History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 606 Who rules the Central Plains 3
4. Blood transfusion
Yelu Deguang did not trust the Han people, and in a very short period of time, he carried out a major reshuffle within the court, replacing important positions in the court and local military garrisons with trustworthy comrades.

On the day of entering Bianzhou (the first day of the first lunar month), Yelu Deguang appointed Liu Min, the deputy envoy of the Privy Council, as the acting mayor of Bianzhou (acting as the Yin of Kaifeng).

He promoted Zhang Li to be prime minister (tongpingzhangshi), Li Song to be privy councilor and prince's grand tutor, Feng Dao to be grand tutor, He Ning to be Hanlin scholar, Zhao Ying to be prince's grand guardian, Liu Xu to be grand guardian, and Feng Yu to be prince's junior guardian.

These people were "veterans of the previous dynasty", but Yelu Deguang respected Li Song and Feng Dao the most, and the others were just political vases, so he quickly packed up the vases and sent them to his hometown, and ordered Zhao Ying, Feng Yu, and Li Yantao to lead 300 cavalrymen to escort Shi Chonggui's family to Huanglongfu for resettlement.

With this dishonorable but arduous task, these people were excluded from the core decision-making level, and they were only in name but not in substance.

The above is the distribution of central power. The following is the division of local affairs:
Liu Xi, the governor of Youzhou, was appointed as the governor of Luoyang; Yelu Louguo (the second son of Yelu Bei) was appointed as the governor of Huazhou; Pan Yuran, the brother-in-law of Yelu Ruan (the eldest son of Yelu Bei), was appointed as the governor of Cangzhou; Zhao Kuangzan, the son of Zhao Yanshou, was appointed as the governor of Hezhong...

The major cities were basically in the hands of Yelu Deguang's direct line. Yelu Deguang was full of confidence and signed a large number of personnel transfer orders with a stroke of his pen, replacing almost all the vassal cities in the world. His operation was not to relocate the cities, but to directly replace them.

This operation is too impressive. Will the Jiedushi obediently hand over their power based on Yelu Deguang's edict? This will be explained in detail later.

5. Threshing
Since the overthrow of Later Liang, all the rulers in the Central Plains have faced the same problem: lack of money and food.

Some scholars have explained the "dynastic cycle" from the perspective of climate change, and proposed concepts such as the Great Ice Age and the Little Ice Age. This is a very novel perspective and makes sense, but it also faces many doubts. However, the chaos during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period was indeed inextricably linked to the climate.

From the end of the Later Liang Dynasty to the demise of the Later Jin Dynasty, three consecutive dynasties and seven emperors could all be applied to the same template: successive natural disasters, food shortages, and lack of money.

Yelu Deguang was also unable to avoid this problem. In fact, his situation was even worse, because one characteristic of the nomadic army was that they had no logistical supplies.

This is the most obvious difference between the two talent trees.

For the people of the Central Plains with an agricultural civilization, logistics supply is the most important part of the military system. As the Art of War says, "Before the troops move out, the food and fodder must go first." Today's military fans also talk about it with relish, saying that war is a battle of logistics. Laymen compare the two sides' combat weapons such as tanks and armored vehicles, while insiders compare the two sides' logistics support systems, such as field medical care, fuel and ammunition supplies, etc.

For the nomadic Khitan people, there was no such thing as logistical support. So what did the soldiers eat? They robbed the enemy.

Therefore, throughout the dynasties, nomadic peoples raided the border areas from the south, looted and burned the areas, and brought severe disasters to the people of the Central Plains.

Now that Yelu Deguang has taken control of Bianzhou and occupied the Central Plains, he still follows this fine tradition.

Zhao Yanshou suggested that Yelu Deguang change his management ideas in time and provide the army with salaries and rations to support it.

Yelu Deguang rejected it with great contempt. The victor will not learn from the loser's experience. The victor has full confidence in his own system. The army must of course make a living, do it by themselves, and have enough food and clothing. Don't ordinary people have food and money at home? You can grab it and it will be your military pay and military rations. It can not only reduce the government's work, but also solve the problem of military rations and military pay, and it can also keep the army energetic and high-spirited. Why not do it?
Yelu Deguang ordered the Khitan cavalry to "herd horses" and "thresh grass" everywhere, which was actually robbing the people. With Bianzhou as the center, the area of ​​hundreds of miles from Puzhou and Caozhou in the east to Luoyang in the west and the Yellow River in the north became a no-man's land. The people were either killed or starved to death because their food was taken away, and the livestock were also robbed.

Yelu Deguang also ordered Liu Xu, who was in charge of finance (Judge of the Three Departments), to take out a huge reward, saying that our Khitan army of 300,000 had traveled thousands of miles to destroy the Later Jin Dynasty, and the soldiers must get the due reward, so hurry up and pay the money!
A good cook cannot cook without rice. The treasury is empty, where is the money to give rewards?
Yelu Deguang doesn’t care about these things. You guys figure out how to make money yourselves.

Apart from printing counterfeit money, there is only one other solution: plundering the people.

The people have long become poor.

Yelu Deguang: "I will make money from anyone who has money. Of course, I won't let go of the poor either."

So they sent out troops to collect taxes from every household in Bianzhou. Not only the common people, but also the prime minister and generals had to pay. Even after taking all the land in Bianzhou, it was still not enough, so they sent troops to the surrounding states to plunder. Anyone who dared not to pay or dared to hide was killed without mercy.

After finally raising this huge amount of money, Yelu Deguang did not distribute it to his subordinates, but sealed it in the palace, making it his private property for him to squander.

The two incidents of threshing straw and extorting money made the image of the Khitans plummet. Both officials and common people hated the Khitans with a vengeance. All previous longings for a Khitan "liberator" vanished at that moment. People hoped that a Han hero would rise up and lead everyone to drive the Khitans out of the Central Plains.

This person will be here soon.

6. Peace on Earth

Yelu Deguang issued an order that from now on, no weapons or armor could be produced or military horses could be purchased in the world, in order to prevent the people in the Central Plains from obtaining armed forces to compete with the Khitan.

This is the fatal bug of the bandit logic, that is, excessive superstition of violence and neglect of the subjective initiative of the working people. Qin Shihuang collected all the weapons in the world and cast twelve golden men. The common people had no weapons, so the exploiting class could sit back and relax? Did they think that the anger of the common people would only lead to them hitting the ground with their heads? They raised poles as flags and cut wood as weapons.

From Qin Shi Huang to Yelu Deguang, and then to the Americans during the Korean War, they all made this mistake. Just millet plus rifles, fearless planes and tanks.

Ironically, Yelu Deguang also issued an order to reduce taxes and levies, saying that the burden of taxes and corvée on the people should be reduced, and the government should also streamline administration and reduce fiscal expenditures. In this way, peace could be achieved in the world.

On the one hand, they "threshed the straw" and collected money, and on the other hand, they reduced rent and taxes for the people. This is still the exclusive entanglement of Yelu Deguang mentioned in the previous article. He was schizophrenic. Sometimes he played the role of a wise ruler of the Central Plains, loving his people like his own children, and sometimes he showed his true colors, still a barbarian leader with huge teeth and fangs, burning, killing and looting.

(End of this chapter)