Valley Emperor

Guilin all the way to the north is Jingzhou, Huguang. Although this section of the road is not easy to walk, it will not block the Fourth Army for more than a month.

Even if it is difficult to travel on the mountain road, there is not much heavy equipment these days. At best, it is just a few artillery pieces. No matter how difficult the mountain road is, if you send more people, the artillery resistance will be able to resist.

What really blocked the pace of the Fourth Army was not the terrain, but the Ming Army!

The tens of thousands of Ming troops who entered Guilin from Huguang did not fight directly with the Fourth Army at all. They were hiding and attacking the supply lines of the Fourth Army, and Chen Keqiao was quite big.

The thousands of people under his command stopped and walked along the way, and sometimes even had to turn around and go back to pursue the Ming army, and there was no way to march with all their strength.

Fortunately, Li Xuan sent reinforcements to him later. After the 6th Infantry Regiment, the 1st Battalion of Liuzhou Independent Regiment and the 6th Guards Brigade also arrived in Wuzhou, he was finally able to lead the main force north with sufficient troops.

He left a regular battalion and a reserve battalion of the 6th Infantry Regiment, and a garrison regiment of about 4,000 troops, and then took the remaining main force of about 7,000 to the north.

For the remaining troops, his request is very simple. Don't go after the tens of thousands of Ming troops who are scattered and attack the supply line. Instead, focus on guarding a few important cities, such as Guilin Fucheng and several key cities on the supply line, and then send troops to **** the baggage troops. .

As for those Ming troops who went to attack some small county towns, they just let him go. Anyway, it is nothing to lose a few small county towns, not to mention many county towns in Guilin Prefecture, the Datang Dynasty did not establish a truly stable rule.

There were about 4,000 defenders who stayed behind in Guilin, and they were commanded by Colonel Zhou Yibao, the deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Brigade.

Although he has 4,000 people under his command, to maintain such a long supply line, he has to defend several important cities in Guilin Prefecture. The task can be said to be quite heavy. After all, among the 4,000 people under his command, there is only one infantryman. The battalion and a reserve battalion are regular troops, and the remaining 3,000 people are garrison troops, and these garrison troops are just surrendered soldiers of the Ming army who have surrendered for more than a month. If there is a real fight, they are unreliable.

Therefore, on the one hand, he who sits in Guilin Prefecture vigorously established and strengthened the local robbery camp in Guilin Prefecture. In addition, he also requested the Privy Council to send some troops to Guilin to cooperate with each other to encircle and suppress the nearly Wanming army active in Guilin Prefecture.

If you don't kill the tens of thousands of Ming Army, they will always threaten the supply line of the main force of the Fourth Army. From Wuzhou all the way to Jingzhou, Huguang, this supply line is quite long, and it takes a long time to go. On land, it is impossible for the troops of the Fourth Army to send heavy troops to protect the transport troops all the time.

After all, if there are fewer dispatches, for example, only dozens or hundreds of people are dispatched, it is very likely that the Ming army will directly swallow it. But if they dispatch heavy troops, will Guilin Fucheng, Yongfu, Yining and other important strongholds still be guarded?

After accepting Zhou Yibao's request for help, Li Xuan didn't think about it for a long time, and soon approved the plan, but the reinforcements he planned to send were not regular troops, nor garrison troops, but armed forces independent of the army: arresting thieves camp.

There is no way. Nowadays, the Tang Dynasty needs troops in almost every direction. There is a shortage of troops everywhere, not to mention that the regular army cannot be recruited, even Li Xuan of the garrison brigade cannot be recruited.

Of course, this does not mean that Li Xuan has no troops on hand, but that he cannot use it easily.

In addition to the troops under the jurisdiction of the four armies that are currently fighting abroad, Li Xuan still has the Guards, the Third Guards Brigade, and the Liuzhou Independent Regiment on hand. Calculate.

As for the two newly established garrison brigades, the sixth garrison brigade has been dispatched to the fourth army, and the seventh garrison brigade has also been brought under the jurisdiction of the first army according to the original plan, and was dispatched in early April. In the central and western regions of Guangdong, this will be in the area of ​​Gaozhou and Leizhou, and is preparing to join forces with a reserve battalion under the 1st Infantry Brigade. Now it is collecting ships everywhere, preparing to cross the Qiongzhou Strait and land in Qiongzhou Prefecture (Hainan Island).

Of course, the Ming army is not stupid. The navy in Guangdong is already waiting in the Qiongzhou Strait. It is still a question mark whether it can successfully cross the sea.

The reason for the question mark is because the Qiongzhou Strait is not wide. Fortunately, you can sneak across the sea on a small sampan, but if you are unlucky and happen to be caught by the Ming army navy, then don't say The landing is successful, and I am afraid that few people will survive.

It doesn't matter whether it can hit Qiongzhou Prefecture, but the large coastal areas of Leizhou Prefecture, Gaozhou Prefecture and Lianzhou Prefecture all require troops to be garrisoned, and because the Ming army can use the navy to land everywhere, the troops should not be too small. .

The 6th Guards Brigade and the 7th Guards Brigade had their places, and now Li Xuan had only the Guards, the two battalions in the Liuzhou Independent Regiment, and the 3rd Guards Brigade to be mobilized.

And the 3rd garrison brigade also has a predetermined battle plan, that is, to cooperate with the first army to attack Guangzhou, and now it is undergoing the final training, and it will not be long before it will go south to Guangzhou.

And the Guards are Li Xuan's life-saving troops, unless he personally recruits, or the enemy kills Zhaoqing Mansion, otherwise, the Guards will never be used easily, even if the entire Guizhou is lost, the Guards will not be used. will be easily used.

The Liuzhou Independence Regiment originally had three battalions. One battalion has been reinforced to the Fourth Army. Now there are only two battalions left, and if nothing else happens, a battalion will have to be transferred to Guangzhou in the future to shoulder the heavy task of breaking the city of Guangzhou. , In this way, he has only one battalion left, a reserve team of less than 500 people.

Under such circumstances, how could he still assign this battalion to the Fourth Army.

But Guilin's side keeps making the Ming army riot like this. There is no way, Li Xuan can only make the idea of ​​catching the robbers.

Is the fighting force of the robbery camp strong? It is definitely not strong. If it is really fighting, with the same number of people, it is estimated that they can't beat the tax inspection team. If they meet the regular guards of the Ming army, they will definitely not be able to beat them. But the robbery camp is still armed with weapons. The army that must be trained is still slightly stronger than the young and strong, and the civilians.

Moreover, in some areas that have been under control for a long time, the relatively large threats have basically been eliminated, and these robbery camps will not have too much task pressure.

Some time ago, Li Xuan also reduced the size of the burglary camp and the tax inspection team, but even if it was downsized, the scale of the burglary camp is still relatively large. After all, every county has its establishment. Dozens of people, as many as one or two hundred people.

In the end, he issued a dispatch order to dispatch the robbery camps from Liuzhou, Wuzhou, Xunzhou and other prefectures in Guangxi, especially the prefectures whose city gates have been flat for a long time, not all of them, but two or three hundred per prefecture. In the end, a robbery camp of about 1,500 people was raised, and they were going to go north to Guilin to reinforce Zhou Yibao in the battle.

When Zhou Yibao heard that his reinforcements turned out to be just a group of robbery camps, he was naturally very disappointed, but there was nothing he could do. It was better to have reinforcements than no reinforcements.

In order to quickly reinforce Guilin, these robbery battalions came here on the transport ships of the logistics department and the navy. The first batch of nearly 500 robbery battalions composed of the two prefectures of Xunzhou and Wuzhou arrived soon. Guilin House, the Privy Council gave these 500 people the number of the first burglary camp in Guangxi, to distinguish it from the burglary camps in various places, because the burglary camps in various places are usually the name of the place and then add a burglary camp, such as the Zhengtai County arrest camp. Robbery camp, Wuzhou prefecture arresting robbery camp, etc.

The following troops formed by the two other prefecture-level robbery battalions will also be called Guangxi No. 2 Robbery Camp and Guangxi No. 3 Robbery Camp.

After the first robbery battalion in Guangxi arrived, Zhou Yibao personally went to see their status. After seeing it, he issued a strict order that the robbery battalion should not be used for field battles or **** tasks, but only for defending the city.

There is no other reason, this strength is really too scumbag, Zhou Yibao suspects that even if they are defending the city, they can't beat the guards of the Ming army.

However, although the strength of Guangxi's No. 1 robbery camp is so poor that Zhou Yibao wants to go crazy, there are still 500 people. If it is in the eyes of outsiders who do not understand their strength, these 500 people are fake Tang thieves. military.

But now the Ming army has a little fear of the pseudo-Tang thief army, even if it is a small place defended by a few hundred people, it will gather thousands of people to fight.

If these 500 people are released into the city of Wuzhou City, they can directly free up hundreds of troops of the Fourth Army. Squeeze a little here, squeeze a little there, Zhou Yibao thinks that after the other two robbery camps also arrive in Guilin, He should be able to have a mobile force of a thousand people on hand, and he still has a regular infantry battalion as the core. At that time, it is time to take the initiative.

Just when Zhou Yibao was racking his brains to secure the supply line of the Fourth Army in the rear~www.wuxiaspot.com~Chen Keqiao also led his troops to officially enter Jingzhou, Huguang.

On the first day he entered Jingzhou, the vanguard troops under his command captured the city step, and the soldiers pointed directly at Suining, and what was the place after Suining? It is Jingzhou Prefecture City, where the Huguang Ming Army entered the base camp of Xingquan Prefecture.

The Huguang Ming Army who fought in Xingquan Mansion passed through and entered Xingquan Mansion from here. At the same time, it is also an important logistics base for the Huguang Ming Army, and there is no one.

Grain, forage and armament transferred from Huguang and other places and even southern Zhili and other provinces traveled a long way to Jingzhou for distribution, and then transported from here to Xingquan Prefecture for the use of tens of thousands of Huguang Ming troops.

The strategic location of this Jingzhou state city is so important that Chen Keqiao can see it at a glance, so after he led his troops into Huguang, he didn't go there, he just went straight to Jingzhou state city and killed it!

The local Ming army soon smashed the pseudo-Tang thief army into Jingzhou, and the news that the soldiers pointed directly at the city of Jingzhou reported to the rear. It didn't take long for Zhang Yue to know the news.

As a superintendent of the four provinces, Zhang Yue immediately sank when he heard the news!