Baili sent people to Xuanming Prefecture to inform the state official Jiang Wanjiang and Xuanming Guard General Zhou Hanxiang that he had been appointed as the magistrate of Xuanming County.
The current situation here is unclear, but we cannot rule out the possibility of a large-scale war. Please prepare for support.
Now Xuanming County is a relatively special independent county that has no direct affiliation with Xuanming Prefecture. Chen Xiaohu's five hundred soldiers are not in the Xuanming Guards, so Baili does not need to go to Xuanming Prefecture to report on his duties before taking office.
The Xuanming Guards had just been established, but their structure was quite complete. In Xiao Chen, Zhuge Xiaosheng and the others' strategic planning, the Xuanming Guards were a very important part, but the focus of their defense was not on the north, but on the south.
Because once there is a war with Da Zhou, the area from the south of Xuanming Prefecture to Yanyunguan will be tactically abandoned in the future...
But if the Xinghe tribe brazenly invades Xuanming, then Xuanmingwei may face the dilemma of being attacked from the north and the south in the future, so Xiao Chen must solve this big hidden danger first.
Of course, Xiao Chen could directly send troops to start a war with Xinghe, but for now, the Xinghe tribe is still in alliance with him.
If he went to war just because of a small friction on the border between the two sides, he would probably be in vain, and it would also affect or even destroy the good relationship he had finally established with the entire northern Xinjiang tribe.
Besides, fighting alone cannot fundamentally solve the problem. The Xianhe tribe is vast and thousands of miles deep. Once defeated, it can shrink back, but it is difficult to completely wipe it out.
Xiao Chen couldn't station too many troops in Xuanming, and if he withdrew his troops, they would surely rebound, and there would never be peace in Xuanming.
Therefore, war with Xianhe is only a means, and stabilizing the situation on the Xuanming border is the fundamental purpose. In other words, if we can avoid a war, we will not start a war.
Even if a war breaks out, it must be controlled on a small scale and the conflict must not be expanded. How to control this specific degree depends on Baili.
Li Tanhua decided to stay and help Baili, and ordered Huitong and others to go back to Niutoushan first, and left Tanma along the way to keep communication open. If there were any big changes here, Niutoushan could quickly come to help.
The first thing Baili had to do when he took office was naturally to conduct a population search. The county magistrate is an official of his parents. As a parent, don’t you know how many of your subjects are decent?
Chen Pin took out a pornography book and patted it a few times. The dust flew up, which showed that it was an old thing and had not been updated for a long time.
In fact, it was not long ago. After Wanyan Pingqiu withdrew his troops the year before last, Chen Ping thought that the imperial court would send someone to take over it soon. He spent half a month compiling it. Unexpectedly, it was useless at all and had been kept in the warehouse. Eat ashes.
"You are an old almanac." Baili flipped through it a few times and frowned, "Where is the new population in the past two years?"
"Good Lord, don't you look at what this situation is like? Who dares to give birth to a child? Will the child come to suffer hardships with us? I don't want to be a low-ranking official. The tigress in the house always wants to show off its power. , I didn’t dare to disobey, but by accident, I got that little girl Yan’er..." Chen Ping said with a bitter face.
"These names marked in red are deserters from back then. They are all bachelors. They don't even have wives. How can they have children?" Chen Ping pointed at the yellow book and introduced to Baili, "These are Craftsmen, there are blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and silversmiths, but where do we have gold, silver, copper, and iron here? Now we are all growing vegetables and herding sheep."
"There are also those who farm, but the weather here is too cold and we can only harvest one crop of grain a year, and we are plagued by those nasty hares, jumping rabbits and mice. If one acre of land can yield forty or fifty kilograms, it is considered a good harvest. No! We don’t have any farm tools, the plows are all made of wood, and we don’t have any sickles and can only use our hands.”
"When the Moji people were here, they made tents for the soldiers and sewed clothes in exchange for some food. When they left, many people lost their livelihoods. When those hateful bastards left, they took away all our iron tools. It was swept away, not even a few sewing needles were left, and the iron pot was even taken away, you can say that!"
Why am I angry when Yan'er threw that big iron pot? Don’t be afraid of jokes, that’s the only iron kettle in our yamen. Back then, when I was still a low-ranking official, I had to hide it in a well to keep it...
But speaking of it, there are really not many old, weak, sick and disabled people here. Why? After two years of hard work, those who couldn't bear it were all dead, and the rest were those who resisted!
Master, don’t laugh at the tigress in my family. All the women in our city are tigresses. Otherwise, how many of us would be alive today?
If the court doesn't give you any salary, we workers also need to eat, don't we?
So every year we collect some taxes per capita, and we don’t convert them into money. If we have money, we don’t have anywhere to spend it, right?
I'm not afraid of your jokes, I haven't seen silver in many years...
In spring and summer, there are fresh fish, wild roe deer, yellow sheep, hares, and rabbits. In autumn, we collect some grain, and in winter, we collect some dry firewood. This year after year we can survive.
There are quite a few cattle and sheep, but they are only raised for their own consumption, so why not sell them? If you can’t sell it, who should you sell it to?
How many people were there in Yanyun County in the past few years?
The wars are going on at high prices all day long. Today the Moji soldiers are here, tomorrow the Xianbo people are gone, and from time to time the Xinhe people come over to plunder...
It's settled now, but how many cattle and sheep are coming over from Bailong City! The price is also ridiculously cheap. Even if we drive cattle and sheep to sell it, we can’t even afford it!
Besides, the family has a lot of wealth, not counting those with fur, these beasts are very delicate, they will freeze to death when the rain is heavy, starve to death when the snow is heavy, freeze to death when the weather is cold, and in winter, those wild wolves will pay exorbitant prices for them. Miles!
These wolf cubs are very hateful. It would be fine if they could only eat one or two, but they are not worth the price!
You can kill all the sheep in your pen in one breath.
Sometimes there are dozens or hundreds of wolves, and none of us dare to move forward to catch them! Last year, we suffered another major snowstorm that had not been seen in decades...
Why no horses? My dear, what's the use of keeping that big guy?
It's fine in the summer, so don't worry about it. But in the winter, when it snows, they can't get a few bites of grass roots out, so they can only be fed with hay. How much hay is enough for it to eat?
It’s not as good as raising cows and still milking them…
There are only a hundred or so horses in the city, and they are all used for grazing sheep. If there is no grass this year, they may not survive the winter, and they will have to be slaughtered for meat.
"How many people are there on errands in the county government office?" If you want the horses to run, you have to give them grass. The first thing Baili has to do is to pay them back.
"There are not many. There are seventeen people in total including upper and lower officials. These are all compiled. There are also dozens of scribes and government officials, as well as a city defense team I organized with a total of more than one hundred people. They usually Everyone is doing their own thing, and when something happens, they will be called together. They are all soldiers who have served in the past." Chen Ping said hurriedly.
According to the Han regulations inherited from the Zhou Dynasty, even the smallest county town had at least 200 officials.
