At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty

These 10 people are not all pure soldiers fighting in all directions.

There are about [-] local county and county security forces. They perform local defense and security tasks and are not responsible for fighting everywhere. However, they still need to participate in military training and fight in wars.

The remaining [-] or so are the real soldiers, who are completely off-duty and dedicated to fighting. Once there is a war, they will immediately rush to fight.

Guo Peng fed them with the grain he got from farming and paid them, making them a professional army completely under his command.

Among the princes in the world, only Guo Peng can support a professional army of this size.

Because the scale of his farming is large enough, and it is getting bigger and bigger, the grain harvest is getting more and more, and there are still enough people who can control it to be recruited to transport grain to ensure wartime logistics.

In ancient wars, "one hundred thousand troops will go out for thousands of miles, and there will be 70 families who are not allowed to do things."

A thousand miles away, 70 troops were dispatched, and [-] households were required to ensure soldiers and logistics. Judging from the productivity and traffic conditions at that time, this was a small number.

Guo Peng has personally experienced many battles. The army in the front is fighting, and the civilians in the back are exhaustingly transporting military rations and military supplies. Along the way, some people fall to the ground and cannot get up.

The officers and soldiers escorted the grain and grass very fiercely, because the demand for grain and grass on the front line was almost harsh.

The farther the battle distance, the greater the mobilization of the people and the greater the damage to production.

It takes a long time to fight a battle of 10 people away from the national border, and it will take a long time to mobilize on a large scale.

In the Battle of Feishui, the former Qin Dynasty planned to mobilize 110 troops, but it took only 110 days from the start of the mobilization to the defeat, which was less than four months. For the Eastern Jin Dynasty, war was not actually a miracle of winning more with less.

Moreover, if all the 100 million troops are really crushed to the south of the Yangtze River, it is estimated that the whole country of the former Qin Dynasty will go bankrupt before the battle is fought.

It's very simple, so that 110 million people don't work and only eat, how much food reserves and transportation capacity are needed to guarantee it.

Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty conquered the Xiongnu in the north. The reason why they were able to form a powerful army was because they had a strong control over the grassroots people.

The registered household is Qimin, and the imperial power goes to the countryside.

With one order, the whole people mobilized without hindrance.

Therefore, Qin Shihuang mobilized more than [-] troops to fight several times, and there were no problems with food and grass.

Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty dispatched [-] cavalry in one go to launch the decisive battle in Mobei, and did not delay the supply of supplies.

To be able to launch a war of this scale requires high mobilization power from the government, and it is very important to be able to control the local people and means of production.

This is the difference between big government and small government.

The Qin government and the Han government in the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty were undoubtedly extremely powerful big governments.

Since the establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there has been no atmosphere of a big government. Liu Xiu once mobilized Dutian to gain more power, but under the "will of the people", he suffered a crushing defeat.

Since then, the Eastern Han government has continued to shrink, and the imperial power has continued to weaken. It looks very strong, but in fact its control over the local area has been very weak. At the time of Huan Ling, it was already a small government on the verge of collapse.

For someone Guo, if it weren't for the Yellow Turban Army's uprisings everywhere, attacking powerful households, disrupting the enemy's order, and giving him the opportunity to take advantage of loopholes, it would be very difficult to re-establish an order. Landlords rob households and means of production.

There is no doubt that it is against the "people", and it will not be good.

Thanks to the Yellow Turban Army, those wandering bandits, and thanks to the inactive celebrities, Guo Peng was given a chance to establish a strong and effective order.

It allowed him to control millions of farm households and self-cultivated farmers directly, without having to go through the tyrants and gentry, and exchange political rights for the households and means of production in their hands.

But it's just food and mobilization. These households are illiterate, uneducated, unable to master the knowledge of governance, and unable to be high-ranking officials.

Guo Peng was able to select low-level officials from among them, but he could not select great talents who could formulate strategies. Therefore, he still had to compromise with the rich and noble families and exchange political power for their cooperation.

Some counties and counties are directly controlled by Guo Peng, and some counties and counties are under the command of the command, but in fact, Guo Peng is just collecting the agreed taxes, and it is not easy to intervene in other matters.

The prefects and county magistrates have considerable autonomy, and it is not easy to control whether they are in place after Guo Peng issued an order to raise food and fodder resources.

Just like many counties and counties under Cao Cao's command were vacillating on the eve of the Battle of Guandu.

Cao Cao ordered the raising of food and grass resources to fight against Yuan Shao, but the gentry and tycoons who actually controlled these resources were not optimistic about Cao Cao, did not support him, did not give him food and grass resources, and he dared not directly grab them.

The feeling of being stuck in the neck is not good, really bad.

So Mr. Guo attached great importance to local construction from the very beginning.

Rebuild the shattered places, reorganize them into new townships and villages, directly bring them into management, register them, and establish a sound civil administration and taxation system, so as to gain their own mobilization power.

Chapter 268

Motivation is hard to come by.

But once you have mastered the mobilization power of a certain place, it is considered that you have really taken root in that place, and the rule has entered the hearts of the people, and it is no longer rootless duckweed.

Except for Guo, most of the current warlords still follow the old thinking of the Eastern Han Dynasty, recruiting troops to join the army when fighting, and disbanding after the battle.

This is a strategy that started from the time of Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu.

Liu Xiu lacked military pay when he fought in the world in the early days, and he couldn't recruit enough troops, so he couldn't do anything, which was a headache.

So some subordinates offered him a plan.

It is to recruit troops without paying military salaries, but to give them the right to plunder the place after the victory, drive them to fight, and disband them after the war, and return to their hometowns separately, which saves money.

Liu Xiu adopted such a strategy, and indeed recruited many people to join the army, and accomplished many great things, but it also set a precedent for looting places after the army's victory, which had a far-reaching impact.

It was at this time that the army really became a military disaster.

Burning, killing and looting are the rewards they should get after winning the battle. This is allowed by the emperor. The emperor wants the result, not the process.

Both the emperor and the big soldiers tasted the sweetness, so they turned this expedient measure into a rule.

Therefore, the number of professional troops in the Eastern Han Dynasty was far inferior to that of the Western Han Dynasty. In Luoyang, the mighty capital, there were only a little over [-] standing professional troops.

From then on until Guo Peng's current situation, the military thinking of powerful factions in various places is also the same.

Except for a very small number of elite cronies who support them with their own money, most of the troops are recruited temporarily.

Of course, there are practical factors as well.

Because they are not as far-sighted as Guo, who play on a large scale to accumulate food, and have enough confidence to raise soldiers. They don't have so much food and money, so they can only recruit temporarily.

Temporarily recruited troops are not very reliable, and marching and fighting must have their own base, so there are generals who spend money to support private soldiers.

Private soldiers are often the most elite army, with the best food, clothing and training. They are the decisive trump card in wartime, and the rest are soy sauce.

People at that time did not have the concept of a nation.

The neighboring counties are not their own people, and the different states are not their own people. Looting, fighting and even massacres within different spheres of influence have no moral pressure, which is completely different from today's world.

You have to tell the people at that time that we are all big men, a family, don't kill me, make sure that the other party will directly kill you and spit on you.

Pooh!Who is with your family?

Because of this tradition, the major warlords seem to be able to fight well, with a large number of people, but there are really not many elites.

In the early stage, when the warlords fought in a small area, they were all pecking at each other to see who could do it better. In the later stage, when the major warlords had a big business, they began to gradually develop the army in the direction of full-time and professionalization.

At present, everyone has no such concept at all, and they still follow the same old rules.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to quickly pull up an army of tens of thousands of 10,000+ as soon as a war is fought, fight each other, grab a good time after the fight, and then disband the army without paying military salaries?

Yuan Shao is like this, Yuan Shu is like this, Gongsun Zan is like this, Dong Zhuo is like this.

The world is like this.

Anyway, the unfortunate thing is that they are basically common people.

Only someone from Guo carried out such a large-scale farming operation in Qingyan and Erzhou.

Therefore, he harvested enough military rations and disaster relief reserves to support [-] troops. When the summer and autumn grains are harvested this year, Guo Peng will be able to accumulate the rations that [-] troops need for four years.

In troubled times, there is food in hand, and there is no panic in the heart.

Someone Guo is now building granaries in various places and stockpiling grains in case of emergencies.

Because there are granaries everywhere, military operations in Qingyan Prefecture do not require too many auxiliary troops.

If that is the case, Guo Peng organized a collective calculation and deduction of officials with the ability to calculate, and calculated that based on the current transportation capacity, it is really necessary to leave Qingyan and Erzhou to fight a large-scale invasion war, dispatching [-] people at a time. It is not difficult to scale an army.

But there are only [-] to [-] real soldiers among them, and the rest are auxiliary soldiers, and more civilians are needed to ensure that the food is sufficient for the frontline consumption.

Although Guo Peng has trained these high-quality soldiers, with the people's strength and transportation capabilities he currently has, if he wants to leave Qingyan and Yanzhou for hundreds of miles to fight, he can use only [-] to [-] soldiers in one go.

If there are too many, there will be difficulties in transporting supplies.

Therefore, in order to increase the transportation capacity as much as possible, Guo Peng mobilized farmers to build roads and open roads in Qingyan and Yanzhou, and also to combine roads and rivers to increase transportation capacity and so on.

This is a big project and it will take time.

But to be honest, the professional soldiers under Guo Peng's command who have undergone rigorous training will not be afraid to deal with any warlord.

The earliest cadres recruited from Shanggu County are now all officers, all of them have hard work, and more than 90.00% of the soldiers have war experience, which is definitely not comparable to the recruits who were recruited casually.

The most important thing is to be disciplined, understand military regulations, and know how to cooperate in battle.

If you are really a recruit, Guo Peng will not rashly put you on an important battlefield, but send you out to suppress the bandits, see the blood, and then come back to participate in the real war.

When the opponent fights, they pull up an army of [-]. It seems that they are more powerful than Guo Peng, but Guo Peng can also use the same method to pull an army.

Moreover, my 7 people are full-time professional troops with guaranteed food and clothing, well-equipped and well-trained. How do you compare the improvised militia with my elite professional army?

On a battlefield of a certain scale, the number of people fighting at the same time on both sides is only [-] to [-], and it is impossible for an army of [-] to press up together.

Guo Peng did not relax his military training for a single day, and the training was even stricter when he was not fighting.

So Guo Peng is really not happy to ask Guo Peng to mobilize troops to fight everywhere and expand his territory now.

He now wants to spend more time laying a solid foundation, stabilizing his rule, governing the grassroots townships and villages, arranging farming, building water conservancy, and preventing and controlling locust plagues.

Especially the prevention and control of locust plagues, Guo Peng is particularly concerned about this matter.

Since he was the governor of Qingzhou, he has attached great importance to the construction of water conservancy and the prevention and control of locust plagues.

He is quite aware that a locust plague can waste the hard work of tens of thousands of people for a whole year, and then there will be large-scale starvation and displacement.

When he took charge of Qingzhou, Qingzhou was really in a state of waste. Guo Peng invested a lot of resources and money to renovate Qingzhou, build villages, cultivate farmland, build water conservancy, and promote the technology of using ducks to prevent locust plagues.

Guo Peng is familiar with this technology.

When the locusts have not grown wings and are still locust gnats, ducks are driven into the fields. Ducks like to eat locust gnats. One duck can kill several kilograms of locust gnats a day.

Using ducks to eliminate locusts during the growth period of locusts can not only eliminate locusts, but the meat of ducks that grow up on locust gnats is very delicious, better than those that eat feed.

So Guo Peng introduced some duck seedlings and put them in some areas where locusts had appeared before. Not to mention, they really saw the effect.

Chapter 269

In order to popularize the strategy of raising ducks to control locusts on a large scale, Guo Peng personally wrote the manual on using ducks to control locusts, copied a large number of copies, and then handed them over to specialized technicians.

One manual for everyone, organize concentrated learning, and tell them the main points.

For example, ducks cannot be allowed to eat to the end in one go. Ducks are addicted to locust gnats, and they don’t know how to stop actively. If you don’t let them stop, they will eat until they are full.

Therefore, we must grasp the timing of putting ducks into the field. Half an hour to an hour is enough, and we must drive the same group of ducks away to digest food.

The timing of releasing ducks into the field should also be well grasped, and farmers should be assisted to release them in the right month, so as not to allow the ducks to trample and destroy the farmland, so as to affect the grain harvest.

Ducks can be raised in different households, but when used, they must be gathered together and handed over to the village chief for unified command. When the ducks grow up, they will be sold to the army, and the army will pay.

Guo Peng used military expenses to buy these delicious ducks to supplement the army with meat, so that they had meat to eat and broth to drink, so this policy was very popular with the army.

After a period of practice and exploration, a set of effective locust prevention policies was summed up. Guo Peng ordered Xun Yu to be fully responsible for this matter, and spread the policy experience of raising ducks to control locusts to the whole Qingzhou, and then to Yanzhou .

It’s not just about raising ducks to control locusts. The so-called severe drought is followed by locust plagues. Drought and locust plagues are also related. Raising ducks to control locusts is like mending a dead sheep.

To better prevent and control locust plagues, it is very important to build water conservancy.

Among the tasks assigned by Guo Peng to the magistrates of the counties is the construction of water conservancy projects. If the water conservancy projects are not developed, there will be many problems. If the water conservancy projects in any county are not done well, Guo Peng will directly hold the county magistrate himself accountable.

Along the Yellow River Basin, although the damage caused by locusts was not as great as that in the later Ming and Qing Dynasties, the damage caused by locusts was not small.

With the gradual drying up of the environment and the gradual destruction of vegetation, the living conditions of the Yellow River Basin can no longer be compared with those in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods. day.

When the warlords were in melee, locust plagues occurred from time to time, and records of cannibalism were frequently seen, which could not be contained. For example, when Lu Bu and Cao Cao competed for Yanzhou, locust plagues occurred, leading to cannibalism.

The warlords can't even take care of themselves, so who cares about the people and the harvest?

When the battle is over and there is no food to eat, well, what should we do?