Chastity Layman

  Chapter 290 Northern Slaves

  There is no shortage of adventurous people in this world, and Li Shimin is also a master who likes adventure. Back then when he was in command of the army, he took many risks. Even when the two armies were at war, he liked to take more than ten riders to other people's territory to spy on them.

  However, Li Shimin deliberately took risks several times, using himself as bait to lure the enemy into ambush.

   But right now, no one is willing to take risks, even Qin Lang is not willing to let the emperor take risks, there is no need for that.

A Liang Shidu has many hemp ropes wrapped around his neck, and if he is strangled again, he will die. Why bother to beat him at this time, the current Liang Shidu is a trapped beast, trapped in silver Xia's pit, at this time, just throw stones and spears into the pit outside the pit, why do you have to jump down and fight with a knife?

   Don't you know that wounded beasts are more ferocious?

  Three years, not even three years, according to the current situation, Master Liang can survive this winter at most.

Qin Qiong was not idle in Lingwu either. He trained soldiers and horses, stockpiled food and grass, repaired city roads, and led frontier soldiers to garrison fields. On the other hand, Qingqi took turns to sweep the border. A special forces unit was trained.

There are not many of them, but they are all masters who are good at lurking and assassinating, sneaking into Yinxia in disguise, assassinating and poisoning, and even setting fire to the granary. Ministry of Civil and Military Affairs.

   As a result, Master Liang is now occupying the already desolate land outside the Great Wall to the north of Baiyu Mountain, and life is becoming more and more difficult.

A batch escaped today, and a few will be sent down tomorrow. From time to time, loyalists will be assassinated in the territory, or a few warehouses of grain and grass will be burned, or some army horses or cattle and sheep in the pasture will be poisoned. .

   It's hard to guard against, it's horrible.

  In this case, Liang Shidu kept begging the Turkic fathers in the north to surrender, but the problem is that the last time the Turkic people suffered such a big loss, it was also a serious injury.

  In spring, horses are thin and hairy, unable to fight. Cattle and sheep are pregnant and giving birth. Even herdsmen's women are mostly pregnant and giving birth in this season. How can they help Master Liang start the war again.

   When it’s summer, the cattle and sheep are even more busy grazing to recover, and the weather is getting hotter. Which barbarians will go south in this season.

   Turkic father refused to help, so Liang Shidu was so angry that he had to send troops by himself.

   But without the Turkic father, only the soldiers and horses of the Liangshi capital had low morale and no fighting spirit. They sent troops several times, but Qin Qiong strictly guarded the border, and there was nowhere to start.

   And Qin Qiong divided his troops to guard the border, and only mobilized a small number of cavalry to wander around, forcing Liang Shidu's army to be restless day and night, exhausted.

   Several times they dispatched troops, but in the end they all returned without success, and Liang Guo's army was even less motivated to fight.

   Right now, he is completely waiting to die.

  If it weren't for the fact that Yin Xiayi was too desolate, it was difficult to march to supply supplies, and he was worried that the Turks would intervene, Qin Qiong would actually have the strength to destroy Liang now.

   It's just that Liang Shi is too poor, and there are Turkic wolf cubs watching behind him, so Qin Qiong has no interest in sending troops now.

  Qin Qiong is living a good life in Lingwu now, it is said that she is very nourished, and she can't even think of leaving.

   It turned out that the area around Lingwu belonged to the border war zone, and the Turkic people came to rob it at every turn. The population in that place was small, so it was very poor before and could not support itself in food.

  Both Li Daozong and Li Jing were busy defending against the Turks when they were in office, attacking Liang Shidu, and had no time to resume production. However, after the bridge alliance between the Tang Dynasty and the Turks, it is a rare truce.

   And Qin Qiong personally sits in the town. When Qin Lang was a transfer envoy, of course he was extremely supportive of his father.

  Of course, Qin Qiong's life is easier now, the most important thing is salt.

  Lingwu, especially in Yanzhou, has many salt ponds, especially the Qingbai salt pond. The green and white salt produced there is a famous salt product, and it is also well received by nobles in Chang'an. It’s just that the salt output in Yanzhou was affected by the war in the past, and the output was not high. In addition, the court did not care about it, so the salt merchants became rich, but the people and the court did not benefit from it.

   Now that the reform of the salt administration has adopted the strategy of salt miners contracting salt ponds to mine and dry them, the government buys them, and then sells them to salt merchants for transportation and sales after increasing taxes, this salt has become a treasure.

Not to mention the use, Qin Lang also gave Qin Qiong a very powerful idea, that is, if the salt merchants want to buy Lingwu's salt, they not only have to pay the tax first, they also have to transport the grain to the military camps and castles in Lingwu, and hand over the salt. Then take the official document in exchange for salt, and then you can go to the official salt warehouse in Yanchi to get the salt.

  For the salt merchants, this is naturally some fatal regulations, but for the government, especially Qin Qiong of Lingwu, in this way, the food problem of the Lingwu army will be solved.

   No need to think about difficult transshipment anymore.

  The people can farm the land with peace of mind, and the army can even spare time to farm the land after training.

This was originally the Ming Dynasty's Nine Sides Kaizhong Salt Method, which was directly used by Qin Lang. This one also brought about a consequence, that is, many salt merchants, in order to save the cost of buying and transporting grain from the Guannei Central Plains and other places, So they simply set up commercial settlements in the area of ​​Lingzhou, and after reclaiming the fields, they can directly transport them to the military camp in exchange for salt, and then go to Yanzhou to collect salt and sell it.

  The Yinzhou area is originally the Xitao area of ​​the famous Yellow River Hetao area. Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, it has been a fertile grain area, and it is known as the top of the Yangtze River. Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, people have immigrated and cultivated here, and built water conservancy canals, making the Hetao area a granary.

  Before affected by the war, the front and back areas all fell into the hands of the Turks, and only the remaining Xitao area was still depressed due to the war.

   Now that the border is stable, Qin Qiong is leading the army on the one hand, and appeasing the people on the other hand, renting cattle and horses tools and seeds for the people to re-plow the land, and on the other hand, opening China and France, and also attracting salt merchants to come to do business.

  They either brought slaves from the Central Plains, or directly purchased Turkic slaves locally, or hired local people, established large farms, and practiced intensive farming.

  The large area of ​​Tianyuan in Xitao, which was abandoned in the past, is being revived again.

  This summer, the Xitao Plain finally had a bumper harvest.

  Mintun, Juntun, and Shangtun, three flowers are in full bloom together, with fruitful fruits and food warehouses. As for the salt farms in Lingyan, this year's salt tax income and salt farm contract fees are also quite satisfactory, not to mention the rise of the salt industry, which has also led to the prosperity of the Lingwu business road.

  Qin Qiong incidentally collected Guanjin city tax, and it was also full of money.

  The Guannei Dao Changping Department of the Transshipment Department left a lot of money and taxes for Qin Qiong, the economic envoy, the governor of Lingzhou, and the head of Lingwu Dao, for the army.

  Qin Qiong has money and food in his hands, not to mention horses and armaments, so he is living a chic life now, Liang Shidu dare not come to the border again, let alone the Turkic people.

   Yusheshe, which is located in Houtaofengzhou area, took the initiative to request the establishment of a border market.

  So Qin Qiong established the border city of Dingyuan in the north of Lingzhou, and started a business with the Turks, taking advantage of the gentle water situation of the Yellow River in Hetao, and even resumed the water transportation of the Yellow River in Hetao.

  From Lingzhou City to Fengzhou City, and then to Yulin in Shengzhou, more than a thousand miles of rivers can be navigated by water.

  Tea, porcelain, silk, wine, sugar, salt and other goods from the Tang Dynasty were continuously transported to the Turkic people in exchange for a large number of cattle, horses, camels and sheep, a large number of fur medicinal materials, and even many slaves.

Yu She set up a position close to the water first, and took a lot of advantages in this trade, and made a lot of money. Now he directly and openly calls Qin Qiong his uncle. In order to ensure the maintenance of this trade, he strictly restrains his subordinates. Cross-border looting is prohibited, and the Tang merchants who enter the ban are also polite, and no one is allowed to rob them.

To put it bluntly, Yu Sheshe is actually equivalent to the general agent of the Turkic side in Tangtu Hetao Border Trade. He eats the goods of Tang merchants first, and then resells them to other tribal merchants at a higher price. Checkpoints were also set up in his own territory, and taxes were collected from the merchants from various Turkic ministries who came.

   It is said that Jieli Khan was extremely dissatisfied with this move, and the relationship between the two escalated again and became more and more tense.

Because there are commercial settlements in Xitao now, Tang merchants still like slaves the most. Yu Sheshe not only collected all the slaves in the territory and traded them with Tang merchants, in exchange for salt, tea, sugar and wine, which are popular among Turkic nobles and are more profitable. , and even began to find reasons to rub against other small tribes, launched raids and captured the population of those defeated tribes as slaves, and then sold them to the Tang people.

  This kind of thing was hard to imagine in the past, but it is happening now.

Yu Sheshe is making money every day, he is rich, and he has even started to build his own city in Fengzhou. He also respects many monks from Lingwu, and even under the persuasion of these monks, he wants to Building a large temple in Toyosu...

  A large number of Tiele, Khitan, Xi, Shiwei, and Turkic slaves have not only added a lot of labor to the farms on the Xitao Plain, but also many of them have flowed into the customs and even Chang'an.

  Qin Qiong specially brought back several batches of high-quality slaves for Qin Lang.

   Adding the front and back together, there are a thousand people.

  These northern captive slaves are now placed in various manors and workshops in Qinlang Pass, and they are sweating and harvesting wheat. Qin Qiong also bought a lot himself, Cui's appetite was even bigger, and he bought more than 2,000 slaves, and the Cui family of Boling also quickly borrowed Qin Qiong's convenience to buy land in Xitao and sell many slaves. Send it to Cui's manors in Hebei, Henan, Hedong, and Guanzhong.

  Qin Qiong really made a profit this time.

Jinglue Guanzhong, presided over Lingwu, and opened the border market. Naturally, it is the first to get the moon. Qin Qiong and Cui have contracted several salt farms in Lingwu and built more than a dozen large and small commercial villages. Hetao water transport fleet and caravan.

  Qin Lang is now a little worried, whether the old man will be instigated by Cui to make economic mistakes.

  Under such a hot situation on the Lingwu border, Qin Qiong's refusal to go to war probably represents the opinions of those salt merchants and border merchants.

  (end of this chapter)