"Dashuai, everyone is here, you can start." In the front-line headquarters of Jianzhou, except for Chai Jia, who was ordered to rush to Xu Ying's aid, the other general systems and some battalion levels were basically all there. Gao Luan, chief of staff of the headquarters, looked at the time and said towards Yang Tiancheng and Wang Houchun.

Wang Houchun saw Yang Tiancheng nodding and stood up, commanded the staff officers behind him to spread out the map and said: "Everyone, I called everyone here today because the emperor and the general staff came with an order to let the East Route Army and the Middle Route Army under the Jiangnan Command work together to solve the Lingnan Domain Town Alliance and take the entire Lingnan region in one battle. That is to say, from this moment on, the command will directly command the two armies. ”

"The strategy agreed upon by the command is that Xue Wanli will lead seven battalions of troops from Fuzhou south to attack the Quanzhou area along the coastline, forcing Fan Hui and others to concentrate their forces in the Quanzhou area." Wang Houchun pointed to Quanzhou and said: "Quanzhou is the core of the entire Fujian, once Quanzhou is surrounded, it will inevitably shake the entire surrounding area, and it will be difficult to compete with us with the strength in Fan Hui's hands, so according to the news from Xuan Yingwei, the surrounding Wang Chao, Lu Guangchou, and Lu Guangmu will definitely support Fan Hui." After Wang Houchun said this, Hu Xiaosi stood up and said with a smile: "This Wang Chao is the successor designated by Chen Yan, the former Fujian envoy, but he was preempted by Fan Hui's son-in-law, so they will definitely intrigue when they arrive in Quanzhou." Therefore, you must wait for their reinforcements to arrive and begin to besiege but not attack, continue to maintain pressure on Quanzhou, and force them to intensify their internal contradictions. ”

Xue Wanli nodded thoughtfully: "Then the purpose of this battle is to attack the city and attack the heart." Let them kill each other, and then let's enter Quanzhou. ”

Yang Tiancheng saw that this former colleague had actually changed his temperament and pondered about this matter, and immediately smiled: "What you said is good. That's your task. What I want to talk about now is the second line of men, which is in charge of Li Tianyi, and the cavalry corps maintains the prominent action of suppressing the other side on the southwestern border of Fujian, and supports the other men and horses at any time. After Yang Tiancheng finished speaking, he said solemnly: "Everyone has also seen the Fujian pursuit battle before, the entire southern terrain is rugged, which seriously delays the marching speed of the army, and even the speed of the cavalry corps is also slowed down. However, with the current conditions of our army, cavalry is still the fastest battlefield support force and assault force, so Tianyi, the command headquarters does not have a specific combat goal for you, and you must rely on your own speed to become the largest support force on each battlefield. ”

Yang Tiancheng's words made everyone present seriously think about the meaning, and Li Tianyi gained a lot, stood up and saluted: "Thank you for your guidance, Tianyi understands, and will naturally use the cavalry legion in his hand to the extreme and become a sword to deter the enemy." ”

Wang Houchun saw that Li Tianyi understood Yang Tiancheng's words, nodded and motioned for him to sit down, and continued: "Qian Ning is in charge of the third route, with a strength of four battalions to five battalions, starting from Jianzhou, attacking Zhangzhou, cutting off Wang Chao's back road, and continuing to attract the troops of several other feudal towns on the southern front into Fujian. The rest of the men and horses were all commanded by Chen Yu, as the main force in the middle of the army, waiting for the opportunity to fight a decisive battle. ”

"Everyone may have understood that all the battlefields of this war are concentrated in Fujian, and the purpose is to attract all the main forces of all the feudal towns in Lingnan Province to gather in Fujian and rape them." Yang Tiancheng pointed to the marker on the combat map and said: "It's already mid-July, and half a year of fighting on the southern front of our Tiance Army has passed, and the troops are tired, so as a commander of the army, we need to arrange time reasonably for the soldiers to rest." ”

"Therefore, the method of the command is also to give up the previous battle for each city and place, and instead find a way to attract the opponent's main force in one place and defeat it." Yang Tiancheng continued: "And the most important point is that we are now fighting on our own territory, the land under our feet is the territory of the empire, and the people are also the subjects of the empire. So I hope you can understand that this world will be unified after all. ”

"Please rest assured, we will keep in mind the teachings of the marshal, take Lingnan, and unify the empire as soon as possible." All the generals present at the meeting stood up and shouted in unison.

When the Jiangnan Command convened a pre-war meeting, Guo Chongtao on the Tianjin side also returned to the military port with his six warships, and the Yongwu was dragged upside down and dragged into the dock because of the previous damage, and was then towed into the dock by a high-horsepower tugboat for repairs, and the other ships also docked separately, and a group of sailors lined up to go ashore to rest. The bodies of more than a dozen sailors who died in the First Battle of Penghu were also covered with military flags and carried ashore, and Li Xuanqing, Cen Tianshi, and Xu Tianxiang waited at the wharf to support the coffin.

After doing this, Guo Chongtao also returned to Tianjin to report the details of the battle to Xu Tianxiang, and handed over his experience to the Naval Military Academy.

"Are you saying that Guo Chongtao thinks that the strength of the warship's hull structure is not enough?" Xu Tianxiang summarized the problems that Guo Chongtao reacted to Li Xuanqing and Qiaoxi. Li Xuanqing looked at the battle damage report of the Yongwu on it and said strangely: "This is also strange, how can the iron-hulled battleship hit the wooden sailboat and still cause damage to the front cabin?" ”

"Brother Xu, was the impact angle chosen by the Yongwu wrong at that time? This warship collision on the sea also requires skill? It is necessary to hit the opponent's weak point at an inclination angle, so as to obtain a more ideal result. Qiaoxi looked at the report and found the problem, which was then fully valued by Guo Chongtao, and faithfully implemented this law in the subsequent naval battle.

"The new warship that has just been launched and outfitted has no problems with the forging and material of the steel plates, right?" Li Xuanqing nodded and asked.

Qiaoxi knew what Li Xuanqing was worried about, as the ironclad battleship grew earlier and bigger, the strength of the hull was an increasingly important issue, so he replied: "Big brother, rest assured, the new warship is not an ordinary steel plate, but a new alloy steel, and a new armor technology is used in important parts when designing." There are no problems with a thousand-ton hull. ”

"Tianxiang, you go and make arrangements, summon Han Xun and Guo Chongtao to come over and hold a naval meeting to finalize the naval equipment and fleet establishment." Li Xuanqing said: "In addition, after the launch of the new naval warships, the current Fuxing and other warships will all be eliminated for the use of the National Guard, and the artillery will be removed. ”

After Xu Tianxiang left, Li Xuanqing began to plan the distribution and composition of the fleet in detail with Qiaoxi, and began to make a detailed distinction on the number of warships in a fleet.

"Big brother, how are you going to grade warships? It seems that we can't build a few warships at the moment, right? Qiaoxi tilted his head and thought for a while: "But if it is a fleet, in addition to combat ships, supply ships, landing ships or troop carriers are still indispensable. How about I go back and let the shipyard designers try to design these boats? I think if it weren't for a combat warship, the cost and quality wouldn't need to be too high, and it would be reasonable. ”

"It's not that I'm worried about right now, it's about people. Now that the Xu family's long-distance fleet has begun to be formed, coupled with the expansion of the navy, in addition to the problem of funding, there is so much talent gap, I am afraid that Guo Chongtao will go crazy. Li Xuanqing smiled bitterly.

"However, according to the experience of later generations, in addition to the students of the Naval Academy, each warship can also train interns on a daily basis, and the Navy can actually train itself for non-important positions." Li Xuanqing said thoughtfully, "It's just that it's more troublesome to manage." ”

"You can let the recruits be trained in the inland river, and then sent to the navy for internship, and then officially take up the post after they are qualified. In this way, the Navy can avoid the drawbacks of recruiting manpower on its own. Qiaoxi thought of this talent training system in later generations and said with a smile.

"Well, there's a way to solve it. Let's talk about the classification of warships. Li Xuanqing wrote these down and said, "My initial plan is to use the method of combining numbers and Chinese characters. Warships of a thousand to two thousand tons are classified as the Xia class, and so on. The number of warships is grouped with three digits. ”

"Big brother, isn't it good for you to be like this? Why don't you organize the combat ships into attack ships and frigates, and then follow the order of the capital ships with the name of the province, and then the supply ships and transport ships are named after the dynasty, what do you think? Qiaoxi shook her head, feeling that Li Xuanqing's method was not very good. However, these knowledge of the two of them are only seen by chance in some impurities in later generations. So there's really no good way to think about it.

"Forget it, let the General Staff have a headache for themselves." Li Xuanqing stood up and stretched his waist and said with a wry smile: "Han Xun has studied the navy for so long, maybe he has a way." ”

"That's right. The ancients were not necessarily worse than us. Big brother, go freshen up and go to the meeting. Come back from the meeting and get some rest, it's about to dawn. Qiaoxi only realized that time passed so quickly at this time, and immediately smiled.

When Li Xuanqing arrived at the office of the General Staff, Xu Tianxiang and the others had already arrived, and even Cen Tianshi followed over to prepare to join in the fun.

"This is the chart that I and Qiaoxi made overnight, basically drawing the sea areas explored by all dynasties, of course, some information may not be accurate because of the age, so the navy needs to redraw it by itself." Li Xuanqing took out the map of the distribution of the East Asian seas in his impression, but those areas abroad were generally only outlined, and he couldn't remember how detailed they were, but for those present, this chart was already very remarkable. Cen Tianshi looked at it carefully and said with a smile: "Your Majesty, you and Qiaoxi probably didn't sleep this night, this chart is estimated to have not been made without going over hundreds of materials, and you must have done your homework in advance." ”

"I painted it before, but it fell in Chang'an, and I re-painted this one." Li Xuanqing waved his hand and continued: "According to the areas that our people have visited so far, the surrounding sea areas can basically be divided into the North Ocean, the East Ocean, the South Ocean and the Western Ocean. It's just that the West Ocean can't do it at the moment, because the imperial border over there has not yet reached the coast. Therefore, according to the regional division, the most important thing for our navy is to build three fleets, the Beiyang Fleet, which is responsible for patrolling and combat escort missions in all sea areas north of Haizhou, safeguarding overseas interests, and cracking down on smuggling crimes. The area where the East Ocean is located from Haizhou to Quanzhou, and from Quanzhou to Guangzhou is Nanyang. ”

"Then these three fleets need a lot of people and money, right? We are still in the period of the unification war, and we can't afford to bear such a large cost? As soon as Li Xuanqing's words were finished, Cen Tianshi complained bitterly: "It is estimated that there will be wars on the southern front throughout this year, and most of those captures will be given to the development of Bohai Bay, except for military spending." Isn't it too expensive to build three fleets in a hurry? And Chongtao, do you have so many people? ”

Cen Tianshi threw these questions out like a cannon, and also gave Guo Chongtao, who was excited, a basin of cold water. He didn't need to worry about military spending, but this staffing made his face bitter in an instant.

"I mean planning, I didn't let you build all three fleets at once." Li Xuan glanced at his admiral innocently and said with a smile: "This is the final plan. Your current task is to honestly set up the Beiyang Fleet for me and cover the Xu family's caravan for trade, only when they make money will the customs have income, and your navy will have the possibility of the next development. I warn you, that Fusang and Samhan area are producing gold and silver mines, and you don't bring some subsidies to the cabinet when you go back, do you think the prime minister will give you funds to build warships? ”

Li Xuanqing's words made Guo Chongtao not react, but Xu Tianxiang on the side bent over with a smile and said directly: "Stinky boy, does the emperor mean to let you assist the Xu family to go overseas to grab money at that time?" ”

"Huh?" Guo Chongtao turned his face to look at Cen Tianshi, and the smile on his face suddenly couldn't help but chill, isn't this prime minister the most polite? Why are you more excited about money than you are now? But he didn't dare to say this, otherwise he would offend the prime minister, and it is estimated that the emperor would not be able to protect him.

"Okay, I've written detailed details for this matter, and I'll go back to the General Staff to study it, and if there is no problem, implement it one by one." Li Xuanqing looked at Guo Chongtao, who was forced to turn red, and thought about the laughter of Xu Tianxiang and Cen Tianshi, handed Xu Tianxiang the results of the night in his hand and continued: "There is another big problem below, that is, the composition of the fleet warships. After the shipyard launches its first new warship, it will build about 20 warships in three years according to the plan, including supply ships, transport ships, and frigates. My assumption is that a fleet should consist of five capital ships, three frigates, and a number of supply ships and transports. Due to the limitation of technical forces, there will be no qualitative leap in the tonnage of capital ships for a considerable period of time in the future. Therefore, Chongtao's specific fleet should be reasonably organized, and your naval department will have to explore it on its own, and I can only give you a reference opinion. ”

Li Xuanqing's words made Guo Chongtao nod, knowing that most of them needed to be practiced by themselves to run in and then sort out a complete plan.

"There is one last point, that is, the classification and numbering of warships, I haven't come up with any good way to do this, the General Staff and the Naval Academy should work out a detailed method." Li Xuanqing threw the last question to Xu Tianxiang and clapped his hands and said: "Everyone must remember that the overseas world is boundless, and although our land of China is rich in things and people, it is still too small for the whole world. After reunification, the Chinese people must not be confined to the Central Plains, we must go further, to open up the territory and expand the territory, for future generations to create a boundless empire. Li Xuanqing's words were deafening, and in this era of the most pioneering spirit of the Chinese nation in history, he was actively recognized by his subordinates, and even Cen Tianshi himself was talking about letting the navy go a little farther to bring new opportunities for the development of China, so that many years later, when this great empire was really established, the first generation of founding heroes invariably recited this sentence Li Xuanqing said today when he was dying.