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As for the next step to use troops against Nanzhili, Xiao Tianjian can be said to have made no secret of his strategic intentions and ambitions, and announced the news in the army with great fanfare, which even aroused the generals of all departments to gear up and start training more vigorously with all their strength.

Anyway, a fool can see what he Xiao Tianjian plans to do next, it is useless to carry out strategic deception, it is better to just publicize it with such fanfare, first, it can boost the morale of the Xingtian army, and second, it can also put pressure on the officials of Nanzhili, in order to achieve the goal of surrendering the army without a fight.

As soon as the news was announced, it immediately flew to the city of Nanjing like wings, and after hearing the news, the officials left behind in Nanjing suddenly became panicked and uneasy, and they were a little overwhelmed with fright, and they all asked Ding Qirui to discuss what to do.

And Ding Qirui is basically desperate at this time, Nan Zhili basically scraped out the money he can scrape out, but it still can't meet the needs of the new army, although the local officials and gentry are very resolute in their will to resist, but they each have their own little abacus, build a fort to recruit troops and buy horses to support their own self-respect, on the surface obey Ding Qirui's dispatch, but secretly he does not want to give Ding Qirui the money to help the war, just want to keep his own one acre and three points of land, although on the surface Nan Zhili has recruited a lot of soldiers and horses in the past few months, The number of officers and soldiers in Chen Bu in the area of Nanzhili has reached an unprecedented two or three hundred thousand horses, but these horses are distributed in the huge Nanzhili and are under the control of various generals.

In order to strengthen the garrison of Nanzhili, Ding Qirui found that after arriving in Nanjing, he found that the long-term mismanagement coupled with many years of use and continuous, in Nanjing's military flag warehouse, there is basically not much usable things, although there are still a lot of armor, bows and crossbows and other things on the books, but after opening the treasury for inspection, it was found that a large part of these things on the books basically do not exist, or use some rotten armor to fill the number, there are more than 2,000 bows and more than 1,000 crossbows in the treasury, But in fact, these things have long been resold by the treasurer and eunuchs, and all that is left are some discarded bows and crossbows, and even the bowstrings are filled with some hemp rope, not to mention the armor, there are thousands of armor in the original library, but in essence, there are only a few hundred pieces of it that can be used, and the rest are basically filled with old armor that is extremely tattered, not to mention the knives and guns, what is left is rusted and unusable, and the good things have long been sold by the treasurer eunuchs, and then distributed to the relevant vested interests, Some spears are even simply filled with bundles of wooden sticks, and with these things, they can't arm the soldiers at all, let alone have any combat effectiveness.

Ding Qirui is extremely angry on the one hand, but helpless on the other, Daming has reached this point today, in addition to a few emperors who are not angry, the scourge of the eunuch group is very serious, and the Donglin Party only knows how to make party disputes all day long, but does not think about the right thing, so that the current Ming Dynasty has been rotten to the extreme, he originally had the intention to play the court to impeach these eunuchs and officials in Nanjing, but he also knew that doing so would offend too many people, and once they fought back, they didn't know how to die. So I can only cry out in vain, but I can't do it.

In order to prepare the soldiers and horses and resist the next attack of the Xingtian Army on Nanzhili, Ding Qirui can be said to have tried his best, begging his grandfather and grandmother everywhere all day long, and trying to find a way to collect some silver money everywhere, and put it into the war bureau, so that the craftsmen can create more weapons, birds, artillery, armor and other things to equip the soldiers and horses everywhere, but as soon as the money passes through the hands of the eunuchs and officials in the war bureau, most of it immediately falls into their pockets, and the craftsmen can't get enough raw materials. can only cut corners to make do with the weapon, but if the weapon created in this way can be used, it will be strange, speaking of which, in the past few months, the craftsmen of the War Bureau have created more than a thousand bird guns and all kinds of fire guns, but if you use it, God knows if you can kill the enemy, and it is estimated that as soon as you fire, the user will be unlucky first.

So on the surface, Nanzhili gathered two or three hundred thousand troops, but in fact, the armament of these officers and soldiers was very poor, and some of the armor was simply rusted and about to rot on the armor, coated with a thick layer of paint, which looked very strong on the surface, but in fact, it could poke out a hole with a finger, let alone use them to block knives and arrows.

However, there are a lot of artillery in Nanjing City, after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, with the development of artillery, the emperors of all dynasties have issued an order to allocate silver two to cast a lot of artillery, these artillery is still usable, and a lot of reserves, the earliest artillery in Nanjing is even the bronze cannon cast in the Hongwu period, and it is still in the treasury, and now it has been invited out, placed on the city wall, and the gunpowder division of the War Bureau has also raised and manufactured a lot of gunpowder, in this regard, it is not too nonsense, and the number is enough, It's just that in terms of quality, no one knows how powerful it is! Anyway, some people have long been able to make granular gunpowder, but until now, the gunpowder made by the Gunpowder Division of the Arms and Warfare Bureau in Nanjing is still powdered gunpowder, and only the craftsmen who make gunpowder know what the ratio is.

In contrast, as the emerging Xingtian Army is much stronger than the imperial court, the people in charge are all promoted by Xiao Tianjian, and it can't be said that there is no waste or greed for ink at the moment, but Xiao Tianjian hates this kind of thing, and once it is found, the punishment is extremely severe, so the quality of weapons and armor produced in the craftsman camp of the Xingtian Army can be said to be far more than the armor created by the Imperial Military Bureau, and the production efficiency is so high that the craftsmen of the Imperial Military Bureau cannot match. In particular, many of the processes of the Xingtian Army have adopted the method of assembly operation, simplifying the procedures, and also reducing the requirements for the craftsmanship of craftsmen, each craftsman has a single process or a part, and the long-term operation is not only extremely high, but also the quality is guaranteed, so that the Xingtian Army can gradually equip a large number of sophisticated bird guns and self-generated fire guns over the years, which has become the killer weapon of the Xingtian Army.

On the bright side, the officers and troops of Nanzhili occupy a huge advantage in numbers, but in essence, the combat effectiveness of these officers and troops is very ridiculous, more than 200,000 troops are entrenched in Nanzhili, scattered everywhere, and they do not help each other, and they can also dismantle the platform, and the whole plate of scattered sand is surrounded by tens of thousands of Xingtian troops, and they don't even dare to show their heads, and try to shrink in some cities or fortresses, and watch the Xingtian Army attack, but no one has ever thought about leading the troops to kill the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army, what to restore the Central Plains, Now it's just a joke! If they can keep their current territory, it will be considered a great achievement, as for the restoration of the Central Plains? Change the gods! It's possible!

In this way, the officials and soldiers of Nanzhili were tremblingly waiting for their end to come, but they never had the power to return to the sky, waiting for that Xiao Xingtian to lead his troops to attack the city of Nanjing.

And Xiao Tianjian was also unceremonious, in the Wuchang Mansion area, making the final preparations, a large number of materials from Henan and the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army, a steady stream began to be transferred to Wuchang Mansion, all kinds of armor, weapons also continued to replenish into the army.

It is necessary to mention that with the transfer of a large number of armaments, the kind of cuirass that was put into production in the Ruzhou craftsman camp at the beginning of this period of time also began to be transported to Wuchang Mansion in a steady stream, and was immediately forwarded to the elite war camps and distributed to the subordinates of the Xingtian Army. After the soldiers of each battalion received it, they put it on and tried it on, and they all felt that their sense of security suddenly increased a lot, and the entire chest and abdomen were basically covered by the entire iron armor.

After a large number of soldiers put on this kind of cuirass, they eliminated their original messy cotton armor and iron armor, and gave the B battalion and C battalion equipment, so that the elites of the A battalion looked much more neat and strong, and after wearing this cuirass, they also became much more energetic.