Han officials

Chapter 256 The Thief
Wulong Township, Jiaodong County.

The afternoon sun was scorching the earth when several lightly armed cavalrymen arrived outside Gongsha's fortified village.

They all appeared to be young, but they were imposing, with loud and firm voices, and acted with considerable experience.

After they opened the gates of the fortified village, they claimed to be on the orders of Wang Xiu, the county's agricultural commissioner, to travel to various villages.

After checking their tokens and talismans, Gongsha's guards invited the five people in.

After the servants reported this, the protagonist of the fortified village, Shalu, also came out from the backyard and met with the group.

Gongsha Lu, dressed in a linen robe and wooden clogs, sat high in the main seat with a tall hat and wide sleeves, and said with dignified composure:
"May I ask what brings you gentlemen here?"

Upon hearing this, the middle-aged man with a long beard immediately took out a scroll of official documents from a bamboo tube and solemnly said:
"By order of the shogunate, I hereby inform the elders and brothers of all the villages in Qingzhou:"
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As General Zuo once said: "Food is the first necessity of the people, and grain is their life."

In the past, the Yellow Turban Rebellion raged, and Qingzhou was reduced to ruins. Many villagers were reduced to living in ditches and ravines, leaving five out of ten households empty. I was deeply saddened by this. Therefore, I dispatched troops from Youzhou and transported grain from Liaodong to Qingzhou to quell the rebellion.

Now that the counties and prefectures have been cleared and the land of Qi and Lu is gradually at peace, and mulberry and hemp are reviving, yet you all either fear difficulties and abandon farming, or wander the streets and alleys, or even gather in the forests and marshes. This is not the way to protect your families and preserve your lives.

I have heard that the ancient sages believed that if one man did not plow, he would suffer hunger, and if one woman did not weave, she would suffer cold. Now that the spring rains have fallen and the Ji River has risen, the fertile soil of the North Sea is suitable for planting beans and wheat, and the marshy land of Donglai is suitable for planting hemp and flax. These practices should not be abandoned.

Therefore, this document is issued to all prefectures and counties of Qingzhou, ordering each county to prepare 500 plows and iron ploughs, and 1,000 oxen and horses, which can be borrowed by all those returning to their fields. This year, all taxes on military farms will be waived, and the remaining grain will be stored in your granaries. You only need to return the grain seeds next year.

You should remember: In the past, when the rebellion broke out, people suffered from hunger and cold; good people and bandits alike were afflicted.

Now that we have been granted a general amnesty and returned to the right path, we should take the past as a warning and not leave any harm to our descendants.

Anyone found guilty of armed robbery or counterfeiting will be severely punished according to the law, beheaded, and their heads displayed in the city; there will be absolutely no leniency.

I made a pact with all the elders:

Sow a single grain in spring, reap a bountiful harvest in autumn; three years of diligent farming can restore the former glory.

Now, the Agricultural Commissioner, the Agricultural Encouragement Officer, and the Military Farm Administrator are dispatched to patrol the villages and towns, observe diligence and indolence, and record the amount of land cultivated. On the day of the harvest next year, all prefectures and counties shall hold a "Feast for Diligent Farming," and those who cultivate more than thirty mu of land and harvest more than one hundred bushels of millet shall be rewarded with two bolts of silk and their names displayed at their village gates.

Alas! Qingzhou is a land rich in fish and salt; how can we allow our descendants to see thorns and brambles covering the fields? I wish to join you all in working the fields so that in the future, children will have enough to eat and the elderly will be cared for until their end. Then we will not have failed Heaven and Earth.
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Upon hearing this, Gongshalu frowned slightly and remained silent.

Seeing this, the agricultural official did not urge him on. After conveying the shogunate's order, he turned and left.

He was in a hurry to go to the next place. There were more than a hundred townships in the eighteen counties of Beihai Kingdom, and they didn't have time to chat.

Anyway, the agricultural commissioner, Lord Wang, said that as long as the official documents from the shogunate are delivered, that's enough. Don't say you weren't warned.

Wang Xiu was originally from Beihai County and came from the Yingling Wang clan.

However, as early as the sixth year of Zhongping, when Wei Zhe served as the governor of Liaodong, he moved his entire family to Liaodong to avoid disaster.

It must be admitted that Zheng Xuan's influence in Qingzhou was indeed enormous.

Roughly speaking, most of the prominent families and noble clans of Qingzhou fled to Liaodong to avoid disaster, with only a small portion migrating south to Xu and Yangzhou.

After arriving in Liaodong, Wang Xiu initially studied at the prefectural school, but later entered the Dongshan Academy for further study.

Later, during the academy's year-end examination, he wrote a rather brilliant policy essay, which caught the eye of Wei Zhe, who recruited him as an aide in his staff and observed him for a period of time. This time, it was also Wei Zhe who personally selected him to be transferred to the position of Agricultural Promotion Commissioner of Jiaodong County, Qingzhou.

In this respect, Wei Zhe's approach can be said to be completely different from Yuan Shao's.

Just as everyone inside and outside Ye City knows, all the high-ranking and powerful people in Ji Province are in the headquarters, and the officials outside are nothing more than lackeys.

Prefects, generals, and governors all had to speak softly and treat their advisors with utmost respect.

Perhaps a single word from a strategist can cause a local governor or prefect to lose all his or her power.

Therefore, everyone in Ji Province with ambitions was vying for a position in the Ye City government, and the closer one was to Yuan Shao, the more desirable the position. This is also the main reason why the scholars from Yingchuan and Hebei under Yuan Shao's command remained within the government, scheming against each other, and never sought any outside appointments.

In contrast, the shogunate staff in Ji County were more eager to be assigned to other posts.

After all, Wei Zhe had been in office for almost ten years, and his subordinates had long since figured out his personnel management habits.

For example, the more he valued someone, the more likely he was to appoint them to local positions; the shogunate's staff were almost replaced every few years. It's just too early to say for sure, otherwise, in time, probably nine out of ten county magistrates would have come from the shogunate.

White body → shogunate → place → shogunate

After much back and forth, Wei Zhe's subordinates have gradually developed a fixed system for appointing officials.

Although some aristocratic families were not used to this, they eventually bowed their heads in submission.

There's no way around it; having rules is always better than having none, especially since these rules aren't bad at all.

As Han Feizi said:

Prime ministers must rise from the ranks of local officials, and valiant generals must emerge from the ranks of soldiers.

They knew this saying, but in the past, no one had ever been able to make them obey.

However, on the other hand, the Tuntian Division was a special entity among the various offices of the shogunate.

From the grassroots officials in charge of agricultural settlements and military commanders, to the later officials such as the agricultural promotion magistrate, the agricultural supervisor, and the agricultural general, the agricultural settlement system in Youzhou had long been a self-contained system, independent of the prefectures and counties.

The agricultural officials of the Tuntian Si (military agricultural settlement) had no subordinate relationship with local administration and were directly responsible to the shogunate.

Whether it was a prefecture or a state, they all had a cooperative relationship with the various levels of military agricultural settlements.

Therefore, those who know the inside story also refer to the Suspended Mirror Office, the Land Reclamation Office, and the Internal Affairs Office as the Three Independent Offices.

This means that the officials of these three departments are of a higher rank than those of ordinary officials.

However, these insider tips are now only circulating in Ji County, and outsiders have no way of knowing the secrets behind them.

For example, in the counties of Qingzhou that were only recently recovered, there were basically very few experts.

Those who truly knew their place had already moved to Liaodong or even Jixian, so they wouldn't have to live with the Yellow Turban rebels day and night.

Therefore, after the agricultural official left, before Gongshalu could even speak, the scarred youth beside him frowned and arrogantly said:

"What kind of bullshit agricultural envoy is this? What kind of Tom, Dick, or Harry dares to come here under the guise of arbitrarily extorting money from my family?"

This scarred youth was called Gong Shakai, the younger brother of Gong Shalu. He was greedy, bloodthirsty, and extremely violent.

He immediately stood up lazily and said:

"Brother, wait a moment. I'll kill these lowly commoners to bring that scoundrel to his senses!"

After saying this, Gong Shakai prepared to turn around and leave. He hadn't killed anyone recently and was itching to do it.

However, Gongshalu was not so impulsive. He immediately glared and shouted angrily:
"Sit down! All you know is fighting and killing. Have you forgotten all the classic texts I was shown?"

Upon hearing this, Gong Shakai immediately sat back down dejectedly.

Despite his cowardice, he still grumbled somewhat defiantly, "What's the use of those ancient texts? Without fighting and killing, how would our family have amassed such a large fortune? Do you really think we're like the rest of the main family..."

However, before he could finish speaking, he saw Gongshalu staring at him with a cold, sinister gaze, which frightened him so much that he immediately shut his mouth...

(End of this chapter)