Xiangyang builds a pontoon bridge in the west of the city every autumn and winter to facilitate land transportation with Fancheng (Dengcheng) on ​​the north bank. When the Han River rises sharply in the flood season, or when large quantities of materials need to be transported directly to Jinzhou, Han River and other places upstream, the pontoon bridge will be dismantled.

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However, at the end of the eighth year of Shaolong's reign, in addition to the usual pontoon bridge erected at Wolongji Ferry in the west of Xiangyang City, the Xiangyang government also recruited soldiers and civilians to erect a pontoon bridge between Yuliangzhou and Lumen Mountain in the east of the city.

The Han River flows from west to east into the territory of Xiangyang Prefecture, but in the northeast of Xiangyang City, it almost turns a big right-angle bend, and the flow turns south, heading towards Yingzhou and Fuzhou.

After flowing through the entire Nanyang Basin from north to south, the Tangbai River flows into the Han River at almost the top corner of this large right-angled bend.

Over thousands of years, billions of silt from the upper reaches of the Han River and Tangbai River have been alluvial and deposited in this large bay to form a large sandbar in the center of the river that stretches for nearly 20 miles from north to south and 11 or 2 miles from east to west.

In the pre-Qin Dynasty, some people used earth and rocks to cross the water flow on the edge of the sandbank, leaving several gaps. Fish baskets made of bamboo and wood were placed in the gaps to catch fish. In ancient times, this fishing method was called weirang, so this

This sandbank has been called Yuliangzhou for thousands of years.

There is a large shoal formed by alluvial sediment in the east of Xiangyang City. Across the river from Yuliangzhou is Yuliangping.

To the east of Yuliangzhou, close to the Lumen Mountain on the east bank of the Han River, is the remnant of the Dahong Mountains. It is also the gateway from Yingzhou on the east bank of the Han River to Nanyang - the rocky beach on the south side of the Yuliangzhou, because the veins are adjacent to the Lumen Mountain.

Jie, also known as Lumen Beach.

Yuliangzhou divides the Han River that turns south into two parts. The east channel is the main channel leading to the mouth of the Tangbai River, and the west channel is the main channel leading to the Jin Ferry in the north of Xiangyang City.

The industry in Beijing and Xiangzhou is becoming more and more prosperous, and the Yuliangzhou East Waterway is also becoming more and more crowded with boats. Every year, thousands of merchant ships pass through it, bringing ironware, cotton yarn, cotton woolen fabrics, and wood produced in Yunyang, Biyang and other places.

Commercial goods such as tea and medicine were shipped to Jinghu, Jianghuai and other places, and even went to sea via Hangzhou, Yangzhou, and Runzhou, and were exported to overseas vassal countries.

Erecting a pontoon bridge on the east waterway between Yuliangzhou and Lumen Mountain will not completely seal the Hanshui waterway. Ships can still go to the Tangbai River waterway through the west waterway, but it will also have some impact on the increasingly prosperous shipping.

hinder.

While everyone was wondering, after the Lunar New Year in the ninth year of Shaolong's reign, the government recruited tens of thousands of troops, and the people built embankments on the north and south sides of the Yuliangzhou pontoon. They quarried pebbles from the east beach of Yuliangping and woven them with bamboo.

The large basket carried it and sank into the waterway between Yuliangzhou and Lumen Mountain to cut off the water flow.

At this time, everyone suddenly realized that the Xiangyang government was going to build a large iron bridge between Yuliangzhou and Lumen Mountain.

The east waterway between Yuliangzhou and Lumen Mountain is 150 feet wide. At this time, no matter how strong the construction industry in Beijing and Xiangzhou is, they will never be able to directly build a super iron bridge spanning 150 feet.

To build the Yuliangzhou Iron Bridge, you need to first build embankments upstream and downstream of the waterway between Yuliangzhou and Lumen Mountain, drain the water, and then build thirty groups of super-large bridge piers on the river bed, and then arch each section

Bridges are erected on these piers, connecting Yuliangzhou with the land on the east coast of Lumen Mountain.

And because the waterway between Yuliangzhou and Yuliangping is more open, more than 400 feet wide, and also bears the impact of violent floods during the flood season, it is not suitable to build a super-large iron bridge in the short term. Fixed pontoon bridges will be used at that time.

Connecting the two sides of Yuliangzhou and Yuliangping.

After the completion of this series of projects, in addition to the fixed bridges connecting the east and west banks of the Han River, boats can pass between the iron bridge arches without interrupting shipping. This can be said to have initially opened up the water and land transportation bottleneck in Xiangyang.

Even with some clever tricks, the Yuliangzhou Iron Bridge was a huge project that was beyond the imagination of most people, not to mention that it was unimaginable more than ten years ago.

It has a lot of experience in iron casting and construction, but the widest iron bridge built in the past is less than one-third of the Yuliangzhou Iron Bridge.

The reason why the Xiangyang Bridge was built between Yuliangzhou and Lumen Mountain where the Han River turns south is that in addition to using Yuliangzhou in the center of the river to significantly reduce the construction volume of the iron bridge, there is also a key technical reason, which is the fish

Among the waterways on the east and west sides of Liangzhou, the east waterway is the least affected by the flow of water during the flood season.

The Yuliangzhou Iron Bridge is the key link between Bixiang Avenue and Xiangyang City. It is located here to facilitate the future extension of Bixiang Avenue southward along the east bank of the Han River.

Bixiang Avenue, which has entered the construction stage at this time, is part of the north-south main road in Xu Huai's vision, and will need to continue to extend north and south in the future.

The northern extension of Bixiang Avenue and the gravel road extending through Fangcheng to Ye County have started construction at the same time. It will also connect Xiangcheng, Xuchang, Changge, Xinzheng, and extend to Zhengzhou Zhiguan City.

The southern extension of Bixiang Avenue goes south through Lumen Mountain, along the east bank of the Han River, to Yingzhou, Fuzhou, and Ezhou, and reaches the bank of the Yangtze River.

Only by achieving this step can this avenue initially connect the northern and southern parts of the empire.

The old city of Xiangyang is located between Yanshan Mountain (the remnants of Jingshan Mountain) and the Han River, with a narrow terrain. During Wen Hengyue's administration, a new city was built to the west of the old city between the northern foot of Longzhong Mountain and the Han River.

The entire Xiangyang City is more than nine miles long from east to west and four miles deep from north to south. In the past, it could be said to be a large city. As the seat of the imperial capital, it was obviously too narrow.

The south side of Xiangyang City is blocked by Yanshan Mountain, Longzhong Mountain, and Liuzi Mountain, and the north side is blocked by the Han River. There is no room for expansion. At the same time, Xiangyang City, the broader Nanyang Basin, and Suiying Anhuang and other prefectures on Jinghu North Road were blocked by the Han River.

Water barrier - Even after the Yuliangzhou Iron Bridge is completed, it is far from meeting the land transportation needs of the imperial capital.

When Sikong Prefecture planned Xiangyang New City, it had two main options. One was to merge Fancheng on the north bank into Xiangyang, and the other was to build the city on a site in the southern part of Zaoyang County on the east bank of the Han River and north of Lumen Mountain.

The Sikong Mansion repeatedly weighed and finally decided to build the new city of the future imperial capital in the open area east of the Han River, Tangbai River, and north of Lumen Mountain. In this way, Bixiang Avenue, as the main road running through the north and south of the empire, could be straightened as much as possible.

, and can also save huge investment in building a super-large iron bridge on the lower reaches of Tangbai River.

Tangbai River is the main waterway from Yunyang and Biyang to Xiangyang in the south. If you do not want to interrupt shipping and ensure smooth land routes, you must build large iron bridges. For other relatively minor rivers, pontoon bridges can be erected in a short time to save construction costs.

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Of course, after the recapture of Bianliang, there were many voices in the DPRK and Central Government that wanted to return the capital.

Now a new city is to be built for the imperial capital on the east bank of the Han River. It is obvious that if the news leaks out, it is destined to cause an uproar.

Therefore, Xu Huai discussed with Shi Zhen, Han Gui and others and decided not to talk about the new city for now.

It is impossible to build a new city directly now. In addition to large-scale construction projects such as the Yuliangzhou Iron Bridge and the southern extension of Bixiang Avenue, the largest commercial cargo transfer terminal and storage and transportation area in Beijing and Xiangzhou will be built east of the Han River in the early stage.

At the same time, a camp and training ground for the Third Town of the Selective Front Army will be built north of Lumen Mountain. First, the construction land of more than ten miles to the east of the Han River and north of Lumen Mountain will be enclosed.

In the future, Sikong Mansion, Xiangyang Academy and Pingliang County Prince's Mansion will be built on the east bank.

It will take at least three to five years to lay the groundwork. After the construction on the east bank has reached a certain scale, or when the Sikong Mansion has further grasped the situation between the government and the opposition, and after the civil and military forces of the entire court have taken root in Xiangyang and settled down, it will not be too late to formally launch the construction plan for the new imperial city.

Of course, there are many criticisms from both the government and the public that the promotion of a series of super-large industrial construction projects is a waste of people and money.

However, in order to avoid excessive consumption of people's power, Xu Huai promoted large-scale industrial construction, always using a combination of conscription and forced labor, and never forced the people to do unpaid heavy manual labor-for prisoners of war.

Except for slavery, even prisoners of war will return to their status as common people after completing a certain number of years of hard labor.

The specially recruited workers and soldiers who are engaged in manufacturing, no matter how meager the salary paid, will ensure that the income from farming is slightly higher than that of the same period.

However, all of this relies on the increasingly strong fiscal revenue of the Sikong Government to support it.

After Xu Huai took control of the government with the Sikong Mansion, he did not significantly increase the taxes in Jiangdong, Jiangxi, Jingnan, Jingbei and eastern Zhejiang. The annual rents and taxes paid by the Five-Road Envoys remained roughly the same as during the Second Huainan Campaign

on the level.

Since the fall of Bianliang, the annual income of the central government has mainly relied on the grain rent and taxes paid by these five roads.

Including taxes on iron salt, tea cloth and other commercial goods, the five routes can provide the central government with an annual income of nearly 30 million yuan a year.

In addition to the five roads including Jiangdong and Jiangxi, Guangnan East Road, Guangnan West Road and Fujian Road are located in remote areas with sparsely populated areas. The amount of money and food collected each year is limited. Before the Tianxuan period, they were unable to make ends meet.

After the fall of Bianliang, Emperor Jianji ascended the throne in Xiangyang. The money and grain paid by these three roads each year was only more than two million guan.

At this time, Sikong Mansion was beyond its reach to these three roads, and Xu Huai did not think about developing the tax sources of these three roads.

The taxes on Xishu Road mainly supplied the war effort on Dongchuan Road and West Qin Road; the West Zhejiang Road was basically divided by the Ge family at this time, and the rent and food on Huaidong Road were currently collected and financed by Han Shiliang and his troops.

The central government currently collects 32 million yuan of money and grain from various routes in the south every year, which is much higher than before the fall of Bianliang.

However, with the suppression of the Dongjing banditry, the public security situation in the southern states and counties has been increasingly improved.

Government officials in various places, either proactively or passively, have taken many measures in recent years to clear land and level taxes, suppress powerful people, reclaim wasteland, resettle refugees, and expand tax sources.

This has not only allowed the tax revenue that local governments can retain to begin to recover; people's livelihood in various places has also improved to a certain extent compared to previous years.

In addition, since there were no new establishments after the dismantling of the Suwei imperial army, and the expenses of the inner court were greatly reduced, the central branch is currently mainly used for the salaries of thousands of civil and military officials in various ministries and departments and various public funds. The total annual expenses are reduced to

Eight million strings.

Six years ago in Shaolong, the inner court alone had five to six thousand chambermaids, and together with other miscellaneous expenses, it would have cost seven to eight million yuan a year; although this was compared to the inner court expenses during the Tianxuan period, it was already

Great savings.

After deducting the central government's annual expenditure of 8 million guans, the various roads turn over to the central government every year and there are still 24 million guans in rent and food that can be spent, which is directly in the hands of the five-road tax envoys headed by Shi Zhen, which is basically

It can cover the military pay and troops of the five armies of Jingsheng, Xuanwu, Tianxiong, Xiaosheng and Xuanfeng with a total of 150,000 soldiers, 50,000 garrison troops and horses of various roads and prefectures, and 150,000 defenders on each defense line.

Military expenses such as armor equipment, construction of barracks and fortresses, etc.

Overall, military expenditures have not increased significantly compared to Shaolong six years ago.

On the one hand, the scale of military pay for generals and soldiers has not been increased, and land grants have even been used to replace the previous costly military merit rewards.

The work of allocating nearly 100,000 generals of the Xiaosheng, Xuanwu, and Jingsheng armies to farmland and resettling their families has basically been completed. The generals and their families can now basically guarantee self-sufficiency in food and other basic living materials, and there is no need to use meager expenses anymore.

The military pay was used to buy the skyrocketing high-priced grain - the grain, cotton and silkworm cultivation of the generals' families even had some surplus, which was purchased by the Sikong Mansion.

This ensured that the living standards of Yuan Xiaosheng, Xuanwu and Jingsheng's three armies, one hundred thousand generals and dozens of their dependents, had been greatly improved compared to the six years of Shaolong.

The total expenditure on equipment such as armor and weapons has not increased significantly, but has actually decreased.

However, there has been a qualitative improvement in the army's armor and equipment. This is mainly due to the fact that Jingxiang took over the manufacturing of all armor and war equipment.

The fastest growing growth is mainly due to investment in the construction of camps and various military fortresses.

This is mainly because the front is advancing too fast.

After the great victory in Yingzhou, the defense line advanced to the Yingshui River, taking over more than 20 cities in Chen Xuying and other prefectures and counties, and building hundreds of military garrisons. More than 200,000 soldiers and horses were to be stationed in the new garrisons, camps and fortresses, etc.

In more than half a year, nearly 5 million yuan was invested in the construction of the direction.

Now that Heluo, Zhengbian and other places have been recovered, there cannot be any reduction in the expenditure in this area.

However, even so, the central government's annual revenue can almost cover all military expenditures.

In the past, the central defense was excluded, and more than 20 million yuan of money and food were invested every year, but this could not necessarily cover the huge expenditure of the Huaihe River defense line. The living environment of more than a dozen generals and their families was even extremely harsh and difficult.
To be continued...