I have lived forever since the end of Qin Dynasty

Chapter 258 Discover problems and deal with them

Henan County, Yiyang County.

Since the Han army entered the Sanhe area, they first separated in Hedong, and then entered Hanoi County. Under the auspices of Chen Luo, rewards were given to more than [-] soldiers, leaving them with enough money to allow them to return home contentedly.

After demobilizing most of the soldiers, Chen Luo led the remaining troops slowly southward, and finally stopped at Yiyang County, southwest of Henan County.

They stayed here for two reasons.

First, when the army is stationed here, the road to the west is very smooth and communications will not be hindered. If there is a new decree from Chang'an, they can receive it quickly.

Second, from Yiyang south, you can take the Luoshui River, and then take the tributaries of the rivers. You can take the waterway all the way to the border of Changsha and reach southern Xinjiang. In addition, water transport can reduce food losses, so it is a perfect route.

The main body of this plan was figured out by Chen Luo himself. At that time, it was sent to Han Xin for help with reference. As a result, he only pointed out five or six deficiencies in details and did not make major modifications. This has already made Chen Luo feel uncomfortable. Luo was overjoyed.

You must know that Chen Luo knew the gap between him and Han Xin. Not only that they were as far apart as Zhou Bo and Cao Shen, at least they were separated by Xia Houying.

I had originally planned to be severely criticized by Han Xin. After all, according to my previous experience, every time I brought up the loopholes in the plan, it would not be as dazzling as the Haohao Lieyang in the eyes of the Bingxian. Like the bright Beidou in the night sky, it cannot be hidden.

It's just that Chen Luo became more and more courageous in this regard.

Every time after being criticized by Han Xin, I can gain a lot. The progress is visible to the naked eye, and I can erase the loss caused by the denial of the plan.

The plan to demobilize the soldiers and station them in Yiyang was beyond his expectation and was confirmed.

Those five or six detailed problems are difficult for anyone else to discover except Han Xin. A second-rate general would not have arranged them better than Chen Luo, and even most of the quasi-first-rate generals would not have discovered them.

Therefore, Chen Luo's arrangement was an extraordinary performance, and he briefly reached the level of a first-class star.

Of course, planning is one thing, and implementation is another.

After the details of the plan he gave to Han Xin have been modified, there is nothing wrong with it.

It's just that when Chen Luo carried out the actual operation, he discovered some problems that were not covered in the plan.

For example, when I demobilized more than [-] soldiers in Hanoi County and distributed travel expenses, their hometowns were far away from each other. Compared with the soldiers whose homes were in Sanhe and Guanzhong, the distances on the road for those who needed to return to Qidi or Chu were different. The amount of travel required can vary several times.

In this case, egalitarianism is undesirable.

If you give a soldier who lives in Hanoi County a regular amount of copper coins, he may be able to go back on foot. When he gets home, he only uses five or six copper coins, and the rest are pure rewards.

But the soldiers who returned to Qidi and Chudi had to cross mountains and rivers, and they had to change several modes of transportation along the way. Only this copper coin was used as toll. When they returned home, they might need to take two more copper coins to pay for their journey.

Faced with such a situation, will they have a psychological balance?

It is precisely this principle that we should not worry about scarcity but inequality.

As for distributing the expenses they need to go home according to geographical distance, it sounds like there is no problem in theory, and Chen Luo also plans to arrange it this way.

But when he was about to implement it, he realized on the first day that he was making a fool of himself.

Counting the home addresses of more than [-] soldiers is not a simple task.

Even if there are partial records during the recruitment, more soldiers have no records, or they can say that their residence information has changed. His home is not in Guanzhong, but in Qidi.

What's more, because the distance of the journey is different and the travel expenses given are different, there will inevitably be false reports or concealment of reports.

After all, the soldiers living in Guanzhong need to spend thirty or forty copper coins on the journey. According to Chen Luo's idea, fifty copper coins are given to them, leaving a certain amount of redundancy to prevent these veterans returning from the army from having a hard time on the road. Tight.

But if these people report their addresses to the same place, they will get one and a half or even two coins.

They returned to Guanzhong with two copper coins, even if they ate and drank a lot along the way, they could still leave a consistent copper coin in the end, which is full of benefits.

In situations where it is profitable and the risks are not high, honest people who do not falsely report are rarer than the remaining elephants in the Three Rivers area.

So after Chen Luo discovered this problem, he immediately started to solve it.

Although the expense of returning home can only be regarded as a mosquito leg, the big man's finances are tight now, and he is not rich enough to ignore these losses.

If Xiao He knew that with a wave of his hand, he casually spent thousands of copper coins, he would probably come to him for a duel with his sword in hand.

After thinking for a day in Hanoi County, he just found a more suitable solution.

He chose to form a team of five soldiers with similar home addresses to implement the policy of returning home together.

Through this arrangement, the original problem is basically solved.First of all, if a team of five people forms a team, then they only need to set up identification officials, so the possibility of them falsely reporting hometown information is greatly reduced. After all, dialects and customs can confirm each other, and it is easy to ask.

Secondly, there are five people in a team, and the distance of the journey is almost the same. The money and food distributed to a team is almost enough for one person, so they will also monitor themselves internally, and Chen Luo will reward those who report false reports. Three times the amount of property, the person being reported will lose their travel expenses, and military merit rewards will be deducted as punishment.

Finally, this team mode has other benefits.

That is, the soldiers returning home carry a lot of money and food on their bodies due to military merit rewards. Returning home alone may attract thieves, but when the number of teams increases, they can support each other on the road, saving a lot of trouble, even if it is not small. Even if your heart is sick, there is still a suitable person to take care of you.

So under Chen Luo's arrangement, there were no problems when more than [-] soldiers received their travel expenses and military merit rewards, and they all left Hanoi County in peace and contentment.

Of course, this is just one of the problems Chen Luo encountered.

After he arrived in Yiyang County, he discovered that there were omissions in one of his original plans.

The reason why Yiyang County was chosen to garrison troops was that it was convenient for transporting food and troops by water. It could be said that it saved Xiao He a lot of money and allowed him to save two handfuls of hair.

If you follow your own ideas and execute them perfectly, you will have the confidence to go to Xiao He when you return to Chang'an, ask him to buy a few drinks, and move a few boxes of books from his home.

However, after Chen Luo officially arrived in Yiyang County, he discovered a rather fatal problem, which was a devastating blow to his plan.

That is, there is a lack of large ships in Yiyang County, with only a hundred or so simple fishing boats and more than 20 medium-sized ships.

The Han army came back from conquering the Xiongnu in the land of the Zhao Dynasty, and did not consider the issue of water transportation at all. After all, the river system there is wide and the main stream is broken, and the tributaries are broken. Water transportation is more expensive than land transportation, so there are only more than [-] large ships in the army. , more than fifty medium-sized ships.

There are [-] soldiers under his command.

Without more than [-] large ships, the plan to transport troops and food would be impossible. Now the ship's transportation capacity is only one-quarter.

As a result, the strategic significance of being stationed in Yiyang is basically zero.

Camping here has smooth transportation, but other places in Henan County are not bad either. This is not a unique advantage. What's more, if you go by land, Yiyang County is not the best choice.

This problem really worried Chen Luo for a while.

However, he firmly believed that there was no problem with the plan he made, so when difficulties arose, he began to prepare to solve them, using a two-pronged approach.

The lack of large ships in Yiyang County does not mean that other nearby counties also lack large ships.

This place is only more than eighty miles away from Luoyang, and Luoyang is a big city, which is a water transportation hub, and there are many large merchants in the city.

So Chen Luo sent people to borrow ships. Those merchants were all smart people and knew that this was a way to make good friends with the court. Lending a dozen large ships was equivalent to getting a "pass" for doing business in the future, and it was not a loss-making transaction.

However, Luoyang has not yet returned to its most prosperous state. Merchants in the city gathered together and loaned out more than a hundred large ships and more than two hundred medium-sized ships.

For the remaining small gap, Chen Luo used another method in "Two-pronged approach".

Build your own ship and don’t ask anyone else.

There are [-] soldiers under his command who are doing nothing. If they are left idle, they will consume food and grass. If they are sent to the nearby mountains to collect wood and work and polish it, they will only consume [-] to [-]% more food and grass.

This is a capitalist behavior that makes full use of idle labor, and is not a capitalist behavior that should be "hanging the street lamp".

Those Luoyang merchants sent large ships, and the skilled craftsmen from Luoyang City were on board. As soon as they landed, they began to direct the soldiers to build the ships.

Moreover, Chen Luo only requested to build medium-sized ships, and did not need to directly build large ships.

First of all, he knew that the skills of his soldiers were limited, and the process of building a large ship was more cumbersome. If the middle parts were not properly constructed, it would not be fun if it disintegrated on the river.

Secondly, it takes too much time to build a big ship. He is not sure when Chang'an's decree will be sent for him to set off. If the big ship is not completed and needs to set off, it will be quite embarrassing.

As for medium-sized ships, their construction process is much simpler.

Even ordinary soldiers can be built in sequence under the command of those craftsmen.

In addition, the soldiers are becoming more and more skilled at work. It can be said that everyone has added a skill in eating.

A ship was built as fast as a hen laying an egg. It was quickly transformed from logs into planks, built into a boat shape, launched into the water and set sail without any pause.

So before Chang'an's decree was delivered, Chen Luo successfully solved the problem of lack of ships.

(End of this chapter)