An active war does not begin at the beginning, and before it is preceded by a lot of preparations.

This can be avoided in both ancient and modern times.

The only difference is that because of the difference in traffic and transport capacity, the preparation period for both is also different.

Although the expeditionary force had been preparing for a long time, in fact, with the postponement of the plan, this preparation was almost non-progressive.

Even after this year, even the normal shipbuilding work was stopped, and the purpose was to develop steel warships with all its might.

If it weren't for the fact that this plan might be postponed indefinitely because of various problems in the development of the project, Li Yuanji would obviously not have decided to carry out this plan now.

And although he had made some preparations in a hurry before, half a year was still a bit tight for Wang Xuance.

War is not child's play, war is not child's play.

Li Yuanji's words made Wang Xuance more cautious in dealing with this war that must be won.

Because the purpose of war is to achieve victory, and to achieve victory, it is a victory that must not be piled up with human life.

He has to get the most out of his game at the lowest cost.

Therefore, this also requires Wang Xuance to take out the plan that he had prepared a long time ago, and then verify it word by word, deduce, and calculate the various possibilities of problems.

This work is complicated, huge, and cannot be completed by one person, and Wang Xuance also called the chief generals of the sailors and the Marine Corps over to study and deduce together.

And the ultimate purpose of this is just to come to a conclusion, if they fight in this way, how many lives will they have to pay?

If the casualties are too large, or the number of casualties is beyond their acceptability, they have to abandon the plan and think of another way.

Then, the staff officers also joined in, and the number of the entire discussion team exceeded 100 people, and all kinds of tactical results were piled up in front of Wang Xuance's case one by one.

The work is not useless, nor is it in vain.

While a large amount of war materials were being transported to Tokai County, the battle plan was constantly being improved, but the final plan had not yet been determined.

Because of Li Yuanji's advice, Wang Xuance changed his previous thoughts.

Especially in terms of transportation, in terms of the proportion of transportation capacity, Wang Xuance has made a lot of deduction work.

In fact, to put it bluntly, we are studying the issue of the proportion of troops for the first batch of landings, and the current arms of the troops are divided into two types, horizontal sword soldiers and pikemen, these two arms are a pair, and the five groups are a group of people, plus a group leader.

That is, a group has eleven horizontal knives and five spears, and in normal combat, they cooperate in pairs, and the gang commander commands to fill in the gaps.

However, Wang Xuance found that the biggest problem was the pikemen.

This plan has been deduced, and it has also been tested on the docks of Donghai County, and it was found that the pikemen did not play a big role when they landed, but because of the spears, they would greatly slow down the speed of the troops' landing.

This is a problem, because pikemen need space to fight, and the small place on the dock simply cannot accommodate a large number of soldiers to fight.

If there is no resistance on the other side, it is easy to say, but in terms of planning, they dare not do this, otherwise if the other side is prepared, then they will make this plan, and they can only wait to die.

In particular, when facing pikemen alone, although they have the advantage of flexibility, the disadvantage of short hands is also obvious.

Take the Tang Army as an example, 500 pikemen against 500 horizontal knife soldiers, the pikemen only need to keep the formation compact, stand in the front and back rows, and leave a position in the middle where the spear can be stretched out, and the horizontal knife soldiers can be directly pushed into the sea.

And when defending, it shrinks directly into a formation, and if you only use a horizontal knife, there is nowhere to start.

Of course, this is only a conventional mode of warfare, and the combat mode of the Tang Army has long surpassed the conventional.

It is precisely because he participated in the battle of exterminating Tuguhun and exterminating Tubo, and in those two battles, Wang Xuance also learned a lot of chicken thief tactics from Su Dingfang, and also saw a lot, so even now, he still doesn't dare to have any carelessness.

As for the 1,000 forbidden troops that Li Yuanji said, I didn't hear any movement when I came back, and I have been back in Donghai County for a month, and there is still no movement.

Of course, in Wang Xuance's view, the forbidden army must have an advantage in defense, but in terms of offense, it may not be able to compare with these soldiers under his command.

Besides, it is not the same as before, and those who used to defend the palace can basically become 'professional soldiers', and their combat effectiveness is very good, but now everyone is a professional soldier, and after a few years of training, the gap in combat effectiveness is actually not big, and it can only be said that each has its own characteristics.

However, at the beginning of September, when the weather was still very hot, the 1,000-strong forbidden army quietly appeared in Donghai County.

A thousand people, what can they do for themselves? Perhaps find them a suitable position, that is, to monitor the every move of the entire expeditionary force.

Maybe Li Yuanji didn't distrust him, but when there were heavy casualties in the expeditionary force, these people would definitely come out to stop it.

In this regard, Wang Xuance has long been prepared in his heart.

Until......

Someone came to tell Wang Xuance that this thousand forbidden troops were very strange, especially when their equipment, no knives, no guns, only a stick, Wang Xuance felt that something was wrong.

……

Rewind to two months ago.

Wang Xuance had just persuaded Li Yuanji on the front foot, and after making a military order, he hurriedly returned to Donghai County.

There are many things that he doesn't have to worry about at all, the emperor decides how many troops to send, and how much grain to send to Donghai County is also ordered by the emperor, coordinated by the military department, and deployed by the household department.

Now the core idea of the Tang Army is that before the war begins, the commander only needs to think about how to fight this battle, and other preparations will naturally be done.

But after the war began, the boss needed to arrange these by himself, ask someone to help, or be responsible for himself, depending on the boss's own will.

After sending Wang Xuance away, Li Yuanji was thinking about which forbidden army to send over?

The transfer of the forbidden army was not because he was not worried about Wang Xuance, but because Li Yuanji knew the combat effectiveness of the forbidden army, or he knew the combat effectiveness of the forbidden army equipped with muskets.

Although the forbidden army guarding the palace does not have muskets in their hands at the moment, it is entirely because Li Yuanji does not look down on the current muskets, so he is lazy to equip them, and thousands of muskets are stored in the warehouse of the palace, and then the camp of the forbidden army outside the city is a rotation training system, all the forbidden troops will spend ten days here every month, and the task is to be familiar with the muskets, and the way to fight after equipping the muskets.

And one thing to note is that the training method is not to train according to the way of platoon guns, but to train according to the combat method of new guns, although everyone is very depressed, but since it is an order, it can only be practiced like this.

"Your Majesty, the problem of bullet propellant has been solved......" Li Yuanji, who was worried about not knowing which unit to send to the front line, received a result that surprised him very much, it was not someone from the bullet research institute who came to report, but Zhai Liang, a student of Li Yuanji and who was appointed as the squad leader.

After hearing the news, Li Yuanji's eyes lit up instantly, and he hurriedly asked, "Is the performance stable?" ”

"It's stable, right? The students tried more than 100 times, and none of them failed, but ......" Zhai Liang hesitated, not knowing what to say.

"Just what?" Listening to Li Yuanji in the front, he was quite happy, but Zhai Liang's words in the back made Li Yuanji's just rising joy can't help but take it back.

The importance of propellant is self-evident, now that the gun is available, and the bullet has been manufactured, only the propellant is missing, as long as the propellant is studied, and his stability can be determined, then the new gun can be tested in a small range of equipment, Li Yuanji naturally does not want to have problems.

In order to promote the research progress of propellants, Li Yuanji even focused the course on gunpowder.

"The discovery of the propellant was a complete accident, the first part was discovered by the students, according to the experimental process, every step must be recorded, and then in the next step, when the students were storing the records, Yu Gu mistakenly thought that the test tube that the student put there was put by him before, and then he went to test according to his plan, and then, when it was dried into powder, Jin Lian was a little uncomfortable, and happened to knock the test tube with the powder to the ground, and then the powder fell to the ground and caught up directly, The flames ignited Jin Lian's clothes, if it wasn't for the timely treatment, I am afraid that there would be injuries in this test......" Zhai Liang carefully explained the whole process.

Li Yuanji was amazed when he heard it, this result was really a complete accident.

These students have been following him for half a year, except for the first two months of learning the basics, the next few months are studying the projectile, and as a result, there is no progress in the research for several months, but because of an accident, they successfully studied it.

And this is nothing, first Yu Gu took the wrong test tube, and then Jin Lian was uncomfortable and knocked down the test tube, if it weren't for these two accidents, there would be no such result at all.

Sometimes I do have to admit that scientific experiments are actually an accident after an accident, and when it is ordinary, there is nothing to achieve, and the more accidents there are, the more discoveries there are.

Anyway, the propellant was available, but Li Yuanji was still not very relieved, so he went to see it in person.

Although he didn't know what the propellant was like in later generations, the propellant he saw now was indeed very easy to ignite, easy to wrap in some paper, find a small clod of soil and fall freely to ignite it instantly, and the flame was strong enough.