Sitting on the dragon chair, Li Xuan looked at the plan in his hand as before, and listened to Lei Wan explain his strategic ideas.

For Lei Wan's main direction, Li Xuan has also learned many times before, after all, if Li Xuan's approval is not obtained, it is impossible for Lei Wan to carry out a follow-up detailed plan.

In fact, the main strategic concept was already formed last year, that is, to go north to Shandong and Henan, looking for an opportunity to annihilate the main force of Emperor Zhengde.

But this is just an idea, and how to implement it to achieve the goal requires the efforts of Lei Wan and many generals.

This time, the battle plan explained by Lei Wan is actually a specific implementation plan.

Li Xuan listened very carefully, and through Lei Wan's explanation, Li Xuan also felt that his substitution was the right one, and Lei Wan's ability was obviously much higher than Zeng Ziwen.

Not only was he able to talk on paper like Zeng Ziwen, but he also served as chief of staff in the army many times, and he also had a very good set of actual combat commands, and when formulating combat plans, he would make different arrangements according to the different characteristics of each unit and the specific situation of the Ming army opposite.

Of course, such a huge battle plan naturally cannot be the credit of Lei Wan alone, in this case, you will wipe out the efforts of many staff officers in the war department.

After explaining the basic plan, the other generals were not polite in the slightest, and kept raising their own questions and even objections.

And this situation basically occurs in every strategic meeting, Li Xuan is already not surprised, this argument is also beneficial, and the perfect plan is perfected in the controversy.

As a matter of fact, he also knew that the plan that the War Department had come up with was finally perfected after countless heated discussions within the War Department.

Now the discussion was attended by several other forces of the Privy Council, as well as the main generals of the Second and Third Armies.

Although most of the major generals, such as Hao Bonian, Li Chunjing and others, were on the front line and could not leave to return to attend the meeting, most of them also sent their respective chiefs of staff back to Jinling to participate in the meeting.

In this Imperial Army Strategic Meeting, many generals discussed many issues such as logistics and supply, specific operations, etc., and the secretaries of several Hanlin Academy who were responsible for recording the meeting on the side were all soft.

After the meeting lasted for more than three hours, Li Xuan interrupted many arguments, and then announced the adjournment and continued in the afternoon!

On this day, Li Xuan directly pushed back all other affairs, soaked in the conference room to hold an army meeting, and waited until the evening, although there were still a lot of controversies among the people, but Li Xuan thought that the plan that had been perfected after discussion was enough.

It was immediately the clapper that formalized and approved the operational plan for the spring offensive!

After the battle plan was determined, the war machine of the Tang Dynasty was once again running at high speed!

Saying that the Tang Dynasty is a war machine is not a problem at all, because to put it mildly, the current Tang Dynasty is all serving for the war, and many departments in the cabinet are actually doing the role of auxiliaries, contributing to the war in the rear.

Moreover, the war preparations of the Tang Dynasty have never stopped, which can be seen from the fact that the major arsenals have almost never stopped producing all kinds of ordnance.

When a big war broke out on the front line, the arsenal was producing ordnance, and when the front line was resting, the arsenal was still producing ordnance!

In such a Tang Dynasty, in fact, when the front-line troops stopped the large-scale offensive, it was just to prepare for the next large-scale offensive.

A large number of large ships carrying hundreds of tons, loaded with all kinds of ordnance materials, set off from the Guangzhou wharf, and then go north through the coast, arrive at the material transit center of Wusong, Jiangyin, Yangzhou and other ports, and then distribute, most of them will be loaded onto small and medium-sized inland river transport ships, continue to transport north through the canal, and some continue to go west along the Yangtze River, and then transport to Jinling, Anqing, Jiujiang and other cities along the Yangtze River.

All units of the Third Army and the Second Army were replenished with soldiers, and at the same time, several mixed regiments were established and deployed in several important areas in Jiangbei, so that the main forces of the Second Army and the Third Army were freed up to go north.

Among the many additions, the most important is the flintlock pistol.

After the five-year flintlock pistol was finalized and officially mass-produced last year, almost all the flintlock pistols produced in the last few months were taken away by the Guards, and it was the turn of the Army and Navy after all the Guards were reloaded.

And through the production of these few months, the army has also successfully completed the refitting of the Fifth Infantry Division!

The Fifth Infantry Division has always been the core and main force of the Tang Army, and its reputation is on par with the First Infantry Division, but in the past two years, the actual combat effectiveness of this unit has actually surpassed that of the First Infantry Division and has become a veritable trump card unit in the Tang Army.

The army changed its flintlock pistol, and naturally preferred the Fifth Infantry Division.

In the process of changing clothes, because it is necessary to replace the spearmen with musketeers one to one, and this makes a large number of existing spearmen unemployed, it is naturally impossible to directly retire the spearmen.

For this reason, the Tang Army adopted the practice of directly training spearmen as musketeers!

At the end of last year, the Fifth Infantry Division was identified as the first batch of troops to replace flintlock muskets, and the Fifth Infantry Division stationed in Xuzhou at that time had no large-scale warfare, so the Fifth Infantry Division began to organize spearmen to train and operate muskets in a centralized manner, and adopted the method of one belt and one belt, so that each musketeer brought a spearman for training.

Later, when the first batch of about 2,000 flintlock muskets was equipped with the unit in January, the 5th Infantry Division used these flintlock muskets in rotation, with several soldiers sharing one, mainly to train new loading techniques and new queue tactics.

And with the increasing number of flintlock muskets, by March, when the Fifth Infantry Division had completed a complete rearmament, basically the original spearmen had become qualified musketeers.

Other units are also basically reequipped according to this model, but because of the limited production, it is impossible for the army to have a second main force equipped with flintlock pistols on the battlefield in a short period of time, and the Fifth Infantry Division will be the only army unit equipped with flintlock pistols in the spring offensive.

Why don't you say that there is only one Tang army, just the army troops, because the temporary brigade of the Guards Army that participated in the spring offensive is also equipped with flintlock guns.

Therefore, the actual flintlock units participating in the spring offensive will be two, with a total of about 13,000 flintlock musketeers!

The rest of the troops are still traditional units armed with arquebuses and spears!

In Xuzhou City, Chen Keqiao looked at the letter in his hand, and then began to convene a meeting of the officers under his command, the letter he just read was the official military order issued by the military headquarters of the Third Army, with the big seal of the Third Army, Hao Bonian's personal seal, and the latest password code.

In order to prevent the heralds carrying military orders and other confidential information from being intercepted and killed, thus causing the leakage of secrets, the Datang Army has adopted the use of passwords to write various secrets since last year.

This kind of full text is all kinds of meaningless, regular Arabic numerals written letters, which require a special code book to be translated, and this kind of code book is generally only carried by generals above the infantry regiment, and the code book is written randomly by a special team in the Military Intelligence Department, and then printed and distributed.

In addition, it is stipulated that under normal circumstances, the codebook shall be changed every one year, and if there is an emergency, such as theft, loss, etc., the person shall be held accountable and the backup codebook shall be used urgently.

The military order sent by Hao Bonian said that his Fifth Infantry Division should be ready for battle, and that when the time comes, the most advanced troops of the whole army will take the lead in launching an attack along the canal, and the specific time of the attack will be when he Hao Bonian comes to Xuzhou.

Yes, the specific time of the attack is not specified in the battle plan of the Imperial Palace, and a series of detailed plans formulated by Lieutenant Colonel Revan are actually detailed, but they are only responsible for the general direction, and the specific operation actually needs to rely on the troops on the front line.

The timing of the attack of the Third Army was to be decided by the Third Army itself, and of course, it could not be postponed without reason, but it was generally determined that the period from late March to early April would be determined.

Moreover, the overall spring offensive was timed with the launch of a general offensive by the Third Army, and then the units of the Second Army and the First Army launched corresponding actions.

Hao Bonian arrived in Xuzhou on 20 March, and after arriving in Xuzhou, he did not rush to order an attack, but first inspected the situation of the Fifth Infantry Division, and in particular, watched the Fifth Infantry Division's new tactical drills.

In this spring offensive, there is no doubt that the Third Army is the main force, and in the Third Army, the Fifth Infantry Division is the main force in the main force, so whether the situation of the Fifth Infantry Division is good or not will directly affect the success or failure of the Third Army.

Before Hao Bonian made a decision, he had to take a look at the situation of the Fifth Infantry Division with his own eyes, which was reasonable.

After watching a regiment-level exercise conducted by the Fifth Infantry Division, Hao Bonian sighed a little: The war in recent years has changed faster and faster.

In the early years, although muskets were also important, they were more important than cold weapon troops, and at that time, heavy armored spearmen and sword and shield soldiers were the core forces that determined the victory or defeat of the battlefield.

Later, it became a musketeer and a spearman, and the sword and shield bearer were reduced to only playing a certain role in siege warfare.

Now, however, the spearmen have been directly abandoned and turned into musketeers!

I just don't know how the Fifth Infantry Division, which abandoned the spearmen and was equipped with tens of thousands of flintlock guns, performed in actual combat!