Zhao Bing's battle deployment was to attack Jingmen along the main road along the main road. After Yicheng, it was close to Xiangyang. The Sixth Army stationed in Ezhou went out of Hanyang, along the Zhang River, attacked Hanchuan, Yingcheng, Anzhou, and Suizhou. It joined forces with the Seventh Army to attack Xiangfan and capture Nanyang. Then, it used the natural barrier formed by the mountains to establish a defense line to control Huaixi.

The two local troops, coupled with the cooperation of the local troops, mobilized more than 100,000 troops, and were unified by Jiangxian. The battle in Huaixi was important in Xiangfan. There is no need to say much about the significance of occupying Xiangfan. Xiangyang and Fancheng were interdependent on the Han River, "crossing Jingyu and controlling the north and south", and were known as the thoroughfare of nine provinces. Xiangfan area was a passage from Jianghan to the Central Plains. Whether it was directly downstream along the Han River or going to Suizhou, it had to pass through this.

Moreover, the terrain of Xiangfan is very dangerous. It has been a battleground for military strategists since ancient times. It was also a grand border town for the Song Dynasty to resist the Mongolian army. It has always been the Zhao Bing regime that threatened the new generation. However, from Xiangyang to the north, follow the tributaries of the Han River such as Xichuan, and cross the Funiu Mountain, you can enter the Yiluo River Valley. Then, you can either take Luoyang in the east or attack Guanzhong in the west, you can play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses and make a difference.

However, he had been unable to attack before, so Zhao Bing had to arrange heavy troops in Ezhou. In two years, through a series of small battles, he captured Hanyang and Yiling, and formed the Ezhou Inland River Naval Army to prevent the invasion of the Mongolian Yuan. If this battle is successful now, not only will the defensive situation in Jiangnan be fundamentally reversed, but it will also lay a solid foundation for further advancing Sichuan and Sichuan. On the other hand, going north can threaten Henan and open a channel to compete for the Central Plains.

The Second Army stationed in Wuhu planned to attack Luzhou first along the main road, and then occupy Shouzhou. Shouzhou had control over Huaiying and carried Jiangtuo, which was known as the key hub in the northwest and the barrier in the southeast. Due to the geographical location of the southern bank of the Huai River, on the one hand, the river network was densely populated, and its traffic effect became increasingly prominent in the late Tang Dynasty; on the other hand, Shouzhou, as a strategic victory place, was located in the transition zone between the Central Plains and the Jiangnan region. It can play a military role in blocking Huainan during wartime and has also become a must-attack.

After the end of the Yangzhou Battle, Zhao Bing's next target was Shanyang in Huai'an and Xuyi. He was facing two divisions of troops. He planned to take a boat along the canal north and head straight to Shanyang, and the other was to enter Xuyi by land. The main battlefield of the two armies' battles at present was Jiangdong, so he had to quickly capture the two places and prevent the enemy reinforcements from heading south.

Now there are a large number of baggage ships gathered under Yangzhou City. They travel north day and night, and can reach Shanyang directly within five days. However, the other one has to marches to Xuyi, which will take ten days to reach. But this may be reached first by enemy reinforcements, and then a hole will be left on the front line. So he began to think about how to speed up the marching and seize the place before the enemy reinforcements arrived. And his idea was on the large number of captured war horses...

In the eyes of modern people, cavalry is "men's romance". Countless military fans have had the same dream - leading a cavalry in front of the two armies to rush left and right, rush around, and make unparalleled achievements. Zhao Bing is of course no exception. However, when he came to this world, he found that this was not the case. The cavalry dominates the battlefield by not acts of head-on charge, which is similar to the courage of ordinary men, but the dominance of the battlefield brought by its strong mobility.

In the era of cold weapons, the cavalry became the well-deserved master of the battlefield. As Engels said: "If any army does not have a cavalry that can conquer and fight, they cannot expect victory in the battle." Zhao Bing thought it was very true. He realized that when the war reached a certain scale, the importance of command became more and more prominent. When the two armies faced off, the better commanding side could often win the final victory.

However, because the process of command activities is "reconnaissance-communication-decision-communication", if you want to conduct successful command, you need to understand the battlefield situation in real time and issue orders in a timely manner. In other words, you have sufficient ability to obtain and transmit battlefield information. The strong cavalry not only has advantages in this regard, but can also destroy the other party's information acquisition and transmit capabilities.

In the age of cold weapons, the acquisition and transmission of battlefield information was mainly accomplished by light cavalry. The light cavalry carried out reconnaissance activities, and the reconnaissance situation was returned to the commander. The commander made a judgment on what action should be taken in the next step based on the reconnaissance situation, and then sent the light cavalry to convey orders to the troops scattered in various places, and each army then carried out relevant actions according to the orders.

In this process, whether the light cavalry can reconnaissance enough intelligence and deliver it to the commander and the commander's orders to the army in time has become an important factor in whether their side can take the initiative. Generally speaking, the army with more light cavalry can obtain more intelligence. During the battle, Mongolia used its large number of light cavalry to conduct frequent reconnaissance, so that the enemy's army's every move is under the control of the Mongolian army. The result is that the Mongolian army can always understand the enemy's weaknesses and weaknesses, and launch a fatal attack on the enemy.

What is more important is that when transmitting information, the enemy and us often have to travel through large areas of weakly controlled areas. These areas lack the military presence of both sides, and will also become battlefields for the two sides to fight. In this battlefield, the two sides are competing for the dominance of battlefield information. Which side can gain the upper hand in the melee, which side can detect the situation and the military orders transmitted can be delivered in time. On the contrary, not only will it become deaf and blind because of poor reconnaissance information feedback, but it may also cause the army to be paralyzed due to poor order transmission. The advantages of light cavalry are beyond the reach of infantrymen.

In this way, the mobility of cavalry can not only help them compete for the dominance of battlefield information, but also help them seize the dominance of battlefield traffic. They can destroy the channels for enemy materials transportation and destroy important bridges and roads, thereby gaining the dominance of battlefield traffic. Because from ancient times to the present, the materials needed to maintain a combat state have always been astronomical.

Because these materials are huge and cannot be carried by the army, they often adopt two methods: special transport teams organized by the rear and special small troops organized by the army to collect materials around the battlefield. However, both methods have obvious weaknesses: in order to transport as much food as possible to the front line, special transport teams cannot accompany the army to guard the army, so they often have no ability to deal with attacks; small troops are small in size and small in number, weak in strength, and low combat effectiveness are also their main disadvantages. Therefore, once a slightly large cavalry unit searches for transportation teams or small troops collecting materials with its extremely strong maneuver power, it is often in danger.

Because cavalry has a maneuver speed that far exceeds infantry, they often gain the dominance of combat opportunities when facing an enemy with a primary infantry, that is, they decide when and where to start fighting against the enemy, and thus become invincible. As Sun Bin summarized, "hiding his unpreparedness, attacking his brigade without reorganization" and "betraying his brigade, and taking his brigade, and surprise him" are all among the "ten advantages" of cavalry.

In addition, many people who have little understanding of military affairs think that when facing a cavalry group, the infantry group does not have to worry about the attack of the cavalry group as long as they are always in a defensive position or successfully set up camps. But what they don’t realize is that the above two are difficult to do in the era when cavalry dominate the battlefield. In the era of cold weapons, the combat state of the army is heavily dependent on whether the army can maintain sufficient physical strength and obtain sufficient supplies.

In addition, Zhao Bing knew that whether in the era of cold weapons or modern times, it would take a certain amount of time for the army to change from a marching state to a combat formation or to set up camps to fight the enemy's attack. If you want to prepare both before the enemy cavalry arrives, you need to have enough warning time. But the reality is that when your cavalry is at a disadvantage, the dominance of battlefield information itself is not on your side, so it is naturally difficult to make timely warnings. Under the siege of the cavalry group, the infantry group cannot get enough rest or obtain sufficient supplies, and naturally they can only fall into failure.

It is precisely because of the high mobility of the cavalry that it gains various dominance in the field of combat and in the field of tactics that it also gains dominance in the direction of attack. When the two armies confront each other, although both sides try to ensure that their own battle formation has no weak links, due to the limitations of their own conditions, they often leave flaws. Faced with these flaws, the cavalry group can rely on its superb mobility to quickly approach and launch an attack, and eventually tear apart the entire enemy's army, thus reflecting the value of charge in battle.

It was precisely because of the powerful mobility of cavalry in war that Zhao Bing thought about how to use the existing war horses to realize his plan. The fact is that the troops participating in the war were lacking cavalry. In order to fill the shortcomings of lack of military strength, he temporarily formed various cavalry units, but the losses in battle were quite large. Even with the personal guard regiment that could barely ride a horse to fight, he still could not undertake the task of independently capturing a land.

In addition, even if you cram the moment and let the infantry learn to ride a horse, Zhao Bing knew that being able to ride a horse and being able to ride a long distance is different. It is not something that can be done in one day, two days, or even ten days, or half a month. Not to mention anything else, you can't stand the butt. You can think about it. Basically everyone can ride a bicycle, but you can't ride for 100 kilometers a day and not ride for three days. The butt and thighs are all covered!
Chapter completed!