The Datang Navy was adjusted and reformed in the first half of this year, and after receiving a large number of armed merchant ships, the Yangtze River Fleet did not hesitate to risk the ships being intercepted and sunk to break through the Yangzhou Fort, naturally not to drive the ships to the Jinling Wharf so that Li Xuan could take a few looks.

It's for the safety of the Yangtze River outage!

Because the Ming navy used a large number of small boats and batteries to block the Yangtze River and Xiangjiang fleets of the Yangtze River naval division from entering the Yangtze River, and also blocked the main force of the Tang Navy from penetrating into the Yangtze River, it led to the fact that in the past six months, the Tang Dynasty has always had a lot of scruples about fighting on the south bank of the Yangtze River.

One of the most important points is that the Tang Dynasty has not been able to use the main stream of the Yangtze River to carry out large-scale supply and transportation of materials, and all kinds of ammunition and guns in the southern and Guangzhou regions have relied on the navy to transport them from the sea to Wusong Port, and then transport them to all parts of the south of the Yangtze River by land or small-scale river transportation.

Not to mention, the Ming army took advantage of the advantages of the sailors and occasionally secretly crossed the river to attack, even if this kind of attack could not actually cause any losses, but it also made the Tang Dynasty depressed.

The army had no choice but to deploy its general troops in many cities on the south bank of the Yangtze River, and at the same time send a large number of troops to disperse and station in a vast area, thus causing a serious dispersion of the army's strength.

For this reason, the army has a very big opinion on the navy, and it has been openly quarreled several times at the imperial strategic meeting, and the army has asked the navy to quickly enter the main stream of the Yangtze River, not to toss in the mouth of the Yangtze River, and the Ming army will not run to Songjiang Mansion.

But the navy also has bitterness and can't say it!

The navy has ships, and now there are five cruisers and thirteen frigates in service alone, but these ships are huge and, more importantly, have a very deep draft, and are very restrictive when fighting on inland rivers.

Not to mention that it is overkill, and the danger is particularly great, if this breaks into the Yangtze River, is put down by the Ming army and sailors from the upstream, and then engages in a gang fight, these warships of the navy will lose a lot.

But you can't just watch the Ming navy control the Yangtze River, so after thinking hard, the navy began to reform, preparing to concentrate most of the armed merchant ships of the First Fleet on the Yangtze River Fleet, and then venture to the main stream of the Yangtze River to fight.

Even if these ships are sunk by then, the navy will not be too distressed.

You must know that the current cruiser, the hull plus the naval gun costs more than 100,000 taels of silver, and even if it is a cheap frigate, it will cost tens of thousands of taels of silver.

As for armed merchant ships, it is much cheaper, the hull is cheap, and there are not many naval guns, even if it is an armed merchant ship of about 300 tons, one down, at most 20,000 or 30,000 taels of silver will be done.

Of course, what is more critical is that most of the armed merchant ships in the Datang Navy are sand ships, Guangzhou ships, Fu ships and other ship types, and this time the ships that are transferred to the inland river fleets are sand ships and Guangzhou ships that are suitable for inland river and offshore operations and have shallow drafts.

After the success of the first venture, the Yangtze River Fleet planned to make persistent efforts, and three days later gathered the remaining fourteen armed merchant ships in an attempt to break through the Yangzhou battery.

The same choice was made at night, and the same choice was made on a rainy night.

But this time, the Ming army's sailors were also prepared, and they were frenzied to prepare more than 200 small boats of various kinds to launch a fireboat attack, and cooperated with Yangzhou Fort to carry out a fierce attack.

By dawn the next day, although the armed merchant ships that had broken through had successfully passed through the Yangzhou Fort, the losses were greater than the last time, sinking as many as four ships, and most of the rest were wounded.

Faced with this result, the people of the Yangtze River Fleet breathed a sigh of relief and sank four ships, but finally ten more ships successfully passed the test.

Together with the ten warships that successfully broke through a few days ago, the Yangtze River Fleet of the Datang Navy has twenty armed merchant ships to fight in the main stream of the Yangtze River.

At the same time, the Yangtze River Fleet also carried out large-scale shipbuilding operations in Jinling City and other cities and ports on the south bank of the Yangtze River, although the ships were all small and medium-sized ships, mainly tens of tons.

After two breakthroughs, coupled with the cabinet ships built by themselves, the Yangtze River Fleet has barely gathered its strength in the Yangtze River valley west of Yangzhou and east of Hukou.

And these warships played a very big role in the follow-up operations of the Tang Dynasty.

At least, with the support of these warships, the army's subsequent battle plan for crossing the river can be realized.

That's right, the Tang Dynasty is already preparing to launch a campaign to cross the river, and the battle of not crossing the river is different from the traditional operations in the past, crossing the river is a difficult point, and the follow-up supply is even more troublesome.

Therefore, the army is still very cautious at present, and is only making preliminary plans, but when the specific time can be launched to cross the river is the specific situation of the follow-up.

For these military matters, Li Xuan no longer interferes in much detail, but only controls the overall direction.

Li Xuan's requirements for the military were very simple, one was to hold the area south of the Yangtze River, and the second was to look for an opportunity to launch a campaign to cross the river and seize the north of the Yangtze River.

In particular, the two nails of Yangzhou and Anqing must be pulled out.

These two places are not only obstacles for the Tang Dynasty to go north, but also threaten the safety of the south of the Yangtze River at any time, these two places, just like two knives, against the soft belly of the Tang Dynasty, so that the Tang Dynasty can feel the threat at all times.

However, although Li Xuan proposed a task to the military.

But the military is ready to complete this task, then it is not Li Xuan's concern, this kind of thing still needs to be handed over to professional people to deal with, and he still has a lot of affairs in the entire empire waiting for him to deal with.

Although the army and navy already want to launch a campaign to cross the river, such a large-scale campaign will not be launched for a while and a half, and according to the management of previous years, it will not be possible to launch it at least between the autumn harvest.

To launch a large-scale battle in this rainy season would be a disaster.

At the same time, the Ming army on the north bank of the Yangtze River is also continuing to hoard strength, Anqing and Yangzhou are operated by the Ming army as fortresses, and the number of troops is increasing.

In order to free up the strength of the border army, Emperor Zhengde even pinched his nose and agreed to Altan Khan's request for mutual markets to relieve the pressure on the border towns.

And after the northern Altan Khan met in the border town last year, he also found that these Ming troops were more difficult to fight than before, and after this hard gnaw, Emperor Zhengde agreed to his mutual market, so he also accepted it when he saw it.

After initially stabilizing the northern border towns, Emperor Zhengde began to send a large number of border troops southward, and almost half of the border troops were transferred south.

As for the newly formed and trained new armies in Shandong and Henan provinces, they have been completely transferred, and even the new armies in Shaanxi, Shanxi, and other places have been transferred in large numbers.

Plus the newly reorganized Jingying.

Emperor Zhengde is planning to hoard at least 200,000 troops in Jiangbei, numbering 500,000 troops!

Moreover, among the 200,000 troops, at least 50,000 are border troops, of which 8,000 are the most elite cavalry, and most of those infantry are also troops equipped with a large number of guns.

In addition, there were about 60,000 new troops from the northern provinces.

Anqing and Jiangbei have their own new troops of about 40,000 people.

The remaining 50,000 or so are the guards and the young.

That is to say, more than 150,000 troops concentrated by the Ming army in Jiangbei are all new-style troops using guns and artillery, and the strength of combat effectiveness is unknown, but the number of guns and artillery is definitely quite large.

And these troops were also made up by Emperor Zhengde after digging out the old bottom, for this reason, he even did not hesitate to start collecting flat thieves in the entire north, and then followed Zhang Yue's example, set up checkpoints in some areas, and began to collect commercial taxes.

The ministers were naturally all against it, but at this time, Emperor Zhengde had so much control there, and directly sent the eunuchs under his command to collect taxes.

Because Emperor Zhengde knew very well that if he couldn't hold Jiangbei, then the Ming Dynasty would really be finished, and he would be the king of the fallen country, and such a result was not what Emperor Zhengde wanted.

The Zhengde Emperor controlled the court for more than 40 years, and firmly suppressed the officials in the court, and his skills were naturally not comparable to ordinary emperors.

Of course, this need is actually only a few million taels of silver, and this number is far from enough for an army equipped with a large number of guns, so in fact, whether it is the Jiangbei General Army, Fengyang General Army and other front-line generals, they have already begun to collect military funds on their own.

Their learning object is naturally Zhang Yue, Zhang Yue has been doing this for several years, and he has not seen any big consequences, and he is self-respecting and has lost a lot of battles, but he is still promoted and rich.

Such a successful example will attract others to learn, and Yu Dayou is one of them.

And their learning object, Zhang Yue from Zhang Yue Huguang, is also buried in searching for money and compiling his supervision standards as usual.

After supervising Sichuan, he obtained the financial support of Sichuan, and the scale of his supervision was rapidly expanding, since the defeat of Hengyang and Changsha, it has now been a year and a half, Zhang Yue's supervision is not only to restore the original troops, but also to expand the scale to 100,000 people.

In addition, there are 40,000 training troops under his command, and the number of troops is also 140,000.

The total number of Ming troops in Jiangbei and Huguang has reached 350,000, and the new army equipped with guns and artillery has exceeded 300,000.

But combat effectiveness, anyway, no one thinks that they can beat the puppet Tang thief army on the opposite side with the same number, and now all the Ming Dynasty monarchs and ministers hope for is that they can hold the north bank of the Yangtze River!