"This reckless man may be brave enough, but what is it that deserves your love?" Song Jia asked Lin Fu privately. She knew that Sun Zhuang had irreplaceable value in contacting the Red Coat Army, but Lin Furuo just wanted to
Using Sun Zhuang would not take so much effort.
Lin Fu smiled slightly and said: "If the water is clear, there will be no fish, and if the people are careful, there will be no apprentices. Those in high positions should use their talents according to their talents, rather than asking for complete preparations. The Huaisi Liuming Army has dozens of canal commanders, who can really make people
The ones that the Huaidong Army finds difficult are Sun Zhuang and Liu Miaozhen. Chen Zhi, Zhang Gou and others are all good. To be honest, Zhang Gou is more knowledgeable in the art of war than Sun Zhuang and has a deeper mind.
, but he has been willing to serve as a general under Sun Zhuang for several years. In terms of these two points, Sun Zhuang has more than just military courage!"
Song Jia's beautiful eyes were slightly confused.
Lin Fu said: "The army will be courageous. If the army is full of far-reaching planners, an army will be slightly lacking in military courage. Liu Tingzhou also underestimated Sun Zhuang. This is the traditional thinking formed by the literati and the martial arts. In fact, Liu Tingzhou also underestimated Sun Zhuang.
Above, Liu Tingzhou cannot control the Northern Army without Xiao Kui'an..."
"Speaking of the Northern Army," Song Jia asked, "will you always let the Northern Army controlled by Liu Tingzhou and Xiao Kui'an hide behind Huai Si?"
"It's not a question of whether I give in or not," Lin Fu said, "Jiangning will do everything possible to transfer the Northern Army out of Huaidong's control. If Liu Miaozhen can successfully accept the recruitment and allow the Northern Army to advance westward,
It is also necessary to strengthen the defense in the middle. Liu Tingzhou and Xiao Kui'an are much more reliable than others, and they can also gain Jiang Ning's trust..."
Sun Zhuang abandoned Suining and stayed in Yu, allowing Liu Miaozhen to lead his troops eastward. In order to calm the anger of Liu Tingzhou and others, Lin Fu transferred Xiao Kui'an to guard Shuyang and assigned the Northern Army to them.
Lin Fu never thought about being able to control the Northern Army from the beginning, and he deliberately did not try to ease the conflict with Liu Tingzhou. Naturally, he had long expected that Jiang Ning would win over the Northern Army from Huaidong.
With the fall of Datong, Beidi is one step closer to collapse across the board, and the time left for Huaidong to prepare is becoming increasingly limited.
Qin Chengzu and Sun Zhuang went to Huaisi to help the Red Coat Army make more preparations; Jinhai also had to start the retreat immediately, but it happened to be the storm season, and the risk of evacuating directly to Mingzhou by sea was too great.
The 300,000 to 400,000 refugees from Jinhai must first be evacuated by sea to the Denglai area in the northern part of the Shandong Peninsula, then go south along the Jiaolai River to Jiaozhou Bay, and then evacuate to Huaidong by sea or land.
There is no extra land in Huaidong. Three to four hundred thousand refugees will eventually be moved to Daishan, Changguo, Mingzhou and other places for resettlement... Of course, some people will also be moved to Yizhou, Jeju, and Dongzhou, but only in a short period of time.
, Yizhou, Jeju, Dongzhou and other places have very limited resettlement population.
Having to evacuate 300,000 to 400,000 people from Jinhai all the way and resettle them is no easier than a major battle.
This is also one of the reasons why Lin Fu is eager to attack eastern Zhejiang. He cannot conquer Mingzhou Prefecture, cannot conquer Changguo, and the Daishan Islands, and Huaidong cannot accept so many people.
Leaving aside Mingzhou Prefecture, Changguo and Daishan Islands have been harassed by bandits from the East China Sea for decades, and almost all Dingkou have moved inland. After the She family occupied eastern Zhejiang, they resumed farming on these islands on a large scale and moved from eastern Fujian.
Many people came over and this time they picked peaches for Huaidong.
After the recovery of Mingzhou Prefecture, the land clearing work has just begun. It is not yet clear how much public land Mingzhou Prefecture can obtain, but the fields, mountains, forests, lakes, houses, walled cities, etc. belonging to Changguo and Daishan Islands have been given to Lin
Fu clearly ordered that he be taken into an official position, and there was no particularly fierce opposition in eastern Zhejiang to this.
In the middle of the Yue Dynasty, the number of registered fields in Changguo County was as high as 300,000 acres. If utilized properly, the paddy and dry fields on these islands alone could accommodate 60,700,000 to 70,000 people. Moreover, the fishery resources of Changguo Islands were greater than those of Hecheng.
The sea outside Hong Kong is even richer.
Of course, the bulk of the refugee resettlement is still in Mingzhou Prefecture. Years of war have caused heavy losses to the Dingkou in Mingzhou Prefecture. Even the fertile paddy fields along the coast have been abandoned due to the lack of Dingkou. To fill in the 300,000 people, the pressure is not great.
The key is to handle the conflicts between the newly relocated Dingkou and local forces.
Sun Zhuang bid farewell to his blind old mother and young woman, took two guards with him, returned to Dongya to meet Qin Chengzu, and then rode northward under the protection of a dozen mounted guards.
The group went north from Chongzhou, and after arriving at Hecheng, they took the Haidi Avenue and headed straight to Yandu County in the northwest.
Construction of the sea-defending embankment started right after the Huaisi War, from Jiangmen to Hecheng and then north to Yandu, with a total length of 312 miles. Millions of taels of silver were invested in it, and it was basically completed by early May.
Although Sun Zhuang behaved and spoke rudely, he was by no means a fool. With the sea wall being defended, Lin Fu uttered the four words "Anmin Jingtu" with great resounding authority, and could not tolerate the slightest doubt from others.
Defending the sea dike is of particularly great significance to Huaidong.
When Lin Fu first took office as the envoy to Huaidong, he built massive sea embankments. Except for Chongzhou, the counties and counties in Huaidong basically looked on with a cold eye. Some local forces were worried that their interests would be infringed, and they either overtly or covertly resisted Huaidong.
The military commander took advantage of the opportunity of building and defending the sea wall to infiltrate into the local area.
In order to build the sea dike, Huaidong not only accepted the surrender of more than 60,000 refugee troops, but also directly absorbed 40,000 local people into the work camp, directly or indirectly solving the problem of nearly 200,000 refugees.
people’s survival issues.
If Huaidong does nothing and pushes these 200,000 refugees and floating people to the counties and localities, the conflicts and turmoil it will cause in the local areas will be unimaginable.
This alone is enough to reverse the previous resistance and confrontational attitude of local forces towards the Huaidong Military Division.
After the sea dike is built, the nearly one million acres of farmland within the dike will fundamentally solve the damage caused by sea intrusion and be gradually transformed into fertile farmland if conditions permit. Large areas of lakes, wetlands, and swamps within the dike can also be gradually encircled and built with dikes.
, transformed into fertile farmland for farming.
Even though a large number of lakes, deserted beaches, marshes, etc. were taken over by the Huaidong Military Division as official property and used to resettle refugees and floating households, the local landowners' own fields were also significantly affected by the construction of the sea wall.
direct benefits.
Some enlightened squires and landowners even actively cooperated with Huaidong's new policy of reducing rents and taxes, recruiting more tenants to renovate and cultivate their fields, so that their own fields can produce more output.
Lin Fu was still unable to carry out thorough land reform in Huaidong. In addition to promoting the new policy of reducing rents and taxes, he also encouraged tenants to redeem their fields from landlords and reduce the degree of land annexation in Huaidong.
Some landowners are unwilling to reduce rents and taxes, but some are willing to sell their fields to avoid conflict with the new rent reduction and tax reduction policies implemented by Huaidong.
For landowners, the money earned from selling their fields can be deposited in Huaidong Bank to earn interest, which is no worse than directly operating the fields. Of course, Huaidong also supports tenants in tax policy to borrow redemption funds from Huaidong Bank.
form a complete cycle.
Of course, fundamentally, after the tenants redeem their land, their enthusiasm for farming and improving the land will increase significantly, and the land output will also increase significantly. Only in this way can the bank provide enough interest income to promote the continuous expansion of the entire cycle.
Motive force.
Only those who are truly proficient in political affairs can have a profound understanding of this point.
While other places are still trying their best to collect more money and food from farmers whose survival is in question, Huaidong can collect more than 80,000 taels of silver from Huaidong Bank this year.
Of course, there is a huge difference in the degree of tolerance of Dingkou between a poor land and a land with rich soil.
In Chongzhou, especially after the dredging of the Yan River, multiple planting of rice, wheat and cotton was promoted on a large scale. One household cultivated ten acres of fertile land, and could even withstand 30% of the rent pressure and still be prosperous. In Huaihe, where water conservancy has been severely damaged
In the Si area, a family can barely make ends meet by cultivating 30 to 40 acres of land, and their ability to withstand natural disasters and social unrest is extremely low.
In the past, the three counties of Gaocheng, Jianling, and Yandu were located in the low-lying areas of the Hudang Plain. The combined area of Dingkou in the three counties was not even as large as that of Hailing or Chongzhou County.
Once the sea defense embankment is built, the land capacity of Gaocheng, Jianling and Yandu counties will be greatly increased. Coupled with the large-scale development of Hecheng grassland in Huaidong, the Huaidong interior will have 4 to 50 million floating households.
This is only possible if the refugees are gradually resettled. This will also more completely alleviate the increasingly fierce social conflicts and unrest in the counties.
In this era, whether it is renting or owning land, ordinary people can only settle down completely by farming. And in order to cherish the current opportunity to farm, those people who suffer from hunger, cold, and displacement will not hesitate to
He shed blood and even lost his life to support the Huaidong Army Division.
Only a small number of people in the Huaidong Military Division have access to the core data and can understand the profound significance of the construction of the sea dike and the series of actions surrounding the sea dike to Huaidong.
Today, more than 10,000 troops remain along the causeway, continuing to carry out follow-up work such as repairing the causeway and planting sea forests on the embankment. These more than 10,000 troops are distributed along the twelve posthouses and many defensive villages that defend the sea dike, which also constitutes the defense of the sea dike.
The basic defense force of the maritime system.
There are also about 40,000 troops transferred into the dike to carry out encirclement and embankment construction, water conservancy construction, reclamation and planting, etc. They are also Huaidong's reserve force.
In addition, from the beginning of the year to this time, the Changshan Camp, Chongcheng Infantry Camp, Jinghai Second and Third Water Camps and the Zhejiang East Marching Camp have undergone large-scale expansion. In addition to the new formations, Fengli Camp has also been expanded to
The twenty battalions doubled their strength and consumed about 50,000 supplies of troops.
Today, the Huaidong Army has 18,000 soldiers from the Changshan Camp, 9,000 soldiers from the Chongcheng Infantry Camp, 12,000 soldiers from the Fengli Camp, and 12,000 soldiers from the East Zhejiang Camp. Jinghai ranks first and second.
The Third Shuiying Camp has 15,000 soldiers, the Haidong Camp has 5,000 soldiers, and the Heishuiyang Ship Company and Jiyun Society have 3,000 soldiers, with a direct combat strength of more than 70,000 people.
However, the expansion scale was too large in a short period of time, the soldiers and armor were not replenished enough, and the overall combat effectiveness declined.
More importantly, including the Haidong camp, about three-quarters of the Huaidong Army's troops are deployed on the southern front. Including the Chongzhou and Siyang defense lines, the total direct combat power Huaidong can mobilize in the north is
Less than 20,000 people.
Compared with the direct combat strength, the reserve strength with the engineering and supply camps as the core has dropped to 50,000, which is already insufficient.
Qin Chengzu and Sun Zhuang went to Huaisi this time. In addition to persuading Liu Miaozhen, Malantou and others to deploy the main force of the Red Coat Army on the northern front to guard against the Donghu cavalry that may infiltrate from the Hehuai area at any time, they also had to persuade Liu Miaozhen, Malantou and others.
It was agreed that Huaidong would recruit young men from Huaisi refugees and set up a labor camp with a scale of 20,000 to 30,000 people in Siyang.
This is also an important measure to prevent the Red Coat Army from defecting, strengthen Huaidong's control over Huaisi, and increase Huaidong's soldier reserves.