Winter, the first year of Jianxing.
The Cao army that moved in Wuguan and Tongguan suddenly stopped after entering winter.
It wasn't really that Cao Wei suddenly stopped the battle plan, but because the actual conditions really didn't allow it.
In Yongzhou, the temperature dropped sharply after November. After the first snowfall in mid-November, three snowfalls fell in Yongzhou in less than a month.
When the time entered December, there was another heavy snowfall in Yongzhou, which lasted for ten days. The amount of snowfall was even greater than that in December last year.
The entire territory of Yongzhou is basically covered by heavy snow, and the snow is two feet thick when going out. In such weather, it is not easy to go out to visit relatives, let alone go to war.
This is the power of the Little Ice Age in the late Han Dynasty.
In this weather, not to mention the Cao Wei armies in Tongguan and Wuguan, even the Dahan County soldiers in Yongzhou retreated to Wubao or the barracks, and could not even practice defense deployment.
This heavy snowfall not only disrupted Cao Wei's military deployment, but also disrupted Yongzhou's response deployment.
Today, the biggest government task of the Yongzhou Governor's Office is not to deal with Cao Wei's possible invasion, but to provide disaster relief.
This year's heavy snowfall was so heavy that almost all parts of Yongzhou were caught in the snow disaster. However, the people's ability to resist disasters these days is really very low, almost close to zero.
After decades of war, many of the people's houses are wooden and straw houses. It is not that there are no mud-roof houses in Guanzhong, but they can only be afforded by people with a certain amount of money.
Last year, Manchong carried out a mass resettlement. Many people abandoned their homes and were forced to migrate away from their hometowns. Although half of them eventually returned to their hometowns, in some places the houses have long been ruined after the war. .
Therefore, the people in Guanzhong who had just been resettled basically lived in wooden and straw houses, and even some small and medium-sized aristocratic families could only barely repair them and live in mud houses.
With regard to the thermal insulation capabilities of wooden plank straw houses and mud and tile houses, people simply cannot bear such a large-scale snowfall.
Mud and tile houses are better, but at most there are some cracks and air leakage, while wooden houses are no different from living in the wild.
Coupled with the heavy snowfall, some flimsy mud-tile houses cannot support the weight of the snow, let alone wooden houses with straw roofs.
Each of the forty-six counties in Guanzhong suffered from snow disasters, and a large number of refugees appeared in each county.
In Guangyou Fufeng County, a total of nearly 200,000 people were affected, and 40,000 people were affected. They had to live on the streets because their houses were collapsed.
Beidi County and Anding County were also severely affected. Taken together, Guanzhong has a population of more than 400,000, and 100,000 people were affected by the disaster.
The one with the fewest number of victims was Zuofengyi County.
It's not that Hu Zun, the prefect of Zuofengyi County, has meritorious service in governing the place, it's simply because there are not enough Dingkou in Zuofengyi. Most of the people staying here are county soldiers and the Northern Army. These people are not counted in the number of Dingkou.
But again, the most severely affected place was Zuofengyi County.
Most of the Dingkou in Zuofengyi County were hidden Dingkou released by aristocratic families in order to redeem the land in Yongzhou. After these people were packed and sent to Zuofengyi by Zhuge Liang, they were placed in the civilian camp to prepare for farming.
These hidden people do not have any assets. The reason why they came to Zuo Fengyi is because Zhuge Liang sent people to escort them. Otherwise, with the rations these people carry with them, if they are allowed to come to Zuo Fengyi by themselves, it is estimated that If you don't get to Hanzhong, most of you will starve to death.
Therefore, after these people arrived in Yongzhou, Zhang Xi had to send someone to organize them to settle down, build houses for them, and prepare various winter supplies.
But the problem is that these people arrived at Zuo Fengyi too late. It was almost November. In addition, Zhang Xi did not expect that this winter would be so cold and snowy for such a long time. The settlements arranged by the villagers are still relatively traditional wooden houses made of straw.
There was no way, this kind of house was easy and quick to build. Zhang Xi originally thought that as long as he survived the winter and the spring plowing, he could improve the residential environment for these farmers. But who knew, this winter would not be easy.
In fact, in order to cope with this winter, Zhang Xi had indeed made preparations in advance, but the basis of these preparations was based on the usual winter experience. Suddenly encountering such a large-scale snow disaster, the Yongzhou Governor's Mansion headed by Zhang Xi was indeed Somewhat unprepared.
Before winter, Zhang Xi indeed issued an order to the governor, requiring counties to prepare for the winter in advance, focusing on hoarding enough food and grass, and repairing government offices, warehouses, and institutions in each county to prepare for emergencies. At the same time, he called on the people to repair their own homes. residence, for which the government can provide certain assistance.
However, the appeal of the government these days is limited to the county town at most. When leaving the county town and going to the countryside, the government cannot speak as well as the village elders.
Moreover, these days, the rule of thumb is "if the people don't take action, the officials don't investigate." After all, the government says that whether the people do something or not is their business, and the government really can't interfere forcefully.
Therefore, in Yongzhou as a whole, the Yongzhou governor's office headed by Zhang Xi was indeed seriously underprepared for this snow disaster, but similarly, the people of Yongzhou were also seriously underprepared for this snow disaster.
Since the continuous snowfall in mid-November, Zhang Xi has realized that this winter may be even more difficult than last year. He ordered all states and counties to prepare for disaster relief early. At the same time, Zhang Xi also began to mobilize all available resources. Prepare for disaster relief.
For example, Zhang Xi asked the counties to be ready to open warehouses and release grains to relieve the people at any time. At the same time, he asked the counties to pack up the treasury and charity facilities and be ready to receive the people affected by the disaster at any time.
But in the end, the power of the snow disaster was still underestimated. When the snow disaster really came, the treasury and charity offices of each county government would not be able to accommodate so many victims.
For this reason, Zhang Xi had to order military tents to be transferred from the treasury and distributed to various counties to temporarily set up military tents to accommodate the people.
The military tent is indeed not very warm, but it is made of felt, at least it blocks the wind.
It's better than letting people freeze to death in the snow.
Immediately afterwards, Zhang Xi broke the routine and urgently allocated the supply of fire carbon in the military. Fire carbon is coal produced in Yuexun County. This thing is a military-controlled material and cannot be easily allocated to civilian use.
But now, Zhang Xi can no longer control that much.
He finally became an official in charge of a party, but because of his incompetence, the people probably froze to death and starved to death. Zhang Xi couldn't bear this the most in his heart.
When he was a general, leading his soldiers to fight, although he felt burdened, Zhang Xi didn't care too much.
When soldiers eat food, they naturally have to defend the country and expand territory. This is the common responsibility of generals and soldiers, and casualties are inevitable.
But the people are different. The people provide taxes to the state, but the state cannot protect the people. It is absolutely incompetent on the part of the consuls to govern the local area and let the people freeze to death and starve to death.
For this reason, Zhang Xi had to use all the resources at hand to rescue the victims and strive to keep more people alive.
But to be honest, I was not fully prepared.
Whether it is felt tents or firewood in the army, they were originally used to supply the soldiers with supplies for the winter. There were not many of these things in the first place, and I never thought of preparing one for the people. If too many were used, the soldiers would suffer. Due to the cold, there are fewer calls, and the people suffer.
The balance here is really difficult to master.
Fortunately, Zhang Xi has two right-hand assistants at hand.
At this moment, Jiang Wan and Chen Zhi's coordinating abilities were fully demonstrated at this moment.
Under the overall arrangements of these two people, the snowstorm in November was finally able to survive the initial stage. The people were resettled to a certain extent, and the number of people who actually froze to death in the wild was only a few hundred. In this era, such a thing would happen. In the snowstorm, only a few hundred people froze to death, which is already an incredible political achievement.
However, when the heavy snow began to fall in December, even Jiang Wan and Chen Zhi could not withstand it.
No matter how strong their planning capabilities are, they still have to have disaster relief supplies on hand.
How can we arrange disaster relief if we don’t have anything? !
For this reason, Zhang Xi had to immediately write to the emperor and also sent a letter to Zhuge Liang.
Writing a letter to the emperor was an apology, saying that the snow disaster in Yongzhou was due to his poor thinking and lack of preparation. The current disaster relief situation was not optimistic, causing the people to be displaced, and he asked the emperor to punish him.
To write to Zhuge Liang is to ask for help.
There is no requirement for food. Zhang Xi has hoarded a batch in Yongzhou early, so there is no shortage for the time being. But you can bring me another batch of coal from Yuexun County and felt tents from Sichuan. Waiting for urgent use.
Zhuge Liang was also shocked when he received Zhang Xi's letter.
But Zhuge Liang had no intention of blaming Zhang Xi. According to the snow disaster situation described by Zhang Xi, even if Zhuge Liang was in Yongzhou, he would not be able to complete such a disaster relief mission.
Zhang Xi was indeed a little unprepared, but to put it bluntly, Zhang Xi was not careless, but that no one had expected the magnitude of the snow disaster and its wide coverage.
No matter what, the snow disaster in Yongzhou needed to be rescued. Zhuge Liang immediately ordered Zhang Yi to take full responsibility for handling the matter, mobilize supplies from Sichuan and Yuexun counties, and send people to Yongzhou as soon as possible.
But, there is another problem.
Now winter has entered Yizhou. Although there isn't much snow, it has affected some road conditions and limited transportation efficiency.
In addition, news came from Hanzhong that it also snowed heavily in Hanzhong. Although it was not as serious as Yongzhou, it was still heavy snow and the roads were blocked.
The most important thing is that the two mountain roads leading to Guanzhong, Baoxie Road and Chencang Road, cannot pass a large amount of convoy materials in a short period of time due to heavy snow cover and steep mountain roads.
It is possible for a single person to venture across the mountain road, but a convoy cannot travel on the snow-covered plank road.
To solve this problem, we must organize soldiers or people to clean up the plank road specifically. But the problem is that it is winter now, and the plank road is long, and cleaning the plank road itself is very time-consuming and laborious. If there is another heavy snowfall in the night , or simply be more unlucky and cause an avalanche or landslide, and the plank road will be completely destroyed.
Therefore, out of caution, Zhuge Liang decided to take the Qishan Road and take a detour to Yongzhou to deliver these disaster relief supplies.
However, Zhang Xi had to find a way to survive the extra ten days of detour time.
It was already mid-December when Zhang Xi received a letter from Zhuge Liang informing him that the relief supplies were going to Qishan Road.
At this time, the heavy snow in Guanzhong was almost halfway down.
Under this situation, half of the supplies Zhang Xi had on hand had been consumed, and it was basically impossible to survive the past ten days.
Zhang Xi thought about it for a long time and finally had to make a decision.
Open the city gates of Chang'an and allow disaster-stricken people from all over the country to take refuge in Chang'an.
This is a last resort, but for now, it is also the only way.
(End of chapter)
