Author: West Lake in the Rain

With Changzhou Prefecture established, Jiang Xinghuo and his party can be said to be extremely resourceful and quick.

On April 2, the first year of Yongle, we had just arrived at Changshu, an important town on the border between Suzhou Prefecture and Changzhou Prefecture, and after a little rectification.

On April 4, in just two days and one night, thousands of infantry and cavalry mixed troops braved the moderate rain, rushed hundreds of miles, and arrived at Taicang Prefecture.

Here, Jiang Xinghuo reunited with Ping Jiang Bo Chen Xuan's troops and received support from the boat division.

After waiting for another day, after the soldiers from the Chongming Sand Station, Liuhebao Zhong Station, Wusongjiang Station and other local guard stations were assembled in place, the military operation to quell the civil unrest officially began.

Emperor Yongle did not send any famous masters and generals to assist Jiang Xinghuo in quelling the chaos. Even at this moment, in order to conquer Annan, hundreds of thousands of troops around Nanjing were undergoing intense combat training and preparations. There were more than 20 Hongwu and Jingnanxun.

Gui could lead troops to quell the rebellion at any time, but Emperor Yongle had no faction except Pingjiang Bo Chen Xuan, who was responsible for dredging the river.

In fact, the focus of the civil unrest in the south of the Yangtze River is not at all about the civil unrest. A group of White Lotus sect rebels are inciting the victims to rebel. How can they resist the elite Yan army that has experienced the blood and fire of the four years of Jingnan?

The important things are how to quickly provide disaster relief after the chaos is over, how to effectively control floods, how to use this chaos to effectively implement the reform in the Jiangnan prefectures headed by Songjiang Prefecture, how to snatch the population out of the hands of the gentry,

How to build a new type of manual workshop area.

Therefore, Jiang Xinghuo entrusted the matter of quelling the rebellion to the highest-ranking Pingjiang Bo Chen Xuan, with him as the chief general and the second prince Zhu Gaoxu as the deputy general, to quell the rebellion of the White Lotus Sect.

He himself came to Huating County, the seat of Songjiang Prefecture, and took charge of local disaster relief, stabilizing food prices, flood control planning and other work.

"You soldiers should take care of these things! I have a lot to do, so I want to focus on disaster relief."

In the rather shabby county government office of Huating County, Jiang Xinghuo frowned and said without even looking at the battle report handed over by the captain next to him.

"This" the captain who came back to deliver the battle report was in trouble and signaled Wang Bin with his eyes.

Wang Bin looked at Jiang Xinghuo, who had not slept for two days and was still working at his desk, and advised.

"Master Imperial Master, you'd better take a look."

Jiang Xinghuo blinked his dry eyes hard, took the battle report and glanced at it, his expression became serious immediately.

The battle should have been overwhelming, but it encountered unexpected obstacles.

The Tax Guards are a firearms unit, and it has been raining for days at this time. Regardless of whether it is heavy rain, light rain, or moderate rain, the firearms are useless anyway. The bows and crossbows of the ordinary guards will not be used for long, and the bow strings will soften and lose their elasticity.

Arrow feathers will also be affected by rain and lose their ability to stabilize the direction. Therefore, battles often evolve into pure cold weapon combat.

But even so, the soldiers in formation relied on their overwhelming fighting will, skills and physical strength to easily win against the chaos organized by the White Lotus Sect.

In just seven or eight days, hundreds of thousands of White Lotus sect rebels were compressed by more than 10,000 officers and soldiers into the triangular area between Taihu Lake, Yangcheng Lake (today's Yangcheng Lake), and Dianshan Lake.

.

But as time went by, the advancing speed of the army began to slow down, and in the end, they were even unable to attack.

Although this is due to the increasing density of troops of the White Lotus Rebellion, it is by no means the main problem. The main problem is that the logistics cannot keep up.

It was not that there was no food. Thanks to Zhu Gaochi and Xia Yuanji's painstaking planning, a large amount of food transferred from Sichuan and the two lakes was successfully transferred to Changzhou Prefecture. Changzhou Prefecture also deployed transportation routes and escort troops.

This food, not only for an army of more than 10,000 people, but also for hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of disaster victims, can feed them for a month.

The amount in advance is already very full.

But the unexpected thing is that the unprecedented heavy rain caused the water level to rise sharply. As a result, the grain transferred from Changzhou Prefecture stalled on the Wangting-Xushuguan line as soon as it entered Suzhou Prefecture. The ship could not move, so the grain had to be transferred to Suzhou Prefecture.

It was moved ashore and transported by civilians on the road.

But now that there have been heavy rains for days, the grain bags cannot be carried on the shoulders for fear of getting wet, and the roads are so muddy that transporting them in wheelbarrows covered with raincloths, or directly transporting them by horse-drawn carriages, can easily get stuck in the mud.

It is difficult to move even an inch.

To put it bluntly, the rainstorm was so heavy that it was beyond everyone's expectation.

The current poor transportation situation is no longer something that human power can overcome.

The food carried by the army from Taicang Prefecture, as well as the supplies obtained from official warehouses in Kunshan, Zhenyi Town, Changzhou, Wuxian and other places along the way, were also gradually consumed during the battle.

"Ultimately, what Uncle Ping Jiang means is that the reason why the final general offensive cannot be carried out is because of lack of food?"

The Captain of the Marine Division under Chen Xuan nodded awkwardly. Before Chen Xuan led the troops, he gave Jiang Xinghuo a guarantee that with the help of the tax guards and soldiers from various local guards, he could defeat the thieves in ten days.

Unfortunately, this goal has not yet been achieved.

Fortunately, Jiang Xinghuo is not Zhu Youjian. He was so excited when he heard "restore Liao Dynasty in five years". When Jiang Xinghuo formulated a series of plans for quelling chaos, disaster relief, and flood control, he fully considered the big cake under his command.

interference factors.

"Then if I transport enough food to him to the front line, can we quell the chaos? Can we rescue these more than 100,000 people and avoid killing ordinary people?"

Naturally, the captain did not dare to answer on behalf of Chen Xuan, but his look had already shown that what the front line was lacking now was food.

How to get food? How to transport it to the front line?

Jiang Xinghuo stood up, and behind him hung a map that was covered with black cloth and could not be easily shown to others. The mountains and rivers of the Jiangnan provinces were all included in it. Although the painting was a bit abstract.

Looking at the Kanyu map, Jiang Xinghuo fell into deep thought.

The army cannot fight without food for a day. Although they have tried their best to mobilize all the food that can be mobilized along the way, it is still not enough at this time. If the food route is blocked by heavy rain, then the best outcome for the army will be to stay in place and stand in confrontation. The worst is

The result was that the entire army collapsed.

The thorny point now is that the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is already the most usable inland waterway. The other waterways extending from Taihu Lake and three other lakes are either blocked by siltation or have long been abandoned.

It’s not that the Yangtze River and the sea cannot carry out water transportation, nor that there is not enough food, but that the inland waterways cannot function and cannot be transported to the front line, and land transportation has basically been scrapped.

Jiang Xinghuo's thoughts drifted to other directions.

"Whether the grain is concentrated in Changzhou Prefecture, which is closer to Nanjing, whether it is to take the most convenient Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal as originally planned, or it is simply transported from the Yangtze River waterway to Songjiang Prefecture, there will be a period of land transportation difficulties."

"The army is running out of food."

"But, there are more than 100,000 people incited and held hostage by the White Lotus Sect. What are they eating?"

A cold air swept over from the open county office, and Jiang Xinghuo shivered.

No, we can't wait any longer. Now we can put an end to the chaos. It will not only put an end to the chaos, but it will also save countless people!

The White Lotus Sect's control over the people is definitely not as strong as imagined. The people have followed them in rebellion, which is nothing more than successive floods. This year, there has been a spring drought and then a summer rain, and they really can't survive.

But the people are also human beings. When the food they finally gathered is gone, the White Lotus Sect will be unable to control them and will naturally collapse by themselves.

But is it better to let the rebels surrender completely, or to wait for them to collapse and then catch them one by one?

Of course it’s the former!

Moreover, if the latter happens, it means that a large number of people have starved to death.

In the eyes of the Ming Dynasty, they were called rioters, but in Jiang Xinghuo's heart, they were living people, and they were also the most important and indispensable beings for the development of large-scale handicraft factories.

In the past, how could hundreds of thousands of people be liberated from the fields on a large scale?

Therefore, he must find a way to transport food to the front line.

Jiang Xinghuo looked at Kanyu Tu, and slowly his eyes lit up.

His eyes focused on another place in Songjiang Mansion.

——Shanghai County.

Shanghai was a town during the Song Dynasty. Due to the divergence of merchants and merchants, a ship lifting department and a cargo yard were established to carry out trade.

In the Yuan Dynasty, that is, in the 14th year of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols established a shipping department in Shanghai Town, which together with Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Qingyuan (Ningbo), and Kanpu (Haiyan) were collectively known as the Seven Major Cities.

Ship Division.

In the same year, Huating County was upgraded to Songjiang Prefecture. In the 27th year of the Yuan Dynasty, some townships in Huating County were separated and Shanghai County was newly established.

Therefore, the area under the jurisdiction of Songjiang Prefecture now includes Huating County (prefectural office) and Shanghai County, as well as Jinshan Guard and Qingcun Zhongqian Guard. As for Qingpu County, in the history of Jiang Xinghuo's previous life, during the Jiajing and Wanli years

It was just added.

"There is a way."

Jiang Xinghuo murmured.

"Um?"

At this time, Song Li just walked in and asked in a daze: "What method did the Imperial Master say?"

"Methods of transporting food."

Song Li naturally knew how difficult it was to transport grain now. He put down the documents in his hands and asked in surprise: "How to transport grain? Is the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal open to traffic again?"

Jiang Xinghuo shook his head, pointed at the map of Kanyu and said: "Raise food from Huating County locally, go north via the waterway to Dahuangpu, and make a transit to Shanghai County, but do not enter the sea. Instead, go west to the Wusong River, and then you can transport it to

Between Yangcheng Lake and Dianshan Lake.”

Dahuangpu, also known as the planned Huangpu River, is one of the water control paths that Jiang Xinghuo has discussed with Song Li before, and Song Li naturally knows about it.

But now this plan that works on the map is facing various practical difficulties.

Song Li asked repeatedly: "The food we prepared is all in Changzhou. Now the local gentry are hoarding goods. The price of food has risen sharply. There is not enough food in the official warehouse. How can we raise enough to feed 10,000 or even 100,000 people?"

food?"

"Even if we have the funds, how can we open up the Dahuangpu line?"

Jiang Xinghuo picked up the coir raincoat next to him and said, "Let's solve the first point first. I have my own solution for the second point."

"Now let the prefect of Songjiang summon the gentry from nearby Huating County and hold a banquet for our troops in the evening."
Chapter completed!