My younger brother Lü Fengxian

Chapter 342: Anti-Lü Coalition
"Why are you two so confused?"

"Dong Zhuo is dead now, and the big tree we were leaning on has collapsed. We are now afraid of being affected by the falling dead tree, but you two are clinging to the dead tree and won't let go!"

"Even if Dong Zhuo hadn't died, the two of you would have only been able to obtain the rank of a lieutenant at best if you had joined Dong Zhuo."

"But now the Marquis of Jin controls the government and kills all the nobles and aristocrats. He is no different from Wang Mang of the previous dynasty."

"If you two submit to the Marquis of Jin now, it will be a meritorious service to the dragon."

"Nothing is more rewarding than following the dragon."

"In the future, you will be granted a title of nobility and a general, and you will have a wife and children."

“Is this such a difficult choice?”

Jia Xu's words immediately woke Li Jue and Guo Si up from their dreams.

The two men immediately disregarded etiquette and prostrated themselves before Jia Xu.

"Oh my, if it weren't for Mr. Jia Xu's reminder, we two would still be stubborn and stubborn."

"In this case, we are willing to lead our people to surrender to the Marquis of Jin!"

"Wait a minute!"

Seeing that the plan was successful, Jia Xu raised his hand to stop the two men.

"In ancient times, those who pledged their services had to pay tribute."

"Are you two planning to go to see the Duke of Jin empty-handed?"

"Isn't it enough for us to lead 100,000 troops to surrender?"

Li Jue was confused again when he heard this.

"Although 100,000 men are many, we have already had the example of Zhang Ji and Fan Chou. Even if you also offer 100,000 men, they can only serve as a foil."

Jia Xu said with a sneer.

"But apart from the soldiers and horses in our hands, we have nothing else to offer to the Duke of Jin!"

Guo Si agreed with what he heard, but then he thought again and looked sad.

"Just because you don't have it doesn't mean others don't have it."

"You should know what the Marquis of Jin wants most now!"

There was an unfathomable expression on Jia Xu's face. After he slowly wrote the word "Dong" in the air, the expressions of Li Jue and Guo Si suddenly changed.

This Jia Xu wants us to kill Dong Zhuo's clan!

As expected, he was a ruthless man. Not only did he surrender, he also offered the heads of his former boss's family as a gift.

He is indeed a vicious person.

The Xiliang Army was built up by Dong Zhuo himself.

Although Dong Zhuo is dead now, the influence of the Dong family in the Xiliang army cannot be underestimated.

Apart from anything else, Dong Zhuo's younger brother Dong Min and Dong Zhuo's son-in-law Niu Fu now hold high positions in the Xiliang army and have far-reaching influence.

If the influence of the Dong family is not completely eliminated, Lu Yi will not be able to control the Xiliang Army in a short period of time.

If Li Jue and Guo Si could use these heads to seek credit, even though they surrendered later, their merits would definitely be higher than those of Zhang Ji and Fan Chou.

However, although Li Jue and Guo Si were shocked, when they thought of the humiliation of being subordinate to others in the future, they made up their minds and chose to forget the many years of kindness that Dong Zhuo had shown them.

"Okay! Let's do it!"

……

Within a few days.

Lu Yi, who was in Luoyang, received surrender letters from these two Western Liang armies one after another.

However, the second letter of surrender from Li Jue and Guo Si of Liangzhou was sent along with many heads.

However, the two parties were worried that Lu Yi would not accept them, so they kept their troops stationed in the original place and did not dare to move rashly. They asked Lu Yi to send someone to take over the military power.

Seeing this, Lu Yi couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Now that Dong Zhuo has been defeated, Xiliang has surrendered.

Then he would get rid of the dilemma of sending troops on two fronts, and now he only needed to concentrate on facing the Kanto noble coalition that he had deliberately created.

The conflict between him and the aristocratic families was irreconcilable.

Now that the representatives of the aristocratic families in Luoyang City have been killed, the two sides have become mortal enemies.

Instead of going through the trouble of interrogating them one by one and then picking them out and dealing with them.

It would be better to just force them to rebel.

Anyway, Lu Yi's power is now strong. Not to mention the 200,000 Xiliang cavalry who have surrendered, the 50,000 Bingzhou cavalry under his command alone are already invincible.

Fifty thousand fully armed iron men, each with three horses.

Impact, this world, this era.

No one can resist!
If the journey was not too far, Lu Yi could even destroy the Romans of the same era with his current strength.

Therefore, for Lu Yi, the solution was to force them to rebel and let them jump out themselves.

It is actually the most convenient strategy.

The first battle is the decisive battle, and the outcome will be decided in one battle!

After Lu Yi received the surrender letter from the Xiliang Army, he immediately arranged for Guan Yu, Zhao Yun, Zhang Liao and Zhang He to lead their troops to the two's camps to accept the surrender.

Lu Bu and Zhang Fei's personalities are not suitable for this kind of job. Guan Yu, Zhao Yun, Zhang Liao and Zhang He are more suitable because of their calm personalities.

Zhang Ji, Fan Chou, Li Jue and Guo Si all wanted to surrender.

Therefore, the surrender process went very smoothly.

After Lu Yi surrendered the four men and 200,000 Xiliang cavalry, he immediately took advantage of the window period when the Guandong coalition forces had not yet begun to be formed, and began to reorganize the Xiliang army and control Liangzhou.

All the soldiers in Xiliang Army were rewarded.

Ordinary soldiers were given an additional month's salary, and were also given some wine, meat, cloth, money and food, which was equivalent to three months' salary.

As for the leaders Li Jue, Guo Si, Zhang Ji and Fan Chou, Lu Yi appointed them as generals of the left, front, rear and right respectively.

Moreover, everyone was granted the title of marquis, with a fief of a thousand households, and was quite prominent at the time.

As for Li Ru and Jia Xu, who made the greatest contributions, Lu Yi also rewarded them generously.

In addition to high-ranking officials and noble titles, Lu Yi also appointed the two as front and rear military advisors under his command.

It is a think tank that is not inferior to those of Cao Wei, Shu Han or Eastern Wu during their heyday.

In addition, in the past, Dong Zhuo was good to the Xiliang Army.

However, Dong Zhuo was not good at management and only knew how to let his soldiers plunder.

The soldiers were never paid, but were given the power to raise their own pay through looting.

Therefore, the Xiliang Army had a strong bandit spirit, and it was no exaggeration to say that they were officially organized robbers.

Moreover, half of them were Qiang people who surrendered to Dong Zhuo, and the rest were Han people recruited from Liangzhou, where Han and Qiang people lived together, and they had acquired many characteristics of the Hu people.

This kind of troops is very strong.

After all, looting motivated them.

When they encounter a wealthy opponent or enemy, they will rush forward without fear of death, even without the encouragement of a general.

After all, money is attractive, and wealth is right in front of you, so no one wants to miss the opportunity to make a fortune.

But once you run too slowly and fall behind, all the good things will be snatched away by others.

But the disadvantages are also great.

If the Xiliang army encountered an enemy that was poorer than themselves, their enthusiasm would be greatly affected.

War is not a game of house; people will die.

Fighting the poor, the risks are obviously higher than the benefits, so they naturally don't want to die in vain.

Moreover, it is difficult for the Hu people to naturalize.

The Five Barbarians' Invasion of China lasted for nearly three hundred years.

Over the past three hundred years, after countless regimes engaged in bloody battles, the Han and Hu peoples were forced to merge under the influence of tremendous external forces.

The various Hu peoples finally returned to Han.

This shows how difficult it is to completely sinicize the Hu people. Lü Yi did not have the energy to settle the Qiang people at the moment, so he separated the Han and Qiang people from the 200,000 Xiliang troops.

For the Han army, Lu Yi selected 20,000 elite soldiers from the Bingzhou cavalry to serve as the backbone and disbanded and reorganized the 100,000 Xiliang troops.

With the ratio of one Bingzhou cavalryman leading five Xiliang troops, he controlled the 100,000 Xiliang troops.

In the upper echelons of the army, Lu Yi used high positions and generous salaries to win over and corrupt generals such as Li Jue and Guo Si, so that they voluntarily handed over their military power.
At the lower levels of the army, Lu Yi did not hesitate to spend all the wealth he had accumulated over the years to appease these soldiers.

Therefore, Lu Yi's reorganization policy was easily implemented.

The Han army was reorganized into a new army of 120,000, still called the Western Liang Army.

As for the 100,000 Qiang people among them, Lu Yi gave them rewards and travel expenses so that they could return to their tribe and reunite with their fellow tribesmen.

Lu Yi and these Qiang soldiers agreed to abolish all the previous Han Dynasty decrees that were unfair to the Qiang people.

For example, the famous general Duan Xing implemented a policy to seize the Qiang people's grasslands, open up farmland, and reduce their living space.

And the decree for compulsory military service for the Qiang tribes after Dong Zhuo occupied Xiliang.

The core message is that Lu Yi showed goodwill to the Qiang people, and the Qiang people were not allowed to rebel against Lu Yi.

Although the Qiang people are also Hu people, they are also fierce and tough.

But they are still different from the pure nomadic peoples, such as the Xiongnu, Xianbei, and Wuhuan outside the Great Wall.

They are very similar to the Sai Nei Wuhuan who have surrendered for hundreds of years.

The Qiang people attached great importance to both animal husbandry and livestock breeding, and therefore their level of food self-sufficiency was far greater than that of purely nomadic peoples.

A nomadic tribe needs one thousand acres of grassland to feed one person.

If you farm, a few acres of land can feed a person.

The Qiang people occupied the Hehuang area. The closer they were to the Han people, the more they valued farming. In some places, the Qiang people had completely abandoned animal husbandry and focused only on farming, just like the Han people.

The economic base determines the superstructure.

The Qiang people were able to be self-sufficient, and they did not have a leader like the Xiongnu and Xianbei who needed centralized hunting and looting to create a leader like the Chanyu.

Instead, they are divided into hundreds of tribes of different sizes and customs.

They fought and quarreled with each other endlessly over land, water and grass.

Although they were forcibly unified as Qiang people by the Han people, there were actually huge differences among them.

On the contrary, many Qiang tribes were loyal to the Han Dynasty and would attack hostile Qiang tribes that were offered rewards by the Han people in exchange for rewards from Xiliang officials.

There is no need for the Han people to conquer them, as they will be in endless internal strife among themselves.

On the contrary, every time the imperial court conquered the Qiang people, these Qiang tribes would often band together to resist the Han people under the threat of the powerful Han people.

Seeing this, some Han nobles in the northwest would join the Qiang people, causing the Qiang Rebellion in the northwest.

This is just like the Japanese pirate rebellion in the Ming Dynasty in history.

There were Japanese pirates, but there were more Han people who plundered under the guise of Japanese pirates.

Therefore, in response to the Qiang rebellion that lasted for a hundred years and completely dragged down the Eastern Han Dynasty's national strength, Lu Yi could not adopt a one-shot strategy, but instead had to unravel the mystery layer by layer.

Appeasing the Qiang tribe was only the first step. Once Lu Yi had settled the Guandong princes and had enough energy, he would turn around and take the second step.

But for now, being able to appease the Qiang people has already achieved the goal.

Therefore, Lu Yi took the time to train the newly formed Xiliang Army, while at the same time he was on high alert at Hulao Pass and other passes to prepare for the invasion of the Guandong Army.

And while Lu Yi was waiting for verification.

Yuan Shao also successfully established himself in Bohai County.

After he gained a foothold in Bohai County.

He immediately compiled a false edict, calling on all the princes in the world to rise up against Lü Yi.

When Dong Zhuo was in power, the Guandong coalition had a total of 18 princes who rebelled against Dong, with hundreds of thousands of troops.

But when it came to Lu Yi, there were only fourteen princes left, with more than 300,000 soldiers and horses.

Originally, Han Fu, the governor of Jizhou, did not appear in history because of Lu Yi.

Jizhou now has no governor, only a dozen or so prefects who govern independently.

Cao Cao and Gongsun Zan had already surrendered to Lu Yi, so they would naturally not appear in the Guandong coalition.

As for Ma Teng of Xiliang, the entire Xiliang is now controlled by Lu Yi, and people like Ma Teng and Han Sui dare not show up at all.

But even so.

The momentum of the Guandong coalition forces is also not small.

It almost covered the entire Central Plains region and affected Hebei.

It was the richest and most populous region in the entire Han Dynasty.

Although the quality of the 15 soldiers and horses is not as good as the cavalry from Bing, You and Liang states under Lu Yi's command.

But in terms of numbers, it is still more than twice as many, and its momentum is not inferior to Lu Yi at all.

The first year of Zhongping, autumn.

Yuan Shao convened a meeting with the other thirteen princes at Suanzao.

They swore an oath of blood to kill Lu Yi and rescue the emperor.

At the meeting, Yuan Shao, because of his reputation as a senior official for four generations, was unanimously elected as the leader of the alliance, except for his younger brother Yuan Shu.

Yuan Shu was the deputy leader, in charge of allocating food and supplies to the coalition forces.

Changsha Prefect Sun Jian was the vanguard.

After a brief adjustment, the coalition forces marched to Hulao Pass, intending to fight Lu Yi to the death.

Lu Yi had been sharpening his knife for this a long time.

However, before going on the expedition, Lu Yi had another thing to do.

Lu Yi immediately seized the opportunity to meet the emperor.

"Your Majesty, the two brothers Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu, who escaped the net of the traitorous party, launched a rebellion in Guandong."

"Now, he has instigated more than ten princes to rebel against the imperial court."

"The rebels are rampant. I ask you to lead the troops to suppress the rebellion!"

Lu Yi remained as respectful as before and made a report to Liu Bian.

"The Duke of Jin is devoted to the country, and all his requests will be approved."

Ever since the relationship between Liu Bian and Lu Yi broke down last time, he had been in a state of panic, fearing that Lu Yi would harm him. Therefore, from then on, Liu Bian did whatever Lu Yi asked him to do.

Liu Bian was a cowardly and weak person. Even though he became emperor, he was worried and anxious every day.

If Liu Bian had to choose, he would rather be a carefree prince than a puppet-like emperor.

More importantly, you don’t have to bear such great psychological pressure every day.

Since he ascended the throne, he has been depressed and worried every day. Although he is at the age when he should grow up, his weight has not increased but decreased, and he has become thinner and thinner.

It was impossible for the emperor to lose weight due to malnutrition.

The only explanation is that it is caused by psychological reasons.

If it were his younger brother Liu Xie, he might have to fight against Lu Yi, and perhaps only after being hit by Lu Yi several times would he obediently become a puppet.

However, ever since Liu Bian was glared at by Lu Yi, he had completely given up the idea of ​​resistance.

Although he is incompetent, he is not stupid.

Before him, many emperors of previous dynasties died young before reaching adulthood, which were bloody examples.

His father died early in his early thirties because he was addicted to alcohol and sex.

But even so, he was considered one of the longest-lived emperors in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

In this case, Liu Bian had to make plans for his own survival.

"Thank you, Your Majesty, for your kindness!"

"It's just that I am of low rank and cannot lead the people. Please grant me the title of general, Your Majesty!"

……

(End of this chapter)