I, Liu Bian, Sanxing Han Dynasty

Chapter 37 Liangzhou Policy

With Lu Zhi's help, Liu Bian saw a set of data that shocked him.

This is the statistics of counties and governors in Liangzhou three or four years ago. The data itself is suspected of fraud, but it is roughly enough to estimate the Han population in Liangzhou more than two years ago.

Hanyang County, which has the largest population, has twelve counties, with a total of 1.34 million Han people. Jiuquan County, which has the smallest population, has only more than 10,000 people in the nine counties combined.

There are only more than 400,000 Han people in Liangzhou. This was the situation before the rebellion. Now the situation is even more serious.

In addition, the Qiang people did not pay taxes, and the court did not have an in-depth understanding of the overall number of Qiang people.

Han Sui seemed to have only 30,000 defeated troops, but once the imperial court tried to send a large army to attack, the Qiang people living in these places would become a hidden threat.

In the past, when Duan Jiong crusaded against the Qiang rebellion, he would recruit Qiang people to fight in the army and divide and rule the Qiang people. This was the case with Yicong in Huangzhong.

But this time, because Huang Zhongyi's rebellion expanded from a defection to an uncontrollable level, the court did not dare to take the risk of failure to control the Qiang.

Years of Qiang chaos caused the Han people in Liangzhou to move eastward. There were not many Han people in Liangzhou, and even fewer were interested in the Han Dynasty.

The policy of garrisoning troops and garrisoning fields originally used in border counties became difficult to implement in Liangzhou.

The Qiang people that Fu Xie attracted through farming in Hanyang County had proven to be completely unreliable at critical moments.

Thinking of this, Liu Bian suddenly lamented that the situation in Liangzhou was already so serious. If we did not consider the fact that this was the territory of the Han Dynasty, this place would be a hot potato.

Under such circumstances, no minister proposed to give up Liangzhou, and no one objected to sending troops to Liangzhou before, which shows that the ministers of the Han Dynasty are very strong.

Liu Bian told Lu Zhi this, but Lu Zhi laughed.

It turned out that more than two years ago, Cui Lie, who was Situ at the time, proposed the strategy of abandoning Liangzhou at the court meeting because of the disturbance in Guanlong and the lack of service.

At that time, Fu Xie served as the Yilang and directly came out: "Behead Situ, so that the world can be stable."

He also talked about the importance of controlling Liangzhou for the safety of Sanfu and other reasons. Emperor Ling adopted Fu Xie's suggestion, but did not blame Cui Lie.

Liu Bian did not expect that the current Taiwei Cui Lie had such a side.

Lu Zhi asked: "Now that Your Highness knows the current situation in Liangzhou, does he still think that Liangzhou must be recovered?"

Liu Bianyi spoke righteously: "In the past, our ancestors were exposed to frost and dew, and they cut off thorns to have a sizeable land. How can future generations treat it like grass and mustard and give it to others?"

After saying that, he asked without giving up: "Master Lu, is there any way to save money and effort to solve the problem in Liangzhou?"

Lu Zhi shook his head: "If so, how could I hide it?"

Liu Bian looked at the map and thought for a long time, and suddenly thought of the method used by the Tang Dynasty to deal with Goryeo in the early years - to use a small number of elite troops to harass Goryeo for a long time and in multiple waves to weaken its war potential.

Liaodong also needs to consider mountains and fortified cities, while Liangzhou is much flatter.

He asked Lu Zhi about the feasibility of this idea, but he saw Lu Zhi looking at him in surprise: "Your Highness actually has such a military strategy!"

"It's just talk on paper."

Lu Zhi actually has an idea. The best way to solve Liangzhou's problem is to move people to the border. But now this method is even more unrealistic than farming, so troops are still needed.

He chose Ji County as the garrison location, so that grain from Yizhou could be transported through Chencang.

At the same time, county officials, under the protection of the garrison, carried out long-term education on the Qiang people, changed their customs, and organized households to integrate the people. This will not take a few years, it will even take one or two generations of hard work, but once successful, there will be no future problems.

The price is that the garrison must have the ability to confront the rebels head-on. Ordinary field soldiers do not have such combat effectiveness, so the garrison needs the long-term support of the court.

When Lu Zhi told Liu Bian, he actually believed that Liu Bian had the ability to implement this strategy to the end.

From the perspective of later generations, the Eastern Han Dynasty's ethnic policy towards the Qiang people has been criticized.

Different from the appeasement policy adopted during the Western Han Dynasty in order to isolate the Qiang people from contact with the Huns, in the early days of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the strategy of extruding Qiang people's cultivated land and pastures with farming was clearly defined. During the implementation process, officials tyrannically enslaved the Qiang people and later migrated The Qiang people entered the interior to provide tax corvee services.

The backlash brought about by these policies and reality has long been apparent. Under this ethnic policy focused on exploitation, long-term instability in Liangzhou is inevitable.

Even hardliners like Duan Jiong said that the Qiang people were "ambitious and difficult to tolerate. Even though they were in power, they surrendered and resumed action. They could only be threatened with spears and necks and ears with bare blades." After many years of conquest, they gained 38,000 heads. More than a thousand levels, it can't stop.

Of course, this is enough to prove that the moral bottom line of Duan Jiong and others is much higher than that of a certain gangster who blames others for committing genocide all day long.

Overall, Liu Bian agrees with Lu Zhi’s views.

How could he, who had received modern education, not understand that although there were careerists in various rebellions since the Yellow Turban Uprising, how many of them, as members of the country, really rose up in resistance because they could no longer survive.

It's just that nowadays, between the government and the public, the attitude of killing everyone like Huangfu Song is the mainstream.

Liu Bian was inevitably affected and only wanted to solve the problem militarily.

It's funny to say that when the Yellow Turban Rebellion began, Emperor Ling was worried that the imprisoned party members would join in, so he accepted the eunuch Lu Qiang's suggestion to lift the party imprisonment.

But Emperor Ling didn't know that the party members and the rebellion in Guizhou would never merge.

Liu Bian finally said to Lu Zhi: "I think Master Lu's strategy is feasible, but I'm afraid it won't be easy to implement it."

Lu Zhi also admitted this. What he currently wanted to achieve was to garrison troops in Ji County. He also believed that the harassment strategy proposed by Liu Bian could be used for areas that had surrendered to the rebels.

At the impromptu court meeting the next day, Liu Bian once again appeared in the court hall. This time he also focused on listening.

Huangfu Song won a great victory, and those who had made meritorious deeds from him onwards would be rewarded. The most important thing was what to do next.

Liu Bian noticed that He Jin was extremely active during this court meeting.

The rebels still have some remaining strength. With the current state of the treasury and the rewards for meritorious deeds deducted, unless Emperor Ling spends all the money from Xiyuan, it will definitely not be possible to start a large-scale war in Jincheng County.

There were calls to continue the march, but no waves could be made.

No one objected to Lu Zhi's suggestion of garrisoning troops in Ji County and transferring grain from Chencang to Yizhou. The question was how many troops to keep and who to send to guard it.

Given the resumes of Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun, it would be unfair to appoint them as governors of only one county.

Although the former prefect Fu Xie had experience in leading troops, his achievements were not impressive.

He Jin wanted to recommend his army commander Xu Liang, government official Wang Kuang and others, but Dong Chong had been drowsy when they left, but now he was sober, and he immediately retorted that these two people were not as good as Fu Xie!

After much discussion, Sun Jian actually appeared.

(End of this chapter)