The role of the supplementary brigade is becoming more and more important in the Tang Army system, not only to train new soldiers, but also to suppress the local area and maintain the rear supply line.

After all, now all the main forces have their own combat missions, and the front line is gradually shifting to the north, so it is impossible to say that if something happens in the rear, the front-line troops will be transferred back to suppress it, and it is even more impossible to let the main force that has spent a lot of money to build stay in the rear.

However, in this way, coupled with the reorganization of mixed regiments and the reorganization of the main division, the scale of the Datang Army has continued to rise, and the total strength of the army has reached 130,000 at present, and if the full establishment is completed by the end of the year, it will be expanded to 150,000 people.

And such a large-scale professional army is also extremely financial pressure on the Tang Dynasty!

The people of the Ministry of Taxation are not worth mentioning, saying that the current military expenditure is too heavy, and the current Datang finance is simply unable to support it.

Of course, the people of the Ministry of Taxation still dare not say that the expansion of the army will be stopped, their idea is that they hope that the military can reduce some expenses, for example, the salaries of the soldiers can be reduced, especially the food expenses that occupy the majority of the salary.

If this continues, this year's fiscal deficit will be as high as 5 million taels or more, even higher than the 4 million taels projected at the beginning of the year!

But Li Xuan has always been reluctant to send this kind of excerpt from the Ministry of Taxation!

And he also knows that although the financial problems are very tight, it is not feasible to maintain it for such a long time, but it is not completely bankrupt now!

Although the financial revenue is not enough, but the income of the Tang Dynasty does not only rely on taxes, but also a major source of finance for the Tang Dynasty.

Many other chaotic raids have also contributed a lot of floating wealth to the Tang Dynasty!

And at present, the Tang Dynasty has several other additional sources of wealth, first of all, the Datang Salt Company, whose annual profit is more than one million taels of silver!

The Tang Dynasty implemented the official system of salt, whether it was production, transportation or sales, it could only be carried out by the Datang Salt Company, here, in addition to the salt tax directly collected by the Ministry of Taxation, the net profit of the salt company could also be used.

Then many factories under the Ministry of Industry are also generating a steady stream of profits, and those factories aimed at the private sector, such as textile factories, steel factories, etc., are all big profits.

Even if it is an arsenal, they take so much money from military spending every year, and they make profits, except for R&D, expansion and other reproduction, the rest of the profits need to be handed over.

The many factories in the Ministry of Industry add up, and in fact the profits are not low, and they have to pay millions of taels of silver every year.

Other income, coupled with the floating wealth from the raid, can also keep the Tang Dynasty running, otherwise, relying on the tax income of less than 10 million taels, the Tang Dynasty would have gone bankrupt long ago.

But even so, the rest of the Ministry of Taxation and even the cabinet are worried, the income from the factory and the salt industry are fine, which is considered a fixed income, but the income from the family is not stable.

And most of the money from the raid came from the newly occupied areas!

And this means that once the army on the front line fails to expand its territory, the income in this area will be greatly reduced, which is the income of millions of taels of silver, once it is gone, I am afraid that even the salary of the soldiers will not be paid.

In response to the concerns of the cabinet officials led by the Ministry of Taxation, Li Xuan is also helpless, what can he do, he is also helpless!

Although there are a lot of wars, if you don't fight, Datang will be finished!

No matter how hard it is, the army must be maintained, and the war must continue.

Now Li Xuan's hope is that in this year's autumn and winter offensive, the army side can open up the situation, capture Nanchang, and finally occupy the whole of Jiangxi, so that not only the strategic situation will be greatly eased, but the financial pressure can also be alleviated.

After the capture of Nanchang, the Tang Army can go there at that time, and if it advances westward, it will be able to besiege more than 200,000 troops in the southern part of Huguang in Hengyang and Changsha, and if it advances eastward, it will be able to enter Nanzhili and seize Jinling.

It was the most important period before the autumn and winter offensive began, and he didn't want the financial pressure to affect the performance of the front-line troops, so the cabinet officials such as the Ministry of Taxation kept all the excerpts in the middle, and at the same time provided the front-line troops with supplies as much as possible.

Even in order to concentrate resources, Li Xuan greatly reduced the investment of military resources in Guizhou and Guangxi, and even Huguang and Guangdong themselves only maintained the minimum supply, and then invested almost all of their strategic resources in Jiangxi.

Tens of thousands of people travel to and from northern Guangdong and southern Jiangxi every day, transporting large quantities of supplies to the front line by inland river boats, or simply by wheelbarrow or even on their shoulders!

After these materials arrive in Ganzhou, the most important material transit station, these materials will be escorted by the Ganjiang detachment of the navy, and at the same time, various important strongholds along the way, especially Wan'an, are stationed in the fifth mixed regiment, and the supply fleet goes down the river through the Ganjiang River, all the way to Taihe County, which is only dozens of miles away from the city of Zhiluling, Ji'an Prefecture, and it is also the base camp of the Second Army of the Tang Army, and the most important front-line base.

At this time, Taihe County has completely turned into a large military camp, in which more than 15,000 troops of the Tang Dynasty are stationed, and there are thousands of troops stationed in nearby areas.

The original nearly 10,000 ordinary people in the city were all used by the Tang Dynasty to build various fortifications and build various strategic materials.

After all, many things cannot be transported entirely from the rear, and some things can be solved on the spot on the front line, such as food, military uniforms, cold weapons, arrows, and the like.

Even if it is ammunition or even guns, it will be as far as possible to stand on the front line and collect craftsmen to build it on the spot.

From Guangdong to Taihe, this is a rather long supply line, in order to supply the Second Army for operations, the logistics department has mobilized more than 50,000 people, and this, or on the premise that some sections of the road have waterways to use, if all by land, the number of people needed must at least double or even more.

This is also the reason why the Tang Dynasty Wangshi put the time of the autumn and winter offensive in mid-September, after the frost fell, because before and after the frost fell, it was the autumn harvest season in the Liangguang region, and during this autumn harvest period, everything had to give way to the autumn harvest.

Those people need to go home and collect food!

After the autumn harvest, the people in the Liangguang region and even in the south of Jiangxi will be able to free up their hands, and then the Tang Dynasty can recruit the people on a large scale to transport supplies.

Another advantage of this is that if you attack after the autumn harvest, you can get the autumn tax collected by the local government, and when you raid the local rebels, you can also confiscate a large amount of grain, so as to alleviate the huge demand for military food.

By the end of August, all units of the Second Army were already ready!

All units of the Second Army were fully manned, ammunition was sufficient, and in particular, the artillery shells that were expected to consume relatively large quantities were already prepared enough to fight three large-scale battles.

On the eighth day of the ninth month, the angels of the Hanlin Academy arrived in Taihe with the secret decree, read the secret decree to Li Chunjing and several other senior generals of the Second Army, ordered the Second Army to launch a authorized attack in mid-September, and clearly stipulated the strategic goal of the campaign: to seize Nanchang and enter Dongting Lake!

Lieutenant General Li Chunjing, on behalf of the generals, immediately convened a strategic meeting of the Second Army, began to make detailed arrangements for the tasks of various troops, and scheduled to launch a general offensive on 14 September!

In determining the time of the general attack, in order to avoid attracting the detection of the Ming army, and also to confuse the Ming army, Li Chunjing did not immediately move the army north, but ordered the fourth mixed regiment to march in the northwest direction.

What is the northwest direction?

It's Fuzhou Mansion!

As soon as the second army moved, the Ming army in Luling City received relevant information and panicked because of it!

Today's Ji'an Mansion is the forefront of the confrontation between the two sides, the Tang Dynasty has deployed tens of thousands of main forces here, and the Ming army is not to be outdone, directly deployed more than 50,000 troops in Ji'an Mansion - Luling City, and at the same time in the rear Jishui is also deployed nearly 10,000 troops!

Moreover, the strength of the 60,000 Ming army cannot be underestimated, there are 5,000 governors and 3,000 border troops.

In the past year or so, Zhang Yue has trained nearly 40,000 people to supervise the standard, and the imperial court has sent an additional 20,000 border troops to him.

However, the previous situation in Huguang was more tense, so most of these troops were deployed in the Huguang area, and Hengyang and Changsha were operated like iron buckets, while in the Jiangxi direction, the strength of the Ming army was relatively small, and now the Ming army in this direction has 10,000 people, 6,000 border troops, and there are also chaotic guards, more than 100,000 young and strong people temporarily recruited, as for the specific hundreds of thousands, well, it is still the same as before, Zhang Yue himself does not know how many.

Not to mention those guards and young soldiers, as the main force of the superintendent and border army, there are full half of them in Ji'an, which shows the importance that the Ming army attaches to Ji'an.

Once Ji'an is lost, then the next step is not only for the puppet Tang thief army to go north to Nanchang, but even to bypass Nanchang and Dongting Lake, after all, no one stipulates that the direction of attack of the puppet Tang thief army must be to follow the Ganjiang River to the north into Dongting Lake, and then enter the Yangtze River, they can completely break away from the Ganjiang River, and then march directly to the northeast to enter Nanzhili.

Of course, they still don't know that with the gradual improvement of the firearms level of the Datang Army, the consumption of ammunition has also increased significantly, and if this supply line of hundreds of kilometers is separated from inland river transportation, the difficulty of logistics is enough for the officers of the Logistics Department of the Datang Privy Council to hang themselves!