At that time, in addition to the manufacturing of soldiers and war equipment, there was a lot of corruption in the transportation of military grains. A more fundamental reason was that the generals did not grant or allocate fields to the soldiers. With the large-scale influx of refugees in the Jianghuai River, agricultural consumption production suffered.

Severe damage, food prices skyrocketed, swallowing up the seemingly considerable military pay income of the generals.

It also forced the court to provide additional rewards in addition to military pay in order to ensure the basic survival needs of the generals and their families.

In addition to the central annual income of more than 30 million guan of money and grain each year, which is jointly managed by the Wulu Duzhi Department and the Ministry of Household Affairs, the Sikong Mansion also directly governs the Jingxiang Road, the four major camp garrison areas, and the newly recovered prefectures and counties.

The entire manufacturing system has developed to this day. In addition to maintaining its own normal development and expansion, it can also pay more than 8 million yuan in taxes and profits to the Sikong Mansion every year.

Jingxiang Road can also pay taxes of 4 million yuan every year.

In addition, the settlement system under Sikong Mansion is growing day by day.

Since the rise of Xu Huai in the Chu Mountains, all the powerful and powerful people have been conquered, and all the newly reclaimed or reclaimed fields have been taken over by the government. Then the camp or production department will organize the manpower to build villages on a large scale, and appoint township officials to take charge.

In addition to the refugees who surrendered, the families of ordinary soldiers and prisoners of war who had undergone certain punishments after being captured were all incorporated into various villages to participate in reclamation and farming, as well as the excavation and construction of local roads, rivers, canals, dams and other public projects.

Since the villages, houses, and various agricultural tools required for cultivating the land, as well as the cattle, seeds, and rations for survival are all supplied by the camp or the company, the cultivators will get a part of the final harvest from the official fields, but they also

A considerable portion should be used as taxes and rents should be paid to the official warehouse.

Only generals who have made great achievements in battle will be directly granted land, without the need to pay additional rent, and can also be exempted from part of the tax.

Before Emperor Jianji ascended the throne in Xiangyang, Xu Huai and the people of Chu Mountain worked hard to reclaim 50,000 to 60,000 acres of sloping land in the north and south ridges of Tongbai Mountain. In order to improve irrigation conditions, they built weirs and dams in streams regardless of the cost, but this was also for the benefit of Chu.

This laid the foundation for the subsequent development of hydraulic engineering in the mountain.

During the Jianji period, in addition to cultivating four and a half million acres of sloping mountain fields, with the increase in military strength, it was able to control the Ruzhou trough basin between Jishan and Funiu Mountains, as well as Ru River, Mingxi River and the northern part of Tongbai Mountain.

In the Pingchuan area surrounded by mountains such as Ling Mountain, Dafu Mountain, and Dengtaijia, the farmland directly controlled by Chushan Mountain in the plain area suddenly increased to more than three million acres.

When Emperor Shaolong ascended the throne, Xu Huai used the name of Nancai Recruitment Division to recruit millions of refugees when he suppressed the Dongjing bandit rebellion. He also forced Emperor Shaolong to agree to add the area north of Jingjiang River to Jingxiang Road, and simultaneously opened the

Large-scale land clearing and reclamation work was carried out in Nanyang, Xiangyang and Jingzhou.

By the seventh year of Shaolong's reign, the four counties of Nanyang, Xiangyang and Jingzhou, plus Nancai, had been cleared and confiscated. In addition to the large-scale construction of dikes and villages in northern Jingzhou and other places, a total of 8 million acres of official land had been acquired in six or seven years.

The fourth stage was after the Second Battle of Huainan. Xu Huai actually dismantled the Huainan West Road. On the one hand, he merged Luzhou, Shuzhou, Hezhou and other counties in southwestern Huainan into the Jiangnan East Road. On the other hand, he merged the counties in northwestern Huainan into the Jiangnan East Road.

Shouzhou, Guangzhou, Haozhou and other places were brought under the jurisdiction of the Xingying War Zone, and a large number of generals and their families of Jingsheng, Xuanwu and Xiaosheng armies were moved in for resettlement.

In three years, these areas were re-cultivated and up to 6 million acres of mature farmland were reclaimed.

Over the years, after deducting more than 3 million acres of land awarded for military merit, the total number of official land under the jurisdiction of the Sikong Prefecture’s Farming Division now reaches 14 million acres.

This does not include the achievements of Liu Yan and Wang Fan in clearing fields in Jiangdong and Zhejiang. It does not include the newly added jurisdictions along the Yingshui River after the great victory of Yingzhou. It does not include the recovery of Heluo, Zhengbian and other places.

Cultivated land available for development.

In the eighth year of Shaolong's reign, the official land tenancy and land tax revenue under the jurisdiction of the Sikong Prefecture, after deducting the expenses of local reclamation, water conservancy road repairs and personnel, was also handed over to the Sikong Prefecture, including two million shi of grain and one hundred shi.

A large amount of materials including 500,000 dans of cotton - this does not include the 4 to 5 million shi of grain purchased at low prices from the people of various villages with additional funding from the Sikong Mansion.

The significance of the settlement system is not only to hand over a large amount of additional materials every year, nor to quickly restore local agricultural production, but not only to facilitate the large-scale promotion of new manufacturing technologies within the settlement system, and more importantly

This is the reason why Sikong Mansion has successfully secured nearly one million reserve soldiers.

These reserve soldiers participate in the farming work of each village as station soldiers during the farming season, and are organized by the village officials for basic drills; in their free time, they are assembled as labor troops to participate in the construction of various local public facilities or to meet the material transportation needs of frontline operations.

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In addition to participating in training as a garrison soldier and receiving a small amount of subsidies, once recruited as an industrial soldier, the salary paid will also be guaranteed to be slightly higher than the income from farming - for the refugees who had no livelihood and were displaced from place to place earlier, And for prisoners of war who received certain hard labor punishment, it was already an excellent treatment.

It seems that in addition to the huge construction expenditures, the Sikong government has also incurred additional costs for this, so the Sikong government needs to expand borrowings appropriately to maintain expenditures.

However, in addition to not overly consuming people's power and causing public resentment, this move not only ensures sufficient reserve troops, but also allows new construction projects, new settlements, and defense line construction to continue rolling out.

At this time, in addition to the restoration of county governance in Xiangcheng, Zhaoling, Queshan and other places, large-scale settlement and reclamation construction was underway in Xuchang, Wanqiu, Xiangcheng, Shenqiu, Ruyin, Huaichuan, Jiaopi and other places to accommodate Yingzhou After the great victory, the number of prisoners who surrendered to the Han army and those who were vassalized by the Han army were taken into custody, totaling about 900,000 people.

At present, the Jingsheng, Tianxiong, Xiaosheng, and Xuanwu armies have regained six state capitals in the northern and western areas of Jingxi North Road, including Heluo, and the southern area of ​​Jingxi East Road. It is currently estimated that they will once again contain the surrendered Han army military households. The total number of expelled people is about 1.8 million.

Although the war greatly reduced the population of the Hehuai region, the proportion of young and strong men among the surviving population was extremely high.

The Sikong Mansion has made preliminary statistics on the people accommodated in the three major camp garrison areas. There are 2.8 million people, and the total number of young men between the ages of 15 and 50 is about 1.2 million.

Even if the young men in the Han army were eliminated - these people were untrustworthy and stained with the blood of their comrades - there would still be nearly a million young men who had been expelled and enslaved in the past.

This also means that if these people are included in the settlement system of Sikong Mansion, the number of reserve soldiers will double.

At this time, the Sikong Mansion may not be able to advance into Guanshan and Hedong, or the military front may be directed towards Puwei, forcing the soldiers and horses of Prince Ping Yanzong's Mansion to retreat further north, and then regain Jingdong East Road (today's Shandong) and other places.

However, in the end, everyone in the Sikong Mansion, led by Shi Zhen, Han Gui, Liu Shiwang, Chen Zixiao and others, still firmly opposed the radical military strategy at this time.

In addition to avoiding excessive use of troops and horses, which may cause heavy casualties, the most important thing is to digest the millions of additional troops, which will take time and process.

And this is a step that Sikong Mansion should not skip when running the world.

Now that the Chihu people have not completely retreated from the Central Plains, Sikong Mansion has won great victories one after another and regained lost territory. Therefore, the local officials and gentry in Jianghuai and Jinghu have behaved extremely docile and cooperative.

The Sikong Mansion could also justifiably hold high the banner of "Expelling the Huru and Recover the Central Plains", requiring the government and the public to concentrate their main resources on military operations, ensuring that the empire's focus was on ensuring military victory one after another.

If we rush to use further troops against the Chihu people now, it is inevitable that the military operation will be frustrated and the personal prestige of Sikong Mansion and Xu Huai will be damaged.

However, even if the Chihu people can be expelled from the Central Plains as quickly as possible, the situation may not develop in favor of the Sikong Mansion.

After the Red Husbands were driven out of the Central Plains, the government and the public would soon lose their strong will to continue to use troops against the Red Husbands, and the focus of the court would need to shift from conquests to construction. At this time, there were already some voices in Xiangyang that wanted to return to Bianliang. , has already illustrated this trend.

It’s not that those who thought about returning to Bianliang have already stood on the opposite side of Sikong Mansion, but the end of large-scale military operations and the shift of the empire’s focus to construction will inevitably lead to scholars and civil servants who are better at government affairs.

Become active again - either actively or unconsciously.

Once the large-scale military operation ends, the psychological inertia formed by the use of civil society to control military affairs and the use of civil society to govern military affairs since the founding of the Dai Viet Dynasty will inevitably rear its ugly head again.

At that time, the Sikong Mansion still wants to continue to directly control the reclamation construction in Hehuai and even Hedong, Guanshan, Hebei and other places in the name of the camp camp area. The conflict with the officials and gentry is likely to intensify again.

Unless Xu Huai is willing to use more intense and severe methods to carry out bloody purges of officials and officials, Shi Zhen, Han Gui and others all advocate that military operations in Hedong, Guanshan, Hebei and other places should be slowed down.

Five years or seven or eight years is better.

Slowed down until Sikong Prefecture initially digested Heluo, Bianzheng and Xusu areas; slowed down until Sikong Prefecture’s total size was expanded to two million. After many rounds of training, the garrison troops initially formed a centripetal force towards Sikong Prefecture; slowed down.

When they arrive at Jianghuai, if the Jinghu gentry dares to rebel, Sikong Mansion can kill them with just one finger...
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