On May 13, Huai'an Mansion, Jiangbei Province, on the embankment of Hongze Lake!

Its water level is already close to the top of the original height of the embankment, and even on some of the relatively low embankments, its water level has exceeded the original height of the embankment.

However, the flood is still firmly bound to the inner side of the embankment, because on the original embankment, more than 100,000 people worked together and fought for more than ten days, and the height of the embankment was temporarily increased.

Although these temporary heightened dikes are not as thick as the original dikes, the pressure on these temporary dikes is not great, and the pressure on the bottom dikes is not as great, so they can withstand it for a while.

However, even if the levee has not yet been broken, the local military and political officials have taken it lightly, on the one hand, they continue to raise the temporary levee, and on the other hand, they want to thicken the existing levee to improve the dike's ability to resist flooding.

More than 100,000 people are still working!

In the rear, many women and children can be seen boiling water and cooking rice, providing hot water and hot meals for the young and strong men and soldiers who are building the embankment.

Although the pressure is huge now, the good news is that the sky is no longer overcast, and the rain has finally stopped for more than half a month.

Although it is still raining in the upstream area, it is not raining in Gangbuk Province and it is not raining anymore, which means that the flood volume will be greatly reduced.

At this time, even if there is still a huge amount of water pouring from the upstream, as long as it does not continue to increase, there is still great hope for a safe passage through this catastrophe.

On 18 May, Kuaima reported that the areas of North Anhui Province were also gradually clearing, and no rain continued to fall, which means that the middle and upper reaches of the vast Huai River will no longer increase the amount of water.

After learning the news, many officials in charge of the flood control work were greatly relieved!

As long as you don't continue to increase the amount of water, then that's great news!

On May 25, a flash came from Henan, saying that the local area had also begun to clear and it had not continued to rain!

At this time, everyone is really at ease!

As long as there is no large-scale flooding in the upper reaches of the river, especially on the Yellow River, there is not much danger in the downstream Jiangbei Province.

Sure enough, at the end of May, the water level of the Huai River gradually declined, and the water level of Hongze Lake, which also serves as a huge reservoir, was also gradually declining.

There is no large amount of water pouring down from the upper reaches, and the mouth of the Huai River is constantly draining to the sea, so the water level will naturally drop.

By 30 May, the water level of Hongze Lake had dropped from a dangerous height to a safe height, and although the water level was still relatively high, it had dropped to the original height of the embankment, and it no longer threatened the temporary construction of the embankment.

And at this time, the government also began to dismiss the people who were conscripted, leaving only the garrison to continue to be vigilant!

On May 6, the water level officially dropped to a relatively safe level, which is roughly the level of water during normal rain.

At this time, it can be regarded as real security.

At this time, even the garrison began to gradually withdraw!

The flood that lasted for a full month finally passed, but although the flood did not cause a large-scale levre burst, the damage caused by this flood was still considerable.

In one month, almost half of Henan, most of northern Anhui, and the entire Jiangbei Province were severely tested by floods, even if there was no large-scale embankment breaking, but the flood could not be discharged, and still formed a considerable amount of waterlogging.

Large areas were flooded by waterlogging, not to mention villages, but also towns and cities, especially those near rivers, most of which were flooded.

Taken together, more than 10 million people have been affected by the floods, and at least a million of them will not be able to return to their hometowns for a short time, and even if they do, they will face the heavy task of rebuilding their homes, because their homes have been flooded, and their land has also been flooded, and it is not so easy to recover in the future.

More than 200,000 people have been completely submerged in their hometowns and forced to move to other places, many of them in the area around Hongze Lake.

The number of dead and injured is not small, and the number of dead and missing people in many places has reached more than 5,000.

In the face of such a huge loss, the follow-up disaster relief work was very difficult, so much so that the Holy Son Li Xuan and even the top leaders of the entire empire have focused their work on follow-up disaster relief in the past month or two.

Prepared food, clothing and other materials continued to pour from all over the country to the affected areas, and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal once again played a huge role, and many ships passed through this canal to transport a large number of supplies from the southern part of the empire to Jiangbei Province, the middle and upper Huai River, and the Yellow River area.

"So far, we have allocated 8 million taels of silver for post-disaster relief, mainly to buy food, clothing, farm tools, etc., to help the affected people tide over the difficulties. Coupled with the three million taels of silver spent during the flood fight, the empire has now invested 11 million taels of silver for flood relief! When Liu Bagou said this, he couldn't help frowning.

This is one thousand taels of silver, and this figure does not include the cost of the military!

Of course, it is also very expensive to raise the army on weekdays, in fact, the military did not spend too much extra money, at most it is only a part of the food and materials, and considering the financial difficulties, the military bosses have already made a commitment to the cabinet that all the military expenses during the flood fighting period will be borne by the military itself, and there is no need for additional financial allocation.

But even if you exclude the military, the cost is still too great!

What's more, this is just the beginning, and a lot of money will definitely be needed for disaster relief in the future!

Li Xuan also saw Liu Bagou's frown, but he still said: "Disaster relief is the most important work of the empire this year, let's put the rest aside for the time being!" ”

The number of people affected by the disaster in the provinces and highways has reached 10 million, and the number of people who are temporarily homeless is more than 1 million, and the number of people who need to be permanently relocated and resettled is 200,000.

But if this money is not spent, what will tens of millions of people do when they have no food to eat after the disaster, and millions of people who lose their homes?

You don't have to guess, you will definitely become a homeless person, and then evolve into a rebel!

Even with strict official control and relief, a large number of people in the affected areas have begun to flee the affected areas with their families, and a considerable number of them are trying to flee to areas that have not been affected by the disaster, especially the Jiangnan area.

According to the monitoring of the relevant official yamen, in just one month, more than 100,000 people have crossed the Yangtze River and flocked to all parts of the south of the Yangtze River, especially those places where it is rumored to be able to make a living, such as the industrial cities represented by Shanghai, where a large number of victims have flocked to the Yangtze River.

They want to find a job to live on, that's all!

And this is all good, after all, this is just to find a job to earn a living.

What the authorities fear most is that they will become mass displacements, and then become locusts, destroying everything wherever they go, and then bringing man-made disasters to areas that have not been affected by natural disasters.

In the ancient feudal dynasties, it was not terrible to be subjected to natural disasters, but even more terrible was the man-made disasters after natural disasters!

Therefore, the military of the Tang Empire will maintain a high degree of vigilance and strictly guard against all kinds of large-scale turmoil.

However, it is no longer enough to rely solely on high-pressure military deterrence, after all, when people do not have enough to eat, it is impossible to think about the consequences.

Therefore, martial law is important, but relief is even more important.

Li Xuan immediately said: "In this way, squeeze it again, and make up another four million taels of silver, enough fifteen million taels of silver!" ”

"Tell me again, let the officials at all levels below be honest with me, if anyone dares to reach out to the disaster relief funds, I want his head!"

Although Li Xuan said so, he knew that people's hearts were evil, especially officials, who were the worst of the wicked.

This point will not make any difference between the Tang Dynasty and the former Ming Dynasty, so it is almost impossible to rely on the self-discipline of officials alone.

It is unlikely that even the Inspectorate will monitor it, after all, this is fifteen million taels of silver, and anyone who looks at such a huge amount of money will be blushing.

Therefore, Li Xuan called the people from the Investigation and Statistics Department of the Hanlin Academy and asked them to focus on monitoring the corruption problem after the disaster.

Although it is said that this is the work of the Inspectorate to deal with the problem of official corruption, when it is actually carried out, Hantong will not do it worse than them, or even better.

Because Hantong originally monitored hundreds of officials, he had a large number of black materials of officials in hand, but in normal times, these black materials were often locked directly into the archives.

The archives of Hantong have been rebuilt several times, and now the archives of Hantong are basically similar to the vault and the silver vault, and the entry and exit are very strict, and there are no people of a certain level who cannot enter, and there are also strict measures such as fireproof, waterproof, and mothproof.

Otherwise, if a random fire burns down the archives, then it means that Hantong's years of work will be destroyed.

In the huge archives of Hantong, there are almost all the files of middle-level officials, and to put it mildly, they are more complete than the official archives mastered by the Ministry of Officials.

Now it is better to let Hantong monitor the disaster relief funds this time than to let the inspectorate monitor it.

Of course, the Inspectorate will not relax, and the flood control and flood control supervision teams of the provincial highways are still staying in the provincial highways, and the leaders are all the inspectors of the Imperial Palace, which is enough to deter those local officials.

However, there are always people who are so greedy that they are not afraid of death!

It didn't take long for Hantong to submit a report to Li Xuan, saying that there was a problem with the disaster relief funds in Taoyuan County, Huai'an Prefecture.

The reason why the problem was found so quickly is because the angle from which Han Tong looks at the problem is relatively unique, they don't look at the specific process, they only look at the result!

Why did they conclude that there was a problem with the disaster relief funds in Taoyuan County?

Because Hantong's spies found that the victims in some of the permanent resettlement sites in Taoyuan County had all kinds of problems, some of them did not receive farming tools, food and other materials, some did not get the wages for work, and some simply did not even have a large part of the rations.

Originally, the central government had allocated enough funds for disaster relief, but now there are people in these resettlement sites who are unable to eat?

No need to ask, there must be something wrong!

When Li Xuan saw the report, his face was gloomy: "What a big boldness!" ”