Qin Official

Time has entered late April, the busy farming season has ended, and the Northland has begun to enter the off-farming period when soldiers are recruited to practice martial arts.

In order to prepare for the use of troops in the coming year, the Beidi County Lieutenant's Mansion has been very busy recently. Heifu also often summons the county lieutenants, military officials, and priests to gather together to arrange tasks for them. From time to time, some golden sentences come out in the meeting.

For example, this sentence.

"There are three things you need to do when joining forces in battle. The first is to obtain the terrain, the second is to obey the discipline of the soldiers, and the third is to make use of the weapon!"

As soon as the county captain said this, the clerks who were in charge of the meeting minutes immediately copied them onto jute paper.

Heifu asked the officials to digest this sentence, while he picked up the cup and took a sip of the wolfberry and chrysanthemum water that his wife had made for him. After a while, he slowly said:

"The Art of War states that people often die where they cannot and are defeated where they cannot. Therefore, in the art of war, teaching war is the first priority."

The so-called soldier obedience is to increase the training of soldiers so that they know the golden drum flag and are proficient in fighting skills so that they will not be confused and overwhelmed when they go to the battlefield.

Beidi County is a border county, so it has standing army soldiers and county pawns, but they are not many. The county capital Yiqucheng has one thousand, the two border passes of Xiaoguan and Wushisai have five hundred each, and the remaining six counties have , each has five hundred, but the total is only five thousand.

At most half of these county soldiers can be mobilized during battle, so the main force in the war is not them, but the garrison soldiers recruited temporarily. Beidi County has more than 30,000 households and less than 200,000 people, which is much inferior to Heifu's hometown, Nan County, and half of them are Rongdi people. Fortunately, the folk customs here are strong and the people are very active in joining the army. With three households and one village, it is easy to mobilize more than 10,000 people.

In addition to the county soldiers and garrison soldiers, there are also cavalry and servants from the Rong tribes such as Dayuan, Wushi, Chaona, Yiqu, etc., which can make up 3,000 people.

Based on this calculation, the maximum number of troops that Beidi County can dispatch is 15,000.

According to Qin Shihuang's orders to Longxi and Shangjun, the war may start next year, and Heifu must seize the time to train them.

"Beyond the fortress, there are mountains and hills, many mountains and plains, vast fields. In this land of chariots and cavalry, there are not even ten infantrymen."

Heifu has set the tone for this war. Whether he can win a big victory, cavalry will be the decisive factor, so he decided to increase the number of chariots and cavalry in Beidi County, especially the cavalry.

The three thousand soldiers and cavalry gathered by each military tribe were temporarily recruited and led by the tribal chiefs to participate in the battle. They did not need to be trained by the county lieutenants, and Hei Fu did not want to rely too much on them. He planned to use three hundred Beidi Liangjiazi who were skilled in horseback riding and archery as the core, and train a cavalry equipped with high saddles and stirrups on the pastures of Yuzhi, Yiqu, and Jingyang, composed purely of Qin people. The number of soldiers is not too high, just a thousand!

Heifu's plan is to have Bailu, the grandson of Yuzhi County, train three hundred good men in half a year, teach them cavalry tactics and become familiar with high saddles and stirrups. When autumn comes, hundreds of young men in the county who can ride horses and archery will be recruited into the army, so that one Liangjiazi can teach two people, and the army will be ready in the next summer...

As for the training of other officers, soldiers, and apprentices, Heifu decided to do it himself.

After talking about "the pawn gets used to it", Heifu emphasized the "use of weapons".

"If the weapon's blade is not sharp, how is it different from a bare-handed fist? If the armor is not hard and tight, how is it different from a commoner? If a crossbow cannot shoot from a distance, how is it different from a short-hand soldier? If a crossbow cannot hit, it cannot penetrate, it is different from a weapon without arrows. What's the difference? Therefore, the art of war says: If the weapon is not good, use it to kill the enemy!"

Heifu went to the county in spring and inspected the arsenals of each county. Generally speaking, he was quite satisfied. Beidi County is located in an important position. Xianyang often transports weapons and arrows here, but most of these weapons are bronze and iron soldiers. less.

When the forging of iron weapons of the Six Kingdoms in Shandong was relatively mature, Qin still used bronze because it could be mass-produced. Although it had reached the pinnacle of bronze weapon manufacturing, there was a problem: Beidi County was short of copper and tin!

This means that Beidi County's weapons can only rely on the Xianyang arsenal and the iron mines in Qixian County. Although it is not far away, once a war breaks out, the battle line stretches for thousands of miles, and there is no arsenal in front to supply weapons and arrows in time. Clusters may become a hidden danger.

When Heifu inspected the counties, he discovered that there was an iron mine in a place called "Yiju" at the intersection of Nishui and Jingshui in Niyang County. There are also some small local workshops that can make iron farm tools. After investigation, it was found that the scale of the iron mine was quite large. If mined on a large scale, tens of thousands of kilograms of good iron could be produced every year!

So after negotiating with the governor, Heifu made a request to Qin Shihuang: set up iron officials in Beidi County, move blacksmiths from Guandong to Beidi, mine and smelt iron, and produce iron weapons nearby to make up for the shortage of frontline weapons...

By the way, there is an iron workshop in Beidi County, so Heifu can easily ask the craftsmen to tinker with some small inventions that will shine in the war against Hungary.

However, afterward, Heifu felt that these were all precautions and even a bit of icing on the cake, because he heard from Wu Shiluo that the Xiongnu's metallurgical industry was more than a little behind that of the Central Plains...

As early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties, there are many relics of bronze civilization on the grasslands. The Huns also smelted bronze. Weapons and horse equipment such as copper knives, swords, arrowheads, axes, and horse bits were very common.

However, compared with the demand, its quantity is really scarce. A few of the Xiongnu's copper and iron are produced by themselves, and most of them are imported from the Central Plains and the distant Altai Mountains, which are valuable. In the hinterland of the Xiongnu, sometimes a small copper knife could be exchanged for a cow. Some ordinary Xiongnu herdsmen had to use stones as blades and bones as clusters.

Therefore, in terms of armor and soldiers, the Xiongnu's weakness is China's strength.

Since transporting copper and iron outside the frontier can make a fortune, during the melee between the seven kingdoms in the Central Plains, the copper and iron from Qin, Yan, and Zhao all flowed out of the frontier. But as Qin destroyed Yan and Dynasty, the copper and iron the Xiongnu obtained from the Central Plains decreased rapidly!

After Heifu came to Northland County, he intensified his blow to the smuggling trade.

"Even a needle is not allowed to flow out of the customs!"

At the end of the meeting, Heifu gave the thief Cao a death order. Once the Great Wall garrison discovers a smuggler intending to cross the border, he will kill him without retaliation!

Forget it, Heifu added another one: "The soldiers on the border can take all the stolen goods and property obtained from smuggling!"

The thief Cao Peng was stunned, and his teeth were chattering. This county lieutenant is so cruel!

In this way, the border guards will be extremely happy to shoot any smugglers who dare to cross the border and seize their belongings. Until the war begins, no one dares to approach the Great Wall openly, and Wushi will be the only merchant qualified to trade outside the customs.

This harsh order will definitely make the border merchants complain endlessly, but Hei Fu has no time to pity them. Border merchants can be used by Qin or the Huns. It would also be a troublesome matter if these smugglers betrayed intelligence from the mainland for profit. .

Not every businessman can be as patriotic as Xian Gao.

After Hei Fu finished drinking a pot of wolfberry and chrysanthemum tea, the meeting was considered over. He had arranged for everyone to take care of the two matters of soldiers' training and utilization of weapons, but Hei Fu did not take care of the top priority, "getting terrain". mentioned.

Heifu left this matter to Chen Ping and the Wuzhi caravan to investigate. They left the fortress at the end of last month. It has been more than a month now. They should have penetrated deep into the Xiongnu Henan region. I don't know where they are now?

…

Chen Ping and his party were still staying at the Xiongnu grazing land at the foot of Helan Mountain. Chen Ping was not worried about his intentions being exposed. After all, the Wushi caravan came every year. Touman Shanyu also invited Ushiyan to visit Touman City. , Don't be afraid of not letting go.

What interested him was that before the caravan set off, Wu Shiyan was invited to the big tent by Moton. It was said that there were only two of them in the tent. This kind of scene to avoid outsiders was usually used for secret talks...

The two county soldiers who were arranged by Hei Fu to protect Chen Ping were slightly worried.

"Will U Thiyan betray us?"

Chen Ping was not afraid at all, and said with a smile: "If Wushi didn't understand which side of the business is more profitable, he wouldn't be as rich as he is today, but..."

He thought maliciously: "In the past ten years, the goods that Wu Shi brought out of customs may also be mixed with contraband such as copper and iron..."

This is what Chen Ping got out of Wu Shiyan yesterday. Wu Shiyan insisted that he reported it to the Shaofu and occasionally brought some copper and iron items to the Xiongnu to win their trust and facilitate trade and exploration. enemy situation.

This trip to the fortress was no exception. With the permission of the county guard and the county lieutenant, Wu Shi brought a hundred small copper knives to Modu. However, the Huns still felt that this was too little and not enough for one tribe.

Therefore, Chen Ping guessed that Maodun asked Wu Shiyan to have a secret discussion this time, and the discussion was about whether Wu Shi could transport another batch of copper and iron weapons to the Xiongnu in the second half of the year...

In the afternoon, Wu Shiyan came back, smelling of mare's milk. After entering the camp, he didn't say anything. After everyone set off and halfway through the journey, and no Huns could hear or see him, he asked Chen Ping to come over and said to him:

"Prince Moton came to talk to me, and it turned out to be about the smuggling of copper and iron gold items out of the country!"

Chen Ping smiled, and his guess was right. Unexpectedly, Wu Shiyan said again: "But this time is different from usual. What Mao Dun wants is not only ready-made copper and iron utensils. He actually asked me if I could get it from the plains." , bring some craftsmen who are capable of mining, iron smelting, and tool casting to the Xiongnu! He will buy them with a lot of money!"

Chen Ping stopped laughing and looked back at the other Xiongnu tribes in Helan Mountain where the tents were lined up. He couldn't help but be surprised.

"In time, will Maodun become the hero of the grassland? At the age of eighteen or nineteen, he can actually understand that it is better to teach a man to fish than to teach him to fish!?"