Chapter 116: I love a river, but I don't love the people of the world

When these words came out, Zhang Xuan was not alone.

Zhang Jiayu's face was pale, he knelt on the ground, and said: "The minister misunderstands the major affairs of the country, and the crime deserves death." ”

Zhang Xuan helped Zhang Jiayu up and said; "It doesn't matter, I don't know what the situation is, I don't know, I don't know, I can only know after I try it."

"It's just a guess."

Zhang Jiayu said: "Even so, it is also a minister's ill-consideration, even if the sediment of the Yellow River cannot be piled up in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, but the three rivers gather together to go to the sea, and the incident of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River will inevitably occur frequently, and Jiangnan is sent by the state's money and grain." It's all about it. ”

"Your Majesty, if you don't build the canal and divide and rule, it's really far-sighted."

"Just -----"

Zhang Xuan said: "You always have to do the matter of water control, if there is anything, you don't need to swallow and spit out, just say it directly." ”

Zhang Jiayu said; "It's just too expensive."

The minister estimated that to separate the Huai River from the Yellow River, it would be necessary to re-excavate a channel for the Huai River to flow into the sea. If you do a rough calculation, it will cost more than 500 miles. ”

"The Huai River has been plagued repeatedly, and this river channel should not be too narrow."

"The Yellow River also needs to be cleaned up before it can be used."

"These are two big projects. The dredging of dikes and waterways in the rest of the places. It takes a lot of work. ”

"Can the imperial court support it?"

Zhang Xuan was silent for a while when he heard this. He didn't have to do the math to know that it was a numerable number that made his scalp tingle.

Because his plan sounds good, in fact, it is essentially a major project to reorganize and even rebuild the Huai River water system.

How big is this project.

Just look at the republic's project to control the Huai River.

It took more than nine years for the Huai River to pass through the sea and the main canal was completed. This is the end of the Huai River control project. That was more than forty years after the founding of the country.

Although there have been repetitions in the middle, the control of the Huai River has been in progress.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, among the things that foreigners thought the Chinese would never be able to do, was the governance of the Huai River.

It can be said that after the founding of the Republic, the situation of the Huai River is different from the situation of the Huai River that Zhang Xuan is facing today.

There are various problems in the Huai River system of the Republic, the biggest problem is the breach of the Yellow River, which is also the matter of Huayuankou, but the thorny point faced by Zhang Xuan is no less than that of Huayuankou.

On the whole, perhaps it is a little easier than the problems of the Republican period, because at least the canal-Yellow River system has not been entangled for another 300 years, laying more hidden dangers for water control.

However, the difference in the development of science and technology also made Zhang Xuan's water control plan need to recruit more people and more troops.

This is a thing that makes Zhang Xuan feel a little dizzy

The astronomical number of halos.

Zhang Xuan is not afraid of spending money, but the energy of the imperial court is limited. If we put our energy into controlling the water, then we will not have the energy to devote to the war in the north at all.

"How much manpower and material resources are needed?" Zhang Xuan said.

Zhang Jiayu said: "The minister can only estimate that according to the materials consumed in the Northern Expedition this year, one Northern Expedition is not enough, and two Northern Expeditions are probably enough." ”

Zhang Xuan said: "No. It's not enough. ”

"If you don't do it, you don't do it. Since you have put in great effort to control the water, you should not try to save trouble. This time, the control of the water is not only to bring the Yellow River and the Huai River into their own ways. It is also necessary to sort out the two Huai water conservancy. ”

"The land of the two Huai was also the prosperous place of the world in ancient times, but now it is not better than a year, and even the south of the Yangtze River is far better than the north of the Jiangbei, how can there be a river apart."

"Because of water conservancy."

"The Huai River is passed, Henan, and the two Huai are fertile soil, and this time the water control is the Zhengguo Canal of this dynasty."

"Even if I can't finish it in my life, my children and grandchildren will continue to do it."

"Zhang Qing, I will give you a chance to regret it now. If you agree to come down, from today onwards, until the water control is completed, I am not going to transfer you out of Lianghuai. ”

"In the first half of my life, I was chasing deer in the world, and I was the first to whip. swept the princes, dying in the world, and the achievements of the second half of my life are here. ”

"Harness the Yellow River and the Huai River, so that the people of the Central Plains will not suffer from floods."

Zhang Jiayu listened to the blood boiling, and said: "The minister obeys the order, from now on, my Zhang family will move from Guangdong, if the flood control fails, this is the place where my Zhang Jiayu is buried." ”

Zhang Xuan said: "Okay,." This major event of the rise and fall of the world will be handed over to Zhang Qing. ”

Zhang Jiayu did not live up to Zhang Xuan's expectations, however, he did not do this thing well. In order to control the water, Zhang Jiayu traveled to all the places in Lianghuai. It took three years to put forward a complete strategy for river control.

At that time, the imperial court also came out of the financial predicament after the Northern Expedition.

Zhang Jiayu immediately began to work on the river.

Zhang Jiayu served as the general system of the two Huai for a total of ten years. In the end, he died of exhaustion on the river embankment.

And Zhang Jiayu is not the first person to die of exhaustion in the position of the Lianghuai general system. The second person to serve as the general system of the two Huai was Zhou Chang.

Zhou Chang served as the chief of the two Huai, but it was because of Zhou Chang's birth defects.

Zhou Chang completed the work of turning Korea into a province in the late Zhaowu period, and officially put the Korean state under the rule of the imperial court as Haidong Province. The hard work is high, but it is impossible to enter the cabinet.

Because the imperial examination was perfected during the Zhaowu period, although there was no rule that non-Hanlin was not allowed to enter the cabinet, the cabinet ministers must always be from Jinshi.

Zhou Chang knew that although he was named the Marquis of the East China Sea, he had reached the apex above the officialdom. Therefore, after Zhang Jiayu's death, he invited himself to be the general system of the two Huai, and carried out the direction planned by Zhang Jiayu.

During this period, it also happened, one of the three major cases of Zhaowu, the Wang Jincai case.

It was set off by Zhou Chang.

Because after the Northern Expedition, there were still some major battles in the middle of the Zhaowu period, such as recovering the northwest, consolidating Liaodong, jointly conquering the Yongli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty with Burma, and competing with Westerners in the South Seas.

But such a major war as the Northern Expedition never happened again.

A large number of troops were involved in the river control project of Lianghuai.

In particular, the local county soldiers in Lianghuai have almost no training tasks, and they are all tasks of controlling water.

Naturally, there are a lot of materials, no, it should be almost half of the financial investment of the imperial court every year. It is almost a mountain of gold and silver, and I heard that the Ministry of Households, the Ministry of Industry, the Privy Council and other departments have flowed into the two Huai.

Wang Jincai served as a fellow confidant of the Privy Council for a long time, and he had great connections in the army and embezzled a lot of funds for water control. But because Wang Jincai is Zhang Xuan's old department. The people below did not dare to denounce it.

Zhou Chang couldn't bear it anymore, so he reported to Zhang Xuan in the palace.

Zhang Xuan ordered Fu Shan to personally investigate and deal with it, implicating seven marquises, ten counts, viscounts, and barons, countless others, and there were many civil officials involved.

The Privy Council was empty.

Even Li Dingguo was implicated in such a storm and asked Zhang Xuan to resign, and Zhang Xuan approved him to resign from a position and only serve as a professor of Wutang.

Later analysis, although Wang Jincai's case was caused by an anti-corruption, it also swept away most of the generals in the court who were born recklessly.

Not many were put to death, but most were no longer in power.

And He Hutou also officially became a privy envoy, and almost all the powerful generals in the court were born in the martial arts. And the crown prince Zhang An also graduated from the martial arts hall.

Conspiracy theories aside.

Zhou Chang himself did not complete this major project on the Lianghuai general system, and died of exhaustion fifteen years after Wang Jincai's case. The imperial court had to elect the third Lianghuai general system.

The third Lianghuai general system was born in the Great Xia clan, named Zhang Qian, who was born in Wutang, and also fought in war. Became the last of the two Huai generals.

After more than 20 years in office as the general system of the two Huai, the major project of controlling the water in the two Huai was finally completed.

Finally, from below Xinyang to the sea, the waterways are unblocked, and almost every village has canals for irrigation, so that Henan and Lianghuai suddenly became major grain-producing provinces, no less than the grain-producing areas of Hunan and Hubei provinces.

Moreover, the Lianghuai region is the place where the Zhang family of Daxia is the most supportive. In the various turmoil that followed, the Lianghuai region has always been the basic plate of the royal family.

It's just that when Zhang Qian cultivated, Zhang Xuan was no longer in power, and even Zhang An was dying of old age and was training the prince to ascend the throne.

This is a long, long time later.

But it started with a conversation between Zhang Xuan and Zhang Jiayu today, a water control project that lasted for more than 50 years, went through three generations, and it was also a work that Zhang Xuan did not complete in the second half of his life.