In Sun Ce's view, once he gets Jiujiang County and Lujiang County, he can not only get the coveted strategic depth, but also get a population of 500,000 and a large amount of food reserves.

With these people and materials, he was able to deploy local defenses almost immediately, and began to digest Guo Peng's accumulated strength, turning it into the power of Wu, and then threatening Guo Peng's core hinterland, thus occupying a strategic advantage.

With a population of 500,000, what a great help it is for Jiangdong, which lacks Han Chinese.

Sun Ce coveted the population under Guo Peng's rule, and he heard business travelers from Jiangbei tell about the population under Guo Peng's rule more than once.

They all said that Guo Peng encouraged childbearing, but whenever there were children in the people, whether it was a boy or a girl, the local grassroots government would send people to congratulate them, and if it was a second or third child, the grassroots government would also give a certain amount of money, meat, rice, and cloth.

Guo Peng attaches great importance not only to the male population, but also to the female population.

He repeatedly asked the government to issue proclamations that the number of women should be valued, saying that without women, how could they have children.

In addition, the practice of drowning female babies that is prevalent in some localities has been strongly criticized, and whenever it is found that there are places where female babies are drowned, local grassroots officials are removed from their posts, investigated, investigated, and severely punished.

In order to protect the baby girl, Guo Peng even raised the reward for giving birth to a baby girl to the same level as a baby boy, and severely punished those who drowned the baby girl, so as to protect the survival rate of the baby girl.

For those poor refugees who can't afford to marry a wife, Guo Peng also has a way.

He integrated the hundreds of thousands of foreign female population captured by the war into the Han nationality as a whole, and then distributed them to these singles who could not afford to marry wives and gave them settling-in allowances.

Then let the local grassroots officials register them on the spot, grant them land, houses, and encourage them to have children, so as to increase the local labor force.

Every year, Guo Peng will also give special subsidies to families with many children under his rule, giving preferential treatment of tax exemptions and additional incentives, and the treatment is even close to that of military families.

For women who have given birth to a second, third, or even fourth or fifth child, they are even more praised and rewarded, which is typical.

In addition, in order to increase the success rate and survival rate of female childbirth, Guo Peng began to gradually set up special fertility hospitals in the villages under his rule, and sent doctors or stable women with experience in female childbirth and rearing to be stationed on the side, and gave them a salary, which was regarded as a government employee.

Then call on women to give birth not at home, but to give birth in a fertility hospital, with the help of special personnel, to ensure the greatest possible sanitary conditions, so as to increase the success rate of childbirth and the survival rate of mothers and children.

The success rate of women in townships and villages and the survival rate of mothers and children are important performance evaluation criteria for county officials, township officials, and village officials, which affect their promotion to a considerable extent.

In order to implement this policy, Guo Peng also sets up special funds to distribute them every year.

Basically, no one objected to such a policy of encouraging childbirth, and everyone was quite supportive, so the population under Guo Peng's rule increased year after year, and many places saw a situation of "prosperous population", "white hair hanging down and frolicking", and "many children in the countryside".

It is hard to imagine that a few years ago, these places were still swarmed by yellow turbans, wars and disasters, wars and chaos, warlords everywhere, mountain bandits and thieves everywhere, people were struggling to make a living, and the land was wasted.

After Guo Peng cleared up the chaos, in the past few years, there has been such a situation of political communication and harmony, which cannot but surprise and gratify.

When Zhou Yu heard about it, he praised Guo Peng's benevolent government with great emotion, believing that this kind of governance was exactly what the ancients were pursuing, and that "white hair and drooping hair frolicking" was the rule of the ancient benevolent kings.

Having said that, Zhou Yu agrees with such benevolent governance, but feels very stressed about the situation brought about by such benevolent governance.

This era is basically fifteen years is a generation, Guo Peng ruled the Central Plains and Hebei for less than fifteen years, of course, but a long time, a large population, not to mention anything else, the population can be piled up to death in Jiangdong.

The number of Han people in Jiangdong is too small, and now Sun Ce can count the population of more than one million, and the scholars and heroes must still have more than one million Han household registrations in their hands, and the rest are in the mountains, but even if these people are also obtained, it is only two million.

The population of the entire Jiangdong Sun Ce is only more than 1 million, and the total is only more than 2 million, while the two counties of Jiujiang and Lujiang under Guo Peng's rule have a population of 500,000.

This is even a border county for Guo Peng, if the large counties in the hinterland of the Central Plains will definitely not have a population less than Lujiang and Jiujiang, what kind of situation is that?

If Sun Ce could annex Jiujiang and Lujiang, his strength would increase by 50 percent, and another 40,000 armor soldiers would be added.

And Guo Peng's loss of this 500,000 population seems tragic, but in fact it is just a drop in the bucket.

According to the calculations of Zhou Yu and Sun Ce's confidant Lu Fan, they all believed that the population of the Central Plains and Hebei under Guo Peng's rule had exceeded 30 million.

These areas are the essence of the Han Dynasty, and the densely populated areas, although they were warned, were swept away by Guo Peng and protected very early, and the population should not have plummeted like a cliff.

Guo Peng, who has inherited a considerable part of the vitality of the essence zone, coupled with the benevolent government and the policy of encouraging childbirth in these years, the population under his control should not be less than that of Guanghe in the sixth year.

Population is strength, confidence, war potential and mobilization, 30 million people, isn't it enough for Guo Peng to raise 300,000 soldiers?

Guo Peng's current number of soldiers is estimated to have exceeded 300,000, and one hundred people raise one soldier, which is not considered to be a reckless force, but relatively easy.

Sun Ce is called a reckless soldier.

With a population of more than one million, nearly 80,000 troops were tossed out, including a part of the Shanyue population and soldiers and horses that were captured by Sun Ce.

This Northern Expedition dispatched 60,000 troops in one go, almost all of the main forces of Jiangdong, and once defeated, the consequences were unimaginable.

But Zhou Yu and Sun Ce both understood that this was an inevitable move, and they had to fight a battle, and now they didn't plunder the population and occupy the territory, would they wait to be annexed by Guo Peng?

Jiujiang County and Lujiang County are too important to Jiangdong and must be taken away.

After seizing it, if Guo Peng uses a large army to fight, he will confront, and if he really can't beat it, then move the people of Jiujiang and Lujiang away.

Bring the population back to Jiangdong and continue to rely on the Yangtze River waterway to actively defend and attack, so that even if Guo Peng gets the land, he will not get people, and he will have no people and no money.

Sun Ce's abacus was very loud, and he didn't care much about whether Guo Peng had any preparations or anything like that.

When they were about to arrive in Hefei City, they first ordered 10,000 troops to land and form a military formation according to Zhou Yu's arrangement, and when they arrived at Hefei City, they could immediately start a war, and use the advantages of these 10,000 soldiers, horses and ships to seize the beachhead and create conditions for more troops to land.