In order to reduce the pressure on the Fourth Army, Li Xuan has always increased his troops in the northwest, but it is not the main force that has increased, but the reserve division!

In this area, the Datang Army has already deployed a full ten reserve divisions, accounting for more than half of all reserve divisions north of the Yangtze River, and Li Xuan's consideration will increase the number of reserve divisions in this area to two in the near future, so as to completely free up the main force of the Fourth Army for mobile operations!

It is worth noting that a considerable number of these reserve divisions were directly adapted from the original Ming army border army!

On the one hand, although these Ming troops stationed in the north and northwest regions for a long time were all old armies, their overall quality was not bad, and on the other hand, when the Fourth Army marched into the northwest, in order to prevent a large number of controlled areas from being stolen by foreign enemies, it adopted a preferential policy of reorganizing and garrisoning on the spot for the Ming border troops stationed in the border towns and still resisting the localities.

In case of emergency, the Ming army in many border towns directly changed their names, that is, they became the Tang Dynasty Division, but this kind of reorganization was only limited to the reserve division.

As a result, the reserve divisions in the northwest region are relatively complicated, some of them are drawn from the Central Plains, some are recruited and formed on the spot, and some are reorganized by the border army of the Ming army.

This also leads to complex composition and weak combat effectiveness!

But there is no way to do it, who makes the current Datang Army insufficient!

The Fourth Army only has more than 30,000 people in total, and they are tired of controlling such a large area!

Although the combat effectiveness of the reserve division is not good, it is still good to suppress the local area and suppress civil strife, and it is okay to defend the city in the border town.

After all, those foreign enemies couldn't break through the border towns garrisoned by the Ming army before, and now it is unlikely to break through, and those foreign enemies are not as complete with guns and artillery as the Tang Army!

To put it simply, the current Fourth Army and the reserve divisions in the northwest region can protect themselves, but the attack is insufficient!

The Fourth Army is under great pressure, so naturally don't expect them to be able to send too many troops to fight in the south, and it is already very good to send an infantry regiment to each of the three passes of Xiangyang and Yiyang, and more combat tasks are actually done by two reserve divisions that work together.

On the northern front, there is basically no need to expect them to take De'an Mansion or Xiangyang Mansion, and in fact, there is no need for the Fourth Army to go south to break the situation.

After observing the defense on the other side of the Yangtze River by the river, Li Xuan went back with his ministers, he didn't know that when he took a large group of military and political dignitaries to inspect the other side of the river, on the other side of the Yangtze River, Zhang Yue also looked at Li Xuan and his party with a telescope!

Although the distance is very far, even if he uses a monocular produced by the Pseudo-Tang Thief Army, Zhang Yue can only see a large group of vague figures, but looking at this posture, it is not difficult for Zhang Yue to judge that his opponent in recent years, the Pseudo-Tang Emperor Li Xuan, is among them.

Just now, he even had an impulse, and directly called the only two nine-pound guns to bombard, in case of luck, maybe he could directly kill Li Xuan, even if he couldn't kill Li Xuan, but it was good to kill several other important ministers of the pseudo-Tang Dynasty.

It's just that he just thinks so, and reason tells him that at such a long distance, even a nine-pound cannon can't hit it, let alone hit it accurately.

The nine-pound artillery of the superintendent is actually a copy of the nine-pound artillery of the Tang Army, and the effective firing range is only more than 500 meters, even if the hitting accuracy is not considered, with the maximum firing range, it is only more than 3,600 meters.

And now Li Xuan is at least five thousand meters away from their artillery position, and the range of the artillery is not so far at all!

Even if it is within the maximum range of a nine-kilogram gun, say three thousand meters, it is basically not expected to be able to hit.

The shelling at this distance can basically only be heard, and the hit rate will be so bad that it will make you doubt your life!

After all, Li Xuan is not stupid, since he dares to go to the riverside to inspect the situation on the other side of the Yangtze River, he naturally considers his own safety issues, if there is not enough distance, how can he run to inspect it.

Even if he wanted to come, a group of important ministers would cry and shout to stop him!

Li Xuan came to Jiangxia, and the command structure of the Privy Council could also command the battle nearby, but for Li Xuan himself, the days had not changed much.

The Tang Dynasty has developed to this extent today, and many things do not need him to do it himself, even if it is this kind of decisive battle, there are a large number of generals and officers presiding, although Li Xuan is unwilling to admit it, but now that he has come to the front line, the biggest role is only to motivate morale.

After waiting for three days in Jiangxia, it was finally the main force of the Fifth Army that arrived in Hanyang!

After the Fifth Army arrived in Hanyang, it stationed troops on the north side of Hanyang!

And in this way, in fact, the Tang Army has already constituted a comprehensive encirclement of Hanyang!

On the west side, the main forces of the First Army, on the north side are the main forces of the Fifth Army, and on the east side, it is empty now, but the Second Army is coming, and it is expected to arrive in five days.

As for the south, it is the Yangtze River, and on the river is hundreds of warships of the Yangtze River Fleet!

Now the 30,000 supervising Chinese troops in Hanyang City are already difficult to fly!

Before, Zhang Yue didn't want to run, but now, he can't run away if he wants to!

On the twentieth day of the first month of the seventh year of Xuanping, the Second Army successfully arrived on the east side of Hanyang, thus completely encircling the Chinese army of Dubiao!

After the arrival of the Second Army, the Datang Army did not launch a general offensive at the first time, but waited for three days!

These three days were for the Second Army to rest and replenish supplies!

But three days later, more than 600 artillery pieces in the Tang Dynasty's division began a large-scale shelling!

And this scale of artillery bombardment is unprecedented since the formation of the Tang Army, and it is even more than the scale of naval guns used in the previous naval decisive battles at sea!

In this shelling, the army artillery units participating in the shelling included five field artillery regiments, four separate field artillery battalions, and seven heavy short-barreled howitzer battalions.

On the navy, also in accordance with the previous operational management, more than 100 artillery pieces were issued from inland warships and two naval artillery regiments were formed.

Among the many artillery pieces involved in the shelling, there were more than 150 pieces of 9-pound artillery, 100 pieces of 24-pound howitzers, 50 pieces of 48-pound howitzers, and 6 pieces of 14-pound heavy guns.

With so many artillery pieces firing, the scene was earth-shattering!

Almost every moment, artillery shells fell on the fortifications of the Chinese army, and the urban defense artillery positions of the Chinese army were the key targets.

More than half of the howitzers were aimed at the artillery positions of the Central Army!

There is a huge gap in the number of artillery on both sides, but the Chinese army is at an absolute disadvantage in the early artillery battles!

When the artillery battle lasted for two days, the entire city of Hanyang was already devastated, the gate tower on its city walls was almost completely destroyed, and many sections of the city wall were destroyed!

At this time, the Tang Army had not even completed the preparations, they had not even dug the tunnels used to blast the city walls, and the communication trenches used by the assault troops when they charged had not been dug yet.

However, the city of Hanyang on the opposite side has been changed beyond recognition, and even under the fierce shelling, it is difficult for the officers who are holding binoculars to observe the effect of the shelling.

The whole city seems to have become a dead city!

Seeing this scene, Li Xuan couldn't help but nodded, and then said to a group of courtiers: "It seems that the 50,000 shells fired in the past two days have not been in vain!" ”

"I am very satisfied with their work and hope that they will continue to work hard to complete the artillery preparations before the general attack to the greatest extent and blow up a passage for the assault troops!"

Li Xuan personally issued an order, saying that he was very satisfied with the artillery unit, although it was only a simple sentence, but it was quite morale-boosting.

Because this made the hard work of the artillerymen who worked hard to carry and load shells be recognized, and it was also recognized by the Son of Heaven!

In the next few days, the Tang Dynasty Wang Division didn't care that the artillery counterattack of the Chinese army in the city was getting smaller and smaller, and in the end they simply didn't fight back, not to mention that the city wall that had already collapsed several sections, they were still stubbornly shelling according to the established battle plan!

After beating the artillery positions of the Chinese army, hit the head of the city, and then shell the depth behind the city walls!

For this decisive battle, the logistics troops have prepared more than 80,000 rounds of artillery shells, and more shells are being transported along the Yangtze River waterway to this place.

The people in the logistics department were rare and generous, and they said to the generals in the field troops, you let go of the fight, this time, the artillery barrel is enough!

Actually, it really is!

There are so many shells prepared by the logistics department, if they really want to shoot them all, a considerable part of the artillery in the field troops will be scrapped!

In particular, the artillery in the Second and Fifth Armies has already experienced many battles before, and the life of many artillery pieces is already running out.

This situation is to make those artillery generals happy and miserable!

In the past, in most cases, when fighting a war, you had to count the shells to fight, and in this battle, each artillery could only shoot ten or twenty shells, and the most remarkable was thirty or fifty rounds, but it was rarely the same as now, and the shells were enough, so you could let go of your hands to fight.

There are too many shells, which makes them start to worry that the life of the cannon's barrel is insufficient!

Then he began to complain that the life of the barrel of the iron-cast artillery was too poor!

The general offensive of the Battle of Hanyang Fucheng has not yet begun, but several bigwigs of the army have discussed together many times whether it is time to replace the five-pound iron-cast artillery, preferably with bronze.

The life of the barrel of these five-pound iron cast guns is really poor!

In this war, the military's logistics units not only have to carry artillery shells, but also often need to carry spare artillery, and it is a shame to say this.

But they don't want to think about it, they also replaced bronze cannons with cast iron cannons back then!

Not for anything else, just for the sake of iron-cast artillery!

But now, they are starting to miss the good performance of the bronze gun, especially the life of the barrel!

However, unlike the army, which wanted to replace the iron guns with bronze guns, the navy tried hard to replace all the large-caliber guns with iron guns.