At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 243, Blitz and Lost Plug-in
On March 17, the third year of the Han Dynasty, Han Xin led 50,000 Han troops all the way into Sishui County. As if there was no one in the desert, he quickly captured Fuli County and Qixian, the parent counties of Sishui County.

Dong Chu State also led an army of 5 to garrison in Zhuyi, guarding Suishui and blocking the Han army's way to continue eastward.

The 10 troops from both sides faced each other across the Suishui River.

Han army camp, Chinese army tent.

Li Zuoche, who joined the army, reported to Han Xinhui: "In order to prevent our army from invading, the Eastern Chu State confiscated all the ships on the Suishui River and built a large number of beacon towers. As long as the sentinels of the Eastern Chu State saw signs of our army crossing the river, they would The beacon will be lit, and the main force of the Eastern Chu Army will arrive. "

Jing Tao sneered and said: "The Suishui River is not a big river. It is only a few miles at its narrowest. They can't stop us. As long as our army builds more bamboo rafts and forcibly crosses the river, the rabble of the Eastern Chu Kingdom will be defeated in one blow."

It’s no wonder that Jing Tao regarded the Eastern Chu Kingdom as a mob. The way they assembled the army was also very consistent with the Mo Ao system. Each Mo Ao brought 1000 soldiers, 52 Mo Ao brought 5.2 soldiers, and dozens of powerful coalition forces. This is not what the rabble is.

Chen Xiaodao worriedly said: "Forcibly crossing the river, it is easy to be attacked by the enemy halfway across the river, and the casualties may be too high. When we crossed the Yellow River, we had warships and powerful crossbows, and the casualties were still high. Now we use unsuspecting bamboo rafts. Soldiers are easy targets for the enemy."

Han Xin said: "It is not advisable to attack by force. Sun Tzu said, so the human form is invisible and I am invisible, so I am dedicated to one and the enemy is divided into ten. If I am dedicated to one, the enemy is divided into ten. Therefore, if ten are used to attack one of them, then we are many and the enemy is few; If we can attack the weak with a large number of people, then we will fight with the enemy. If the place we fight with is unknown, and if we cannot know it, then the enemy will prepare more. If the enemy prepares more, then we will fight with the enemy. Therefore, if you are prepared for the front, you will be few for the rear, if you are prepared for the left, you will be few for the right, if you are prepared for the right, you will be few for the left. If you are prepared for everything, you will be few for others. He who makes others prepare for himself.”

Chen Xiaodao scratched his head and said: "I have also read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu. What you are talking about is the content of the fictional chapter, but what does this have to do with our current war?"

Dong Min found out that Jing Tao was also building tools for crossing the river, so he relaxed his vigilance in other places.

Song Yidao: "Put down the suspension bridge and open the city gate."

"What's the condition of the city gate? The enemy won't attack from here, right?"

On March 24, the third year of the Han Dynasty, after a day and night of rapid march, Han Xin brought his army to Pengcheng.

"The general is here!"

"Boom!" The suspension bridge at the west gate of Pengcheng fell and the gate was opened.

At this time, there were less than a thousand defenders in Pengcheng, and the wide opening of the city gate demoralized them even more, and they all surrendered to the Han army.

Song Yi's other soldiers also took advantage of the gatekeepers' unpreparedness to kill them.

March 23rd, the third year of the Han Dynasty.

After Han Xin captured Pengcheng and let the soldiers rest for a day, he left 1000 soldiers to garrison Pengcheng. He personally led 4000 soldiers and slowly pressed from Pengcheng to Zhuyi.

Song Yi patted the village chief on the shoulder and said, "Well done."

"You bring two thousand men and horses, set up more flags, and build more tents to make the Eastern Chu army think that you have 20,000 people. Then you set up camp in Fuli, build bamboo rafts, and make a gesture of attacking."

Then the Han army followed Han Xin's instructions.

At Pengcheng Tower, the heavily armed Song Yi brought his personal guards to the west gate of Pengcheng.

The village chief was stunned, covering his wounds and falling down.

In front of Dongchu Palace.

"The last general takes command!"

Jing Tao and Chen Xiaodao: "No!"

Xiong Xin rode a white horse and wore white clothes. Song Yi beside him held the sealed jade seal and talisman of King Chu. The two of them leaned in front of the palace gate and said: "King Xiong Xin of Chu, orders Yin Songyi to surrender to the Han army."

Then Han Xin led 5000 soldiers without stopping and rushed towards Pengcheng, the capital of the Eastern Chu Kingdom.

"The terrain of Suishui River is flat. You can cross the river anywhere. It is impossible for the Eastern Chu army to block the hundreds of miles of river. The more they want to block us, the thinner their troops will be. Then they will be able to stab us. In order to break the situation, what we are looking for now is the enemy’s weak spot and kill the enemy with one strike.”

Han Xin smiled and said: "Sun Tzu said this to tell us that the overall strength and resources of an army are limited, and you cannot cover everything. With limited troops and resources, covering everything means that everything is in vain."

The commander of Dongchu Village looked at Song Yi and immediately raised his hands and saluted, "Your Majesty!"

Han Xin led 5000 soldiers to build a pontoon bridge near Lingbi and crossed the Suishui River overnight.

Then Han Xin looked at Jing Tao and Chen Xiaodao and said: "You and the supervisors built bamboo rafts in the camp and made a move to forcefully break through the Suishui River to divert the enemy's attention. We would have brought 5000 soldiers across the river from Lingbi to Enter Pengcheng, the enemy's capital."

After Han Xin's troops entered Pengcheng, the army divided into many groups and took control of Pengcheng's city wall, granary, arsenal and palace respectively. It took less than half a day to control the entire Pengcheng.

Han Xin was overjoyed when he saw this scene: "Kill the soldiers!"

The village commander just thought that Ling Yin appreciated him and that he would become famous in the future, but he did not expect that Song Yi turned around and struck him with a sword.

After Dong Min and others learned of this situation, they detached an army of 20,000 men and stationed themselves opposite Wang Jin's army to prevent Wang Jin's army from crossing the river.

Jing Tao looked at the map and murmured to himself: "Where is Dong Chu's weakness?"

The Pengcheng defenders were frightened when they saw the sudden appearance of the enemy. They quickly closed the four gates and asked Dong Miao and others for help.

The Han army marched into Pengcheng with overwhelming force.

Han Xin shouted: "Wang Jin."

Jing Tao and Chen Xiaodao also brought soldiers to build bamboo rafts every day.

The two were overjoyed that they had done so many things and betrayed all the nobles of the Eastern Chu Kingdom just for this matter.

The commander immediately said: "In the direction of Ling Yin, the general has already locked the city gate. Later, the general will lead people to block the city gate with stones. By then, even if the enemy breaks through the city wall, it will be impossible to enter through the city gate."

"Right here!" Han Xin pointed at a city on the map.

March 25th, the third year of Han Dynasty.

Although Song Yi was just an archway in the Eastern Chu Kingdom, to a low-level officer like him, he was a high-ranking figure.

Wang Jin led 2000 men and horses disguised as 2 people to Fuli County and built a camp for 2 people. He brought soldiers every day to cut bamboo and make bamboo rafts.

Han Xin immediately raised the two men and said with a smile: "You two are my great heroes, and your achievements will be reported to the emperor!"

Dongchu camp.

Dong Min and others still thought about when the Han army would cross the river and how to stop the Han army.

At this time, the deserters from Pengcheng came to the Chinese army's tent in Dongchu and cried sadly: "General, Pengcheng has been captured by the Han army."

Dong Min was dizzy for a while, and Zhu Wu and others were even more frightened. Pengcheng, their rear, was really captured by the Han army, and their army's food and grass were cut off.

Zhu Wu immediately asked: "The city of Pengcheng is high and deep, and the people who defend the city are our army's confidants. How could it fall so quickly?"

The deserter cried and said, "It was your commander who opened the city gate and let the Han army enter."

Zhu Wu said angrily: "Song Yi, why didn't we see his despicable face and let him become the commander of Chu State?" Dong Min suppressed his anger and said, "Now is not the time to talk about this. Pengcheng fell." The news was told to Jing Si, and he was ordered to return to Pengcheng and send an order to break up the camp and retake Pengcheng. "

"promise!"

The 3-strong army in Zhuyi began to break out of camp, preparing to return to Pengcheng.

The Han army camp across the Suishui River.

Jing Tao and Chen Xiaodao discovered that Dong Chu was breaking out of camp. They understood that Han Xin had captured Pengcheng, and they immediately led the army across the river.

Two days later.

Han Xin's army, Dong Chu's army, and Jing Tao's army met in the suburbs of Pengcheng. After Han Xin and Jing Tao attacked from both sides, the 50,000 Dong Chu army was defeated. Except for a few Mo Ao who escaped alive, more than 40 Mo from Dong Chu Ao was caught by Han Xin and others.

Then Han Xin, while reporting victory in Guanzhong, led the army to capture Surabaya and more than fifty counties in the East China Sea.

April 2, the third year of Han Dynasty. Hu County, peach blossom.

Xu Fan led hundreds of guards to inspect the spring plowing situation in Guanzhong.

This year's spring plowing in Guanzhong is extremely important. In order to quickly restore Guanzhong's vitality, Xu Fan used the grain from the Lantian granary to flow into the pockets of low-level farmers in the form of work-for-work relief. With this batch of grain, there was finally no widespread famine in Guanzhong this year. and starvation.

But the consequence of this is that the food in Lantian Camp is consumed rapidly, which has reached an extremely dangerous figure.

The Han court also needed to have food reserves. There were nearly 1 officials, 2 craftsmen, and 10 troops in Guanzhong. The food for these people was provided by the court. In addition, some food was left in Guanzhong. To prevent natural disasters or sudden wars, these grains cannot be moved.

Now the Han State has stopped infrastructure construction projects in various counties. Instead, Aocang is needed to transport grain and grass to Guanzhong, but the grain and grass in Guanzhong has always been easy to get out but difficult to get in.

More than half of the food transported from Aocang to Guanzhong was consumed. With Xu Fan's continuous relief work for the victims in the Central Plains, the food in Aocang was less than one-third of the original.

In other words, it took Xu Fan one year to release hundreds of millions of stones of grain from Aocang. This speed frightened Zhou Zhang. He originally thought that he could use ten years of grain, but it turned out that it was almost exhausted after one year.

Seeing that Aocang's grain and grass supplies were less than 5 million shi, Zhou Zhang, Zhang Liang, Chen Ping, and Li Shiqi persuaded Xu Fan to stop the relief activities. Xu Fan also knew the importance of Aocang's grain reserves to the entire Han Dynasty, and listened to their advice.

Of course, after paying such a high price, the results were extremely gratifying. After the Qin Dynasty was destroyed, there was no widespread famine in the entire world, let alone such things as fighting for rice and tens of thousands of dollars.

Prime Minister Zhou Zhang was surprised to tell Xu Fan that there were nearly 300 million households in the Han Dynasty. Although the number of households was too small due to the equalization of land, it was already very impressive. Xu Fan remembered that Li Shimin seemed to have only this small population back then, but he went from 900 million households to only 300 million households.

Xu Fan remembered that the history books said that Qin had a population of more than 2000 million. This was the statistics after unification. After more than ten years of growth, before Xu Fan's uprising, it was estimated that the world's population did not exceed 3000 million.

The Han Kingdom alone has a population of 300 million households. Taking into account Qi, Yan, and Baiyue, the population of the entire world should be close to 400 million households and 2 million people.

In the past three years of war, no more than 30% of the world's population should have died. This should be the dynasty change with the smallest number of deaths. This made Xu Fan extremely happy. At least he saved a lot of people from dying in the world.

But the bad news is that Xu Fan's plug-in is about to be used up. If there is a problem with the grain in Guanzhong this year, it will be difficult to rely on Aocang, because in such a vast place, the Han Dynasty needs to reserve grain, and cannot put out unlimited grain.

Therefore, spring plowing in Guanzhong this year is extremely important. Chen Ping went to Longxi to inspect, Zhang Liang went to Shangjun to inspect, and Xu Fan visited almost forty counties in Neishi County.

Xu Fan was gratified by the situation he saw at the local level, but also made him helpless. He tried to bring back 300,000 people in Guanzhong, and the Han army also left more than 100,000 young men, which was beneficial to supplement the lack of labor force in Guanzhong.

Coupled with the equalization of land, tax reduction, and exemption from corvee, the people generally came out of the atmosphere of war and began to actively cultivate their own land. There was very little wasteland in Guanzhong. Even if there was a shortage of labor, the people still used slash-and-burn farming. Try to sow all your fields.

The helpless part is that even though Xu Fan has asked local officials to actively guide people to plant winter wheat, the area sown with winter wheat in Guanzhong is still much less than Xu Fan imagined. There is almost no winter wheat planted in counties in the northwest, and east of Chang'an Winter wheat planting will only occur, but generally it is only about 10 to 20%.

The farmers who planted winter wheat were all retired soldiers of the Han army. They trusted Xu Fancai to plant winter wheat. As for the ordinary people in Guanzhong, they still have deep concerns.

However, Xu Fan also understands the concerns of the people. They don't have much food in their hands, and growing winter wheat is a new thing. Losing those seed grains will be unbearable for many people.

Xu Fan had just brought his people into Hu County. Cao Sheng, the magistrate of Hu County, led the county magistrate and the county lieutenant to greet Xu Fan.

"Your Majesty!" Cao Sheng said excitedly.

Cao Sheng was Chen Ying's younger brother. Unlike Han Xin, who had military talent, his military talents were not outstanding. He fought in the Central Plains War and was promoted from Qu Chang to Army Sima.

When the Han army began to disarm, he was among the first batch of officers to change jobs. However, Cao Sheng had an advantage over other Han army officers. He was also a Qin official in his hometown back then. He understood the official system and after a little training, he became the magistrate of Hu County. .

Xu Fan pulled him up and said to the officials behind him: "Leave Cao Sheng to introduce me to the situation in Hu County. You can go about your own business."

The county magistrate of Hu County and others could only look at Cao Sheng with envy and said: "No!"

Xu Fan asked as he walked: "How is the winter wheat planting situation in Hu County?"

Cao Sheng said: "Because Hu County was recovered early and His Majesty released the soldiers to return home, about 3% of the fields in the county were planted with winter wheat. The remaining land, farmers either lacked seeds or did not dare to trust the court, so they did not plant it. Instead, corn was planted in the spring plowing.”

Xu Fan nodded and said, "Having 30% winter wheat is pretty good."

This is almost the county with the most winter wheat planting among the counties he visited.

"How is the spring plowing situation in Hu County?"

Cao Sheng said: "It's all done. There is basically no abandoned land. It's just that the people lack farm tools and the sowing situation is not very good."

Xu Fan said: "It will get better in the future."

It can be said that Xu Fan's eyes were opened during this period. There are really all kinds of planting methods. The place near Xianyang, because of the advanced production tools, is still what Xu Fan remembers. The ancient farming methods, the people used oxen to plow the land, or the people pulled the crops. Iron plows, but this year there are a lot more Quyuan plows in Guanzhong.

But far away from Guanzhong, many villages lack farm tools, land and irrigation. There is also a lack of labor at home. In addition, the farming area is large. Basically, you poke a hole with a stick, throw in a few grains and plant them. Seeing Xu Fandu I was stunned. No wonder such a planting method only yielded 1 stone per acre.

Xu Fan's experience during this period finally made him understand the poverty of the feudal era. Even farmers in Guanzhong lacked iron farm tools, cloth, food, not to mention cattle. In many places, wooden plows and stone plows were used. Plow, Xu Fan tried a wooden plow to plow the land, but it couldn't be plowed with a small amount of force. It was too powerful and afraid of breaking. These farmers were talking about being left with only four walls.

Xu Fan communicated with them in depth and found out that they originally had iron farm tools, but later their corvee and tax burdens became heavier and heavier. The family did not have the savings to buy iron tools. The original iron farm tools had been used for more than ten years. It was scrapped, and in the future they could only use wooden farm tools and farm tools made of stone.

Xu Fan looked at the fields not far away. Most of them were millet seedlings that had just sprouted, but there were also many long and lush winter wheats. These wheats would be harvested in a short time. I just don’t know if these farmers have enough iron farm tools to harvest food.

It was after this inspection that he discovered that all his ambitious industrialization plans were in vain. He should first find a way to solve the problem of people's farm tools and improve agricultural productivity.

Cao Sheng thought for a while and asked, "Your Majesty, can you recruit more farmers in Hu County and arrange for people from the Mohist family to come to Hu County to set up workshops."

Then he smiled bitterly and said: "The people in Hu County are too poor. If you hadn't released grain, half of the people would have been lucky to survive this year. In the county, every household cannot afford an iron plow. Many people can only take a Hoe the ground.”

"My subordinates have seen the prosperity of Chen County. They wanted to do something. They wanted to build waterwheels and repair canals, but the county had no money and food. They wanted to let the people buy some cheap iron plows, but they didn't. Money, everything my subordinates want to do is trapped by money and food.”

Xu Fan patted Cao Sheng on the shoulder and said: "It will be fine. Not only are you short of money and food, but the court is also short of money and food. After today's autumn harvest, the court will leave 30% of the tax to the local area. Then you will lead the local people to build canals." , waterwheel.”

Cao Sheng had only seen the prosperity of Chen County, so he wanted to govern Hu County like Hu County. However, Xu Fan had seen the agriculture of later generations. Even in the most fertile land in the world, the food grown in Xu Fan's eyes There is no difference between coming and going without a harvest.

He also wants to quickly develop agriculture in this world, build water conservancy projects, and replace iron farm tools and cattle. As long as these two things are done, agriculture can be doubled or doubled.

But it is difficult for the Han State to do this now, because doing all these things costs money, and the Han State is now almost in poverty. The only thing that makes Xu Fan feel lucky is that he spent great efforts to repair the Zheng Guo Canal. The grain growth near Zhengguo Canal is very good, and the 400 million acres of farmland nearby are the ballast stone for the entire Guanzhong.

(End of this chapter)