The war in southern Huguang began in December of the second year of Xuanping, and it can be said that it has lasted for more than a month, and during this month, the two sides have come and gone to achieve their desired combat goals.

However, the battle plans of both sides on the battlefield are constantly changing with the changes in the situation on the battlefield, which means that the plans cannot keep up with the changes!

At the beginning, when the Tang Army went north, Hao Bonian was ready to advance gradually, first taking Yizhang, Chenzhou City, Guiyang City and other more important cities south of Hengyang City, and then launching a general attack on Hengyang City, but he didn't expect that the Ming army would be a shrinking turtle, with several times the advantage of troops, and he still hid in the city and did not dare to come out.

In order to avoid the loss of troops and time in the continuous many battles, Hao Bonian adopted the lure strategy of the main force rushing north, leaving ambushes for ambushes, but this was an opportunity for the Ming army to swallow the main force of the puppet Tang thief army in one bite, and then there was a series of subsequent battles between the two sides.

And now, the situation on the battlefield is completely different from a month ago, and it is naturally no better for the Ming army, losing troops and losing Yizhang.

But it is not ideal for Hao Bonian, although he has annihilated 20,000 Ming troops and captured Yizhang, but in the end, he found that the situation he faced has not fundamentally changed from a month ago, and the Ming army is still hiding in the strong city and does not come out!

The only change is that there is no need to attack the city all the way as before, and fight several consecutive battles, now, the main force of the Ming army in the south of Huguang has all gathered in Hengyang City, as long as he can take down Hengyang City, then the follow-up of the entire southern Hunan region, basically can not stop the pace of their own army!

And he also saw another opportunity, that is, after the Ming army in Changsha moved south to Hengyang City, how many Ming troops would be left in Changsha City?

Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? How many of them are the main forces in the Ming army, that is, the superintendent and the border army in their mouths!

If there are very few Ming troops in Changsha, will you be able to attack Changsha?

However, judging from the many deployments of the Huguang Ming Army before, Zhang Yue, the puppet Ming Governor of the Six Provinces, does not seem to be stupid, and has always tried his best to avoid a frontal field battle with his own main force, but instead adopted the strategy of holding on to the city, so that the frontal field combat ability that the Tang Dynasty is proud of cannot be brought into play!

It can be seen from this that Zhang Yue is not stupid, he will not make Changsha empty!

In case he led his troops to attack Changsha, he encountered Changsha defended by several people, even if these troops defending were local guards, then it would not be able to take it in three or five days, and then the Ming army in the direction of Hengzhou would be able to easily cut off the supply line of their main force, and even worse if the Ming army in the direction of Hengzhou returned to Changsha, they might fall into the front and rear attacks of the Ming army with a total of more than 100,000 or even more.

Even if Hao Bonian has great confidence in his First Army, he is unwilling to let his troops fall into this predicament of being attacked from front to back!

Alas, now he is a little regretful, in Yizhang and Chenzhou, Guiyang direction of the Ming army fought too badly, if he pretended that the supply line was cut off, I am afraid that now the Ming army in Hengyang City has already come out to surround him, then he will be able to usher in a frontal field decisive battle that he has been striving for, and the first battle will lay the victory of the Huguang War.

It's a pity that he didn't know that the Ming army's action was so big, and when he reacted, the good news of the troops under his command had already been reported, and at that time he knew that the Ming army was brewing such a big move.

There is no regret medicine to take in this world, since the Ming army has been frightened by itself, and has completely given up its own plan to besiege, it is not so easy to let the tens of thousands of main forces of the Ming army in Hengyang City come out in a short time.

Now, he must have a new method, a way to seize Hengyang and even Changsha, a way to annihilate the Ming army in southern Huguang!

Just when Hao Bonian was thinking hard about how to break the situation, in Changsha City, Zhang Yue was also worried!

Hao Bonian in the puppet Tang thief army was worried about annihilating the Ming army, while Zhang Yue was worried about how to block the northward advance of the puppet Tang thief army!

As for the main force going north to encircle and annihilate the puppet Tang thief army, this idea was completely dispelled after he received Xu Xinchang's letter!

Xu Xinchanglai's letter said that the puppet Tang thief army had already arrived at Hengyang City, and it was estimated that there were 30,000 thieves, and all of them were real thieves, and there was not a single fake thief.

At the same time, Zhang Yue also learned from the information that was publicly circulated in many quarters that in the second half of last year, the Tang thieves carried out a drastic reform of the military system, and eliminated the garrison army and the robbery hunting camp with weak combat strength, and instead strengthened the regular army.

In other words, there will be no real thieves and fake thieves in the pseudo-Tang thief army in the future!

Thinking of this, he just admired and even envied Hao Bonian in the puppet Tang thief army, people felt that the garrison was unusable, and said that if it was eliminated, it would be eliminated, but he Zhang Yue also felt that the soldiers of the inland guard were unusable, and he also wanted to eliminate them all at once, and then allocate military funds to train the new army such as the superintendent.

However, this kind of thinking can only be imagined, and the local health center will be eliminated? According to the current situation of the Ming Dynasty, it is absolutely impossible to do it, not to mention that he is a governor of six provinces, even if the cabinet bosses go out collectively, plus a Zhengde Emperor, it is impossible to do.

The only thing they could do was to recruit as many young people as possible while maintaining the local guard station, and then organize and train a new army.

After the rise of the Tang Dynasty and the successive defeats of the Ming army's inland guards, the Ming Dynasty began a wave of firearms manufacturing and military recruitment under the strong impetus of Emperor Zhengde, who was already lying on the sickbed!

Zhang Yue's superintendent and Yu Dayou's musket army are typical representatives, in addition to these two typical representatives, in fact, many local officials, especially in the areas near the front line of the Tang rebels, have already set off a wave of making guns and training new troops!

It's just that the scale and momentum of these local officials building guns and training the army are not so large!

In addition, another very important change is that the local government has begun to raise its own military expenses on a large scale!

To build artillery and train the army, the imperial court did not have much money, and most of the military expenses needed to be raised by the local government, and those local officials also used all means to raise military expenses.

Of course, it is certainly impossible to let the officials pay their own money, and it is also impossible to reach out to the gentry who have a background and background, so they can only apportion a part of the ordinary gentry to the merchants, and then levy all kinds of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, for example, Zhang Yue is to ask Huguang, Nanzhili, Fujian, Sichuan and other southern provinces to open a 'flat thief salary', and the obtained military expenses are dedicated to the military expenses required by the flat thief, and Emperor Zhengde has allowed him to play!

This has a very serious negative effect!

Well, this is not to say that the Ming Dynasty will lose the central financial power, because the Ming Dynasty has never had the central financial power, and the financial power is in the hands of local officials, so it is not a loss.

The real impact of this practice of local officials is that the pressure on ordinary people, especially those at the bottom, has increased instantly!

Although Zhang Yue's proposal to divide the average burden of the people is not very heavy, and it can even be said to be very light, but there are policies and countermeasures, and when the specific levy is levied, the local powerful people will naturally not pay, so their share will have to be transferred to those ordinary people who have no power and no power.

What's more, the local officials at the grassroots level often set up a name to collect additional money, and they dare to collect ten taels of silver if they should collect one tael of silver!

Although Zhang Yue received a large amount of military expenses to maintain military expenses, it also became a carnival feast for the cabinet bosses and ordinary officials in the Ming officialdom!

If the actual statistics are made, then the tax burden of the people in the southern provinces has at least more than doubled in just one year, and at most only one-tenth of this increase has been used for the military expenses of the provinces, and the other 90 percent has gone there? Naturally, it went into the private pockets of officials at all levels!

This kind of carnival is not a trivial matter for ordinary people's families who will be ruined if they encounter a little disaster, but a major event that will ruin their families.

In the feudal era, ordinary people had a very low ability to bear disasters, especially for the peasants at the bottom, and they had to sell their sons and daughters if the grain harvest was a little less!

In this year, there were countless people who died under the Ming Dynasty!

Therefore, it shows that the local officials of the dynasty built guns and artillery to train the new army, and they were exchanged for the people's poor livelihood.

And this is not the people who are bored in the mouths of those literati and officials, because the gentry class behind the literati and officials are still alive and well, eating and drinking what they should eat, drink and drink, and there is no.

When I say that the people are not living well, I mean ordinary people, especially the poor people at the bottom!

It's a pity that the officials can't see this kind of people's misery, and they don't care if they see it, these mud-legged people will starve to death, and if they dare to rebel, they will be suppressed directly!

And with many methods, Zhang Yue managed to maintain such a large-scale army, but now he found that relying on the existing army, he still couldn't stop the northward offensive of the puppet Tang thief army!

Now, he suddenly understood a little bit about the former Governor of Liangguang, Wang Yue!

It's not that I don't want to kill thieves and make meritorious contributions, but I really can't do anything!

At the beginning, Wang Yue watched the puppet Tang thief army kill all the way from Liuzhou to Wuzhou, and then to Guangzhou!

Now, he, Zhang Yue, is also watching the puppet Tang thief army go all the way north and kill Hengyang, but he can't do anything about it!