The officers of the Teaching Brigade, who had previously come from the Guards Battalion and the Brave Guard Battalion, did not feel much pressure on the upcoming big battle, but were eager to try. After all, they had dealt with the Jianzhou Army before. Those top elite backbones in the Jianzhou Army once gave the entire team a lot of psychological burden to the earliest budding embryos. However, by the time of the Battle of Qingyuan Nanyuan, although the Jianzhou army composed of tens of thousands of armor seemed to be able to match its own strong opponents, it was only in an offensive posture that it suffered somewhat. But since the beginning of this year, the entire team has obviously made a lot of progress, not to mention that the gains along the way have greatly strengthened their strength. The officers of the teaching brigade were different from many traditional officers of this era who were no longer literate and numeracy, and had better logical thinking skills. Its own combat effectiveness was significantly stronger than last autumn, and the Guanning Army was only more than enough to defend and not enough to attack in front of the main force of Jianzhou. Then there is only one possibility: the so-called 100,000 troops must be like the so-called "300,000 Protector Army" this time, with only a very small number of elites used for the finale, and there is nothing to worry about in the overall quality.

Of course, the heavy artillery encountered in the Battle of Linqing still made many officers and soldiers feel uneasy, but as long as they did not storm the opponent's field positions with a large number of Western heavy artillery, it seemed that they would not suffer too serious casualties.

Zhou Yuji, Sun Yingyuan and others couldn't help but feel a little depressed after hearing the news that the main force of the Liaodong Army had returned to the division and stood on the side of the Nanjing Imperial Court. What if we can win this battle? Will Jiannu, who has been eyeing the Son of Heaven outside the gate, also come to make trouble? If that is the case, the best situation is nothing more than the army successfully breaking through and retreating into the capital to rely on the capital for defense. This has fallen into a situation where one city is the enemy of the world. After a year or two, the food in the city runs out, even if the team changes from 10,000 elites to 20,000 or 30,000 elites, how can it be an enemy of the whole world? In the case that many tactics and training methods have been passed on, it will not be possible to encounter a siege by stronger or more elite soldiers and end up in a desperate situation. If it weren't for the infiltration of the military intelligence system in the entire team, at least Sun Yingyuan at this time would have been ready to rebel against the thief ship of the mad emperor.

Of course, Xiao Xuan also felt the seriousness of the situation. At the internal military meeting before the battle, Xiao Xuan still decided to warn the military commanders of each battalion: This time the army marched along the canal, and the gunpowder reserve was not small. If you encounter an enemy attack, you will use your firepower to the maximum extent of the standard effective range. The goal is to knock back the opponent instead of giving them maximum damage as before. Because only in this way can the opponent whose combat power is not very strong retreat in the face of difficulties and dare not act rashly.

Over the years, Cao Wenzhao has been fighting a grievance battle with Jiannu, who has strong combat effectiveness and strong mobility, and this time he has fought against opponents in Guannei, and many generals are very confident. On the battlefield in Liaodong, at least recently, there are not without examples of successful confrontation with the main force of the Jianzhou army by virtue of the superiority of Cheying firearms. Therefore, the significance of the battle of Nanyuan in Qingyuan was not very serious in the Liaodong Army. With eight cavalry battalions and 40,000 cavalry vanguards, the opponent was besieged and tested, even if it could not shake the opponent's elite main force, at least it could deal a great blow to the wings of those servants who followed, and completely turned the opponent's army into a lone army with less than 10,000 cores. If that's the case, it may be much easier to build fortifications outside the gates of the capital to resist his return to the division.

However, what the main force of the Liaodong Army moving south did not expect was that some raids and harassment attacks carried out by tens of thousands of cavalry troops against the enemy's partial divisions along the north of the canal did not seem to be successful.

The Guards and Brave Guards brigades, which had been in army for less than half a year, were generally able to use war bows of about four to seven buckets, and caused the light cavalry approaching in clusters to suffer many casualties with a dense rain of arrows. Each infantry brigade often uses very clever light shotguns to threaten the light cavalry of the Liaodong Army, which is not very strong, which makes many people in the Liaodong Army realize that even the partial divisions outside the army of the Son of Heaven are by no means an ordinary team, and they cannot be defeated in one fell swoop by relying only on the swarming light cavalry as imagined.

However, the large-scale exploratory confrontation was not without detection, at least allowing the Liaodong army heading south to judge the strength and weakness of the entire team led by Xiao Xuan: the army that was advancing along the canal in the middle was the strongest. A single cavalry team could not even get close to the distance of the bow and arrow, and was repulsed under heavy fire. In contrast, the teams behind the flanks are much weaker after all. Although the level of bows and arrows is okay, strong archers are rare, and the density of firearms seems to be slightly lower.

The unexpectedly active attack of a large number of enemy cavalry actually exceeded Xiao Xuan's expectations, in order to prevent possible danger from other newly formed brigades, after the tentative attack of the Liaodong Army. Xiao Xuan also had to strengthen hundreds of general-level three-to-five-hundred-pound body-barreled artillery into the brigades. Let each new brigade have a minimum of 24 or more about 30 decent artillery pieces and corresponding gunners, so as to deal with possible crises to the greatest extent.

In this way, the vanguard cavalry of the Liaodong Army going south attacked and harassed from time to time, with the fleet as the core, and the army of eight brigades responsible for covering the surrounding shores since encountering the main force of the Liaodong Army in the Linqing area, after more than ten days of marching, finally approached the distance of only one day of cavalry forced march or three or four days of infantry march from Tongzhou and even the capital.

At this time, the main force of the Cheying Battalion led by Sun Chengzong himself had also arrived in the Tongzhou area, and everyone knew that the area from Wuqing to Xianghe south of Tongzhou was the final place for the decisive battle. If the location of the blockade is further north, then if the Son of Heaven's pro-army from the south desperately gives up their baggage and flees north at night on horseback, it is not impossible to escape to the capital. It would have been a victory, but there would have been no doubt that there would be a lot more of a problem.

Of course, this is just the idea of many staff members in the Liaodong Army. At this time, Xiao Xuan did not give up the idea of fleeing into the capital as soon as possible. If that's the case, you won't have the capital to rely on defending the city to turn the tables. It was necessary to defeat the main force of the Liaodong Army gathered in the area of the Xianghe River, even if it was a little more overdrawn in the use of gunpowder and firearms.

Therefore, Xiao Xuan did not hesitate too much, and ordered the gunners of each team. As long as it is not a straggler, in the face of the assembled enemy cavalry target, you can open fire as appropriate at a distance of about two miles.

(End of chapter)