According to Hao Bonian's order, the route of Sun Shuangxi's detachment to the north is not from the direction of Chenzhou, but will bypass Chenzhou and go north like the main force of the First Infantry Division before.

Because he wants to lead his troops to return to the combat sequence of the 1st Infantry Division as soon as possible, and prepare for the subsequent Armageddon!

He had already received information from the military department, which said that the Ming army in the direction of Changsha and Hengzhou was converging, and it was very likely that they would continue to move south, and then besiege the main force of the First Infantry Division.

As for where it is, it depends on the final outcome of the actions of the forces of both sides, but judging by the current actions of both sides, a major war is almost inevitable.

Because of how the follow-up Ming army will act, it is impossible to judge the military headquarters of the First Army now, so Hao Bonian can only concentrate his troops as soon as possible and make complete preparations to meet the battle.

This is also the reason why they gave up attacking Chenzhou first, now there are at least 10,000 Ming troops in Chenzhou City, if you add the young men they temporarily recruited, I am afraid that there are 14,000 or 5,000 people.

If the Tang Army wants to storm Chenzhou City, it will either pay heavy casualties and quickly conquer it, or waste a lot of time to grind it slowly.

And these two are unacceptable to Hao Bonian, otherwise, he would not have come up with such a complicated plan in the first place, just to attract the Ming army out of the city.

Therefore, in Hao Bonian's strategic planning, Chenzhou City is to keep it as it is, let the provisional Fourth Regiment continue to watch, as long as the Ming army in the city does not take the initiative to rush out, then the provisional Fourth Regiment will not take the initiative to attack.

The main forces of the 1st Infantry Division, including Sun Shuangxi's troops, began to assemble, of course, before the assembly, Hao Bonian was leading his troops to attack the Ming army in the direction of Guiyang Prefecture.

In the end, Hao Bonian's goal was to concentrate the strength of two infantry divisions to meet the Ming army heading south in the direction of Hengzhou and Changsha!

When Hao Bonian led the troops of the First Army to continue fighting with the Ming Army in Huguang, the First Supplementary Brigade also took on the responsibility of the previous robbery battalion and garrison brigade.

As for the crisis supply line close to the front line, it has nothing to do with them, and if it is not absolutely necessary, the higher authorities will not let them participate in the battle.

After all, the supplementary brigade is more strict, it is just a training unit, and its core purpose is to provide supplementary troops for the front-line troops and be responsible for specific combat missions, which is not their task.

In the previous series of battles between the First Infantry Division and the Provisional Fourth Regiment, although the losses were relatively small, they also suffered some losses of soldiers, but the First Infantry Division has always maintained a full strength in strength, where did these supplementary soldiers come from?

Naturally, they were all drawn from the 1st Replenishment Brigade!

The First Supplementary Brigade has also continued to receive new recruits from several recruit camps in Guangdong who have completed basic training, so that the First Supplementary Brigade has always maintained a full training establishment.

It is precisely because of the steady stream of recruits from the supplementary brigades that the 1st Infantry Division and the 4th Provisional Regiment have been able to maintain their full strength and continue to fight.

In particular, the soldiers from the supplementary brigade have not only received complete basic training in the new barracks, but have also received training close to actual combat in the supplementary brigades, and their overall quality is much better than in the past, when recruits were directly transferred from the new barracks to supplement them.

In view of the good effect of the supplementary brigade, Li Xuan wanted to set up a fourth supplementary brigade, but unfortunately, the financial capacity of the Tang Dynasty was no longer able to form a supplementary brigade under the condition of supporting the scale of the existing army.

You must know that the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty's naval and land armies, whether they are regular armies or supplementary brigades, are all active professional armies that are completely out of production, and with the current population base and financial capacity of the Tang Dynasty, it is almost the limit to support the current army of nearly 100,000 people.

This is no longer a limitation on the production of ordnance, but a financial one.

Of course, if you don't pursue quality like before, only pursue quantity, and greatly reduce the treatment of soldiers and the quality of equipment, then you can expand the army by many people, but the combat effectiveness of such an army is completely inadequate, otherwise the Tang Dynasty would not have eliminated the garrison and the thief hunting camp before.

At present, the core of the Tang Army's construction is relatively clear, that is, to maintain a certain scale, and then improve the combat effectiveness of the existing troops as much as possible!

The 100,000 army, if used well, is barely enough, and next, the main job of the Datang Army is to continuously improve their equipment level!

At present, an infantry division is equipped with an artillery battalion, a total of 24 artillery pieces, and the artillery in the artillery battalion of many infantry divisions is only a three-kilogram shotgun, which cannot meet the artillery needs of the Tang Army.

According to Li Xuan's own plan, in the next year, the existing artillery battalions directly under the infantry divisions of the Datang Army will be expanded into artillery regiments, and the number of artillery pieces in each regiment needs to be expanded to more than 50.

In this case, an artillery battalion would be reduced to eighteen guns, but an infantry division would have three such artillery battalions with fifty-four guns.

This will greatly increase the artillery power of the infantry division!

At the same time, the spear regiment under the infantry division also needs to be gradually reorganized into a musket regiment, and more importantly, the number of musketeers should be greatly increased, and the optimal ratio is that the ratio of musketeers to spearmen is one to one.

In this way, even if the infantry unit still has heavy armor, sword and shield soldiers, and archers, but the musketeers of an infantry division need to be increased to the level of at least about 3,000 people, plus the baggage troops, grenadiers, and cavalry, then the strength of an entire infantry division equipped with muskets will reach nearly 6,000 people!

And this standard will be three times higher than the current level of less than 2,000 people!

To put it simply, the core goal of the Datang Army in the coming year is to double the number of artillery pieces and triple the level of muskets, which is not so easy to achieve.

Why would Li Xuan rather increase the number of guns than the number of troops, because the money for recruiting, cultivating, and supporting an ordinary soldier is definitely much more expensive than a musket.

Raising a soldier costs at least three taels of silver a month, and the price of a musket is only about three taels of silver!

The cost of raising a soldier for a year is enough for the Tang Army to purchase twelve muskets, not including settling-in allowance and training expenses.

When the cost of manpower exceeds the cost of muskets, Li Xuan will naturally tend to increase the number of firearms and equipment, and postpone the expansion of troops!

Therefore, although he wanted to expand the army in his heart, after Li Xuan saw the financial report from the Ministry of Taxation, especially after seeing the financial budget submitted by the Ministry of Taxation for three years in Xuanping, Li Xuan decisively gave up the idea of continuing to build a new army, even if it was just a supplementary brigade!

Just when the war in Huguang continued to break out, the departments of the Tang Dynasty in Zhaoqing were already preparing for next year's work.

In particular, the budget work is the top priority!

Because you can do as much as you want!

On December 30, the day when the second year of Xuanping was about to end, the Ministry of Taxation officially submitted the budget for the third year of Xuanping!

The budget of the Ministry of Taxation includes the revenue budget and the expenditure budget, but the gap is quite large, that is, the fiscal expenditure of Xuanping in three years will far exceed the fiscal revenue.

According to the estimation of the Ministry of Taxation, in the third year of Xuanping, the Tang Dynasty will be able to provide the Tang Dynasty with a total of about 9 million taels of silver in the central financial revenue based on the current main control areas, that is, Guizhou (excluding the northeast of Guizhou occupied by the Ming army), Guangxi and Guangdong.

Among them, Guangdong is the majority, and Guangzhou alone will contribute nearly one million taels of silver in taxes, because Guangzhou is an important maritime trade town, and it is also an important agricultural town in the Pearl River Delta, with more agricultural taxes, commercial taxes and even tariffs.

In terms of taxes, the bulk is still the land tax in the feudal dynasty, that is, the agricultural tax in the Tang Dynasty, accounting for about 40% of all the financial revenue of the Tang Dynasty.

However, even if the proportion of agricultural tax is relatively large, it can still be seen that the tax revenue of the Tang Dynasty does not all rely on agricultural tax, because the second largest tax under the agricultural tax, that is, the commercial tax, accounts for 26 percent, only 14 percentage points less than the agricultural tax, and the Ministry of Taxation expects that in the three years of Xuanping, the tax revenue that the Tang Dynasty can collect will reach more than two million taels of silver.

In addition, there is a large part of the tax, that is, the salt tax, which is the key, like all feudal dynasties, the Tang Dynasty also implemented an extremely strict salt monopoly system, and in order to protect the income of the salt industry, the Tang Dynasty set up the Datang Salt Company under the Ministry of Commerce, and set up branches in each province and each province respectively, responsible for the production, transportation and even sales of salt.

Except for salt companies, all private salt production, salt transportation, and salt sales are illegal behaviors that have been severely cracked down!

In other words, the Tang Dynasty was competing with the people for profit, well, more precisely, with salt merchants!

As for the salt merchants, if they are not satisfied, they will directly raid their homes and exterminate the clan!