No matter how uncertain he is, Hong Tao finally finished the groundwork before spring came. In the officialdom, he has at least one-third of the right to speak in the Daimyo's Mansion Road, and as long as he does not touch the interests of the Xianji and Caoji too much, they will not come to trouble again.

The first step in the civil society has also been taken, and the small 400,000 mu of cultivated land is completely enough to be used as a demonstration field. As long as the first batch of farmers who follow themselves to plant white stacked flowers can get a satisfactory harvest in the autumn, there will immediately be landlords who will move closer to their side, who has a grudge against money?

In terms of industry, coal and iron mines are ready-made, and all workshops have been built and started, although the output is not as good as that of Weiqiao Town, but as long as the war does not start immediately, it is no problem to meet the basic equipment needs of the new army.

The financial achievements are mediocre, mainly because the original business of Daimyo Fulu is not particularly developed, and it is impossible to find another way to carry out too many economic reforms. At present, only the Daimyo Bank is officially operating, and Ziju and the Jews with Green Lotus and those Jews plan to get out of the deposit business after the beginning of the spring, in addition to issuing agricultural loans.

The chemical industry has made greater progress, and Gao Yu has really transformed from a corrupt official to a chemical engineer with both theoretical and practical transformation capabilities. With the help of Wang Wu, the fertilizer plant has entered mass production in the first month.

The glass workshop did not fall, and even took the time to build a half-acre glass greenhouse in the mountain glade, and continued to grow melons, fruits and vegetables, exclusively for Lord Shuaisi's gluttonous mouth.

What satisfies Hong Tao the most is not the progress of the chemical industry, but the start of the shipbuilding industry. The concrete ship has been officially put into operation by the maritime merchants, except for the sinking of the big ship with no bamboo tendons and iron bones at the bottom, there has been no ship destruction and death, and the firmness has withstood the test.

The Wen family and his son used the winter to train more than 50 apprentices from the hard labor prisoners, and with enough manpower, as soon as the weather warmed up, the plan to build a real large wooden boat could be started.

Regardless of whether he can enter the sea and turn into a dragon, Hong Tao instinctively prefers the ocean. With a boat, even if you can't get on it, you still have a sense of steadiness in your heart.

Compared to these aspects, military development seems to be a bit slow. The field hospital was established, but the locals had not yet accepted this unheard-of medical method, so Wang Shiba, who was harmed, took the doctors and nurses to the street to set up stalls for free treatment, and had a fight with the seller of strong pills.

Now Hong Tao has less than 7,000 new troops in his hands, and there is no reserve, so if he wants to expand the scale, he has to fight the idea of the forbidden army. Hong Tao didn't think it was a good time to transform the forbidden army now, the training cycle of the new army was about half a year, and it was useless to train it too early, not to mention wasting money and food in vain, and it was easy to be calculated by people in the court.

At that time, the army that he had spent a lot of money and energy to train would probably have made wedding clothes for others. If they will use it, they are afraid that the new army will be used as the original forbidden army, which will not only fail to achieve the expected effect, but will also send equipment to the Liao people in vain and become the captain of the transportation brigade.

When should the new army be expanded to the extent that it can take back the Sixteen Prefectures of Youyun? Hong Tao felt that the last year was more appropriate. In the past year or so, we have to play with our lives to develop agriculture and industry in Hebei Road, and by the way, we will drive business and lay a good foundation for large sums of money in the future.

100,000 new troops, this is the highest authority given to him by Emperor Shenzong, and it is also the limit of what the emperor can support, and it cannot last. Once the army is formed, it must immediately enter the war and make a quick decision, otherwise without the Liao State fighting, these 100,000 gold-swallowing monsters will have to drag down the finances of the Northern Song Dynasty.

With Hong Tao's chicken thief character, if you can use 50,000, you will never need 100,000, and you don't know how many new troops you need at present, everything has to wait for Fu Ji and Wang Shi to collect the garrisons of Nanjing Road and Xijing Road in Liao State.

There is another thing that needs to be done quickly, and that is the road. If you want to get rich, you must first build roads, and if you want to fight, you must also build roads. The road situation of the two roads in Hebei Jiang Erlang's special forces have been explored almost, and the overall situation can only be described in one word, rotten!

The closer you get to the border area, the worse it gets, but this kind of rot is not like the road in Huangzhou because the terrain is complex and difficult to build, but someone deliberately did it. If it weren't for Jiang Erlang's loyalty, Hong Tao would have felt that he was deliberately deceiving himself.

Hebei is mostly plain, but the traffic is not developed, and there are only two main roads connecting the north and south. In the west, there is a post road called Taihang Donglu, Kaifeng crosses the Yellow River from Mengjin to the west and then enters the Hebei region to the east, and then turns north and enters the territory of Liao all the way along the foot of Taihang Mountain. This road is relatively far away, and there are mostly mountain roads, so it is not easy for the team to pass.

This road in the east is located in the middle of Hebei, from Kaifeng to go to Lanzhou first, go north to the Daimyofu to cross the Yellow River, and then all the way out of Xiongzhou or Bazhou, called Song Liao Post Road.

There are many rivers along this road, but the terrain is flat and relatively wide, and the distance is still short, which is more suitable for large troops to pass through. When the Liao Kingdom went south, it mostly chose this line, and rarely broke through from the western front.

This is also the strategic significance of the Daimyo's Mansion, which is to lock the gateway to the north of Kaifeng, if this place is broken through and then there is no danger to defend.

Some readers who live in Hebei and Shandong may say that there should be a road, that is, Cangzhou further east, along the coastal plain area directly into Shandong, can't it still go south.

This method can be done after the Ming and Qing dynasties, but it really can't be put in the Song Dynasty. It's not that the people of the Liao State are stupid, and they don't go to the plains to attack the Daimyo's Mansion, but Cangzhou at this time is full of rivers and swamps. The Northern Song Dynasty court was not enough, and dug a lot of artificial ponds, almost all of which were connected into pieces, not to mention cavalry, and it was difficult for infantry to pass.

Therefore, there is no eastern coastal passage at all, and in the area north of Mount Tai, there are only two roads mentioned above to lead a large army south.

Could it be that the Northern Song Dynasty court paid attention to it for a long time, and even the two only strategic highways could not be repaired? Hong Tao thought so at first, and the answer given by Fu Ji made him immediately cry and laugh.

It's not that it can't be repaired, but that it is deliberately not repaired, with only one purpose, to increase the difficulty of the Liao cavalry going south. For this purpose, the monarchs and ministers of the Northern Song Dynasty can be regarded as hollowing out their minds, and the methods they came up with were all extinct.

On the first line of the Baigou River (later Juma River) where the Song and Liao confronted, the Northern Song Dynasty forbidden army relied on strong walled forts for defense. More than 100 walled forts, large and small, were connected into a string, and once a small group of Liao troops attacked, several neighboring walled forts would send troops together, relying on numerical superiority to fight.

If the Liao army comes, it will rely on the walled fort to hold out, and the Liao army is not good at attacking the city, and if it makes a detour, it will wait for the opportunity to harass its rear road with cavalry.

After the Liao army broke through the first line of defense, it was not the second line of garrisons, but endless plantations and ponds, and this was the beginning of the real battle of the Song army.

The large cavalry force could not successfully pass through this terrain, so they could only dismount and send people to cut down trees and fill in the earth, or use heavy troops to attack and guard the city with several roads. The former is quite laborious, the woods are too dense and there are too many ponds, and the Khitan herdsmen who have no earthwork training are not efficient in doing this kind of work.

The latter is not light, the Northern Song Dynasty army held on to the city to wait for work, there were friendly troops in front and back, and the Liao people were not good at attacking fortifications, and from time to time they would be attacked by local village soldiers and archers.

At this time, the Liao army had lost its ability to maneuver, and it was not much stronger than the infantry, even if it could break through the obstacle belt of 100 miles, it would be the end of the crossbow.

Reluctantly rushed to the north of the Daimyo's Mansion, there was no strength to fight another large-scale battle, and the logistics could not be guaranteed, so they could only plunder around and quickly retreat while the Song Dynasty forbidden army was not mobilized in place, and there would be big losses if they ran late.

It sounds like this kind of defense is very stupid and stupid, and it has no initiative at all, but with the current combat capability of the Northern Song Dynasty army, it can only do so if it wants to block a large-scale cavalry attack in the plain area, and it is very successful.

Since the general strategic policy is to use strategic depth to consume the enemy's sharp energy little by little, all the construction of the Hebei Road must also obey this strategy, and the road has become rotten in this way.

From the Daimyo Mansion to the north to the border of Xiongzhou for about 700 miles, the post road to Hejian Mansion for 400 miles is barely open to traffic, and the road to Xiongzhou for more than 200 miles after passing Hejian Mansion is miserable.

When it doesn't rain, there are potholes, almost not a foot is flat, and as soon as it rains, it immediately turns into a mud pit. These muds are not like the dirt roads in Huangzhou, which are mostly sandy and thin mud, but sticky and slippery cement. No matter how awesome the car is, it is estimated that even if the four-wheel drive off-road vehicle of the future generation and replace it with mud tires, it will be the life of the nest.

If Fuji said that the road is not easy to walk, it must be that it is not easy to walk. Her caravan has almost covered the northern border in recent years, and she has a lot to say about the road conditions. Fortunately, there are more white camels in the caravan, which can carry goods instead of vehicles, otherwise she would not be able to pass smoothly in late spring, summer, and early autumn.

Making the road so bad would indeed make it more difficult for the Liao cavalry heading south, but it would also be troublesome to send supplies to the front.

That's right, it's just very troublesome, and every year for this purpose, the local government will hire a large number of civilians to carry supplies through this defensive belt on their shoulders and hands to transport supplies to the front line.

The Northern Song Dynasty court was also forced to be in a hurry, so it simply played the trick of killing 1,000 enemies and losing 800 self-inflicted losses, and fought with the Liao State for human resources.

I don't have a problem with you having more horses, but we have a lot of people, and if you use this method to offset the advantage of your horses, the two sides will basically be in a balance of power. You can't go south, and I can't go north, so let's just consume it.

There is nothing wrong with the use of this strategy in strategic defense, and there is no good way to change it to Hong Tao's command. But now that Emperor Shenzong is going on a northern expedition, it is not appropriate to play like this anymore.

Without a smooth road, the Liao State could not go south quickly, but its own new army could not go north smoothly, so the road construction was officially put on the agenda. The road north of the separation zone can be slowed down first, but the Song Liao Post Road, which is more than 400 miles from the Daimyofu to the south of Hejian Mansion, must be started first.