According to the current regulations of the Datang Army, the normal marching speed of the troops, under the condition that the official roads and other roads are good, an infantry regiment or a cavalry battalion or a five-pound field artillery battalion marches for about six hours a day, and marches about 20 kilometers a day.

But this is only limited to the case of good roads, and if the roads are ordinary, if it is necessary to ensure that the march of twenty kilometers a day is required, then this time will increase to eight or even ten hours.

If the road conditions are very bad, then this time increases to more than twelve hours!

At the same time, if it is a baggage unit and a heavy artillery unit, this march time will be greatly extended, if the road is good, it will take more than eight hours to march 20 kilometers, if the road conditions are poor, then it may take 15 hours, if the road conditions are very poor, then 20 hours or more will not be able to walk 20 kilometers.

If it is impossible for the troops to walk all day and night, it is necessary to leave time for the soldiers to rest, and it is necessary to leave time for the whole team to leave the troops, in short, walking for seven or eight hours a day is basically the limit, and if there is more, it will greatly deplete the physical strength of the soldiers and greatly affect the combat effectiveness of the troops.

In order to ensure the speed of this march, and at the same time, based on the information of the previous reconnaissance and the situation of the last attack on Changsha, Brigadier General Li Xin, deputy chief of staff of the Second Army, formulated a rather detailed and detailed march plan for how many roads to take on a specific day to ensure that it arrived in Changsha on time.

The road conditions on the road leaving Shaoyang were relatively good, and there was no need to worry about the enemy ambush on the way, so the speed of the march was relatively fast, and the advance speed reached more than 25 kilometers every day for the first three days.

Of course, this is only limited to infantry and other combat units, and the nine-pound field artillery battalions in the rear, the baggage troops carrying a large amount of baggage, and the Minfu transport regiment further behind, their speed is even slower.

In order to ensure that the main force can arrive on time, Hao Bonian naturally cannot expect to arrive outside Changsha with heavy artillery and baggage troops, which is unrealistic, so he took the main force to hurry first, and let the heavy artillery and baggage troops slowly catch up behind!

When the First Army was rushing all the way towards Changsha, Li Chunjing led the Second Army to Changsha slowly!

After Li Chunjing took Yuezhou, he left the Fourth Mixed Regiment to garrison Yuezhou and went south with the main force, because Yuezhou was far away from Changsha, only more than 100 kilometers, so he was not in a hurry.

When the army went south, the baggage, heavy artillery and even the people were all on the road with them, and the marching speed was only more than ten kilometers a day, which means that the road conditions from Yuezhou to Changsha were better, and if the road conditions were worse, it was estimated that the speed would be even slower.

It's not that Li Chunjing wants to be slower, but he can't be fast!

His second army didn't have any supply lines or anything like that, and all the baggage needed to be carried together, so if he threw the baggage troops and ran away, if the baggage troops made any mistakes, the second army would collapse immediately.

Moreover, the number of artillery pieces of the Second Army far exceeded that of the First Army, and quite a few of them were heavy artillery such as nine-pound field guns and forty-eight-pound heavy howitzers.

If it weren't for the restrictions of the heavy load, the Second Army would not have spent more than 20 days rushing to Yuezhou!

Li Chunjing's various strategies seem to be risky, but in terms of detailed tactics, they have always been steady and steady, and when the Second Army attacked Yuezhou before, it never divided its troops from beginning to end.

After taking Yuezhou, he did not say that he would kill Changsha directly regardless of it, but left the Fourth Mixed Regiment to garrison Yuezhou.

And now he is not in a hurry to advance, playing any tactics such as blitzkrieg Changsha City, he is steadily and steadily marching southward, and tens of thousands of troops are gradually pressing towards Changsha.

The army pressed the border, and it was not only the second army of the puppet Tang Li thief who went south from Yuezhou, but even the first army of the Hao thief on the Shaoyang side also moved!

After knowing this situation, it almost made the civil and military officials of the Ming Dynasty in Changsha panic!

A few days ago, they were still arguing about whether to reinforce Yuezhou, and in the next few days, they were arguing about whether to counterattack Yuezhou, but they were arguing and arguing, and they did not discuss any good way.

And the most precious few days were wasted by them in the debate!

Yuezhou is finished, and the army of thieves is slaughtering Changsha!

What should I do?

Dispatch and attack to defeat the thief armies in the south and the north?

Or do you want to go out with the army of Hengyang and destroy the first army of Hao thieves over there first?

Or is it desperate to defend Changsha?

Many of these methods were proposed, and then they were rejected one by one.

If you go north to fight with Li Thief's second army, are you sure that the more than 30,000 soldiers and horses in Changsha can beat Li Thief's second army?

There is no superiority in troops, even if it is the new army of the superintendent, it is not in a position to have the guts and the pseudo-Tang thief army in the field!

If they don't go north, the army that goes south and Hengyang will flank the first army of Hao thieves, I'm afraid that as soon as they left Changsha on the front foot, the Li thieves will immediately take Changsha without blood, which clearly shows that they want to send Changsha City to the pseudo-Tang thief army, whoever dares to do this is a traitor!

In the end, they discussed and discussed, and they finally decided that the advantage of Changsha's city defense could not be abandoned, and that a large amount of food and ammunition had been hoarded in the city, and if there were enough troops, it was possible to defend it for a year and a half.

But where do the troops come from?

There are only more than 30,000 new troops in Changsha City and Changsha training troops, and they have no bottom in their hearts about whether these troops alone can hold Changsha!

In the end, it was decided to abandon Hengyang and concentrate on defending Changsha!

And although this tactical choice will be suspected of taking the initiative to send Hengyang to the puppet Tang thief army, in terms of the current predicament faced by the Ming army, it is actually their best, and it is also the only choice.

Otherwise, it will be the end of being defeated separately!

From Changsha to Hengyang, if it is a large army march, even if it is a light march, it will take at least ten days, but for the Pegasus Express, which simply transmits orders, a little more than a day is enough for Changsha's orders to reach Hengyang.

And the atmosphere in Hengyang City two days ago will not be much better than that in Changsha City, because people with a little insight know that now the main force of the puppet Tang thief army is plotting to seize Changsha, and once Changsha is finished, Hengyang has absolutely no reason to survive, and this is the case.

After receiving the order from Changsha, the Ming army in Hengyang City was also decisive and resolute, and they poured out early the next morning, directly abandoning the city they had held for more than a year.

And they left in a hurry, in order to hurry, they basically didn't carry too much baggage, only brought a month's food and ordnance and weapons, and the army of about 30,000 people left in a hurry, but they didn't plan to leave Hengyang intact to the puppet Tang thief army!

Before leaving, the Ming army set fire everywhere, not only burning the mountains of grain and grass in the city, but also burning all the ordnance and ammunition that could not be taken away!

If that's all it takes, what's more, they're setting fires everywhere in the city, so much so that there are huge fires in the city!

On that day, dozens of Tang cavalrymen who were monitoring the situation in Hengyang City outside the city saw the entire Hengyang City in flames and thick smoke billowing into the sky!

The next day, when an infantry battalion stationed nearby arrived outside Hengyang City and tried to enter the city, it was met with no resistance, not even a single Ming soldier in the city came out to resist, and even those local officials couldn't see a few!

Moreover, the fire in the city was still fierce, and the infantry battalion, which belonged to the 3rd Mixed Regiment, did not dare to act on its own, on the one hand, it began to organize the remaining people in the city to extinguish the fire, and on the other hand, it controlled the situation in the city.

On the third day, the main force of the 3rd Mixed Regiment arrived in Hengyang, because there was no longer any Ming army in the city that resisted, and the Dubiao and Hengyang Lian troops had all withdrawn, leaving only the people in the city under fire.

Therefore, after the third mixed group entered Hengyang, what they saw was still billowing smoke and countless people who were burned by the fire!

So after the 3rd Mixed Regiment arrived in Hengyang, their task was not to fight, but to extinguish fires!

With the concerted assistance of the military and civilians, the fire in the entire Hengyang City was extinguished, and at this time, almost the entire Hengyang City was filled with thick smoke, and the sky was constantly falling dust!

The fire directly caused more than half of the city to be burned, especially near the granaries and ammunition depots, which were in shambles, and because of the violent explosion of the ammunition depots, almost swept away the nearby streets.

However, all this has nothing to do with the soldiers of the Third Mixed Regiment, because after they extinguished the fire, they quickly evacuated Hengyang, which had been reduced to ruins, and continued to go north!

And the follow-up disaster relief and reconstruction affairs of Hengyang City will naturally be taken over by the civil officials of Datang!

Although most of the current Hengyang has been reduced to ruins, it is good to say that the city that has blocked the Tang Dynasty for more than a year has finally fallen into the control of the Tang Dynasty!

And this also means that the Tang Dynasty was finally able to use the Xiangjiang River to transport supplies to the north on a large scale through Hengyang.

Through the Xiangjiang River, the supply fleet of the Tang Dynasty was able to reach Changsha all the way, which greatly solved the problem of logistical supply difficulties.

The third mixed regiment went north, escaped from Hengyang City, and went north to Changsha along the Xiangjiang River, but it was intercepted by thousands of Tang Army!

They are the forward troops of the First Army composed of the First Army Corps and the First Cavalry Detachment led by Major General Wang Chaohong, Chief of Staff of the First Army!