sweeping the world

Chapter 651 Not enough food?Go grab it!

Thanks to the impression that those civil officials who were worse than shit in the Ming Dynasty gave the Chinese people of later generations, it is an inevitable phenomenon that the Chinese people have distrust of civil officials.

Furthermore, the army of a country is the existence that guarantees the survival of the country. Even if the military really has some bullshit, the information about the army is actually in a closed state, and it is not known to ordinary people at all. Let ordinary people have a better impression of the army.

In fact, no matter how greedy the civil servants in a country are, or even doing some outrageous things, they can't do as much harm as the power of the army.

Once the army is corrupted, the country will enter the stage of being defenseless. Invasion by foreign enemies will lead to the destruction of the country.If there is a rebellion in the army, it will not be as simple as the people being in dire straits, but the country falling into a raging war.

As long as he is a ruler with a normal mind, he can tolerate the corruption of civil officials, but he will never see the corruption of the military. Everything is nothing more than civil officials without military power. The military is no small matter.

Although Liu Yan has become a king, the thoughts he has cultivated for a long time will not change just because of a few years, and he needs to encounter some events to wake up.

The rulers of all dynasties, as long as they were not forced to, would not feed the army too much. What they did was to keep the materials held by the military at a minimum, so that even if there was a rebellion, the army would be short of supplies and unable to fight for a long time.

As a ruler, Liu Yan has not yet become a king in the true sense. He cannot be cold-blooded and ruthless. Due to his nostalgia for the army before time travel, some of his actions are really too leaning towards the military.

It is not that no one in the Han Dynasty saw the risk of the army holding a huge amount of supplies. It should be said that anyone in the center could see it, but for the time being, no one advised Liu Yan.

The reason why no one has stated the powerful relationship is a bit complicated. As the imperial official, Sang Yu personally visited various counties and counties. In just three months, he found out a large number of local officials who had done all kinds of bad things, which really put the central civil service system at risk. It's hard to talk when you're blushing.Next, the country is about to enter a stage of internal affairs development. The military is unable to start a large-scale war and has nowhere to go. Anyone who jumps out may be hated and attacked by the military.

In fact, there is another reason that even civil officials cannot refute. As long as you are a civil official, from the Three Emperors and Five Emperors mentioned above, to modern times below, as a civil official, you know very well that as long as there is oil and water, there must be someone who reaches out. It is inevitable that someone will reach out in a metropolis, the difference is a big greed or a small greed.

It’s not that the military won’t lend a hand. There are pests in every group. The problem is that there are definitely fewer people in the military than civilians who will lend a hand because of their sense of honor and discipline.

Ji Chang positions himself as the king's loyal dog leg, and he has to say what others dare not say or don't want to say, even if he bites the bullet.

After the Great Court Meeting, Liu Yan sat in the apse for a short time according to the usual practice, waiting for someone to come to a private audience, talk about some things that are not good to talk about in the Great Court, and maybe someone will make a small report.

"Huh? What about military corruption?" It's not that Liu Yan hasn't thought about this issue, and he had to put it on the table when he heard Ji Chang say it: "Materials are managed and dispatched by the military, but the central and local governments have to set them up separately." The team will supervise."

"The army keeps a huge amount of supplies..." Ji Chang said a little boldly, "I'm afraid something that I dare not say will happen."

Having said that, no ruler in the past dynasties was willing to allow the army to control supplies, even if the supplies were too much for the treasury to hold, but the practice was that the supplies were only limited to three months, in order to block the army's logistics and let the rebellion The troops were short of supplies and could be suppressed better.

The Han army was founded by Liu Yan. He is absolutely respected in the military. He was never worried that the army would break out in rebellion. As a result, when Ji Chang mentioned that the army might break out in rebellion, the expression on his face was very special. weird.

What Ji Chang was afraid of was Liu Yan's complete trust in the military. Seeing the strange expression on Liu Yan's face, he couldn't help but feel relieved.He would not say that some materials should be kept and allocated by the civil service system. Liu Yan had already made the final decision at the meeting and discussed how to carry out supervision.

To carry out nationwide infrastructure construction, we must first have food reserves. Ji Chang had already found Yu Yi before he came. As the group going to colonize the Indochina Peninsula was headed by the Yu family, at least nominally, each family respects the Yu family, so there are It's right to ask Mrs. Yu for any problem.

Even if it is only the leader in name, Yu Yi is still afraid of becoming the leader, fearing that Liu Yan will have some bad opinions, and then it will be tantamount to erecting a signboard to be attacked by others.Because of this, he never shirks when he can cooperate with Liu Yan, and never pretends to be aggressive when he can keep a low profile about various things.

Before Ji Chang found him, Yu Yi had made the greatest psychological preparations. Ji Chang only asked a few words, and he stated that even if all the monkeys in the Indochina Peninsula were starved to death, he would guarantee to collect as much food as possible to return home. .

It has been almost two years since the Han people entered Indochina, and they have a good idea of ​​the local production capacity.The last time the food issue was discussed, Yu Yi contracted for a share of 500 million shi as soon as he opened his mouth.

Fifteen million shi of grain sounds like a lot, but in fact the amount is really huge.Based on the measurement unit of the Jin Dynasty, one stone is 500 jin of the modern measurement unit, so the conversion is 160 billion jin, and the measurement unit according to Liu Yan's plan is 24 million tons.

120 million tons of grain is not a small amount, but if it is spread evenly among 700 million people, without suppression, it will only be enough for about three months at most, and that is under the condition that there are various supplementary foods.If there is no complementary food, the ancients can eat freely, and the young and strong can eat up to a catty for a meal.

The available grain for 700 million people is only 120 million tons. Such a country must be a pill every minute, so even if the Indochina Peninsula can really provide this amount of grain, it will be a drop in the bucket.

"If there is really no harvest in the Central Plains, just calculate the output in the south and then settle the taxes..." Ji Chang blinked for a while and said with difficulty: "At most about 4000 million shi?"

Based on the original territory of the small imperial court of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the country’s official tax-collectable farmland ended before the small imperial court’s demise. If there were 2000 million shi a year, it would be regarded as the top of the sky. According to Ji Chang’s data, it doubled because the family in the south was destroyed. Quite a few, the aristocratic family's previously concealed farmland surfaced.

Liu Yan's arithmetic was quite good, and he calculated silently and came up with the figure of 440 million tons.This time, he kept blinking his eyes, wondering about the food available across the country. After being confused for a while, he asked, "How is the big man's current food reserve?"

Ji Chang opened his mouth and gave the number: "The contract is 500 million shi."

There will be this number, one is Huan Wen's massacre in the south, and it is collected from the exterminated families; the other is the annual tax accumulation, which naturally includes the looting on the Indochina Peninsula.

"Last year, the big man's consumption for statistics totaled 7000 million shi, of which 1% was used for war, and the rest was supplied to the people." When Ji Chang mentioned this, he felt severe pain in his crotch. The war opened its mouth wide and swallowed food continuously.He had to make some things clear: "The great Han expelled the Hulu one after another. The counties and counties in eastern Shandong recovered early and resumed production first. The rest of the Central Plains mostly rely on the central grain supply market."

Liu Yan is quite aware of this mentality. When the grain is harvested or bought, only a small part can be stored, and most of it is directly mobilized to supply all parties. As a result, the grain in hand is extremely worrying. It is impossible to store any strategic grain reserves.

The Central Plains has been repeatedly harmed by the Hulu of various ethnic groups, and the sharp drop in population is one of them. The Hulu are really turning the Central Plains into pastures. Most of the farmlands opened up by the ancestors of the Xia Dynasty are abandoned. It will take time to restore farming, and there is not enough labor. , There is almost no irrigation system, and there is also a lack of production tools, which has caused great difficulties for the restoration of production.

In the past three years, the center has repeatedly emphasized the dredging of the original irrigation system. People who can move in the local area, whether they are in corvee or hired, are doing this work, and a large number of slaves are also put on this work.

Most people are working with enthusiasm, thinking that the restoration of the irrigation system should make fertile fields everywhere, but God doesn't want people to live in peace at all. The land of the Central Plains ushered in a drought, and the plague of locusts that inevitably followed the drought .

Even in modern times, there is no good way to deal with drought. Even if a drought is detected in advance, it is of little use to store water in a reservoir. If it is not a reservoir, it will not be absorbed by the ground or evaporate. The water in the reservoir will also Only with the same subsystem can it be transported to where it is needed. What can be remedied is to transport water from areas that are not short of water to the water conservancy system that was originally built. (The South-to-North Water Diversion Project is used for this purpose)
If you want to build a system for allocating water sources, it is really not something that can be done in the age without machinery.Think about the manpower and time spent by the first emperor to build Dujiangyan, and then look at the 200 million deaths and injuries that Yang Guang, an impatient digging a canal, knew that the process involved scalp numbness.

If he could make preparations in advance, Liu Yan would do it as soon as he gritted his teeth. At worst, he would be mentally prepared to die hundreds of thousands of slaves.The problem is that when he had that time, the Central Plains was still under his rule. It was not enough time to wait for him to dominate the Central Plains. In the face of a large-scale drought, he could only take some trivial remedial measures. The following investigations also proved that those measures were not enough. For birds.

"There is no tax in the Central Plains this year, and the south is the only calculation... I am afraid it will be difficult to guarantee the needs." Ji Chang did not say that the south will increase taxes, and the south has only been ruled for two years. It is obviously not good for the rule of the south to make the southerners divorced from morality: "Fortunately, the Han Dynasty did not have large-scale wars, which can eliminate most of the army's food consumption, and put more food into the big project of working for relief."

Just as Liu Yan was about to speak, Cui Zong came to report that Xu Zheng, Ran Min and Huan Wen were asking to see him.

The large-scale battles being carried out by the military have basically stopped, and most of the serious high-ranking generals have to return to the center. If it weren't for the responsibility of supervising work-for-relief, they would have to be free enough to play cockfights dog.

The three of them had just attended the Great Court Meeting, and they were wearing the corseted dresses of warriors, not military uniforms.They entered the apse and lined up, saluted Liu Yan respectfully, and then glared at Ji Chang.

"Prime Minister, are you talking about the storage of supplies?" Ran Min said carelessly without waiting for Ji Chang's response: "We had a little discussion and decided that it would be inappropriate for the military to keep and allocate supplies. Return to the Prime Minister’s Mansion.”

Xu Zheng kept nodding his head, and said with a little bit of openness: "It should be so, it should be so. We and other warriors can only kill Yingye, how can we be so meticulous."

Just now Ji Chang was stared inexplicably and slightly annoyed, but after hearing what Xu Zheng and Ran Min said, he was a little stunned, and called Qu: "Chang and the king discussed the big man's reserve of resources, but never talked about it."

The three military leaders responded to Ji Chang with a burst of "hehehe...", and the expressions on their faces were clearly unbelievable.

The original thing, the military is really doing murder and arson and killing Yingye, herdsmen and material management, deployment, etc. are the affairs of civilian officials.The speed of the Han army's restoration of various places is fast enough. The Han country currently has a large number of military-controlled areas.

A large-scale natural disaster is about to occur, and the king must make preparations for disaster relief. From ancient times to the present, as long as he has a relationship with the people, it seems that it is handled by the civil service system, and the military will only be allowed to enter under extremely special conditions.It must be said that the civil service system is generally screwed up, the disaster relief is so overwhelming that the local people cannot survive and chaos erupts, and the military's appearance is to kill people.

"Who does the work, who will do it." Ran Min just wanted to carry it through to the end, so he didn't care whether it sounded good or not and whether he should say: "Don't worry about mastering so many materials, but we don't feel at ease, so please ask the king to help you." It's a fate. We thought about it carefully, thinking that only relying on the output of the big man, there is not enough food, so we should go out and grab it, and count as much as we can grab."

Liu Yan understood clearly that the three military bosses couldn't calm down, and the military was not willing to use only two standing armies for war. What they wanted was to keep the path to success.

Ji Chang said weakly: "The Indochina Peninsula is a colony of various families..."

"We don't want to mix in there." Ran Min looked at Liu Yan flatteringly, and said slyly: "What about the Liang family and the Chen family, don't they have a large number of countries in the north? The king also said, The Ganges River Basin on Ah San's side is a large grain-producing area. Now that the big man is short of food and the food at home is not enough, we think we should grab Ah San."

Asan's side is also the place that Liu Yan has designated to entertain the domestic folks. It's just that the Indochina Peninsula is a bit full now, and I can't reach out before I digest it. It is expected to wait for several years or even decades. .

"Didn't you find that strait?" Xu Zheng also had a thief on his face: "I think that if you are not familiar with cross-sea warfare, you won't engage in big moves to destroy the country, but it is very difficult to plunder with appropriate troops. suitable."

At this moment, Liu Yan looked at Ji Chang, thinking that he should take a closer look.

(End of this chapter)