The Han army advanced so fast that spies from various countries who wanted to see the Han army defeated were completely confused.
It’s not that they didn’t know that Li Jie could fight in winter, but they didn’t expect that large numbers of people in the Handong area of Chu State would “drop by the wind”. Li Jie went out personally and never encountered a single tough battle. There was no decent battle. The Crocodile Man only dispatched the squadron leader.
Moreover, the squadron was not at full strength, but a downsized squadron, and the auxiliary troops became the largest contributor to this battle.
After the Jiaoying area was gradually controlled by the Han army, the spies from various countries who were still in Shangbo finally couldn't sit still this time and went south one after another, waiting for the arrival of the Han army in Qiuyi.
Li Jie just made a false shot, and the troops took a short rest north of Yongxi. Ishaha led an expanded brigade, plus two brave men from the brigade, and joined forces with Shen Lu with the Sanguan troops heading south.
This place is quite special. When the Chu State Alliance joined forces, it was here that they imitated Lutai and swore to heaven that they would never betray their alliance.
Even if the entire eastbound passage from Jiao Ying is completely cut off at this time, even if the Chu State makes one final desperate attempt, it will face many difficulties after crossing the Han River.
At that time, the ancestors of the Chu State had built a large number of transportation arteries in hilly areas, and with the addition of important water and land transportation nodes, the Chu State was able to ensure logistics and easily transport troops to the front line. Then they fought several battles with the concubines of Hanyang, and finally A battle in Pu Sao will determine the outcome.
If you want to copy the routines of your ancestors now, there is basically no hope.
Li Jie and Shang Wuji moved to the south and north, and their plan was to cut off the connection between Handong and the homeland of Chu, at least in terms of transportation, and directly prohibit communication.
Not only are all the boats on the Han River managed by "Canglangjun", starting from the banks of the Yangtze River, Zhugong on the south bank of the Yangshui River, the state capitals in Yunmeng Zenan, Yongxi between the Han River and the Xishui River, plus Shenlu and green forests are separated by the Tang Dynasty and the two countries. This line from south to north can be regarded as killing all Chu's thoughts in the east of Han Dynasty.
If you want to carry out harassment behind enemy lines, it's not impossible, so you need to provide assistance; if you want to engage in guerrilla warfare in occupied areas, it's not impossible, and you need to provide assistance; if you want to keep the flames of war burning, and make the Han army tired of putting out the fire, it's not impossible, and you need to provide assistance.
As long as the Chu State bites the bullet, works together, and uses the rich heritage of the Chu State clan and old aristocratic families to squeeze out the annual fiscal revenue of several Chu State imperial courts, there will be no problem.
But this is just the best imagination. The actual situation is that it is impossible for the local aristocratic families of Chu State to pay the central government of Chu State, let alone a large sum of money.
This has something to do with the fact that Chu State has been imitating the Zhou Dynasty system. The counties and cities in the entire country are actually fiefs, and they were conquered one by one. Over time, the territory naturally became larger and larger.
But to say how powerful the central army is, it is not necessarily the case. On the contrary, the local troops cannot be defeated, and eventually they form the Dou Shi and other weird things.
During the period of rapid development, war dividends can drive the Chu people to move forward bravely, but along with unprecedented setbacks, there will inevitably be a situation where everyone is swept away.
Take Li Jie's departure from Zhu Palace and his own expedition to Handong as an example. Normally, even if he doesn't welcome Chu King Xiong Sheng back and steal him back, he will at least create some trouble for Li Jie, destabilizing his rear and causing an imbalance in the morale of the frontline troops.
But none of this happened, because the largest force in Yingdu now is the Dou clan, and according to the comparison of strength, the Chu state is generally weak, but the proportion of power of the Dou clan has increased significantly.
Today's Chu State Ling Yin is owned by the Dou family.
Sima Xiangba was an in-law of the Dou family, and the Dou family in Quanyi sent 20,000 slaves and guests to Huaizhong City in the form of a caravan.
In the eyes of the old families in the core ruling area of the Chu State, the Dou family was betraying the country, and they were also traitors to the country as a powerful official.
In this situation, the situation can only be stabilized unless Douhuang uses part of his power to divide it up. In this way, even if the various local noble families in Chu State are not very willing, they are still willing to provide money and people to cause trouble.
But Emperor Yin Douhuang, the leader of the Chu State, had some things that he couldn't tell the old people. He could not tell the old people. Based on his intuition, Douhuang thought that the evil dog Li Jie was not a simple man, and he might be plotting against them, so
Let's forget it now, let's develop with peace of mind and don't wander around.
Even if it turns out that Dou Huang is right in the end, the reason is still unclear, so Dou Huang simply won't talk about it. Naturally, the power that was finally concentrated cannot be artificially dispersed.
Douhuang's idea is relatively simple. Since Li Jie, the Han Dynasty, also knows that he cannot become fat by eating in one go, he will defeat all the Chu Kingdom. With the size of Han Ziguo, he cannot digest it quickly.
As long as the Han army dared to cross the Han River, the old people of the Chu State would dare to fight and retreat at the same time. They really couldn't imitate the Zuo Army and fled to Ba State in one go. If they couldn't flee to Shu State, or if they couldn't flee south to Dongting.
You can always run away. As long as someone has money and equipment, you won't be afraid of regaining a foothold in the wilderness.
Because there are precedents. For example, the earliest fiefdom of "Danyang Gong" Douzun was actually on the western border of Chu State, where he had to fight against the Baipu people all year round.
Another example is that the remnants of the Luo Kingdom have now been moved to the south of the Yangtze River. The rebuilt Luo Kingdom has been fighting with the Yangyue tribes for decades, and hundreds of thousands of acres of rice fields have been opened up.
As long as you can stand firm, you can always survive.
However, this is the most extreme situation, and Dou Huang naturally does not want to go to this step.
From the perspective of Emperor Yin Douhuang, the commander of the Chu State, he was not unaware that Li Jie digested and pacified Handong a day earlier, which meant that for the Chu State, it would be a day earlier to face many risks.
The fighting power of the Han army was so strong that Dou Huang had no hope of victory.
The only thing he can hope for is that the Han army will gradually eliminate its elite troops in the long-term siege and attrition war. In this case, there is still hope of counterattack.
That day may be very far away, and Dou Huang has even made up his mind that he will never see that day. His greatest determination is to consume the Hanzi Kingdom to death in two or even three generations.
Prior to this, what Douhuang was planning to do was to rebuild the capitals of Chu State, follow the example of Qin State and Qi State, and set up multiple cities. However, the actual core of the rule must retreat and establish an effective defense line in the west of Han Dynasty.
Even if the Han army cannot be defended, it is still quite good to give the core ruling area reaction time to evacuate.
Therefore, even though it was known that the Han army set out from Zhu Palace to defeat Yongxi first and then advance to Shangbo, the Chu State, especially the Central Committee of the Chu State, did not take any action.
Even when someone in Yingdu criticized Ling Yin Dou Huang, Dou Huang turned a deaf ear and pretended not to hear the cynicism.
As for the court meeting, while he wanted to win over the Queen Mother Zhao and seek political support from Li Jie and the King of Chu, he did offer some benefits to the clans that obeyed him.
For example, like the Qu family in Western Chu, Emperor Dou allowed them to organize horse teams to go to Bashu to purchase raw silk, and at the same time resell the raw silk from Bashu to the Huaihe River Basin.
At the same time, on the bank of Yangshui, although both Zhugong and Ying could see each other, a market for mutual trade was still opened at the natural junction of the two places.
There is a wooden bridge on Yangshui River, one in the south and one in the north, with a trading market on each side.
Here, various specialties from the Hanzi Kingdom will be concentrated in Henan and then sold to Hebei.
The bridge is not long, only a dozen feet in length, but from the south of the bridge to the north of the bridge, one transaction completes an import and export.
Although the warehouses on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are fueled by the government, there are also quite a lot of temporary warehouses built privately by the private sector.
Even some controlled items, such as bronzes, grain, and jade, were traded by both parties with a blind eye.
In order to stabilize the situation in Yingdu and prevent riots from happening, Ling Yin Douhuang tried his best to promote all the Dou family members and use his most trusted people in key positions of power;
To raise supplies, we must not only ensure heating for the winter, but also ensure food supply.
To complete this difficult task, Emperor Dou even gave the Baipu people a break. According to the administrative order, the Baipu people were allowed to enter the territory of Chu State and go to the allowed markets for transactions.
This is basically the same as the previous policy of the Chu State in facing the Baipu tribes, which was completely overthrown.
In the past, the national policy of the Chu State was to drive the barbarians to death. Once the barbarians were driven to death, the territory would naturally be theirs.
In the process of persecution, the Chu State's subordinates were defeated, and the territory was moved near these barbarians, and they were asked to fight to death with the barbarians.
In this two-pronged approach, in the absence of transactions, the Baipu tribes with backward weapons and equipment and unbalanced nutritional intake could only continue to develop into the mountains and southwest regions.
But now Ling Yin Douhuang has passed a decree that allows Baipu people to go to Guanshi in Chu State to trade. In other words, for the first time, Chu State has to play with the dog barbarians with a gentle policy instead of being tough to the end.
You must know that even when the old monster is at its most domineering and the Chu State collapses, Wu still thinks that the Wu State is a barbarian, but this barbarian is better at fighting.
There is no doubt that what Dou Huang did this time directly caused shock to the entire Chu Kingdom's core ruling area, but the shock returned to shock, and Dou Huang's finances actually increased during the winter.
The reason is that the various materials accumulated by the Baipu tribes over the years can be released through the Chu State. Even if the people of the Chu State do not use these materials, they can transfer them to Zhu Palace and exchange them for more needed winter materials from the Hanzi State.
.
Among them, the largest stocks among the Baipu tribes include various furs, antlers, rhinoceros horns, ivory, gems, feathers, minerals, wood, etc.
These are basically of no use to the current Chu State, but for the Hanzi State, they are in great demand.
The military uniforms of the Han army were institutionalized, and the distinction between officers and soldiers was mainly based on metal badges and feathers of different colors.
These things are relatively expensive and may seem useless, but they are still helpful to the unity and cohesion of the army.
During the entire trade process, the customs tax at the Chu port on both sides of the Yangshui River and in the north of Qiao Dynasty ranged from 2.00 yuan per 100 yuan to 1 yuan per 10 yuan according to different goods.
Ling Yin Douhuang set taxes on different commodities based on the volume of goods transactions at the customs clearance port. Basically, one tax per item can be achieved throughout the winter.
The tax on bulk goods is less, and the tax on luxury goods is more. At the same time, customs duties and municipal taxes are only levied once.
At the same time, both parties to the transaction will ask the customs ambassador to be the official intermediary at the customs clearance port. Then each transaction can be estimated based on the market price at the customs clearance port.
Yin Douhuang, the magistrate of the State of Chu, called the estimation of export transactions at customs clearance ports the "estimated sales method" because exports from the home country were easier to control, and merchants basically had no ability to resist, so it was easy to do a little bit on this.
I'm not too greedy either, it's probably around 2%.
Such a point is definitely not low for President Li before time travel.
But these days, it is normal to draw one out of twenty, one out of ten, and four out of ten, so for many local clans' vest caravans in Chu State, they are not very eye-catching.
At the same time, for Ling Yin Douhuang, the "estimate and sell method" relieved a lot of statistical pressure, basically focusing on treaty port transactions, and in many cases, there was no need to collect taxes after the transaction was completely completed.
At the beginning of the transaction, taxes can be collected in advance, and then tax payment certificates are issued, similar to the "jade slips" between merchants, and then the caravan is allowed to leave the customs.
Or maybe they import a large amount of white paper from Huaizhong City. Because white paper is very expensive, it is used to make tax payment vouchers. It is perfect and easy to write. As long as you make a backup, you can trace the person responsible for a certain day based on the archive.
Who is the official responsible person for a certain export transaction.
For Dou Huang, when there is tax evasion, he has no intention to find out how to escape. He only needs to arrest the person in charge and ransack the house.
The proceeds from confiscating homes will naturally make up for the tax evasion.
So, when Li Jie was busy sweeping up in Handong, Chu State's Ling Yin was not idle either. He was also busy "cleaning up", but he did it more elegantly and quickly restored the Chu State's central finance.
At the same time, Douhuang's focus on restoring finances is not exports, but imports.
Naturally, the bulk of the goods were imported from the Hanzi Kingdom. After a large number of luxury goods came in, in order to avoid irritating the Han people during customs clearance, they often let in the Hanzi Kingdom's caravans and then made a fuss about city taxes.
The tariffs will be lower, or even directly reduced.
However, the city tax was directly raised, and because the city tax was treated equally, the Hanzi Kingdom's caravan had no good solution other than protesting, unless Hanzi Li Jie could be persuaded to launch another campaign in order to reduce the Chu Kingdom's city tax.
A war against Chu.
With the Chu-Han peace treaty, this idea is just a dream in the short term, so luxury goods have entered the market, such as high-end silk, high-end pottery, lacquerware, porcelain, glassware, gold and silverware, etc. Dou Huang has no worries about collecting money.
So cool.
Even if they don't charge money and collect taxes in kind, once the central government of Chu changes hands, they can use these high-end luxury goods as salary and decentralize them. As long as they are aristocratic families, they can't refuse.
Because people are bound to die. If the ancestor of our family dies these days, and there is no decent thing to bury with him, the whole family will be humiliated.
It’s not that I don’t want to be buried, it’s that I can’t.
Douhuang eats this kind of people's hearts, because when these old people go to the market to purchase, the price may be more than 20% more than in previous years.
After all, the price of luxury goods is long-term but not marketable. The problem of food is that your family has a fiefdom and the land has output, what the hell are you afraid of?
However, imports from the Han Dynasty are still not the focus of Dou Huang's work.
Instead, the focus is on Bai Pu, Yang Yue and other barbarians.
In the past, Chu State was determined to punish these barbarians to death.
But things are different now. In order to ease the finances, Ling Yin Douhuang gave these tribes a sweet spot. While purchasing local specialties at land prices, he also worked with some neighboring tribes to follow the example of the Yangshui customs clearance port and established markets in the main activity areas of the local tribes.
However, when this market was established, Ling Yin said that this was a goodwill show by the Chu Kingdom. In order to show sincerity, everyone took a step back. From now on, anyone who comes to trade here, except the Chu Kingdom and the local native people, will be taxed.
Then every time a trading market is expanded, the local Tu people must continue to maintain this fine style and strengthen the long-term friendship between the Chu Kingdom and the Tu people.
In a word, if outsiders come in, the taxes will be damned!
When the hundreds of Pu people are put together, they are not afraid of the Ba Kingdom and the messy small states anyway. The only one that can kill them seems to be the Chu Kingdom, so let's agree.
As a result, the remaining defeated generals of the three armies of the Ling Division who wandered to the western border of Chu State were all confused. They suddenly discovered that one day when they went to buy dried meat, grain, and wood from the Baipu people, they actually had to pay a large sum of money.
money.
And you can't trade privately, you have to trade in the market.
In the market, I also met an envoy from Yingdu, who was dedicated to helping the Baipu fellow villagers to establish a complete tax collection work.
Just such a move made a large number of local military leaders tense up and feel uncomfortable.
In the middle of winter, it is not impossible to bite the bullet and snatch hundreds of Pu people, but the risk is there. It is easy to snatch things, but the coming year will be difficult.
As soon as the weather gets warmer, the Baipu people are not stupid and will definitely take revenge.
In the dilemma, some unruly military leaders immediately sent their confidants to Yingdu, saying that they wanted to congratulate the Queen Mother on the New Year...