Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 867 Self-knowledge

Yuan Xi did not expect that Mrs. Du would give birth to a child quietly. When he returned to Haixi and found out, he could not help but be overjoyed. However, due to the illness, Mrs. Du and Mi Zhen were told not to go forward. When I came to visit, I, Lu Lingqi and several others insisted on being isolated in a small courtyard.

It was not until late autumn that Hua Tuo repeatedly confirmed that Yuan Xi had recovered, and Yuan Xi felt relieved to go out for activities.

However, Hua Tuo later said that Yuan Xi's condition was extremely dangerous this time, and it could be said that he had a narrow escape from death, because from Hua Tuo's point of view, Yuan Xi, who was born in a family like this, was actually not as good as the body of the selected soldiers under his command. Those with good qualities and strong ability to resist diseases, after all, Yuan Xi's men are all elite soldiers now, and those with poor health have long been eliminated.

Yuan Xi also knew that in the past few years, he had been running around and fighting, and his body had been in a state of exhaustion. Therefore, once he got sick, it would be extremely dangerous. With his knowledge of future generations of three-legged cats, he could not be sure what the epidemic was this time. He only knew these Over time, people in Yuan Xijun have been getting sick and dying one after another. It is really his luck that he can survive.

Yuan Xijun, who pays great attention to medical treatment, is like this, not to mention Cao Jun, because Cao Cao covered up a lot of news. Although Yuan Xi did not know that Cao Cao was also ill at this time, the number of casualties of Cao Jun could not be concealed.

According to reports from spies, the Cao army who fought with Yuan Xi, as well as the soldiers and civilians who occupied Yecheng to clean up the dirt, fell dead in large numbers. When it was severe, there were corpses under the city wall outside Yecheng.

According to Tian Yu, who is in charge of intelligence collection, it is estimated that of the approximately 100,000 people affected in Cao Ying, at least half of them died. This can be considered a rare major epidemic in recent years.

In the past few years, it is because of this large-scale epidemic outbreak, which occurs every few years, or appears in many places at the same time, and the number of people who died is at least tens of thousands.

During the Three Kingdoms period, due to years of war, people mostly gathered in a few large cities. The population density was high and the water sources were easily polluted. They were high-risk areas for epidemics. However, such large cities were prone to lack of food and firewood, and epidemics broke out due to cold and hunger. It is common for the population to drop by several percent in just one month.

Yuan Xi can only deal with this terrible situation that is very likely to happen in the future. The first is to build a complete drainage system to avoid contaminating domestic water. The second is to quickly find open-pit coal mines to solve the fuel problem. The third is the most fundamental to ensure agricultural production, develop industry and commerce, and improve people's living standards.

The commercial enfeoffment system in the Zhou Dynasty created various princes, large and small. During the turmoil of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the Qin unified the six kingdoms and for the first time the idea of ​​unifying the world clearly emerged.

Politics is very complicated. As an art of compromise, it does not mean that all problems can be solved by swords alone. The frequent changes of dynasties in Central China, where the Five Husbands respected force, also proved this. Whoever breaks the rules and raises a sword to others will have the final sword. It will fall on yourself.

The officials stationed by Yuan Xi in villages and towns can at best only issue orders and allocate supplies. However, food and firewood do not fall from the sky. They still need to rely on all local households, especially wealthy households.

Just like the battle between the centralized power represented by the imperial power and the aristocratic families representing the underlying management power, it lasted for more than two thousand years. Both sides changed their strategies countless times in order to find an ideal balance point.

He didn't know what was going on with the other princes, but the continuous wars this year had emptied out almost all the wealth he had accumulated previously. Even if he wanted to raise troops to attack Cao Cao, he was unable to do so. The top priority was to replenish his troops and promote production. , open up trade routes.

This is also inseparable from the cooperation of local families. On Langya's side are Zang Hong and Zang Ba Changxi, and on Qingzhou's side are Jizhou's old tribes loyal to the Yuan family. Without their cooperation, many things would not be possible.

However, Qin did not have time to eliminate the nobles of the six countries, and perished due to its counterattack and military merit rules. A large part of the reason was that its military merit awards had lost their effect in peaceful times, and harsh punishments and laws caused the titles of these nobles to be cleared. Naturally, it was very difficult. Not satisfied, they took advantage of the peasant uprising to coerce rebellion.

The poor living conditions in ancient times meant that the ability to withstand natural disasters and man-made disasters was extremely poor. In this case, most of the time, there was no way to wait for external forces to provide disaster relief, and they could only save themselves locally. This tested the local mobilization ability.

With an expert like Chen Deng in Xuzhou's agriculture, Yuan Xi didn't need to worry too much. The only thing he had intervened in was mobilizing a batch of Xuzhou's reserved seeds during Qingzhou's autumn planting season.

He also had to compromise on this. Instead of banning the sale of official positions, he did not completely block the passage. Instead, he had corresponding rewards for large households who donated money and food during the disaster, such as virtual nobility without fiefdom. Variation of later charity.

Yuan Xi had to admit that although he wanted to restrict the gentry as much as possible, in today's historical environment, it was impossible to completely eliminate the gentry. After all, in this era of imperfect communication and transportation, without a strong organization, no matter in terms of face-to-face For disasters and foreign invasion, the ability of the people at the bottom to cope with risks is even lower.

During this period of time, in Qingzhou and Jizhou, the subordinates headed by Zhuge Liang have also been very busy. On the one hand, they have to guard against enemy attacks and harassment, on the other hand, they have to digest the territory that Yuan Xi has established, while eliminating hidden dangers and promoting production. Everyone was very tired.

Taking cold protection as an example, even in the Song and Ming dynasties when cotton-padded clothes were widely popularized, when snowstorms hit the north and roads were blocked for more than ten days, according to the records handed down, the death toll exceeded 23 out of 10.

Fortunately, Yuan Xi told them before leaving that they could decide everything by themselves, so except for very important matters, they would send letters to Haixi and find ways to deal with them at other times, which made Yuan Xi extremely happy.

Some people say that the biggest lesson of history is that mankind has not learned from it. This sentence is a bit biased. At least the Chinese people who value history very much are actually constantly looking for new roads. Sometimes it seems that they are driving backwards. In fact, the details There is a crucial difference between means and ends.

This process evolved into a battle between the aristocrats of the Six Nations represented by Xiang Yu and the grassroots represented by Liu Bang. In the end, the latter won.

Because Liu Bang's origin needed a strong claim, Confucianism jumped out and added the crown of heaven-given to the imperial power. However, this also put a shackles on the imperial power, that is, the emperor lost his way and the virtuous took it, giving future generations the opportunity to rebel. Justifiable reasons, which naturally include aristocratic families with more capital for rebellion.

Liu Bang and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty saw the hidden danger, so they began to use drastic measures to eliminate this hidden danger. That is, they needed a wealthy family to conquer the world, but at the same time they could not allow it to grow bigger, so they regularly used means to take back their privileges. This is not to say that the gentry is useless. The problem is that after the interest groups formed by them want to obtain far greater benefits than they deserve, they will gradually escape control and become a blood-sucking cancer. Central powers in the past dynasties will not tolerate this kind of thing. question.

Among them, Liu Bang simply sent troops to attack and suppress, while Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty formed a multi-pronged approach that was passed down to later generations, that is, promoting military nobles to suppress the wealthy families, and then imitating the Qin Dynasty's harsh punishment methods to suppress the wealthy families, while encouraging They fight among themselves.

This method was also used in the Ming Dynasty, but it soon got out of hand. In the later period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the methods became rough and direct. Liu Che not only killed aristocratic families, but also common people, and even his own children. Really Treat everyone equally.

Later, whether the aristocratic families lost control in the late Han Dynasty or the Five Hus in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the cause was that the aristocratic families seized power, but the result was that the imperial power was weakened in disguise and deprived of force. As a result, when the Hu people went south, the local area was unable to resist, and the Hu people were respected by force. Social morality is gone.

The Tang Dynasty learned this lesson and tried to start ethnic integration while suppressing the emerging clans. Instead, more uncontrollable Jiedu envoys appeared, leading to the final collapse.

Its ethnic policy is also very problematic. Without a strong dominant ethnic group, complete integration cannot be achieved through enlightenment alone. Enlightenment and violence are indispensable, as well as the absolute centrality of the dominant ethnic group. Otherwise, the alienation of certain alien races will never be eliminated.

Then the Song Dynasty learned from the lessons of the Tang Dynasty, suppressed military personnel, adopted the imperial examination system on a large scale, created bureaucratic landlords, replaced the powerful landlords, vigorously developed commerce, and allowed officials to engage in business. Song Dynasty officials could not have land, but having commercial private property became an extremely important thing. common phenomenon.

But the final result was that these landlord officials who were lying in their official positions had extremely weak national awareness, and business or later capital was inherently rebellious towards centralization. Therefore, in the end, the Song Dynasty not only cheated military generals, but also rushed to betray the country when foreign enemies appeared. The Song Dynasty, which had historically dominated the economy, collapsed.

Again, since you have money to make, just surrender, why do you have to sacrifice your life?

This was the fate of the commercial Song Dynasty under the budding bourgeoisie. Without the cheap raw materials and labor provided by overseas colonies, conflicts could only break out internally.

The wealthy families in the Han and Tang dynasties regarded land as private property, and at least they did a remarkable job in protecting the land. However, in the Song Dynasty, the scholar-bureaucrats stripped the land of its attributes and relied on commercial profits, and they completely became the leading party that brought disaster to the country and the people.

The Song Dynasty was also a dynasty in which Confucian scholar-bureaucrats exercised power to the extreme. It was not that the Confucian bureaucrats did not rebel. They just knelt down to rebel. They wanted to kneel down and pretend to be grandsons while tearing off a piece of fat from the imperial power. As for whether the imperial power would bleed in the future. And death is not within their scope of consideration.

A road was blocked. After going around in a circle, the method used by Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty was more similar to that of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. However, he set a bad precedent of enfeoffing the kings and turned his descendants into big landowners who had nothing to do with their bodies. The Qingliu gentry who were not inferior to those of the Song Dynasty drained the last loyalty of the people, and in the end it can only be said that they died unjustly.

As for the Manchu and Qing Dynasties after the Ming Dynasty, they adopted the simplest and most direct method.

Turn everyone into pigs.

As long as the pigs are full, they will not cause trouble. As for the landlords, they have just become bigger pigs and have completely lost their ability to rebel. Instead, they will help the Pig King take care of other pigs.

As a result, the world has lived a peaceful life, which is gratifying.

But the only problem is, there are beasts outside the pig pen.

When the fence of the pig pen was demolished by the beast, and the beast with sharp teeth and saliva appeared in the pig pen, the Pig King suddenly discovered that times had completely changed.

Then everything collapsed, and the Chinese people used their lives to find the only way to survive in the chaos and blood and fire.

Fortunately, I found it.

In China's long history of thousands of years, countless pioneers have fallen among them. Due to the limitations of the times, many people have tried their best to move forward with their simple and unyielding heritage. Although each of them has limitations, they have sacrificed everything for their ideals. All worthy of respect.

Of course, except for some people who only want benefits and don’t want to pay.

The reason why Yuan Xi fell into long-term self-doubt for a period of time was because he knew that the Chinese ancestors had stepped on almost all the pits they had stepped on. Every period of history was a bloody lesson, but even if he knew it, he could not know it because of the times. Even with the restrictions, I had to compromise, but it was accompanied by an inner struggle.

But after this serious illness, he realized that he was still too proud. There were hidden dangers that countless talented and brilliant people could not avoid. How could he, an ordinary person, completely eliminate them?

But the desire for the world to live a better life remains unchanged. Thousands of years of inheritance have gathered the wisdom and experience of countless predecessors. Yuan Xi believes that with these, he can and will certainly be able to change this era. Better, that's enough.

(End of this chapter)