Chapter 138 Troops stationed in Wuchang are strong
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At this point, because the Xingtian Army has completely demonstrated its strong strength, compared to the performance of the imperial court, everyone is quite disappointed, so that many people have already felt that the Xingtian Army has come to this point and has become a huge force that the imperial court can no longer control! In addition, the Xingtian Army scattered to various places in the instigation, in many parts of the country, there began to appear the situation of the lowest level of the people spontaneously responding to the Xingtian Army, many people can be said to be looking forward to the Xingtian Army, hoping that the Xingtian Army will hurry to their place, exempt them from the heavy taxes and miscellaneous taxes they carry, and they can live better, this momentum can be said to be surging, the Xingtian Army almost did not go anywhere, and it can be welcomed by a large number of people, and there are many followers, every time they attack the city, There will be a large number of local people to help in the war, carry materials for the Xingtian Army, build equipment, and even directly participate in the siege of the city, fill in the trenches dug by the defenders for the Xingtian Army, and remove all kinds of obstacles to the defense, many people died on the battlefield for this, but there are still more people to join.
So much so that now every time the Xingtian Army attacks a place, it is much easier than before, and even the domino effect has appeared, inducing the defenders in many places to simply surrender to the Xingtian Army, making the territory of the Xingtian Army continue to expand almost every day, and one state and county after another have been broken by the Xingtian Army, making Xiao Tianjian a little too busy for this, and he doesn't even know how much territory he has newly controlled at the moment, anyway, almost every once in a while, his subordinates will send people to deliver letters. Tell him where he took it again, and then Xiao Tianjian simply ordered the staff of the staff to draw a huge map of the Ming Dynasty, and whenever he received the news, he immediately painted the newly occupied territory in red, and at the same time marked the main force of each department with troops and horses on the map, so that the situation became clear at a glance.
After the defeat of Yunyang, because Xiao Tianjian had no plan to attack Shaanxi, Li Xuanzhu's department was a little easier, and the main focus was on consolidating the northern part of Huguang, taking over the defense of Jingzhou, Chengtianfu and other places, and the original guards division left behind the men and horses rushed to Wuchang to join Xiao Tianjian, which made Xiao Tianjian's guard group more powerful, and also relieved Xiao Tianjian of the worries about the western Sichuan official army, and Li Xuanzhu was ordered by Xiao Tianjian, led his troops to capture Dangyang, and then marched to the area of Yiling Prefecture, and began to prepare for the forced entry into Sichuan in the future, but at the moment Xiao Tianjian's main energy is on the aspect of Nanzhili, so there is no hurry to enter Sichuan for the time being, as long as he can control Huguang and Jiangxi, and free up his hands in the future, entering Sichuan is not a problem at all.
On the whole, after Xiao Tianjian controlled Wuchang Mansion, the focus of the battle began to bias towards the area of Nanzhili, from the plan he set in advance, after taking Huguang, the next step is to attack Nanzhili, as long as Nanjing is captured, then the Beijing division alone in the north will be cut off from all material support, this Ming is completely finished, as for how he captures the Beijing division, it is up to him to decide.
After October, Huguang was basically controlled by the Xingtian Army, and Li Xin also led the troops to attack in the south of Huguang, and in November, the entire southern part of Huguang was basically controlled by Li Xin and the troops in the hands of the Xingtian Army, and even in Jiangxi, there were large-scale popular uprisings in several places, and a large number of people learned that after the Xingtian Army captured Huguang, they began to act in Jiangxi, and under the leadership of some bold people, they began to take the initiative to capture some local gentry's forts and villages. and sent people to Huguang to contact the Xingtian Army, asking the Xingtian Army to join them as soon as possible, and they were willing to surrender to the Xingtian Army.
It can be said that the officials in Jiangxi have already become frightened birds, and they are so frightened that they hurriedly gather the gentry and wealthy families in the local area, and step up the organization of some village soldiers, on the one hand, they have stepped up the suppression of the local rebels, and on the other hand, they have also stepped up their defense.
Under such a good opportunity, Li Xin sent someone to inform Xiao Tianjian that he could not miss the opportunity, and he was willing to lead his troops to directly attack Jiangxi, if it went well, he could cooperate with Xiao Tianjian from the south to form an encirclement of Nanzhili after the year, and at the same time, he could also contain the officers and troops in Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong to support Nanzhili.
Xiao Tianjian considered Li Xin's proposal in Wuchang, and felt that it would be relatively safer to attack Nanzhili in the future, so he immediately agreed to Li Xin's request, and Li Xin's strategic considerations were indeed very level, and he really lived up to Xiao Tianjian's expectations of him.
In order to strengthen Li Xin's strength, Xiao Tianjian thought about it for a while, and pulled out some of Li Dingguo's troops who had undergone change and reorganization, and ordered him to rush to Changsha immediately to support Li Xin's use of troops against Jiangxi.
After Li Xin was instructed, he immediately led his troops into Jiangxi with Gao Jian, and went straight to Yuanzhou (now Yichun), an important town in the west of Jiangxi, and at the end of November, with the support of a local righteous people in Yuanzhou, and with the assistance of Neiying in Yuanzhou City, he easily captured Yuanzhou, and then began to divide his troops to attack Wanzai and other counties, and pointed his troops to Jizhou.
Xiao Tianjian sat in Wuchang Mansion, Luo Li and Liu Yaoben spent two months, basically controlled the boundary between the Guangdong part of Hudong and the area of Nanzhili in the hands of the Xingtian Army, and basically did not encounter strong resistance from the official army in these places, and the march was very smooth, Luo Li took a short rest after laying Daye, and then sent troops with Liu Yaoben to attack the northern part of Jiangxi, and captured Ningzhou in early November, and the combined forces directly threatened Jiujiang Mansion, an important town on the Yangtze River, and also put pressure on Nanchang Mansion, the capital of Jiangxi.
As a result, Ding Qirui had to hurriedly increase troops in the area of Nanchang Mansion and Jiujiang Mansion, and sent the chief soldier Sun Yingyuan and the deputy commander-in-chief Wu Xueli to lead troops into Jiujiang Mansion and Nanchang Mansion separately, hoping to prevent the Xingtian Army from continuing to occupy these two places and put pressure on Nanjing.
At the same time, Ding Qirui also sent the supervisor army Wan Yuan Ji to sit in Luzhou Mansion to supervise the army to resist the offensive of Henan Liu Bao's Xingtian Army against Nanzhili, so that the entire southern official army has completely lost the ability to take the initiative to attack, and can only adopt a passive defensive way to prevent the threat of the Xingtian Army to Nanzhili.
Xiao Tianjian was in Wuchang Mansion, constantly observing the actions of the various departments under his command, thinking about the next move, through the two months of rest and material replenishment and re-training in October and November after the defeat of Wuchang Mansion, Xiao Tianjian alone in the vicinity of Wuchang Mansion, more than 20,000 soldiers, more than 20,000 people, were temporarily organized into the Guards Group, organized into nearly ten combat battalions and cavalry battalions, including three A battalions, three B battalions, two C battalions, plus two cavalry battalions, in addition to three water battalions, two heavy artillery battalions, The two battalions and the engineer battalion were basically fully manned, not including the more than 10,000 men and horses of Luo Li's Second Division and the more than 5,000 men and horses of the Guards Division led by Liu Yaoben, and of course not counting the more than 20,000 men and horses that Li Xin was currently commanding in the south of Huguang and the southwest of Jiangxi.
At the moment, Xiao Tianjian's subordinates have gathered dozens of generals such as Luo Rucai, Situ Liang, Shi Ran, Lin Luo, and Lao Huihui.
Now if the Guards Division is also called a division, then this division is really a little too big, in fact, at this point, the Guards Division can already be called a corps, such a huge force, for the convenience of command, Xiao Tianjian then temporarily divided it into three divisions, in addition to the water battalion and the heavy artillery battalion and the iron head of the Guards Battalion alone, the remaining dozen battalions Xiao Tianjian divided it into three Guards Division, Liu Yaoben served as the commander of the first Guards Division, Situ Liang served as the commander of the Second Guards Division, Lao Huihui served as the commander of the Third Guards Division, Shi Ran and Lin Luo directly belonged to Xiao Tianjian, and they were regarded as Xiao Tianjian's personnel directly leading the headquarters.
And after two consecutive months of supplementation and high-intensity training, the soldiers and horses of all departments can now be said to have been reborn, most of these new battalions are new soldiers, in the elimination and dismissal of some of the unqualified generals, and strict rectification, and in the way of cutting off the head to kill some scum in the army who committed crimes against the wind and defy the law, and at the same time, in the form of commendation and promotion, a number of generals were promoted, under the strict training of such carrots and sticks, The appearance of these newly organized battalion generals has also undergone great changes, and everyone has experienced the ruthlessness of the military law of the Xingtian Army, and knows that the military law of the Xingtian Army is not just a joke, and the high-intensity training has enabled them to quickly adapt to the new combat tactics and methods, and the overall combat effectiveness has been greatly improved in the past two months.
Even the worst C battalion is not willing to be left behind, although the equipment is a little worse, but the morale is not bad, all the soldiers and generals are full of energy, to erase the classification of their C battalion, to promote to a battalion A, the worst to change to a battalion B, so when training, the officers are even more strict, and the soldiers are also very hard-working, so they actually put a lot of pressure on the two types of battalions that surpass them, and no one wants to be demoted to a battalion C in the future, so they secretly compete with each other, setting off an upsurge of training in the station.
Even some recruits who used to be officers and soldiers who were hangers in the past, after joining the Xingtian Army, put away their casualness, gradually adapted to this kind of life, and began to become high-spirited.
In short, in December, Xiao Tianjian personally gathered these soldiers and horses outside Wuchang City, and came to a large-scale exercise, he divided the two divisions into the two armies of Honglan, and carried out a large-scale confrontation drill similar to actual combat.
Although the training time is only more than two months, all the units have shown high morale, but it is a pity that the time for these new battalions to become an army is still a little shorter, and they are not mature in many tactics. I want to take more than two months, and these new battalions will be tempered like those old subordinates, obviously a little too difficult for them, a real elite soldiers and horses, is to be tempered through repeated battles, this Xiao Tianjian is still very clear, without more than a year, a few big battles, just want to make these new battalions become the real elite, it is impossible, now to do this, it can be said that those generals in the army have done their best.
In time, Xiao Tianjian believes that these newly formed soldiers and horses will also become real elite soldiers, at least now that he has deeply imprinted the Xingtian Army on their bodies, he will not worry that they will not be able to become elite soldiers in the future, not to mention, the backbone of the generals who built these new battalions are still his old subordinates drawn from everywhere, as long as they are there, there will be no big problems.
This is just by looking at the old subordinates brought out by Lao Huihui, you can see that when you first saw Lao Huihui and his subordinates, these people were either down-and-out, or they were arrogant and arrogant, and no one could put them in their eyes, but after nearly a year of tempering, they were all integrated into the Xingtian Army, and began to become no different from other Xiao Tianjian's old departments, and their faces were filled with a proud look, which only the Xingtian Army could do.
In addition to these infantry drills, including the water battalion led by Zhang Chi and Liu Jiang, also conducted a confrontational drill on the river, and the two warship battalions practiced tactics such as attacking and covering on the water, and the cargo ship battalion that specialized in transporting materials and horses also practiced loading and unloading personnel, horses and materials on the dock, and the overall combat effectiveness has also been greatly improved, at least not like before coming to Wuchang, there was a lot of chaos on the river, hundreds of ships of all kinds, Just the neat array on the river, and the high masts are hung with all kinds of flag-recognizing military flags, it makes people look at it and sigh again and again.
So don't look at them as only more than 20,000 people, but Xiao Tianjian believes that the combat effectiveness they can exert is far more than that of their officers and soldiers, plus Luo Li and Liu Yaoben's old troops, with the cooperation of Liu Bao's department, the conditions are basically ripe to fight Nanzhili.
So Xiao Tianjian made up his mind at this time, and after stepping up training for another month, he chose the opportunity to start down the river and send troops to Nanjing City after the year.