As we enter September in Xuzhou, the autumn mood is getting stronger.
After more than half a year of construction, based on Jiming Village, Chenzhong County has begun to take shape.
Chenzhong County is located on the south bank of Chenshui River and is divided into an inner city and an outer city.
The inner city is roughly the same as Jiming Village, and the inner city wall is also built on the basis of the stone village wall and covered with large and small city bricks.
The inner city is very small. After planning, some of the buildings inside were repaired and some rebuilt.
In addition to the state offices, departments, and general residences, there are mainly living areas such as the state hospital, the engineering school, the military attache school, and the student dormitories.
In the outer city, in addition to building a group of verandahs next to the inner city wall as barracks for the defenders, new streets and alleys and sewage ditches were also planned and paved. Generally speaking, the inner city wall was the core, forming two large, semi-enclosed buildings.
The ring road is then connected through the straight road connecting the three gates of the inner city and the straight road along the river in the north of the city, forming the basic pattern of the outer city, with civilian residences, workshops, markets, etc. built between the streets and alleys.
The outer city no longer builds walls, but is directly connected to the surrounding fields, mountains and rivers.
The outer city wall needs to be built, with a total length of nearly ten miles. Even if it is rammed earth and not covered with city bricks, it will be a waste of money and the project is huge.
In Han Qian's view, if the enemy cannot be defended outside the country and the core area is penetrated by the enemy, he will have to rely on a city wall as the final defense. Even if he can barely resist the attack of a powerful enemy, it will actually be useless.
Just a death struggle.
Besides, not to mention the more powerful offensive weapons of later generations, only after the large-scale promotion of cyclone cannons, the defensive role of the city wall has been greatly weakened.
Instead of wasting money on building a ten-mile long wall, it would be better to use the money to cultivate 30,000 to 40,000 acres of sloping terraces.
The terraces built along the hilly slopes provide ventilation and light transmission, which is conducive to crop growth.
And because precipitation will bring a large amount of minerals and humus from the mountain ridges and tops to make up for the loss of soil fertility, the cultivation conditions are even better with the step-type terraces built along the contour lines.
The only problem is that it is built along the contour line in circles, and anti-seepage ponds that can store rainwater must be built every two to three floors. The cost of reclamation is extremely high, so it is necessary to build embankments and open channels in the river valley area.
Several times the amount of cultivated land.
Some states and counties in the southwest have large areas of terraced fields, which are actually the result of the hard work and savings of countless generations of working people for hundreds of thousands of years.
However, it would not work if Chenzhong did not open terraced fields.
They forcibly occupied the river fields in the upper reaches of Chenshui River and established Chenzhong County. There were 1,300 aboriginal households and more than 8,000 people.
Excluding the more than 30,000 acres of farmland formerly under the direct jurisdiction of the Xi clan and used by Han Qian to resettle the Xi clan and build the county seat, the aborigines have only 70,000 acres of cultivated land. The per capita cultivated land is less than nine acres, and the farming methods are backward.
, apart from self-use of grain, there was only a small amount of surplus to pay land tax.
Through the management of the Chenshui River, it is planned to cultivate a total of 40,000 to 50,000 acres of new farmland before next spring, but this will only be enough to be used as ration fields for the more than 1,000 households of Chishan Army soldiers and civilians who have moved westward.
Apart from these, there is extremely limited room for reclamation in valleys and flat dam areas.
On the one hand, Chenzhong County's subsequent population reproduction cannot stop, and the pace of attracting population inflow cannot be stopped, so it can only focus on the development of hilly terraces.
Not to mention other things, the north bank of Chenshui stretches for hundreds of miles from east to west, and the hilly belt overlaps for more than thirty miles from north to south. The height is limited to less than a hundred feet, and the area faces south and has a suitable slope.
According to preliminary surveys, the terrace reclamation potential is as high as nearly 600,000 acres.
Of course, Chenzhong’s desire to cultivate 600,000 acres of terraced fields at once is undoubtedly a foolish dream, but not only Chenzhong, Qianyang, Zhijiang, Linjiang, Zhongfang, Quyang and other counties have also regarded terraced field reclamation as a long-term project.
To advance, seven counties and fifty-nine townships have joined forces to organize villagers to cultivate an additional 20,000 acres of terraced fields every year. Accumulated in ten years, it will be a very impressive figure.
In fact, after the surrounding areas increased their vigilance against Xuzhou and strengthened the control of the pass, and after the Chishan Army moved westward, the flow of external people into Xuzhou was temporarily interrupted. Although business travelers were not allowed to pass through the pass, the business travelers entering and leaving Xuzhou were not allowed to pass.
After all, they are not here to settle, so they cannot directly increase the net population of Xuzhou.
However, even if the external population inflow is interrupted, the growth of the qualified labor force in Syria has not stopped due to endogenous factors.
It takes time for newborns to grow into a suitable workforce. However, with the improvement of material conditions, as well as the improvement of medical and patient management and sanitary conditions in rural communities, the disease rate of the adult workforce has decreased, and the mortality rate of teenagers and children has decreased, which directly reflects the growth of adulthood.
The size of the labor force continues to expand.
In the past, the population of Syria Prefecture remained largely stable for hundreds of years without a large-scale influx of external population, mainly relying on high fertility rates to resist high mortality rates.
In Xuzhou, it is very normal for a woman to give birth to six or seven children in her lifetime, but the disease rate in children and adolescents is extremely high. About half of them will not die in infancy, and it will be quite difficult for them to survive into adulthood.
This also means that as long as Han Qian can improve the medical treatment and sanitation conditions in Xuzhou, improve the living conditions of the poor people at the bottom, even if it is slightly improved, reduce the death rate of adults and the death rate of juveniles, he will directly
As a result, the number of qualified adult labor force is increasing year by year, without having to wait for newborns to grow up.
The state government's control over local areas directly penetrated into rural communities, and population statistics was also an important task attached to the registration of natives and guests.
Excluding Han Daoxun's reign, counting only since Han Qian's return to Xuzhou early last year, the number of male and female laborers over the age of 16 and under 50 in Xuzhou has increased by a net of 2,000 people by the end of this summer.
If children under the age of sixteen are included, the net population increase in Xuzhou is more than 4,000.
This is a considerable figure that can only be achieved in a prosperous era.
Of course, if frequent armed conflicts break out between Xuzhou and surrounding forces, and the number of casualties exceeds a thousand each year, the increase in the number of adult males will stop.
This is also an embarrassing part of the small place and sparse population.
And everyone judged that even if Sizhou calmed down the civil unrest, its vitality would definitely be severely damaged. This is the reason.
Xuzhou, with a population of over 210,000, cannot withstand too many casualties. The civil unrest in Sizhou, together with the casualties of state soldiers and civilians in the uprising, only exceeds 5,000 or 6,000. Given the difficult material conditions of Sizhou,
, at least it will take one or two generations before the population can return to the old outlook.
The outbreak of civil unrest has been brewing so far, and it has swept into most areas of Jinhe and Renshan, as well as a small part of Yezhou in the south. More than 20,000 people gathered in Panlong Ridge to riot. Han Qian really wanted to ignore it. In the end,
The death toll could be even five to six thousand.
As for the Chenzhou Xi Clan, despite its current prosperity, the population under its direct control has suffered extremely heavy losses in various wars.
However, in addition to relying on the annual income of the state government and the military rewards from the court, after regaining Jinling City, Emperor Yanyou committed tens of thousands of crimes.
The prisoners, family members and relatives were exiled to Chenzhou, which slightly made up for the lack of labor within the Xi clan, allowing Xiying to still maintain a camp establishment of 4,000 soldiers in Chenzhou, half of which were tribal soldiers of the Xi clan.
After the civil unrest broke out in Sizhou, although Xiying did not directly send troops into Sizhou via the Chenshui River Valley to assist in the suppression, the number of elite soldiers gathered in Chenyang County exceeded 3,000, and there were nearly a hundred large and small warships. It seems that
As soon as the imperial decree arrives, hundreds of people will rush to Sizhou to help suppress it.
Under the current tense situation, Han Qian did not increase the number of troops stationed in Chenzhong on a large scale. That night, he dictated to Xi Rong to record the verdict:
"Forcibly violating the new law on nationality and obstructing marriage, I will be sentenced to six months of hard labor in Zhijiang County!"
The reform of land ownership, the unification of native and guest registration, and the abolition of the slave trade and the slave trade not only increased the number of lawsuits in counties and townships, but also produced a large number of cases that had no precedent.
The so-called merger of registrations is not simply a matter of merging local registrations and customer registrations together.
Nothing in the world is so cheap.
The most critical one is to break through the old barriers so that the two opposing groups can freely intermarry.
However, the power of tradition is still extremely tenacious. Recently, there have been several cases in Zhijiang County where the parents agreed but the clan intervened to obstruct the marriage, and even maimed and injured people.
Han Qian has always strongly suppressed this kind of cases. However, the county and judicial officials have not yet mastered the sentencing standards for these new cases, so they can only upload the files to Han Qian's desk, and Han Qian will make the final instructions.
Seeing that this was the last file on her desk today, Xi Rong couldn't help but stretch her waist, stretch her muscles and muscles, and said softly: "I'm exhausted."
"How about I squeeze your shoulders for you?" Han Qian asked in a flattering manner, his hands already stretched out to Xi Ying's slightly stiff shoulders. He stood behind Xi Ying, his eyes glancing at the surging snow-white color on the tube top.
.
At this time, Feng Yi rushed in. Han Qian retracted his hand in vain and asked: "What happened, you came here in a panic?"
"Yang Hu and Cao Xiushi have returned to Chenyang with the decree. At the request of Sizhou and Chenzhou, Jinling sent troops to Sizhou to suppress the civil unrest. Xiying just sent people into the city and informed that Chenzhou would send troops tomorrow.
Xi Shepeng led a thousand soldiers to go to Hujian Pass along the post road on the north bank of Chenshui River, and asked Xuzhou for convenience along the way!" Feng Yi said, "My brother has not received any news yet. Tan Yuliang and Dong Tai are occupying Panlongling.
Yezhou and Sizhou jointly suppressed it, but it was difficult to resist. Now that Chenzhou is sending Shepeng and a thousand elites over, I am afraid that the situation will be reversed within three to five days!"
Han Qian also frowned suddenly.
Currently, Sizhou and Yezhou have assembled more than 5,000 soldiers and horses outside Panlong Ridge to control the entry and exit channels of the rebel troops, but they are not yet able to penetrate the depths of Panlong Ridge.
Although Xi Shepeng only led a thousand soldiers into Sizhou, these thousand soldiers were all veterans who had been in the army for many years and had experienced many bloody battles. Their armor and equipment were also very complete, and their combat effectiveness was very strong.
They are not much weaker than Xuzhou soldiers, far from Sizhou soldiers, Yezhou soldiers, and even less powerful than the rebel army.
Although Xi Shepeng was beaten like a dog by Xuzhou in his early years, in addition to his extraordinary bravery, he has grown greatly in the wars of reducing vassal status and regaining Jinling in recent years.
Even if the Marquis of Changxiang agrees to conspire with Xuzhou, the two places are far apart, and the response from Yuzhou will never be so fast. However, Xishepeng will lead his elite troops into Sizhou tomorrow to help in the suppression. How much can Tan Yuliang and the others do?