In this village, Liu Yu met and talked with a white-haired old man.
Liu Yu learned that the old man had four sons and three daughters. Except for the youngest son, the other three sons were no longer alive.
Liu Yu estimated that according to the ancient custom of early marriage, the old man's sons would have lived longer than the average life span when they died.
Nowadays, all the grandsons of the old man have married and started families, and the dozen male grandchildren are the guarantee of the old man's status and reputation in the village.
Liu Yu then asked the officials who encouraged farmers to carefully supervise the farming work and whether anyone had committed crimes. After getting a relatively satisfactory result, he was quite relieved and felt that he seemed to have a feeling of being a great master in the sky.
In line with the mentality of a modern person who respects and respects his elders, Liu Yu chatted with the old man about a lot of domestic matters, such as which grandson was the most hardworking and hardworking, which great-grandson was the most naughty and mischievous. This approachable attitude made the originally a little nervous person The old man relaxed completely. Instead, this thief-turned-prefect seemed as friendly as a junior member of the clan.
By the time Liu Yu returned to Yin County two days later, he already had very good prestige among the people he visited.
It's a pity that Liu Yu's hard work in persuading farmers and mulberry trees in the spring seemed destined to fail to achieve good results.
In the first year of Yongjia, after a rain during spring plowing, until May, there was little rain in half of the northern land, and a severe drought swept across.
Large-scale locust plagues broke out in Jizhou and Yanzhou. Hundreds of millions of locusts destroyed millions of people's hope of survival.
Although there is no locust plague in Donglai County, when the drought comes, the fields on the hilly slopes are even more difficult to irrigate. Even if Liu Yu ordered his men to promote the construction of barrel carts and water-lifting windmills, they had little effect.
"The fields in Dongmou are cracked by drought, and about 80% of the seedlings in people's fields have died."
"The same goes for Dangli County. I'm afraid there will be no harvest this year."
"The same goes for Lu Township, and there are rumors that many people are planning to leave their hometown and flee."
A group of subordinate officials reported the disasters in various places to Liu Yu.
After listening to this, Liu Yu felt like he had a headache.
At this time, powerful aristocratic families occupied most of the good land that was conducive to irrigation. Therefore, when a drought came, the losses suffered by these powerful aristocratic families were often much less than those of ordinary people. As a result, ordinary people who were already vulnerable would flee their hometowns in order to survive. , otherwise if you stay at home, you will not only be unable to pay the autumn grain tax, but you will also very likely starve to death at home.
On the contrary, the power of the powerful families will become stronger and stronger. When the prestige that Liu Yu established before dissipates, it will be the time when he will be controlled by these powerful families.
"Instruct all counties to exempt all taxes and corvees this year in advance. Pavilion chiefs, elders, and miserly men in various places must spread the word to every village."
Liu Yu immediately ordered that the power to exempt taxes from taxes and corvees actually belonged to the emperor, and the governors and prefects who governed the prefectures and counties on behalf of the emperor had no power to make such decisions.
The emperor at this time was Sima Chi who was captured during the Yongjia Rebellion in history. It was completely impossible for Liu Yu to expect a puppet emperor with such an ending.
And even if Liu Yu submitted the report to the emperor in accordance with the rules of the Western Jin Dynasty, Emperor Sima Chi would not see it.
Because Liu Yu's writings need to be reported to the Qingzhou governor first, and then signed by the Qingzhou governor and submitted to the emperor.
And the current governor of Qingzhou, Yang Hao, has reprimanded Liu Yu several times since Liu Yu refused Ju Xian to enter Donglai territory. If he hadn't been concerned about the strength of Liu Yu's Donglai army, he would have declared Liu Yu a traitor and punished him.
Although this exemption from taxes and corvee will not have any effect on resisting natural disasters, without heavy taxes, ordinary people will not easily leave their homes and become refugees.
Next, it’s about extracting and finding ways to get through the autumn when the harvest will be dead in a few months.
Liu Yu knew that those powerful families who had been lying low and small in front of him still had a lot of food reserves to survive this famine, but he couldn't grab it, otherwise the mutual trust and cooperation that had been finally established would be wiped out. .
Liu Yu could only find a way to replace what he wanted with other benefits.
There are always only two best ways, one is to trade, the other is to rob.
The trade envisioned by Liu She is also difficult to realize. Today, the world is full of refugees who lack food.
And if the other one goes to grab it, he has to plan carefully.
The first thing to do is to rob somewhere. Anyway, there is no hope for nearby Qingzhou and Xuzhou. Not only are the disasters there similar to those in Donglai County, but Xuzhou has been burned and killed by Wang Mi for several months. I am afraid it has long been a ghost.
In this way, only Liaodong and North Korea were left. Liaodong was occupied by Murong Xianbei. With Liu Yu's military strength at this time, if he went to rob Murong Xianbei, he would basically be killed. Murong Xianbei had not yet annexed the Yuwen Department, but his military strength was There were already thirty to forty thousand people, and they were beyond what Liu Yu could handle.
So in the end, the only ones left are the Buyeo and Samhan people on the Korean peninsula. Although these relatively easy-to-knead persimmons have little meat, they are still much better than nothing. Not only do they have much-needed food and population there, There is also a lot of copper.
"Come here, call the navy commander Yi Zhong to come see me."
Liu expected to ask Yi Zhong how many ships would be needed for another large-scale cross-sea march, and then he would seize the time to cut wood and make it.
"No, no, no matter how good the new wood is, it cannot be used to build a boat right away. Without years of water maintenance, the fresh wooden boards will deform and crack after being made into a boat. I am afraid it will fall apart after just a few uses. "
As soon as Yi Zhong heard that Liu Yu planned to use new wood to build ships to expand his navy, he immediately asked for more.
"Besides, without sailors and bows, a bunch of new people just feed the fish when they get to the sea."
If there are not enough big ships, even if the Buyeo and Samhan people are beaten to death, the food and materials will not be transported back by then. After all, relying on the ant-like transportation capacity of the ships, I am afraid that the people of Dongnae County will have long been A lot of them starved to death.
For a moment, Liu Yu was in trouble. Where could he get so many ships and sailors? During the Western Jin Dynasty, Qingzhou and Xuzhou were already the largest shipbuilding centers in the world, and they needed to be transshipped enough to feed tens of thousands of people. The supplies and ships required may be a huge number.
In this way, if you want to rob these three Han people, you have to make careful preparations.
