The battle of Liyang ended temporarily with more than 1,000 defenders going out of the city and surrendering.

The fiercest battle did not occur in the capture of Liyang City.

After the Huaixi Forbidden Army hastily withdrew, Wen Bo sent troops to take over the defense of Liyang City, and naturally he was deeply aware of the strategic position of Liyang City to stand on Chaohu Lake and the Yangtze River, considering that the Chu army would attack Liyang when it counterattacked the north bank, so in addition to the elite defenders, it was also the little remaining bed crossbow and other weapons in his hand to be sent into Liyang City first, just to strengthen the defense of such a long-term important town on the east bank of Chaohu Lake and the south.

Zhou led his troops to attack the city, and in front of Liyang City, which was in high danger and surrounded by a moat, there was no way to storm it in a short time.

It took a lot of effort to transport more than a dozen heavy trench and bridge car parts to the city through the river beach and assemble them, and open the passage directly into the foot of the city wall.

After these preparations are done, the whirlwind cannons have not yet collapsed the west tower of Liyang City, first the enemy army besieged in the southeast of the Misu Mountain was defeated, and then Wen Bo and Zhao Mingting were forced to lead their troops to retreat, giving up the plan to aid Liyang, the defenders of Liyang saw that there was no hope of holding on, and there were no reinforcements outside, and finally chose to surrender, and at this time, the Zhou Department lost a total of dozens of generals under Liyang City, and the battle was naturally far from fierce.

However, the capture of Dongguan Town, the defeat of 3,000 enemy troops in the southeast siege of the Misu Mountain, and the interception of enemy reinforcements at the western foot of Fuchashan Mountain and along the Chuhe River, the fierceness of the battle and the heavy losses were comparable to the battle at the mouth of the Puyang River.

Compared with the first battle at the mouth of the Puyang River, nearly a month has passed now, and the material conditions of the Shouzhou Army on the southern front have been further improved, and the combat effectiveness has also recovered to a considerable extent, which makes the casualties of the Tangyi soldiers much heavier than in the previous two battles.

The total number of soldiers who died in several battlefields was as high as 4,000, and the number of wounded was as high as more than 5,000.

Such heavy casualties greatly reduced the ability of the Tangyi soldiers to continue fighting.

In order to maintain the morale of his generals and not fall into depression, Han Qian must also keep pace with the construction of the defense line of Fucha Mountain and Chuhe River.

However, the 5,000 defenders of the Shouzhou Army in Liyang, in addition to nearly 2,000 annihilated, more than 3,000 people could only choose to surrender or be captured because the road was cut off - these were net losses for the Shouzhou Army.

In addition, the Shouzhou Army also suffered a total of 7,000 or 8,000 casualties in an attempt to break through the interception of the Tangyi troops on Fucha Mountain and along the Chuhe River and move southward for reinforcements, and at the same time, it failed to seize the favorable terrain for continuing the offensive, and it did not have the ability to continue to attack the Tangyi Army's defense line on Fucha Mountain and Chuhe River in a short period of time.

In a short period of time, the confrontation between the two sides east of Chaohu Lake and along the Chuhe River and Fucha Mountain temporarily eased slightly, forming a new balance.

At this time, the ice of the Huai River melted, because the embankments on both sides of the Huai River were in disrepair, and the Lingxin formed in the upper reaches overflowed the remnant embankments, so that Yingxu Huoshou and other prefectures on the north and south sides of the middle reaches of the Huai River were flooded before the rainy season came, and the roads and canals were washed away.

This also made the delivery of supplies from the hinterland of Liang to the south extremely slow, which was good news for Han Qian to defend Tangyi, and there was no need to worry about the Shouzhou army having the ability to launch a large-scale counteroffensive in a short period of time.

However, the scouts who infiltrated the northern part of Chaozhou also noticed that the Shouzhou army was requisitioning people on a large scale in the southern part of Shouzhou and dredging the channels between the north and south of the river, which should be to sum up the lessons of the first battle of Liyang, and wanted to deploy a part of the warships of the Lou Boat Army to the north shore of Chaohu Lake at the fastest speed.

At the same time, the soldiers and horses of the Shouzhou army in Chuzhou built a walled fortress on the south side of Mopan Valley, and some of the elite soldiers and horses stationed in Zhongli entered Shiliang County south.

They obviously saw that the Tangyi soldiers had the intention of cutting off the communication between the two wings of Chuzhou from the east and west flanks to the outside world, so they intended to strengthen the defensive depth on the southeast side during the stalemate of the war, so as to ensure that Chuzhou City and Shiliang County, Zhongli and Haozhou City in the north formed a whole, so as to break the Tangyi soldiers' attempt.

Han Qian also did not have the ability to strengthen the restrictions on these actions of the Shouzhou army at this time, on the one hand, the Tangyi soldiers were powerless and urgently needed to rest and replenish their new combat strength, and on the other hand, he had too many things to do in a short period of time.

In addition to compensating for the casualties, several camps and cities had to be built and improved, land had to be reclaimed, galloping roads had to be built, rivers had to be dredged, and plans had to be arranged for the soldiers and civilians stranded in the Wujian Mountains to evacuate south.

Han Daochang went to Liyang on behalf of the Du Zhi Envoy, and he did not see Han Qian's face in the first few days, until he returned to Dongguan Town from the Shiquan camp at the western foot of Fucha Mountain, and did he see Han Qian who had rushed back from Tingshan.

Because the Shouzhou Army withdrew from the valley-shaped area between the southern foot of Wujian Mountain and Tingzi Mountain and Fucha Mountain, the more than 20,000 soldiers and civilians who had previously withdrawn into Wujian Mountain were also able to withdraw south to the south of the Chuhe River.

There is no doubt that the exiles or the slaves and maids who were sent by the Gyeonggi family to Chuzhou to occupy the map will undoubtedly be incorporated into Tangyi on the spot to fill the population of the counties, but the resettlement of more than 2,000 generals of the remnants of the sailors is controversial.

These generals are mainly from the soldiers of the Zuo Wuya Army, and their families are all placed in the cantonment military mansions near Tanzhou and Yueyang, and they are different from civilians and slaves, they are all entered into the roster of the military department, and they have no personal freedom, so naturally they cannot be recruited into the Tangyi soldiers.

In addition, the Jinling side will not give up its efforts to reorganize the water division.

Of course, Han Qian supported Emperor Yanyou to continue to be pro-government, did not completely fall to the Queen Mother, suppressed the control of Lu Qingxia and others over the palace, and also led the Tangyi soldiers to throw their heads and spill blood on the north bank, and defend the gateway of the imperial capital at all costs, no matter what kind of calculations everyone had in their hearts.

There are lessons from the past, at least until the situation has not been completely stabilized, and no one will be in a hurry to chill the hearts of the meritorious generals.

As the nominal commander of the forbidden army, the commander of the forbidden army's camps, and the king of longevity, Yang Zhitang, on the second day of Han Daochang and Han Qian's arrival in Dongguan Town, that is, on the fifth day of the third month of the third year of Yanyou, he and his son, Yang Fan, the commander of the Youlong Wu Army, rushed to Dongguan Town, and discussed with Han Qian the fate of the remnants of the water division in the name of rewarding the Tangyi soldiers for their exploits in capturing Liyang.

The key turning point of this battle was to defeat the enemy army in the southeast of the Misu Mountain in time, and more than 2,000 generals of Yang Zhitang and Yang Fan's father's descendant Right Dragon Wu Army crossed the river to participate, which can also be said to have given Yang Zhitang a full face.

When Yang Zhitang and Yang Fan entered the Yuxi River by boat, they found that the Yuxi River was turbid, and the river seemed to carry a large amount of sediment into the Yangtze River.

After entering the upper reaches of the Yuxi River, the Wet Whisker Mountain was like a screen in front of them, and they saw that there were several boats in the nearby river that were dragged by hundreds of slender men on both sides of the river, and they were difficult to come from the procession, and the stern of the boats brought up a stream of turbid black water, Yang Zhitang asked curiously Feng Yi, Han Daochang and others who rushed to the estuary to meet them instead of Han Qian:

"The water potential of the Yuxi River is quite large these days, these boats don't seem to be clumsy, the draft should not be particularly deep, why is it so difficult to sail down the river?"

Han Daochang was also confused, he crossed the river this time, he came from the mouth of the Wushou River, and only arrived in Dongguan Town yesterday, seeing these situations, he was still curious.

"This is a plow boat specially built in Xuzhou for dredging the river,"

Feng Yi didn't hide anything, and directly answered the doubts of Yang Zhitang and others, and said,

"The bottom of the boat itself does not touch the riverbed, but the tail is tied to a huge plough, embedded in the riverbed silt, so it needs to be dragged forward step by step with the slender man to bring up the riverbed silt - in the past few days, several spring rains have fallen around Chaohu Lake, which has made the water level of Chaohu Lake rise, and the flow speed of Yuxi River has increased, and it is the most labor-saving way to dredge the river in this way. When the water level rises further, it will be more convenient to use a few sail boats to drive the plow boats! ”

If the world wanted to dredge the river on a large scale, it was usually necessary to wait until the dry season in autumn and winter, and recruit people to intercept the flow and dig deep riverbeds.

In doing so, the amount of work is huge.

Han Qian used this method to build a water diversion dam and dredge the river channel in Wuliuxi, and requisitioned thousands of middle-aged laborers at a time, and the movement was very huge.

In the more than 20 years since the founding of the Great Chu, few prefectures and counties have the ability to organize the construction of such large-scale water conservancy projects during the agricultural slack season.

The maintenance and dredging of the river is mainly to use a long-handled spoon to travel in the water by boat and dig up the silt at the bottom of the river little by little.

This efficiency is unimaginably low, and it can only be used for the maintenance of a small number of key lakes and waterways, and it certainly cannot be used for the development of large-scale water conservancy and dredging projects.

Han Qian's administration in Xuzhou, building water conservancy, flood control and flood control has always been an important thing, but the main rivers cannot be cut off casually even in autumn and winter, and the traditional way is too inefficient.

Fortunately, the group of generals in Xuzhou has begun to get used to thinking from the perspective of engineering equipment to solve problems.

Plough boats and some special dredgers are several good river dredging and dredging tools built in Xuzhou in the past two years.

The pear boat is the simplest, with a cast iron plough attached to the stern, which is dragged to stir up the silt from the riverbed and then carried away by the turbulent current, which is the most efficient, but this is only suitable for rivers with turbulent currents without worrying about siltation downstream.

There are also some dredgers in Xuzhou, mainly following the principle of vehicles and boats, but the wheel plate that rows the hull to move forward is replaced with a chain iron scraper that explores the riverbed, and the small scraper can be stepped on by manpower, and the larger one is driven by the winch with animal power, and the silt at the bottom of the river is dug out through the chain scraper, and poured into the mud boat on both sides to realize the river cleaning.

The dredger is complex to make, but in a flat river where there is no turbulent current, it is easier to desilt in this way than to spend hundreds of people at a time to clear the dredge, which is more scarce than in Xuzhou.

The dug up riverbed silt can also increase the fertility of the fields on both sides, which can be regarded as a gain and a loss.

As the only waterway in the lower reaches of Chaohu Lake, the Yuxi River has great pressure to discharge floods during the rainy season.

Unable to carry out dredging of the Yuxi River in time, not to carry out the necessary widening of the Yuxi River, and wait until the rainy season comes, not only because the water of Chaohu Lake will be discharged rapidly, which will cause flooding on both sides of the Yuxi River, but also because of the low flood discharge efficiency of the Yuxi River, which will not be timely enough, which will lead to the rapid rise of the water level of Chaohu Lake, and the lake area can be expanded several times in a short time, and in fact, it will also flood the surrounding tidal land that can be reclaimed.

If there is no hurry to reclaim the coastal beach, this is certainly not a very urgent problem, but Han Qian has already started to build a polder north of the Weisu Mountain, and he wants to reclaim the new fields in the polder on a large scale to resettle the families of the generals.

At this time, if the flood discharge and water level of Chaohu Lake in the rainy season are not considered, the newly built polder will be under great pressure when the rainy season comes.

The consequences of embankment failure, field flooding, and death were obviously not what Tangyi could bear at this time.

Therefore, after several dredging boats were transferred from Xuzhou, they were first used to clean up the upper reaches of the Yuxi River, which is about eight or nine miles long between Qibao Mountain and Weixu Mountain.

In addition to dredging boats, more than 2,000 people along the river are digging and widening the waterway on the river beach to increase the amount of water discharged in summer and autumn.

This also has a great advantage, that is, this autumn and winter, when Chaohu Lake and the Yangtze River enter the dry period, large warships will not be able to freely enter Chaohu Lake because of the shallower river, thus losing the strategic advantage of controlling Chaohu Lake.

This is also Han Qian's priority to retreat south to Min'an

The key to placing it in Liyang County, or even considering a new county based on Dongguan Village, requires a lot of manpower to do these things.

In the face of Feng Yi's explanation, Yang Zhitang smacked his lips and did not say anything, from the turbid river water downstream, it can also be seen that this method is extremely effective, and every day I don't know how much sediment is stirred up and washed away.

The Degree Branch Envoy Division, the Salt and Iron Transshipment Envoy Division, and the Household Department can be in charge of the wealth of Dachu and serve as officials, all of whom boast of mastering the skills that have been applied to the world.

Han Daochang joined the envoy department, Ren Langzhong, and he usually boasted of himself, but at this moment, there were too many concepts in his heart that were subverted......

He heard that the Shouzhou Army was also widening the channel between the north and the south of the river, in order to be able to send the warships of the Lou Boat Army into Chaohu Lake in the near future, but even so, he still couldn't help but think that after the warships of the Lou Boat Army came over, in addition to guarding several key estuaries on the north shore of Chaohu Lake, even in the autumn and winter, there was still no way to compete with the large warships built in Xuzhou in Chaohu Lake.

This is no longer a simple contest between generals and swords, swords, halberds, and flesh and blood to win the level.

If this kind of ploughboat was used for dredging and dredging of the Chuhe River and other rivers on the north bank, and it was effective in a short period of time, Han Daochang could hardly imagine what means the Shouzhou army would have to rely on to suppress the superiority of the Tangyi soldiers in the naval army.

Of course, Han Qian also had a plan, Feng Yi would not point it out to Yang Zhitang and Yang Fan, but Han Daochang knew about it.

That is the focus of Han Qian's follow-up management of Tangyi counties, and it will be placed in Liyang on the west side for a long time, rather than Tangyi on the east side.

Tangyi is surrounded by a flat river, lacking sufficient depth of defense, and at the same time, it is necessary to guard against someone in the court who will be willing to seize the fruits of their construction in the future, and it is too close to Jinling City across the river.

However, the lakeside area in the west of Liyang, there are Weixu Mountain in the south, Qibaohua in the southwest, Qingcang Mountain, Fucha Mountain, and Wuyuling in the north, Liyang Jiancheng on the east side, and the deep and wide Chaohu Lake with a depth of more than 100 miles in depth on the west side, all of which are conducive to the defense of Tangyi soldiers.

More importantly, there are nearly 200,000 acres of low-lying land in the lakeside area, which can be reclaimed into new fields to provide necessary land resources for the resettlement of tens of thousands of generals' dependents, the construction of cities, and the development of craftsmen. The surrounding mountains have abundant resources of lime mines, iron ores, timber and coal mines, which provide the necessary foundation for the development of industrial and mining industries.

The surrounding low ridges, hills and mountains, streams and rivers are staggered, and there is enough drop, and it also provides convenience for large-scale development and the use of hydraulic equipment.

This is the best place to replicate the model of Qiuhu Mountain in the early period and Xuzhou in the later period.

Han Qian's next plan was to first build a polder, reclaim Xintian, build a Shuiying Dazhai in the lakeside area west of Liyang City, and then build a shipyard, a dock, an iron foundry, and a weaving yard, so as to develop this area into a real military, economic, cultural, and political center in Tangyi.

The dredging of the Yuxi River, the only Chaohu Lake waterway, has become more important and urgent.

Engaging in construction in the north of the mountain is also the main reason why Han Daochang came over this time.

Han Qian has too many things to do now, too much, a few fierce battles in the early stage, almost exhausted the family funds that Xuzhou has saved in recent years, and can only concentrate on ensuring the construction of several key camps first, and concentrate on building a shipyard, an iron foundry and an ordnance foundry first, but it is difficult to take care of other aspects, so it is necessary to attract forces from all walks of life to participate in the follow-up construction.

Thousands of years of tradition have made the clansmen and the emerging elite accustomed to focusing on the hoarding of land, but the industry and commerce have not been suppressed to the point where there is no sound at all.

In the early years, the ancestors of the Feng family took advantage of the convenience of the official residence Jianghuai salt and iron transshipment envoys, and operated goods and colonies with warehouses and ships, and there were many wealthy families in Jinling and Zhuzhou who were engaged in wine or cast iron, and the Han family had long been famous for mining and smelting copper and iron, and casting bronze ware.

It's just that the old system is conducive to the encroachment of land and the raising of slaves and maids, whether it is the Feng family, the Han family or even the Zheng family, which have made huge profits from industry and commerce, and finally transferred to the hoarding of fields and houses, slaves and maids, and did not use it for the development of industry and commerce itself.

Even in order to promote the further gathering of the population on the North Shore, Han Qian must strive to attract more forces to the North Shore to develop industrial and mining industries - of course, the subsequent need to further weaken the physical confinement of slaves and maids, otherwise the ceiling of industry and mining will be extremely low if there is not enough demand.

Of course, Han Qian's merits are repeated, but the new system he wants to implement in Tangyi is still contrary to the interests of the clan lords in essence, but the current situation is like this, forcing the princes and ministers who represent the clan lords in the court to make compromises.

Otherwise, it would be impossible for Han Qian to organize the Tangyi soldiers with a conscription system.

Han Qian also did not expect that his high morality and respect could win the general support of the clan lords, but in addition to the Han family's determination to invest all the resources in the future, except for his follow-up recruitment of a group of industrial and mining owners from Xuzhou, Qiao Weiyan's Shezhou Qiao family, Chen Zhiyong's Chizhou Chen family, are all wealthy families and the wives married by Han Jun and Han Duan, they are all big families in the local area, and there is even a section of the Han family who went out of the analysis clan, can you fight for it?

The contemporary family clan still implements the inheritance system of the son-in-law, and the children of the concubine naturally have the desire to seek a way out.

Han Daoming wants to fight for more interests for Tangyi above the court, and some additional and cumbersome work needs to be undertaken by Han Daochang.

Although Han Qian would later restrict the clan lords from occupying land and raising slaves and maids in the North Shore Circle, as long as they paid taxes, they were encouraged and protected to hire workers on the North Shore to open mining farms, develop craftsmen, and even cultivate plantations.