Just after the Zhongyuan Festival full of battlefield flavor, the city of Youzhou was still immersed in a large number of reward materials such as pigs, beef and mutton, ducks and geese, moon cakes, glutinous cakes, halva, osmanthus cakes, taro cakes, etc., as well as many consolation performance groups.

With the assistance of many soldiers, staff officers and Marquis Yu, I also took stock of and summarized the gains and losses during this period.

On the seventh day of the eighth month some time ago, after the Cangzhou army had been replenished and reorganized, it attacked Xindu first, and then used special siege artillery to attack the Dongshengmen that had not yet been repaired.

Then on the 8th, the division of troops in full swing broke through Nangong City again, and even the key points of Jizhou such as Tuancheng Town, Hetang Town, Beiming Town, and Xinyang Town.

On the ninth day, it drove down the river into the town of Zhaozhou and then broke through the town and Nanming Town, and then took the cities of Julu, Pingxiang, Renxian and Quzhou, and besieged Yongnian City, the capital of Zhaozhou.

On the 10th, Yongnian City was broken, and it was divided into several roads to go south to most of Qu'en Prefecture, and then down to Cizhou and directly to the bank of the Yellow River, and dozens of large and small river boats were copied in Liyangjin Port; It entered Zhaozhou and Xingzhou in the north, and forced the towns belonging to the Pingding Army to surrender.

On the 11th, trapped in Anyang Dayi, the state city of Xiangzhou, the Anli Army was not allowed to surrender and dispersed; Seize Xiaowu field, Linping field, Yuchi field several important places of Hejin, since then the passage to the territory of Huazhou, Henan Province has been opened.

On the 12th, there was no fighting on any front, but thousands to tens of thousands of soldiers were killed everywhere.

On the thirteenth, the consumption of sub-medicine in front of the army was interrupted for the first time, and it still maintained the offensive momentum under a certain inertia, and even went down to Gaoyi and Pingjiao Cities.

On the 14th, the Niugao Division of the North Road joined forces with the Shanhou Strike Army from Qizhou in Wuji County, Dingzhou, and since then the north-south and several fronts have begun to be initially connected, and in most of the occupied Hebei areas, they have begun to echo each other.

It's just that the fly in the ointment is that it is said that most of the civil and military forces in Hebei Province headed by Zhang Bangchang have already retreated to the direction of Zhenzhou and Baozhou in the northwest.

And the next step seems to be as long as you continue to attack south along the Yellow River, you can penetrate the territory of Weizhou and become neighbors with the former friendly army, the deputy governor of the northern land and Luodu, who stayed in the headquarters of Wang Duanchen.

Therefore, in addition to the Yanshan North Road (Kyushu behind the mountain), as long as the rest of Zhang Bangchang, who was huddled in several prefectures in the northwest of Hebei, was captured, it seems that it would be possible to set up a Hebei East Road and a Hebei West Road on the existing basis.

However, at present, the offensive on all fronts has been suspended, and it has been transferred to rest and replenishment, and only the local troops led by Dapeng Bird's Cangzhou Army and Zhang Xian's special strike army are left to maintain pressure and contain Zhang Bangchang from the south and from the movement respectively.

In addition, there was also a cavalry division led by Liu Hou, the deputy governor of the Ma Army, which had already entered the Saishang grassland in Yanbian through Dingzhou and other places in Hebei Province, to prevent the possibility of Zhang Bangchang's troops leaving the Saishang grassland through Hedong.

In this process, the military strength and resource allocation used were only half to two-thirds of the preparations for the attack on Pinglu Dao, and even a considerable part of them were transferred from the Pinglu Dao strategy, among which there was even a group of men and horses, which were selected from the surrender army and prisoners of Pinglu Dao, and the transformation troops led by the surrendered general Wang Yuan led the charge in front;

On the contrary, it has taken out a large area of newly occupied areas that have been added to dozens of counties in more than a dozen prefectures at once, and it will take a lot of manpower, material, and financial resources to sort out, rectify, and operate.

Of course, the enormous post-war costs were mainly due to the new policies and measures adopted by the newly occupied territories. According to the traditional rules of the game, after defeating and annihilating the enemy's main force, many places can be completely transferred without spending too much effort;

As long as a little bit of the garrison is symbolically maintained, and it is promised to continue to retain the original officials and let the local powerful and large families maintain the original order and situation, instead of disrupting the old pattern and the status quo and rebuilding a set of systems and social order; That would save most of the effort and investment, and fully devote resources to subsequent military operations.

You can even get the help and welcome of these surrendering local forces, and get some kind of snowball bonus in terms of momentum and resources; It doesn't matter at all where the money, food, goods, and servants come from, or even the thoughts and needs of the majority of the common people;

Anyway, they have already endured countless tortures and torments of exploitation and looting, and they don't care how much more suffering they have, anyway, it is enough for the new ruler to bring order and stability.

History books have never recorded all kinds of stories about the emperor's meeting and acquaintance with the local leaders of the time, and they don't care about the price that ordinary people need to pay behind these popular allusions and jokes; Or how much of the dregs and impurities of the old era have been tolerated and absorbed by the forces of the new dynasty, and how many inertia and old precedents have been inherited in the name of respecting traditions.

But all this is obviously the new force that Huaizhen is targeting, and it is necessary to avoid and abandon the repeated things. Although the same problems may still breed and accumulate under the impact of time in the future, at present, in terms of absorbing new blood and vitality and self-purification, maintaining vitality and new blood for a while is a moment, and maintaining a lifetime is a lifetime.

However, although it seems that the investment is quite huge and long, the result of large-scale collectivization is that the operating costs have dropped significantly, coupled with the advanced management and accounting system, which can achieve corresponding results under the Huaizhen system at a low cost in the eyes of others, and even meet the corresponding market demand, but also ensure enough profits and technology accumulation.

In terms of the coal-iron complex, which represents the base of primary industry, the output of coal under the rule of Huaizhen has reached a new peak under the addition of steam machinery input, and the monthly output in Yanzhou (now Zaozhuang generation) and Qingzhou (now Linzi) is 60 million jin and 67 million jin respectively;

This does not include the coal output of more than a dozen government-run mines, large and small, distributed elsewhere in Huaibei, as well as the scale of private licensed public operations or private mining for their own use.

Among them, lignite is the most common fuel, followed by bituminous coal for coking and quenching, and the proportion of anthracite with the highest combustion value is the smallest, which is mainly used in various steam engines.

However, the scale of these outputs also looks considerable in this era, compared with the scale of tens of thousands of tons after the liberation of later generations, it can only be regarded as a sequence of small coal kilns that the country needs to clean up and remediate.

Of course, although Huaizhen has mastered the technology of horizontal and vertical shafts and oblique deep pits, it is currently only used to collect precious metals such as gold, silver, copper and tin, and the so-called good steel must be used on the blade; At least until the open-pit coalfields and shallow mines are fully exploited, there is no need to do such thankless tasks.

In addition to meeting the needs of industrialization, the use of these increasing production capacity has gradually occupied the majority of the daily aspects of people's livelihood; In addition, the production capacity of coke, tar, coal wax, asphalt and other derivative products and chemical raw materials has also risen.

For example, as a large consumer of coal mines, the supporting steel production capacity has also reached the scale of one million catties per day, of which only a small half is a refined raw wrought iron billet and its secondary processing products for private needs, and other crude steel ingots, special steel, etc., have been digested by the internal military industry, machinery, construction (construction), agriculture and animal husbandry system.

Of course, despite the enormous long-term investment in these follow-ups, such measures cannot be said to be without immediate results and other benefits.

For example, during this time, many people actually took advantage of the chaos to run to the newly occupied territory of Huaizhen to incite civil rebellion; Then I found that those old sources that had energy and could use influence were already black eyes;

As a result, most of them have not been able to move for long or have been lurking, and soon have not been able to produce perfect identification or sufficient cover in the place where they have been organized, and they will soon be exposed to flaws and suspicious appearances; Either the new immigrants felt that the new face was quite suspicious, and they were sent out to exchange for rewards, or they were discovered by the secret spies in the area supervised by the Anti-Rebellion Society, and they were taken away for questioning and more things were involved.

It's just that after the continuous expansion of the territory, it has also brought some other negative things and noises, such as all kinds of speculators who want to make a difference in politics and career.

"Who's making this up?"

I couldn't help frowning and picked out a book that looked like it was full of more than 10,000 words, and threw it into the basket that was specially handled. Ever since Huaizhen showed his intention to sweep the Northlands, I don't know if it was the first few people who wanted me to peddle dragon slaying or the corresponding doctrine ideas;

The so-called "determination of state affairs" is to set the tone for the future development of the regime and the ideological and theoretical basis for its long-term maintenance.

In contrast, I am more concerned about the various texts that diverge from the Jiangnan provinces to the south, and I am engaged in a polemic between the north and the south with the old dynasty. The main way was to engage in a bunch of publications and privately circulated postings to criticize the southern court and publicize the governing philosophy of Huaidi, as well as the new doctrines advocated and promoted in the north, so as to attract those capable people with lofty ideals who really wanted to make a difference.

Of course, the voices of the mainland cannot be completely ignored; Although it is prematurely determined that "the country is", the soldiers do not conform to my basic line and strategy of "building a high city, accumulating grain, and slowly becoming king"; However, according to the suggestions provided by the enigmatic creatures in the rear, in order to cope with the various needs that may be extended in the future, and the new calendar involving the development direction of Kita technology, it is possible to consider starting to work on it.

The creation of a new calendar is not only closely related to production and life, but also represents a part of a new regime and new atmosphere, but it is not so sensitive, and it can be regarded as a means of some kind of roundabout temptation. Although it is not something that can be completed in a while, it is also a basic statement.

Suddenly, a document with an expedited fire signature was temporarily inserted

"Urgent news from West Myeon River East Province?"

I was slightly surprised and continued reading.

But it was brought back by the patrol fleet that routinely went to the middle reaches of the Yellow River, as well as a message from Wang Duanchen, the governor of the northern region from Dugi Province, Henan.

(End of chapter)