I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 390 This world seems to be getting more and more interesting.
Besides Shanggu Commandery and Dai Commandery, where there were Wuhuan people, there were also large numbers of Wuhuan people in Yuyang Commandery, Youbeiping Commandery, Liaoxi Commandery and Liaodong Commandery. There was also a Wuhuan tribe that was incorporated into the Han Empire in Liaodong State.

Because they lived among the people of Youzhou for a long time and entered a semi-agricultural state, the total population of the Wuhuan people exceeded that of the Xianbei people.

However, in the long course of history, the problems caused by the Wuhuan people were far less serious than those caused by the Xianbei people. Their spirit of compromise was much stronger than that of the Xianbei people, and they were comparable to that of the Southern Xiongnu.

Yuan Shu originally thought that eliminating the Wuhuan people in Dai and Shanggu counties would trigger panic and a chain reaction among the Wuhuan people in the other counties, causing them to rebel on their own, and giving him an excuse to march in and wipe them out.

Yuan Shu miscalculated. The Wuhuan people's fear of him exceeded his own imagination. They watched helplessly as their compatriots were slaughtered, and they didn't even have a thought of revenge.

Instead, he quickly slid on his knees.

Between March and August of the second year of Yande, although the Wuhuan chieftains of various prefectures did not come to Zhuojun in person, they all sent their sons, nephews, and other representative figures to Zhuojun to pay homage to Yuan Shu and to prove their innocence to him.

They all declared that they were not like the fools in Dai and Shanggu counties, that they had not rebelled with the Xianbei, and that they had even helped the Han army fight against the Xianbei, and that they were definitely not enemies of the Han Dynasty.

They are friends of the Han Dynasty, loyal allies, and would never betray the Han Dynasty.

Yuan Shu just listened to their words casually. Although they were very good at admitting their mistakes, as the saying goes, a leopard can't change its spots. They would be afraid and obedient if he was here, but who knew when they would revert to their old ways?
So Yuan Shu came up with a solution.

The suggestion was to move them further south to Jizhou, ostensibly to keep them away from the harshness of the border region and the threat of the remnants of the Xianbei people beyond the Great Wall.

The real goal is to disarm them, break them up and reorganize them, and integrate them into the Han Chinese household registration system, thereby annexing them all. This process can be slowed down appropriately, and the methods can be more gentle.

Just then, Yuan Shu needed some people to fill the Liangzhuang he had set up in various prefectures and counties.

If they agree, it means they have reached the pinnacle of their spirit of compromise. The Wuhuan people, who have no fighting spirit but only a spirit of compromise, are the best targets for assimilation. There is no need to push them to the brink of death; we should be lenient when we can.

If they don't agree, it means they still have wild instincts, and wild instincts are hard to tame. In that case, we can prepare to use weapons to increase the possibility of taming them.

Yuan Shu did not want to rashly start a war against the entire Wuhuan ethnic group. He wanted to divide and weaken them if possible, and reduce the number of enemy troops if possible. He also did not want to cause unnecessary sacrifices.

This was his basic attitude towards dealing with the Wuhuan problem.

By this point, the methods for dealing with the Xianbei and Wuhuan ethnic groups had been established.

As for the Southern Xiongnu, Yuan Shu planned to save them for future use against the Qiang people, so let's leave that aside for now.

As for the small states east of Liaodong Commandery, such as the Buyeo people and the Goguryeo people, which had certain agricultural and civilizational characteristics, Yuan Shu decided to take a more direct approach.

Eliminate them.

Fortunately, Tan Shihuai had already inflicted heavy losses on them through several battles, so it would be relatively easy for Yuan Shu to take over and deal with them.

Thus, from March of the second year of Yande to September of the fourth year of Yande, a period of nearly two and a half years, Yuan Shu managed to reorganize Youzhou through a series of operations. However, the effort he spent on resolving the Youzhou problem was far less than the effort he spent on resolving the Bingzhou problem.

In a sense, Bingzhou was the place where he established his foundation, while Youzhou was the place where he continued to develop naturally. Everything he wanted to do had experience and precedents in Bingzhou, so when it came to Youzhou, it was just a simple repetition and some minor adjustments based on local conditions.

The only thing that could be considered somewhat groundbreaking was the handling of the Wuhuan people in Youzhou.

Under Yuan Shu's intimidation and negotiations, the Wuhuan people in various counties of Youzhou split into two parts. One part was willing to accept Yuan Shu's conditions and enter Jizhou. Under Yuan Shu's Liangzhuang system, they entered the next era and were thus incorporated into the Han population, collectively becoming Han people.

Another group consists of those who are unwilling to give up their existing lifestyle.

However, they did not dare to go against Yuan Shu, so they tried to lead their people to escape. They contacted the remaining Xianbei people who were originally from the western Xianbei on the grassland, and attempted to enter the grassland with the help of the Xianbei to make plans for the future.

But their operation naturally failed.

In March of the third year of Yande, Yuan Shu dispatched 40,000 iron cavalry in two routes for a second northern expedition to the grasslands. He successfully annihilated the remaining Xianbei and Wuhuan people, winning another great victory on the grasslands and capturing 500,000 Xianbei and Wuhuan people, achieving an even larger scale of results than before.

However, this time, the combined resistance of the Xianbei and Wuhuan people was not even a third stronger than it had been during the time of Tanshihuai.

This is Yuan Shu's own physical sensation.

When the two sides clashed head-on, whether in mounted archery or hand-to-hand combat, the Xianbei-Wuhuan allied forces were far from being a match for the Han army.

In the past few years, Yuan Shu has made many improvements to the standard weapons of the Han army. The individual crossbows used by cavalry have been greatly improved. Each soldier has one, which can be held and fired with one hand. Relying on mechanical power, it has a range and accuracy that exceeds that of the horse bows of the grasslands. Therefore, in terms of mounted archery, the Han army is no longer at a disadvantage.

The first battle between the two sides was also the last. The Han army won a great victory. After crushing the enemy in the head-on confrontation, they continued to pursue them for more than 20 miles, chasing them from day to night, and basically annihilated the Xianbei-Wuhuan alliance's fighting force.

Tan Shihuai was an excellent leader. His appearance elevated the Xianbei tribal alliance, which should not have developed to this point, to a level that was more than one level higher. However, unfortunately, he encountered Yuan Shu, who had even more extraordinary abilities than him, and thus he was defeated.

After this battle, the last remaining forces of the Xianbei tribal alliance were wiped out, along with the radical faction within the Wuhuan tribe. Thus, the Wuhuan problem in Youzhou was resolved in one fell swoop.

As Yuan Shu's strength increased, the internal and external problems of Youzhou were no longer issues that required a lot of effort to resolve; in fact, Yuan Shu found them to be resolved quite smoothly.

Throughout Youzhou, he uncovered over 500,000 hidden Han Chinese and captured over 500,000 Xianbei and Wuhuan prisoners of war. This more than one million available manpower provided sufficient human resources to support Youzhou's development plans.

He also used appeasement to relocate more than one million Wuhuan people in family units to Liangzhuang in Jizhou, using Liangzhuang in Jizhou to settle these Wuhuan people, thus realizing the splitting and reorganization of the Wuhuan ethnic group.

In Liangzhuang, where the Wuhuan people lived, Yuan Shu arranged for young officials who were members of the Yixin Association to serve as managers. They taught the Wuhuan people farming techniques, enabling them to transition from a semi-agricultural state to an agricultural state and also to a settled state. They also learned to speak Han language, wear Han clothing, and eat Han food.

With such overwhelming advantages in both civilization and military strength, Yuan Shu was fully confident that he could completely assimilate these Wuhuan people into Han Chinese.

Within three generations at most, the descendants of these Wuhuan people will no longer remember their nomadic days on the grasslands, and the Han population in Jizhou will increase by nearly two million.

By September of the third year of Yande, the government had achieved complete control over the eleven administrative regions of Youzhou, including ten prefectures and one vassal state. All forces outside the government's control had been wiped out by the Tianxiong Army and the prefecture and state troops. More than 90 percent of the officials in Youzhou, like those in Bingzhou, were energetic young people from the Yixinhui, highly loyal to Yuan Shu.

Yuan Shu spent two and a half years building 67 good villages in Youzhou, expanding the registered tax-paying population of Youzhou to 2.71 million, exceeding the 1.13 million of Bingzhou.

Before Yuan Shu arrived in these two states, the combined registered population under their control was only around 2.7 million.

Yuan Shu's efforts resulted in the discovery of over a million hidden people, all of whom were reinstated in the official records and resumed contributing tax revenue to the Han Empire.

Even so, this is still not the actual population of You and Bing prefectures. Yuan Shu estimates that these two prefectures combined could uncover at least another 1.5 million hidden people, meaning that the number of productive population controlled by aristocratic families, landlords, and powerful clans is more than one-third of the number controlled by the government.

This small detail reveals a larger truth: at least one-third of the labor force in the entire Han Empire was not under the control of the imperial court.

Yuan Shu wanted to solve this problem, but he also knew that it would be too difficult.

Lu Zhi knew of Yuan Shu's worries, so he had tried to persuade Yuan Shu.

“Zijia, you always say you want to finish everything you can while you’re young, but how much can you actually do? How much time do you have left? Human lifespan is finite, but problems are endless. I don’t want you to work yourself to death. Don’t force yourself to finish what you can’t do. Leave it to future generations, isn’t that a good thing? If our predecessors couldn’t solve so many problems, then you, their successor, will appear. I believe that after you, many great talents will emerge, and they will take over from you and continue to handle the problems you haven’t finished.”

Lu Zhi's statement resonated with Yuan Shu slightly.

He wanted to believe in the wisdom of future generations, yet he was also somewhat hesitant to do so. This behavior essentially delayed the outbreak of the problem, and the longer it was delayed, the more difficult it became to deal with. Yuan Shu did not want the things he had not been able to resolve to become a lasting pain in everyone's hearts.

Anyway, he knew that after Chai Rong, no one in the entire Song Dynasty was able to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun.

He himself felt somewhat confused and perplexed about this.

But he must always move forward.

While resolving the issues with the Xianbei and Wuhuan people, Yuan Shu originally intended to also address the problems with the Buyeo, Goguryeo, and the Three Hans, ending the encroachment of these troublesome people on the Liaodong region. However, at the end of the third year of Yande, Yuan Feng issued a new appointment to Yuan Shu through Emperor Liu Li.

Yuan Shu was appointed General of Chariots and Cavalry to concurrently manage the military and political affairs of Liangzhou.

Following the agreement between Yuan Feng and his son, after Yuan Shu resolved the Wuhuan problem, Yuan Feng conveniently handed over Liangzhou, the most problematic of the three northern prefectures, to Yuan Shu, allowing him to achieve his goal of completely plugging the financial black hole in the three border prefectures.

Because the problem in Liangzhou was clearly more serious, Yuan Shu decided not to resolve the Liaodong issue himself.

He ordered Lu Zhi, as a future general, to lead 10,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry to Liaodong to resolve this issue, while he himself led the Chariot and Cavalry General's Office and most of the Tianxiong Army back to Bingzhou, with Shangjun in Bingzhou as the new headquarters of the Chariot and Cavalry General's Office.

He planned to stay in Shangjun and personally command the battle against the Qiang people of Liangzhou, to take over the problems that Duan Jiong had failed to completely solve, and to completely resolve the problems in Liangzhou.

In February of the fourth year of the Yande era, Yuan Shu led his subordinates and the main force of the Tianxiong Army to Shangjun in Bingzhou. At this moment, he had 40,000 cavalry and 40,000 infantry, a total of 80,000 men.

This figure is after Lu Zhi took away 20,000 men, which means that the total combat strength of the Tianxiong Army has reached more than 100,000.

From the initial 30,000 to the current 100,000, it took nearly six years. This speed cannot be considered fast, but the elite level of the Tianxiong Army is far beyond that of an ordinary army that expands at an extremely rapid pace.

The fact that every soldier has experience fighting on the battlefield and seeing blood is something that most military organizations in the world cannot achieve.

But the Tianxiong Army can.

Yuan Shu recruited brave and skilled warriors from Bingzhou, Youzhou, and even Jizhou into his army. He managed this army according to the management model of the Yixin Society, which gave the army not only strong combat power but also a high degree of discipline and organization.

Interestingly, while expanding his army, Yuan Shu also recruited some people in Youzhou, Bingzhou, and Jizhou who felt very familiar to him.

For example, Guan Yu from Hedong Commandery, Zhang Fei from Zhuo Commandery, Zhao Yun from Changshan Commandery, Zhang Liao from Yanmen Commandery, Zhang He from Hejian Commandery, and Wen Chou from Anping Commandery.

As these people's names gradually appeared on the recruitment list, Yuan Shucai suddenly realized the passage of time.

Earlier, when he founded the Yixin Society and dominated the debate among the Confucian scholars in Luoyang, these people were either too young or not even born yet, and had no chance to step onto the stage of history. He didn't even think of seeking them out to join his camp.

At that moment, he had only issued a notice to recruit soldiers, and people flocked from their hometowns to his army to sign up. He had no intention of recruiting, but talented people spontaneously came because of his recruitment notice.

Time marches on, the wheels of history roll ever onward, and no one can stop them.

As a member of the post-50s generation, Yuan Shu keenly sensed that the era of the post-60s generation was approaching, and the post-70s generation was also poised to take center stage in history.

This world seems to be getting more and more interesting.

In another world, these people are greeted by a chaotic and broken world, an era of uncertainty.

At present, Yuan Shuli is determined to create a peaceful and prosperous era.

I just wonder if the same group of people could walk the same brilliant path in life in different eras?

Yuan Shu didn't know.

However, he will still complete what he is supposed to do without compromise. He will provide a platform, and whether these talents can shine depends on themselves.

Since Duan Jiong decisively defeated tens of thousands of Qiang people more than a decade ago, essentially ending the century-long Han-Qiang war, there has indeed been no large-scale or systematic Qiang uprising since then. This is probably because Duan Jiong killed too many people, to the point that the Qiang people are no longer able to gather a cohesive force to continue fighting against the Han Empire.

However, while the large-scale rebellion groups are gone, the smaller ones still exist. The organized rebel armies are gone, but scattered rebel squads still exist.

There was no way around it; the officials of the Han Empire in Liangzhou were inhuman, their ferocity and corruption far exceeding what normal people could imagine.

To put it another way, compared to the officials of Liangzhou, the officials of Bingzhou could be considered philanthropists, and the high-ranking officials and nobles of Luoyang were all saints. This shows just how inhuman the officials of Liangzhou were.

The most ruthless county in Bingzhou only collected taxes sixteen years later, while Yuan Shu had heard Jia Xu say that some places in Liangzhou had collected taxes sixty years later.

Yuan Shu felt that even if he lived in Liangzhou, he would definitely rebel against such officials. If he didn't rebel, he would be letting down the good head his parents gave him.

Therefore, Yuan Shu had two things to do in Liangzhou.

The first priority is to eliminate all the rebellious Qiang people.

The second is to get rid of all the local officials who are incompetent.

Beidi Commandery, Anding Commandery, and Wuwei Commandery were places where the Qiang people lived in large numbers. The Qiang people had a relatively large number of settlements in these places. These Qiang people were considered to be relatively honest. They were Qiang tribes that had surrendered to the Han Empire since the Han-Qiang War and were relocated to these commanderies and counties. They basically lived an agricultural life.

A large number of Qiang people who have not surrendered and remain in a hostile relationship live in the Qinghai Lake area, continuing their nomadic lifestyle passed down through generations, while also engaging in some agricultural production.

Yuan Shuding's plan was to first stabilize the state of the Qiang people who had migrated inland. Punishing corrupt officials was the best way. After arriving in Shangjun in the early years of Yande, he arranged for many of his subordinates to take up positions in Beidi, Anding, and Wuwei prefectures, and to take full control of the main official positions and powers of the prefectures and counties. Then he began to compile a list and settle accounts.

All incumbent officials and clerks will be investigated. Those who prey on the people or engage in corruption will be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

One must be strong to succeed; Yuan Shu could not tolerate these scoundrels causing trouble in his ranks.

Moreover, Yuan Shu has some special advantages in Liangzhou.

He has businesses in Liangzhou. Among the earliest members of the Yixin Society, people from Liangzhou were an important group. Most of their families had business dealings with Yuan Shu and were already part of Yuan Shu's sphere of influence. Therefore, it was actually very easy for Yuan Shu to do something in Liangzhou.

Coupled with the experience and prestige he had accumulated in Bingzhou and Youzhou, Yuan Shu's arrival in Liangzhou was essentially a crushing victory. He uprooted the officialdom of the three counties that were the first to be targeted, investigating and punishing them one by one.

The final result was worthy of his big move.

(End of this chapter)