"According to the strategy formulated by our Privy Council in advance, although there is something wrong in the first stage at present, the first army failed to successfully attack Huangzhou, but the flaws are not concealed, the sneak attack on Huangzhou was originally an additional combat mission in the first stage, if it can be achieved at the best, it can greatly speed up the process of the southwest campaign, if it cannot be achieved, we can continue to carry out according to the original plan!"

In Jiujiang, in the huge combat conference room in the temporary palace, Li Xuan sat on the dragon chair at the top like the usual imperial meeting, and the rectangular table below was divided into more than a dozen high-level military generals!

On the left, there are army generals headed by Lieutenant General Lei Wan, head of the Operations Department of the Privy Council, and after him, the commander of the Second Army who temporarily rushed back to Jiujiang from Susong on a naval communications express ship to participate in the Imperial Strategic Conference, and Li Chunjing, the commander of the First Army, who rushed back from Wuchang.

And the remaining few are several other important generals of the Privy Council, including the deputy director of operations of the War Department and the director of the General Staff Department, the director of the logistics department, the director of the ordnance department, the director of the military intelligence department and others.

These army generals occupy the left side of the rectangular table.

On the opposite side of them were Vice Admiral Bao Yifen, director of the Military Command Department of the Navy Command, and Rear Admiral Chen Pingyang, commander of the Yangtze River Fleet.

Sitting on the right side with the admirals, below the admirals were the three chiefs of staff of the Guards.

This is a strategic meeting of the Imperial Army, the Navy, and the Guards, and the lowest rank of these generals present is a major general, and the brigadier general is not qualified to appear in such a strategic meeting.

However, in such a high-level imperial strategic meeting, there are no people below the rank of brigadier general, no one in the cabinet, but there are still people from the Hanlin Academy.

The head of the Army Section, the Navy Section, the Survey and Statistics Section, and the Director of the Secretariat are all there.

Of course, in this meeting, these people from the Hanlin Academy were just attending and observing, and they did not have any qualifications to interject at all, and the director of the secretariat, a high-ranking official of the fourth grade, was to some extent the person in charge of the Hanlin Academy, and he could only act as a meeting recorder on this occasion.

The Tang Hanlin Academy is different from the Hanlin Academy of all dynasties, more strictly speaking, it only bears the name of the Hanlin Academy, but it is the business of the emperor's private secretarial institution.

It has a secretariat, various sections, a total of more than 20 departments, in addition to the secretariat is more special, the other section chiefs, are the five grades of the bachelor, the deputy chief of the five grades of the bachelor, all levels of staff for the six grades of study, from the six products of the lecture, from the seven products of the revision, from the seven products of the editor.

The secretariat is more special, the director is the fourth grade of Hanlin bachelor, the deputy director is the fifth grade of the bachelor, there are also four special responsible for the 24-hour rotation of the bachelor, in addition to the waiting, waiting, and other grades of secretaries at all levels.

Because the director of the secretariat is a bachelor of the fourth grade of Hanlin, and the grade is higher than that of other sections, so sometimes, people will also think that the director of the secretariat is the Tang Dynasty version of the head of the Hanlin Academy, but this is just an outsider's view, in fact, the various departments in the Hanlin Academy, including the secretariat, have no governing relationship with each other, and each is independent of each other.

Speaking of who is more powerful in the Hanlin Academy, there is no need to ask, it must be the head of the Investigation and Statistics Department of the Hanlin Academy, Lord Li Daobing, although he is only a positive five products, but he controls more than 10,000 Hantong Eagle Dogs, no one knows if he has all kinds of evidence of his own greed and perversion of the law, basically, it is an official who sees Li Daobing, it is all not good, why?

They're afraid!

However, Li Daobing has always been low-key, as the head of Han Tong, he basically does not deal with other officials, he has always adhered to his duty as a retainer, and never formed a party for personal gain.

Li Daobing knew that he was completely different from other courtiers, he was from the Li family's village, he was a tenant of Li Xuan's family back then, and he was also a distant relative of the Li family.

And this caution has also made him sit firmly in the position of the head of the Survey and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy in the past few years!

Today, Li Daobing naturally won't say even a word, and he won't even look at it, and today he came to observe, it was a routine matter, after all, such a big battle as the Southwest Campaign is inseparable from intelligence support.

And the one who provided the information, in addition to the Military Intelligence Department, was naturally indispensable to his Han commander!

Not only Li Daobing, but several other people in the Hanlin Academy also acted as if they were not on the scene, and they didn't say a word, and they didn't have the qualifications to intervene in today's matter related to the empire's strategy in the next few years.

Lei Wan and other senior generals of the military are also these people from the Hanlin Academy, especially Li Daobing does not exist, anyway, every time there is such a large-scale strategic meeting in front of the emperor, these people from the Hanlin Academy are indispensable, and they are all used to it.

This listened to Lei Wan continue: "At present, the first stage has been successfully concluded, and after the second army captured Susong, ammunition replenishment is underway for the second phase of combat missions!" ”

"In the second stage of the Southwest Campaign, our strategic goal is not to capture Hanyang, because according to our intelligence, in the past few years, Zhang Yue has already built Hanyang into a solid foundation, although there are not many troops at this stage, only about 20,000 people, but Hanyang has already been a fortress, deploying a large number of artillery, and once our army marches to the vicinity of Hanyang, the enemy army can draw troops from the surrounding areas at any time to reinforce, and it may be attacked from front and back at that time!

Because our plan for the second phase is not to fight Hanyang, but to cut off the connection between the entire southwest region, especially between Hubei and Sichuan.

At present, the deployment of the puppet Ming Governor in Hubei has about 50,000 troops on the front line of Huangzhou Prefecture and Qizhou on the whole, about 10,000 troops in the area of De'an Mansion and Xinyang, about 20,000 troops in Hanyang City, about 10,000 troops in Anlu Prefecture, about 5,000 troops on the front line of Xiangyang Prefecture, and about 10,000 troops on the front line of Jingzhou.

According to our estimates, in the entire Hubei region north of the Yangtze River, there are about 110,000 pseudo-Ming governors.

In addition to the Hubei region, there should be 30,000 puppet Ming governors in Sichuan, and about 20,000 puppet Ming troops of other factions.

In Yunnan, there are about 10,000 governors and about 20,000 soldiers.

In other words, the main forces of the puppet Ming are all gathered in the Hubei region, and the thief Zhang Yue is also in Hanyang in person!

As long as we annihilate the Ming army in Hubei, then the remaining Ming troops in Sichuan and Yunnan are just clowns!

In order to annihilate the Ming army in Hubei, in order to prevent them from escaping into Sichuan, so our main target in the second stage is here! ”

Speaking of which, Lieutenant General Lei Wan pointed directly to a city on the map: Jingzhou!

Although many of the people present had actually seen the southwest strategy proposed by the Privy Council Operations Department for a long time, and they also knew that the main target of the second phase was Jingzhou, but now when Lei Wan said it, he couldn't help but set his eyes on Jingzhou on the map.

This place is one of the ancient Kyushu, in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period was the capital of the Chu State, and later generations were also used as the capital by various regimes many times, and it was the political center of the south for a long time, but later as the economic center of the Chinese land gradually moved south to the south of the Yangtze River, Jingzhou began to wither like the Central Plains.

Now, even in Huguang, its political and economic center is not in Jingzhou, but in the area of Wuchang and Hanyang.

This is known from Zhang Yue's choice, his base camp was in Wuchang before, and after the fall of Wuchang, he directly crossed the river to Hanyang.

However, this does not mean that Jingzhou is not important, on the contrary, it is still important, at least for the current southwest strategy of the Tang Dynasty.

Because this place is the connection node between Sichuan and the central and eastern parts of Hubei, if the Tang Army can capture this place, then it can completely divide the Ming army in Sichuan and Huguang, and then break through each one.

This is why the main goal of the second phase of the Southwest Strategy will be this Jingzhou.

"In order to ensure that Jingzhou can be captured, we are ready to use the second division of the first army as the main force to attack Jingzhou City, and the third mixed regiment will launch a diversionary attack on the land of Anluzhou.

The 1st Infantry Division and the 10th Mixed Regiment of the 1st Army were to cross the river and land in the west of Hanyang, making a posture of attacking Hanyang in order to confuse the enemy's sight and at the same time intercept the enemy's possible westward escape. ”

The First Army had four main forces: the 1st Infantry Division, the 2nd Infantry Division, the 3rd Mixed Regiment, and the 10th Mixed Regiment, but this time they were dispersed and not all of them were concentrated together like the Second Army! ”

"At the same time, due to the fact that the troops are not too sufficient, our army has already transferred the seventh mixed regiment, and it is expected to attack the Badong area from the Shizhou line to intercept the puppet Ming army that may come out of Sichuan to help!"

"The departments of the Second Army will continue to launch a fierce attack on Huangzhou Mansion from the Qizhou line, contain the main force of the Ming army, and shake the defense line of the Ming army here!"

As Lei Wan finished speaking, basically the tactical arrangement of the entire second stage was also completely revealed, the core purpose was to capture Jingzhou, and in order to capture Jingzhou, the other troops also cooperated and launched their own attacks.

Thunder Tube tactical aspect of things, but a large-scale battle. Naturally, it is impossible to have only one war department, in fact, several other departments are also very important, especially the logistics department.

The people in the logistics department did not have as much as Lei Wan said, but simply said that at present, the logistics department has hoarded enough ammunition and other materials for 30,000 people to launch three large-scale battles in a row, of which only food is enough for 30,000 people to eat for more than half a year.

It is completely sufficient to support the related operations of the 2nd Infantry Division and the 7th and 3rd Mixed Regiments!

As for the ammunition and other supplies needed by the other units of the First Army and the Second Army, they were replenished from Wuchang nearby, while the bulk of the troops continued to be transported from Jiujiang!

The people of the logistics department proudly said that they have prepared more than 1,000 large and small transport ships on the front line of the Jiujiang River, and almost all civilian ships in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River have been recruited, and a large number of civilian ships have also been recruited from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

At the same time, the navy has also sent a large number of large-tonnage transport ships, but the navy's transport ships are relatively large, and they undertake the transportation tasks in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the transportation tasks after crossing the Jiujiang River are undertaken by the small and medium-sized ships of the logistics department.

They have great confidence in completing the logistical support of the troops!

The battle plan is there, the troops are ready, and the logistics materials are on the way, so what are you waiting for, just start fighting!

After the end of the imperial battle meeting, Li Xuan officially ordered the second phase of the operation, seized Jingzhou, and locked the 100,000 governors in Hubei in the cage of Hubei, so as not to give them the opportunity to escape into Sichuan!

It's just that when the Tang Dynasty Wang Shi did this, they didn't ask anyone if Zhang Yue would run, let alone know if he would run!