Standalone Northern and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 380: Prime Ministers Must Rise from Prefectures and Counties

Jia Yuan and his entourage traveled non-stop and finally arrived in Yongle City before Su Yuyao's wedding date and presented congratulatory gifts to the Duke's Mansion.

Su Ze also met with Jia Yuan in person. He did not say anything harsh, but just asked him to do a good job as the county magistrate of Huazhou. This made Jia Yuan breathe a sigh of relief.

Jia Yuan did not dare to delay, and after returning his official duties as the Deputy Governor of Liangzhou, he immediately went to Huazhou to take up his post.

Jia Yuan's son Jia Zhi completed the admission procedures for Chongwen Pavilion and officially became a student of Chongwen Pavilion.

Liu Chong, the pastoral supervisor who arrived in Yongle City with Jia Yuan, somehow got in touch with Princess Chenliu and was kept in Baizhang Tower to become an eunuch who assisted Princess Chenliu in managing the Duke's Mansion.

Su Yuyao's wedding was very grand, and this time there were even more people sending gifts than when Su Ze got married.

In response to these gifts, Princess Chenliu took the gift list, gave appropriate return gifts from the Duke's Mansion, and then moved all the gifts received into the residences of Su Yuyao and Dugu Xin.

In addition to these, Princess Chenliu also prepared a series of gifts for her sister-in-law, including silk, gold, silver, jewelry, spices, etc., to provide the young couple with enough start-up capital.

After this marriage that made everyone in Yongle City envious, Su Ze announced the appointment of Dugu Xin.

Wuyuan County was rebuilt on the Yellow River, north of Xiazhou, and Dugu Xin was appointed as the governor of Wuyuan County.

Many scholars in Xiazhou City did not understand this appointment.

How come Su Ze and his brother-in-law Dugu Xin had a quarrel just after they got married? Why did he banish his brother-in-law to the north?
But smart people quickly realized the opportunity.

Now there are only two opportunities to fight in the entire Guanzhong area.

One is the increasingly serious border threat in the north. This year, the Turks crossed the Yellow River and broke into the territories of Xiazhou and Gaoping County to rob. Although they were defeated, the Turks themselves are composed of many tribes, and more tribes may move south next year.

There is a war to be fought in the north.

The other is Yongzhou occupied by Xiao Baoyin, which is the most essential and fertile area in the entire Guanzhong, and Chang'an is the core of Guanzhong.

However, the battle to occupy Yongzhou is not difficult, as Xiao Baoyin's strength is not as good as Mozhe Tiansheng's.

However, the political significance of this matter is very important, so the county government has not yet decided when to take action.

Such a battle must be commanded personally by Su Ze, the Duke of Gaoping County, so the possibility of the generals gaining military merit in this battle is very low.

Haven’t you seen that several of Su Ze’s favorite generals were transferred from military positions to provincial governors?
However, not everyone has the opportunity to transfer from the military to local officials. Those middle- and lower-level officers can only train in the barracks when there is no war and have no chance of promotion.

At such a time, Dugu Xin was able to go to Wuyuan, which was Su Ze's cultivation and support for him.

Smart people who can understand this are trying their best to squeeze themselves into the Northern team.

This is the time for everyone to show off their talents.

The first person to take action was Wei Xiaokuan. No one knew what path he took, but he was promoted from a reviewing official to the magistrate of Wuyuan County. He went to the north with Dugu Xin to build Wuyuan City.

This made many young officials jealous of Wei Xiaokuan. Although Jianxiulang was closer to Su Ze, in the Northwest system, being noble and clean was useless.

This is different from the system of the Northern Wei Dynasty, where one could be promoted all the way as long as one held a noble position.

Working under Su Ze, there is a saying that is widely popular among low-level officials.

"Prime ministers must rise from the prefectures and counties, and brave generals must rise from the ranks."

This sentence is said to have been put forward by Duke Su when he was formulating the standards for selecting officials in the Ministry of Personnel.

This broke the standard of selecting and employing officials that had been in place since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, which separated the clear and the turbid.

Since the implementation of the Nine-Rank System in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, official positions have been divided into clean positions and dirty positions.

The so-called Qingzhi is a clean position that does not require handling specific affairs. Through these positions, a child of a noble family can be promoted to a very high official position smoothly.

However, those dirty positions that deal with specific affairs are looked down upon by the clean officials and they are not promoted for a long time.

Emperor Xiaowen's reforms also inherited this system in its entirety.

Those officials who started out as proofreaders or secretaries, after several rounds of transfers, could become prime ministers without even leaving Luoyang.

Those princes can directly take charge of the central government and govern from the moment they inherit the title of king.

Those who are not from a high-class family can only be relegated to low-level positions, no matter how great their contributions are, and it is difficult for them to get a chance to be promoted.

Therefore, what Su Ze needs to reverse is this consensus in the officialdom and use grassroots experience as an assessment criterion for promoting senior officials. Only in this way can a more benign official ecology be established.

What the superiors like, the subordinates must follow. A change in the wind direction at the top will naturally cause a change in the attitude of lower-level officials.

But even if you go to the grassroots level, there are good and bad ones.

People are different, and official positions are not the same, which is why the Ministry of Personnel is a place that officials yearn for, and why the Minister of Personnel is called the Heavenly Official in later generations. Even if you are a county official, some places have good economic development, low difficulty in rent collection, and good local security. Even if you do nothing for a few years in office, you can get a good evaluation and be promoted safely. Such a gilded experience is of course a good opportunity for everyone to fight for.

In some places, the local people are tough and the land is barren, making it difficult to collect rent. After spending a lot of effort to collect the rent, it may cause vicious incidents in the local area. In the end, the county magistrate will be unpopular with everyone and may even be punished.

Without money and food, nothing can be done. Even after working diligently for several years, he still received poor evaluations and was not promoted, and was even demoted.

Naturally, no one wants to fall into such a trap.

Of course, now under Su Ze's rule, the administration is clean and the examination of officials is relatively fair and based on actual conditions, but there is still a distinction between high-level and low-level positions.

A good position is one that allows you to achieve results.

Therefore, those officials who have the conditions will take the initiative to go to the grassroots level for future promotion, gild themselves, choose a good grassroots position, and accumulate a good grassroots work resume.

The Magistrate of Wuyuan County is just like Dugu Xin, the Governor of Wuyuan County. Both are good positions where one can gain merit by doing well. The fact that Wei Xiaokuan can take up such a position at this age means that he is one step ahead of other Inspectors.

Moreover, the civilian positions on the front line are actually similar to military positions, and there are also opportunities to make military achievements.

If you can make some achievements while in office, you will truly be on the path to promotion to middle and senior officials.

Even Wang Sizheng was a little envious of his friend being able to go to Wuyuan. In fact, he had invited Dugu Xin after he got married, but he was reluctant to leave the tens of thousands of books in Chongwen Pavilion, so he finally declined Dugu Xin's invitation.

In addition to Wei Xiaokuan, Dugu Xin also transferred Chen Chong over.

During the last war, Chen Chong was Wanqi Chounu's military commander and had made some military achievements. However, Wanqi Chounu was not a direct descendant of Yu Jin after all, so he did not have any outstanding performance in the final battle of Lueyang. In the end, he was only promoted to an honorary officer, and his military position remained unchanged.

When Dugu Xin and Chen Chong were chatting, Chen Chong had a very high opinion of Wanqi Chounu, so Dugu Xin simply poached Wanqi Chounu's entire team of a hundred men.

Of course, since Dugu Xin was going to the border, Su Ze allocated a newly formed [Light Cavalry Battalion] of a thousand people to him. This was the [Legion] that Su Ze had just organized, and it was formed by drawing light cavalry from the army who were good at volley fire.

Although it is a [Light Cavalry Battalion], all the riders are elite soldiers with outstanding archery and superb riding skills, and have been selected through layers of selection.

Everyone in the army knew how powerful the elite soldiers personally selected and trained by Su Ze, the Duke of the County, were. The legends of the [Xiaoqi Battalion], [Guards Battalion] and [Vanguard Battalion] were circulating in the army. Handing over the newly formed [Light Cavalry Battalion] to Dugu Xin was enough to show Su Ze's expectations for his brother-in-law.

In the end, Su Ze was reluctant to let his sister suffer in the frontier, so he kept Su Yuyao in Yongle City temporarily and let her go there after Wuyuan City was rebuilt.
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While the wedding was being prepared in Guanzhong, Gao Huan took the time to raise horses under Erzhu Rong for more than a month.

Even Dou Tai and Sima Ziru couldn't stand the stench of the stable. Only Gao Huan and the hardworking Wei Jing cleaned the stable personally every day. Gao Huan also had to get up early and stay up late to brush the horses. His life was even harder than when he was in the Six Garrisons.

Of course, Gao Huan did not raise horses for ordinary soldiers, he raised horses specifically for Erzhu Rong.

After all, Gao Huan was recommended by the Heba brothers and was also a well-known figure in the Six Garrisons. The horses in these stables were all Erzhu Rong's favorite horses, which was also the motivation for Gao Huan to persevere.

This month's efforts have paid off. Erzhu Rong went out hunting today, and his personal followers came to lead the horses.

Gao Huan quickly handed the reins to his personal attendant.

When Erzhu Rong had nothing to do on weekdays, he would organize hunting trips. This was also a way for him to train the elite troops around him. However, due to the busy government affairs these days, Erzhu Rong had not gone hunting for more than half a month.

When Erzhu Rong saw the horse brought by his personal attendant, his eyes lit up.

He was a man who understood and loved horses, and the Erzhu family had been raising horses for generations. Most of the good horses for the nobles in Luoyang at that time were supplied by the Erzhu family.

So Erzhu Rong was in a good mood when he saw that his horses were well taken care of.

This time the hunt was a great success. Erzhu Rong was in a better mood. He not only rewarded the soldiers who participated in the hunt, but also called his personal guards and said:

"Who raises this general's horse?"

The guard immediately said:

"Reporting to the general, Gao Huan, the newly surrendered commander of the Six Garrisons, is the general's newly appointed horse officer."

Only then did Erzhu Rong remember that he had asked Gao Huan to raise horses. He didn't expect that this guy could really raise horses.

"Take one of the prey to the stable and give it to Gao Huan as a reward."

"promise!"

On this day, Liu Gui, who had just returned from Sizhou on business, heard that Gao Huan had surrendered to Erzhu Rong, but was arranged by Erzhu Rong to raise horses. He hurried to pay a visit to Erzhu Rong.

Liu Gui was one of Erzhu Rong's earliest defectors and a rare scholar in Erzhu Rong's group. Erzhu Rong relied on him very much.

When Liu Gui met Erzhu Rong, he began to recommend him:

"General! This Gao Huan is an extraordinary man with outstanding appearance. Please use him personally!"

(End of this chapter)