Yuan Yao didn't get angry with Huang Zhong in the end.
On the one hand, Huang Zhong is such a human being, and Yuan Yao knows that it is not Huang Zhong's original intention to offend him.
On the one hand, Huang Zhong himself realized his mistake and took the initiative to admit it.
Yuan Yao wouldn't get angry just for the sake of getting angry, so he just said "nothing" and put the matter aside.
After everyone left, Yuan Yao stood up and fixed his eyes on the huge map of Jiangdong, mentally calculating the comparison between his own forces and Sun Ce's.
Yuan Yao asked Zhang Kai to win over some of the 8,000 Jiangdong soldiers he had extorted from Sun Ce.
On the eve of the crusade against Jing County, Yuan Yao deliberately arranged for the four Jiangdong soldiers who had surrendered to him and their 2,000 Jiangdong soldiers to stay in Danyang, while he led another 6,000 Jiangdong soldiers to the expedition.
After the battle in Jingxian County, after eliminating the seriously injured, disabled and missing, and excluding the defeated troops, Yuan Yao finally selected only 2,000 usable troops from the 6,000 men.
Yuan Yao took advantage of the power of victory and quickly deprived several Jiangdong military princes of their military positions on the charge of ineffective combat.
He also completely dispersed the two thousand available soldiers and distributed them to Huaiyi school captain Tai Shici with more than a thousand men, and military princes Xu Ding and Yuan Wu with 500 men each.
After Taishi Ci returned from recruiting his old troops, Yuan Yao placed Xu Ding and Yuan Wu under Taishi Ci's account, bringing the strength of his Huaiyi School Lieutenant Division to 3,000.
Now these three thousand soldiers and horses are stationed in Danyang County under the leadership of Tai Shici. They train diligently every day and are quite capable. They are also responsible for monitoring Quanrou, Xu Kun and Huang Gai.
As for the other two thousand Jiangdong soldiers who did not participate in the battle of Jingxian, after eliminating the old and weak, only one thousand soldiers remained.
These thousand men were added to Huang Zhong's command to make up for the shortage after Huang Zhong allocated a thousand soldiers to He Qi.
There are also two to three thousand defeated soldiers, old and weak people who have been eliminated. Although these people will consume food and grass if they are kept, Yuan Yao will definitely not release these people back to Jiangdong in vain.
After thinking about it, Yuan Yao divided these people into several groups, either sent to repair the road from Poyang to Danyang, or sent into the mountains to mine ore, smelt copper and iron, and make armor, so as to enrich the military resources.
The land of Wuyue is bordered by the sea in the east and mountains in the west.
Sea water can boil salt. As an essential material for everyone's life, salt can include taxes in its price, so that people cannot avoid taxes but do not feel the taxes.
When Guan Zhong proposed to Duke Huan of Qi the strategy of "official mountains and seas", that is, "salt and iron monopoly" to enrich the country, he once settled an account for Duke Huan of Qi:
In a large country with 10,000 military vehicles, there are about 1 million taxable people out of a total population of 10 million. Each person is levied 30 yuan per month, which is only 30 million yuan a month; but only 2 yuan per liter of salt is added, because the sales of salt Strictly implement "salt sales based on household registration" according to household registration, and you can get an extra 60 million yuan per month, which is far more than the income from the high head tax of 30 yuan per month.
Mountains can be used to mine copper and make iron. In the past, King Liu Bi of Wu was richest in the world because he mined copper to cast coins in the Yuzhang Mountains and made profits from salt. The reason why Liu Bi was able to arm an army of 200,000 was because of the rich iron resources in the hometown of Wu and Yue.
Although Yuan Yao is a liberal arts student and does not understand physics, he has very good knowledge of geography.
He knew that Ma'anshan Iron Ore Area, one of the seven major mining areas in the country, is located in Danyang County. It's a pity that most of the mines are currently occupied by Sun Ce.
In addition, Jiangxi is also the province with the richest mineral deposits in the south and is a famous non-ferrous metals province. In particular, the reserves of gold, silver and copper are among the top three in the country.
The entire territory of Jiangxi in later generations, namely Yuzhang County of the Eastern Han Dynasty, is now under Yuan Yao's control.
In short, although the south cannot form large-scale cavalry like the north, it can make all its soldiers strong and strong!
Yuan Yao believed that as long as he unified the south of the Yangtze River and made good use of the salt and iron, he might be able to conquer the Central Plains in the north!
In addition to Taishi Ci and Huang Zhong, Yuan Yao also transferred Gan Ning's troops from Yuzhang.
When Yuan Yao left Yuzhang, Gan Ning had only two thousand troops.
But in the past few months, Gan Ning also added more than a thousand Yuzhang recruits. Yuan Yao also naturally promoted him to the rank of captain of Zhechong.
Therefore, Yuan Yao had three full squadrons of captains, each with 3,000 men, totaling 9,000 troops.
In addition to the three Han generals Huang Zhong, Gan Ning, and Tai Shici, Yuan Yao also had the Shanyue general Zu Lang on Danyang's side.
Before Yuan Yao pacified Danyang, Zulang occupied the two dangerous counties of Yangling and Yi and the nearby mountainous areas, and had five to six thousand Shanyue armed men.
After accepting Yuan Yao's recruitment, Zulang offered his troops to the city to express his loyalty and submission to the Yuan family.
Yuan Yao then appointed him as the captain of the Fuyue School, still commanding the Shanyue soldiers under his command, and asked Zu Lang to recruit the Shanyue tribes in various places for him.
Zu Lang also spared no effort in this regard. In just a few months, he recruited tens of thousands of Danyang Shanyue tribesmen for Yuan Yao, and they moved out of the mountains into the plains and were incorporated into civilian households.
In fact, the so-called Shanyue is not different from other ethnic groups of the Han people, but a collective term for the scattered people who live in the mountains in the southeast.
The people of Shanyue are extremely scattered, and wherever there are mountains in the southeastern area, they can be found.
Their origins are also extremely complex, including indigenous people in the mountains, remnants of Wuyue's homeland, fugitives from the Ouyue tribe who migrated to Fujian and Yue during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and Han people who took refuge in the mountains due to disasters and wars, etc.
In short, they do not have an independent culture and are deeply influenced by Han culture. It is difficult to call them an independent nation.
It's just that the current level of development in the southeast is not high, and there are many deep mountains and old forests, giving them room to survive.
But to conquer Shanyue is a long and arduous process.
The reason is still that the level of development in the southeast is too low. Even if you risk the dangerous journey and move hundreds of thousands of people out of the mountains.
But as long as there is a war in a disaster year, there will always be people who run back to the mountains to avoid taxes and military service.
You must know that the Sun Wu regime went through decades of brutal conquests before finally pacifying Shanyue.
But in the view of Yuan Yao, a graduate student in the history department, the reason why the Sun Wu regime was able to pacify Shanyue was because they managed the southeastern region well.
There are large tracts of fertile fields and criss-crossing roads outside the mountains. Who would want to go back to the mountains to be with the wild animals and live a miserable life without a good meal?
Therefore, after the Wei and Jin Dynasties, there were no Shanyue tribes in the southeast.
From then on, there were no longer refugees entering the mountains, but only the bandits who occupied the mountains and became kings.
The more than 10,000 households of the Shanyue tribe that Zu Lang recruited were only a drop in the bucket to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of Shanyue people.
But it has played a considerable role in alleviating Yuan Yao's current shortage of soldiers.
These rough mountain people who were born and grew up in the mountains have a much higher proportion of able-bodied people than the Han people who farm on the plains.
Because they eat more cereals and legumes, these Shanyue soldiers have extraordinary endurance, and they are all top-notch elite soldiers!
Although many of them are ignorant of discipline and orders, as long as they train more, Yuan Yao believes that one day they can become the "Elite Soldiers of Danyang" he wants!
Based on this, Yuan Yao asked Zu Lang to select strong people every time he recruited the people of Shanyue and handed them over to Huang Zhong and Tai Shi Ci for training.
Shan Yue, who is currently training, is getting stronger and stronger, with four thousand people in total.
But Zulang's army still had 3,000 people after eliminating the old and weak.
Together with Huang Zhong, Taishi Ci, and Gan Ning, Xu Qian's 1,000 navy troops, and the 3,000 Huainan soldiers brought by Yuan Yin, Yuan Yao now has 10,000 combatable troops in Danyang. Six thousand!
According to Yuan Yao's estimate, Sun Ce's troops currently number at least 40,000!
Although the gap in military strength is a bit large, Yuan Yao has no way to expand his military strength in Danyang.
Because Yuan Jun currently consumes an astonishing 23,000 dendrobium of grain every month in Danyang!
Although Sun Ce's 40,000-strong army consumed more food and grass. But Sun Ce had the Taihu Plain in Wu County, the Ningshao Plain in Kuaiji County, and the Yanjiang Plain in the north of Danyang to supply food and grass. These three places were all rich and fertile places with dense water networks, and they were also famous as land of fish and rice.
Not to mention a mere 40,000 troops, even supplying a hundred thousand troops would not be a problem.
However, Yuan Yao currently only controls six or seven poor counties in the southern mountainous area of Danyang, and is unable to supply enough food for the 16,000 regular Yuan troops, 4,000 Shanyue recruits, and thousands of civilians who build roads and collect mountains.
If he hadn't extorted 100,000 hu of grain from Sun Ce at the beginning, Yuan Yao would have drunk the northwest wind.
Fortunately, almost all the stone and wood for building Banzhou City have been transported, and Zheng Bao's naval fleet will soon be free to transport food from Yuzhang.
But if we raise grain to supply military supplies from Yuzhang, the cost will be high.
According to Zhuge Liang's estimation, if Yuan Yao cannot expand into new territories, he will definitely not be able to expand his military strength this year due to the supply of grain and grass.
This is also the reason why Yuan Yao must recruit Yan Baihu.
Wucheng is adjacent to Taihu Lake and can not only provide Yuan Yao with considerable grain and rice. In wartime, it can also threaten the harvest of half of the Taihu Plain.
Similarly, this is one of the reasons why Sun Ce must capture Wucheng.
