In these years, it costs money to raise soldiers, and it costs a lot of money.

Now Liu Bei Group only has four counties in Jingzhou, of which Yidu County is still separated from the original South County, and in fact, it still controls the territory of the original three counties in Jingzhou.

The total number of registered people in these places is about 120,000 households, 6.7 million people.

If you look at the official data, there can be 60,000 soldiers in Jingzhou, which can be regarded as a poor army.

Ten people raising one soldier is the limit of tolerance in any era.

But in fact, there are nearly 80,000 soldiers in Jingzhou.

This has to be said to be a strange phenomenon of this era - the difference between the actual population and the registered population.

The number of registered households does not mean that there are only so many people in Jingzhou, there are many people, in fact, they are all homeless and hidden households hidden by the family.

These people do not have to pay taxes, but they are not registered either, they are also tenant farmers of the family, or tuntian households, and their number is not less than the registered population.

To give a simple example, after Sima Yan of the Western Jin Dynasty destroyed the Wu Kingdom, according to the statistics of the household registration book at that time, there were only more than 9 million people in the world, and then there was a marketing account compared with the peak of the Sui Dynasty, with a population of more than 50 million people, which illustrates the serious consequences caused by the turmoil of the Three Kingdoms.

But these people will not explain to everyone at all, just five years later, Sima Yan conducted a census, and the final result was that there were more than 16 million people in the world.

In five years, it's almost doubled. There can't be more than 7 million people who have been born in the past five years, right?!

This is still the result of the census under the condition that Sima Yan did not dare to offend the family by a large margin.

Of course, it is not to say that it is necessary to wash the ground for the troubled times of the Three Kingdoms, after all, in this kind of troubled times, the mortality rate of the people is high, and the sharp decline in the population is indeed a thing, and it should indeed be the princes of this era who bear the blame, but it is not as serious as one out of ten.

Well, back to the point.

Because the family hides a large number of people, the princes' taxes have been greatly affected, so the family has to make certain concessions in this regard.

For example, in Jiangdong, they adopted the "world soldier system", except for the tens of thousands of troops directly controlled by Sun Quan, the other soldiers were the private soldiers of the big families, and Sun Quan did not pay a penny to raise soldiers.

There are good and bad things about this, and the biggest advantage is that under Sun Quan's control, the actual ratio of military and civilian personnel can be greatly reduced, and the burden of raising soldiers can be handed over to those families and hidden households who do not pay taxes.

Cao Wei is different, Cao Wei uses the method of military tun and min tun to raise soldiers.

Whether it is a military tun or a mintun, these tuntian people are not included in the household registration, that is to say, Cao Wei's real military-civilian ratio is actually not too high, and it is a large number of tuntian people who really suffer.

As for Liu Bei's side, because of the late start, from occupying Jingzhou to conquering Yizhou, that is, five or six years, there was no time to thoroughly sort out this matter, so Liu Bei Group adopted a compromise method - let the family pay for food in exchange for Liu Bei Group's acquiescence to their hidden population.

This is something that can't be helped, Liu Bei's foundation is thin, and he doesn't have enough time to tidy up the interior, so he can only use a compromise emergency plan.

That is to say, on the land of Jingzhou, there are only 120,000 households in Dingkou, but the number of soldiers is as high as 80,000, but in addition to the large number of soldiers, in fact, the burden of paying taxes and raising soldiers in Dingkou is actually not very heavy.

Most of the cost of raising troops was provided by the clans.

Zhang Xi knew about the situation in this regard, so he did not consider the idea of increasing the number of troops and expanding the army in terms of how to increase the combat strength of the Jingzhou army.

There may not be a shortage of money and food, but the recruitment of soldiers must always occupy the share of Dingkou and conscription, and the 120,000 households of yeoman farmers may be able to support 80,000 soldiers economically, but if the recruitment is expanded, the population will not be able to support it.

Recruiting for service can only be recruited from homesteaders with household registration or refugees, and the big families will not take the initiative to take out their hidden Dingkou and hand it over to Zhang Xi to train as a soldier.

Therefore, if you want to improve the combat strength of the Jingzhou army, you can't move in terms of numbers, so you can only find a way from the ordnance aspect.

For this reason, Zhang Xi pondered for a long time how to improve the ordnance and improve the field combat ability of the soldiers.

In these years, in addition to hand-to-hand combat, the biggest attack weapon in field battles is the bow and crossbow, and Zhang Xi has no good way.

In terms of archery, it will take about a year or so to get a qualified archer, and Zhang Xi will not be able to quickly increase the number of archers in a short period of time.

Therefore, even though Zhang Xi has a set of so-called "assembly line" operations, which can speed up the production of bows and arrows and other ordnance, Zhang Xi will still be constrained by this era in terms of the number of archers.

As for crossbowmen, it's a good choice.

It's just that the range of the hand-held crossbow is too close, and there is probably only three or four opportunities to shoot on the battlefield, and it has to be under the protection of heavy soldiers to shoot, and after shooting, you have to retreat and rest, and you can only engage in hand-to-hand combat after changing weapons, which is very troublesome.

The crossbow operation is too cumbersome, a crossbow team needs three to five people, and Zhang Xi does not have enough manpower to train the crossbow troops on a large scale.

Seriously, Zhang Xi had the heart to go to Chengdu, and let the dead fish head quickly get the Zhuge Repeater out, see what it looked like, and save it with a shadow and a picture, and the province would be lost again.

By the way, there are also wooden oxen and flowing horses. I always felt that it couldn't be as simple as a unicycle.

Hawkers, it's a lot of, let's talk about going back to the Jingzhou Army ordnance.

In the absence of a good way to improve long-range weapons, Zhang Xi thought about it, and it seemed that he could only find a way to use hand-held melee weapons.

Guan Yu increased the proportion of long sword soldiers, didn't he dislike the inconvenience of pikemen and shield soldiers to climb the city wall to attack, and think of a weapon that could not only fight in the field, but also attack the city, wouldn't it be good?!

In this regard, Zhang Xi pondered for several days and locked two things.

One is a Pu knife, and the other is a Miao knife.

The simple knife is usually a short knife, but you can add a long handle at any time and become the kind that Song Jiang took in the machete "Water Margin".

The long or short simple knife can be made into a short knife to attack during the siege, or it can be turned into a machete to exert power in the field, which is simply the most ideal weapon now.

As for the Miao knife, it was made by Qi Dashuai to cut the Japanese Kou, the length is much longer than the current standard weapon ring head knife, the blade is thin, it can be used for both stabbing and slashing, but it can also be suitable for the general characteristics of Zhangxi field siege.

But Zhang Xi always felt that the length of the Miao knife was still a bit short after all, and he would suffer a loss if he encountered a spear or something, so he just put the Miao knife as an alternative and gave priority to the trial production of the Pu knife.

But this trial production, there is a problem.

The first is the problem of craftsmanship. In fact, this is the place where Zhang Xi thought it was the least likely to go wrong.

Since the former Han salt and iron official camp, the government has built a lot of government-run iron smelting areas in various places, and the scale in some places is already very large.

The huge number of iron-smelting areas not only brought a large number of iron utensils, but more importantly, the iron-smelting technology has been greatly developed.

Aside from some improvements in details, the iron-smelting techniques of ancient China have hardly changed from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties periods, and then for more than 1,500 years.

Whether it is 100 steelmaking, or frying steel, or steel filling method, in fact, it has existed in the era of the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

Qi Wuhuaiwen's steel filling method only combined with the experience of predecessors, improved the process, improved efficiency, and was completely recorded for the first time.

Like Cai Lun's improvement of paper, Qi Wuhuaiwen only improved the steel filling method.

Therefore, Zhang Xi originally thought that in terms of iron-smelting technology, Zhang Xi had no place where he could give full play to his advantages as a traverser, unless you made blast furnace steelmaking.

Blast furnace steelmaking, Zhang Xi knows the words "blast furnace steelmaking", and he doesn't even know what the blast furnace looks like.

But in reality, this is not the case.

In this regard, Zhang Xi is looking at the problem from the perspective of later generations, and does not take into account the actual situation of this era at all.

Yes, there have been hundreds of steels in these years, but it is really time-consuming and laborious to build a weapon of 100 steels.

In these years, there is not even a hydraulic stamping machine, and the so-called hundred refining really makes the blacksmith beat it repeatedly, purely relying on manpower, and smashing it hundreds of times.

Legend has it that Cao Cao spent three years to build five hundred steel knives. It is really too extravagant to use 100 steels to build ordnance.

There are also methods of frying steel, but in this era, this skill is really not something that ordinary blacksmiths can master, and it is basically the kind that some old craftsmen do not pass on their secrets, and they are passed on to men but not women.

Moreover, the operation of the steel frying method is very dependent on the experience and luck of the blacksmith, even the most experienced iron master, the probability of frying steel is one in a hundred, and most of them can have wrought iron.

Moreover, the frying method has high requirements for fuel, and it is definitely not possible to use charcoal, and coal must be used.

But these days, coal is really hard to find.

As for the steel-filling method. Even the most experienced old blacksmith had only heard of it, but you had to ask him exactly how he did it - I don't know.

Zhang Xi was speechless for a moment, and at the same time realized what his problem was.

From the perspective of later generations, the steel filling method has appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty, but it does not mean that this technology has been completely mature and has been widely popularized.

It's like paper appeared in the Western Han Dynasty, and Cai Lun in the Eastern Han Dynasty has improved the paper manufacturing process, but at this time, everyone still uses bamboo slips and silk silk as text carriers.

The steel filling method does exist, but in this era, it is probably a private secret, or it may be that the skills are not perfect and not taken seriously, so most blacksmiths do not know that there is such a thing.

It doesn't matter if the craftsmen don't know, Zhang Xi knows. Qi Wuhuaiwen's steel filling method is not a difficult thing to understand, that is, let the pig iron and wrought iron stick to each other, and then let the pig iron melt and blend into the wrought iron, and adjust the carbon content in the wrought iron.

I don't know what the ratio of pig iron to wrought iron should be, but I just need to test the ratio a few more times.

However, this method still has a more troublesome problem - like the steel frying method, this thing costs coal.

(End of chapter)