Including Xinyang, the three hundred miles of Tongbai Mountain is currently considered safe, and the excavable arable land resources may be less than one million acres, of which slopes and terraces account for more than half.
Even if all of this arable land resource is used to grow food, it may not be as rich as a prosperous county in the south of the Yangtze River.
What's more, in addition to eating and making ends meet, people also need to wear clothes, cover their bodies, and keep warm. This small amount of arable land resources also requires a large amount of land to be used to grow mulberry, hemp, and cotton.
In Chushan, Xu Huai tried his best to suppress the exploitation of large clans and small and medium-sized landowners, ensuring that farmers and tenants could keep more grain and mulberry for spinning and weaving, and also ensuring that enough land tax and oral taxes could be collected.
, but this small amount of cultivated land resources is quite reluctant to solve the problem of feeding and clothing the 200,000 soldiers and civilians directly under Chushan.
However, if you want to maintain a combat-effective and large-scale army, you must ensure that prefectures, counties and townships have sufficient control over local governance. It is far from enough to just provide food and clothing.
Forging armor and weapons, building cities and fortresses, dredging rivers, opening roads, cultivating new lands, maintaining such a large scale of horse herding, as well as a total of more than 20,000 soldiers, and paying salaries and wages to officials, which one is not
A huge hole that requires countless money and food to fill it?
Xu Huai had won great victories in several battles in the past. Judging from the loot captured, it seemed to be extremely impressive, but it had been exhausted. In the future, if he only relied on Xiangyang to import more than 40,000 guans of money and food every month, he would not be able to make up for the gap.
At present, the bulk of income that Chushan can add is, first, the placer gold mining including Jinshagou, which nets a monthly net income of more than 10,000 yuan. However, before a new placer gold mine or other gold mines are found, this part of the income will be
It is difficult for income to increase significantly.
There is another directly expendable income in Chushan. After the Tongbai Mountain Bandit Rebellion, the sales of tung oil seeds, tea medicine, alumite, alkali stone, mules and horses operated by the Tang and Xu families were all transferred to Zhufeng.
Don takes over.
Tongbai Mountain tea medicine has always been a bulk product exported abroad.
In addition to the needs for woodworking, the shipbuilding industry in Jianghuai, Guangnan and other places has been booming in the past century, and there is a huge demand for tung oil, one of the raw materials for leak-filling agents.
Among the bulk products currently available in Tongbai Mountain, the output of tung oil seeds has exceeded that of tea medicine.
However, after Zhufengtang took over the warehouses and caravans of the Tang and Xu families, it purchased bulk products from Tongbai Mountain and sold them out of the mountain. The scale has expanded a lot, but the maintenance costs of the caravans, yards, and warehouses are also high, and the monthly net income
It can barely match the income from gold mines.
After the fall of Bianliang, countless refugees flocked to the south, and business travelers between Huainan and Nanyang no longer traveled between Tongbai Mountain. In the past, there was at least 40,000 to 50,000 yuan in tax revenue every year. In a short period of time,
It is impossible to hope for recovery.
Chushan also has a large amount of income, which can be said to be the most important one. After the bandits were wiped out in Tongbai Mountain, with the help of Tang Tiande, Zhufengtang took over the Tangshi Shibaliwu Iron Mine and established it here.
Armor ordnance casting developed on the basis of.
Due to the great disturbance caused by the banditry in Tongbai Mountain, the Red Husbands invaded the south twice more. On Jingxi South Road and Jinghu North Road, not only did the supervisors recruit soldiers and horses on a large scale, but the prefectures, counties and even villages strengthened the recruitment and training of Xiang army soldiers.
This caused a surge in demand for Bingjia ordnance in the prefectures and counties surrounding Tongbai Mountain.
However, in the past, the weapons and armor ordnance casting capabilities in these places were extremely weak.
Zhufengtang seized this opportunity. In just two years, not only did the Shibaliwu Iron Works expand in size, but the number of craftsmen responsible for casting armor and weapons also expanded to more than a thousand, and it sold quantities to Jinghu and Xiangyang.
Thousands of swords contradict armor.
Thanks to this part of the income, Zhufengtang has enough energy to cast the armor needed for its own development. Together with the armor ordnance seized from Lien Zhan's victory, the Tianxiong Army and Xiang Army currently under the jurisdiction of Chushan Camp will be 10,000.
Five thousand soldiers were armed.
Otherwise, the Tianxiong Army's 10,000 regular soldiers and the 5,000 Xiang Army under the jurisdiction of the State Military and Horse Supervision Department, equipped with tens of thousands of armor and weapons, would definitely be a despairing astronomical figure.
At present, the left and right Xiaosheng Army, the left and right Xuanwu Army, and the Xuanwei Army under the jurisdiction of Jinghu North Road have been expanded to 90,000 people, but there is still a serious shortage of armor and weapons.
Xiangyang, Nanyang and other places have to build larger-scale local troops and horses, and the demand for soldiers and armor will only be greater, not smaller.
In a short period of time, the soldiers, armors and weapons cast by Zhufengtang were easily sold, earning Chushan a net income of more than 20,000 yuan a month.
However, after King Jing went south to Xiangyang, the Marshal's Office not only organized the expansion of the casting of Bingjia ordnance in Xiangyang, but also ordered the Jinghu, Jianghuai, Chuanxia and other road supervision departments to simultaneously expand the casting of Bingjia ordnance to supply the expansion of troops and horses.
.
A large number of private workshops in Jianghuai, Jinghu and other places, seeing the profits, are also casting armor and equipment for Yousi.
No matter how much King Jing trusted Xu Huai, he could not let Chushan monopolize the production and supply of Dai Viet armor and weapons; Zhou He, Gao Chunnian and others would resist even if they broke their minds.
What's more, the iron smelting technology in Jianghuai, Jinghu, Chuanxia and other places has made great progress in the past century. At the same time, the government has always encouraged private companies to open iron yards for mining and iron smelting.
Compared with the previous dynasty, the scale of the Dai Viet government-run iron yard has not expanded much, but private mining and iron-making have developed rapidly.
Private iron yards in Dai Viet charge ten cents as tax, and the government collects two cents as tax.
Based on the statistics of iron taxes collected by various prisons in the first year of Tianxuan, the annual iron smelting scale in Jianghuai, Jinghu, Chuanxia and other places was at least no less than 30 million kilograms.
The current annual iron-making scale of Chushan Zhufengtang is only 200,000 kilograms.
Tongbaishan has abundant iron ore resources and abundant charcoal resources, but the biggest limitation is transportation.
In the past, the ironware and raw and wrought iron produced by the Shibali Ironyard operated by the Tang family were mainly supplied to the mountains; if transported by land, they were basically uncompetitive.
Zhufengtang wants to continue to expand its sales of armor and weapons, including ironware, and also wants to make up for part of the shortfall in expenditure. The only way is to make cast armor and weapons and civilian ironware of high quality and low price.
In order to improve the efficiency of Chushan's iron-making and reduce costs, Zhuang Shouxin, Xu Wuliang and others have also thought of many ways. However, iron-making in the Central Plains has a history of one or two thousand years. It is not easy to make major improvements in the basic technology in a short period of time.
?
Zhuang Shouxin, Xu Wuliang and others all advocated reducing the production of simple weapons such as swords, spears, arrows, and shields to meet their own needs, and focusing on armor casting with higher technical content and greater added value.
Xu Huai did not agree.
Shi Zhen also believed that compared with agricultural production, large-scale coal and iron mining and smelting would make it possible for Tongbai Mountain to accommodate a large number of young and strong labor force - and the young and strong labor force is the real potential for Chushan's continued development in the future.
A large number of refugees are flocking to the south. Chushan can only do everything possible to evacuate to Jinghu, Nanyang and other places. It's not that Xu Huai doesn't want to keep them, but the population that the relatively safe area of Tongbai Mountain can carry is too limited.
Specializing in armor making may be very profitable, but in addition to requiring skilled craftsmen to make armor, the number of craftsmen that can be accommodated is also extremely limited. One or two thousand people are enough.
If the iron smelting industry in Chushan can develop, it will not be difficult to accommodate 10,000 to 20,000 young adults. With the accompanying family members, the population directly under Chushan's jurisdiction will increase by a quarter or even a third.
Large-scale iron smelting, through trading of iron materials and iron tools for grain into the mountains, can also enhance the flexibility of grain reserves in the mountains; transportation capacity will also be greatly enhanced.
The benefits that can be derived from the development of the iron-making industry cannot be simply measured in terms of money and food.
Shi Zhen advocated that even if the profit was small, the scale of iron smelting in the mountains should be continuously expanded, so as to continuously absorb young and strong labor among the refugees.
Of course, when it comes to the basic process of ironmaking, charcoal is indispensable.
Chushan also thought about using raw coal to replace charcoal, but the iron made from raw coal is not only brittle and easy to break, but more importantly, after the raw coal is placed at the bottom of the furnace and ignited, it is very easy to loosen, and even more so after it is completely burned.
A pile of loose ash mixed with molten iron.
It's not that raw coal cannot be used to replace charcoal, but until better raw coal is found, even if it is used to produce ordinary farm tools, the cost performance is much lower than that of charcoal.
"Collect Tongbai charcoal, smelt it with the charcoal method, and use it to smelt iron to see its effect!" Taking advantage of the opportunity to brag and fight with Zhao Yi, Xu Huai wrote a secret letter in handwriting, asking Shi Po to arrange manpower.
He immediately returned to Chushan with the letter and handed it over to Shi Zhen.
Xu Huai was also full of expectations for this. He knew in his heart that if the method of coal smelting was effective, how much it would promote the iron smelting revolution.
Although Tongbai Mountain is rich in wood materials, the wood is scattered in the steep mountains. After felling, a cellar is built on site to refine the charcoal and then transported to the iron yard, which is extremely labor-intensive.
These are all costs.
If the iron smelting industry in Tongbai Mountain wants to truly develop into the financial support of Chushan and absorb a large number of young and strong labor, the scale will need to be expanded ten times or dozens of times. At this time, it will still rely purely on charcoal, and Tongbai Mountain will soon be replaced.
The timber resources in Baishan have been exhausted.
In comparison, the several coal mines currently discovered in Tongbai Mountain have huge reserves. The key is to concentrate on mining and smelting, thereby greatly reducing the cost of smelting...
