"General manager, Xiliang is indeed a serious problem."
Just as Huang Xin was expressing concern about the Xiliang Kingdom, a general below also raised a question: "But now the country has a standing army of 300,000 people and 500,000 tiger and wolf people. The total number of soldiers in the country is no less than 800,000.
These soldiers and horses, Xiliang soldiers gathered 500,000 people in this Taoshui front line alone, no less than our army.
Although our Chu soldiers and horses are brave and good at fighting, those Tibetan people are really useless.
Although 400,000 troops were gathered to help, only 50,000 to 60,000 of them were capable of fighting.
In this way, the number of soldiers available to our army is only 150,000 or 60,000.
There are half a million people in Xiliang.
With such a huge disparity, it may not be that easy for our army to defeat the Xiliang people on the battlefield. "
After these years of wars with the Zhou Kingdom, last year's disastrous defeat against the Xiliang Kingdom, and successive years of natural disasters, the Tibetan people's strength has now greatly diminished.
At its peak, it had a population of 15 to 6 million people, but now only 4 to 5 million people remain, which is one-third less than before.
When the Tibetan people were at their peak, there were more than 100,000 standing knights, but now there are only 50,000 or 60,000 left.
Although the Tibetan troops from the Xiliang Kingdom gathered 400,000 troops for this battle, apart from the 50,000 to 60,000 standing knights, the remaining 300,000 Tibetan cavalry were just herdsmen.
Although after these years of war training and selection on the battlefields of natural disasters, most of the Tibetan people who survived were strong and strong, and were no strangers to battlefield battles, and many of them had one or two skills.
However, the Tibetan people's frequent food shortages and natural disasters in recent years cannot be ignored.
You can't expect a person who has been hungry and cold all year round, who doesn't have enough to eat, doesn't have warm clothes, and is extremely tired and thin, to have much fighting power.
Such is the case with these Tibetan herdsmen.
Basically, for a year, I was in poverty and hunger, with no time to eat.
At the same time, the increasingly cold weather has also caused many people to suffer from extremely severe frostbite and frostbite. It is also common for limbs such as fingers, toes, and ears to be frozen off after waking up.
Many Tibetan people suffered from major or minor disabilities due to the severe cold.
Coupled with the torture of hunger, everyone is so thin that they are no longer far from skinny.
No matter how ferocious and easy-to-kill an army composed of such herdsmen is, its combat power is limited.
Facing the Tiger Wolf Xiliang who is more ferocious and ruthless than them, the outcome is self-evident.
Therefore, now that the Chu-Tiban coalition forces are facing Xiliang, it seems that both sides have an army of 500,000, but in fact it is 100,000 Chu troops plus 50,000 elite Tibetans, fighting against 500,000 Xiliang soldiers. .
The strength gap between the two sides is twice as much, approaching three times.
This can be seen from the fact that just five thousand Tibetan herdsmen were easily defeated by three thousand Xiliang militiamen.
Those Tibetan people are really unusable.
"Haha, the Xiliang Tiger and Wolf Country is naturally difficult to fight, but why would I want to fight him head-on?"
Hearing the worries of his men, Huang Xin burst out laughing: "Now I am leading an army of 500,000 men to camp on the southern line of Taoshui. The Xiliang Kingdom lives in the north of Taoshui, and the two armies face each other across the river.
This Peach River is naturally dangerous. In spring, summer and autumn, the river is very fast and cannot be crossed except by boat.
Only in winter does the river freeze, allowing people and horses to pass through.
But in winter, the wind and snow are increasing, and the cold is getting increasingly severe. If you walk a hundred steps in the wild, you are in danger of freezing to death.
In such weather, one can only survive by staying in a house in the city and relying on charcoal fires to keep warm.
How can those Xiliang thieves fight in the cold winter?
Therefore, sending troops in winter is not feasible. "
Speaking of this, Huang Xin sneered: "So we only need to secure the entrances of the major crossings along Taoshui when the river is open to navigation, build forts and villages, and build important cities and towns at key points as fulcrums.
In this way, by building five or six cities and more than a hundred strongholds along the line, the Xiliang people can be blocked in the north of Taoshui.
And we have stationed heavy troops in important towns on the southern line of Taoshui. How can the Xiliang Kingdom not also gather heavy troops in the north of the Yangtze River?
Our army sent troops across the river from time to time to plunder and harass the territory of Xiliang, burning, killing, and plundering, neglecting its agriculture, and exhausting its country.
In just a few years, the Xiliang Kingdom would be exhausted due to the heavy military effort, fall into famine and civil strife, and collapse without attack.
Moreover, this is also an opportunity for us to train the Tibetan people..."
Huang Xin glanced at the Fan people in the distance with a meaningful smile.
Although Xiliang Kingdom has an army of 800,000 tigers and wolves, it can be said that it has a strong martial arts style, which is almost comparable to that of ordinary hegemons.
But it also has a fatal weakness, that is, the population is too small and the land is too barren.
Xiliang is a country with three counties, but among these three counties, there are a lot of grasslands, Gobi, and even deserts, which are not completely suitable for farming.
Therefore, in the land of three counties, even if both agriculture and animal husbandry are used, the maximum number of people can be supported by about four million people.
Even now that the Xiliang people have taken over half of Hexi County, the country's rich and arable land has suddenly increased by more than half, and the number of people that can be fed can be increased by two million.
Population pressure should be greatly alleviated.
But no matter how rich the land is, someone has to plant it, right?
But now that the two sides are fighting, such a small country with four million people has dispatched half a million troops and sent them to the Taoshui frontline to fight against the Chu and Tibetan people.
Such a huge war is simply a disaster for a small country like Xiliang.
To be able to maintain it now is to use all the efforts of the whole country, with men going to war and women transporting food.
And a situation like this cannot be maintained for a long time, even for three to five months.
Therefore, for the other party, they must be eager to fight and beg for a fight at this time.
But for the Chu State, the main purpose of sending troops this time was just to protect the Tibetan people. Let them settle in the northwest of the Chu Kingdom and serve as a barrier to block the Xiliang Kingdom.
The real core purpose is to weaken the Xiliang Kingdom.
Therefore, he sent troops to fight Xiliang, then defeated his army and destroyed his country.
For Huang Xin, it is not necessary to do it.
It's great to be able to do this.
But if we can seal the Xiliang Kingdom in Hexi and prevent them from leaving eastward, we have accomplished our goal.
At present, the people of Xiliang are not easy to provoke. If they fight, their side will most likely lose.
Although Chu State now has millions of people, its troops and horses are showing its power in the south of the Yangtze River.
But if we lose a hundred thousand troops in the northwest and are defeated by a small and marginal country like Xiliang, that will be very heartbreaking, and it will destroy Breeze.
Therefore, after realizing the risks in this regard, Huang Xin naturally learned to be prudent and began to naturally choose to act prudently.
Xiliang is only a small country with limited population and land. It cannot support many armies and cannot sustain large-scale wars for too long.
But the Chu State was a big country, occupying a single state and having tens of millions of people.
For the Chu State, maintaining half a million soldiers and horses on the northwest front was extremely expensive and expensive, but it was not impossible.
Now that after seizing Lingnan and Jiangdong, Chu State not only had a significant increase in the population in its territory, but also had three more grain-producing areas.
Up to now, Chu State already has six grain-producing areas: Xichuan Plain, Jianghan Plain, Dongting Plain, Pengli Plain, Nanhai Small Plain, Jiuzhen Small Plain, etc.
Not to mention the two small plains in Lingnan, the grain produced is just enough to satisfy the southwest of Lingnan and cannot be exported.
But Xichuan, Jianghan, Dongting, and Pengli, these four plains, are really important grain-producing towns.
A fully developed plain can produce enough food to feed tens of millions of people in a year.
The current total population of Chu State, according to the latest data from the country, is about 30 million people.
The grain produced in the four grain-producing plains can feed 40 million people. Counting the other two small plains and the acres of fields in Chu State, the grain produced by Chu State in a year is enough to feed 60 to 70 million people.
This means that after recuperation, Chu State can provide food for 30 to 40 million more people a year.
The people of Chu had to rely on themselves to eat these grains, which could not be eaten at all. They could only collect them and put them in warehouses to mold.
Instead of taking advantage of those big rats in the warehouse, it is better to take out the grain and transport it to the northwest to consume the Xiliang Kingdom.
Anyway, Xichuan and Xiangyang County are not far from Hanzhong County.
Especially in the Jianghan Plain where Hanzhong County is located, the grain produced there can be easily sent to Hanzhong County by large ships through the Han River waterway, and then from Hanzhong County to Longxi.
The pressure on food transportation can be described as minimal.
And it is not troublesome at all to transport it from Longxi to the Taoshui front line here.
There are still four to five million Tibetan people in Longxi.
These hungry and cold Tibetan people are all crying out for food. The Chu State can use the hard labor of transporting military rations to recruit and hire these Tibetan people.
Just help transport food and give them food. Isn't it possible to achieve it in an instant with millions of labor?
Moreover, the Chu State still helped the Tibetan people fight the war, and the food they sent was also given to them for their own consumption. There was no need to worry that the Tibetan people would not help.
The only thing Chu State has to pay is the food it can't finish.
On the contrary, Huang Xin can use food and the large-scale project of building a fortress on the southern line of Taoshui to take the opportunity to infiltrate the Tibetan people and slowly achieve the purpose of controlling this Tibetan people group.
"Also, perhaps we can take advantage of the opportunity of garrisoning troops in the fortress and the excuse of the Tibetan herdsmen not to resist the war, and ask our Chu army to help them train elite soldiers and horses, so as to control the Tibetan military power.
With the threat of the Xi Liang Kingdom, the deterrence of my 100,000-strong army, and the temptation of the interests of my Dachu food, even if the tribal leaders are reluctant, they will never dare to refuse.
By using ration control on the one hand and seizing force on the other, the four to five million remaining Tibetan people in Longxi can still escape from the clutches of my great Chu..."
Huang Xin was thinking about it in his mind, and a plan on how to annex and control the Tibetan people slowly took shape in his mind.
Just do it if you think of it.
He looked at the generals and immediately said: "Come here, please invite the leaders of the tribes of the Tibetan people. I want to discuss with them the construction of a city fortress on the southern line of Taoshui and the transportation of grain from the country to support the Tibetan people."
After hearing this, the guard next to him immediately turned around and ran to the Fan people to ask for help.
…
Just as Huang Xin was in the northwest, he was busy containing the Xiliang Kingdom and began to plot to annex the entire Tibetan people.
Thousands of miles away in the south of the Yangtze River, Lu Yuan couldn't help but fell into deep thought when he looked at the latest household registration statistics from local counties this year.
As early as the second half of last year, Lu Yuan ordered local counties to start counting the population in the counties to verify Chu's household registration.
It is now the beginning of the second half of the second year. More than a year has passed, and the population statistics of each county have been reported one after another and summarized in the hands of him, the King of Chu.
According to the report, including the Hehe County that had just been merged with the northern part of the Nanzhao Kingdom, and the Jiuzhen County that was separated from the Song Kingdom, the population of each county in the Chu Kingdom is as follows.
They are 3.5 million people in Dongting County, 2 million people in Xiangyang County, 2.7 million people in Xichuan County, 1.8 million people in Hanzhong County, 1 million people in Hehe County, and 7 million people in Yuzhang County. , 1.5 million people in Qianzhong County, 2.4 million people in Jian'an County, 4.3 million people in Nanhai County, 1.7 million people in Jiuzhen County, 630,000 people in Yulin County, and 630,000 people in Tonghai County 170,000 people.
In this way, there are 109 prefectures in twelve counties across the country, with a total population of 28.7 million people.
Well, the population was three to four million more than Lu Yuan's original estimate.
The most important thing is that after the Chu State took control of the three counties of Yuzhang, Jian'an and Nanhai, it carried out a cleansing of the original local gentry and landlord system and cleared out many household registrations.
As a result, the population of the three counties has increased by tens to millions more than the original household registration.
In addition, in the past two years, the northwest Tibetan people have successively sent five to six million Zhou people and two to three hundred thousand Tibetan people to Chu State in order to obtain food.
In the Zhou Dynasty in the north, two to three hundred thousand people fled across the mountains to Hanzhong County due to war.
In this regard, it also added almost one million people to Chu State.
The sum of all these aspects brings the population of Chu State to nearly 30 million.
Thirty million people sounds like a lot.
But for the Chu State, which now occupies more than 90% of Yangzhou, it is still considered to be vast and sparsely populated.
Let’s not talk about anything else, let’s just talk about the two counties of Tonghai and Yulin that we just acquired. Each county has a population of only tens or hundreds of thousands. After leaving the city, the wilderness is completely barren and there is no human habitation for thousands of miles.
Compared with the population of these two counties, Chu State needs to maintain nearly 3,000 officials and nearly 50,000 local county soldiers here.
There is no doubt that for the Chu State, these two counties are simply unable to make ends meet and are simply losing money.
Moreover, the combined population of the two counties is only 800,000, so there is really not much need to maintain a county-level unit.
Therefore, after counting the population of Tonghai and Yulin counties, Prime Minister Sun Siwen immediately wrote to Lu Yuan, proposing to abandon the newly established Tonghai County, evacuate all the population to Yulin County, and focus on the development of this area. The long-standing proposal of Lingnan County.
He even suggested that, if possible, Yulin County could actually abandon half of the counties with more mountainous areas and focus on the counties near the sea and with more plains.
In this way, the provinces and counties were merged to save expenses and concentrate resources to prepare for Chu's future march north to Zhongzhou.
After all, after dozens or hundreds of years, the counties of Southwest and Lingnan will definitely be abandoned.
The remote mountainous areas of Tonghai County and Yulin County cannot be retained even if they are developed with great efforts.
Rather than doing this, it would be better to evacuate people to coastal plain areas that are better developed and have more resources, so that the population can reproduce better and produce more money, food and taxes.
As many as 3,000 officials and 50,000 local troops in the two counties can be allocated to the newly expanded Hehe County and Jiuzhen County, saving the court from wasting money and food and carefully selecting officials and recruiting troops.
It has to be said that Sun Siwen's memorial is indeed good advice and good advice.
After seeing it, Lu Yuan was indeed quite tempted.
There is really no need to develop the southwestern Lingnan area.
Because in the future, when the poisonous fire in the extreme south reappears, the first areas to suffer will definitely be Southwest and Lingnan, and you will be the first to be destroyed.
On the contrary, areas such as Xichuan, Dongting, and Jiangdong may be affected by disasters ten to twenty years later.
From this aspect alone, it is most cost-effective to use limited manpower and material resources to operate a few areas first.
Moreover, in the future Northern Expedition to Zhongzhou, supplies will basically come from these areas.
It was impossible to transport supplies all the way from Lingnan and Southwest to the Northern Expedition battlefield across rugged mountain roads and sea routes. It would be too slow and time-consuming.
Therefore, Lu Yuan agreed with Sun Siwen's proposal.
The reason why he didn't express his position at this time was not that he was reluctant to part with those pieces of land, but that he was wondering if he could take a bigger step forward?
For example, we might as well give up the Jiuzhen County we just acquired and abandon it together with Tonghai County and Yulin County.
The Chu State moved all 2.5 million people from these three counties to Xiangyang County in the north of the Yangtze River to develop the rich Jianghan Plain and save money, food and materials for the future Northern Expedition.
Even Nanhai County, which was still prosperous at this time, could actually start to slowly move the local population to the Hanzhong area in the north of the Yangtze River to avoid temporary migration in the future.
It is much more cost-effective to relocate people now when the population is small than to relocate later when the population has multiplied to millions.
The resistance and expense encountered will also be much less.
Just giving up the four counties of Southwest and Lingnan at once is almost equivalent to reducing the territory of Chu State by one-third, which is extremely ugly in terms of face, let’s not talk about it for now.
Just saying that with so much territory lost, Lu Yuan's own luck has been reduced, which is uncomfortable enough.
The previous annexation of the Lingnan Three Kingdoms directly increased Chu's luck by 20%, which just made up for the loss of his spiritual energy due to the loss of Dongtian.
Abandoning the four counties at this time will not cause much loss in population, but it will still have some impact on luck.
Maybe you will lose 10% or 50% of your luck.
So Nanfang can give up, but his luck cannot be reduced.
"It seems that in this regard, we have to fall to Jiangdong."
Lu Yuan was muttering in his mouth as he walked aside and looked at the Yangzhou fish picture hanging on the wall, his eyes fixed on the two counties occupied by Ningguo in Jiangdong.
Since the past few months, the Chu State has divided the Southwest and Lingnan Kingdoms, expanded eight vassal states in one breath, and taken over all their territories.
Not only was the Chu State filled with joy and excitement, but the surrounding countries that were close to the Chu State were also instantly trembling and nervous.
Because everyone knows it.
As the Chu State sorts out its internal affairs step by step and resolves its worries, the Chu army, which has been able to integrate more forces, will definitely not sit still in the country, but will instead seek expansion.
The first step in expansion is naturally the last country in Yangzhou that has not yet surrendered. The former overlord of Yangzhou, Ningguo, occupied the two counties of Jiangdong.
