Although their new army of the Tang Dynasty had expanded to the size of several thousand, and more than 500 people had been killed and wounded in a previous battle, they now heard that crossing the river head-on would kill and wound thousands of people, and there was a possibility of thousands of casualties during the siege stage.

This is not what the current Datang New Army can afford.

With casualties of this magnitude, I am afraid that the existing main infantry battalions and mixed battalions will be disabled!

Moreover, such heavy casualties will trigger a chain of negative reactions, excessive casualties will cause soldiers to resist, and when the time comes, the troops will collapse when they say that they will collapse.

Li Xuan also sighed at this time, I am afraid that it will not work to cross the river head-on.

Zeng Ziwen's No. 1 combat plan mentioned before was actually to forcibly cross the river head-on, directly force the river head-on without any strategy, use the combat effectiveness of the new army of the Tang Dynasty to forcibly break through the defense line of the Ming army, and then defeat them.

This scheme sounds simple, but it's actually very difficult!

The Ming army has not been idle on the other side of the river in the past few months, although they have spent most of their time preparing for crossing the river to attack, but the necessary defensive preparations have not been left behind.

Although the fortifications on the other side of the river are not as perverted as those of the Datang New Army, they are not easy to fight.

So Li Xuan immediately said: "If we adopt the No. 2 battle plan, what are our chances of winning?" ”

The No. 2 battle plan is Hao Bonian's proposal to use the main force to cross the river from the No. 3 ferry to carry out a sneak attack, and go around the back of the Ming army to attack the Ming army, so that it can not only inflict heavy damage on the Ming army, but also cut off the retreat of the Ming army and eliminate the possibility of them escaping back to Xingquanfu City.

At this time, Zeng Ziwen said: "The key to the No. 2 plan is whether the main force can cross the river smoothly when crossing the river from the No. 3 ferry, if the process of crossing the river is intercepted by a large number of Ming troops, then the follow-up combat plan will be useless, and in order to avoid indifferent casualties, it is necessary to take the initiative to abandon the river crossing and retreat."

The possibility of success lies in whether the Ming army knows the direction of our army's crossing of the river and how long it will send troops to intercept it.

Once the main force of our army successfully crosses the river from the No. 3 ferry, with the field combat ability of the main force of our army, the puppet Ming thief army will not be able to stop the attack of the main force of our army even if it sends two or three thousand people, so that our chance of victory can be more than seventy percent, and the overall casualties are expected to remain below five hundred! ”

Li Xuan continued: "What about Plan No. 3? ”

Plan No. 3 is a change plan of Plan No. 2, that is, to launch troops to cross the river from Ferry No. 2 and Ferry No. 3 at the same time, and flank the Ming army after crossing the river.

"With the No. 3 combat plan, the stage of crossing the river may be relatively smooth, but it is easy to be broken by the enemy, if the puppet Ming thief army sends a large army in the direction of the No. 2 or No. 3 ferry at that time, then it may be difficult for our army to break through the interception of the puppet Ming thief army!"

Li Xuan did not continue to speak at this time, but pondered in his mind for a long time, and finally said: "Change the No. 2 battle plan, we will also send a part of our troops to cross the river at the No. 2 ferry, and try to confuse and attract a large number of enemy troops as much as possible!" ”

These three combat plans all have advantages and disadvantages, and Li Xuan is not at ease about choosing only one of them, so he is ready to combine the No. 2 and No. 3 battle plans and prepare to launch a river crossing in three directions at the same time.

Of course, these three river crossing directions have their own primary and secondary directions.

Because the No. 2 ferry is more suitable for large-scale troops to cross the river than the No. 3 ferry, the Ming army's defense is also stricter, and there are already thousands of Ming troops stationed there, and they are building fortifications, so Li Xuan plans to send a small number of troops to attract the attention of the Ming army.

On the No. 3 ferry side, the Ming army's defense was slightly lax, which was suitable for a large number of main forces to launch a surprise attack across the river.

Of course, this is just a brief plan to commit the crime, in fact, it is quite complicated to do, for example, how to attract the attention of the Ming army at the No. 2 ferry and make them mistakenly think that the main force of the Datang New Army will cross the river at the No. 2 ferry, which is a rather complicated and difficult matter.

All kinds of preparations and disguises are required!

How to conceal the main force sneaking into the vicinity of the No. 3 ferry and then crossing the river in one fell swoop is also quite troublesome to operate.

However, Li Xuan doesn't have to worry about these things, naturally there will be many officers below to worry about, especially the Operations Department led by Zeng Ziwen, who does these trivial details.

Otherwise, what is the use of this combat division!

After the plan to cross the river was decided, the Datang New Army also started a new round of busy green!

A large number of recruits who have only undergone one month of basic training have been continuously replenished into various units, and various combat materials sent from the rear have also continued to arrive at the Lanjiang crossing.

There are not only ammunition, but also weapons and even artillery, and the Ministry of Industry has recently built a 500-pound artillery gun and sent it over.

But the kind of light artillery of one or two hundred catties that Li Xuan wanted most had not been built so quickly.

A batch of muskets has also been replenished, so that the current musketeers and grenadiers of the Datang New Army are already one musket per person, and there are even dozens of muskets that have been added as strategic reserves to replenish the troops at critical moments.

It's a pity that those 20mm muskets have not yet been built, and the time it takes for a musket to be ready for use from the beginning to the beginning of the process is about a month, which is not fast.

In addition to replenishing a large number of supplies in the rear, the new army of the Tang Dynasty also began to prepare a large number of equipment for crossing the river on the spot, such as rafts and bamboo rafts, etc., although the new army of the Tang Dynasty also prepared a lot of ships in the past few months, and also captured a lot of Ming troops left behind when crossing the river, but if you need to confuse the Ming army, you must also prepare a large number of ships at the Lanjiang ferry and the No. 2 ferry, otherwise, you don't have so many ships, and the Ming army will definitely not believe that you will send the main force to cross the river!

In the process of preparation, there were more and more ships on the side of the Lanjiang Ferry and the No. 2 Ferry, and in order to confuse the enemy, Li Xuan repeatedly sent a lot of troops to the No. 2 Ferry, and also built a simple temporary large-scale camp, which was enough for 2,000 people to be stationed, and it was tightly guarded, and a large amount of cooking smoke rose before the return point.

However, the troops in the camp came during the day and sneaked away at night, and this repeated process created the illusion that there was a large number of Tang army's main forces on the side of the No. 2 ferry.

At the same time, on the side of the No. 3 ferry, about 200 people were also stationed there, putting on a posture of crossing the river, but this posture was easy to misunderstand, this was just a partial division used to contain the Ming army.

As for a hidden forest three miles away from the No. 3 ferry, there was a main force of 1,400 people, including almost all the main forces of the new army of the Tang Dynasty.

It includes the 1st Infantry Battalion, the 2nd Infantry Battalion, the 1st Mixed Battalion, the Sword and Shield Corps, the Archers Corps, the Grenadier Corps, and even a squad of baggage troops.

The unit carried enough ammunition for three high-intensity battles and enough food for seven days.

This temporary main force will be commanded by Hao Bonian, and at the same time, Li Xuan also specially transferred four or five staff officers from the Operations Department to Hao Bonian, so that these staff officers could give Hao Bonian advice.

This force will take on all the most critical battles in this crossing of the river and even in the attack on the city of Xingquanfu!

After they entered this dense forest, in order to hide their traces, they could not make a fire to cook, so as not to be detected by the Ming army when they lit the fire, so they could only eat dry food.

It was naturally impossible for the Tang New Army to conceal such large-scale preparations for crossing the river, because even if Song Zhiwei himself looked at it on the other side of the river, he could see that many soldiers of the Tang New Army were cutting down trees to make rafts, and they were also carrying out rowing and other relevant training related to river crossing operations by the river.

"These thieves, I'm afraid they're going to cross the river, and it's just in the past few days!" After Song Zhiwen saw the preparations of the new army of the Tang Dynasty, he was full of thoughts!

Those micro-bullet thieves are about to cross the river, and will you be able to stop them?

For a while, Song Zhiwen regretted that he had to write brilliantly and conceal the true strength of the puppet Tang thief army, if he had reported it truthfully, even though he would have been greatly punished, but the governor would definitely mobilize a large number of troops to arrive in Xingquan Mansion.

In this way, the last crossing of the river would not have been so embarrassed, and perhaps the puppet Tang thief army would have been annihilated long ago.

It's a pity, there is no regret medicine in this world to take!

However, if he was wrong once, it didn't mean that he would be wrong a second time, as early as after the second failed river crossing, he had already sent someone to report the relevant situation here.

This report is naturally brilliant, shirking responsibility as much as possible, and in order to cover up the defeat and heavy casualties of the two major wars, he once again erased the recruits and young men he recruited, and only counted the casualties of the soldiers in the guard.

The 2,500 recruits who were annihilated had never appeared, and as for the young and strong people, they didn't even write down the specific data, only a few words.

After such a report, the army that went into battle changed from 10,000 to less than 5,000, and only less than 1,000 guards were killed and wounded.

And ask the governor to mobilize troops to suppress the rebellion of the puppet Tang thief army!

However, even if the governor really wants to send troops to support, it is estimated that it will be a month or two or even longer.

However, the puppet Tang thief army on the opposite side is already preparing to cross the river in the past few days!

What to do?

At this time, Song Zhiwen was also a little helpless!

He had no choice but to let people pay close attention to the movements of the puppet Tang thief army on the other side of the river, and always be vigilant, once the puppet Tang thief army really crossed the river, then it was time to fight to the death.

His guess was not wrong, two days later, the scouts who crossed the river to reconnoiter reported that a huge puppet Tang thief army camp was found behind the No. 2 ferry, and judging from the amount of cooking smoke, at least two thousand puppet Tang thief troops were hoarded here.

Song Zhiwen sent 500 reinforcements to the No. 2 ferry port that day to strengthen the defense of the No. 2 ferry port.

On the night of the third day, the Ming army stationed at the No. 2 ferry sent people to report to Song Zhiwen quickly, saying that there were a large number of pseudo-Tang thieves at the No. 2 ferry, and judging from the number of torches, there were at least 2,000.

After listening to this, Song Zhiwen took a deep breath: "It's finally here!" ”