Chapter 58 Raising military rations

Chapter 58 Raising military rations

Before the soldiers and horses move, food and grass must go first. The supply of military food is undoubtedly the most critical factor in maintaining the army.

Hearing what Zhou Changming said, Li Tai couldn't help but frown: "Didn't you say that the county allocated grain and fodder?"

"It's like this. Originally, the county was supposed to give the township regiment two months of food for the post-autumn training and the grand parade. But not long ago, Longbian Qingshui Dihu moved inland to Huazhou. They need to be properly resettled this year, so they have to The county will only be able to allocate one month's worth of food for the festival this autumn."

Li Quji explained that he had negotiated a lot with the county government recently to achieve such a result.

Li Tai had previously been gloating about the misfortune of the villagers, but he did not expect that the relocation of Dihu would have such repercussions, and he suddenly couldn't be happy anymore.

There are thousands of Dihu families and tens of thousands of people who have moved to Huazhou this time. It is naturally an extremely large number for an individual, but it is actually nothing for a political power.

This amount of resettlement actually forced Daxingtai to change the previous expenditure plan and transfer the grain that should have been allocated to the township league to Dihu, which shows how shallow the Western Wei Dynasty was. There are few variables when it comes to spending and spending finances, so we need to make major emergency adjustments.

The key is that there must be expenditures elsewhere, so why should we use the rural food groups? In the final analysis, although the township troupe has been initially integrated, its combat effectiveness and strength are still not taken seriously by Daxingtai, and the previous hijinks of these Dihu have caused quite a lot of trouble.

Although the township regiment in Wuxiang County is not directly under Li Tai, it is the only Kansai armed force that he can intervene to have a profound impact so far. He has great expectations in his heart for the formation and formation of the township regiment. The formation of combat effectiveness is quite attentive.

Now that there is a sudden food shortage for more than a month, Li Tai is naturally irritated. He feels more and more that Yu Wentai is really picky. You can't afford to support an army of more than a thousand people, and you are still fighting for hegemony! Go back to your hometown and farm, you can't even compare to me in farming!

But after complaining in my heart, the problems that should be faced and solved still need to be solved.

How much military rations does a team of more than 1,600 people need to consume in a month?

The "Song Book" of the Southern Dynasties records a story from the Eastern Jin Dynasty: Today, on the other side of Yi and Di, the foreign empire is in a hurry. The soldiers have seven liters of food, and they forget themselves to go to the disaster.

It is said that the soldiers fighting on the front line sacrificed their lives for seven liters of food per day. The extravagant entertainers in the court were given five dou of food per day, which was really inappropriate.

It can be seen that seven liters of rations per day is already a very low supply for a soldier. If the soldiers can be adequately replenished for their daily consumption, it is more reasonable to give them one bucket of food every day.

A soldier needs three dan for a month's ration. The consumption of more than 1,600 people for a month is a food gap of more than 5,000 dan!

"Then can you think of a solution?"

Although Li Tai was worried about this, he did not want to cause this trouble. Not to mention that he did not have so much food at all. Even if he did, it would not be possible to use it all to fill the gap, unless Yuwen Tai was willing to divide these township groups into Be his private army.

I am determined to be Lu, but not Red Rabbit! He Liuhun is still my big brother after all, you black otter are nothing.

"I have discussed the emergency with several military governors before, hoping that they can provide help with high righteousness. However, except for the two old governors, the three new ones all lost their posts and received rewards, and their household savings were not huge, so they could barely scrape together Give out one thousand two hundred stones of grain."

Li Quji said that the reorganization of the army during this period of time was also a very difficult test for him. From register registration to material mobilization, various problems, big and small, emerged one after another. Some were properly solved, and some were not. It's really beyond our capabilities.

When Li Tai heard this, he couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed. Because of his troubles, the three new governors all paid a much higher price than usual. Especially for Shi Gong, this poor guy, with all his hard work and being blackmailed by himself, all the rats in the warehouse might starve to death.

Under such circumstances, they could still collect more than a thousand stones of food, which shows that these rich people also attach great importance to the position of governor.

Zhou Changming also said: "I have recently visited some people in the county who are not involved in the matter, and I can transfer eight hundred shi of grain every week."

This scene and this conversation are indeed a bit shabby, but it is the current situation of the army's supply in the Western Wei Dynasty.

In the early years of the reign of Emperor Datong, when Dugu Xindong conquered Luoyang, he appointed Zhao Su, the township yi, as a logistics officer. He raised military rations from the powerful men of Heluo so that the army could have supplies. Yu Wentai excitedly called Zhao Su "the master of Luoyang".

At the end of the Tatong period, when Yang Zhong led his army to conquer Shannan Prefecture, he also needed local powerful people to fund military supplies. It’s true that I have a gun with everything in it. If you don’t lend it, I will grab it.

With the supplement of these two thousand stones of food, the gap is still more than half. Li Tai was not unable to come up with the remaining three thousand stone gap. After all, he had extorted three thousand stone from Shang Yuan Shijia alone. The county government deducts military rations from me, and I owe the county government debt. This is also very reasonable.

But after all, he was not the legitimate leader of the township regiment. If he was asked to spend three thousand shi of food to support the army for no reason, he would feel unhappy even if he was willing to part with it.

After pondering for a while, he asked again: "When will the county pay for grain and fodder? Is it mainly about millet removal?"

"It will be allocated at the end of the month, with 80% of millet and 20% of miscellaneous bean sprouts."

Li Quji replied again.

After hearing this, Li Tai nodded: "It's okay, there is still time. Once the grain is in place, it will be replaced with wheat grain immediately!"

After Zhou Changming heard this, he was immediately surprised: "Selling military rations privately, is this... Even if it is expedient and there is no crime, but the soldiers' meals are poor, it will also hinder the morale."

Husked millet is millet without husk, which is the main crop and food in Guanxi. Although rice is also grown, it is mainly produced in large estates and official settlements near abundant water sources.

As for wheat, in addition to removing the ears and peeling the skin, it must be ground into flour to be considered a fine ingredient. The processing process is too complicated and requires a huge labor cost, which is far less convenient than millet that can be steamed and eaten after husking.

Therefore, wheat is often used as a grain for famine preparedness. Its mainstream status in Guanxi is far less than that of millet, and the price is nearly doubled.

The county government can allocate 4,000 stones of husked millet. If all of it is replaced with wheat, at least 7,000 stones can be exchanged, plus 1,000 stones of miscellaneous beans and 2,000 stones of donations from the county, then the quantity is enough for two months of consumption.

However, the reason why the price difference between wheat and millet is so large is that the taste of wheat rice and millet rice is too different, and eating too much wheat rice will also cause a series of problems such as bloating and constipation. Soldiers are also human beings. If they see that they are treated so harshly, it would be a miracle if their morale can be high.

"Do as I say!" Li Tai said without questioning, and when Zhou Changming nodded in agreement, he said, "There is a new water mill on the plateau, which can grind wheat into flour. It is not a problem to produce hundreds of stones a day, which can be enough for the soldiers." The price of corn is nearly twice as high as that of wheat, and the price of wheat processed into flour is nearly twice as high as that of corn. The difference between the two times is the labor cost of processing wheat into flour. Before today, Li Tai would have to scratch his head when he encountered this problem, but with the help of the hydraulic tools on the Luo River, this problem can be easily solved. The pulp for papermaking only needs to be processed by a water mill, and the water mill can be used to grind flour. A mill is equivalent to a small processing plant nowadays, so the powerful and wealthy are keen to live by the water. Who wouldn't be happy with a business that makes money by lying down? The reason why Liang Chun's family gave up the manor so simply was that, in addition to Liang Chun's own open-mindedness, it was probably because Zhao Gui's servants were too domineering. It was also a torture to see the other party making money while they did not dare to work.

Although the pestle did not belong to Li Tai's property, he had already planned to compensate Ruo Ruohui with the first batch of dividends from the printing workshop.

Ruo Ruohui himself might not care about these trivial matters, but he had many followers and families after all. If the money could not be distributed fairly and clearly, the business and friendship would not last long.

Now it was past the Mid-Autumn Festival, and there were still more than ten days before the end of the month. It happened that Liu Gong also began to lead the people to purchase grain in the village, so Li Tai asked him to exchange the millet harvested by his family for a batch of wheat from the villagers for grinding and processing, and then use the processed flour to exchange wheat for circulation.

In Li Tai's manor, the autumn sowing of winter wheat and the autumn harvest of millet had just been completed, and the people in the manor were engaged in grain processing again.

On the open space of the manor, there are several huge wooden drums. Someone is constantly turning the handles. The drums are rotating rapidly, and there are constant crackling and friction sounds coming from inside.

On the other side, there is a long wooden table, and thick round cakes are placed on the table. Someone is chopping these round cakes into pieces with a knife and an axe, and then sending them into the drum for crushing with a dustpan.

These round cakes are sesame cakes from the oil mill. After being crushed again, they are sent to another shed.

There are several large stoves in the shed, and a concave copper pan is placed on the burning stove. A person is holding a spoon next to it, constantly frying the flour, bean powder and sesame cake crumbs in the copper pan.

Li Tai also guarded a big stove, rolled up his sleeves and stir-fried the noodles himself, paying attention to the color change of the fried noodles while shouting: "Turn down the stove! Add half a liter of sheep oil to suppress the dust... Add salt, half a cup is enough! Do it like me, you take over."

After giving up the position of the chef, he walked to the wooden rack to the side, picked up a handful of fried noodles that had been stir-fried and put them into his mouth, chewed and tasted them carefully, then nodded with satisfaction, and ordered: "Add water and make cakes. Don't add too much water. After forming, press it with a bar and send it to the oven for drying."

The cakes were pressed with a row of large wooden barrels. The large cakes kneaded with water were still fluffy and fat. After being put into the wooden barrels, they were first covered with several layers of silk cloth, then covered with wooden boards, and then covered with huge stones. Finally, workers used wooden bars to squeeze them.

The extruded grain cakes are already very thick, but they are not the final products. They need to be transferred to two wooden boards and processed by the method of ramming walls. The grain cakes that are more than ten inches thick are rammed to several inches thick, and this set of processes is considered complete.

On the grill, the grain cakes that have been dried are constantly hooked out with hooks and placed under the shed for ventilation and cooling.

Heba Sheng, who had just arrived at the manor, sat on a Hu bed with a big horse and golden sword, waiting for the personal soldiers to scrape half a bowl of compacted cake crumbs with a knife. He was impatient to order people to mix it with boiling water, and held the pottery bowl while blowing and drinking.

"This is not the food for uncle!"

Li Tai saw it from a distance and walked towards the shed.

"It's all drunk!"

When he arrived, Heba Sheng showed the bottom of the bowl, patted his stomach with satisfaction and sighed: "When I was in the army, I didn't dare to dream of such exquisite and delicious food!"