At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 376: Arrangements for the Desert, Confucianism's Way of Education
On September 5, the eighth year of the Han Dynasty, the Protectorate of Southern Mobei, Pinglu Fort.

After the Northern Expedition began, Xu Fan brought a group of soldiers and senior generals from the Taiwei Mansion to Pinglu Fort, the forefront of the war, to collect first-hand information from the front line and handle logistics matters for the Northern Expedition Army.

Wu Sheng briefly explained the latest frontline battle report to Xu Fan and said, "Your Majesty, the three armies are currently progressing smoothly. On August 8, Lieutenant Chai Wu of the Sharp Front caught up with the fleeing Loufan tribe in the Camel Desert. After a brief battle, our army wiped out all Loufan tribesmen. Now there are no Loufan tribes in the desert."

Then Wu Sheng pointed to the Xiongnu royal court and said, "In early August, Han Xin, the governor of the southern desert, led 8 troops to the outskirts of the Xiongnu royal court. Maodun fled without a fight and led the main force of the Xiongnu to continue retreating northward."

"The Liaodong vassal coalition forces on the east route also fought very smoothly. The Zhelan tribe suffered heavy casualties and had to retreat to the Langjuxu Mountain. The Liaodong vassal coalition forces were only one step away from the Xiongnu royal court."

Then Wu Sheng pointed at the map and said, "Our three armies have all broken through the Xiongnu's defenses and entered the northern desert. The Xiongnu have no way to resist our attack and are being beaten back by our army. In five days at most, our three armies can completely meet up with the Xiongnu king's court and continue to advance north to defeat all the Xiongnu main forces."

Xu Fan looked at the map and said, "Modun is very patient. Even the royal court was willing to give up and told the frontline commander that if Maodun continued to retreat, he would not have to pay attention to them and would focus on annexing the Xiongnu's manpower. The Xiongnu tribe will not even have herdsmen, so the desert will naturally belong to us."

Reaching the North Sea is the limit of the Han army. Continuing to fight with the Huns would be very dangerous for the Han army.

This was a warm period, and the northern desert did not have the kind of snow in August that occurred in later generations. However, after October, the climate in the desert would quickly turn cold. By then, the most dangerous enemy for the Han soldiers in the desert would not be the Huns, but the extreme low temperature. In the feudal era, it was common for 2-3% of the soldiers to be lost in a heavy snowfall.

Wu Sheng said: "As you command."

Wu Sheng continued, "Liaodong Governor Lu Chen sent a letter saying that the tribal leaders in Liaodong wanted to migrate to the desert."

Xu Fan looked at Wu Sheng and asked, "Is this just one person's idea, or do many tribal leaders have this idea?"

Wu Sheng said, "Lü Chen didn't explain it clearly, but the desert is much larger than Liaodong, and the living space is also larger. The Xiongnu were wiped out by our Han Dynasty, and the desert became a no-man's land. I think there are not many tribal leaders who have this idea."

Xu Fan said calmly: "The desert is not an ownerless land. From now on, this desert belongs to me, the Han people. These tribes and I are in an employment relationship. I take the money, they do the work, and when the work is done, they go back to where they should go."

"You must make this clear to Lu Chen. You should give more rewards to the tribal leaders than to deduct any of them. But if any of these tribes cross the line, do not show mercy. We, the Han Dynasty, spent millions of gold, not to build an empire for these people."

Wu Sheng said: "Yes"

It is difficult to eliminate the Huns, but it is even more difficult to rule the desert.

When Xu Fan was a child, he had a very strange question when watching TV about Li Er.

Li Erdu was so good at fighting that he defeated the powerful Turks and captured their Khan to Chang'an City, demonstrating the singing and dancing skills of a minority ethnic group thousands of years in advance.

How come when we were fighting Goguryeo, the Tiele people appeared in the desert, and then the Uighur people appeared. Isn't this desert the territory of the Tang Dynasty?

Later I checked and found that it was not the case. The Tang Dynasty only occupied some territories south of the desert. The Hu people in other areas changed their names and continued to fight against the Tang Dynasty, such as the Tiele people and the Uighur people. The desert was like a resource point for the Hu people. New ethnic groups always emerged and continued to fight with the Central Plains.

Xu Fan didn't want to defeat the Huns and then the Xianbei, and then the Qiang. If he wanted to prevent this situation, the Han Dynasty had to directly rule this area.

Xu Fan asked: "How many Huns have we captured since the war started?"

Although Maodun moved his tribe to the northern desert, he was only the leader of a tribal alliance in the desert. Even the Han people found it difficult to issue orders down to the village level, let alone Maodun.

Many small tribes thought that this war had nothing to do with them, or they didn't care at all. They didn't think that the Han people could catch them in the desert. After all, the army from the Central Plains had never involved this territory. The herdsmen here could hardly imagine that the Han army would come to the desert. They were both hoping for luck and didn't know how to deal with it.

But they never expected that the Han army had more than 80 troops in the desert alone, and more than troops guarding the logistics alone.

After the war started, they had nowhere to hide. There were too many of their own people in the Han army, and these people knew every river and every grassland in the desert clearly.

Under the leadership of these people, all the small tribes hiding deep in the desert were captured, and hundreds of thousands of herdsmen were captured in the southern part of the desert alone.

Wu Sheng said: "Including Chai Wu's this time, there are probably one million herdsmen."

Xu Fan said: "I plan to establish the Mobei Protectorate after this battle. The main task of the Protectorate is to suppress the desert. At the same time, the court will enfeoff hundreds of princes in the desert. These herdsmen must be taken care of. After the battle, each prince will lead 1 herdsmen to the desert to establish a vassal state.

After thinking for a while, Xu Fan said to Deng Zong: "If officers below the rank of captain want to stay in the desert, the court should not be stingy with the titles of viscount and baron, and let them establish earldoms, viscountdoms, and barondoms in the desert."

Deng Zong was surprised and said, "Your Majesty's enfeoffment of meritorious officials on such a large scale is not conducive to the future rule of our Han Dynasty."

According to the emperor's opinion, there are hundreds of marquises alone, and the number of earls, viscounts, and barons added together is probably over a thousand. So many nobles were enfeoffed, which could only have happened at the founding of the Han Dynasty.

You have to know that every time the Han Dynasty enfeoffs one more noble, it is equivalent to having one more upper-class family. Such an upper-class family consumes a lot of resources of the court. In the case of limited resources, every time the court enfeoffs one more noble, the resources it can control will be weakened.

Therefore, after the founding of the Han Dynasty, Deng Zong tried to find ways to improve the value of the Han nobility. It was difficult to become a nobility without great merit.

Xu Fan said: "The high-ranking titles can be regarded as rewards, but for the middle and low-ranking ones, as long as they stay in the desert, they are guarding the border and making contributions to our Han Dynasty. In a poor place like the desert, if the court does not reward them heavily, not many meritorious officials will be willing to stay."

The court divided the herdsmen into thousands of households for earls, 500 households for viscounts, and 100 households for barons. If we capture all the Xiongnu people in Mobei, I think there will be enough to go around.”

Xu Fan naturally understood what Deng Zong and the others were thinking, but he made a clear distinction between the inside and the outside. Feudal bureaucracy was an advanced political system, but this advanced political system consumed more money and grain. If a poor place like the desert were to be directly managed by Han officials, not to mention the consumption of money and grain by the Han officials.

In such a remote place, the people would rebel against the government in a few years. These Han officials would force a powerful grassland empire to emerge. The imperial court could not rule directly, and could only use the feudal aristocratic system with lower consumption.

Xu Fan felt that it would be a good idea to implement the medieval feudal system in the desert. The more fragmented the desert was, the more beneficial it would be to the Han Dynasty.

For the Han Dynasty, the desert had to do two things: one was to provide wool for the Han Dynasty's textile industry, and the other was to prevent the Hu people from invading the Han Dynasty from the south.

The Han Dynasty did not need to exploit the herdsmen on the grasslands. Normal commercial exchanges were enough to make the desert the Han Dynasty's raw material center and commodity market.

Therefore, for the Han Dynasty, any system that can maintain the stability of the desert and reduce the threat posed by the desert to the Han Dynasty is a good system.

Deng Zong said: "I understand."

Wu Sheng said: "Your Majesty, there is another problem. The princes and nobles have divided the herdsmen, but those herdsmen must take their livestock with them in order to feed themselves.

But these animals are the spoils of war of our Han Dynasty. If they take them all away, what will happen to the rewards for ordinary soldiers?
We have to reward them. If the court pays for all the expenses, it will be like fighting the Great Battle of Mobei all over again. The court cannot afford such a large sum of money. "

Wu Sheng's opinion was very simple. It was impossible that the princes could eat meat while the soldiers under them could not even have a sip of soup. With such a distribution method, the morale of the Han army would be in jeopardy.

The Han Dynasty's powerful combat capability and strict military discipline were built with money, and Xu Fan knew this very well.

In the past, when the Han Dynasty fought in the Central Plains, the spoils were enough to reward the soldiers. After all, conquering a county and distributing land to the soldiers was equivalent to distributing millions of dollars. With such a huge reward, which soldier would not fight to the death? But this method does not work in the desert, where the herdsmen are already very poor. How much money can the nobles get by robbing beggars?

Xu Fan was willing to give the soldiers pastures in the desert. If there were really 60 Han soldiers stationed on the border, plus their families, with millions of Han people in the desert, he would not have to worry about the desert being taken away by other races.

But he also understood that ordinary soldiers would not be willing to stay in the desolate desert. This was not a reward but a punishment for them. The First Emperor had done this once. If Xu Fan really did this, the combat effectiveness of the Han army would collapse.

Therefore, post-war rewards were also a big problem. Wu Sheng originally wanted to use the captured livestock as rewards to ordinary soldiers. Although this could not completely solve the problem, it could solve a large part of it.

But Xu Fan wanted to distribute these animals to the herdsmen, which made it difficult for the Han army soldiers.

Xu Fan thought for a moment and said, "The imperial court will pay a portion of the money and grain, and the princes and nobles will keep an account of how many livestock they take. The Development Bank will advance a portion of the money, and the princes will repay with livestock and wool."

The court has already given you land and people, so it’s not too much to ask you to pay some money.

"The rewards for soldiers are divided into three levels. Soldiers in the southern part of the desert receive about 3000 coins in money and food, soldiers in the junction of the southern and northern parts of the desert receive 5000 coins, and soldiers who fight in the northern part of the desert and fight the Xiongnu receive tens of thousands of coins. In addition, the number of times a soldier fights in battle increases by 3000 coins per battle, and those who fight three times are recommended by officers to attend military academies. The court trains them to become officers and Han officials. The general principle is that the greater the merit, the greater the reward."

Deng Zong nodded and said, "Yes."

Then Xu Fan ordered someone to find Ouyang Xun and praised him highly for the education he had carried out in Mobei, saying that he was the contemporary Zhao Gong and Tai Gong.

To be honest, Xu Fan didn't know that Confucianism would be so powerful in the south of the desert before he came here. Almost every village has a Confucian scholar, and every village can hear the sound of reading, and these herdsmen read the Analects of Confucius.

When Xu Fan was on patrol, he found that local herdsmen would recite the Analects even when grazing. This surprised Xu Fan very much. He did not dare to say that there were so many people in the inland of the Han Dynasty who could recite the Analects fluently, but in a desolate place like the desert, they could actually hear the Analects easily.

Under the guidance of Confucian scholars, these herdsmen could not even speak Chinese clearly, but they firmly believed that they were Han people.

The most ferocious and fiercest fighters in the Battle of Mobei were the Han people who were educated by Confucianism. When Xu Fan first learned about this scene, he was extremely surprised. Then he looked for the reason and realized that Confucianism had put a lot of effort in the desert in recent years.

There is still something to be said for the Confucian way of education. The rule over Mobei cannot be simply tough and brutal. After the Han army gives these herdsmen a beating, they also have to give them a sweet treat. Confucianism is the best sweet treat.

After praising Ouyang Xun, Xu Fan asked whether Confucianism could allocate more scholars to Mobei so that the herdsmen in Mobei could also receive education.

Xu Fan also gave a Confucian a sweet treat. He told Ouyang Xun that the imperial court would restore the feudal system of three generations in the desert, and there would be thousands of baronies in the desert. As long as the Confucianists were willing to send teachers to the desert, the imperial court would build a primary school in each barony and hand it over to the Confucianists.

Xu Fan discovered that Confucianism in the desert seemed to have become Confucianism, and those herdsmen who believed in Confucius were more like believers than scholars.

Xu Fan heard that these "Han people", under the leadership of "Master", shouted: "The Master said: Without Guan Zhong, I would have been wearing my hair loose and my clothes on the left."

Then they rushed forward with swords in hand, and each of them fought to the death. Although they were volunteers and poorly equipped, their combat effectiveness was extremely strong. They made outstanding contributions to the Han army's sweep of the Huns in the rear, and hundreds of thousands of pastoralist tribes south of the desert were captured by them.

Xu Fan was extremely shocked when he learned about all this. This was still a Confucian school, or it would be more appropriate to call it Confucianism. They were just short of raising a cross flag.

When a school of thought degenerates into a sect, it is naturally decadent and backward, but this set of things is naturally suitable for the desert.

Historically, Buddhism ruled this vast area and played a vital role in the stability and ethnic integration of the region.

But Xu Fan traveled through time too early, and there was no Buddhism in the Han Dynasty. The emergence of Confucianism gave Xu Fan an unexpected surprise.

Confucianism only wants to educate the herdsmen to become Han people. Xu Fan doesn't care if the desert becomes the territory of Confucianism.

The emperor's guarantee was a pleasant surprise to Ouyang Xun, especially the emperor's plan to restore Zhou Gong's system in the desert, which surprised Ouyang Xun even more.

Last year, all schools of thought in the Han Dynasty took the world of great harmony as the ultimate goal of their own school, and paid less attention to the rule of the Three Dynasties.

But Confucianism is the only exception. They still firmly believe that the rule of the Three Dynasties is the best system in the world.

So Ouyang Xun promised the emperor: "Confucianism will send more scholars to Mobei to educate the Hu people, so that the Hu people can accept the light of education and become true Han people, and Mobei will always be the territory of the Han Dynasty."

Pinglu Fort, outer city.

The arrival of a large number of herdsmen caused the population of Pinglu Fort to increase several times. The inner city was already overcrowded, and many people simply set up tents in the outer city to live in. There were even many grass markets.

There were endless livestock in the outermost area. The Han Dynasty not only captured hundreds of thousands of herdsmen, but also captured millions of livestock. This was an extremely huge wealth, which made Pinglu Fort the economic center of the north in a short period of time.

Hu Hai and others were strolling in the Caoshi.

"This kind of top-quality warhorse can be sold for at least 20 coins in Chang'an City, but here it only costs coins." Zhu Pei sighed as he stroked the BMW he had just bought. He had always wanted to buy a thousand-mile horse, but he was short of money. This time he finally got his wish.

The prices in Pinglu Fort were truly jaw-dropping. An average horse cost 5000 coins, and an ox cost 3000 coins, which was only half the price in Hebei. Selling these animals to the Central Plains could earn two or three times the profit.

Leather worth tens of thousands of yuan could be bought for just a few thousand coins. He even saw agate gems, which were luxury goods more expensive than gold in the Central Plains, but could be bought for just a few hundred coins here.

Zhuzi said, "Brother Hu Hai, why are we waiting for a ranch? Why don't we just buy a batch of goods here and sell them to the Central Plains to make more money."

Hu Hai shook his head and said, "It's not our turn to make such a profitable deal. Mo Nan Trading Company has already received the goods. This year, the luxury goods in Chang'an and Luoyang will be greatly reduced in price again."

Hu Hai discovered that compared to his own petty and petty actions, the Mo Nan Trading Company was the real powerful one.

They set up a Mo Nan Escort Agency and recruited more than 3000 private soldiers to help the court transport food and supplies. In this way, they not only improved the court's favorability, but also made money.

Although the desert looked dangerous at this time, the main forces of the Huns were engaged in a decisive battle with the main forces of the Han army. Small groups of herdsmen and horse thieves in the desert were no match for the Mo Nan Escort Agency. Their appearance only added some spoils to the Mo Nan Escort Agency.

Sometimes they would even take the initiative to capture herders along the route. After a major battle, they would capture thousands of herders and seize hundreds of thousands of livestock.

After the war in Mobei broke out, the Han army's demand for food and supplies was almost endless. The Mobei trading company took the initiative to serve the court, and the generals on the front line were extremely happy.

When they arrived at the frontline, the Mo Nan Trading Company revealed their true purpose. They wanted to be merchants accompanying the army, and their caravan followed the imperial army. They bought the spoils of war from the frontline soldiers at a low price, and sold them to the Han Dynasty at a high price, making 10 times the profit.

The strength, organizational ability, and powerful combat effectiveness of the Mo Nan Trading Company are not much worse than those of the vassal states of the Han Dynasty.

Hu Hai was even more astonished when he learned this. As a businessman, he was exploited by Han officials, while the Mo Nan Trading Company was already an ally of the Han army, and ordinary Han officials had to please them.

(End of this chapter)