The important affairs of the country lie in military service and sacrifice, but in the eyes of all the common people, this is all nonsense.
Only the ribbons pursue passionate wars and luxurious sacrifices. The common people know that there is only one big thing in life.
That’s food!
Therefore, after Zhang Chong finished fighting the battle and recounting his achievements, the first thing he did was to take his troops and prisoner camps to a few docks outside the mountain to help plant millet.
Summer has arrived, and it is the time to plant millet. It is related to farming, and Zhang Chong does not dare to slack off even a little bit. As the saying goes, "people mislead the land for a while, and the land misleads people for an autumn." After a little rectification, he handed over the general affairs to Duman. , and then led everyone down the mountain.
Previously, after a series of high-intensity battles, Zhang Chong successively eliminated the Zhangsuo tribe in Diaotiao Mountain, the seven Gongsun tribes in Wangqinfeng, and the seventeen clans of Zhou Zaoshan Lao tribe.
After the war, statistics showed that a total of 2,000 Dingkou were captured, of which 1,200 were brave. These were the most daring warriors among the people of Mount Tai, and were considered elite soldiers of the entire Han Dynasty.
In addition, there were forty-six leaders of two villages and sixteen Shanliao, including Na Changxi and Yu Jin, who all surrendered.
Yes, Yu Jin also surrendered to Zhang Chong.
At first, Zhang Chong was naturally shocked when he heard that the man hunted by the Shanliao people was called Yu Jin.
He never expected that one of Cao Wei's five best generals, who was also Cao Cao's number one general with a foreign surname, would kneel in front of him and ask for surrender.
Zhang Chong recalled it carefully and thought that the first time this person appeared on the stage of history was as one of the 20,000 Taishan soldiers recruited by Bao Xin, the powerful Taishan hero. Later, Bao Xin was attacked and killed by Qingzhou Taiping Road, and this person belonged to Cao Cao. Then he rose to prominence through military exploits.
From this point of view, it is reasonable that Yu Jin is a Taishan bandit, otherwise how would he know Chang Xi, who is also a Taishan bandit.
After accepting Yu Jin, Zhang Chong was also a little happy. After all, it was the first time that a historical heavyweight joined his army. It was worth being happy. When he was happy, Zhang Chong rewarded Yu Jin with a big cloak and asked him to work hard.
Yu Jin is also full of bitterness, what can he do!
When he was hunted by the Shanliao people, he felt bitter when he saw that all the Shanliao people wanted was a good meal. He thought that I, Yu Jin, was the leader of fifty thieves and was only worth a few bushels of corn.
sad.
And when the man named General Shi asked him if he was willing to surrender?
He was angry in his heart, but he replied in a mysterious way:
"Wish to surrender!"
Gongsun Qi is already dead, but he is still alive, so he will follow Gongsun Qi to death? This cannot be done.
Gongsun Qi's martial arts career is over, but his journey to ban has not yet begun.
Therefore, it is not shameful for him to surrender to Jin, right?
At this moment, Zhang Chong was listening to the instructions of his father, Zhang Gouzi, on the field ridge of Heshibi, forty miles north of Wangzhou Peak.
"Even though you are leading thousands of people now, you think it's amazing. When it comes to farming, you are still a male! Come and see how I do it!"
After saying that, Zhang Gouzi picked up the hoe and dug it into the ground skillfully.
While he was planing, he taught Zhang Chong:
"The soil dug out will be piled up into ridges. Don't look at this small step, it is wonderful! Otherwise, your ancestors would not have secretly imitated the old Zhang family.
That year, in order to secretly learn this skill, your ancestor crouched beside the fields all night and taught our three brothers all the work in the fields, but he was not exhausted to death.
Let’s not talk about this anymore. Come on, let me tell you what’s wonderful about this.
You see, now a furrow has been plowed, and we will put millet seeds in this furrow later. When the time comes, the millet seeds will germinate into crops.
But this grass is most afraid of the wind, and it will fall over when it blows, and the ridges of soil we have piled on both sides are just there to protect the young grass from the wind. Do you think it's wonderful?"
"wonderful!"
"What's even better! You see, now we are planting millet in the ditch, right? When we plant bean sprouts later, we will plant them on the ridges. Look at this kind of planting, it doesn't hurt the ground, isn't it?
?”
"Wonderful!"
Now Zhang Chong really thinks that this method is good, because the beauty of this method is that it does not increase the workload, but can increase the yield per mu through coordination, so why not!
Zhang Chong was not a farmer in his previous life, and he never farmed, but he knew that if he wanted the people to have enough to eat, there were two ways to do it, one was to increase the yield per mu, and the other was to increase the cultivated area.
Zhang Chong has been spending time with his father these days and knows that in this era, methods to increase yield per mu include composting, planting rotation, etc. But the results are not ideal!
Zhang Chong asked his father, and he said it was because what he was growing was not good enough. If he planted wheat as he did before, he would get half as much from one acre as he did from millet, and twice as much as from sugarcane.
Zhang Gouzi recalled to Zhang Chong that the best days when he was a child were the days when his family grew wheat, but it is a pity that he can no longer do so.
Zhang Chong asked why?
Zhang Gouzi said what else could be the reason, lack of water.
This kind of wheat requires more water than growing millet, but where can they get the water? In the past, there were water conservancy ditches built by the official temple, but no one took care of them anymore. If they want water, they can only go to the pond all the way to get it. How can they get it after all this trouble?
He also managed to get wheat.
Moreover, even the Pitang was later surrounded by Zhang Hong and his family. They said that they wanted to raise fish, but they would not provide water to everyone. Or they could use water, and they would pay ten shi of grain to their family every year.
Therefore, Dasangli switched to planting millet. Although the yield is not high, it can grow in dry land. It is a good life!
Zhang Chong understood, and the root lies here:
When the country is strong, water conservancy projects are built so that more people can use water. But once the country declines and there is no money and food to maintain public water conservancy projects, it will be difficult for the people to use water. In this process, powerful people can monopolize water resources because of their power.
, to carry out secondary exploitation of the poor people.
After thinking about this one, what about the second one, increasing the cultivated land area?
There are some dilemmas in this. First of all, if you want to increase the farming speed of Yiding, you must rely on oxen and horses.
After all, if you have to cultivate more land by yourself, how much more can you plant if you work so hard!
However, the cost of raising cattle and horses is not low. It even requires more food than raising people. This is not something every household can do.
In addition, despite the fact that there were only 50 million people in the Eastern Han Dynasty and there was a lot of land, the contradiction between man and land was not tense.
But in fact, most of the population in this world is concentrated on both sides of the Yellow River. This place has a prosperous population, but there is not enough land.
On the contrary, the vast south has less people and less land at this time. The feasible idea is to let the people from the north go south to develop, and the subsequent population explosion in the Tang and Song Dynasties will depend on this.
But this kind of immigration does not just rely on the spontaneous formation of the people. Let’s not talk about where they will get food and drink along the way. It is said that in the first year of opening up wasteland, there will be no food. Without food storage, they will not be able to survive for a year.
This is also the reason why the poor people on both sides of the Yellow River would rather starve in their hometown than leave for the south. Therefore, such large projects can only be led by the government.
At this point, Zhang Chong seemed to have grasped the general trend of the world.
An Tianxia has six characters, namely "Destroy the powerful and equalize the land".
There are also nine characters for governing the world, which are "promote water conservancy, select good seeds, and open up the south."
The former reshapes production relations, while the latter improves productivity. Only by combining them can we break the historical cycle of the Little Ice Age.
At this point, Zhang Chong felt that he had thought it through.