Late Tang

When the more than [-] new troops in Shamen Town were hurrying to train in the late spring of the first month, the construction of the new Shamen Town also entered the final stage.There are more than [-] people on the island. In addition to the [-] young and strong called into the army, there are also old people and children, as well as some craftsmen and apprentices working in the workshop. There are nearly [-] women, teenagers and girls. They all joined the fortification army.

Even many half-grown children and elderly people in their 60s and [-]s joined in, although building the city was related to everyone.However, Li Jing did not say that the common people were expropriated to do this coolie for nothing.Historically, the expropriation of common people to work without pay has easily intensified conflicts between the government and the people, and even the effectiveness of the work has been greatly reduced.Li Jing had already ordered that the entire city building project, from the city wall to the residential area, to the construction of the last street, Lifang, all the workers recruited were paid.

When the common people participated in the construction of the city, someone recorded their work points, and the work points were different for different levels of work.Even if the performance is not hard-working, there is a grade gap in the work points recorded.All the work points can be exchanged for money and silk in the town warehouse at any time, and can also be exchanged for food and cloth and other life specials, and can even be saved to buy newly built houses in the future.

Regardless of men, women, young or old, remember as much as you do.Even if a child helped carry a basket of soil or a stone, he would record it truthfully.In addition, three meals a day were included on the construction site, with rice and fatty meat slices, which was enough.Stimulated by these conditions, the construction of the entire new city proceeded very smoothly.

In the past few days, many people from Taishan Village and Beishan Village on the island have been attracted to join, even the poor people from the shantytowns on the four docks have come.In the beginning, Li Jing sent people to recruit them, but only a small number of poor men came.However, these people worked on the construction site for a day, and not only did they eat three meals, their stomachs were round and their mouths full of oil. When they finished work at night, they went to the supervisor of the construction site to ask for payment, and they got a hundred coins smoothly.The next day, not only did they continue to come, but they also called the whole family and all the neighbors.

After that, it was passed on to ten, ten to hundreds, and everyone called friends and friends. The daily number of people building the city on the construction site exceeded the [-] mark, and even more and more people came here from several nearby islands. There were even people from the land area of ​​Dengzhou who came by boat.

With so many people, the construction of the new city went smoothly.

The four city walls have been completely demolished, and new bases for the city walls have also been dug.

In order to improve the defense, Li Jing positioned the new city wall as a crown prismatic wall of masonry structure from the beginning.However, the city bricks at this time were not cheap. It was impossible to build a city wall of this scale with all bricks. Instead, the city was built with rammed earth and then covered with bricks.

The whole new city is nearly square, with a length of [-] steps from north to south, [-] steps from east to west, and a circumference of [-] steps, about three miles, which is equivalent to one-seventh of Dengzhou City.The city wall is the most traditional rammed earth wall, and then covered with bricks.

The method of rammed earth is the plate-building method. The plate-built rammed-earth wall is built with wooden boards as the mold, filled with clay and limestone, and rammed layer by layer with a pestle.

In order to improve the defense force, the new city of Shamen Town was built with "sanhe soil", that is, loess, lime and sand were mixed and rammed.Li Jing also adopted the suggestions of several old craftsmen, and mixed brown sugar and glutinous rice pulp into the soil to increase the hardness of the earth wall.It is difficult to drive iron nails into the earth wall made of such soil, and it is still intact after hundreds of years of wind and rain.

These days, Li Jing spent half of his time in the barracks training recruits, and half of his time on the construction site.The last time the pirates attacked, one of the biggest disadvantages was that they didn't have a good castle defense.This time, Li Jing planned to build the new city into the most reliable and safe fortress in one go.

The old craftsman pointed to the foundation of the city wall, which had already begun to make rammed earth, and said: "In the system of building a wall, each wall is three feet thick, and the height is nine feet. Adding a foot is the same as subtracting."

"According to the general's request, the wall of the new city will be as high as six feet. According to the method of building the city, the wall base of the six feet is half the height of the city, and the width is three feet. The thickness of the city is one third, and the thickness of the city It is two feet tall. Its upper slope is cut in half, and the thickness of the top of the city wall is ten feet. This is the first time I have built a castle like this. When it is completed, it will be as solid as gold, and no one can break it, and it can be preserved for thousands of years."

In the Tang Dynasty, the city was built with rammed earth walls, and there were also adobe brick walls, mountain stone walls and masonry walls.In comparison, mountain stone walls and masonry walls are the strongest, but pure mountain stone walls and masonry walls are costly and difficult to build too tall.The soil-damaged brick city wall is to make good soil-damaged bricks in advance, and then build them up. This method is faster, but it is not strong enough.The rammed earth wall is the thickest because it is made of rammed earth. The thickness of the city wall is often one or two feet thick, rough and resistant to attack.

After careful consideration, Li Jing finally chose the rammed earth wall, but in order to increase the defense, he also asked to wrap a layer of city bricks on the outside of the rammed earth wall.In this way, it is rough, thick and strong.The compound soil rammed with loess, lime, and sand, and glutinous rice slurry was added to make the most cohesive and firm glutinous rice mortar, which was then rammed with tamarisk or reed branches.

A piece of building plate was used to clamp the formwork, and countless men and women built the city with iron nests to heat up, and heated and fried the loess into clay.Others sifted the soil with a wall sieve and built a plate.There is a special mixer for mixing cooked king, lime, and sand to form a three-component soil.There are also specially picked soil to send the soil and pour it into the building plate, and then someone specially holds the ramming pestle to tamp the soil hard over and over again.In addition, there were some women holding big clappers and small clappers followed by clapping.The whole process is very cumbersome, with dozens and hundreds of procedures.However, there are more than a dozen old craftsmen working on the construction site, and there are many experienced craftsmen guiding them, everything is in order.

Seeing more than a dozen old craftsmen rigorously inspecting each process, Li Jing also sighed in his heart that building a city is actually so complicated.It is so complicated that even the soil for building the city has to be fried in a hot pot. The old craftsman reached out and grabbed a handful of the fried soil in his hand.Clenching his hands tightly, the soil in his hand formed a ball. After looking at it, he threw the soil on the ground again, and the ball of soil scattered as soon as it hit the ground.

The old craftsman explained to Li Jing, "The control of the water content in the soil during ramming is the key to ensuring the quality of the earth wall. If the water content is too small, the soil viscosity is poor, and the rammed earth wall is loose and obviously not strong; If there is too much water, the soil wall cannot be compacted, and the wall will easily shrink and crack after the water evaporates. Therefore, we must strictly control it during construction. According to experience, the cooked soil can form a group when it is squeezed tightly, and it will disperse when it is dropped, which means that the water is suitable.”

Li Jing watched all the way, gaining insight.

The construction of the four city walls started at the same time. The foundation with a width of three feet has been completed.Li Jing saw that the foot of the wall was specially dry-built with pebbles. According to the craftsman, this is to prevent rainwater from soaking.

The entire city wall is gradually thinned from the bottom to the top, the outer skin is slightly narrowed, and the inner skin is retreated layer by layer, each layer is thinned by 3 to 5 inches, which makes the structure more stable and reduces the weight of the wall.In order to increase the integrity of the wall, reinforcements are added inside the earth wall, that is, "wall studs" are set in the horizontal direction.The method is to split the moso bamboo into long bamboo pieces with a width of more than one inch, and use them as bamboo tendons to be sandwiched in the rammed earth wall. A layer of bamboo tendons is placed every three or four inches in the height direction of the wall, and the horizontal distance is about 6 to 7 inches.Since the upper and lower squares are staggered in each layer to avoid joints in tamping, the integrity of the wall is greatly enhanced by the addition of wall studs and drag studs.

In addition, the tamping is carried out in an orderly manner in stages, usually divided into stages: the first stage is to ram eight blocks, each block is one foot three high, and then stop for half a month, and the second stage is to wait for the wall to dry to a certain level. Level, you can repeat the first stage ramming method, ramming the second eighth version, and so on until the top floor.This step-by-step tamping makes the wall stronger, and it takes three months to complete the tamping phase of the entire city wall.

After the rammed earth wall is built, there is no need to wait any longer, and the earth wall can be wrapped with bricks immediately.The city bricks used are larger and stronger than ordinary house bricks. As early as the beginning, Li Jing had invited brick kiln craftsmen to make and burn bricks at the foot of Phoenix Mountain.After the earth wall is rammed, the city bricks will basically be fired by then.In addition, when wrapping the bricks, it is necessary to specially quarry the glutinous rice mortar made of lime, sand, and glutinous rice slurry to bond the brick walls.According to the artisans, this kind of glutinous rice mortar has been used in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Its performance exceeds that of ordinary mortar, and its strength is stronger than that of pure lime mortar. It is extremely strong and more water-resistant.

The shape of the city wall was not square at all, but according to Li Jing's requirements and drawings, the city wall was repaired into a crown prismatic city wall with countless facets, which greatly improved the defensive performance of the city wall.In addition to the four gate towers on the city gate, several three-foot-high arrow towers and turrets will also be built on the city wall.

In addition to the four city gates in the southeast and northwest, four urn cities will be built to protect the city gates, and the four urn cities will also be built into four small crown bastions in full accordance with Li Jing's requirements.Then around the entire new city, a moat ten feet wide and two feet deep will be excavated, and running water will be introduced from the foot of Phoenix Mountain.

It is six feet high, the base is three feet wide, the city is two feet thick, and the top of the city is also one foot wide.As soon as the new city wall is completed, it is completely possible to make a pair of sevens, or even a pair of ten.As long as the [-] soldiers and horses in Shamen Town retreat to the city, hoard enough food, and equip the city with crossbow beds and strong bows and crossbows, even if more than [-] or even [-] soldiers and horses come to attack, they can definitely last for more than a year.With such a fortress, even if Shamen Town is surrounded by Feng Zhang and Wang Jin, Li Jing will not be afraid at all.

"It only takes half a year, and the castle will be completed in half a year!" The old craftsman said excitedly as he looked at the new city that had just emerged.

Li Jing shook his head: "I will only give you three months. After three months, I will not only require the completion of the main wall of the new city, but also the gate towers, turrets, arrow towers, parapets, urns, and moats. In addition, the residential areas, office areas, warehouse areas, barracks areas, workshop areas, square urban areas, and streets, bathhouses, pharmacies, public toilets, shops, etc. that are being planned and arranged in the city must be completed within half a year at the latest. Done. Just mention what you need. If the money is not enough, I will pull it out for you. If the people are not enough, I will recruit again. If the materials are not enough, I will send someone to buy it immediately. But, I only give you so much time.' A few craftsmen and those who are responsible for building the city The officials of the town general's mansion couldn't help but look at each other. This requirement is a bit harsh. But everyone knows Li Jing's character, and the words have already been spoken, so there is no room for bargaining, and they can only find ways to do it seriously.

(To be continued)