Xuande

Chapter 297 The Rising Zhang Yan

Governments in Jizhou and Bingzhou seldom launched effective actions to pursue escaped households.

Once the farmer flees, he is dead by default, no matter what.

As a result, a long time ago, starting from the Western Han Dynasty, there were a considerable number of people in the Taihang Mountains who did not belong to the household registration system of the imperial court.

Some of them fled into the mountains because they could not bear the exorbitant taxes, some could not bear the military service, and they were not under the control of the court, and they basically did not pay taxes. Use this to get survival supplies.

In the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty, this situation became more and more obvious. It is conservatively estimated that there were more than 20 escaped households living in the Taihang Mountains. In order to survive, they hugged each other. Hard to survive.

The chaotic situation before the Taiping Dao army in Jizhou led a considerable number of Taiping Daoists to flee into the mountains with their old and young children.

The arrival of these people has brought some small influences of Taiping Taoism to the hundreds of thousands of escapees who are struggling to survive in the Taihang Mountains, and also brought them the news that Jizhou and even the world are about to be in chaos.

At the same time, because the Yellow Turban Army's battle situation in the first few months was not bad, several counties in Jizhou and Bingzhou were affected.

Some people who had nothing to do with the Taiping Dao but who were also dissatisfied with the Han court decided to respond to the Yellow Turban Army, took advantage of the situation and staged a rebellion, attacking and killing officials and bullies.

Among them, Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan are the most famous.

These two teams set off a wave of waves in Changshan State in the west of Jizhou, attacking the city and occupying land everywhere. The local officials and troops could not resist and fled in embarrassment.

Moreover, their timing was very good. It happened that when Lu Zhi returned to Luoyang to accept his appointment, he began to rebel. By the time Lu Zhi took office as Jizhou pastor, they had grown to a scale of more than [-] people because of the chaotic situation in Jizhou. , Changshan Kingdom is almost their paradise.

At the beginning, Lu Zhi was too weak to deal with it. Fortunately, Liu Bei entrusted Qianzhao, Liu Yong, and Liu Sheng to Lu Zhi for promotion. Cheng and Cheng are school lieutenants, leading the troops to deal with Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan.

Lu Zhi saw very clearly at the time that the reason why these two men were able to grow in Changshan was because the situation in Jizhou was unstable, there was a lack of food, and agricultural production had not resumed. Many people were affected by the war and lost their livelihoods, so they had to follow them to rebel .

So the important thing is not to defeat them, but to have enough food to stabilize people's hearts, so that those who lack food can see the hope of having enough food, so that they will not risk their lives to follow the bandit army to make trouble.

Liu Bei played an important role at this time. With the Zhen family as the main support, he won a large amount of food aid for Lu Zhi in Jizhou. This batch of food aid enabled Lu Zhi to open warehouses and stabilize food prices. Confidence.

As a result, Lu Zhi began to reverse the situation, and announced many policies beneficial to people's livelihood, which stabilized the hearts of the people in Jizhou, making Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan's situation in Changshan State unfavorable.

In the end, he personally led the troops into Changshan Kingdom, and with the help of some local armed forces in Changshan Kingdom, he successfully defeated the coalition forces of Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan.

Zhang Niujiao was shot, Chu Feiyan fled, more than [-] troops were scattered, and only [-] remnants of defeated soldiers fled into the mountains with Chu Feiyan.

At that time, Lu Zhi didn't have the extra energy to go into the mountainous area to chase down the remnants of the enemy. As long as the boundary of Jizhou was stabilized, he would start to transfer to administrative management, continue to stabilize the situation, promote the recovery of agricultural production, resettle refugees and so on.

But what he never expected at the time was that not only did Chu Feiyan not disappear, but instead became bigger and stronger.

After entering the mountainous area, Chu Feiyan changed his name to Zhang Yan, and incorporated some of Zhang Niujiao's followers who fled into the mountainous area with him into his army, forming a powerful fighting force, and opened up a new era in the Taihang Mountainous area. situation.

He couldn't beat Lu Zhi, but he could beat many others. Through constant fighting, he won a large piece of land for survival, and accumulated a huge military prestige, and then competed with Changshan, Zhaojun, Zhongshan, Shang Escaped household groups in the Party, Hanoi and other places contacted each other.

Sun Qing, Wang Dang and others among the leaders of the fleeing households admired Zhang Yan's military ability, and brought their troops under Zhang Yan's command one after another. Some relatively small forces in the mountainous area also obeyed Zhang Yan's orders because of Zhang Yan's prestige.

While Lu Zhi pacified Jizhou and prevented civil uprisings in Jizhou, Zhang Yan was also developing in the Taihang Mountains, and he was developing very well.

He gradually developed from a small force in the top ten to one of the largest forces, and through several battles and diplomatic planning, he successfully annexed several large forces.

In the end, in November of the third year of Zhongping, when Lu Zhi left Jizhou and returned to the Luoyang court to serve as a Taiwei, he basically completed his great cause of dominating the Taihang Mountains, and became the common name of the fleeing families from all states in the Taihang Mountains. The identified number one person.

He is not necessarily the direct leader of everyone, but he has the strongest force and the greatest prestige, and is the most capable one, so even if the big guys maintain a semi-independent state, they will obey his orders and not be hostile to him .

Since then, the fleeing forces in the entire Taihang Mountains had a unified speaker, and Lu Zhi never expected that the junior who was beaten to the ground by him would have such ability.

Around October of the third year of Zhongping, Lu Zhi had already learned through some news that a big bandit leader named Zhang Yan had appeared in the northern mountainous area of ​​Changshan Kingdom. He was quite prestigious and had sent small groups of troops into Zhao The county, Changshan country, Zhongshan country and other places attacked and plundered, resulting in instability in the three places.

He dispatched Qianzhao, Liu Yong, and Liu Sheng to lead Jizhou soldiers to the local area many times to crusade, and achieved certain results, but the people who came to attack have never been cut off, and even defeated the official army.

Lu Zhi inquired further and learned that Zhang Yan was Chu Feiyan back then. This guy not only survived, but also became a powerful rebel leader in the mountainous area, stronger than before.

He was deeply worried, so he made preparations and wanted to lead the army into the mountains to fight against him, so as not to lose his tail.

He has always known that the huge mountainous area at the junction of Youzhou, Bingzhou, and Jizhou is a weak area for the ruling power of the Han government. The power of the government has never penetrated into the mountainous area. Enter plain areas to cause chaos and disturb local law and order.

He was determined to solve the problem.

But just when he submitted the performance to Luoyang and was about to lead the army to attack, the order of the Luoyang court came.

The Luoyang court believed that the thieves in the mountain area were not an important matter and could not affect the overall situation. The court believed that Lu Zhi had done a good job in Jizhou. Fighting in Jizhou, not to mention the possibility of crossing the border into Bingzhou and Youzhou areas.

That's not his business.

Lu Zhi went to the table twice to explain his worries about the situation in the mountainous area, thinking that letting Zhang Yan ignore it would lead to catastrophe, but Liu Hong made up his mind to let Lu Zhi ignore these things and just go back to Beijing.

Lu Zhi had no choice but to return to Luoyang with worries. He was promoted to the rank of Taiwei of the Sangong, and he recorded the affairs of the minister, mastered the crucial administrative power, became one of the actual prime ministers of the great man, and realized his ideal in life.

But the situation in Jizhou and Bingzhou was just as Lu Zhi expected. After Lu Zhi left, things started to get worse.

(End of this chapter)