There are a lot of bandits in Baoyuan Mountain.
Indeed, Baoyuan Mountain is a large mountain, or a collective name for a series of peaks.
But in Zhang Xi's concept, as for bandits, only a hundred or so people can survive in one cottage. In the entire Baoyuan Mountain, assuming there is one cottage on each hilltop, there are more than a dozen bandits' dens.
If you calculate it this way, it's just a thousand numbers.
But Zhang Xi never expected that before December, more than a thousand bandits would surrender from the mountain.
Of course, some people did not go down the mountain to surrender, but gathered accomplices and wanted to go down the mountain and break through the obstacles of the officers and soldiers to escape. Zhang Xi would not show mercy to such people.
How could an ordinary bandit be the opponent of the regular army?
The regular army has crossbows and long swords in their hands, but the bandits can't even hold a short sword in their hands.
In addition, Zhang Xi kept asking people to go to the mountains to shout, saying that as long as they surrendered, they would ensure the survival of these bandits. They would not massacre them, but would only attack them and besiege them. As a result, more and more people chose to go down the mountain and surrender.
From the beginning of December, some people could not bear the cold and lack of food in the mountains, so they descended the mountain to surrender one after another. By the end of December, the number of people who had surrendered in Zhangxi's camp had exceeded 1,000.
Now Zhang Xi couldn't sit still.
There were only about 1,500 soldiers left to guard the camp. Looking at the more than 1,000 bandits who surrendered, it felt a bit short-circuited to have to spend money on food and grass supplies.
Therefore, Zhang Xi, under Deng Ai's suggestion, organized and reorganized the more than a thousand surrendered bandits into several small teams, then sent people up the mountain to find several salt springs near the camp, sent soldiers to guard the perimeter, and then Let these surrendered bandits boil salt in it.
Trade salt for grain.
On the one hand, Zhang Xi can also get some income subsidy. On the other hand, it also shows the bandits on the mountain that after you go down the mountain and surrender, there is actually no difference. It is just boiling salt again, but this time it is boiling salt for the government. It’s not about boiling salt for wealthy families.
If you boil salt for aristocratic families, they won't give you any guarantees, and the food you can get in exchange is limited.
But if you boil salt for the government, you will not only have a tent to sleep in, but also have soldiers to protect you. The most important thing is that you will be given a lot of food.
One pound of salt can be exchanged for twenty pounds of grain. Well, Zhang Xi himself felt that he had a dark heart, but for the bandits, this was indeed a very big attraction.
The official price of salt these days is one pound of salt for fifty pounds of grain, but this is asking the common people to exchange grain for salt, which does not mean that salt households can also obtain the same grain.
There is no free land in the world, and farmers are starving to death. This is nothing new in these troubled times.
The bandits on the mountain are actually equivalent to the salt households raised by the aristocratic family on the mountain, so the price given to them by the aristocratic family is one pound of salt for ten pounds of grain.
This ratio will only allow the bandits on the mountain to survive and continue to work for the family.
Now Zhang Xi has fully doubled the price, which is very attractive to bandits on the mountain.
With the previous batch of bandits who surrendered as an example, the remaining bandits suddenly began to feel relieved.
The only key issue that still limits them from surrendering is that many of them are not Han Chinese.
The thousand people who surrendered first were basically Han Chinese, and most of them were originally salt households in Badong County.
The Han Dynasty was run by the Salt and Iron Government, so salt households in these days were supported by the government. They were given a certain amount of support every month, and then used salt in exchange for food, which was a bit like the current piece-rate wage system.
If it were a peaceful and prosperous age, then being a salt household would be quite good except for not having much freedom in life.
But once in troubled times, the price of food rises, the government collapses, and no one provides support to the salt households, and at the same time they do not provide food in exchange, these salt households will be the first to be unable to survive.
These more than a thousand people basically lost their support during the series of wars when Liu Bei entered Sichuan and had to work for the wealthy families.
Going down the mountain to surrender to Zhang Xi now is just a change of work partner. To them, the difference is not big, not to mention that the food provided by Zhang Xi is enough.
But among the thousands of bandits left on the mountain, they are not salt households, and most of them are not even Han people, but Han people.
These people have no interest in being salt households. What they are more worried about is whether the Han people are going to exterminate them.
In fact, these people were not originally from Badong County, but migrated from Brazil County.
They belong to the peripheral forces of the Han people. Because they have been with the Han people for longer, they have become more sinicized. Apart from retaining their own ancestor worship methods, they are not much different from the Han people.
With the influx of refugees from the north, the migrant population in Yizhou is increasing, further compressing the living space of the Mi people. Therefore, some Mi people ran from Brazil County to Badong County to make a living, and they happened to catch up with Baoyuan County. The salt springs in the mountains were temporarily unattended, so some Mi people occupied these salt springs, exchanging food and goods with the Han people down the mountain, hoping to take root in this place.
Now, if the Han people want to take back these salt springs, they will be cut off from their livelihood. And if they go down the mountain and surrender, people really don't know how the Han generals at the foot of the mountain will treat them.
Therefore, the leader of the people recommended a eloquent young man to come down the mountain to negotiate terms with Zhang Xi.
People's requirements are not high, as long as they can be accommodated and given a way to survive.
Anyway, their degree of Chineseization is quite high. They can speak Chinese and can farm. As long as there is a place to accommodate them, it is not impossible for them to go down the mountain.
But if the Han generals are really unwilling to give them a way out, then they have lived in the mountains since childhood. It would not be that easy for the Han generals to exterminate them. But there are many salt springs in the mountains, which is not easy to say.
That depressed person in Zhang Xi, I just went into the mountains to suppress a bandit, and I didn’t encounter any aristocratic families causing trouble. Why did an ethnic issue suddenly arise? What should I do about this? !
Zhang Xi really has no experience in this area. In these days, everyone is not equal. The differences between Han and Yi are very important. Even if Zhang Xi thinks so, what should Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang do if he doesn't think so? !
Besides, Badong County is such a big place, the problems of the aristocratic families have not been solved, and the land ownership has not been redistributed. Where will the land come from to accommodate these people?
Let these people go to farm and become farmers? !
That doesn’t work either.
Throughout Jihan, the economy has been relatively stable because of the support of grain from the Chengdu Plain and the hard currency of Shu Brocade, so farming was not carried out in the early days.
It was not until Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition to garrison Hanzhong that he established a small-scale military garrison because of the inconvenience of transporting grain.
Before that, the entire Liu Bei Group was trying its best to maintain the number of homesteaders, so once they wanted to resettle, they had to provide enough land.
Zhangxi really doesn't have that much land.
In desperation, Zhang Xi had no choice but to write to Zhuge Liang asking for help. Boss, there are three to four thousand people here, both old and weak. Now they are asking to join, but I really can't accommodate them here. See if there is any way to deal with it. one time? !
Zhuge Liang heard that there was such a good thing? !
The surrender of the barbarians is a political event with great influence. No matter how large it is, it must be set up as a typical propaganda event.
Another thing is, there is no land resettlement over there, but there is one here.
Originally, Zhuge Liang was still worried that there were not enough manpower to repair Dujiangyan, but now it is better, manpower has been delivered to his door.
Although Dujiangyan is close to Chengdu, there are only three to four thousand people there, including the elderly and the weak. Even if they are arranged near Chengdu, they will not be able to make waves.
Zhuge Liang asked Zhang Xi to quickly send these people to Chengdu. He would reward them well first, and then arrange them to be farmers near Dujiangyan.
In recent years, due to the disrepair of Dujiangyan, the Chengdu area has guarded this famous water conservancy project, but there are still large areas of farmland left uncultivated, and there is no one to cultivate the land.
Zhuge Liang doesn't care who originally owned these barren farmlands. As long as no one is cultivating them, they are ownerless. Is there any problem with Zhuge Liang using them to house the people who repair Dujiangyan? !
As long as these aristocratic families are willing to spend some money to repair Dujiangyan, it will not be blocked like it is now, let alone the farmland will not be barren.
With Zhuge Liang's support, Zhang Xi immediately spread propaganda to the people on the mountain. In less than half a month, another four to five thousand people came down from the mountain and surrendered.
There are not only farmers, but also refugees, who want to have farmland.
Zhang Xi immediately put these people in their place, sent five hundred soldiers to escort them, and sent them all to Zhuge Liang.
Then, it's time to go back and deal with those shameless families.
Originally, Zhang Xi felt that if he solved the bandit issue, reoccupied the salt springs of Baoyuan Mountain, and cut off the wealth of the aristocratic families, these aristocratic families would definitely have a large-scale rebound.
Not to mention rebellion, there should be some turmoil that would cause Zhang Xi a headache and embarrassment.
But the families in Badong County have to say that Badong County is really a good place.
There are really no large aristocratic families in this place. There are no representatives of aristocratic families who can speak in front of Liu Bei. They are basically branches of some big families.
And these big families are not willing to offend core figures of the Liu Bei Group like Zhang Xi easily because of the development of their branches.
In addition, the matter of private salt is actually not that important in the eyes of the aristocratic families.
Zhang Xi's perception is somewhat biased.
The salt these days is government-run.
The government handles everything from salt production to salt sales. The government has the final say on the price of salt. Folks and aristocratic families have no pricing power.
Like now in troubled times, the price of official salt is high and the price of private salt is low. Although some people will buy private salt, as long as the government regains control of the salt mines and reorganizes production, the price of salt will definitely come down. Then the price of aristocratic families will Private salt will not be sold.
In this way, the aristocratic family became a tool for the government to work for free and stabilize the price of salt.
Of course, if one day Liu Bei decides to delegate the right to sell official salt, that is, to sell salt, that will be another matter.
Once they have the opportunity to control the pricing power of a large-scale people's livelihood transaction, the aristocratic families will not take it into consideration.
Not to mention Zhang Xi, even if Liu Bei himself dared to touch their influence, they would also dare to oust him.
But under the government-run policy of salt and iron in this era, there was no place for people like Ming Yuzhen and Zhang Shicheng to survive.
Therefore, for the aristocratic family, selling private salt will not last long, and the two are taboos for those in power. If you have the opportunity, you can do this kind of thing privately and make a little money, but you will never pay a high price for it.
In addition, Zhang Xi did not intend to drive out all the aristocratic families, nor did he let these aristocratic families spit out the salt profits they had embezzled. He just tightened the rules and returned the salt profits to the government.
Under such circumstances, unless the aristocratic families were out of ideas, why would they confront the prefect of a county who holds military power? !
If you create turmoil or directly raise an army to rebel over such a small thing, then don't go to the ancestral graves when you die, otherwise you will injure your family.
(End of chapter)
