Just when Chen Ke led a group of soldiers to carry out adaptation training before the battle, they were full of food and sleep, and continued to eat when they had slept enough, the generals of the Ming army, Hu Guangdu, who had just left Xingquan Mansion and entered Jingzhou with a large army, and Hong Linquan, who also held the title of general, was irritable.

This march was relatively smooth, but on the way, I don't know who revealed the news, so that the middle and low-level officers and even ordinary soldiers below knew that their supply lines had been cut off by the puppet Tang thief army, and the fact that the army had less than seven days of food in stock.

This situation inevitably caused the morale of the military to fluctuate, and many middle-level officers showed a little pessimism.

Some people even prefer not to believe in the correct information, and they say that there are tens of thousands of pseudo-Tang thieves who cut off the supply lines between the two places, and there are at least 20,000 real thieves among them.

These fools don't want to think about it, if there are tens of thousands of puppet Tang thieves in Jingzhou in the north, and there are 20,000 real thieves in them, they still need to cut off the supply lines between the two places, and it is better to kill Xingquan Mansion directly or storm Jingzhou City?

How many troops does the puppet Tang thief army have?

Although the outside world has said tens of thousands of troops in the puppet Tang Dynasty thief army, and some say hundreds of thousands, Hong Linquan, as a senior general of the Ming army, still knows something.

After all, although the puppet Tang thief army can conceal the detailed strength, many things are semi-public, as long as someone has a heart to inquire and collect, even ordinary people can judge from some official news of the puppet Tang.

From many channels, the total strength of the puppet Tang thief army is a relatively vague number, and it is difficult for all parties to judge, because the puppet Tang thief army has three categories: guards, regular army, garrison army, and robbery camps, and the strength of the thief hunting camp is very difficult to determine, not to mention them, even if it is Li Xuan himself, it is not clear how many robbery camps there are in the huge Tang Dynasty, because almost every county under the control of the Tang Dynasty will have a thief hunting camp, but the number is not uniform, and some are less. There are more of them, and they are constantly changing.

However, it is difficult to judge the number of the capture and robbery camp, but the number of garrisons, regular armies and guards in the Tang Dynasty is relatively easy to judge, because this can be judged directly.

A brigade of the Puppet Tang Thief Army has about 6,000 people, and it is rumored that there are five regular military brigades in the Puppet Tang Thief Army, almost seven or eight garrison brigades, so if you calculate it, it is about 80,000 people, and then add other messy troops, it is more appropriate to give an estimate of 100,000 people.

But in fact, many troops in the Tang Dynasty were dissatisfied, and there were many auxiliary units such as baggage and navy, and there was also a new barracks that was independent of the combat troops.

Not to mention anything else, just the number of recruits who are being trained in the boot camp is about 20,000 people.

Because the troop configuration of the Tang Dynasty Division is relatively complex and has many numbers, it has always been difficult for the outside world to judge how many troops the Tang Dynasty Division has.

But there is one thing that many people can affirm, that is, the rules of the pseudo-Tang thief army, that is, the so-called real thieves, at most 30,000 people.

Because the puppet Tang thief army has a total of five infantry brigades, all of these five are counted as going up, and there are only 30,000 people.

It is impossible for the main force of these puppet Tang thieves to be used on a certain front, and there are them in Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Huguang, because there are several thousand puppet Tang thieves in Jingzhou, and that is already good, but it is impossible to have tens of thousands.

For those who were deliberately exaggerated because of ignorance or fear, but they all shook the morale of the army, Hong Lin caught and killed one by one, and in the past few days, he has killed more than a dozen such people before and after, including even a thousand households.

In this way, the morale of the army was initially stabilized, but even so, the soldiers still had fear for the future in their hearts.

With such a group of people to fight against the new force of the Pseudo-Tang Thief Army, he felt quite stressed!

But now he doesn't have much to worry about this, no matter what, he needs to go to Jingzhou, to kill this pseudo-Tang thief army, even if he can't completely kill them, but he has to drive them out of Jingzhou, otherwise, the supply lines in these two places will not be restored, and the more than 30,000 troops in Xingquan Mansion rely on food stocks, but they can't support it for too long.

Ten days is okay, and half a month is barely okay, but after a long time, there will inevitably be uncontrollable changes.

After marching east with the army, he soon learned the information of the puppet Tang thief army from the mouth of the scout!

As the previous intelligence said, this pseudo-Tang thief army that appeared in Jingzhou really has 7,000 people, and most of them are wearing blue clothes and red pants This kind of ugly military uniform, according to the experience of a group of Ming troops, but all the thieves who wear this kind of ugly military uniform are real thieves, although it is ugly, but the combat power should not be underestimated.

Therefore, although he had an army of 15,000 on hand, he was still more cautious, and sent all the people on horseback under his command out to continue to investigate, on the one hand, to maintain the monitoring of the puppet Tang thief army in person, and on the other hand, to reconnoiter to the periphery to see if there were other puppet Tang thief armies in ambush.

He didn't want to be in front of the enemy, when suddenly another army of thieves appeared and attacked his flank.

In addition, he also sent fast horses to Jingzhou City to report the news, so that they could be prepared, and agreed to meet in five days about twenty miles northwest of Jingzhou City.

He didn't plan to attack the puppet Tang thief army at the first time, he still planned to fight steadily, first join up with the Jingzhou defenders and then attack this bold army, but now they are still staying outside Jingzhou City.

At that time, you will be able to gather about 25,000 soldiers and horses, and you will be more sure of fighting a thief army of 7,000 people, and even if you can't win at that time, you will be able to protect yourself.

Hong Linquan was extremely cautious, and instead of leading his army towards the Fourth Army, he began to make a detour to the north.

Naturally, this situation was quickly learned by Chen Keqiao.

It's not that the Ming Army only has scout cavalry, and the Fourth Army also has scout cavalry!

At this time, although the two sides were separated by dozens of miles, because of the existence of a large number of scouts, in fact, the movements of the two sides were transparent to each other.

There's no way, the speed of the scouts is fast, it doesn't take much, dozens of scouts can roughly search the places for dozens of miles, not to mention, there are a lot of scouts on both sides.

And when the scouts of both sides conduct investigations, it is inevitable that there will be contact!

At this time, about ten miles away from the garrison of the Fourth Army, more than a dozen cavalrymen of the Tang Dynasty Division were leading their horses and moving forward slowly, looking at the direction of their march, but instead of going to the direction of the Ming army, they circled around their own troops.

That's right, they are not the scout cavalry sent out by Chen Keqiao to investigate, but the cavalry unit in the second cavalry battalion belonging to the Fourth Army, their task is not to investigate, but to shoulder the task of guarding the periphery, and at the same time intercept and kill the Ming army scout cavalry that infiltrated in.

In order to save the physical strength of the horses, they did not march on horseback, but the cavalry led the horses, and even in order to reduce the burden on the horses, they even carried their own equipment on their backs, leaving only a small amount of equipment on the horseback.

In the Tang cavalry unit of the single horse, in fact, unless it is combat time, in normal times, even if it is a combat readiness patrol, it is difficult to see the cavalry marching on horseback, but any cavalry who dares to do this will be directly whipped by the cavalry officers!

Because as a cavalryman, the war horse is his second life, whether it is to escape or kill the enemy, it is heavily dependent on horses, so there is a crucial article in the relevant regulations of the cavalry, that is, no matter when and where, the physical fitness of the war horse must be preserved as much as possible.

Unless the officer explicitly ordered a rapid march on horseback, it was never permissible to ride a horse on the march.

The more than a dozen cavalrymen who marched with horses belonged to the First Cavalry Corps under the Second Cavalry Battalion, and were sent from above to carry out the task of guarding the perimeter.

As they walked, they looked around, trying to find traces of the enemy cavalry.

At noon, a lieutenant cavalry officer who led the team ordered the troops to rest on the spot, in addition to the soldiers eating dry food and drinking water, they also needed to feed the horses.

During the execution of combat missions, in order to ensure the physical fitness of the war horse to the greatest extent, it is necessary to feed the best material.

While most of the cavalry began to feed their horses in addition to their own food, the other two cavalry went out to the edge of the grove to serve as a guard.

These two cavalrymen looked a little strange, because the age difference between them was too great, the older one looked like he was in his forties, this age was a veritable elder for the ancient times when the average life expectancy was only twenty or thirty years old, and many people had a large group of children and grandchildren at this age.

The other looked only fifteen or sixteen years old, and his face was still immature, but both of them had one thing in common, that is, they were extremely strong.

Although it is said that there is a general lack of nutrition in this era, resulting in the general thinness of the people's bodies, the regular army soldiers in the Tang Dynasty are exceptions, they have sufficient food to supplement nutrition, coupled with proper physical training, physical fitness is much better than that of ordinary people, and some veterans who have been in the army for a long time are even stronger and stronger.

The bare little arms of these two people are strong enough to see the lines of the muscles, which are enough to make a group of sub-healthy future generations envious.

At this time, the two of them invariably showed a hint of vigilance, the young cavalry leaned directly on the ground, and then put his ears close to the ground, and then raised his head to reveal a heavy color and said: "There are enemy horses!" ”