportation, the logistics department of the Tang Army has used countless wheelbarrows to transport many supplies for the front-line army!

Although the four-wheeled carriage was designed and procured by the military, it could not be used for a while, so the Seventh Infantry Division and the Guards Temporary Brigade could only advance slowly in groups, but even with the attack of the Ming cavalry, they still arrived in Hefei smoothly.

The Seventh Infantry Division captured Hefei, which was garrisoned by more than 20,000 Ming troops, with an absolute superiority, annihilating more than 1,000 enemy troops and capturing more than 3,000 on the spot.

As for the remaining 10,000 or so Ming troops, they ran away at the beginning of the battle!

After taking Hefei, the 7th Infantry Division did not continue to launch a large-scale offensive, but made contact with the troops of the 3rd Army on the northern side of Fengyang Province and began to recover some prefectures and counties, consolidate the results of the battle, and establish a defensive line.

Because at this time, the logistical supply of the Second Army was already completely inclined to be supplied to the troops of Anqing, and the Seventh Infantry Division, like the Third Army, had to save ammunition.

Outside the city of Anqing, the Second Army concentrated the 3rd Infantry Division, the 4th Mixed Regiment, the 5th Mixed Regiment, two heavy artillery battalions, and the 3rd Assault Battalion and the 4th Assault Battalion totaling nearly 30,000 troops.

In addition, the main fleet of the Navy's Yangtze River Fleet will help in the battle!

And Yu Dayou's department in the city, the strength is not bad, there are more than 40,000 people, nominally they all belong to the thief army, of course, the core main force is not so much, the main force is about 20,000 at most, and the remaining 20,000 are all dressed in the name of the thief army, but in fact they are still ordinary new troops.

However, in any case, the army of 40,000 is the real thing!

In addition, the Ming army still had about fifty field guns in Anqing City, some of which were artillery in the Anqing Battery, but as the Yangtze River fleet was killed, and the Second Army also successfully crossed the river, Yu Dayou simply gave up the batteries outside the city and withdrew the artillery and artillery into the city.

This is almost another copy of Yangzhou City, although the scale is a little smaller, the artillery is a little less, but the strength of the Second Army attacking Anqing is not as much as when the Third Army attacked Yangzhou!

However, Wang Chaohong was not worried about this, when his second army successfully crossed the river, this Anqing had already fallen into his palm, and then he only needed to fight step by step, and this Anqing could be taken.

Wang Chaohong's tactical style is similar to that of Hao Bonian, they are both steady and steady types, and they will not be too aggressive, so when the main force of the Second Army arrived at the city of Anqing, it began a long preparation time!

Dig trenches, prepare artillery positions, dig tunnels to prepare for blasting, and then respond to the navy, so that the navy can also bring in naval guns to help in the battle.

Then a large number of shells were hoarded, and intensive shelling was carried out.

These things take time, and Wang Chaohong is not in a hurry, anyway, Li Xuan did not urge him too much, and gave Wang Chaohong a full three months.

Three months to take Anqing, Wang Chaohong thinks that this is enough!

In fact, in Wang Chaohong's own plan, it will only be a month at most, and if it goes well, maybe half a month is enough!

The main force of the Second Army was stationed outside Anqing City, and Jinling City in the distance also ushered in the Spring Festival of the sixth year of Xuanping!

On the thirtieth day of the Chinese New Year's Eve of this year, Li Xuan held a state banquet according to the practice of previous years, banqueting important ministers and nobles, and this state banquet, the Tang monarchs and courtiers ate very comfortably.

Not only because the situation in the world is quite good for the Tang Dynasty, and it seems that it will not take a few years to completely unify China, but also because Li Xuan gave the courtiers another round of wages a year ago, although it is not much, it is only two months, but this time there is no national debt, and the gold is found.

When they got it, those courtiers were all moved and almost cried!

After so many years, I can finally have a fat year with my salary!