The Tatars' strategy in the Western Regions seemed very rogue to the generals of the Tang Dynasty!

Damn you, you Tatars are able to sweep across Central Asia and Eastern Europe, and now they are causing panic among Europeans. Why are you so insignificant on the Eastern Front?

For more than ten years, they have never fought a big battle with our Datang Army!

Every year, there are small and medium-sized battles involving dozens, hundreds, or less than a thousand people, and there is never a battle involving tens of thousands of people!

The army of the Tang Dynasty sometimes penetrated hundreds of kilometers and ran all the way to Hami City, but the Tatars actually hid all the way. Hami City also closed its gates and refused to come out to fight.

This feeling gave the generals of the Tang Dynasty army a sense of powerlessness and nowhere to use it!

If possible, many generals in the Army of the Tang Dynasty hoped that the Tatars would come out and fight with them in an upright manner, and even giving up a hand to the Tatars was negotiable.

But the Tatars didn't give them this chance at all.

In this Western Expedition, Lu Yuzhi and other senior generals of the Tang Army also had no illusions that the Tatars would come to their doorstep to fight. Instead, they prepared to advance steadily and steadily to establish long-distance supply lines and cover railway construction workers.

As well as the engineering corps within the army, the core goal is to build the northwest railway extension line.

If the Tatars don't come out, they will build the railway all the way to Hami, and then build it to Turpan. Once there, they will occupy it, and then consolidate their defenses. After capturing these two strongholds, they will then use cavalry troops to launch an attack on Central Asia.

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If the Tatars are unwilling to give up the Western Regions and are preparing for a head-to-head confrontation with the Tang Army, then Lu Yuzhi can laugh out of his dreams!

Based on the army strategy of the Tang Dynasty, although a lot of troops had been accumulated in Jiayuguan in advance, and they even knew that the Tatars must be well prepared, Lu Yuzhi and the others were still not in a hurry to launch an attack.

Instead, they continued to wait, training troops on the one hand, and waiting for more supplies to arrive at the front line on the other. At the same time, more importantly, they needed to wait for the engineering team of the Railway Corporation and the engineering troops reinforced by the army to arrive.

In order to build railways, the Railway Corporation designed simple military railways and deployed a large number of technical backbones and equipment, but they lacked sufficient labor.

Building railways these days requires a lot of labor, but there are not many people in Gansu. The total number of civilians in the province is only 700,000 or 800,000.

The number of local garrison troops reached more than 200,000.

Therefore, part of the labor force required for the construction of military railways was hired by the Railway Corporation from Shaanxi and other provinces. The number was about 30,000 people.

It's not that we don't want to mobilize more people, but the northwest railway has limited transportation capacity, and it is already difficult to maintain an army of more than 200,000 and tens of thousands of employees.

In order to solve this difficulty, after coordination, the Railway Corporation transferred only 30,000 people, and the remaining labor gap was solved by the military.

How to deal with it?

The military has more than 200,000 troops stationed in the northwest!

When the battle started, it was impossible for all the troops to go to the front line. In fact, those who could actually go to the front line to fight the Tatars were only tens of thousands at most. The rest were basically used to maintain the supply lines. These maintenance

The troops on the supply line can help build the railway even if they have nothing to do.

In other words, in order to build the railway, the empire will mobilize 30,000 hired workers, and the military will also mobilize a large number of troops to directly participate in road construction.

In addition, there are about 2,000 technical personnel from the Railway Corporation drawn from all over the country, and a large number of machinery and equipment.

Sufficient personnel will be a strong support for the military to march into the Western Regions!

With so many people working on the project at the same time, the Railway Corporation is very optimistic that it will be able to build the railway to Hami City before winter comes.

With such a large labor force and the original more than 100,000 combat troops, the supplies required, especially food, are also astronomical.

This was impossible to solve in the past, but with the Northwest Railway, these can be solved.

In order to supply grain to the northwest region, the central plains include Jiangnan and Huguang. In the northeastern region, a large amount of grain is moved onto trains, and then transported to the railway hub of Zhengzhou through the railway network, and then continues to be transported westward to Jiayuguan.

In order to put down the large amount of materials transported from all over the country, the local garrison built a large number of material warehouses. Even because the warehouses were not enough, many materials were even stored directly in the open air.

Today, the entire Jiayuguan Pass does not look like a pass at all, but rather like a huge construction site!

On the third day of June, Lu Yuzhi, who had been preparing for a long time, officially ordered the troops to set off!

The early troops are the first cavalry corps and the second cavalry corps, the two main cavalry forces!

These two cavalry corps are the only two cavalry corps in the Army of the Tang Dynasty, and they are also the most elite independent field cavalry units in the Army of the Tang Dynasty.

Among them, the First Cavalry Corps has three standard cavalry divisions and the fifth lancer regiment. The Second Cavalry Corps also has three standard cavalry divisions and the seventh cuirassier regiment.

Although the two cavalry corps mentioned above only have more than 25,000 troops in terms of strength, they have more than 60,000 horses, because in these field cavalry units, the light cavalry are all single.

Riding two horses, heavy cavalry all ride three horses alone.

The Tang Army's various equipment, tactics and organization have been constantly innovating, but the infantry and artillery units have relatively little change, while the cavalry units change frequently.

From the equipment to the attached war horses, to the organization and even tactics, everything has changed a lot.

Finally, the currently more complex Datang Army Cavalry Unit was formed!

The cavalry units in the Army of the Tang Dynasty still had field cavalry and divisional cavalry.

The divisional cavalry includes regular army divisional cavalry regiments and garrison division cavalry battalions in reserve forces.

The cavalry battalion of the garrison division only has more than 300 cavalry in one battalion, with a single cavalry and a single horse.

The standard for a divisional cavalry regiment in an infantry division is to have 800 cavalry and four teams of two hundred cavalry each. Among them, the divisional cavalry regiment in the main force is usually equipped with two horses, while the divisional cavalry regiment in the second-line army is usually equipped with two horses.

There is only one horse.

The divisional cavalry is relatively simple. They are basically all light cavalry, equipped with sabers, pistols, lances and other equipment. Their main combat mission is reconnaissance, and charging into battle can only be regarded as a secondary mission at best.

As for the field cavalry unit, it is actually a combined unit, because they also have cavalry artillery, cavalry baggage and other units, and each cavalry division can fight independently.

A standard field cavalry division consists of five regiments and two battalions, including four cavalry regiments, a baggage regiment, and an artillery battalion.

Generally speaking, among these four cavalry regiments, there are three standard light cavalry regiments and one heavy cavalry regiment.

But this is just a simple distinction, because whether it is a light cavalry regiment or a heavy cavalry regiment, there are often many types.

The Hussars, the Hussars, the Hussars, and the Hussars.

Heavy cavalry regiments include full-body plate armored lancers, heavy cuirassiers, light cuirassiers, light cuirassiers, etc.

For example, the famous First Lancer Regiment of the Guards is equipped with heavy full-body plate armor. Even the war horses are equipped with plate armor and are equipped with hollow lances. They are heavy cavalry that can directly launch intensive charges. They are also the only heavy cavalry in the Tang Dynasty that have always been equipped with them.

A cavalry unit with heavy plate armor.

Because of the huge load of the cavalry, the main war horses they ride are all Jurong horses. Although the Jurong horses have many shortcomings, their advantages are equally obvious. They are extremely tall, have strong load-bearing capacity, and have explosive short-distance sprinting capabilities.

, and they will also be equipped with two additional Arabian horses as auxiliary horses.

But similarly, the Fifth Lancer Regiment, which belongs directly to the First Cavalry Corps, has similar names to the First Lancer Regiment of the Guards. They seem to be heavy lancers, but in fact they are only equipped with breastplates and no

Instead of using hollow lances, sabers and pistols were used as the main combat weapons. The horses used were mainly Arabian horses, supplemented by northwest horses. In terms of tactics, the main focus was on saber charge.

As for the designation of the Lancers, it was because they were light lancers at that time. Later, they continued to be called cuirassiers after they were changed to cuirassiers.

There is also the 7th Cuirassier Regiment, which belongs directly to the Second Cavalry Corps. This is a serious cuirassier, but their cuirassiers are thinner, only medium thickness, and they pay more attention to the application of pistols.

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In addition, there is the Third Musketeer Regiment, which is equally famous. The combat method of this independent cavalry regiment is that of dragoons. It just shoots from horseback. The marksmanship of each cavalry is quite accurate.

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It is basically difficult to find a unified standard for the field cavalry units of the Tang Army, because even each cavalry regiment will prefer different equipment and tactics due to its historical traditions and the commander's tendencies, and the top generals of the cavalry units

, also does not stop this behavior, in fact it cannot be stopped.

Because to a certain extent, the equipment and organization are similar. Heavy cavalry units are basically equipped with breastplates, sabers, and pistols, while light cavalry units are basically equipped with sabers and mounted muskets. They just like to use them.

But even if there is no unified standard, these two cavalry armies are actually the elite cavalry units in the Tang Dynasty Army. Six cavalry divisions and two independent heavy cavalry regiments basically include one-third of the Tang Army.

A standing field cavalry unit.

And this time, it will also be the main force of this Western Expedition!

When the two cavalry corps leave Jiayuguan first, the subsequent units of the Fifth Army will follow, and this corps will cooperate with the cavalry units.

As for the troops of the Fourteenth Army, including Ying Yikang's 31st Infantry Division, they set off slowly. Moreover, they were not chasing the cavalry troops on the front, but were slowly advancing behind them.

Because in this battle, the main combat mission of the Fourteenth Army was not to fight the enemy, but to maintain the logistics supply line.

But this is just a decent statement. In fact, they had just left Jiayuguan, which is not correct. It should be said that the forward troops left Jiayuguan for only five kilometers, and then they stopped advancing.

The soldiers threw down their guns one by one, put on hoes, and began to build the railway under the command of a group of technicians!

In other words, Ying Yikang, Bi Zhian and others ran to the northwest after all the hard work and finally became a railway construction team!
Chapter completed!