The Southern Expedition was made a national policy.
But this does not mean that the Han Dynasty can send troops to attack Soochow now.
After a decision has been made, the next step is to prepare for this decision. To prepare for a big war, the first thing to do is to mobilize food, grass, ordnance.
The soldiers and horses have not moved, but the food and grass go first.
After that, there are many steps including mobilizing troops, collecting intelligence, preparing the army for war, etc. It will take at least three months to more than half a year to prepare.
And since it is the Southern Expedition, there is no need to ask. The coach of the Southern Expedition must be Zhang Xi. In order to coordinate the preparations for the Southern Expedition, Xu Shu will return to Chang'an to take Pang Tong's place and manage the government, while Pang Tong will be temporarily transferred. Go to Jiangling and assist Zhang Xi in formulating strategic plans.
Pang Tong was a famous scholar in Jingzhou. Only if he went to Jingzhou in person could he use all the manpower and material resources in Jingzhou to the greatest extent possible and persuade the Jingzhou aristocratic families to support the Han Dynasty's southern expedition.
Within Jingzhou, the most active person for the Southern Expedition is probably Pan Jun, the head of the Pan family. If the Southern Expedition succeeds, then the promises made by Zhuge Liang and Zhang Xi to the Pan family should be fulfilled.
The right to allocate an entire newly reclaimed land in Lingling County. This is the best opportunity for the Pan family to rise.
The rest of the Ma family, Pang family, and Kuai family also responded well to the Southern Expedition.
This southern expedition will not end with the capture of Lingling and Wuling counties. There are also two counties of Changsha and Guiyang.
Especially in the two places in the north of Changsha County and Guiyang County, the Jingzhou family is still very interested.
This place, after twenty years of continuous development by Soochow, has become quite large.
Although it cannot be compared with the Dongting Lake Plain in later generations, the area of the original swamps and tidal flats has been greatly reduced. It is hard to say whether the tens of thousands of hectares of newly added farmland are considered to be first-class farmland, but at least they can be used to grow food. Land.
It’s better to have a well-established land without having to invest in development yourself. Who wouldn’t want this! ! !
It is impossible for the imperial court to swallow such a large scale. In the end, it will need to rely on the power of aristocratic families to digest it. Otherwise, the imperial court will not be able to complete the work of relocating people to the field without ten years of effort.
If so, it's a big deal! ! !
Lingling County has no choice. Zhuge Liang personally agreed to the Pan family. It is difficult for the Ma, Pang, and Kuai families to compete with the Pan family, but there is still great hope for part of the land in Changsha County and Guiyang County. Pocketed.
Although a large amount of money and food would be paid for this, if this money and food were used as support for the Han Dynasty's southern expedition in exchange for the right to control the land in Changsha and Guiyang counties, the deal would be a good deal.
If we attack other places, the Jingzhou families may not have much support, but if we attack Jingnan...hehe, a mere Wu Gou dares to stop me, the great Han Fengrui? !
In this way, under the joint coordination of Pang Tong, most of the Jingzhou families supported the Southern Expedition.
And the support of the family means that most of the problems of money, food and ordnance have been solved, and the remaining half can also be transferred from Xiangyang, Nanyang, or even Chang'an. All it takes is time.
The rest is a matter of deploying troops and generals.
In terms of military strength, Jiangling's own defense strength is about 25,000 navy troops and 35,000 infantry troops, totaling about 60,000 people.
But among them, about 20,000 navy troops were recruited and trained again. Although they had been training for nearly two years, Zhang Xi did not know their combat effectiveness.
Zhang Xi is really not familiar with the navy matter.
The commander-in-chief of the navy, Yang Xi, had promised Zhang Xi that the new navy was no worse than the original Jiangling navy. But Zhang Xi thought that in the last battle, the original Jiangling navy was directly defeated by Zhu Ran.
If the balance of power in the navy cannot be maintained in this attack on Jingnan, the main force of the Han army attacking Jingnan will be in a dangerous situation of being cut off from logistics and food.
Therefore, Zhang Xi asked Yang Xi to expand the naval force to 30,000 men within this six months. We do not have enough combat power, so we must gather more troops.
There are also navy warships. In the past two years, in order to rebuild the navy, Zhang Xi used almost all the corvees in the Jingzhou area to rebuild the warships.
Except for some of the civilians in Jiangling County who were responsible for repairing Jiangling city defenses, Zhang Xi sent all the rest of the corvee regulations to work as laborers in the shipyard. Zhang Xi also transferred most of the corvee regulations in Xiangyang County to cut down trees. Transport wood to Gangneung to provide raw materials for shipyards and shipbuilding.
Through this method of all-out invasion of corvee labor, Zhang Xi finally built four more Mengchong warships, nearly a hundred small and medium-sized warships, and more than fifty Zongke warships for the Jiangling Navy, and barely restored the original ships of the Jiangling Navy. quantity.
At the same time, under Yang Di's suggestion, Zhang Xi also ordered people to build a "big guy" for water battles according to Yang Di's request. To be honest, Zhang Xi was really excited when he heard Yang Di's suggestion. It's a bit unexpected.
This Yang Di, maybe he really is the kind of navy genius who has been buried in history.
The reconstruction of the navy has basically been completed, and as for the army, the remaining 20,000 Jiangling garrison has been expanded to 35,000, which will affect the combat effectiveness of the army to some extent.
After all, there are one-third more recruits.
However, compared to the navy, Zhang Xi is more familiar with the training of the army and has his own set of training methods to support it, so Zhang Xi is not too worried about the combat effectiveness of these armies.
At least, Zhang Xi was not worried when his opponent was the Soochow Army.
Of course, it is impossible to launch an attack on Jingnan with these troops alone.
After all, Soochow's land and sea troops in the Jingnan area totaled more than 70,000 people, not counting the 50,000 land and water troops in Jiangxia.
If reinforcements are needed, it will only take two or three days by water from Jiangxia to Lukou.
In addition, considering that attacking Changsha, Guiyang and other places, there may be a situation where the city needs to be sieged. If there is not enough strength advantage, it will be very troublesome to be unable to siege the city.
Therefore, military reinforcements are needed.
There is basically no need to worry about Chen Dao from Badong County. As soon as the emperor's edict arrives, Chen Dao will definitely bring Badong County troops to reinforce him.
However, considering the need to defend Badong County, Chen Dao sent a letter to Zhang Xi, stating that he could only recruit about 20,000 soldiers to help, and at least half of them were new recruits who had been trained for less than a year.
Chen Dao couldn't guarantee his combat power.
But no matter what, having 20,000 troops here in Zhang Xi is considered a considerable amount of support.
As for Xiangyang, Wenpin also needs to bear the heavy responsibility of defending Xiangyang. After all, Jiangxia has a lot of navy and land forces. If Zhuge Ke tries to attack Xiangyang by encircling Wei and rescuing Zhao, Wenpin will have to guard against it.
Therefore, Wenpin could only send a maximum of 10,000 county soldiers south, but Wenpin would try his best to choose veterans with better combat capabilities to go south, while he would only take the newly recruited county soldiers and 20,000 naval troops to guard Xiangyang.
This is already the greatest support Wenpin can give Zhang Xi.
Thirty-five thousand Jiangling County soldiers, plus 20,000 Badong County soldiers, and 10,000 Xiangyang County soldiers, a total of 65,000 people. Zhang Xi thought about it and felt that it was still not enough.
At least 100,000 people must be gathered, so that we can be sure to regain the four counties of Jingnan in one fell swoop.
What to do with the remaining 35,000 people? !
Twenty thousand of them can be easily dealt with, and Zhang Xi can mobilize the troops from the three eastern counties under Kou Feng's command. When Da Cong heard that they were going to march south, he wrote to the court and to Zhang Xi, just because he wanted to Come and join in the fight.
So where will the remaining 15,000 people be drawn from? !
In Yingchuan, Wang Ping and Zhang Yi's troops experienced a disastrous defeat, and there were only seven or eight thousand men left. In the past two years, through troop transfers from various places and local recruitment, they could barely make up 20,000 men.
In Xuchang, Yingchuan County, Chen Tai and Guo Huai are also recruiting soldiers for training, and their strength has reached 30,000. The troops in this place are not enough, and they must not be transferred.
From Zhuge Liang in Luoyang? !
Zhuge Liang did have up to 50,000 troops in his hands, including 20,000 Luoyang County soldiers and the 30,000 Han Dynasty Northern Army that had been re-allocated to full quota.
But Zhuge Liang not only had to face the 50,000 Cao Wei troops in Hedong County and Hanoi County, but also had to face a total of 40,000 Wei troops in Hulang Pass and Gong County. Zhuge Liang also needed to divide his troops to defend Hongnong County. Although he had a lot of troops, But not too rich either.
In this case, Zhang Xi had no choice but to report to the court and ask the emperor to make a decision.
In fact, they just want the 20,000 Han Nan army in the hands of the emperor to come to Jiangling to help in the battle.
Of course, Zhang Xi did not expect the little fat man to send all the Han Nan troops to help in the battle. Ten thousand people could come, and ninety-five thousand people would be enough, which is no different from one hundred thousand.
However, Zhang Xi really didn't expect that the little fat man would be so courageous this time and directly sent all 20,000 Confederate troops to Zhang Xi.
Moreover, along with the 20,000 Southern troops came four generals: Jiang Wei, Wen Qin, Guanqiu Jian, and Fu Qian.
Obviously, in the last war, the Southern Army fought. Although Jiang Wei's performance was pretty good, the Southern Army really did not make any decent achievements. Instead, nearly half of the 10,000 Southern Army was lost in the battle to rescue Wu Yi.
This time, the little fat man was determined to make his personal guard Nanjun make contributions.
Well, no matter what the ultimate goal is, today's courage is quite similar to that of the late emperor.
(End of chapter)