Chapter 61: Guan Gong's return

As mentioned last time, the Wei and Wu armies besieged the city of Jingzhou for more than a month, and Zhao Yun, like Mozi, defended the city with a clear eye and did not move.

During this period, Liu Hou also ordered the musket team on the Jingzhou to continuously attack and harass the barracks of Wei and Wu, and also achieved certain results. However, the coaches of the two countries are not ordinary people, and it is impossible to figure out the outcome of a sneak attack on Guò.

The disparity in the strength of the two sides is too great, and Liu Hou's sneak attack tactics can only be used as a useful supplement to the main battlefield, and have no decisive impact on the overall situation. Just when Sima Yi sighed that Zhao Yun had the style of the Mo family in guarding the city, he couldn't help but be shocked when he received an order from Xu Changlai.

In the twenty-fifth year of Jian'an (March 15, 220 AD), Cao Cao died in Luoyang, at the age of sixty-six, and was nicknamed King Wu. Cao Pi succeeded to the throne as the king of Wei, Sima Yi received the bad news in the country, and had to retreat to return to the court, Lu Xun lost the allies, and had to retreat in disgrace, and the siege of Jingzhou was lifted.

After determining that Wei and Wu really retreated and did not plan to trap him, Liu Hou led his soldiers and horses back to Jingzhou City. At this time, Jingzhou City was really full of desolation, with heavy casualties.

The city wall is covered with dense pits, which are wounded by bed crossbows, and there are many places that have been smashed, which are smashed by stones thrown by trebuchets, although the city walls have not collapsed, but to repair these defects, it is also very difficult, so I have to wronged the prisoners of Eastern Wu to continue to work.

The casualties also made Liu Hou very worried. The casualties of the musketeers were more than 1,000, plus the casualties of Liu Hou's attack, the casualties of the entire Hong army reached almost 3,000, and the casualty rate was more than half. The other new units suffered even more heavy casualties, more than 3,000 dead, and almost all the rest were wounded. In addition, there were countless casualties among the people.

It can be said that the Jingzhou soldiers were disabled, and if Wei and Wu did not retreat and continued the siege, the city would be broken within 10 days. At that time, Liu Hou had no choice but to flee back to Chengdu. Fortunately, Cao Cao died in time, Liu Hou couldn't help but sigh, could it be that he really had the aura of pig's feet, and he was blessed by God in the dark?

The post-war restoration work was arduous, with heavy losses to both the army and the city defense, and it took a long time to repair. Liu Hou didn't care about this, he handed over all the work to other subordinate officials, and wandered around the city by himself, thinking about life.

After this actual battle, he found that his firearms unit was not as powerful as he imagined, and that it was like the Eight-Nation Alliance Army that defeated tens of thousands of Qing Dynasty troops by relying on a few thousand people, and that was because the Qing Dynasty army was already decaying. When encountering these strong generals who have been baptized by decades of war in the Three Kingdoms era, it is a joke to rely on thousands of people to fight the world.

This battle of Jingzhou, Liu Hou named him the second battle of Jingzhou, this time, Liu Hou both the army and the navy suffered a blow from Yan zhòng, although the whole army was not annihilated, but it was also a wolf bèi fled. The reason is due to one word: "quantity". The difference between the number of oneself and the enemy is too great.

In order to narrow the quantitative gap, there are many accompanying problems, first of all, the population problem. After so many years of war, the population has been reduced to a very dangerous value, and now the ratio of people to soldiers in various countries has almost gone to 10 to 1, which is an astonishing number for many years. It is not easy to increase the population in the short term.

The second is the issue of productivity, and in addition to relying on hard training, the most important thing for Liu Hou's army to strengthen his army is to rely on advanced weaponry. And the production of these weapons and equipment is not easy, and it is also difficult to expand the scale of production in the short term. This involves issues such as population size (productive population), money, skilled craftsmen (who need a lot of time to train craftsmen), and so on.

Then there is the problem of capital, yes, there are many profitable industries, cement, paper, printing, wine, soap, etc., etc., but all this time the products need people to consume in order to generate profits.

During the war, the population declined, and most of the remaining people became displaced and poor, and these people had no spending power to speak of, which limited the scale of their ability to make money from these fresh products.

In the final analysis, it is a population problem, and in the end, the problem can be traced back to the problem of human resources. This is the conclusion that Liu Hou thought about.

But how do you increase the population? That's a big problem. It is definitely not possible to rely on the current people to give birth slowly, who has the time to wait for more than ten years, waiting for those children to grow up. With this time, Lao Tzu has already unified the world.

Then there is only one way left: plunder, plunder the population!

Of course, plundering the population is different from plundering goods, and the plundering population can be divided into civil and military, armed plunder, or relatively sven plunder. Sven's way of doing this is to use all kinds of favorable conditions to attract the population to consciously move to their own territory. Now the Ministry of Industry is a huge magnet for the population, and all kinds of people have been coming here to make a living, settle down, and do business all kinds of people over the years.

The increase in population has led to the continuous expansion of the scale of the Ministry of Industry, and the current Ministry of Industry is no longer the six-pointed star city of the rule, the six-pointed star city has been equivalent to the inner city, and new areas are constantly emerging outside this inner city, and these affiliated areas are inhabited by all kinds of people who come to the industrial area to make a living.

This method of plundering the population of Sven is very effective, Liu Hou plans to increase its process, send more people to Wei and Wu, propaganda, mobilize some people to migrate to Shu, enhance their own strength and also weaken the enemy country, the benefits are obvious, this is a good strategy, but the effect is a little slower.

Needless to say, plundering by force is to conquer by force, and Sun Quan's constant attacks on Wuxi Man and Baiyue are for the sake of population and land. It's just that where to plunder the population yourself? Do you want to follow Sun Quan's example to plunder the barbarians? Liu Hou couldn't help but think of the barbarians within the scope of Shu.

There are really a lot of barbarians in Shu, the southern and central regions, and now there is no division of counties, in real history, after the Shu Han Dynasty, the lord Jianxing three years (225 years), that is, 5 years after the present, after Zhuge Liang's southern expedition, it was redivided into seven counties.

Namely: Yueshan County (Zhidengdu, now Xichang City, Sichuan); Zhuti County (Zhi Zhuti, now Zhaotong City, Yunnan); Qike County (Zhijilan, near present-day Fuquan County, Guizhou); Jianning County (Zhiwei County, now Qujing City, Yunnan); Xinggu County (Zhiwanwen, now Yanshan North, Yunnan); Yongchang County (Zhibuwei, now Baoshan County, Yunnan); Yunnan County (Zhiqiaodong, now Yao'anbei, Yunnan).

In these 7 counties, there are ethnic groups such as Suo, Yao, Pu and Han people, and in addition, there are ethnic minorities such as Qiang and other ethnic minorities in the northern half of Shu and Han. Do you want to find a way to fight these barbarians?

Thinking about it, I somehow came to "Fei Hongju", that is, the restaurant where I met the singer last time. Entering the restaurant and finding a place to sit down, Liu Hou couldn't help but think of that singer, what a beautiful girl, how could she be the assassin of Soochow?

I wonder how she's doing now? Alas, he and her are in two hostile camps, and they are destined to have nothing to do with her.

After Liu Hou sat down, the shopkeeper Liu Guicai came over to greet him, Liu Hou casually asked a few words about what news he had recently inquired about, and Liu Guicai answered Liu Hou one by one. Then Liu Hou instructed him to send more people to Wei and Wu to spread the news, saying that Shu gave preferential treatment to craftsmen with craftsmanship, no matter what kind of craftsmanship it was, it was very popular in Shu.

All craftsmen who go to work in Hanzhong Wang Shizi can get a lot of wages, if they are skilled craftsmen, not only have wages, but also allocate houses to live, and the treatment they enjoy is straight after the nine officials.

Even if you don't have craftsmanship, as long as you have the strength to work, you can live well in Shu, and Liu Bei, the king of Hanzhong, is kind and treats the people like a son. Shu is a happy land without war, wealth, stability and peace, where there are no corrupt officials to oppress the people, and there are no local tyrants and gentry to exploit the people.

In short, it is to do everything possible to advocate how good Shu is and attract more people to immigrate to Shu. In the past, Liu Hou was only a targeted search for craftsmen from all walks of life, but now he has figured out the importance of population, regardless of whether there is craftsmanship or not, as long as they are young and strong, he welcomes them to immigrate to Shu, others think that population is a burden, and he now realizes that population is a resource.

Liu Houzheng and Liu Guicai chatted, and the soldiers came to report, and Guan Gong led 50,000 soldiers and horses to aid Jingzhou. When Liu Hou heard the news, he had to go back and go out of the city with other officials in Jingzhou City to meet Guan Gong.

It turned out that after Guan Gong returned to Chengdu, under the treatment of penicillin developed by the medical school, it didn't take long for the fever to subside. After the infection was charged, it took almost two months for the whole body injury to heal under the care of Hua Tuo and other famous doctors.

At this time, the Wei army sent troops to plot against Jingzhou, Liu Bei received a request for help from Jingzhou City, and his son was in Jingzhou, of course Liu Bei could not help but save him. Although Shu Han used troops everywhere, and now Chengdu's troops are also stretched, Liu Bei still gritted his teeth and cobbled together an army of 50,000, ready to personally lead troops to rescue his precious son.

It just so happened that Guan Gong's injuries healed at this time, he returned from the last attack on Xiangfan, and almost lost his life in Maicheng, and he hated Wei and Wu to the core, and this time he had the opportunity to take revenge, so he naturally refused to let go of such an opportunity. So he tried to lead the troops by himself, planning to go to Jingzhou to fight the rivers and lakes again.

Liu Bei couldn't resist his second brother, so he handed over the army of 50,000 to him and asked him to rescue his precious son quickly. But where is it so easy for the 50,000 army to move, and they don't have the fast-moving super battleships like Liu Hou, and when they arrived in Jingzhou, they didn't even see a single hair of the Wei army.

"I used to watch police movies, and the police always defeated the bad guys at the pig's feet, and it was too late for the matter to be resolved. Liu Hou thought angrily.

Liu Hou welcomed Guan Gong back to the palace, and Guan Gong took out Liu Bei's edict and asked Liu Hou to return to Chengdu immediately. Liu Hou was shocked, he finally got Guan Gong away last time, and he wanted to establish a bridgehead here to conquer the world, but he didn't expect his wish to be shattered so quickly.

This time, won't all my previous efforts be in vain? This time, I will be trapped in the Ministry of Industry again, when will I be able to participate in the conquest of the world? Although, in the eyes of others, he is only 13 years old and not very suitable to participate in the war, but he knows that he has been waiting for 12 years.

It has been 12 years since I came to this passionate and war-torn world, and I have been dormant for 12 years, and I don't want to participate in this game of competing for the world and winning the Central Plains all the time. Liu Bei thought that he was too young to participate in this kind of game among adults. Couldn't his cousin in Jingzhou reassure him this time?