Chapter 201: The Yanmen Army’s Strength Is Soaring
If the Yellow Turban Army wants to attack Luoyang, it can only attack from the east, southeast, south, and north.
Luoyang has Hulao Pass and Dagong Pass in the east; Mengjin Pass and Xiaopingjin in the north; Sheyuan Pass in the southeast, Guangcheng Pass in the south, and after breaking through any of these two passes, there is Yique Pass.
The Yellow Turban Army will definitely choose one of the four directions as the main attack direction. Once they attack Luoyang City, the other six levels will lose their effect.
But no matter which direction the Yellow Turbans attack Luoyang, they must capture at least two passes before they can reach Luoyang.
Judging from the fact that Zhang Jiao placed his base camp in Chenliu and cleared all the defense facilities in front of Hulao Pass, the Yellow Turbans' main attack direction must be the front line of Hulao Pass.
But no matter which route the Yellow Turbans choose, they must capture two great passes in a row, and the difficulty of capturing the other three routes is no less difficult than Hulao Pass.
Hulao Pass is the first pass in Heluo, and its defense is the highest among the eight passes in Luoyang. However, even so, the reason why Zhang Jiao naturally chose Hulao Pass is because entering Sili, the route for grain and grass transport vehicles will be shorter, so it will be more difficult.
Convenient.
After Hulao Pass, there is Dagu Pass. Although Dagu Pass has extremely dangerous terrain, it was newly built not long ago. Since the construction time of the pass was shorter than that of Jiao Pass, its defensive power is naturally not as good as that of Hulao Pass.
On the surface, Dagu Pass is the last line of defense for Luoyang, but everyone knows that once Hulao Pass falls, it will only be a matter of time before Dagu Pass falls.
Therefore, all the hopes of the Han Dynasty are now concentrated on Hulao Pass. The imperial court mobilizes all its military forces to go to Luoyang, hoping to defeat the Yellow Turbans at this magnificent pass.
The Yellow Turbans are also sharpening their swords, preparing to conquer this thousand-year-old pass in one fell swoop, thereby destroying the Han Dynasty and establishing the Yellow Turban Heavenly Kingdom!
With a strong attack and a tight defense, it is conceivable that Hulao will become a huge war meat grinder in the near future!
……
Five months passed by in a blink of an eye.
During these five months, both the Han Dynasty and the Yellow Turbans were engaged in intense war mobilization, and countless materials were transported to the forward positions.
As for the Yanmen Army, in these five months, it was completely in a state of nirvana and rebirth, with its strength growing crazily.
All institutions in Yanmen are operating at overload, and all officials in Yanmen, including the lord Qin Wen, rarely have time to rest.
Expand the army, build customs, immigrate, build houses, divide fields, open up wasteland, sow seeds, purchase grain...
In short, it’s just one word: busy, really busy!
On average, nearly 10,000 refugees come to Yanmen every day with guidance along the way. After staying temporarily in Yanmen for a period of time, they will be assigned to move to three counties to settle down.
Gradually, Wang Meng and Fan Zhongyan's development speed in the three counties could not even keep up with the migration speed of the refugees, resulting in an overcrowded situation in Yanmen.
Seeing that this happened, Qin Wen ordered the construction of Yanmen Pass to be postponed and allowed 20,000 troops to escort nearly 200,000 Yellow Turban prisoners to the three counties as laborers.
With the addition of this part of the labor force, the abnormal and abnormal development of the four counties in Bingbei has moved in the benign and fastest direction.
As the temperature dropped sharply, the difficulty of Yanmen's immigration work also increased a lot. In response, Qin Wen had to send manpower on all the roads to Bingbei and set up porridge shacks and meal stations along the road, trying his best to prevent any one from leaving.
People starved to death on the road.
In this case, the consumption of food has also increased a lot, and most of the Qin family's secret grain depot in Yanmen has been consumed, but Qin Wen does not feel sorry for it at all.
Although food is a hard material in troubled times, if it can be transformed into foundation, no matter how much food is consumed, it is worth it, because fighting for hegemony is the way to go in troubled times.
Moreover, although the price of food has soared now, you can still buy food at a certain price. As one of the five major business families in the Han Dynasty, the Qin family has no shortage of funds, so a large amount of working capital is used to purchase food.
Jia Yu arranged in advance for several groups of people to go to various states to buy grain. Among them, Shen Wansan's group had the best results, buying the most grain and grass from Yizhou at the lowest average price.
Jia Yu saw Shen Wansan's extraordinary business talent, so he promoted and promoted him, and handed over the soap manufacturing factory project to Shen Wansan's hands.
As for the glass manufacturing factory, due to huge profits, Jia Yu decided to take charge personally, and this became the biggest business mistake in Jia Yu's life.
Although glass is highly profitable, it can only be circulated among aristocratic families. Although soap is cheap, it is an indispensable item in life. If it were popularized throughout the world, the profits would be unimaginable.
The immigration work in the four counties of Bingbei is proceeding in an orderly manner, and in the fourth month of migration, the number of refugees going to the four counties of Bingbei finally dropped.
Most of the refugees who are willing to come to Bingzhou have already come. The rest either dislike the difficult conditions in Bingzhou or dislike the long journey and are afraid that they will die on the road if they can't reach it.
But even so, thousands of refugees still arrive in Yanmen every day. For these people, Yanmen accepts them all and does not let any of them go.
During this five-month long migration, the four northern counties were merged with a total of more than 1.1 million refugees and more than 300,000 Yellow Turban prisoners of war, with a total population of more than 1.4 million.
In addition to the population of more than 400,000 in Yanmen itself and the population of more than 100,000 in the three northern and central counties, there are now nearly 2 million Han people in the four northern counties alone, and nearly 300,000 Hu people.
The resettlement of a population of 1.4 million is also a big problem. Considering the reception capacity of the four counties, there were eventually 300,000 refugees and 100,000 Yellow Turban captives, a total of 400,000 people were resettled in Yanmen, and the remaining 800,000 refugees and
Two hundred thousand Yellow Turban prisoners, a total of one million people, were placed in the three counties of Central and North China.
Since then, the population of the four counties in the north has far exceeded that of the five counties in the south, but the economic level and living standards are far behind. However, under the governance of Qin Wen, it is only a matter of time to overtake.
After the population surge, the natural response is to expand the army, and the expansion and immigration of the Yanmen Army are carried out at the same time. After all, the war will start in five months, and no training time can be wasted.
Qin Wen had been busy with government affairs and had no time to escape, so he entrusted full military power to Qin Hao. Qin Hao originally wanted to transfer Wang Meng back from the three counties to help him handle military expansion matters.
But the three counties have more affairs to deal with. Without either Wang Meng or Fan Zhongyan, the three counties will be in chaos. In the end, Qin Hao can only handle the matter of army expansion on his own.
This time the expansion of the Yanmen Army will be expanded to 100,000 troops, including 60,000 cavalry and 40,000 infantry, and 60,000 were declared to the court.
A population of two million supports an army of 100,000, and 20 people support one soldier. This puts no pressure on the Yanmen Army, and it can afford to support twice as many.