Xuande

Chapter 627 Slaves
After about two months of fighting, the Xianbei, Wuhuan, and Xiongnu forces in Bingzhou were defeated by the Han army.

Basically, they either died or were captured, or some who were well-informed even escaped, but in any case, Bingzhou has basically returned to the jurisdiction of the Han Empire.

The territory that was slowly eroded and occupied by them over a period of more than 100 years has also fully returned to the control of the Han army. Guan Yu and Qianzhao even visited the Great Wall that was in disrepair together, offering sacrifices to ancient warriors on the edge of the Great Wall. Talk about expressing your feelings.

Liu Bei no longer worried about the war, and handed over the finishing work of the war to the General's Mansion. He began to communicate with Man Chong, discussing with him the next plan for the recovery of Bingzhou.

War is the means, rule is the end.

Although Bingzhou was restored, the absence of the Han Empire government for a long time also led to the emergence of large and small separatist forces in Bingzhou. They all have their own armed forces, and have their own production lines and production capacity for weapons, food and other materials. .

They are not good people.

this is a problem.

The more urgent problems are the treatment of prisoners of war, the repair of dilapidated city walls, roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and the reclaiming of abandoned land.

So Liu Bei and Man Chong discussed a charter together.

First of all, for those captured Xianbei, Wuhuan, Xiongnu and other people, they will be dealt with according to the usual practice.

Women of childbearing age are included in Bingzhou household registration, which is intended to be used to increase the population.

Craftsmen and shepherds with special skills were also selected and used for their own use. They went to prostitutes for three years to polish their wildness, and then they were incorporated into the household registration and became Han people.

The rest of the people without any skills were made official slaves to play their own subjective initiative for the construction and recovery of Bingzhou.

During the years of waste management in Bingzhou, the infrastructure, city walls, roads, bridges, etc. in various places have been completely damaged. It will take half a year and a lot of resources to fully restore it to normal. Like this, also need a large amount of manpower to carry out.

There are not many Han people in Bingzhou, and even fewer can carry out agricultural production, so the limited agricultural population must be used to restore agricultural production, and those captured guys are the best source of labor.

If their number is not enough, Liu Bei also plans to transfer a batch from Youzhou to Bingzhou to help.

You don't separate families!

Resuming agricultural production while working, this has high requirements for the administrative capacity of the Bingzhou government, and even higher requirements for Man Chong, a state governor who became a monk halfway.

Man Chong needs to explode his liver.

Then there is the issue of Han people in Bingzhou.

In the past, when the imperial court was absent, the Han people in the occupied areas of Bingzhou either survived under the protection of powerful clans like Liangzhou, or became armed groups wandering around. .

The governed population basically only exists in a part of Taiyuan County, Shangdang County and Xihe County. In order to survive, the local economy in other areas has already been manorized and fragmented. They want to return to the past The production status of registered household Qimin is very difficult.

The first to bear the brunt were those local powerful families, who played a great role in the process of the Han army's attack on the state, but after the war, their existence became an obstacle to the government's governance of the region.

At the same time, the existence of Zhang Yan and Yu Fuluo is also troublesome, especially Zhang Yan, there is no explanation for the large population in the mountain.

After a long period of chaos, Bingzhou lacked household registration, but a large number of people existed and could not use it. In this way, how should the economy of Bingzhou develop after the war?

During Liu Bei's discussion with Man Chong, Man Chong mentioned one thing to Liu Bei. He said that if he wanted to gain population, in addition to war and plunder, it is also a way to let the local wealthy families release slaves.

Man Chong established Liu Bei to promulgate court decrees, and used the form of law to stipulate the total number of servants that powerful families can have in the Bingzhou area, so as to limit their power, and through such actions, they can obtain enough population for the development of Bingzhou.

Man Chong's suggestion made Liu Bei pay attention to a fact that has been ignored by many people for a long time.

In the social class of the Eastern Han Empire, there was a social group that was more humble than the common people - slaves.

The Eastern Han Empire was not without slaves. Slaves still existed until the Qing Dynasty.

A considerable part of the large number of households that Liu Bei re-registered in Liangzhou were originally slaves, and a considerable part of the tenants handed over by the major families voluntarily and passively were actually slaves.

In the Han Empire, there were five main sources of slaves—prisoners of war, criminals, debtors, plunderers, and children of slaves.

Its core feature is that there is no personal freedom. They are generally regarded as property rather than people, and can be bought and sold at will.

And the market for buying slaves at will existed widely in many big cities of the Eastern Han Empire.

There, people and livestock are locked in cages and sold. As long as the price is right, you can buy a slave to take care of yourself at home, and enjoy all his sacrifices grandiosely.

Away from the majestic slave market, slaves still exist in other places, but they are not called slaves, but are called slaves, maidservants, boys, or ministers according to their different identities. ,concubine.

Although these slaves with different titles have different identities and living conditions, and some of them can even live a good life, there is only one thing in common—they can all be traded as property.

In terms of legal status, their status is extremely humble, even inferior to common people, and they even need to meet some special conditions if they want to change their status to common people.

For example, it is recorded in the Han Dynasty that official servants and maidservants over fifty are exempted from being common people. That is to say, official slaves under the control of the government can be exempted from crime and become common people when they reach the age of 50.

But if you think about it carefully, in that era, how rare was it to live to be 50 years old as a slave in an extremely harsh living environment?
Even if they really live to be 50 years old, they will still be old, sick and thin, and have no property or even family members. At this time, they will be released and become common people. It's "benevolent governance" rather than murder.

Another possibility is that after the death of the master, there is no legal heir, and no one inherits the family property, so the slave can legally become a commoner.

All in all, once you become a slave, you can only try your luck if you want to restore your status as a free citizen. Apart from rebellion, there is no other possibility for individuals to change their destiny.

But rebellion is not something every slave can do, because slaves are not even qualified to make friends. They can't drink, can't gather at will, and if they don't listen to the master's reprimand, they will be whipped.

This situation widely existed among the social classes of the entire Han Empire, and their number was also very large.

During the reign of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, there were 3 official slaves raising horses in the northwest.

During the reign of Emperor Han Yuan, the official Gong Yu once wrote a letter saying that among the slaves controlled by the central government, there were more than [-] idle slaves who had nothing to do, hoping to prevent them from being common people.

During the reign of Wang Mang, more than [-] people who minted money privately were demoted to slaves.

The number of official slaves controlled by the central court in the entire Western Han Dynasty was hundreds of thousands.

In addition to the large number of official slaves, the existence of private slaves is also extremely common, especially in the families of powerful officials. Because of the large number of private slaves, social production was affected. Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty even ordered the number of private slaves that officials could have.

For example, there were 200 slaves and maidservants for princes and kings, hundreds of princes and princesses, and 30 princes and officials in Guannei. According to such regulations, the number of private slaves that 12 princes and officials in the Western Han Dynasty could legally own was as high as 360 million.

These are still public and private slaves that are related to the government. The number of slaves owned by local powerful families that have no relationship with the government far exceeds this scale, which is beyond the court's statistics.

Even ordinary people who are slightly richer can own slaves.

A man who digs a well for a living can buy an old slave, a small businessman with two properties has three servants, and a small landowner with more than [-] acres of land has seven slaves.

And this situation did not show any signs of improvement in the Eastern Han Dynasty. On the contrary, the number of slaves in the Eastern Han Empire showed a trend of increasing year by year with the footsteps of the end of the dynasty.

Judging from Liu Bei's own situation, the Liu clan in Zhuo County, Zhuo County, was just a small local clan before Liu Bei made his fortune. The entire clan had hundreds of people and thirty or fifty families.

Among them, 40.00% of slightly wealthier families had slaves serving them, and the number of slaves ranged from five to ten.

After he made his fortune, among the major families in Zhuo County, including the Lu family, none of the families did not have slaves.

Even Ji Jian was the slave of a street gang boss at the beginning. Liu Bei was not even a gang boss at the time. After Ji Jian's gang was wiped out by Liu Bei's gang, Ji Jian became a prisoner. He admired Liu Bei's force and asked to be Liu Bei's slave.

At that time, Liu Bei admired Ji Jian's force and refused to let him be a slave. Instead of signing a contract with him, he made him his younger brother. Later, he went through the back door of the government and helped him restore his household registration as a free citizen. That's why Ji Jian was so devoted to Liu Bei and was willing to help he died.

After Liu Bei came to Luoyang, every non-official scholar who came into contact with asked about the situation in their homes, and they all said that there were slaves serving them, and even his own home had ten reliable servants arranged by his father-in-law Han Rong. serve.

According to the provisions of the current law and the current number of officials, officials, princes and princes, as well as the overall population, the total number of various servants in the Eastern Han Empire after Man Chong's estimation is 800 million.

However, Man Chong believes that this number is still a conservative estimate, and there are still many things that cannot be counted. He estimates that the total slave population may have accounted for 15.00% of the total population of the Han Empire.

(End of this chapter)