At the beginning of Zhang Wu's eleventh year, the Han Dynasty was still running according to its expected trajectory.
Chen Mu sat firmly in the cabinet and was in charge of the world's government affairs.
The latest news is that the Yangzhou Jiangnan River Section project was finally completed at the beginning of this year, completing the canal connection between the Yangtze River and the Qiantang River.
In this way, after six years of excavation, most of the entire Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal has been opened, and basic navigation can be achieved in the south.
Now only the most difficult section of the Grand Canal, Yongji, Hebei Province, has not yet been completed.
The reason why most of the canal dredging work was completed in six years is because, except for the Yongji Canal and Jiangnan River, the rest of the river sections were dredged from the original river sections, and the amount of work was not large.
For example, Shanyangdu is the Hangou River, and Tongji Canal connects the Honggou, Langdang Canal, Suishui, Sishui, Dayezawa, Shushui, Bianshui and other more than a dozen rivers in Xuzhou, Henan. You can go to Luoyang to the northwest and Luoyang to the north.
Yongji Canal leads to Qingzhou in the northeast.
Nanyang Canal connects Feishui, Hanshui, Yingshui, Rushui, Langdang Canal, Bianshui, etc. There is also Yunmeng Canal, which uses the Chan River as a canal to connect the upper reaches of the Huaihe River and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
Guangzhou Canal naturally utilizes Ling Canal.
It can be said that except for the Yongji Canal, which was difficult to dig diagonally over half of Hebei, the rest of the rivers were basically just dredging and expansion and reinforcement, and the amount of work was much smaller than re-excavating a river.
In fact, when Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty later dug the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, it did not take long. It only took six years, and the entire navigation work was completed in one go.
But this was a case of eager for quick success and instant benefit. Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty recruited more than five million civilians. It was a real waste of people and money, and the amount of the project was larger than building the Great Wall.
Qin Shihuang's construction of the Great Wall and Li Palace caused a lot of turmoil, not to mention the construction of a tens of thousands of miles of Grand Canal in such a short period of time?
Therefore, the demise of the Sui Dynasty was a matter of course.
Chen Mu learned the lesson from Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty and did not dare to rush for quick success. Even when the national treasury was sufficient, he would proceed step by step. He would start with easy things and then difficult ones, focusing on excavating Henan and Jiangnan areas, and then Hebei.
According to the preliminary estimate of the cabinet, basic navigation will be completed within ten years and comprehensive navigation will be completed within fifteen years.
It is expected to take nine years longer than Emperor Yang of Sui Dynasty.
However, everyone built rivers and dug canals, and there was still a big difference between the Han Dynasty and the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
The project volume of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in the Han Dynasty was much larger than that of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. For example, the Nanyang River section in Jingzhou was an extra work.
The number of civilian laborers recruited also exceeded four to five million.
The impact spread throughout the Han Dynasty, but it would not shake the country.
Because this river construction project is essentially a work-for-relief project.
Civilian labor is a recruitment system rather than a compulsory recruitment system.
However, when Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty built a river, it was a forced recruitment project. During the construction project, 250,000 people actually died. Not only was it a waste of people and money, it basically destroyed all the foundations laid by his father Yang Jian.
The gap here is obviously the gap between an economics professor and an ordinary person who doesn't even know basic financial management, or even save money.
It's just that money for big men doesn't fall from the sky. Even if you can mine all over the world in the undeveloped era, you still have to pay time and cost.
Therefore, from another perspective, choosing to work for relief also requires a country to have strong strength and foundation.
If we just talk about mining, according to preliminary estimates, the direct cost of the canal will exceed tens of billions of Han copper treasures.
If converted into silver dollars, it would exceed tens of millions of silver dollars.
Because after the food crisis was initially resolved, prices in various parts of the Han Dynasty have begun to drop significantly.
During the heyday of the Han Dynasty,
The lowest price for one stone of grain was during the reign of Emperor Jing of the Western Han Dynasty, when "grain and stone were five coins", that is, 120 kilograms of rice only cost five coins and five baht.
This is why the Wen-Jing rule is said to be the best era of the Han Dynasty.
After the Eastern Han Dynasty, the peak period was the rule of Ming Zhang. According to the unearthed "Dunhuang Han Bamboo Slips": "There are two stones and nine buckets of wheat, and two hundred and thirty straight springs."
It can be seen that during the heyday of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the price of food per stone was relatively low, about sixty or seventy yuan per stone. Moreover, this is also the "Dunhuang Han Bamboo Slips", which records the prices in the Yumenguan area of Xiliang. If it were in the mainland, it would be even lower.
But now that cheap grain has entered the Dahan market and crops with astonishing yields such as sweet potatoes, corn, and potatoes have appeared, grain prices have naturally plummeted, plummeting all the way.
Recently, the price of grain in Luoyang has fallen below the level of sixteen Han Dynasty copper treasures per stone, and is about to plunge all the way to single digits, with a trend close to the reign of Wen and Jing.
Therefore, the wages of workers digging canals are actually not high. When food prices are low, each worker's monthly salary is between 800 and 1,000 Han Dynasty copper treasures, which is less than one silver dollar.
But even so, this income is already very generous.
Because if the copper treasures of the Han Dynasty are equal to the five baht coins, according to the records in "Juyan Han Slips" and "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic", the annual income of a Han commoner at that time was only between 3,000-5,000 yuan.
At that time, the price of grain fluctuated between 100 and 200 qian. After Emperor Huan, the price of grain began to soar, going above 220 qian. At the end of the Han Dynasty, it was generally above 500 qian.
In other words, the current labor wages in the Han Dynasty are much higher than those in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the price of food is far lower than in the heyday of the Han Dynasty.
Then the financial resources and national strength that the country has to pay are unimaginable, and it requires strong support from the national treasury.
A simple arithmetic problem.
Although the number of civilian laborers recruited amounted to four to five million, it does not mean that these four to five million people were digging canals every day.
It's just a general number. The number of workers every month is not fixed in each place.
But the estimated number of people per year is between one million and two million.
Taking the middle value of 1.5 million people, the average worker salary is between 800 and 900 Han copper treasures.
So in one year, the country's financial salary expenditure will reach 1.5 billion Han copper treasures, and this situation will last three to five years.
Because most of the canal work will be completed within three to five years, the number of remaining employees will decrease, and the next five years will be calculated as one billion per year.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Over the past ten years, salary expenditures alone have reached more than 10 billion. Not counting other expenses, the total expenditure is probably more than 20 billion.
And this is only the direct expenditure for building the canal, there are a lot of other expenditures.
For example, most of the young people along the canal were involved in building the canal, and the counties and counties along the route had insufficient food production.
The country has to purchase food from other places to stabilize local food prices.
In addition, the number of civil servants has soared. The policy of high salary and integrity has been adopted, and the annual salary expenditure has been several times higher than before. Most of the national fiscal revenue is used to pay civil servants and the cost of building the canal.
As mentioned before, according to records, during the period of Emperor He of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the annual tax revenue of the Han Dynasty in normal years was about 20 billion yuan. After excluding all expenditures for the year, 8.3 billion yuan was left.
But now the annual fiscal expenditure exceeds 20 billion, or even close to 30 billion, and the financial pressure is very high.
The hundred-year Qiang Rebellion in the Eastern Han Dynasty only cost more than 20 billion and a half baht, but it was a Qiang Rebellion that almost wiped out the entire family fortune of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
From this point of view, we can know that without the support of various economic means, even if we transport gold, silver, and copper from Japan and overseas, we may not be able to make up for the shortfall.
So Chen Mu took many measures.
For example, alloys can be used to reduce the consumption of copper and silver, while increasing the output of Dahan copper treasures and Dahan silver coins.
Salaries to senior civil servants are not paid directly with money, but mostly with more precious items of equivalent value, such as silk, spices, pearls, agate, etc.
Increase efforts to mine domestic and overseas minerals, create a large number of state-owned enterprises, let the state specialize in some necessities, and withdraw funds from the private sector.
The last and most important point is to reduce agricultural taxes, increase commercial taxes, and encourage the development of folk handicrafts and commerce.
In this way, only under a series of economic measures and national policies can we enter a virtuous economic cycle.
certainly.
So far, the first three of these measures are really useful, and the last one is not something that can be done so quickly.
It took so many years for our country to achieve good results through reform and opening up in later generations. Now, for the Han Dynasty, it is nothing but nothing. Starting from scratch is naturally a long process.
But as there is a saying in the future, the poorest people can only beg for food, and the undead will always come forward. It is already at the lowest ebb, and no matter how you develop, you should move up.
Therefore, Chen Mu believes that as long as he maintains the consistency of his policies and develops according to the path he laid out for at least a hundred years, it should not be a problem for the Han Dynasty to develop to the extent of global domination after the British Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.
In March of the eleventh year of Zhangwu, Situ Zhaowen died of illness at the age of seventy-five. Since the purification of penicillin had been completed and it was officially put into the market, he lived three years longer than in history.
After the imperial court held a grand funeral for this veteran who had devoted his whole life to the Han Dynasty, Wang Yi, the great minister who had made outstanding political achievements in recent years, was replaced as Situ, and Zhong Yao was appointed as great minister.
Originally, Liu Bei wanted to replace Xun Yu, but Chen Mu formulated a system whereby cabinet members could serve as Jiuqing, but not as three ministers, because the status of the three ministers was second only to the prime minister.
If the cabinet members themselves have the power to handle the world's government affairs, plus the power of the three ministers, then the power will be too great.
Therefore, the cabinet and the three ministers cannot concurrently serve each other, and the prime minister cannot concurrently serve as the three ministers and nine ministers.
In addition, military power must also be decentralized.
Six military regions were established, and the power to command the army was in the hands of the three generals and the emperor. Only the general Hu Fu and the emperor Hu Fu could mobilize the army.
The generals rotate their posts every three years and change defense areas. The three who have a bye stay in Luoyang waiting to be garrisoned.
By May, Chen Mu personally went to Hebei to inspect the work.
The excavation of the Yongji Canal was indeed relatively difficult. It took Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty six years to dig the Yongji Canal. Moreover, the amount of work required for the Yongji Canal in the Han Dynasty was much larger than that of the Yongji Canal in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and it was required to be able to carry steam.
Ships are naturally not that simple.
So the whole industry is in full swing right now, and it is the busy farming season in May and June. Even so, there are still a large number of young and strong laborers working on the front line of canal opening, contributing to Dahan's shipping industry.
Liu Bei then visited Guangzhou on his southern tour. Since the construction of the Nanyang Canal was completed, he could take a steamship directly from Luoyang all the way south, then follow the Han River to the Yangtze River, then from the Yangtze River to the Xiang River, and finally reach the Pearl River from the Ling Canal of the Xiang River.
Unlike Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty who wasted money and people on his southern tour, the ship he took was a steam-powered ship and did not need to be towed by boatmen along the way. Therefore, wherever he went, he had to deal with local government affairs and severely punish some local evil forces.
Although due to system problems, it is now very difficult to disregard human life.
But as the saying goes, there are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom. It is impossible to eliminate all powerful forces in a short period of time.
Problems left over from history still exist, so these things must be dealt with through various means. The emperor's inspection is naturally one of the methods.
Everywhere Liu Bei went, he sent people to open reporting mailboxes. At the same time, he secretly investigated and visited the people several months in advance to find corrupt officials.
As a result, wherever he went, he eliminated countless corrupt officials and oppressed the people, and he was instantly supported by all the people.
And in the Western Regions.
At this time, Guan Yu had already left Yumen Pass and arrived outside Haitou City.
Zhang Fei in the front went north along the Congling River and arrived at Yuli Kingdom.
In June, they divided their troops into two groups and formally launched a general offensive against the invading Kushan Empire army and the Xiutu tribes in the north.
Guan Yu sent general Guan Hai and led 20,000 people across Lishan Mountain and headed straight for Yiwu.
This Lishan Mountain was the Kuruktag Mountains in Xinjiang in later generations, and to the north was the Turpan Basin. During the Han Dynasty, this was the territory of the Five Kingdoms of Cheshi.
The Five Kingdoms of Cheshi often vacillated between the Xiongnu and the Han. For example, in the second year of Yongyuan (AD 90) of Emperor He, Dou Xian defeated the Northern Huns, and the kings in front and rear of Cheshi each sent their sons to serve.
In the first year of Emperor Yongning of the Han Dynasty (AD 120), the Northern Huns attacked again, and the Western Regions re-attached themselves to the Northern Huns. The Cheshi Kingdom killed Suoban, the long history officer established by the Han Dynasty in the Cheshi Kingdom, and led the Northern Huns to the front.
Come and attack the Han Dynasty.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! In the third year of Yanguang (AD 124), the Han Dynasty sent Ban Yong, the chief of the Western Regions, to drive away the Northern Huns in the front of the Cheshi Kingdom.
Returned to the Han Dynasty again.
The countries in the Western Regions themselves are just outsiders. They will help whoever is powerful. There is nothing wrong with that.
This time the Kushan Empire came with great force, and combined with the alliance with the Northern Xiongnu and the western Xianbei who were driven out of Monan by the Han, most of the Western Region fell, and the Cheshi Kingdom was naturally no exception.
Yiwu City is not the sphere of influence of the Cheshi Kingdom, but the sphere of influence of the Han Dynasty. In the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty built Yihe Duwei City here to defend against the Huns from the north who invaded the western region.
There are still cattails in the north of the Tianshan Mountains, branching off into two small countries.
However, as time passed and the influence of the Han Dynasty weakened, these places were occupied by the Xianbei people who came from Zhuoxie Mountain in the east.
The main forces of the Huns and Xianbei are currently stationed in the area of Jiaohe City and Gaochang City, located in the Turpan City of Xinjiang in later generations, forming a flanking situation with the Kushan Empire to the west and the Yuli Kingdom.
Guan Yu's army currently has a relatively large staff system, which is full of talents. For example, many counselors who surrendered to the princes are among them and serve as mid-level staff advisors.
The opinion given by the staff is that Yiwu should be defeated first to block the Xianbei reinforcements, and then a counter-siege offensive should be carried out to defeat Xiutu first.
They believed that the Yueshi came from afar and had mostly infantry and insufficient mobility. Therefore, they should first get rid of the more mobile Huns and Xianbei, at least not allowing them to join the war as soon as possible.
Otherwise, if they get entangled with the Da Yuezhi and the Huns and Xianbei cavalry raid, they will be passive.
This suggestion was approved by Guan Yu, so he chose to send troops.
In July, Guan Hai defeated Yiwu and killed thousands of Xianbei people. In the same month, Guan Yu's main force went north to Gaochang and launched a general attack on the Huns and Xianbei people.
In addition, Zhang Fei sent Zhang He to stay in Weili to block Da Yuezhi's reinforcements. He went north into the Yanqi Kingdom, detoured through Weixu City, and headed north to the Dongqiemi Kingdom, which was later known as Urumqi, and prepared to attack Cheshi's rear.
country, cut off the retreat of all tribes.
Suddenly, the Han's offensive against the Kushan Empire and the Xiongnu-Xianbei coalition officially began.