Liu Xiang was suffocated to wake up, and she was a little out of breath while sleeping on her stomach.
When he woke up, it was dark outside and he didn't know what time it was. He didn't want to disturb Su Wei, so he turned his body sideways and thought quietly.
It's the end of August. I don't know if Zhang Jiao is dead. In more than a month, the main force of the Yellow Turban Army will be defeated.
By November, when Zhang Bao is destroyed, Liu Xiang will lose his barrier against the Imperial Army of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the window period for developing his power will be over. There will only be Zhongshan Kingdom between him and Huangfu Song. By then, there will be a battle.
How to repel them is a difficult problem.
Zhongshan Kingdom is now in chaos. Officials, soldiers, private soldiers, bandits, and the Yellow Turbans have all become a mess in that land.
They couldn't stop Huangfu Song.
The location of Beixin City where Liu Xiang was located was just northeast of Baoding City and southwest of Xushui County in later generations. It was called Yannan Zhaobei and the Gate of Yandi. This place was originally called Kongcheng. It was first built in the Yan Kingdom and was later abandoned due to wars.
In the Western Han Dynasty, Beixin City was rebuilt to the north of the original site of the empty city.
It is a small plain sandwiched between mountains and lakes and swamps. If you defend this place, you can block the path north to Youzhou.
To the east of Beixin City is Baiyangdian in later generations, which is now occupied by various water thieves and bandits. The terrain there is complex, with river networks, lakes, and silts densely covered. The official army is unable to conquer it, and Liu Xiang does not want to fall into that quagmire.
To the west is the boundary of the Taihang Mountains. There is Beiping County in the upper reaches of Xushui. The mountains in the county are high and the valleys are deep, making it a difficult place to use troops.
To the southwest is Puyin County, located in Puyang Mountain, the birthplace of Pushui River. The river meanders in the mountainous area, so it is known as Quni County in ancient times. As you can tell from the name, it is not easy to get there.
If he wanted to march into Zhongshan, he had to attack Puyin County first. There was not enough time, and he was likely to be besieged under the city. This made Liu Xiang hesitate.
The safest way is to defend Beixin City and resist Huangfu Song's advance from the north.
Historically, Huangfu Song wiped out Zhang Bao in November and stopped using troops. This was because the Yellow Turbans in Guangyang County had already been wiped out and no one rebelled in Youzhou.
Now, Liu Xiang's rebellion was so powerful that Huangfu Song could not turn a blind eye. There was going to be a fight after all. In two months, Liu Xiang would build Beixin City into a fortress, and then use the severe cold in winter to drive back the enemy.
He needs to get through this.
Just as Liu Xiang was meditating, the sky had brightened and a new day had begun.
Disaster relief continues in the city. Today we are mainly cleaning up the ruins after the fire and preparing to rebuild the houses. The buildings in the Han Dynasty were mainly made of wood. Of course, the wealthy families used good wood and built beautiful buildings.
Ordinary people do not have this condition. Their houses are built with a small frame of wood, and then filled with branches, thatch, and soil. Such thatched huts and thatched huts are their residences.
In case of fire, each thatched hut is like a torch, and this kind of house is really not very effective in keeping out the cold.
Liu Xiang felt that it would be really unsightly to build a bunch of underground cellars in the county town. So he asked people to dig out soil embryos to build houses. The yellow mud was mixed with broken thatch and straw, which was degerminated with molds and then dried in the shade.
When building a house, just use mud to build the joints and then plaster the outside with yellow mud. This kind of house still existed in later generations until the 1980s.
There were also earth-membrane buildings in the Han Dynasty, but they were rammed earth techniques and were indeed very strong. However, they consumed too much manpower and material resources, and the construction speed was extremely slow. They were mainly used to build city walls, palaces, and mausoleums, and ordinary people could not afford them.
After teaching the method, Liu Xiang stopped caring. He was just a talker. The people of the Han Dynasty were much more hands-on than him. How to dig trenches for foundations, build walls, build beams, and pave roofs?
Without Liu Xiang’s teaching, everyone would know how to do it.
Liu Xiang had the idea of burning red bricks, but it was too late and he did not have time to build a brick kiln. The original kilns in Beixin City were requisitioned by Liu Xiang and were being rebuilt to prepare cement, lime and trebuchet stone bullets.
.
Liu Xiang needs these materials even more. Compared with them, the red bricks are dispensable. Let's wait until we get through the difficulties.
Yesterday at the execution ground, I played a trick about giving out grain and establishing trust. I don’t know if it was really useful or if I was just attracted by the grain.
There are so many people coming to the county to apply for recruitment, and victims from all over the country are gathering in the county seat.
The people's grievances in Beixin City were not settled yet. Liu Xiang was worried about these people and was not worried about recruiting them into the army, so he recruited them all as civilian husbands and sent them to work in various places.
Liu Xiang couldn't tell who had been robbed and how much was robbed. He didn't know how much food he should return, and he couldn't appease the resentment in these people's hearts.
But famine waits for no one. If there is no food, you will starve to death.
It can be considered a work-for-relief program.
The old and weak, women and children were given two meals, and the young and strong were given an additional five buckets of rice every month.
It is estimated that more people will come in the next few days.
The more the better, the more the better. Liu Xiang planned a lot of projects, but he was worried that he would not have enough labor.
The people were busy, there were crowds of people everywhere, and the city had completely turned into a large construction site. Liu Xiang focused on the problem of toilets. With so many people gathering, if the excrement was not properly treated, the plague would be rampant.
Priority was given to building latrines, and dedicated personnel were assigned to supervise the problem of random excretion. A team was also established to collect feces and transport it outside the city for fertilization.
As the old saying goes, a farmer's business relies entirely on manure. The manure is mixed with grass stalks and leaves, plus soil, and is piled in the field. Finally, it is sealed with soil and allowed to ferment. It can be used as fertilizer next year and can be directly composted.
Before the popularization of chemical fertilizers, this was a magic weapon to increase field production.
There is no peace outside the city. Anyway, where Liu Xiang is, the people don't want to calm down. Do you want to wait for death in peace? Just dream, they all work for me. If you work, you will have food.
He asked people to build a straw shed outside the city, where they were degermed and dried in the shade. There was not such a big place in the city.
He also ordered people to cut down trees to solve the problem of building materials and fuel.
A convoy of materials was also organized to transport demolition waste out and construction materials in. Deer carts, flat carts, and baggage carts kept coming and going.
After leaving the west gate and walking another eight or nine miles, you reach the mountainous area. There is a kiln there, which is mainly used for firing pottery and bricks. It is currently being renovated and will be used specifically to bake cement, lime and trebuchet stone bullets.
Liu Xiang felt that the terrain here was really good, surrounded by mountains on two sides and adjacent to Xushui in the south. He wanted to build a small town here to serve as a workshop area and expand the kiln factory.
This city does not need to be big. Relying on the trend of the mountain ridges, it is enough to build two more city walls of about 200 meters. It can also provide mutual aid to Beixin City in wartime.
Once the cement comes out of the kiln, construction begins.
Liu Xiang planned to name this place Baoding to commemorate the Gyeonggi Gate for future generations.
After this calculation, he found that there was a lot of labor shortage, so he sent a message to Fan Yang and mobilized 10,000 people to go south, and sent 2,000 infantry to escort him. He also brought more craftsmen with the army to build the small town of Baoding.
At the end of the document, Tian Chou was asked to send a team of Tiqi over.
After walking around a lot, we returned to the county government office in the evening.
Zhao Yun has not returned yet. He has taken three thousand troops to attack the manor and fort outside the city. Most of these are the properties of the rebels last night, and the rest are also inseparable from the rebels.
Liu Xiang wanted to completely clean up the powerful landlords in Beixin City, and last night's rebellion gave him a perfect excuse.