Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 216 Raid Inspection

Yang Menglong also screamed in his heart that something was wrong.

In the Tang Dynasty, feudal vassals and towns were separated, and each festival envoy killed literati like chickens. This tragic history has become a nightmare for literati. Song Taizu used a glass of wine to kick off the prelude to advocating the civil and dethroning the military. The almost hysterical suppression, no matter which army, as long as there is a slight possibility of becoming a military town, it will immediately attract crazy suppression, and it will not be finished if it is not dismantled. Di Qing was frightened to death by the civil officials.The Ming Dynasty carried forward this method even more. In the Song Dynasty, the military status was a bit lower, but the treatment was still good. The generals also had greater power and could decide the deployment of battles. This was not the case at all in the Ming Dynasty. The status of the generals was low. Even the decision-making power of facing the enemy, the supply of food, etc. are all in the hands of civilian officials. A group of civilian officials who have not even read military books say they have to fight as they say. If they win, they have good command. It's the generals who are weak and incompetent. Anyway, the civil servants have only credit and no fault.disobedient?Then you just wait to be cleaned up, without the nods of these civil servants, your army can’t even eat—the generals don’t have much food and grass in their hands, and the food and grass are supplied by the states and counties along the way when they go out. Where to go, whether you can eat or not depends entirely on the mood of the local officials. With a combination of punches, the generals have no temper at all.He and Lu Xiangsheng went in the opposite direction, vigorously reclaimed wasteland, stockpiled grain and grass, and tried to be self-reliant.

The old man Sun came to the Daming Mansion, probably because he wanted to ask the teacher for his crime, right?

The more he thought about it, the more he felt that something was wrong, he stepped forward and cupped his hands and said, "Master Lu, these abnormal actions of Mr. Lu are all suggested by the subordinate officials, and have nothing to do with him!"

Sun Chengzong looked at the boy strangely: "Did you suggest him to do this?"

Yang Menglong said: "Yes! The vigorous reclamation of wasteland, the construction of water conservancy projects, and the use of the output of the military field to support the soldiers are all learned from me! That...the method of training soldiers is also learned from me, and there is really not much from him. Relationship, if there is anything wrong, you can find me!"

Lu Xiangsheng shouted: "Commander Yang, I want to imitate you, Wuyang Guard. One person does everything and one person is in charge. It's not your turn to support me!"

Yang Menglong said: "It's not topping the tank, the fact is like this!"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "You!"

Sun Chengzong waved his hand and said, "Stop arguing, take me to the military camp and granary first."

Yang Menglong desperately winked at Lu Xiangsheng, the corners of his eyes and mouth were constantly moving, just like a humanoid telegraph machine.If possible, he really wanted to use brainwaves to send a telegram to Lu Xiangsheng, asking him to reject Sun Chengzong's request.The Tianxiong Army is now considered to be well-equipped soldiers and has a lot of food reserves. This is of course a good thing for the army, but it is not necessarily a good thing for the civil servants. The well-intentioned people may be happy that the Tianxiong Army can support themselves, but they have bad intentions. If you want to add a sentence "...the capital of the king and hegemony" in the memorial to the emperor, you just wait to be punished!Even if you want to take this old man to see it, you have to remove most of the food and grass in the warehouse, let the soldiers replace it with some tattered equipment, and then take him there to reassure the leaders and the country.

Lu Xiangsheng hesitated for a moment, gritted his teeth, and made a "please" gesture to the door: "Mr. Ge, please!"

Sun Chengzong nodded slightly and strode out.

Yang Menglong grabbed Lu Xiangsheng and whispered: "Are you stupid? You have hoarded so many soldiers, armor, food and grass, which is a taboo thing in itself, and you still take him to see it? Aren't you afraid of being labeled a big hat by him?"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "Mr. Ge has been kind to me, and he is an upright person. He would never do this!"

Yang Menglong jumped on his feet and said: "He can't, but can you guarantee that the people around him won't? Any one who makes a small report to the higher authorities is enough for you to eat and walk away!"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "I am not afraid of the slanting shadow!" After speaking, he followed with strides.

Yang Menglong chased after him again, grabbed him for the second time, and lowered his voice: "You are upright and not afraid of evil shadows, but some bastards are born with evil hearts. This kind of bastard is born to hate others, you Can you be more careful!" He emphasized his tone: "If the momentum is not good, you can infer that most of the armor and supplies are borrowed from me, remember!"

Lu Xiangsheng's complexion changed slightly: "Isn't it even more taboo for you, a commander of the guard, to lend so much food, grass, and armor? If it gets out, I'm afraid you may lose your life!"

Yang Menglong said: "Anyway, you just push me!"

Sun Chengzong's voice came over: "What are you two muttering behind? I'm not a big tiger, so why should I be so panicked?"

Lu Xiangsheng responded casually, and quickened his pace to follow.Yang Menglong muttered: "Of course you are not a tiger, but the group you represent is much more terrifying than tigers. Tigers eat people and spit out bones. Your group doesn't even spit out hairs, let alone bones!" up.

A group of people came to the barracks of the Tianxiong Army.The Tianxiong army camp has towering fences, thick deer villages, deep and wide trenches, and meticulous layout. It is like an iron fort in Tangchi. It is a headache to swallow such a big camp.Next to the big camp is a more heavily guarded camp, with five steps, one sentry post and ten steps, one post, and all the fences are covered with thick soil to prevent fire. In order to prevent theft, the Tianxiong army even shoveled all the grass within hundreds of steps. The radishes were planted to provide fresh vegetables for the military camp, and also to prevent thieves and robbers from secretly approaching and sneaking into the camp under the cover of vegetation.Sun Chengzong pointed to the camp and asked, "Why is this camp so heavily guarded?"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "This is the grain depot. Hundreds of thousands of shi of the military grain are stored here. The relationship is very important. The lower officials have to step up their guard. If something goes wrong with the military grain, the nearly ten thousand soldiers and tens of thousands of military households will only be hungry." It's time to die."

Sun Chengzong was quite surprised: "You put so much food and grass in it? Go, go in and have a look!"

Lu Xiangsheng naturally obeyed, asked the defenders to open the door, and led Sun Chengzong and Yang Menglong into the grain depot.

In the grain depot, there are piles of sacks that are so bulging that they are almost bursting. If you open a bag at random, there are full grains of wheat still exuding a faint fragrance.Lu Xiangsheng explained: "This is newly harvested wheat, all from Juntian."

Sun Chengzong picked up a handful of wheat, sniffed it with his nose, and said, "Sure enough, it's fresh wheat, and the grains are plump. It seems that the wheat harvest in Tianxiong Army's field is really bumper this year. How much grain do you keep?"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "30 shi."

Several attendants brought by Sun Chengzong gasped.

Sun Chengzong didn't speak, walked out of the warehouse full of wheat, pointed to another warehouse and asked, "What's in there?"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "Potato noodles."

Sun Chengzong smiled and said: "Potato noodles? It's interesting, go and have a look."

Lu Xiangsheng asked someone to open the door of the potato noodles warehouse. Sure enough, the bags inside were full of potato starch. The quantity was even more than that of wheat. They had just been put into the warehouse.Lu Xiangsheng personally opened a bag and introduced the processing of potato noodles to Sun Chengzong. Sun Chengzong was really surprised when he learned that the output of this thing reached more than ten dan per mu, and there was still a lot of room for improvement.

"It can be processed into steamed buns, bread, noodles, and can also be used to make wine and sugar. It is a very ideal food." Lu Xiangsheng said.

Sun Chengzong looked a little excited: "What a good thing! The yield is high and the taste is good. Where can I find such a good thing! I will report to the court later and strongly encourage the people to plant this plant. With it, the people's lives will be easier. !"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "The elder Ge doesn't know that the output of potatoes is far more than this. It is the first time for those military households to plant potatoes. There are many inappropriate things, and the output has been affected. Otherwise, they can harvest more. Like Wuyang Wei , an acre can produce 25 shi of potatoes!"

Sun Chengzong looked at Yang Menglong in surprise: "Really?"

Yang Menglong shrugged and said, "I went outside the Great Wall before the autumn harvest. I don't know exactly, but it's about the same. Last year, the yield of potatoes we planted per acre reached [-] shi."

Sun Chengzong asked: "Then how many potatoes did you grow?"

Yang Menglong said: "Wuyang Thousand Households planted [-] mu, and Biyang planted another [-] mu, but the military field in Biyang was not as fertile as Wuyang's. The yield was affected, and it must not be able to reach The standard of Wuyang Qianhusuo."

Sun Chengzong calculated silently: "Despite this, you still harvested nearly 200 million stone potatoes from the [-] acres of military land!"

Yang Menglong said: "It's probably about this number. There must be more than 160 million shi."

Sun Chengzong was inspired and said: "If every guard can be like Wuyang Guard, the court will be much easier!"

The Tianxiong Army has hundreds of thousands of grains in storage. Of course, it is impossible to store such a large amount of grain in one warehouse. This is just one of the larger warehouses. There are several granaries in Guangping and Shunde. After September, The Tianxiong Army has officially completed its training and is going to divide its troops to garrison some strategic locations in these two prefectures. At that time, the grain stored in these granaries will come in handy.Even so, the huge storage of 15 shi of wheat and [-] shi of potato noodles amazed Sun Chengzong and his group.

Then, the old man visited the horse feed warehouse.

When you mention the horse feed warehouse, the first thing you may think of is the forage field, but this is actually wrong.Ordinary horses don’t care if they eat hay every day, but war horses, especially Hetao horses, must eat hay in order to grow fat. If they are allowed to eat hay every day, it is better to kill them.Now there are [-] shi of barley stored in the horse warehouse, and the workers are busy drying the alfalfa cut from the army field, then chopping it and storing it in the silo. It is fermented in an environment to become silage, which is a storage technology that has been used since the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The nutritional value of the preserved silage is much higher than that of hay.In addition to alfalfa, the workers also chopped sweet potatoes and fermented them for storage. This trick was learned from Yang Menglong. The results of his experiment proved that feeding horses with fermented sweet potatoes is easier to gain weight. Such a useful technique, Lu Xiangsheng has no reason not to learn .

In addition to forage, barley and sweet potatoes, there are more than 2000 black beans in the horse feed library. War horses also like to eat these beans. Of course, it seems a bit wasteful to feed them to horses. You should squeeze the oil first and then make the bean dregs. The effect will be better if you add the bean cake into horse feed.

"So much horse food is enough to feed two or three thousand war horses." Sun Chengzong pointed to the bags of black beans and said.

Lu Xiangsheng said: "I tell the old man that I only have 1000 or [-] war horses now."

Sun Chengzong frowned slightly: "There are only 1000 or [-] war horses? I remember that you have repeatedly asked the court to allocate funds to buy [-] war horses. Why is there so much difference?"

Lu Xiangsheng smiled bitterly: "After several reports, the Ministry of War rejected them on the grounds that they had no money. Fully half of these [-] war horses were seized by Xiaguan in Dingxing, and the remaining half were purchased by Xiaguan at high prices through horse dealers. Bought."

Sun Chengzong sighed.Now the horse farms in the hands of the Ming Dynasty are producing fewer and fewer horses due to grassland degradation and poor management. Correspondingly, the size of the cavalry of the Ming army has shrunk sharply. There are benefits only for Hejia Ding. If you want to get a large number of war horses, you can only buy them from the Mongols.Even if each war horse is only sold for 30 taels of silver, two thousand horses would be 6 taels of silver. The government's financial deficit was already so red that it couldn't get any redder, so of course it couldn't afford so much money.He pondered and said, "This... this old man will fight for you again, and try to find a way to gather two thousand horses for you."

Lu Xiangsheng was overjoyed: "Thank you, Mr. Ge!"

Sun Chengzong waved his hand and said, "You're welcome, you deserve it. Well, the warehouse is almost there. Take me to see your barracks."

(End of this chapter)