"This reckless man, although he is brave enough, what is there to love?" Song Jia asked Lin Jian in private, she knew that Sun Zhuang had irreplaceable value in contacting the Red Jacket Army, but if Lin Jian just wanted to use Sun Zhuang, he would not have put so much effort into it.

Lin Lian smiled slightly and said: "If the water is clear, there will be no fish, and if the person is observed, there will be no disciples. There are dozens of canal commanders in the Huaisi Liumin Army, and what can really make the Huaidong Army feel difficult to bite is that Sun Zhuang and Liu Miaozhen are only two or three roads. Chen Yan, Zhang Gou and others are not bad, seriously speaking, Zhang Gou's knowledge of the art of war is stronger than Sun Zhuang's, and his mind is also deep, but he has been willing to be a general under Sun Zhuang for several years, in terms of these two points, Sun Zhuang has more than just martial arts! ”

Song Jiamei's eyes were slightly confused.

Lin Jian said: "For the army's courage, if the army is full of far-reaching generals, an army will be slightly lacking in martial arts." Liu Tingzhou is also light on Sun Zhuang, which is the traditional thinking formed by the literati and light martial arts. In fact, Liu Tingzhou left Xiao Kuian, and he couldn't control the ...... of the Northern Army."

"Speaking of the Northern Army," Song Jia asked, "will you always let the Northern Army controlled by Liu Tingzhou and Xiao Kuian hide behind Huaisi?" ”

"It's not a matter of whether I let it go or not," Lin Jian said, "Jiangning's side will do everything possible to transfer the northern army out of Huaidong's grasp." If Liu Miaozhen can successfully accept Zhao'an, let the northern army advance westward and strengthen the defense of the middle road, it is also the right intention. Liu Tingzhou and Xiao Kuian are much more reliable than others, and they can also gain Jiang Ning's trust......"

Sun Zhuang abandoned Suining and Suyu, and Liu Miaozhen led his troops eastward, in order to appease the anger of Liu Tingzhou and others, Lin Jian transferred Xiao Kuian'an to guard Shuyang and gave them the establishment of the Northern Army.

Lin Lianda never thought that he would be able to control the Northern Army from the beginning, and he deliberately did not ease the contradiction with Liu Tingzhou, so he naturally expected that Jiangning would win over the Northern Army from Huaidong.

With the loss of Datong, Beidi is one step closer to the collapse of the whole line, and the time left for Huaidong to prepare is becoming more and more limited.

Qin Chengzu and Sun Zhuang went to Huaisi to assist the Red Jacket Army in making more preparations; Jinhai also had to start retreating immediately, but it was just in time for the storm season, and it was too risky to retreat directly to Mingzhou by sea.

The 300,000 or 400,000 refugees in Jinhai had to first evacuate by sea to the Denglai area in the northern part of the Shandong Peninsula, then go south along the Jiaolai River to Jiaozhou Bay, and then evacuate to Huaidong by sea or land.

There was no surplus land in Huaidong, and the three or four hundred thousand refugees eventually had to move to Daishan, Changguo, Mingzhou and other places for resettlement...... Of course, some people will also be relocated to Yiju, Jeju, and Dongju, but in a short period of time, the number of Dingkou resettled in Yiju, Jeju, Dongju, etc. is very limited.

Withdrawing 300,000 or 400,000 people from Jinhai for thousands of miles and relocating them well is not much easier than a major battle.

This is also one of the reasons why Lin Lian is eager to fight in eastern Zhejiang, he can't beat Mingzhou Mansion, Changguo and Daishan Islands, and Huaidong can't accept so many people.

Mingzhou Mansion aside, Changguo and Daishan Islands, due to the disturbance of the East China Sea for decades, almost all of Dingkou have moved inward. After the luxury family occupied eastern Zhejiang, they resumed agriculture on these islands on a large scale, and many people moved from eastern Fujian, and this time they picked peaches for Huaidong.

After the recovery of the Mingzhou Prefecture, the work of clearing the fields had just begun, and it was not clear how much public land the Mingzhou Prefecture could obtain, but the fields, mountains, forests, lakes, houses, and walled cities to which the Changguo and Daishan Islands belonged had been clearly ordered to be taken into official ownership, and there was no particularly fierce opposition to this in eastern Zhejiang.

In the middle of the Yue Dynasty, the number of acres of registered land in Changguo County was as high as 300,000 mu. If it is used well, 60,000 or 70,000 people can be resettled in the dry fields on these islands alone; In addition, the fishery resources of the Changguo Islands are even richer than those off the port of Hecheng.

Of course, the bulk of the resettlement of refugees is still in Minnesotto. The war that lasted for many years caused heavy losses to the Dingkou in Mingzhou Prefecture, and even the fertile paddy fields along the coast were abandoned because of the lack of Dingkou, and 300,000 people were filled in, and the pressure was not great. The key is to properly handle the contradictions between the newly relocated Dingkou and the local forces.

************

Sun Zhuang said goodbye to the blind old mother and the little woman, took two soldiers, and then returned to Dongya to join Qin Chengzu, that is, under the escort of more than a dozen cavalry guards, he rode north.

The group went north from Chongzhou, and after arriving at Hecheng, they took the Hanhaidi Avenue and went straight to Yandu County in the northwest.

After the Huaisi War, the construction of the Hanhai embankment, from Jiangmen to Hecheng and then north to Yandu, a total length of 312 li, before and after the investment of millions of taels of silver, to the beginning of May was basically completed.

Although Sun Zhuang behaved and spoke rudely, he was by no means a stupid person. There is a seawall to defend, and Lin Jian spit out the words "peace and tranquility" in his mouth, and he can't tolerate the slightest doubt from others.

Defending the seawall is of great significance to Huaidong.

Lin Jian was the first envoy of the Huaidong system, and he built a large number of seawalls, except for Chongzhou, the counties and localities in Huaidong were basically indifferent. Local forces are even more worried about the infringement of their interests, and they either openly or covertly resist the Huaidong Military Division's infiltration into the localities by taking the opportunity of repairing and defending the seawall.

In order to build a seawall to defend the sea, in addition to accepting more than 60,000 displaced people's troops, Huaidong also directly recruited 40,000 Ding Zhuang from the local government into the workers' camp, which directly or indirectly solved the problem of the survival of nearly 200,000 displaced and floating people.

If Huaidong had done nothing and pushed these 200,000 displaced and floating people to the counties and localities, it would have been unimaginable to cause contradictions and turmoil in the localities.

This alone is enough to reverse the previous resistance and confrontation attitude of the local forces towards the Huaidong Military Division.

After the construction of the seawall, nearly one million acres of fields in the embankment will fundamentally solve the harm caused by sea invasion, and there are conditions to gradually transform it into fertile land. The large areas of lakes, wetlands, and swamps in the embankment can also be transformed into fertile land that can be cultivated through the gradual encirclement of the embankment.

Even though a large number of lakes, barren beaches, and wet marshes were taken over by the Huaidong Military Department for the resettlement of displaced people and floating households, the landowners' own fields in the local areas also benefited significantly and directly because of the construction of the seawall.

Some enlightened squires and landlords even took the initiative to cooperate with Huaidong's new policy of rent reduction and tax reduction, recruiting more tenants to transform and cultivate their fields, so that their own fields could produce more output.

In addition to promoting the new policy of rent reduction and tax reduction, Lin Jian was unable to carry out a thorough land reform in Huaidong, and more to encourage tenants to redeem land from landlords and reduce the degree of land annexation in Huaidong.

Some landowners were reluctant to lower rents, but some were willing to sell their fields to avoid conflict with Huaidong's new policy of reducing rents and taxes.

For the landlord, the silver money obtained from the sale of the land can be deposited into the Huaidong Money Village to eat the money interest, which is no worse than directly operating the field; Of course, Huaidong also supported tenants to borrow and redeem funds from Huaidong Money Bank in terms of tax policy, forming a complete cycle.

Of course, fundamentally, after the tenants redeem the land, the enthusiasm for cultivating and improving the land will increase significantly, and the output of the land will also increase significantly, so as to provide enough money and interest income for the money bank to serve as the driving force for the continuous expansion of the whole cycle.

Only those who are truly proficient in political affairs can have a deep understanding of this.

While other localities are still struggling to collect more money and grain from peasant households with problems in survival, Huaidong will be able to collect more than 80,000 taels of silver from the heads of Huaidong Qianzhuang this year.

Of course, there is a world of difference between the extent to which the thin land and the anointed land can accommodate Dingkou.

In Chongzhou, especially after the dredging of the Yunyan River, large-scale promotion of rice, wheat and cotton multi-cropping, a household cultivating 10 acres of fertile land, and even being able to withstand a 30% proportion of the rent pressure and be rich. In the Huaisi region, where water conservancy has been severely damaged, a family can barely make ends meet by cultivating 30 or 40 acres of land, and its ability to withstand natural disasters and social unrest is extremely poor.

In the past, the three counties of Gaocheng, Jianling and Yandu were located in the low-lying area of the Hudang Plain, and the Dingkou of the three counties together was not even as good as Hailing or Chongzhou County.

After the construction of the seawall, the capacity of the land in Gaocheng, Jianling, and Yandu counties to accommodate Dingkou will be greatly increased, and in addition to the large-scale development of Hecheng pasture in Huaidong, it will be possible to gradually resettle 450,000 floating households and displaced people in the interior of Huaidong. This will also completely alleviate the increasingly violent social contradictions and turmoil in the counties.

In this era, whether it is tenant or self-owned land, ordinary people can only settle down completely by cultivating the land. In order to cherish the current opportunity to have fields to cultivate, those people who have suffered from hunger and cold will also support the Huaidong Military Division at the cost of bloodshed and even their lives.

Only a small number of people in the Huaidong Military Department can have access to the core data to understand how profound the significance of the construction of the seawall and the series of actions carried out around the defense of the seawall is to Huaidong.

Today, along the causeway, there are more than 10,000 soldiers left behind to continue the follow-up work such as the repair of the causeway, the planting of the berm and the seawood. These more than 10,000 soldiers are distributed along the 12 post forts and many fortresses along the seawall, which is also the basic defense force that constitutes the seawall and sea defense system.

There are also about 40,000 soldiers transferred into the embankment to carry out the construction of embankments, the construction of water conservancy, reclamation and planting, etc., which are also the reserve troops of Huaidong.

In addition, from the beginning of the year to this time, in addition to the large-scale expansion and new formation of the Changshan Battalion, the Chongcheng Infantry Battalion, the Jinghai Second and Third Water Battalions, and the Eastern Zhejiang Battalion, the Fengli Battalion was also expanded to 20 battalions at one time, doubling the strength of the battalion and consuming about 50,000 soldiers.

At present, the Huaidong Army has 18,000 soldiers of the Changshan Battalion, 9,000 soldiers of the Chongcheng Bu Battalion, 12,000 soldiers of the Fengli Battalion, 12,000 soldiers of the Zhedong Battalion, 15,000 soldiers of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Water Battalions of Jinghai, 5,000 soldiers of the Haidong Battalion, and 3,000 soldiers of the Heishui Foreign Ship Society and the Jiyun Society, with a direct combat strength of more than 70,000 people.

However, the scale of expansion in a short period of time was too large, the replenishment of armor was insufficient, and the overall combat effectiveness declined.

More importantly, about three-quarters of the Huaidong Army's troops, including the Haidong Battalion, were deployed on the southern front, including the Chongzhou and Siyang defense lines, and the total combat strength that Huaidong could mobilize in the north was less than 20,000.

Compared with the combat strength directly under the central government, the reserve strength with the workers' battalion as the core has been reduced to 50,000 people, which is already insufficient.

Qin Chengzu and Sun Zhuang went to Huaisi this time, in addition to persuading Liu Miaozhen, Ma Lantou and others to deploy the main force of the Red Jacket Army on the northern front to guard against the Donghu cavalry that might infiltrate from the Hehuai area at any time, they also persuaded Liu Miaozhen and Ma Lantou to agree to Huaidong to recruit Ding Zhuang from the Huaisi refugees and set up a labor battalion of 20,000 to 30,000 people in the Siyang area.

This is also an important measure to prevent the defection of the Red Jacket Army, enhance Huaidong's control over Huaisi, and increase Huaidong's military reserves.