The wind on the banks of the Dadu River was blowing cold, and the elder brother who built the fort was feeling miserable, and no matter how miserable he was, he didn't dare to say anything.
The location Liu Chengzong chose to build the fortress was across the mountains from Dajianlu, a distance of one hundred and forty or fifty miles.
The straight-line distance from Lengbian Tusi's official village, including the Dadu River, was less than two miles.
This place is very good, with land suitable for farming. There are more than 700 acres of cultivated land in the north and more than 800 acres of cultivated land in the south. There are also areas that can be cultivated along the river bank extending to the north and south.
Moreover, in the mountains behind, there are various stones such as iron, coal, lead, and lime, and there is ample water.
Liu Chengzong did not send anyone to prospect for the mine, because the mine was right there. He only had to send people to follow the native people to the mountains to search for the minerals that were waiting to be mined.
However, Liu Shizi decided to build a fortress here not to protect the fields and minerals.
It's because from this place, you can just see the vast fields on the other side, and not far away is the official village of Lengbian Tusi.
Although the territory of Lengbian is much smaller than that of Changhexi, and the water and soil conditions on both sides are almost the same, the land reclamation, water conservancy and irrigation projects, and population there are much stronger than that of Changhexi.
This is the power of the market. Where the market is, wealth will flow there. Where the wealth is, the population will migrate.
In fact, the terrain along the Dadu River is not suitable for building a fortress. The Dadu River rises every May, and the river surface will engulf all the lowlands along the coast. However, during the dry season, large stretches of rocky beach will be exposed, which is not conducive to building a fort.
If you want to build a fort that allows you to lift a gun and shoot to the other side, the lower level of the fort will be immersed in the river water for a period of time every year; but if you want to avoid being soaked, you will not be able to cover the tidal flats on the other side within shooting range.
Liu Chengzong originally did not want to build a fort here, no matter in Xining or Kangning. He liked to leave a buffer zone with the court. The cold side and the sinking side were the buffer zone.
However, two porters could bring hundreds of people to migrate here. This scale of immigration made Liu Chengzong both happy and surprised. What he was happy about was that in the environment where the mainland was ruthless, population was no longer a constraint for Kangning Prefecture; what was surprising was that this year's autumn harvest After that, the number of immigrants is likely to increase exponentially, and his food gap will expand dramatically.
Considering this problem, the terrain here is very suitable. It can be used as a warehouse and as a field support for defensive counterattacks. It can force the Shenbian chieftain to sell grain with military pressure, it can force the crossing to collect grain, and it can also stop the owner of the grain. The army is pursuing him - he must build a fort here.
Because there was a Pine Forest River nearby, he named it Pine Forest Fort and the farmland next to it Pine Forest Town. He temporarily stationed 200 soldiers and planned the future development of the Pine Forest area.
If you have a mine, you can't be idle. Mining and iron smelting must be possible here. In my memory, there should be a very famous Luding Bridge nearby. Although others have been standing here, they still can't figure it out. This river is called Moshui, and there is nothing around it. Why is something related to the word Lu called Luding?
He also wants to build an iron cable bridge, but he doesn't have the ability to build the bridge now, so he has to mine iron, smelt it, and burn kilns to make bricks. The biggest difficulty in iron smelting is talent. He has to transfer people from Xining to build the best Dajian furnace.
He wanted to transform a hilltop into a civil structure fort, and build two stone-based watchtowers on the river beach to protect his people, protect the future iron factory, and lay the foundation for the construction of a cable bridge that would connect the Dadu River in the future. It will be much easier to transport goods and baggage between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Fortunately, Mu Ya can help with the construction of the fort. There is a shortage of all kinds of civilians in Changhe West, but there is no shortage of idlers hanging out in Dajian Lu.
Muya's armored soldiers were running around. If they saw anyone wearing cassocks on the street, they would bring them over. The idle monks over there were called over to transport stones from the mountains. The monks were so anxious that they raised the price of the clothes for making arrow stoves. 20%.
It's useless to raise the height. The tailor shop in Dajianlu uses high-quality fabrics imported from Chengdu. The customers they serve are not ordinary people. Of course, ordinary people include ordinary monks. They can't afford new clothes and the weather is bad. It was still very cold, so I had to be dragged to work if I wore cassocks.
It actually made the three detained officials at the foot of the famous mountain breathe a sigh of relief. When they were first captured, they were frightened when they heard that they would be asked to build a fort. They were afraid that they would be exhausted and die in a foreign country. Now they saw hundreds of monks. Come to help, I feel half relieved.
I am still worried about being exhausted to death, but I just feel that if I am exhausted, there is a free overdue service, and the soul can more or less fly back to his hometown.
When the work really started, Liu Chengzong met with the three government servants and completely relieved them of their worries. They were not allowed to do anything else. They worked here as supervisors, and every day six tsampa and ten pieces were converted into two Marshal Tong Bao.
The three yamen servants thought for a while. Although they had never seen the two-note coin with the Qinghai Marshal's Yamen and the war horse pattern on the back, but a careful calculation calculated that the salary was higher than working as a clerk in the county yamen, and they were just watching others work and showing their ability.
I can't help but put them back later. It's a business trip at the Yamen, and I can still get a salary.
Mr. Liu is such a man who knows people and makes good use of them. It would be a waste to leave professionals like yamen servants to suppress the people and use them to carry stones.
Unintentionally, Liu Chengzong's move to pay the government servants caused Chief Shen Bianyu's thinking on the other side to go completely astray.
Since Liu Chengzong's army entered the west of Changhe, Chief Shen Bian has been paying attention to the movements here, waiting for a group of Han people to come over to reclaim the fields and carry out large-scale construction. Chieftain Yu was completely panicked. He went to the official village every day with a telescope to look This aim.
The more I look at it, the weirder it gets.
The three people on the construction site were wearing narrow green robes, red scarves tied around their waists, and black hats with three peacock feathers stuck on the left side of the hats. This was a very conspicuous outfit, and one could tell at a glance that they were local government servants of the imperial court.
In addition, the people who carry stones and wood from the mountains every day are monks wearing cassocks.
Chieftain Yu wondered what was going on in Changhe West. Was he cooperating with the imperial court to build a temple?
Although there were many sergeants, they did not seem to be very aggressive. They were busy repairing waterwheels, making water mills, building canals, digging trenches and leveling the land all day long. Because too many trenches were dug, Chieftain Yu relied on a telescope and could There are really no danger signs.
Liu Chengzong indeed paid more attention to the construction of water conservancy projects. He used this place as a testing ground to test what he learned from Wang Zheng's Illustrated Description of Wonderful Weapons.
He has studied the things in that set of books for a long time, but has never had the opportunity to apply them. According to his experience, although this is a very advanced book that combines Chinese and Western things, many of the things in it may still remain in the design and experiment field in this world. Stage, nowhere is it put into use.
Because the equipment in the book is basically more complicated.
Regardless of East or West, people who learn these things have no power to make these things; but those who have the power to make these things will obviously focus their main energy on politics, military and economy.
This matter is the same for Western nobles and Eastern officials.
A water well using dozens of large gears, connecting rods and other mechanical equipment can allow dozens of families to fetch water with less effort, but these dozens of families, whether they live in the backwoods of Gansu or in the remote villages of the Netherlands, do not have that luxury. Can afford to build such a well.
And people with sufficient financial resources and abilities do not need to carry water themselves.
Without such demand, it will be difficult to produce talents who study these things seriously. Even if there are a few, it will be difficult to spread their branches.
In Liu Chengzong's understanding, this is why this book is called a strange weapon rather than a divine weapon.
It's just in his territory, so I'm happy to be able to build some of these things.
His set of books was left in Xining as a textbook for the government. I didn’t have any books at hand, so I built a well in Songlin Town based on my memory. I made two design mistakes. After revisions, I finally completed it. I found that the effect was pretty good and it saved a lot of effort, so I decided to Another one is planned in Pinewood Castle.
The design of Songlin Fort came from Liu Shishi, and Liu Chengzong was an expert in this regard.
If a person can participate in building a city or a fortress in his lifetime, he is considered very experienced.
Liu Shizi has designed and built several forts, seen many castles, and captured most of them. There are also many forts that he has built that left him helpless. He is also good at using his brain and has studied many fortress defense ideas. .
When building forts and cities, we pay attention to adapting to local conditions, while weapons and equipment pay attention to adapting to the enemy's conditions.
When he designed all the fortresses, he never considered completely building a bastion in memory.
The bastion in his memory was a good thing. The walls were low and thick, with great depth and many forts. They formed a large fortification group with the trench slopes outside the bastion, which not only reduced the chance of being bombarded, but also maximized the effectiveness of the bastion. The defenders have superior firepower.
But Liu Chengzong believed that he was not worthy of using such a fortress.
Although the Lion Army is stronger than firearms, it depends on who you compare with.
His opponents were the Mongols and Xifan chieftains, who did not use as many firearms as him, and there were not many cannons. However, he actually did not have many muskets and artillery in his hands.
There may be more troops stationed in Xining Prefecture, but the cost of transporting these heavier weapons and equipment to the pine forest area west of Changhe is much higher than manufacturing them locally.
The current firepower level of Kangning Mansion's garrison outside Nangqian cannot reach the level of taking advantage of the fortress. Using a low fort wall is likely to allow them to be engulfed by a large-scale enemy force using cold weapons. A taller fort Wall, the amount of work is too large.
The most important thing is that after spending a lot of money to build a perfect bastion, it is quite embarrassing to look back and find that our own artillery does not have enough artillery to fill the fort.
So he only drew on the ideas of acute-angled enemy towers and ramps, and built a triangular fort according to the mountain terrain. The triangle was equipped with acute-angled enemy towers, facing northeast, southeast and due west respectively, and the fort gate opened to the south.
Two trenches were dug outside the fort. The bridge of the inner trench was on the east side, and two enemy platforms in the northeast and southeast were blocked by two fixed artillery positions on the sides. The outer trench bridge was left in the south, and the enemy platforms in the southeast and due west were also blocked by two fixed gun emplacements. Side emplacement blockade.
In terms of design, this fortress is equipped with eight heavy cannons, eight small cannons, twenty muskets, fifty muskets, and a garrison of 190 people.
At the same time, two more four-room piers were built on the east side. Like the piers outside the Great Wall, they were solid high platforms without doors. They were each equipped with five defenders, one Buddha Wolf Machine, five shields, and five muskets.
The whole structure is made of rammed earth plywood. In the future, it may be covered with bricks if conditions permit, or it may not be covered.
There is also a plan to build a large granary under Pine Forest Castle, which can store more than 15,000 stones of grain.
In fact, his uncle Cai Zhongpan made some calculations and felt that this fortress could completely build a granary with a grain storage capacity of 30,000 dan, but Liu Chengzong said it was not necessary. His proud work was exactly the size of this granary.
He smiled and said to his uncle: "It's useless to build this granary. It has to be covered with stones. It's a waste of effort. Look at how there is so much food stored here."
"There's no need for fifteen thousand." Cai Zhongpan stood on the top of the mountain and raised his hand: "I think this year's harvesting of grain, even if the weather is good for two thousand stone, even if we open up some nearby wasteland and don't take care of it, we can get there Three thousand stones is good.”
As he spoke, Cai Zhongpan spread his hands and said, "Besides, if we go further north or south, it will be far away. We have to build another fort thirty miles away. There is no need to store all the food here."
Liu Chengzong shook his finger: "No, no, no, uncle, Hexi can produce up to three thousand shi this year, yes, but the east coast of the river can produce at least 20,000 shi of grain. If we get all 20,000 shi, we have to get half of it." ?”
Cai Zhongpan blinked and realized that Liu Shizi had transferred all the neighbor's grain reserves to himself. He asked, "Then you plan to start a war with Lengbian Tusi this fall?"
"Try not to fight. I plan to leave this matter to my uncle and talk to Leng Bian about buying grain. Nang Qian has a batch of gold and silver from the previous war. You can use it to buy grain. See if they are willing to sell it."
Liu Chengzong looked at the other side, shook his head and said: "If you don't want to sell it, then you can only rob it. Anyway, as long as there are a few forts built along the coast here, it will be difficult for us to attack, and they can't even think of attacking, so they can just rob it. "
Liu Chengzong did not have high expectations for the agricultural situation in Kangning Mansion.
It is difficult to get rich through agriculture here. With food, the people's living standards can be higher than during the slave era. If they can maintain self-sufficiency in food rations and attract immigrants to enrich Kangning Mansion, his wish will be fulfilled.
The Ban people are very resistant to mining minerals, and the herders are very resistant to agricultural development. These things can only be done by immigrants.
The prosperity of Kangning Mansion will ultimately depend on the commercial prosperity brought about by animal husbandry, mining, and handicrafts. Therefore, without agriculture and immigration as the basis, there is no possibility of huge development of these things.
In Liu Chengzong's eyes, as long as there are enough immigrants and Kangning Mansion can guarantee food rations, after several years of development, supplemented by the penetration of Sichuan, it may not be unable to be used as an advance base for partial divisions to enter Sichuan.
Just as the two were chatting about their future strategy against Leng Shen Chieftain, a group of horse soldiers came running from a distance. They were the garrison of Luhuo County. The horses were running so fast that they were foaming at the foam.
The cavalry soldier turned over and prostrated, his legs softened and he almost fell to the ground. He cupped his fists and said: "Commander, Xining Prefecture is reporting urgently, there is a war!"
"Is there a war in Xining?" Liu Chengzong and Cai Zhongpan looked at each other and asked, "With whom? When did it happen?"
The horse soldier shook his head: "I don't know, the news came from word of mouth all the way from Xining, just these three words."
Liu Chengzong took a deep breath and thought to himself, what the hell kind of news is this? Will you die if you say a few more words?
He turned to look at Cai Zhongpan: "Uncle, the affairs of Changhe West, the Songpan Banner Army and the Xichuan immigrants will be left to you. I will return to Nangqian right away and send someone to tell Li Laojiao to stay behind, and order Zhang Tianlin's cavalry soldiers to follow me. Let’s go back to Nangqian together, and then set off back to Xining!”
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