Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1206

In addition, the most unreliable way to dig rivers in advance, build embankments, artificially divert roads, and resettle in advance is the most unreliable road.

But the prince listened to his father, if he did this, wouldn't he be repeating Liu Yu's old path of reform in Songsu?

Before anything happened, immigration, conscripting labor, building rivers, and forced relocation began. By then, wouldn't all the grievances fall on the court?

If Liu Yu does not reform in Songsu, no one will be responsible for the death of 10,000+ people every year.

But he reformed and forced emigration, and those souls who died in Nanyang every year due to unacceptable climate and malaria fever would also fall on Liu Yu's head.

If the Yellow River bursts its mouth and drowns a million people, and the rest will be rescued and rescued, then the imperial court will be benevolent and righteous, similar to the benevolence of the three generations of Yu Sheng.

But if the Yellow River didn't breach, and there was no threat of Yellow River flooding in Shandong, but people were forced to relocate people and build river embankments in advance, wouldn't the imperial court be as brutal as Shi Huang built the Great Wall and Sui Yang opened canals?
Moreover, this involves the migration of millions of people, if it is really done, it will definitely be a top-level project for Dashun.

Returning to the Western Regions and going to Nanyang, compared with this, is simply pediatrics.

The diversion of the Yellow River is definitely a big deal for the traditional dynasties of the world.

The matter is definitely as big as the subjugation of the country, Huang Chao, Li Zicheng and the like.

In fact, the prince's daring to think this way proves the prince's naivety.

Of course, humans can conquer and transform nature.But it has to be matched with productivity.

Stone Age Bronze Age, conquer the Impact Plains.

In the Iron Age, conquer the swamps and mountains.

After Dashun's reforms, we made do with Hongze Lake and Huaihe River.

So, can the Yellow River be restrained?
can.

But obviously, not now.

Because there is no such ability.

Not only technically, but also requires the organizational power of a modern country to complete.

Those of the Dashunshi School are a little bit drifting.After the opening of the Huaihe River to the sea, some people felt that the Yellow River could be artificially diverted.

This is normal.

Judging from the momentum of the greatest technological progress after the use of fire by humans, people of the real school feel that Lao Tzu can use mathematics to predict the return of comets, try to measure the distance between the earth and the sun, and try to replace manpower with machinery... ...It seems that it is not difficult to wind the Yellow River, right?

In this era, Dashun's enlightenment optimism is like this.It is different from the theological optimism of Leibniz of the European Enlightenment.

Although, both can be called optimism.

However, optimism can.Actually, it can't be done.

Changes at the social level have not been achieved, and organizational control capabilities are weak.

At this level, Dashun already needs the power of the whole country to take care of the lower reaches of the Huaihe River—under the conditions of almost the same level of productivity and technology in later generations, it is just a matter of a prefecture-level city—but now it is quite necessary to use the power of the whole country. It was only because of the household government's fiscal surplus for more than two years that the Huaihe River was slightly reckoned.

Engage in the Yellow River, forget it.

In theory, can it be done?

In theory, yes, even in a stupid way.

Survey and map in advance to prepare a [-]-kilometer-wide no-man's land.

On both sides of this reserved no-man's land, build a set of spare Yellow River embankments, from Kaifeng and other places where breaches often occur, all the way to the Bohai Sea.

Not only people, but all the rivers along the way gave way to this levee.

How big is this project?

It is more than 1000 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide. In the calculation of the marginal impact area, about [-] square kilometers of uninhabited land have been artificially created.

There are four embankments of the Yellow River that do not have the Yellow River at all.

Because it can’t be too wide, a narrower river channel should be created in advance to facilitate the erosion of the Yellow River. Otherwise, if it is 15 kilometers wide, it will be silted up soon.

This is not finished.

Once the Yellow River bursts, even if water is introduced into this no-man's land, it will take at least ten years for the Yellow River to stabilize.

Because in the past ten years, the Yellow River has to rely on the flow of water slowly to create a river for itself.

Before the Yellow River is completely stabilized, a large amount of money needs to be invested every year to maintain the Yellow River.

To repair the Huaihe River, you can spend money.

To build the Yellow River, corvee had to be collected, which could not be afforded by spending money alone, because the imperial court couldn’t afford to support a group of workers who were separated from agricultural production and were responsible for the Yellow River channel for decades.

The seemingly simplest thing here is to plan a [-]-square-kilometer no-man's land.

It is also [-] square kilometers, and it seems that it is not difficult for Liu Yu to set up in Yanhu District in northern Jiangsu.

However, if these [-] square kilometers are to be done in Henan and Shandong, it is really... difficult to reach the blue sky.

This is the easiest of all the questions here.

The [-] square kilometers in Henan and Shandong are completely different from the [-] square kilometers in northern Jiangsu that were ruined and turned into hell.

In the Ming Dynasty, standing on the city wall of Yancheng, one could directly see the tide coming and going.That's Subei.

But in Shandong, Henan... the people of Dashun, even the concept of eight hundred miles of water mooring Liangshan, can only be known from Shi Naian who experienced the early Ming Dynasty.

Which of the counties, cities, prefectures, and states that may be affected along the way has a population of 10,000+ or ​​10?

Caozhou, Yuncheng, Heze, Dongping, Wenshang, Pingyin, Eping, Feicheng, Qihe, Licheng, Jiyang, Qidong, Putai, Lijin, Jining, Dongchang, Wuding...less than 1500 years Historical, it will feel embarrassing in it.

This is a completely different [-] to [-] square kilometers from Liu Yu's [-] to [-] square kilometers in northern Jiangsu.

Henan and Shandong have already fully cultivated land. The [-] square kilometers can almost be considered to be all cultivated land—because it is impossible to dig rivers to dig into the mountains, and they must go to the plains. The plains in Henan and Shandong are actually still there Not a place for farming?
About 4500 million mu of arable land can be considered.

The people affected along the way, add up to about 500 million people, or even more.

This does not count those who need to be conscripted or need to go to work, but roughly only those who need to migrate.

It’s not that if you don’t live in the river, you don’t need to move, but if the land is there, you have to move, because it’s hard to say that Dashun, or the entire world market, can accommodate 100 million industrial population. If there is no land, we can only arrange land for them.

Dashun has never used the land enclosure movement of sheep and people to create cheap urban labor. For now, if it does not engage in land enclosure, it will cause headaches every day because of the number of disaster victims, refugees and tenants.

This is the simplest, most achievable and easiest solution among the series of problems in the Yellow River.

For the rest, relocating people, repairing dikes, surveying and mapping, opening rivers, demolishing dikes, changing existing rivers...any one of them is more difficult than this.

What do you think about this matter?
If the emperor really made up his mind, in order to completely control the floods in North China, in order to prevent millions of people from being affected, even if it is subjectively in order to continue his rule, he must do this matter.Those with political ideas and a clear program who are absolutely addicted to rebellion against the feudal dynasty may hold off for a few years and ponder the idea of ​​making some big news.

Because the flood of the Yellow River is not a "swish" event that ends in one year.

Rather, if left alone, it will be a continuous disaster for at least about ten years.

flood.

Swing back and forth without a fixed channel.

Salinization after flooding.

There will inevitably be a large-scale locust plague after the flood - the locust plague is an inevitable follow-up.

riot.

uprising.

resist.

It's not appropriate for An'an to starve to death.

Corruption.

corvee.

Breach south.

Horizontal spreading due to tidal inversion.

refugees.

A plague following the death of a large population.

Disease spread from corpses in floods.

Inundation from south to north due to elevation of siltation.

For 600 years, Shandong people and officials who were not mentally prepared to rule the Yellow River were at a loss.

Wait, wait, it will take at least seven or eight years, at least five or six years, before the Yellow River can stabilize its course and enter the sea on a fixed route.

At least it was a catastrophe with tens of millions of people, according to which 700 million people died.

If we focus on the distorted only productivity improvement, we can have investment options in other directions.

Set the goal on the true benevolence, righteousness and morality, no matter how difficult it is, you should try to do it.

The goal is to serve the nation, or to serve the compatriots, of course we have to do this.

As for the more ambitious ideal, it goes without saying.

However, the prince did not think in this direction at this time, nor did he think in the direction of even a distorted productivity.

He just felt that his father would not be satisfied if he expressed his thoughts.

Because from the perspective of feudal imperial power, being Bian Que is the right choice; being Bian Que's big brother and second brother is a wrong choice.

Moreover, choosing to do this means that there is a great possibility of failure, which is not guaranteed to be successful.

If you don't do it, you won't fail.

However, the emperor asked him the question now, and he has not answered yet.

The crown prince felt that the few options that could be answered seemed inappropriate, or the emperor would not be willing to listen, or some sounded like they were deliberately digging holes to lure them.

Now if we know that the Yellow River will burst, but we don't care about it, then who is responsible for what happens in the future?

After thinking for a long time, the prince finally said: "My son is stupid, I really don't know what to say about this matter. I also ask my father to enlighten me."

The emperor sighed faintly from the bottom of his heart, the slight disappointment and dissatisfaction just now was finally suppressed.

At the beginning, he trained the prince in the style of a "successful king".

At that time, the emperor felt that the world would be peaceful in the future by conquering Rakshasa in the north and recovering the Western Regions in the west.It is nothing more than continuing to carry out reforms in the Southwest, and these conservative kings are enough.

Many troubles can be resolved before he dies, leaving his son a perfect prosperous world.

However, even the emperor himself didn't know how many new things have been introduced in the past 20 years;

In the end, it was discovered that Dashun had been kidnapped by the times, and he had to take the initiative to move forward, otherwise something serious would happen.

For more than a thousand years in the past, under the prosperous age, there was no problem for the conservative king to be the heir.

Because the changes are not that big, and the foundation is strong enough, as long as you don't try your best to create a civil fort or the like, generally speaking, there is no problem.

But now, it is difficult to keep the two words.

In the past, Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty asked his courtiers: Is it difficult to create an emperor's career, or to maintain it?
But now, how can we still succeed?Every step must be pioneered, even if you want to be a successful king, in the current situation of Dashun, you have to do a few major things to gain prestige in order to be able to hold on.

Seeing that the prince was forced by himself for a while and didn't know how to answer, the emperor also understood that even if the prince had some thoughts in his heart, he was unlikely to say them out.

Sui Dao: "My son, remember. This matter can be the responsibility of the Minister of Water Control, the emperor, someone else, or nobody's responsibility."

"But no matter which one you choose, the right to choose is in the hands of the emperor. And those who are the emperor should avoid changing orders overnight."

"Either don't do it, or do it to the end."

(End of this chapter)