With the victories of the Tang Dynasty again and again, Li Xuan's prestige within the Tang Dynasty is also getting higher and higher, and it is already high to the point of deification.

Even though Li Xuan was not the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty, the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty, that was the first emperor Li Erbi, but people who know a little about the history of the Tang Dynasty, even if the history they see is a version beautified by the officials of the Tang Dynasty, it is still undeniable that it was Li Xuan who brought the Tang Dynasty from a small-scale bandit nested in a ravine to the extent that it now occupies half of China.

The Tang Dynasty has been able to come to this day, and to put it mildly, Li Xuan's role is to occupy the vast majority.

Without Li Xuan, the Tang Dynasty would never be where it is today!

Li Xuan, who brought the Tang Dynasty to today, has a high prestige, which is beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

Even Hao Bonian, who is famous and can be called the first general of the Tang Dynasty, does not dare to say a big word obediently in front of Li Xuan, let alone the middle and senior generals of the new generation who only got up in the middle and late stages.

And there is a very important thing in it is that in the Tang Dynasty now, most of the middle and senior generals are from the Imperial Academy, and the veterans who were born from bandits in the early years are already a handful, nothing more than Wang Danxu, Chen Butcher, Cai Erhu, and the rest are some of the former Ming generals, such as Zeng Ziwen, he is the general of the Ming army, and so is the cavalry general Cao Mingda.

But these people, in today's Tang Dynasty, are no longer the mainstream.

Today, Hao Bonian, Li Chunjing, Fang Xitong, Wang Chaohong, Chen Keqiao, Lei Wan and others are the core generals of the Tang Army, and they all have the same characteristics, that is, they are all born in the Imperial Academy and are proper protégés of the Son of Heaven.

And there are more at the rank of major general and brigadier general, and even more at the rank of colonel.

A large number of students from the Imperial Academy occupy high positions, which is also the main support for Li Xuan to control the army, without these students of the Imperial Academy, it would be much more difficult for Li Xuan to control the huge Tang Army and Navy.

The young colonel who Li Xuan held his hand was undoubtedly also a student of the Imperial Academy, and he was also a student of the later stage, and the relationship between these students of the later Imperial Academy and Li Xuan was more complicated.

On the one hand, it is the relationship between the monarch and the minister, and on the other hand, it is the relationship between teachers and students, when he saw that this person was missing a hand, but he still appeared on the front line in military uniform, Li Xuan naturally did not have any expression, personally held his hand, and said that Aiqing had worked hard.

A simple sentence also contains a trace of Li Xuan's guilt!

As a superior person, Li Xuan has learned to look down on life and death for so many years, the casualties of the front-line soldiers are just numbers on paper in his opinion, last year's Jiangbei War, the Third Army suffered nearly 8,000 casualties before and after, and the casualties were more than 5,000.

In the Battle of Anqing, the Second Army also suffered no less than 3,000 casualties.

At the same time, small and medium-scale fighting broke out occasionally on other fronts, and the cumulative number of casualties was several thousand.

If all of them are counted, last winter, the total number of casualties in the Datang Army had reached more than 10,000!

But more than 10,000 people, in Li Xuan's opinion, are just numbers on paper, and if there are casualties, then new recruits will be replenished.

But now, seeing with his own eyes that the students of the Imperial Academy he taught were injured on the battlefield and were forced to amputate, leaving only one hand left, at this moment, Li Xuan was also a little guilty.

But this trace of guilt only lasted for a short second!

To lead the Tang Dynasty to unify China and lead the rise of China, it is inevitable that there will be a lot of sacrifices in this process, and Li Xuan has long been psychologically prepared for this.

The simple reception outside the city was soon over, and then Li Xuan entered the city with the support of many courtiers and stayed in the temporary palace.

It is said that it is a palace, but in fact, it was just a rich merchant's mansion before, and the conditions naturally cannot be compared with the royal palace in Jinling City, but Li Xuan is here to fight, not to enjoy, so there is no dissatisfaction with this.

On the day of entering the city, Li Xuan gave a banquet to the ministers according to the custom, but during the war, it was naturally a big sin not to drink, whether it was Li Xuan or the ministers, they all tasted it at a moment's notice.

The next day, Li Xuan convened a strategic meeting in front of the emperor, which was attended not only by army generals, navy generals, but also civilian officials in the cabinet.

At the meeting, there was no such thing as a strategic direction, but the main thing was to hold a mobilization meeting to unify thinking and boost morale.

Subsequently, Li Xuan personally inspected all the units of the Third Army in military uniform, and in the process of inspection, Li Xuan was more pleased that although the Third Army went north to fight for more than half a month, the spirit and morale of the officers and men were still relatively full, and the continuous operation for most of the month did not bring any trouble to the Third Army.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that the Ming army took the initiative to shrink, and the Third Army did not fight large-scale battles in most of the month.

The previous northward march was a battle, not to mention an armed march.

However, the next northward journey is different, according to the news reported by the reconnaissance cavalry, combined with various information transmitted back by the Military Intelligence Department, Emperor Zhengde has personally sat in Anping Town, and the Shandong Ming army and even part of the Ming army that was originally in Henan have all gathered here, and the total strength will not be less than 100,000 people.

In addition, the main cavalry force of the Tatars had already arrived and appeared in the area of Fan County, southwest of Anping Town.

The 80,000 Ming army and the 50,000 Tatar cavalry have already set up a posture in this area, and if the Tang Army continues to go north, it will meet them, and when the time comes, a large-scale decisive battle will inevitably break out!

At present, the Tang Army marching into Shandong has most of the main force of the Third Army, about 50,000 people, in addition, Li Xuan also brought 15,000 guards troops, 30,000 people including two divisions of the Fourth Army and artillery, and if you count the thousands of officers and soldiers of the canal fleet of the navy, then the total strength is just 100,000.

Simply speaking, the comparison of the strength of the Tang and Ming armies is one to one, setting a record for the smallest comparison of the strength of the two sides in the previous large-scale decisive battles.

But there is a great variability here, that is, it is also 100,000 troops, but there are tens of thousands of cavalry in the Ming army!

In addition, it is also important that there are 50,000 Tatar cavalry next to it!

The cavalry of the Tatars is more elite than the cavalry of the Ming army, speaking of cavalry archery, the Tatars are masters of playing mounted archery, people have grown up on horseback since childhood, and it is needless to say that they are skilled in equestrian skills, and archery is also quite good.

In addition, the cavalry of the Tatars also has a great tactical advantage, that is, their cavalry is all single-horse, two-horse or even three-horse, and their mobility, especially the ability to run long distances, far exceeds the cavalry of the Ming army, not to mention the cavalry of the Tang Dynasty.

The Tang cavalry is extremely short of horses, and they have always been riding a single horse, and when they are not charging to fight, they will never ride a horse, and even when they are marching, even the baggage is carried by the cavalry themselves, in order to preserve the physical fitness of the war horse.

In this battle, the focus is to deal with the cavalry of the Ming army and the Tatars, after all, the total number of cavalry on the opposite side adds up to more than 60,000 cavalry, and this one is not good, even if there are more guns on their own side, it will cause big trouble.

In order to confront the cavalry on the opposite side, many generals and staff officers of the Tang Army were not idle, and they put forward many strategic ideas after pondering and meditating.

But many strategic ideas are inseparable from how to deal with the enemy's cavalry, especially how to deal with the enemy's cavalry charge!

The enemy has such a big cavalry advantage, it will definitely rely heavily on cavalry to fight, and now, the Tang Army is trying to figure out how to use infantry against cavalry.

Frontal formation against cavalry, that's for sure, but how to line up is also to pay attention to, the four-cornered phalanx is wanted, but the four-cornered phalanx is just a tactic at the level of an infantry battalion, which is put in a 100,000-person array, how to arrange the troops, that is quite a big science.

In addition, the cavalry of other people is not stupid, it is impossible to directly attack the well-defended infantry phalanx of the Tang Dynasty stupidly, they will attack around the rear!

After all, the cavalry has an absolute advantage in mobility, and if you want to fight, you can fight, and you can leave if you want, and the Tang Army has no way at all.

In this case, Lieutenant General Lei Wan, the head of the Operations Department who went north with Li Xuan, pointed out sharply that although the enemy's cavalry was a great threat, their infantry was the weakness.

The enemy's cavalry can come and go independently, but their infantry cannot, as long as they quickly go north to Anping Town, and entangle the 100,000 infantry of the puppet Ming.

Do you say their cavalry will go or not?

Let's go, these 100,000 infantry Datang Army will swallow it in one gulp!

If the enemy cavalry does not leave, then if you want to change the disadvantage of their infantry, then you must take the initiative and finally force the enemy cavalry and your own infantry to engage in a large-scale decisive battle!

In the face of the large-scale charge of the enemy's cavalry, there will definitely be casualties, and there will definitely be no less, but even if it is a one-to-one exchange, the Datang Army will have something to earn.

Although the infantry of the Tang Army consumes a lot, to be honest, the current infantry is cheap consumables, and the expensive thing is the cost of maintaining the troops, not the infantry itself.

With 50,000 dead and wounded infantrymen, the Privy Council Training Department will be able to immediately replenish 10,000 trained recruits, and 50,000 will be able to be sent up in a few months.

The Cabinet of the War Department's Recruitment Department is now recruiting troops in the rear every day, and now that Datang occupies so many places and has a large population and resources, recruiting troops is no longer a problem, the problem is how many troops can be raised.

Because the gap in the troops is not large, the War Department is now recruiting soldiers, and it has already begun to limit the number of soldiers by raising the requirements, and it is no longer the case in previous years.

But the cavalry on the opposite side suffered fifty thousand dead and wounded? Not to mention a few months, they can't recover for a few years!

As long as they can defeat their tens of thousands of cavalry, even if they pay a heavy price, the staff officers in the war department think that it is cost-effective, of course, this kind of thing must not be said to those ordinary officers and soldiers in the army, because no one wants to become cannon fodder and then be consumed.

But just because you don't say that doesn't mean you don't do it!

Therefore, after determining the main battle plan, Li Xuan personally led the army to continue to go north along the canal, and the goal was directly aimed at Anping Town!