stubborn thief

Chapter 296 Pine Forest Castle

The wind blowing by the Dadu River was cold, and the elder brother of the yamen servant in Xiubaozi felt bitter, no matter how bitter he was, he dared not say anything.

Liu Chengzong chose the location to build the fort, which is separated from Dajianlu by a mountain, a distance of one hundred and forty to fifty miles.

And the distance from the official village of Lengbian Tusi, counting the Dadu River, is less than two miles in a straight line.

This place is very good. There is land suitable for cultivation. There are more than [-] mu of cultivated land in the north and more than [-] mu of cultivated land in the south. Extending north and south along the river beach, there are also places that can be reclaimed.

Moreover, in the mountains behind, there are various stone materials such as iron, coal, lead, and lime, and there are sufficient water sources.

Liu Chengzong didn't send anyone to explore the mine, because the mine is there, he only needs to send someone to follow the native people to the mountains to find it, and find the minerals to be mined in the past where the chieftains circled them to prevent people from going there.

However, Liu Shizi decided to build a fort here, not to protect the fields and minerals.

It's because from this place, you can just see the fertile fields on the opposite bank, and not far away is the official village of Lengbian chieftain.

Although the territory of the cold side is much smaller than that of Changhexi, and the water and soil conditions on both sides are almost the same, but it is far stronger than Changhexi in terms of land reclamation, water conservancy irrigation projects, and population.

This is the power of the market. Where the market is, the wealth will flow, and where the wealth is, the population will migrate.

In fact, the terrain along the Dadu River is not suitable for building a fort. The Dadu River rises every May, and the river will swallow up all the lowlands along the river. However, in the dry season, large rocky beaches will be exposed, which is not conducive to building a fortress.

If you want to build a fortress that can be shot to the opposite bank, the lower layer of the fortress will be soaked in the river water for a period of time every year; if you want not to be soaked, you cannot cover the beach on the opposite bank within range.

Liu Chengzong didn't want to build a fort here at first, whether in Xining or Kangning, he likes to leave a little buffer zone with the imperial court, and the cold side is the buffer zone.

But two porters can bring hundreds of people to migrate here. This scale of immigration makes Liu Chengzong both happy and surprised. What is happy is that under the environment of the mainland, the population is no longer the constraint of Kangning Mansion; what is surprising is that this year's autumn harvest After that, the number of immigrants will probably increase exponentially, and his food gap will increase dramatically.

Considering this problem, the terrain here is very suitable. It can be used not only as a warehouse, but also as a field support for defensive counterattacks. If you retreat, you can use military pressure to force the Shenbian chieftain to sell grain. The army pursued him - he must build a fort here.

Because there is a Pine Forest River nearby, he named it Pine Forest Fort and the farmland next to it Pine Forest Town. He temporarily stationed [-] soldiers and planned the future development of the Pine Forest area.

If you have a mine, you can’t be idle. If you want to be able to mine and smelt iron here, there should be a very famous Luding Bridge nearby in my memory. Although others have already stood here, they still can’t figure it out. Why is something related to the Lu character called Luding?

He also wants to build a chain bridge, but he doesn't have the ability to build bridges now, so he has to mine iron and smelt kilns to make bricks. The biggest difficulty in iron smelting lies in talents, and he has to transfer people from Xining to build the best one. Dajian furnace.

He wants to transform a small hill into a civil structure castle, and build two stone-based watchtowers on the river beach to protect his people and the future iron factory, and lay the foundation for the construction of the chain bridge. In the future, there will be a bridge connecting the Dadu River It is much easier to transport goods and luggage between the two sides of the strait.

Fortunately, Muya was able to help with the matter of building the fort. There was a shortage of all kinds of Fanmin in Changhexi, except for idlers hanging out in Dajianstove.

Muya's iron armored soldiers ran around, and brought over when they saw people wearing cassocks on the street. The idle monks over there were all called to transport stones from the mountain, and the monks were so anxious that they raised the price of Dajianlu's clothes [-]%.

Raising the height is useless, the tailor shop in Dajianlu uses high-quality fabrics imported from Chengdu, and it does not serve ordinary people at all. It's still very cold, so I can only be dragged to work in cassocks.

On the contrary, the three famous Yamen servants who were detained under the mountain breathed a sigh of relief. When they were first caught, they were frightened when they heard that they were going to build a castle. They were afraid that they would die from exhaustion. Come to help, my heart is half relieved.

I am still worried about being exhausted to death, but I just feel that there is a free overhaul service when I am exhausted, more or less this soul can fly back to my hometown.

When the work really started, Liu Chengzong met with the three yamen servants, and completely relieved them of their worries and didn't let them do anything else. He just worked as a supervisor here, and six tsampa and ten pieces of tsampa every day were converted into two Marshal Tongbao.

The three yamen servants thought about it, although they had never seen the two-fold coin with the pattern of the Qinghai Marshal’s mansion and the war horse cast on the back, but after careful calculation, the salary was higher than that of being an errand in the county government, and they just watched others do their jobs, and they were capable.

If they can't make it right and put them back, the yamen can still receive a wage if they are on business trips.

Mr. Liu is such a man who knows people and makes good use of them. It would be too wasteful to use professionals like yamen servants who oppress the people to carry stones.

Inadvertently, Liu Chengzong's act of paying the yamen servants made the train of thought of chieftain Shen Bianyu on the other side completely go astray.

Ever since Liu Chengzong's army entered Changhexi, Chieftain Shen Bian has been paying attention to the movement here. When a group of Han people came to reclaim the fields, and there was a posture of large-scale construction, Chieftain Yu completely panicked. This aim.

The more you look at it, the more strange it becomes.

The three people on the construction site were wearing narrow robes in green clothes, red scarves around their waists and black hats on their heads. There were three peacock feathers on the left side of the hats.

In addition, the monks who carry stones and carry wood from the mountains every day are all monks in cassocks.

Tusi Yu wondered what was going on in Changhexi, and cooperated with the imperial court to build the temple?
Although there are many sergeants, they do not seem to be too aggressive. He has been busy repairing waterwheels, water mills, repairing canals and digging trenches to level the land. Because there are too many trenches dug, Chief Yu can also rely on a telescope. There's really no sign of danger.

Liu Chengzong really paid more attention to the construction of water conservancy projects. He used this place as a laboratory to test the equipment he had learned from Wang Zheng's illustrations of strange instruments.

He has learned the things in that set of books for a long time, but he has never had the opportunity to apply them. According to his experience, although this is a very advanced book combining Chinese and Western cultures, many things in it may still remain in design and experimentation in this world. stage, nowhere has been put into use.

Because the things in the book are basically more complicated.

Regardless of the East and the West, those who learn these things have no power to manufacture these things; and those who have the power to manufacture these things will obviously focus on politics, military affairs, and economics.

This matter is the same for nobles in the West and officials in the East.

A well that uses dozens of large gears, connecting rods and other mechanical equipment can save dozens of households the effort to fetch water, but these dozens of households do not have the luxury to live in the backcountry of Gansu or the remote villages of the Netherlands. A well like this can be built.

And people with sufficient financial resources and ability do not need to carry water themselves.

Without such a demand, it will be difficult to produce talents who study these things seriously, and even if there are a few, it will be difficult to spread out.

In Liu Chengzong's understanding, this is why this book is called a strange weapon rather than a magical weapon.

It is also in his territory, and he is happy to be able to repair some of these things.

His set of books was left in Xining as a school textbook. He didn’t have any books at hand, so he built a well in Songlin Town from memory. There were two design mistakes in the middle, and it was finally completed after revision. Another one is planned in Pinewood Castle.

The design of Songlin Castle was designed by Liu Shizi. In this regard, Liu Chengzong is an expert.

If a person can participate in the construction of a city or a fort in a lifetime, he is considered very experienced.

And Liu Shizi has designed several forts, built several forts, seen many castles, captured most of them, and many forts were built so that he was helpless, and he was also good at using his brain, and he had a lot of research on the defense ideas of forts. .

Building forts and cities pays attention to adapting measures to local conditions, while weapons and equipment pay attention to adapting measures to the enemy's conditions.

When he designed all the forts, he did not consider completely building a bastion in memory.

The bastion in his memory is a good thing. The fort wall is low and heavy, with a large depth and many forts. Moreover, it forms a large fortification group with the ditches and slopes outside the fort, which can not only reduce the chance of being bombarded, but also maximize the garrison firepower superiority.

But Liu Chengzong didn't think he deserved to use such a fortress.

Although the Lions are stronger than firearms, it depends on who they are compared with.

His opponents were the Mongols and the Western chieftains, who didn't use as many firearms, let alone cannons, but he didn't have many muskets or cannons in his hands.

There may be more garrisons in Xining Prefecture, but the cost of transporting these heavy weapons and equipment to the pine forest area west of Changhe is much higher than manufacturing them locally.

However, with the current level of firepower of the garrison of Kangning Mansion outside the Nangqian, it is simply not enough to give full play to the advantages of the bastion. Using low fort walls is likely to allow them to be swallowed by large-scale enemy forces using cold weapons, while increasing the fort The wall, the amount of work is too big.

The most important thing is that it is embarrassing to spend a lot of money to build a perfect bastion, and then find that one's own artillery is not enough to fill the fort.

Therefore, he only borrowed the idea of ​​sharp-angled enemy towers and slopes, and built a triangular fort according to the mountain situation. The triangles were set up with acute-angled enemy towers, facing northeast, southeast, and due west, and the gate of the fort opened to the south.

Two trenches were dug outside the fort. The bridge in the inner trench was on the east side, and the enemy platforms in the northeast and southeast were fixed on two sides to block them. Side emplacements blocked.

In terms of design, this fortress needs to use eight heavy artillery pieces, eight small artillery pieces, twenty carrying guns, fifty muskets, and 190 defenders.

At the same time, two four-room piers will be built on the east side, which are the same as the piers outside the Great Wall. The solid high platforms will not leave doors, and each will have five defenders, one Buddha wolf machine, five shields and five muskets.

As a whole, the rammed earth splint structure is used. In the future, bricks may be covered if conditions permit, or it may not be covered.

It is planned to build a large granary under Pine Forest Castle, which can store more than [-] shi of grain.

In fact, Uncle Cai Zhongpan made some calculations and felt that this fortress could completely build a granary with a grain storage of [-] shi, but Liu Chengzong said it was not necessary, and his proudest work was exactly the size of this granary.

He smiled and said to his uncle: "This granary is useless if it is enlarged. It has to be covered with stones. It is a waste of effort. Look where there is so much grain stored here."

"That [-] is not necessary." Cai Zhongpan stood on the top of the mountain and raised his hand: "I think this year's land harvesting grain, [-] shi will be considered good weather, and even if the nearby wasteland is opened up, it can be reached without taking care of it. Three thousand stones is not bad."

Cai Zhongpan spread his hands and said, "What's more, if you go further north and south, it will be far away. No matter how far you are thirty miles away, you have to build another fort. There is no need to store all the food here."

Liu Chengzong shook his finger: "No, no, no, uncle, it's true that Hexi can produce up to three thousand shi this year, but along the east bank can produce at least [-] shi of grain. If you don't say [-] shi, you must get half of it." ?”

Cai Zhongpan blinked, cooperating with Liu Shizi to count all the food stored by the neighbor's house to himself, he asked: "Then you plan to start a war with Lengbian Chieftain this fall?"

"Try not to fight. I plan to leave this matter to my uncle and talk to Leng Bian about buying grain. I have a batch of gold and silver from the previous war in my pocket, which can be used to buy grain. Let's see if they are willing to sell it."

Liu Chengzong looked at the opposite bank, shook his head and said: "If you don't want to sell it, you can only rob it. Anyway, as long as there are a few castles built along the bank, it will be difficult for us to fight over it, and they don't want to fight over it, just rob it. "

Regarding the agricultural situation in Kangning Mansion, Liu Chengzong did not have high expectations.

It is difficult to get rich from agriculture here. If the living standard of the people is higher than that of the slave era, the rations can be self-sufficient, and immigrants can be attracted to enrich the Kangning Mansion. His wish has been achieved.

Fan people are very resistant to mining minerals, and herdsmen are very resistant to agricultural development. These things can only be done by immigrants.

However, the prosperity of Kangning Mansion ultimately depends on the commercial prosperity brought about by animal husbandry, mining, and handicraft industries. Therefore, without the foundation of agriculture and immigration, there is no possibility of great development for these things.

In Liu Chengzong's eyes, as long as enough immigrants come here, and the Kangning Prefecture can guarantee food rations, after several years of development here, supplemented by the penetration of Sichuan, it may not be unable to serve as a base for advancing into Sichuan.

While the two were chatting about their future strategy against Leng Shen Chieftain, a cavalry soldier came running from afar, the garrison of Luhuo County, and their horses were foaming at the gallop.

The horse soldier turned over and bowed down, his legs gave way and he almost lay on the ground, he clasped his fists and said, "Marshal, the Xining Mansion has an urgent report, there is a war!"

"War in Xining?" Liu Chengzong and Cai Zhongpan looked at each other and asked, "With whom? When did it happen?"

Ma Bing shook his head: "I don't know, the news came from word of mouth from Xining Road, just these three words."

Liu Chengzong took a deep breath and thought to himself, what kind of news is this? If you say a few more words, you can die?
He turned to look at Cai Zhongpan: "Uncle, the Songpan Banner Army and the Xichuan immigrants will be handed over to you for the matter of Changhexi. I will return my wallet and send someone to tell Li Laozheng to stay behind, and order Zhang Tianlin's horsemen to follow me." Let’s go back to Nangqian together, and then set off to return to Xining!”

　good evening!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)