Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1452 Power
Guan Yu listened to Yuan Xi's words and was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, "Can Yu trust the King of Jin?"

Yuan Xi looked directly at Guan Yu, "General, you should know that if I only wanted to be an emperor, I wouldn't have to come here in person."

"I believe the general has his own judgment."

Guan Yu stood up and said, "Okay, I will trust the King of Jin this time."

"Yu will return to Changsha now. Goodbye."

Seeing Guan Yu leave so abruptly, Zhang Hong and other accompanying officials were a little dumbfounded. Guan Yu had been waiting for Yuan Xi for several days, but he met Yuan Xi, talked for less than half an hour, and then left just like that?

Zhang Hong couldn't help but sigh, "Your Majesty was able to persuade the most difficult Guan Yu with just a few words. In comparison, we are helpless. I am really ashamed."

Yuan Xi shook his head and said, "No, you have also done a lot of preparation. The only thing I can rely on is the truth."

"But it's also because of these years that I have accumulated some credibility in front of him. Otherwise, I would never have been able to convince him so easily."

Gu Yong said, "Since Guan Yu has sided with Your Majesty, then there will be no problems in Hannan?"

Yuan Xi pondered for a moment and said, "It's hard to say."

"Hannan, in the final analysis, still has his own persistence."

"If they completely abandon this ideal, it would be tantamount to betraying Liu Xuande and the original intention of their founding of the country."

"So after Guan Yu returned, he could only do some mediation. If Jin pressed too hard, Hannan would have its own way of survival."

Zhang Hong said depressedly: "We failed in our duty. We were on guard against Guan Yu and Zhang Fei at the beginning, but we didn't expect Guan Yu's attitude to be so non-resistant. Xu Shu, who we ignored at the beginning, turned out to be the most troublesome and hard-line radical faction."

Yuan Xi sighed, "The Prime Minister told me that among the four friends, Xu Shu was the most opinionated and impulsive. When he was young, he avenged others and almost died. He is a typical knight-errant."

"For someone like him who is ready to die at any time, he naturally has no worries, so Hannan's future direction will largely depend on his reaction."

"So we can't count too much on Guan Yu. We need to deploy sufficient forces in Nanchang to deal with the situation."

"Xingba, I leave all this to you. You will command the generals of the three counties in Jiangdong."

Gan Ning hurriedly came up to receive the order. After Lu Su left, he took over the position of governor. He was a man of both civil and military talents, and was the most suitable person to be in charge of Nanchang.

The generals in the military of Jin State are different from those in other forces in that, in order to crack down on slavery, they have strictly limited the number of their private soldiers. Even those of Gan Ning's status only have a few dozen private soldiers, and the rest need to be recruited from the army.

Although such a move was somewhat troublesome, it prevented the local forces from growing too powerful. In later generations, the governors of the Wu State often had thousands or tens of thousands of private soldiers. Lu Xun even had more than 30,000 private soldiers at his peak. It is no wonder that Sun Quan would be suspicious.

The current approach of the State of Jin is to provide enough official titles and salaries, but to impose strict restrictions on fiefs and households, which is completely opposite to the Wei and Wu in later generations.

The fiefdoms of Wei and Wu had thousands of households, with an average of ten people in each household, and tens of thousands of households with hundreds of thousands of people. They were the private property of the lords, and they had been slaves for generations, and could be bought and sold at will, just like goods. Even so, many people still flocked to them, and many refugees even became black households.

The reason for this is that these people only need to be responsible for their corvée labor to the lord. Compared with the heavy taxes and levies at the end of some dynasties, the pressure will be less. This is a typical feudal system, and it is also a means for various princes to win over local nobles and military forces under their command in times of war.

Although this approach was quite effective in the fight for world domination, and even the Kingdom of Shu could not completely avoid it, in the long run it still had a considerable negative impact on governance.

When Yuan Xi first faced this problem, he was also quite troubled. Money can move people's hearts, and civil servants and military generals are not saints. On the one hand, they have ideals, but on the other hand, they will not die for their ideals. It is useless to just talk to them about ideals, so he must take measures to win them over.

After years of exploration and combining the experience of later generations, Yuan Xi finally gradually figured out some tricks, put them into practice, and carried out initial trial practices.

What inspired him was the New Democratic Revolution of later generations.

The original intention of the New Democratic Revolution at that time was to overthrow feudalism and imperialism. In this process, the local stubborn forces faced were the reactionary comprador forces cultivated by feudal landlords and foreigners.

To this end, the revolutionaries tried to launch an uprising, initially in relatively civilized and advanced cities, but failed. Under the encirclement and suppression of the reactionary forces, the revolutionaries were once in a precarious situation and were forced to go north to establish a base. Finally, after going through untold hardships, they finally achieved the final victory.

This experience seemed to continue the legendary curse of the North unifying the South, but this cannot fully explain why the initial revolutionaries were mainly from the South, and why the people in the South, where the revolution was first launched, awakened earlier, so why did it fail in the end?

Although it is generally accepted that the countryside should surround the city, this cannot explain why the attempts to establish bases in the southern countryside during the same period all failed. After thinking about it, Yuan Xi came to a conclusion that the strictness of control over villages and towns is the key to whether a gap can be opened.

There are extremely strict clan forces in the rural areas of the south. Such forces are the local tyrants in the late Han Dynasty. When the world is in chaos, they will establish their own regime and act tyrannically. However, if there is a powerful force that gives them enough benefits, they will decisively surrender to it and become the thugs of the powerful force, just like the Jiangdong tyrants who depended on Sun Quan.

Later generations called them local tyrants and evil gentry. They were supported by reactionary forces, and the Homecoming Corps they established was the vanguard in the encirclement and suppression of revolutionary forces. Therefore, the revolutionaries suffered setbacks in both cities and rural areas, and went north to look for fire.

The local rural areas in the north are very different from those in the south. The northern people have been extremely stubborn since ancient times, and they often rebel and kill the wealthy. As a result, although there are many clan forces in the north, they are not as large and stubborn as those in the south. There are mostly small and medium-sized landlords. The real big forces that dominate one side do not have enough control over the villages and towns.

The reasons are quite complicated, but one thing is certain: in feudal times, the frequency of rebellions in the north was much higher than in the south. Once these people rebelled, the local wealthy families would be the first to bear the brunt. Over time, the wealthy families would either flee south or become dependent on the imperial court, and naturally they would no longer struggle in the villages and towns.

A typical example is Shandong, which was later called the hometown of Confucius and Mencius, and a place of loyalty to the emperor. However, its true image is that it has never been absent from rebellions in all dynasties, including the slave uprising of Dao Zhi in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Red Eyebrow Army in the late Xinmang Dynasty, the Yellow Turban Army in Qingzhou in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, Wang Bo and Dou Jiande in the late Sui Dynasty, Huang Chao in the late Tang Dynasty, Liangshan in the Northern Song Dynasty, Tang Sai'er in the late Ming Dynasty, Yu Qi and Wang Lun in the Qing Dynasty, and the Nian Army and Boxer Rebellion in modern times. It can be said that as long as there is chaos in the world, there will be rebellions in Shandong.

Under this constant impact, except for a few large forces protected by the rulers, the local landlord clan forces were shattered and almost completely wiped out by the local people. As a result, during the War of Liberation, Shandong was the only province that was spontaneously liberated by relying on local bases.

This situation was very similar in various parts of the north, which undoubtedly gave the revolutionaries hope of opening up a new path. As a result, within just a few years, revolutionary bases sprang up like mushrooms in the north, played an important role in resisting the Japanese invasion, and ultimately achieved victory in the revolution.

It was from this kind of analysis that Yuan Xi came to the conclusion that if he wanted to establish a dynasty that required a longer period of stability, he would have to strip away the control of the local areas by the powerful aristocratic families.

When he told this idea to Zhuge Liang, although he concealed the revolutionary experience of later generations, Zhuge Liang still keenly discovered the contradiction in it.

He questioned: "If your majesty says so, then the local tyrants are still helpers who help your majesty rule the world."

"Your Majesty, if you weaken their control over villages and towns, won't it make it easier for the people to revolt?"

Yuan Xi couldn't help laughing at that time, "The Prime Minister has hit the nail on the head."

"Yes, when I first thought of this, I was also confused. In today's world, it is obvious that handing over the governance of villages and towns to local tyrants is more in line with the interests of an emperor. After all, in this way, I don't have to worry about the lives of the lower-class people. I just need to collect the taxes I want from the local tyrants."

"This is what is called the emperor and the scholar-officials ruling the world together. The so-called people of the emperor are just the tens of thousands of scholar-officials. As for the real people of the world, they are just the private property of the scholar-officials."

“But is this really okay?”

"Prime Minister, I am the emperor, who is this day?"

"Is it all the common people in the world, or those tens of thousands of landlords and tyrants?"

"Mencius made this point very clear."

"In fact, the common people are easily satisfied. As long as they have food to eat, clothes to wear, and can survive, how could they possibly rebel?"

"How many common people want to be emperor and rebel without reason in times of peace?"

"When the whole world is in rebellion and the people are rising up, that means the emperor has lost his way. When the emperor does not think about feeding the people but instead tries his best to suppress the people's rebellion, that is the real and complete loss of his way."

"So when I send officials, they must go into villages and towns to replace the powerful landlords and listen to the voices of the people. There is no need for a wall of clans and powerful people between the emperor and the people."

"I know that the prime minister has always been frugal and dedicated to his duties, and he is a role model for all officials, but not everyone thinks so, especially those generals who once had private soldiers. There are many such people in Jin State. They are not the prime minister, so it is impossible for them to have no ideas at all."

"For their contributions, Jin will naturally reward them, but how to make them accept the new dynasty's approach is indeed a rather long and difficult process."

"We cannot let the Prime Minister do this evil thing alone, so I will start this. Let's work together and see if there will be a revolutionary beginning in the future."

“It is better to guard against the people than against the river. The dynasty is not the enemy of the people. In order to satisfy the people, the dynasty must keep moving forward and constantly get rid of the old and bring in the new. A dynasty that does not purify itself and innovate will sooner or later meet its demise. There is nothing to regret.”

Zhuge Liang felt mixed emotions after hearing this. "The emperors of all dynasties have always aimed to keep their dynasties going. This is something I have never heard of before."

"I will keep your Majesty's words in mind and try to transform this world into what your Majesty wants, to see if this path is right."

(End of this chapter)