As early as when the Tang Dynasty division went south to Liangguang, the Ming army in various places had already discovered that it was not possible to fight the puppet Tang thief army in the field, even if it had twice or even three times the advantage of troops, it was not safe.

The best way to fight against the puppet Tang thief army is to rely on the fortified city for passive defense!

Of course, at the beginning, such a passive defensive method was actually not very effective, because Liuzhou, Wuzhou, and Guangzhou were all conquered by the puppet Tang thief army.

And this made them feel deeply, and they thought that in order to resist the puppet Tang thief army, in addition to the thick and high city walls, they must also have a large number of guns and cannons, and train a firearms army like the puppet Tang thief army.

As a result, the high-level leaders of the Ming Dynasty, represented by Zhang Yue, invested in the wave of making guns and training new troops, and in the past two years, the total number of muskets made by the Ming Dynasty was actually not much less than that of the Tang Dynasty.

These guns were equipped to the hands of the Ming army in various places, and most of the guns made by the Ming Dynasty in the north were equipped with the Ming army in Beijing and the border army and the nearby areas, while most of the guns made in the southern region were concentrated in the supervision of Zhang Yue and the recruitment of troops in various places.

The Ming army in the north will not talk about it first, but only say that the Ming army in the south is mainly composed of 40,000 governors under Zhang Yue, followed by Yu Dayou's tens of thousands of musket troops, and there are also some small-scale recruits with only a few hundred people and two or three thousand people.

These are all armies equipped with a large number of firearms, and the proportion of arquebuses is basically about 20 percent, which is actually the old establishment of the Tang Dynasty's royal division.

In the musket army under the command of Yu Dayou, the proportion of arquebuses equipped was even higher, reaching about one-third, and this was almost similar to the reorganized Fifth Infantry Division.

Not only is the proportion of musket equipment similar, but in fact, the establishment of these firearms units of the Ming army is basically copied from the Tang Dynasty!

Build guns and train new troops.

How do you make guns? Directly imitated the guns of the pseudo-Tang thief army, and even the Ming army didn't even bother to change the name, and directly used the title of arquebus, instead of using any bird guns, bird guns and the like, and the artillery did not use any generals, invincible generals, but used five-pound artillery and seven-pound artillery as the title.

This is true for firearms, and the same is true for the detailed establishment of the army.

It has been a few years since the rise of the Tang Dynasty, and in this process, it is impossible to hide the detailed establishment of the Tang Dynasty Division, and the Ming Army has known the detailed infantry battalion establishment of the Tang Dynasty Division for a long time.

Of course, they just imitate, not copy it entirely, and the title is different.

Taking Zhang Yue's superintendent as an example, they still call small flags, general flags, 100 households, and 1,000 households, but the specific establishment is to directly imitate the pseudo-Tang thief army, and it is also a banner with sixteen people as a banner, with a small flag commander, six flags for one hundred households, a hundred household commanders, and a general flag as a deputy.

500 households are 1,000 households, with 1,000 households and 1,000 sub-households.

And the above-mentioned small flags, 100 households, and 1,000 households are basically equivalent to the platoons, teams, and battalions in the Tang Dynasty's division.

However, in the establishment of a higher level, the Ming army also has its own rules, that is, more than 1,000 households are guarded, and each guard is not a fixed number of people, as little as two or three thousand households, and as many as five or even seven or eight thousand households.

At the same time, the artillery of each guard is also directly under its own sole jurisdiction.

It is organized into an army by a number of guards, and the entire 40,000-person scale superintendent has a total of five armies.

The strength of each army is different, not only the main infantry, but also the artillery, cavalry and other forces.

The specific strength of each army and even each guard depends on the personal ability and power of these guard commanders and army commanders.

Why?

There will be soldiers for the generals!

These recruits are the recruits that belong to him Zhang Yue, and to the extent that they are Zhang Yue's private soldiers, although they fought for the Ming Dynasty, but the 40,000 governors are not loyal to Emperor Zhengde, but Zhang Yue!

Zhang Yue is the one who is loyal to Emperor Zhengde!

In the same way, the commanders of the various armies were loyal to Zhang Yue, but the guards under them were not loyal to Zhang Yue, but to themselves.

The same is true for thousands and hundreds of households!

Such layers of allegiance system constitute an extremely special military group of 'Governor'!

The personnel relationship in this military group is somewhat similar to that of the Hunan army in later generations, and it is maintained through the relationship between teachers and students, relatives and friends, fellow villagers, etc., but unlike the Hunan army in later generations, although these commanders in the supervision standard are inextricably linked to Zhang Yue, they are all court officials before, and many of them are civilian officials.

That's right, among the officers in Zhang Yue's supervision, only the middle and low-level are traditional military generals, but the middle and high-level generals are actually all civilian officials.

This is an army commanded by pure literati, which is very different from Yu Dayou's musket army, which is also the new army of the Ming Dynasty!

A large number of guns, newly recruited soldiers, and sufficient food and salary all make the superintendent under Zhang Yue's command have combat effectiveness far beyond that of the local guards!

But this powerful new army turned out to be in the hands of Zhang Yue alone, and even the imperial court had no way to directly command this army beyond Zhang Yue.

This also caused the Ming Dynasty bigwigs to worry, they were not worried that Zhang Yue would rebel, Emperor Zhengde and many cabinet bigwigs sent Zhang Yue out, and Zhang Yue had not been removed in the case of defeat, which was enough to prove their trust in Zhang Yue.

However, Zhang Yue is Zhang Yue, and the superintendent is the superintendent!

What if one day those generals under Zhang Yue's command gave Zhang Yue a yellow robe?

This is also why the guns built by the Ming Dynasty in the northern region were not sent to the south, but only equipped with guards in Shandong, Henan and Beizhili, as well as Beijing camps and border troops.

They have to keep a hand, they need to strengthen the defense force in the north to prevent the situation in the south from getting completely out of control, the risk of the situation in the south is not only the strength of the puppet Tang thief army, but also the rebellion of Zhang Yue or other generals under Zhang Yue.

It is also based on this kind of defensive psychology that the 20,000 border troops that went south to quell the rebellion were not under Zhang Yue's control, but under the control of the Jinling Military Department.

There are actually many armies that are also not controlled by Zhang Yue, for example, in the past two years, they have been in the limelight, and they have single-handedly blocked the army under the command of Yu Dayou, who is the puppet Tang thief army going north to Fujian.

Although Yu Dayou is now the commander of Fujian, nominally belonging to Zhang Yue, the governor of the six provinces, Yu Dayou has gradually become famous in the past two years, relying on nearly 10,000 firearms troops under his command, not only to hold Fujian, but also to give great support to the defenders located on Nanao Island, in addition, because the number of the Tang Army deployed here has been relatively small, and Fujian is not the main direction of attack of the Tang Dynasty, so Yu Dayou has lived a very nourishing life in Fujian.

Recently, the Ming Dynasty because of its meritorious service in training troops to resist thieves, on the basis of his Fujian general army, Jiadu Governor of the country, and at the same time, gave him the power to act cheaply, and gave his musket army the title of 'Broken Thief Army'.

Therefore, although the current Yu Dayou still nominally belongs to Zhang Yue's moderation, in fact, because of the four words 'act cheaply' granted by the imperial court, Zhang Yue can't control him, and basically he can fight how he likes to fight.

The thief army under Yu Dayou, although the establishment and armament are similar to those under Zhang Yue's supervision, but the personnel system is very different.

To a certain extent, it can be generally considered that Zhang Yue's superintendent is the army of literati, and Yu Dayou's thief army is the army of military generals, but they all have a common characteristic: they are both private armies!

And these two armies, plus 20,000 border troops, are also the main enemies of the Tang Dynasty King Division in the north!

The Ming army took the above-mentioned army as the backbone, supplemented by local recruitment, and the guards to do miscellaneous work, and jointly built the defense line of Huguang, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces to encircle the puppet Tang thief army!

Li Chunjing, who went north to Ji'an, Jiangxi, knew very well that the enemy he was facing was no longer those local guards two years earlier!

This time to attack Ji'an, the biggest trouble is the governor and the border army in the city, as long as they are killed, then the remaining tens of thousands of guards and young men are vulnerable!

But they have a strong city to rely on, and it will not be easy to kill them!

Li Chunjing is not in a hurry about this, he still has time!

So he was unhurriedly preparing the troops for the siege, especially the construction of artillery positions!

Whether this can break the city or not depends on whether the artillery can give it or not!

At the same time, he is still waiting for news from Jishui!

And his wait didn't last long, just four days later, news came from Jishui's side, and the two mixed regiments under the leadership of Brigadier General Gu Shizhong had successfully broken through Jishui.

The Ming army in Jishui City is no more than 10,000 people, and there is no main force, most of them are guards, only more than 1,000 recruits organized by local officials in Ji'an can barely fight, but under the onslaught of tens of thousands of Tang Dynasty divisions, these more than 1,000 recruits soon suffered heavy casualties, and then the remaining guards were scattered in a hurry.

Subsequently, after leaving two battalions of troops in Jishui, Brigadier General Gu Shizhong led the remaining more than 8,000 troops to return south to Luling City, Ji'an, and the Ming army in Luling City was already completely surrounded!

And this also means that the general attack on Luling City is about to begin!

When the troops were ready, especially the artillery, Li Chunjing did not hold any mobilization meeting, and it was very insipid that he gave the order to start attacking the city!

Li Chunjing issued an official order, which meant that the general attack of the Second Army would be launched immediately, and he was looking forward to the surprise of the performance siege artillery to him!