Not to mention the frequent wars in the Hehuai River Basin in the past two years, even if we maintain a neutral and wait-and-see attitude, the prefectures and counties that have not yet been involved in the war have suffered from severe drought in recent years, which has greatly reduced the summer and autumn grain harvests, and refugees continue to starve to death on the way.

, all over the wilderness, wandering in all directions.

Emperor Zhu Yu of the Liang Dynasty could recruit young men from the refugees and disaster victims to expand his army, but the Sima family of Xu Si is still keeping silent, so that the prefectures and counties sandwiched between Xu Si and the Weizhou rebels have chosen to remain neutral.

It would naturally be extremely difficult to support the more than 130,000 Hehuailiang Army including Caizhou Army, Shouzhou Army and Bianjing Army by relying solely on the eight southern states that returned to the rule of Bianjing.

More importantly, after Liang Emperor Zhu Yu ascended the throne, he obtained the "Book of Heavenly Craftsmen" from Zhao Kuo. In order to facilitate control and utilize water resources more effectively and on a larger scale, the Liang State Ministry of Industry and General Supervisor for several years vigorously developed

Workshops are mainly concentrated in the Heluo area at the northern foot of Funiu Mountain.

These workshops, mines, and large numbers of craftsmen and craftsmen all fell into the hands of the rebels along with the fall of these places.

It was impossible for Emperor Zhu Yu of the Liang Dynasty to rebuild the armor production system in Bianjing in a short period of time. This would also directly lead to a serious shortage of armor and weapons supplies for the Hehuai and Liang armies for a long time.

Liang Emperor Zhu Yu led his troops to sneak out of the pass and enter Caizhou, severely damaging the Weizhou rebels' troops on the west wing. Combined with Liang Emperor Zhu Yu's power over the years, it was enough to make the Weizhou rebels panic and their morale fluctuate. If only

We were fighting against the Weizhou rebels on the western front, and there were some shortages in food, soldiers, armor, and weapons. It was not a big problem. The high morale could make up for it.

The problem was that the Mongols reacted very quickly. They not only ordered Wang and Tian to step up their attack on Yongzhou and Huazhou from Hejin, but also directly sent generals to lead elite infantry and cavalry to cross the Yellow River and enter Xingzhou to cooperate with the Weizhou rebels.

At this time, the Hehuai Liang Army was short of food, soldiers, armor and horses, which actually greatly weakened their ability to fight in the field with the Mongol soldiers and horses. Currently, they can only rely on the city forts for defense. The plan is to capture Heluo and pass through Guanzhong and

I don’t know when the strategic goal of connecting the Hehuai River will be achieved.

Although the Liang Army in Guanzhong still had nearly 50,000 troops guarding Yong and Hua Prefectures, the terrain in the north was lost. Wang Yuankui and Tian Weiye's combined troops of more than 80,000 troops advanced south, and nearly 10,000 Pingxia cavalrymen intervened.

With looting, looting and harassment on both sides of the Tong River, the situation in Guanzhong cannot be delayed for too long.

The main purpose of Guo Duanduo's mission to Chu to discuss peace this time was to borrow food, soldiers, armor and weapons.

Of course, Tangyi has secretly lent a batch of grain, soldiers and weapons to the Liang Army in Hehuai, but even if he wants to continue to lend grain, soldiers and weapons to the Liang Army in Guanzhong, he must obtain Li Zhigao's permission.

Only permission is required.

And Emperor Liang wanted to continue to transfer a group of elite soldiers and horses from Guanzhong, especially a group of veterans and elite grassroots military attachés to join the war in Hehuai and strengthen the combat effectiveness of the Liang army in Hehuai. He also needed Liang and Chu to conclude a formal peace agreement - currently Liangzhou

It completely fell into the control of Li Zhigao, Li Changfeng and others.

Shen Yang has almost grasped the relevant information. I believe that the news from Cishou Palace and Huaidong will not lag behind Shangshu Province. However, how much money Tangyi has borrowed and plans to borrow in the future for grain and soldiers, the specific figures are still unknown to the outside world.

The mystery of the unknown.

These figures are a mystery unknown to the outside world, but after their birthday, Han Daoming and Han Daochang wanted to inform Qiao Chen and other family heads.

Han Qian wanted to ensure that Tangyi's fiscal revenue and expenditure were balanced and that the internal construction and development of Tangyi would not be interrupted by aid to the Hehuai Liang Army. He planned to classify all these expenditures and debits into the Official Money Bureau.

That is to say, the Official Money Bureau funded the Chishan Society to purchase grain, grain, armor and war equipment in Huaixi, and then borrowed these at low interest rates through the two main waterways connecting the Hehuai River and Huaihe River, such as the Shaying River and the Woishui River.

Strategic materials were transported to Xuzhou, Chenzhou, Bianjing and other core areas controlled by the Hehuai and Liangjun armies.

The scale of borrowing has also been agreed upon long ago, and is temporarily limited to 40% of the agricultural output of 120,000 people in Fengtai, Shouchun, and Huoqiu counties.

This was also the condition for Emperor Liang Zhu Yu to return Fengtai, Shouchun and Huoqiu cities and at the same time order Xu Mingzhen not to move the people out.

After the sudden change in Heshuo, Tangyi regained Huozhou, the counties in the central and southern part of Shouzhou, and Guangzhou and Haozhou. However, he did not directly besiege Fengtai, Shouchun, and Huoqiu cities, and did not send troops to harass them at all.

The agricultural production in the three counties, as well as Shouchun as the prefecture of Shouzhou and Huoqiu as the prefecture of Huozhou, and the craftsmen and workshops that have begun to take shape in the two cities have also been preserved.

There are 120,000 people, more than 900,000 acres of cultivated land, and the construction of ditches, water conservancy and other facilities is much better than that in other places in Huaixi. Every year, the summer and autumn grain production is about 2 million shi.

This also means that if Tangyi fulfills its agreement, the Official Money Bureau will need to lend 600,000 shi of grain and a total of 200,000 shi of grain to the Hehuai Liang Army every year.

If Tangyi directly collected money and grain from these three counties as usual, it would not be impossible to gather so much materials to support the Hehuai and Liang armies.

However, Han Qian wanted to abolish many of the old systems that Xu Mingzhen had implemented in these three places as soon as possible.

These three areas and the connecting areas in between have always been the core area controlled by the Shouzhou Army. Xu Mingzhen has been working hard for many years, which is why the farming conditions are so good. However, most of the more than 900,000 acres of land are official farmland.

, to drive soldiers, family members, servants, and servants to cultivate the land.

Precisely by directly skipping the exploitation of the clan clans in the middle, Xu Mingzhen was able to directly acquire a large amount of money and food in these three core counties to raise soldiers and horses. At the same time, he also raised a group of craftsmen and craftsmen to ensure the basic supply of soldiers and armor.

Repairing ships; its status and importance is equivalent to that of adjacent areas such as Donghu, Liyang, Wanshou and Tangyi at this time, and currently accounts for nearly half of the current fiscal revenue of Huaixi.

Now these three counties must implement the New Deal as soon as possible, and the acres of land will be equally distributed to each household. Official slaves, as well as a group of peasant households who have been severely exploited, must be given back to the poor, so that the three counties can be fully integrated into Huaixi as soon as possible.

In that case, the total productivity of the three counties will be difficult to increase quickly during the transition period, and the actual total tax revenue that can be collected will need to be directly reduced by half.

Even if these taxes are collected, they still need to be withheld by the prefectures and counties, mainly for local construction. In other words, Han Qian does not expect these three counties to make a direct contribution to the annual revenue of the government in the short term. More

Or generate indirect income from bulk goods such as coal, iron, salt, cloth, etc.

Therefore, Han Qian can only let the Official Money Bureau be responsible for fulfilling the loan to Liang Jun.

Of course, the Official Money Bureau is responsible for such a large-scale loan of grain, soldiers, and weapons, so the amount of money and grain is not as scary as imagined.

In order to ensure that food resources are not lost to the outside world, or to ensure the food security of Huaixi, a

The state government, from prefectures and counties to townships, is currently implementing a policy of unified sales and purchase of grain.

Under this policy, only prefecture, county, and township bureaus in Huaixi have the right to purchase grain from households or sell grain to households; foreign grain merchants can only trade with prefecture, county, and township bureaus when importing and exporting grain, and are not allowed to trade with households.

Direct Deal.

After recovering the main areas of Huaixi, the four seasons of grain harvest have been completed, and the food pressure in the territory has been completely alleviated. With the implementation of the unified sales and purchase policy, the price of food in Huaixi has actually dropped to 800 yuan per stone.

This is much lower than the neighboring Huaidong, Jiangdong and Gyeonggi.

In fact, the wealthy rural households in Jiangdong and other places controlled the local area and monopolized the local grain trade. They purchased grain from private households and suppressed the price extremely in order to sell it at a high price to make a profit.

When there was a shortage of food in Huaixi before, the Zhizhi government did everything possible to buy cheap food from Xuzhou and other places, and the prefectures, counties and township bureaus sold it to households, which was far lower than the price of food in Jiangdong, which was as high as two thousand yuan per stone.

It can protect urban people's livelihood from the impact of fluctuations in food prices.

Huaixi has had good harvests throughout the four seasons. After that, an additional sixty, seventy or even one to two million stone of grain will be exported every year, which will not cause a shortage of food resources within Huaixi at all.

This will also allow the Bureau of Official Money to borrow money from the Hehuai and Liangjun armies, which can actually be controlled at less than 700,000 yuan per year in terms of money and grain.

This is already within the scope of what the Official Money Bureau can bear.

In addition to the increase in the total capital of the Guanqian Bureau in the past two years, the total amount of money and grain borrowed from the Huaidong branch reached 600,000 yuan, and the total amount of money and grain borrowed from the Shou Wangfu branch amounted to 800,000 yuan. These two items combined accounted for nearly 100,000 yuan each year.

Interest income of three hundred thousand yuan.

No matter Huaidong, the relationship between Shou Wangfu and Tangyi has been ups and downs in recent years, and no matter how easy it is to borrow money and how difficult it is to pay back, in Huaidong, the quarterly interest paid by Shouwangfu can be said to be

The burden is quite heavy for both families, but they are still able to fulfill it as scheduled.

Merchants have no national boundaries. The accounts behind this are clearly calculated. The heads of the Chen Qiao and other clans have no idea that Tang Yi secretly colluded with Liang Jun to settle matters. Back then, they all claimed with indignation that they would support the Liang-Chu peace talks to drive away the barbarians.

Of course, they also knew in their hearts that the money they lent out, especially whether they had previously promised to borrow 300,000 yuan of food from Shu State, or this time they had borrowed 700,000 yuan of food from Liang Junzhi each year, if they wanted to have a steady flow of money,

The most fundamental way to recover money and interest and ensure that the principal is worry-free in the future is Tangyi's military strength.

The peace agreement secretly concluded between Liang Jun and Tangyi, in addition to returning Fengtai, Shouchun, and Huoqiu as a condition for borrowing money, food and soldiers, also agreed to open the Tangyi coal, iron, salt, cloth, medicinal materials, oil soap and other bulk materials in

Sales channels in the southern states of Liang State and Bianjing.

At present, the production system of the southern states of Liangjing and Bianjing has been severely damaged, and it has recovered very quickly in a short period of time. The people are also in urgent need of these materials to alleviate the increasingly precarious people's livelihood; and even though the initial entry scale of these materials will be very limited,

It can also provide an additional amount of tax revenue to Hehuai and Liangjun to alleviate the shortage of military resources, and allocate a certain amount of money from it to pay loan interest.

Such conditions are beneficial to Tangyi, and are also beneficial to the Hehuai Liang Army at this time. In addition to obtaining extremely scarce supplies, it can also effectively weaken and limit the military potential and ambition of Xu Mingzhen's unit, forcing it to fight with the Hehuai Army.

The Liang army advances and retreats together, otherwise Tangyi's troops and horses can cross the Huaihe River at any time and attack Qiaozhou and Yingzhou, the core areas they currently control.

In addition, the states south of Bianjing are affected by drought and war, and a large number of hungry people and refugees have fled their homes. The Hehuai and Liang armies are currently only able to recruit young men and horses to supplement the shortage of troops. In order to avoid triggering uncontrollable civil unrest, this time also

It will open a channel for these refugees and hungry people to go south to the Jianghuai River to escape famine and seek food.

Although the hungry people going south to the Jianghuai River would be mainly the elderly, weak, women and children, and there would also be a lot of diseases, and they would be considered a burden anywhere, but Han Qian had nothing to be picky about.

In the middle of the previous dynasty, the population of the West Road of Huainan multiplied, and there were once more than 3 million registered households. However, when the Chu Kingdom was founded, the population of Huaixi had dropped to 700,000 or 800,000. In the following sixteen or seventeen years, Emperor Tianyou went to Huaixi.

After a large number of military households were moved in and civilian households were established, the population slowly recovered to around one million.

Anning Palace failed and fled north. Although a large number of people were forced to cross the river and move to Huaixi, military confrontations and wars followed for several years, resulting in considerable population losses. Not counting the generals of the Shouzhou Army, the total population of Huaixi in the previous two years

All under one million.

In the past few years, Han Qian spared no effort to recruit and resettle the refugees in the territory. He also incorporated hundreds of thousands of households in the Huaiyang Mountains and moved in more than 200,000 hungry people from Jiangdong, Huaidong and other places. In the end, the total population of Huaixi barely exceeded

1.3 million, but it is still far from the peak of Huaixi.

In order to resettle these hungry people who went south, the government will first set up a number of settlements in the sparsely populated areas of Huozhou, Shouzhou and central Guangzhou...

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The cold wind howled, the night was pitch black, and not a single star could be seen, making people suspect that the first snow since winter this year would drift eastward at any time.

The lights in the Han Mansion were brightly lit until late at night. Yao Xishui was sitting in the carriage at the entrance of the alley. He opened the curtains and saw that there were still people leaving the Han Mansion at this time - these people had stayed until now. Obviously, they were not just here tonight.

Birthday banquet.

"There should be four shadow guards from Han Mansion coming over." At this time, the curtain of the car in front was opened, and Ye Feiying, who looked like a nimble wild cat, retracted into the car and said to Yao Xishui.

"Let's go!" Yao Xishui lowered the curtains of the carriage, tapped the carriage wall twice, and signaled the coachman outside to drive the carriage away from here.

During the most difficult two years in Tangyi, the size of the Han Mansion shrank by nearly half. Even if the servants employed in the Mansion were hired, there would not be much difference, but the number of people serving the servants and guarding the house were reduced by more than half.

However, at this time, the Han Mansion had a small group of shadow guards stationed there, which not only did not weaken the Han Mansion's security capabilities, but actually enhanced them a lot.
To be continued...