"Boya, Zijing, here is the enemy's military situation after the Zilong siege. There are more than 20,000 enemy troops in Changli, twice as many as our army. The main one is the deadly rebels in Wuhuan. There are still 20,000 in Xiangping (Liaoyang) and there are many enemies and we are few. How can we defeat the enemy?"

After Liu Bei called Li Su and Lu Su, he went straight to the point and asked the topic directly.

Lu Su used to serve as the magistrate of Ji County. After being transferred to Liaodong, he was recommended by Liu Bei as the magistrate of Changli County. However, he has not paid any money and has not taken office yet. Because Changli County is still in the hands of the enemy, Lu Su must be attacked before he can take office.

It has been half a step forward from a prefecture-level county to a prefecture-level county. Lu Su was still very satisfied with this appointment. He was grateful for Liu Bei's support. It was not easy for him to be a county magistrate at the age of 18.

At this moment, Lu Su's performance was more active than Li Su: "The king of the country, the enemy is large and we are few, and our army has Mi Zhuhai to transport grain, so it is naturally beneficial to be siege, which is the same as when Qiu Liju dealt with Gongsun Zan last year.

Now that the first month is about to end, spring plowing will soon be soon. During the spring famine, there will be no military rations for at least a hundred days, so we can only sit and eat the empty mountain. Our army has deep ditches and high bases, building ports and camps to store grain.

If we have the law of defense, we have the confidence to defeat the enemy in defensive battles, and we can even use the military information of our army to store grains to lure the enemy to intercept the grain, so that it is easy to attack as a defense. If our army relies on solid camp defense, it is not impossible to defeat 20,000 enemies."

The strategy of robbing grain can always be used both positive and negatively. Although Cao Cao defeated Wuchao was a masterpiece, if Yuan Shao could take the initiative to set up an ambush in Wuchao and release false information to ask Cao Cao to rob, then maybe Cao Cao would die too much.

What Lu Su thought of was obviously this opposite variant.

Liu Bei agreed with this, nodded slightly, and turned to Li Su: "Boya, what do you think?"

Li Su smiled awkwardly: "Military battle formation is not my strength. This kind of battle can no longer be separated from the enemy. I really can't think of any clever plan. It's good to see what Zijing said. As long as the execution is safe, it should be possible."

Liu Bei patted Li Su on the shoulder with encouragement: "It's rare that Boya plans to be poor."

Li Su: "There are some orders of hearing the truth and specializing in skills and profession. How can there be an omniscient and omnipotent person?"

Lu Su: "..."

How could Li Boya speak inadvertently even in daily chatting? She is really a brilliant writer. But she is not the kind of corrupt scholar who searches for chapters and picks up sentences. She is really talented and has good literary talent.

Liu Bei finally ordered: "Since this is the case, I will ask Zijing to establish a water village at the mouth of Xiaoyushui River and expand the wharf to store food and grass transported from the sea route in the future. We must build a solid defense, preferably loose on the outside and tight on the inside, so as to show that the enemy is weak but it is difficult to break, so that the enemy can be ready to move."

Although Zhang Chunjun got rid of the food burden of more than 100,000 people in the Zhang Ju era and shrank to 40,000 to 50,000. However, the harvest last year was bad and the overall situation of food shortage in Liaodong did not improve, so the spring famine was definitely difficult.

Liu Bei believed in the attraction of military rations to the enemy.

"My subordinates receive the order." Lu Su immediately went to execute.

Li Su continued to stay with Liu Bei, discussing progress every day, waiting for an opportunity to act.

...

In the following days, Lu Su was progressing smoothly, and the enemy had no intention of crossing the Xiaoyu River to attack Lu Su, because the enemy was also afraid that they would be "half-crossed" by the Han army when they crossed the river.

When the two armies confront each other across the river, it is definitely the one who takes the initiative to cross the river and who suffers the loss. The rebels thought that the Han army would take the initiative to attack, so of course they would not do anything extra.

By the end of January, Lusu's water village was basically built, and Mi Zhu's first batch of sea ships and military rations were also transported to the front line. It seems that the problem of food shortage in Liu Bei's army has been solved.

Liu Bei is still very rich now. After this operation of buying Marquis and Liaodong Prime Minister in January, there were more than 300 million, so he directly asked Mi Zhu to buy grain from Bohai County, Jizhou, where the food is cheap. After buying it, he went north along the Bohai coast.

This is equivalent to transporting from Tianjin to Jinzhou in later generations, and the loss of sea transportation is very small.

The first batch of military rations with 100,000 s, together with the freight, was only 40 million yuan.

According to the calculation that each soldier consumes a dou of coarse grain every two days, this 100,000 stones is enough for Liu Bei to eat ten thousand soldiers for more than half a year, and Mi Zhu can still transport it again at any time.

While confronting each other across the river on the front line, Liu Bei and Li Su discovered a new situation.

That is, with the arrival of the Han army, in just a few days, a large number of refugees who had fled famine and even had no homelessness after being robbed of food by the rebels. After hearing the news, they began to gather at the Han army camp.

With the idea of ​​utilitarianism, Li Su was reluctant to accept these people who were baptized by the rebels at this time.

Because the people stayed on the rebels' side, they could consume the rebels' food, and after being stripped of everything, they would have to eat Liu Bei's military food.

In addition, last year, Liu Bei received more than 20,000 prisoners from Zhang Ju and expanded his troops from them by 5,000, but the rest were not disbanded. Instead, they temporarily served as auxiliary soldiers and civilians who provided logistics and food transportation. These people also had to eat Liu Bei's military rations for a period of time, so the pressure would be even greater.

"Brother, you must not be kind to a woman. Now it is a critical moment in military information. At this time, disaster relief will be aroused by your relatives. When the rebels see this, they will definitely become more and more powerful in persecution of the people in the enemy-occupied areas, plunder them to nothing, and then drive them to us. It will be unimaginable at that time."

When Liu Bei was inspecting the camp, Li Su had to advise him as he watched the camp formed by refugees from both sides of the Xiaoyu River in groups of three or three on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Although he also knew that these people were indeed miserable. Accepting these people undoubtedly means that the war to regain Liaodong would be delayed. If it was delayed in normal years in the future, that would be fine, but this year is the last year before Emperor Ling of Han’s death. Every day of meritorious service and layout time are very precious.

If you jump one more step up this year, it may be equivalent to the three-step jump to the future era of heroes.

Later generations Sima Yi pacified Gongsun Yuan in Liaodong, and the battle ended for a hundred days. If Liu Bei accepted the hungry people, he would definitely not be able to fight in a hundred days, and it would become a more lasting military farm battle.

Unfortunately, Li Su repeatedly persuaded Liu Bei's old habits were in trouble.

After repeatedly watching the tragic situation of the victims, Liu Bei expressed the utopian truth in front of Li Su, Guan Zhang, Lu Su, Tian Chou and Mi Zhu:

"We must be based on people's responsibility for major events. Now that people return to me, how can I bear to abandon it! At least there are tens of thousands of creatures here, how can we sacrifice for quick victory? If these people are sacrificed, what's the use of us to obtain an empty Liaodong?"

Li Su: "..."

He understood Zhuge Liang's depression when Yang Tong lost.

Forget it, this sentence is finally said. The theory of abandoning the people and winning quickly is probably no market.

Fortunately, the situation Li Su is facing now is much better than Zhuge Liang's when he was in Changban. He is simply a slower contribution and a waste of some golden time to climb to the official position, but he can still win.

Liu Bei is the man who refuses to abandon the problem of harming the people. He is afraid that it is brought out from his mother's womb and will never be able to change it in his life.

"Brother... Rende, let's make a long-term plan." Li Su sighed and gave up.

However, only a person with a heart-hearted heart like Li Su was as calm as that. The other Guan, Zhang and Lu Su next to him felt that Liu Bei was doing a good job and his morale was high. They praised him for his kindness and kindness, which was admirable.

Lu Su was even more like he was injected with chicken blood, and he was full of brain power. He thought, "Mr., since he decided to accept refugees, he is just about the beginning of February and can still catch up with spring plowing. Why not organize these people to farm themselves here?

I see that Yangle and Tuhe counties are already large in population and have a certain foundation for land development. Especially on both sides of the Yu River, the best fertile fertile land within hundreds of miles from western Liaoning to this place. It is not in vain to support the people. Just make Mi Zhishu harder, transport the grain for half a year, and carry these people to feed exponentially until the autumn harvest in August."

Li Su sighed from the side: "How could we survive until the autumn harvest in August and not yet eliminate Zhang Chun? If there is food, it will only be backfilling the deficit, which will be of no help to the war. It can only be regarded as a stop loss strategy, so as not to let the people stay idle.

In my opinion, all the ox carts and animals that were sent to transport grain by land can be rented to the people on the spot, and the cattle rent equivalent to 40% of the harvest will be collected by the people at the autumn harvest. There is no need for one cattle per household, and it can be rented to the people, five or six households, or more than ten people in time. If the government army is still needed to provide food, and if the seeds are needed to survive the spring famine, the owed food will be doubled after the autumn harvest."

This is also a way to stop losses, which is already a bit similar to the strategy of farming that Mao Jie thought for Cao Cao later.

However, Li Su did not want the strategy of farming to be leaked too early, so he made some optimizations and only promoted "renting cattle" as a regular basis, and at the same time, the rent and tax were also reduced to 40% so as not to attract attention from the world.

The government collects at least half of the harvest for the genuine military farm, but the organization of the people is also higher. In addition to giving cattle, there are also agricultural tools and seeds.

Because Liu Bei's army intercepted Zhang Ju's gains plundered in Bohai County last year, there were so many cattle left. In addition to selling Mi Zhu for money, he still retained nearly 2,000 heads that were not sold out, as a cart to transport military supplies.

In this way, Liu Bei's change of supplies to rented cattle can be said to be a temporary measure, and others will not pay attention to it at all.

In addition, the method of renting cattle has a longer lifespan than the military farm system and can flow smoothly. Later generations until the wars between the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, in order to quickly raise military rations and give refugees a way to survive, all countries in the Five Dynasties implemented the method of renting cattle.

The advantage of the cattle rental method is that it is lighter than military farming, simplifying government, simpler operation, and less room for military farming officials to exploit the people--

Because of the complete military farming system, sometimes after the first two-year difficult period of the people had already accumulated a certain amount of food savings during the spring famine and some seeds were left. However, in order to collect more interest, military farming officials often forcibly lent the people to seeds regardless of whether the people need seeds or not, and they doubled or even tripled during the autumn harvest.

This disadvantage is the same as Wang Anshi's Qingmiao Law of the Song Dynasty. At the execution level, it is forcibly levied, so that the people who are not short of food will also be subject to usury. This is the same.

In contrast, cattle are always a very luxurious bulk property for most people. When each household has only a few dozen acres of land and up to a hundred acres, they cannot make full use of the labor of a cow. Therefore, cattle must be short of the people, and renting cattle does not have the problem of harming the people.

In this way, Li Su transformed the military farming system into "food, seeds and farm tools, and only rented it to the people when the disaster and the people really had nothing to do to collect high interest. When the people recovered and these things could be self-sufficient and not want to pay usury, they would only rent cattle."

Of course, under the efficiency of administrative management in the feudal era, no system could be completely free of disadvantages and blind spots. The cattle rental system is much more labor-saving than the military farm management, but problems will occur over time.

In Houliang at the beginning of the Five Dynasties, Zhu Wen rented cattle near Bianliang. Later, the Later Tang, Later Jin and Later Han dynasties also collected the cattle rent for Zhu Wen. But in fact, because decades have passed, many cattle have died of old age, and the people have not used cattle, and they are still paying up to 40% of the harvested cattle rent.

It was not until Zhou Shizong Chai Rong ascended the throne that Chai Rong, who had understood the people's conditions, went deep into the people to sort out the situation of the cows and conducted a large survey to exempt the old cattle households from renting them.

However, these disadvantages have nothing to do with Liu Bei and Li Su. "If you die of old age and collect rent", it will only happen after military farming for at least twenty years. What Liu Bei has gained now is pure people's hearts and gratitude.

"Then, as Boya said, give the people food, seeds and rent cattle in exchange for the harvest in the autumn harvest. Zijing, you and Zitai (Tian Chou) are responsible for this matter. Zitai is unfinished and has served as a cavalry for several years. It should be more effective for Qimin to reclaim wasteland. You two will discuss it. If the people are unwilling to accept this condition, they will not force it."

Lu Su bowed and agreed: "Don't worry, Mr. Fu, I and I will do our best. Mr. Fu uses military food to save the people from water and fire. The people are grateful, so how can they dislike the high rent and taxes?"

After Li Su and others made arrangements, they added a reminder: "Brother, they should not only arrange for the people to farm, but also be prepared to further prevent the attack of Wuhuan Nanqiao King. In my opinion, if Nanqiao King knew that our army was a long-term plan, they would not come out to harass him during the spring plowing. They wanted us to have more food.

However, once the spring plowing is over, the grain growth cycle in the northern land will be long, and there is no need for much busy farming in summer. I am afraid that the King of Kui will fight to defeat our army and occupy the military farmland area to wait for the autumn harvest.

Last year, Zhang Ju and Qiu Liju were snatched by our method of cutting green yellow wheat. They will learn lessons until now. This year, they will definitely take advantage of the midsummer when even green yellow wheat is not taxed. We must prepare for field battles."

Li Su's words were recognized by most people, and Guan Yu and Zhang Fei asked for his orders: "Brother, if King Nanqiao dares to go out of the city to fight and destroy the military farms, let's leave them to us. When we cross the Xiaoyu River, we must stop King Nanqiao on the east bank of the river and give him a headache, so that he will not threaten the military farms in Hexi."

Liu Bei thought for a while: "Boya, you and Chang Yun, Zilong are responsible for keeping a close eye on King Nanqiao. Yide, you should guard the grain and water village at the mouth of Xiaoyushui River. There will be no loss in both places! No matter where King Nanqiao attacks the grain and food site, you will have to hit the head-on!"

——
Chapter completed!