Horse on the World

Chapter 865 Severe Form

When it entered July, Dingzhou was still very cool, but it was already very hot in Ningzhou, Dengzhou and other places. The wanton destruction of Ningdeng and other places during King Ning's retreat caused great devastation, and the food was almost destroyed. After all the raids, the young crops that had grown very well were seriously damaged. Seeing that the autumn harvest was hopeless, this gave Li Sizhi, who had just been transferred to serve as the governor of Ningdeng, a very headache.
Food is the most important thing for the people, and now Ningdeng and Ningdeng are facing this major problem.And Li Qing specially transferred his uncle Li Sizhi from Luzhou to serve as the governor of Ningdeng, because his uncle had many years of experience in local government. The severe situation in this area is not something ordinary people can handle.

Even though Li Sizhi is rich in experience, he is still a bit scheming when facing this mess. There is nothing else to talk about now. The first thing is to keep the people alive. Otherwise, the Ningdeng area will be chaotic. What are the hungry people who are frantically hungry? Can do it all.
To keep the people alive, there must be food, but where does the food come from?

Yizhou has food, but Yizhou has to support the battle of the tens of thousands of troops in the mountains, and at the same time, it also needs to support Quanzhou and Jinzhou. There is no surplus food at all, and Dingzhou itself can only be self-sufficient. Even if some can be squeezed out between the teeth, it is still a drop in the bucket facing Ningdeng, and the distance is far away, and the transportation cost is extremely high.
Even so, Li Qing still ordered to send food to these two places as much as possible. Right now, Li Sizhi can only count on Liaoshen and Shenyang.Liaoshen and Shenyang were originally major grain-producing states. In this war, Shunzhou and Weizhou were severely damaged. However, because of the death of Zeng Yifan and the surrender of Zeng Chong and the Zeng clan, these two places must be preserved almost completely. down.
However, although Liaoshen has food, it has to wait until after the autumn harvest. Years ago, King Ning’s hundreds of thousands of troops marched into Weizhou, and the required military supplies were taken from Liaoshen. Even if Liaoshen still has surplus, it will not be too much ．

The Zeng family surrendered, out of the consideration of stabilizing Liaoshen, Li Qing still appointed members of the Zeng clan as the prefects of Liaoshen and Zeng Chong as the governor of Liaoshen, and Liu Yuan as the governor of Shunzhou and Weizhou.

At the same time, the governor, but obviously Li Sizhi's status is much higher than the previous two. Li Sizhi wrote a sharply worded letter to Zeng Chong, asking him to raise 100 million shi of grain and send it to the Ningdeng area, in order to solve the urgent need.
What can comfort Li Sizhi right now is that although Lu Dalin is a general, after occupying the Ningdeng area, he immediately sensed the crisis in Ningdeng, stopped all military operations, mobilized with all his strength, organized the people to help themselves, and was planted , in order to be able to harvest more or less after autumn and reduce the pressure, and at the same time spare no effort to collect surplus grain from the people, especially the surplus grain from some large households, gather all the grain, and carry out rationing in the two places. There was not much food left in the king's sweep, but the Ningdeng area was originally rich, and because of the time, the king of Ning also slipped through the net, and the small amount made a lot, but it also allowed Lu Dalin to raise millions of shi of grain.

These two measures by Lu Dalin greatly eased Li Si's predicament after taking office, otherwise, when he came from Luzhou, the day lily would be cold.
But there are still a lot of problems left for Li Sizhi. Lu Dalin's measures can only cure the symptoms but not the root cause. It is possible to alleviate the urgent need, but it is obviously not a policy that can be implemented for a long time. King Ning fled. The whole Ningdeng area is almost in a state of anarchy, and the countryside is better, especially some big cities, such as Ningzhou City and Dengzhou City. There are no officials in ten, all government agencies are shut down, and daily management functions cannot be carried out. Now the two places can only implement military control.
After Li Sizhi took office, he put up a list calling on the former officials to quickly return to their posts, perform their duties, and personally guaranteed that these officials would never be held accountable for their previous crimes. Li Sizhi's personal guarantee was still somewhat effective. Some officials returned to the yamen to start governing, but this was limited to some low-level officials, and almost none of the senior officials came back.While appealing to the original officials to return to their posts, Li Sizhi also visited some famous literati and retired officials in the two places and invited them to come out to do things. The Yamen began to operate slowly.Assisted Li Sizhi to start disaster relief work in Ningdeng and Ningdeng.At the same time, Li Sizhi wrote to Li Qing urgently, asking Li Qing to quickly send civil officials to the Ningdeng area to enrich the yamen of various ministries.
However, the civil official group has always been Dingzhou's shortcoming. Although Li Qing has been working hard to cultivate civil officials, the effect has not been obvious. It was only then that there was a slight improvement, Qingliu Shilin also began to divide, and many people began to turn to Dingzhou. After more than a year of hard work, the Taixue established in Dingzhou recruited talents, trained officials, and instilled Dingzhou New Deal, but But the time is too short, even the professors and students of Taixue, there are only three to 400 people. Gritting his teeth, Li Qing sent them all out to Ningdeng to take up positions. Some of them only want to be scholars but not officials Li Qing did not hesitate to condescend to come down to visit, whether he wanted to show righteousness or coerce and lure them, in short, he persuaded them one by one, and all of a sudden, the Taixue was empty.There are only a few office workers left in the huge Taixue.
From the occupation of Ningdeng in May to the end of July, the situation finally stabilized. Although there were not enough officials, the yamen were finally able to operate. I don’t know what method Zeng Chong thought of, but he actually gave Li Sizhi from the Liaoshen area We brought in 120 million shi of grain and transported it to the Ningdeng area through the navy, and the task was actually overfulfilled. With this grain, although we can’t say that we are full, but we can live with it until after the autumn harvest. ．But Li Sizhi actually lost more than [-] catties in the past two months, and he was already skinny.
The severe economic situation has also dragged down military operations. Lu Dalin's tens of thousands of troops have all stopped advancing. If there is no war, the soldiers can only consume one catty of food a day, but once the war starts, it is commonplace to consume two catties of food a day Without food, the battle would naturally be impossible, and after Luoyang occupied Bozhou, it was also eager to stabilize the local situation and build a defensive system, and had no spare power to attack the Ningzhou army. The two sides knew it for a while.

But the situation in Bozhou is much better than that of Ningdeng, because of the agreement between King Ning and Shang Haibo, the last madness of King Ning did not involve the Bozhou area, and the Bazhou that Shang Haibo took over was intact, and it is believed that Compared with the turmoil in Ningdeng, Bozhou has a considerable advantage.

In terms of military affairs, in July, under the strong recommendation of Shang Haibo, Qiu Zhi, who was not neglected much, became the commander of Bozhou, which made Deng Bo's front line tense in an instant.Small-scale frictions continue to start appearing.
In view of this situation, Lu Dalin personally went to the front line of Dengzhou to supervise the entire army to deal with Qiu Zhi's active offensive strategy, while Tian Feng was in Ningzhou, commanding the army led by Guo Quanfeng from the battalion to attack the Ningzhou army in the [-] mountains. Wang Remnant.

In Bozhou, Qiu Zhi finally came back after being hidden by Tianqi for nearly two years. The complicated relationship with the Li family is the reason why Qiu Zhi was left out in the cold. Under the strong attack, Qiu Zhi, who had not suffered any big losses, was one of the rare figures in the Luoyang military, so under Shang Haibo's insistence, Qiu Zhi was sent to Bozhou.
Qiu Zhi is almost 70 years old. In this era, he is already a rare old age, let alone commanding an army to fight. The old guys of his age have either retired to live at home or have already gone. The underworld has dealt with King Yan Luo, so Qiu Zhi is very proud.
After arriving in Bozhou, Qiu Zhi did two things. First, he took the initiative to seek war. The information that Pang Jun was defeated at sea and that Dingzhou had developed an extremely powerful weapon had already arrived in Luoyang and was distributed to the desks of all the commanders. , after carefully studying the opponent's weapon, Qiu Zhi concluded that in the face of such a fierce attacking weapon, no matter how strong the fortress is, it is impossible to defend it. machine.

The director of the staff has found out that this weapon is named Shenwei Cannon, and each cannon weighs several thousand catties. Such a heavy weight determines his limitations in battle, so there is an opportunity to take advantage of it.
Second, under the instruction of Shang Haibo, Qiu Zhi built a fortress at the mouth of the Lai River in Bozhou. For the Luoyang court without a powerful navy, the Laihe River is a sharp sword hanging over its head. Once the Dingzhou Navy Division is allowed to break into the Laihe River, the thousands of miles of fertile fields in the Central Plains will inevitably become a battlefield.
This is also the reason why Shang Haibo ran to Ningzhou after Ningzhou's inevitable defeat, and tried his best to snatch Bozhou over. If Bozhou fell into the hands of Li Qing in Ningzhou, the advantage of the Luoyang court would be gone. live.
After Qiu Zhi took office, he selected various locations for surveys, and finally chose Qingtan, about [-] miles away from the mouth of the Lai River, as the fortress to block the Laihe River.The current in Qingtan is relatively fast, the river channel is narrow, and there are high mountains on both sides of the bank, occupying the highlands on both sides. Building a fortress can completely seal the river channel. Loaded with stones, sank to the bottom of the water, and at the same time transported countless iron pillars from the Central Plains, melted them into iron pillars in Bozhou, and planted them in the water. From the outside, the waterway is the same as in previous years, but in fact it has long been a hidden reef. From birth, murderous intentions are everywhere, trying to get in through this waterway is tantamount to idiotic dreams.

But Qiu Zhiren didn't dare to be careless, he couldn't be too careful when fighting against Dingzhou. Under such a strong fortress, he still stationed [-] soldiers on both sides of the strait, and sent his confidant generals to lead them, trying to be foolproof.
At the end of July, the deployment of Qingtan was completed, and Qiu Zhi turned his attention to the front line of Dengbo.
(End of this chapter)