Tao Jintang naturally understood the righteous king's eagerness to fight, in fact, not only the righteous king, but even him, who had always been calm and rational, and all the other soldiers of the Western Expedition, all wanted to fight happily and fiercely attack the Tsarist Russian army.

They are different from those who coerce the army, the officers and men of the field corps, their treatment and promotion are directly linked to military merits, and they finally have the opportunity to follow the righteous king on this expedition, so they naturally don't want to let go of any opportunity to obtain military merits. As for the battle death or injury, they didn't think too much about it at all, and being selected into the field army naturally had more glory as a soldier than other imperial soldiers, even if they died in battle, they were fearless, after all, the powerful empire and His Majesty the Emperor, who loved the army like a son, would take care of their families.

Therefore, Tao Jintang and Shi Ming praised: "King Yi's move to delay the army made those Tsarist Russian troops think that our army was a little afraid, and strengthened their determination to defend. At the same time, it also has the effect of encircling the point and sending reinforcements, so that the enemy troops on the west bank of the Volga River can rush over, so that our army can concentrate on annihilation and save the effort of pursuit. It seems that the righteous king and his soldiers will definitely be able to get their wish this time and defeat the enemy army. ”

Shi Da smiled, and pointed to the Volga River valley on the map and said, "You mean that the enemy army has built fortifications here, this area?" ”

"Yes, the righteous king!" Tao Jintang replied: "These places are the valleys of the Volga River, similar to the Pearl River Delta in the area of Nanhai County, Guangzhou, and although the volume of the Volga River is not as huge as the Pearl River, these valleys through which it flows are very flat, almost equal to the surface of the Caspian Sea, resulting in the water level of the entire delta being gentle, criss-crossing and criss-crossing, so that the entire lower Volga River basin is a water system intertwined, and the river network is dense, which is not conducive to the combat of cavalry and artillery units, but the small water division has a great advantage.

In the Russian army, the Yergeny Regiment had a river network fleet consisting of about ten shallow-water steamboats, plus some troop carriers. This is where we need to be on guard during our march.

The enemy's purpose in building fortifications in the river network was naturally to take advantage of the fire support of this river fleet and the mobility of the troops. ”

Shi Dakai paid some attention to this, he did not carry boats or anything like that in this expedition to the west, and it was not until he entered the Volga River valley that he captured a few small boats such as fishing boats, but these became equipment used by the logistics troops of the engineering regiment and the coercion army to build pontoon bridges. Without warships, there is always some disadvantage. Although there is no fear of this fleet attacking, after all, there are not only small field artillery that is convenient for fighting at any time, but also Congreve rocket artillery and some terrifying incendiary weapons, but if the enemy does not really attack on a large scale, but harasses at night and fires indiscriminately in the dark, it will be a little troublesome.

"How to deal with it? Our army does not have warships, if the warships are transferred to Xiangzhen on the south road, the time will be delayed for a long time, and their warships are also small, and their combat power is not strong. Shi Dakai directly stared at Tao Jintang and Shi Mingkai, hoping that his two staff officers would provide some ideas.

"King Yi, from the perspective of his subordinates, there is no need to worry. Our army is numerous, with a strength of 250,000. In this way, I have the flexibility to use my troops! King Yi, the initial first goal of our army was to capture the city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga River.

In fact, the first goal of our army now is actually aimed at the two Tsarist armies of the Caucasian Army and the Yergeny Corps stationed in the valley on the east bank of the Volga, and for us it is more important to defeat the Tsarist army than to capture the city. But the enemy did not know about the shift in the objectives of our troops, and in their opinion, our target was definitely the city of Astrakhan.

Therefore, we can take this as an opportunity to send a cavalry force of 100,000 men to cross the river from a distance of tens or even hundreds of kilometers from the upper reaches of the Volga River, looking for a place where it is easy to cross the river, and make a detour to prepare to attack the city of Astrakhan from the back. And in this way, it is time for our army to attack the Caucasian corps and the Yergeny corps!

If the enemy ignores the cavalry sent by our army, we can let our cavalry carry out a policy of plundering the area east of the Volga, crushing and destroying all the armies and noble farms of Tsarist Russia, not only to rob some of the wealth, but also to deal a heavy blow to the Russian power on the east bank of the Volga, forcing them to come to meet them. ”

Shi Dakai nodded and praised: "Not bad! Anyway, now in this Volga Delta, the river network is dense, and the cavalry of our army is useless. It's better to let them go upstream and play the role that cavalry should play! However, the cavalry does not need to be so much as 100,000, only 50,000 or 60,000 is enough. If there are too many, it will be difficult to solve the problem of logistics and materials on the spot, and if there are too few, it will be easy to be ambushed by the enemy and cause large losses.

By the way, these cavalry can also do some damage upstream, the enemy's supply lines are all along the Volga, go to the slight cavalry troops, but also complex harassment of the Russian army's supply lines, attack the opponent's sentinel cavalry and seize some property, after all, we have to give some benefits to those Kazakh, Sikh, Bengali and other armies that follow us on the expedition. ”

Speaking of this, Shi Dakai sighed and said: "This Volga River valley is also a rare fertile treasure land, but unfortunately, it is too far away from our east, and no of our Han population is willing to settle here, and it is inconvenient to govern in the west, otherwise, I really want to occupy this treasure land for Your Majesty and for my Great Chinese Empire."

Let's occupy this area and include it in the territory of the Kazakh Khanate. It's cheaper for them!

By the way, what about the details of the enemy's forces and defensive firepower? ”

Tao Jintang replied: "Back to King Yi, Tsarist Russia has a total of less than 30,000 troops in the city of Astrakhan, and the enemy troops stationed on the east bank of the Volga River are about 90,000 in total. Of these, the Caucasian Legion consisted of 40,000 and the Yergeny Legion numbered about 50,000. The combined strength of other sporadic forces and the fleet of inland water divisions was less than 6,000 men.

In terms of firepower, it should be the Caucasian Corps that is the most powerful, they have nearly 120 medium and large caliber guns, but most of them are old smoothbore guns, with a small number of front-loading rifled guns and howitzers. Although the number of Yergeny regiments was larger, there were only about 80 guns, all of which were old-style smoothbore guns, and even some bronze smoothbore guns left over from the defeat of the original French Emperor Napoleon I against Russia.

However, there are a lot of new artillery pieces in the city of Astrakhan, about 20 front-loading rifled guns, some power, which may bring some trouble to our army's siege, but that's all, it is still far from enough to block the powerful offensive of our army. After all, our army has more than 360 artillery pieces in one artillery division alone, and even if their new artillery is better than the artillery in the Caucasian Corps, it is extremely limited, and compared with the new Krupp field guns equipped with our artillery divisions, I am afraid that they can only be beaten. ”