At the end of Song Dynasty: I want to be the master of ZTE

Chapter 259 Food shortage
In the Military Intelligence Room of the Privy Council, Wen Daosheng walked in quickly and said: "Lu Wenhuan has been executed."

Zhao nodded without saying much.

A mere traitor is not worth worrying about.

Looking at the sand table, Zhao Shi said: "Although new grains from the south are about to arrive, the drought in the Huaihe River is unexpected, and we can only supply the army for a month and a half at most.

Whether to order a frontline attack or to retreat and wait for the coming year, I will make a decision early on. Your Majesty will give it a try. "

No one spoke easily.

They all want to wipe out the Yuan army, but if they are not careful, they will end up in a huge defeat. Even if they capture Xuzhou, they still have to find a way to resettle the local people. Where will the food come from?
Retreating is also impossible. Xuzhou has been besieged for several months. Money and food have been spent like water prices. The sunk cost is too great.

"Your Majesty, Li Heng's [-] troops have crossed the Huihe River and are currently stationed in the Mangdang Mountains. They are at the horns of Xuzhou's [-] troops. A Shu led an army of [-] troops to station in Shanzhou, threatening all parts of Shandong. Instigated the capital to lead [-] troops to garrison and return. The German government thought it was a backup.

The Yuan army has a total of 16 troops, while our army only has 13 troops. Although the troops are at a disadvantage, their morale is high and they can fight decisively. "Li Tingzhi said.

"It's still a risk." Lu Xiufu said: "The Yuan Dynasty's horse army is fifty to sixty thousand, and now the rivers everywhere have dried up, and the traffic is like the wind. If we fight rashly, there may be flaws.

Our army is short of food and grass, but it controls the river, so the losses are not much. The Yuan captives are transported by land, and the losses are twice as much as our army.

It is difficult for the state to support the government, and it is even more difficult for the Yuan Dynasty to support them. I thought that I could continue to maintain a stalemate, but when I couldn't hold on, there would be a flaw.

The key now is to keep things calm and not to put pressure on the front line, lest they panic. "

"Director Zhang is a veteran, and he will not make mistakes easily, unless the imperial court exerts pressure." Jiang Dongting said.

The Privy Council doesn't care whether money and food can be sustained. They only consider military issues and are unwilling to take any risks.

A drought caused Xuzhou to fall into a stalemate. Both sides deployed troops and generals to transport grain, and the investment was huge.

If the Song army is defeated, the territory north of the Yellow River, including Shandong, will be lost. If the Yuan army is defeated, it is unlikely that it will be defeated thousands of miles away, but Kaifeng will be lost with a high probability.

"Your Majesty, would you like to issue another bond for emergency use?" Chen Yizhong suggested.

The last time a 500 million-guan bond was issued, people rushed to buy it, so the political hall naturally wanted to do it again.

Li Tingzhi shook his head and said: "Now we are short of food, not money. Issuing bonds will not help."

"Where else can we get food?" Zhao Shi touched his chin and turned his gaze to the map on the wall.

Needless to say, Goryeo was seriously harmed by Naiyan, and Naiyan's spoils eventually went to the Song army.

Now that Goryeo is already struggling to support the Song army, don't even think about exporting food.

The situation in Japan was even worse. The people on both sides were warned by the Song Dynasty not to take action, but they each prepared their own horses and strengthened their troops. Production did not recover much, and the people were already exchanging children for food.

The same is true for Li Chen in Nanyue in the south. After working hard for several years, he couldn't make it anymore, and his family's fortune was clean.

There was no civil strife in Champa, but every year, there was no more oil to be squeezed out of the bones.

Nanning State has been sending money and grain to the country, and the expenditure of the Ministry of Household Affairs itself is taken into consideration.

The United Kingdom is barely self-sufficient, and it is not like Nanning Kingdom, which is a kingdom of the Prince of Zhao. The court cannot clearly request it, and can only wait for others to take the initiative to show filial piety.

In short, there is no big input from the outside, so we can only find ways to increase revenue and reduce expenditure from the inside.

"Your Majesty, why don't you stop the water conservancy project in the south?" Chen Yizhong said: "In this way, we can squeeze out more than [-] shi of food. We can't wait for another month to see the result."

It’s not that Prime Minister Chen doesn’t know the benefits of water conservancy.

Judging from the survey statistics in the past two months, even if millions of acres of fields are occupied due to water conservancy, the overall food supply can still increase by [-]%.

The merit is in the present, and the benefit is in the future.

However, things have priorities, and when you can't take into account everything, you can only choose the most important ones.There is no doubt that war is the most important thing.

National security is above all else.

The other three did not speak, having already acquiesced to Chen Yizhong's proposal.

Zhao is also the default.

Although the country is not small, its fields are numerous, and its annual grain output is also numerous, which cannot be conjured out of thin air.

It’s just that Zhao couldn’t figure it out. He had such a powerful weapon as a trawler, but catching thousands of fish every day was not enough to make up for the gap. Why did Yuan Ting persist?

In fact, he didn't know that Li Heng had been racking his brains for food since June.

In the original battle plan, the food of his department was raised locally, because the Huanghuai area was originally a grain-producing area, and a large area to the west of Xuzhou had been separated from the Yellow River Flood Area, and the food income was very stable.

Then transporting some grain from Shaanxi down the Yellow River can fully meet the combat needs of other departments.

Unexpectedly, the drought came so unexpectedly.

Although this facilitated his deployment, it hindered the subsequent replenishment of military supplies.

People are not stupid. When a drought occurs, they will try their best to survive. The first thing is to hide the food they can receive.

Anyway, being killed by the government is death, and starving to death is death. Why not have a full meal before dying?
At this time, a group of soldiers led more than a thousand people into the Mangdang Mountain camp.

These common people were both male and female, old and young, and all had one thing in common: they were all skinny. As they walked, some fell to the ground, unable to move despite being beaten and teased by Yuan soldiers.

died.

"Come on, drag me down, even a dead man will squeeze out two ounces of oil!" shouted the leader of the group.

A soldier said: "Baihu, these two-legged sheep are too thin, I'm afraid they can't supply the army."

Baihu glanced sideways and said, "Then what should we do? Fatten him and kill him? Or don't you eat?"

Yuan Bing smiled and stopped talking.

The people were nearby, and the conversation between the two was not hidden at all, but no one responded.

It is said that it is better to die than to live, but with natural and man-made disasters running rampant, life is really worse than death, and there is really no strength. Even if you know your fate, you can't resist.

After a while, another group of Yuan soldiers came over. They worked in pairs, dragged a commoner, threw him on the platform, and beheaded him with a single blow.

The butcher next to him immediately used a basin to catch the splattered blood. While licking the blood that splashed on his face, he said: "Don't waste it. If you can't complete today's share, why don't you use your time to make up for it?"

Things in the camp are not secret. At least the senior generals of the Yuan Army are well aware of it.

But they won't say it.

The status is high enough, and the family members are protected by themselves, but the ordinary soldiers are kept in the dark.

Many of them are locals. If they knew that their relatives might be included in their daily meals, they would probably explode on the spot.

The soldiers can hide it, but the reality is that nowadays it is even harder to catch a two-legged sheep.

There is no way to survive, and those who seek their own way to survive, traveling south or north, have either been buried in the ground, and the countryside is empty.

A clever woman can't make a meal without rice. No matter how ruthless Li Heng is, he can't conjure a two-legged sheep out of thin air, let alone run upstream to catch it.

The hinterland in the rear is thousands of miles away. There is no need for the Song army to deal with him. I am afraid that Kublai Khan will deal with him.

(End of this chapter)