For the Battle of Guangzhou, the Tang Dynasty, including Li Xuan himself, was extremely concerned, and at the same time quite cautious, for fear of suffering a defeat under the city of Guangzhou, thus shaking the current good situation of the Tang Dynasty.

The reason why I am worried about losing the battle in Guangzhou is that there are many factors, first of all, the city of Guangzhou is different from many inland cities, although Guangzhou is also a traditional city, but its commerce and trade are extremely developed, the water network is dense, the city is built on the north bank of the Pearl River, and its north is Baiyun Mountain, and the western region is also the Pearl River and its tributaries, only in the east can be regarded as a relatively open place.

At the same time, the city also borrowed the water of the Pearl River to build a perfect moat system.

In such a place with a dense water network, in fact, for an army with the army as the core, especially the field army, such as the Tang Dynasty, it is more troublesome to attack, and many advantages cannot be brought into play.

In the past few months, the Ming Army's naval division has been firmly in control of the sea control in the Pearl River Basin, although the Tang Navy has also tried to launch a water war, but it can only take advantage of some small-scale battles, once the main force of the Ming Army's naval division is dispatched, the Tang Navy has to avoid the war.

Because the Ming Army's naval division doesn't compete with any naval artillery at all, well, although the Ming Army's naval division has more naval artillery than the Tang Navy's!

The sailors of the Ming army played all the way up, playing hand-to-hand combat, and attacking with fireboats, and the Tang Navy was quite helpless!

There is no way, there are not enough ships, not enough naval guns, not enough sailors, even if you have the performance advantage of naval guns, you can't beat it, and in the end you can only rely on the land batteries to defend to the death.

Long before the capital of Zhaoqing, the Tang Dynasty had already decided to build a fort in the dangerous place of Antelope Gorge in the east of Zhaoqing City to defend the important land of Gyeonggi.

Antelope Gorge is one of the small three gorges of the Xijiang River, this water flow is turbulent, the water is whirlpooled, because the Xijiang River is thousands of meters wide in the urban area of Zhaoqing, but after reaching the Antelope Gorge this side, it is only two or three hundred meters, its water depth is forty or fifty meters on average, and the deepest depth can even reach seventy or eighty meters.

This kind of terrain is almost a natural waterway pass!

Especially after the Tang Dynasty fixed the capital of Zhaoqing, in order to prevent the enemy from going north along the Xijiang River from the sea, it became the top priority to build forts to hold the Xijiang River.

After the capture of Zhaoqing, the construction of forts here was also on the agenda, because at the beginning there was no need to face the threat on land in this place, because the Ming army in Zhaoqing and even the nearby areas was gone, and the Tang Army firmly controlled the ground control of the nearby areas, so in the case of little threat on the ground, the early project was mainly to place artillery and hold the river.

Therefore, the construction of the fort was relatively fast, and the only thing that was more troublesome was to give the fort the artillery it needed, and in this regard, the navy and the army worked together to take the initiative to retire the equipment time of some seven-pound heavy guns, so as to equip some of the artillery to the Antelope Gorge Fort.

Up to now, three 1,200-pound guns (nine pounds) have been deployed in this battery, and the 500-pound guns that have always belonged to the artillery unit of the Tang Army have also been placed in the battery, thus realizing the establishment of 800-pound and 1,200-pound heavy artillery in the field artillery battalion, simplifying the logistical pressure.

The artillery deployed in Antelope Gorge is already enough to use the firing range to completely cover the entire river, and its seven-pound guns can even hit the other side of the river.

In order to protect these artillery pieces and prevent the enemy from breaking through the fort from land, the Tang Dynasty stationed a whole battalion of reserve battalions and two battalions of garrison battalions here, plus a full battalion of artillery units and a small number of auxiliary units, and the above departments were reorganized into the Antelope Gorge Independent Regiment under the direct jurisdiction of the Privy Council.

Relying on this Antelope Gorge Fort, the Datang Navy repelled the attempts of the Ming army and naval divisions to go up the river many times!

However, although this can ensure the safety of the water surface of the Xijiang River in the Zhaoqing area, the Datang Navy is still unable to obtain control of the water surface of the Pearl River Basin, which also leads to the inability to use these dense water networks whether it is logistics transportation or operations, not to mention, it is also necessary to avoid the dense water networks, so as not to be attacked by the Ming army's naval divisions.

Therefore, the attack on Guangzhou City was greatly constrained!

In addition to the complex geographical situation of Guangzhou City itself, it is also related to the relatively tenacious will of the Ming army in Guangzhou City to defend the city!

Wang Yue, the governor of Liangguang, gathered almost all the troops under his command who could fight and hoarded them in the city of Guangzhou, and it was initially estimated that there were at least more than 20,000 Ming troops in the city, and Hao Bonian judged that most of them were still regular troops.

Secondly, they also know that the Ming army in Guangzhou has obtained a large number of muskets and artillery, which are copied and purchased.

Those twelve-pounder naval guns were even bigger than the largest artillery in the Tang Dynasty's division, and such a large cannon was placed on the top of the city, but anyone who was not blind could see it.

As for the Ming army, it is not surprising that they are equipped with muskets, because in the past few times when they carried out fire reconnaissance and launched a tentative attack, the Ming army at the head of the city had already used a large number of muskets to fight back, but they did not know how many muskets Hao Bonian had in the Ming army.

The soldiers are strong and strong, and there are a lot of artillery, and more importantly, the strength of the Tang Navy is insufficient, and it is impossible to completely block the material transportation channels of Guangzhou City, whether it is food, weapons or even soldiers, the Ming army can be transported to Guangzhou through the Pearl River.

This situation is not in many previous battles, it can be said that the Tang Dynasty division has fought so many battles, but Guangzhou this time the Ming army occupies the most advantage.

What's more, in fact, the will of the Ming army to defend the city is still relatively firm, Guiyang relies on seven or eight thousand remnants of soldiers to defend from last year to the present, and the entire central Guizhou has fallen into the hands of Tang thieves, only the Ming army in Guiyang can proudly say: Guiyang is still holding on.

Many other cities were basically defended, such as Liuzhou and Wuzhou, both of which were held by the Ming army for a long time, and the Tang Dynasty paid a lot of money to conquer them.

But even if the Battle of Guangzhou is not easy to fight, the Tang Dynasty King Division must also fight, because as long as the city of Guangzhou is captured, then the gate of the Xijiang River can be completely closed, so as to avoid the superior Ming army and naval division from attacking Guangdong from the Xijiang River.

At the same time, after conquering Guangzhou, the Tang Dynasty was able to free up the main force of the First Army for subsequent expansion operations.

Because of the existence of Guangzhou, the main force of the First Army is unable to move, and the Third Garrison Brigade has no way to move, which directly leads to the fact that the Tang Dynasty Wang Division has been unable to take the northern and western regions of Guangdong for a long time, not that Li Xuan does not want to conquer these places, but that he really can't draw enough troops, and he can barely maintain the strategic initiative against Shaozhou Mansion, which is already very rare.

Therefore, from the perspective of the overall military strategy, Guangzhou must be taken, and it cannot be delayed for too long!

In addition, from the political and economic influence, it is also the sooner to take Guangzhou, the better, this year Guangzhou is the only commercial port in the south, foreign maritime trade is very prosperous, take Guangzhou, you can completely open up the Tang Dynasty and the outside world of maritime trade, which can not only obtain a large number of valuable strategic materials, but also can provide rich tariff revenue.

Although the Tang Dynasty has taken over the western coastal areas of Guangdong, Hepu Port, the capital of Lianzhou, is also a relatively traditional foreign trade port, but its trade influence and port throughput are incomparable with Guangzhou.

Today, the Hepu Port of Lianzhou Mansion is only an import channel for strategic materials for the Tang Dynasty, and does not have the status of an industrial and commercial center.

Of course, even if Hepu Port is only a small port, it is still very important for the current Tang Dynasty, through this port, the Tang Dynasty can finally get in direct contact with those maritime merchants, and openly purchase all strategic materials such as saltpeter, sulfur, steel, etc.

Like Hepu Port, there were other small ports along the western coast of Guangdong, which more or less provided some strategic materials for the Tang Dynasty.

Even the Xijiang River, a waterway that was blocked by the Tang Navy and the Ming Army's naval divisions, could not be completely blocked.

Ignoring the warnings and obstructions of the Ming army's sailors, those bold maritime merchants went directly up the river, transported a large number of supplies to Zhaoqing and Wuzhou, and then purchased a large number of local specialties from Zhaoqing and Wuzhou and returned to Guangzhou down the river.

Even if the Tang army and the Ming army fought to death, they still failed to completely cut off the Xijiang waterway, forming a very special Xijiang trade system!

It is worth mentioning that at this time, the ships that were still able to travel to and from the Xijiang River, except for a few ordinary ship owners who were bold, in fact, most of the ship owners had one or more Ming Dynasty magnates standing in the background.

Of course, in fact, these magnates themselves know, because these magnates will not meddle in these vulgar copper affairs, they are all presided over by the children of the side branches and even the house slaves.

At least Wang Yue himself didn't know that a shipping company with more than half of their equity was the largest shipping company on the Xijiang River, and this shipping company directly transported enough saltpeter and sulfur for tens of thousands of troops for a month, directly or indirectly creating at least 10,000 taels of silver for the Tang Dynasty's finances.

The shopkeeper of the ship in Wuzhou is the guest of the Wuzhou tax officer!

However, these small-scale trade and transportation are far from enough for the Tang Dynasty, which has developed to the current scale, and Guangzhou must be taken in order to obtain a real economic engine.