March of the twenty-fourth year of Jian'an.
Meng Huo rushed back from the White Horse Division and brought the news that King Mulu was willing to cooperate with the Han people and provide a fixed quota of Yunnan horses every year.
The specific number can be discussed in detail. After all, it is a matter of interests. King Mulu will not decide so quickly. It is already good to express a willingness to cooperate.
To this end, Zhang Xi sent Ma Su to "Yinkeng Cave" to discuss cooperation with King Mulu in detail.
At the same time, Zhang Xi also instructed Ma Su to take the mineral exploration craftsmen and go to the "Yinkeng Cave" to have a good inspection to see if there was a silver mine.
After all, the name is very obvious. It must be a relic left by the previous generations of silver mining. Otherwise, could it be called "Silver Hole"? !
Although silver is not very useful these days and cannot be circulated as an alternative currency, it is always a raw material for making some luxury goods. It is better than nothing.
By the way, as an aside, the mainstream currency these days is the five-baht coin, which is made of copper, lead, and tin.
The "gold" of the Han Dynasty was not copper, but real gold. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty "wined gold with gold" is an obvious example.
Therefore, copper can be used to make money, and gold can also be used as a high-end item as a reward from the emperor or tribute from his subjects, representing value. Only silver, in this era, can only be used in some ritual vessels, high-end aristocratic utensils or luxury items. play a role in the funerary objects.
So as for this silver, having it is of course the best. If not, Zhang Xi is actually not very demanding.
After settling King Mulu, the war in the entire Nanzhong has completely calmed down.
Next, Zhang Xi needs to think about how to manage this place.
Zhuge Liang was able to pacify Nanzhong and leave because Zhuge Liang was the prime minister at the time. No prime minister would stay in the barren land of the south to govern the place every day without returning to the central government to handle government affairs.
But Zhang Xi is the governor of Gajiang, and his duty is to care for and govern Nanzhong.
First of all, the first thing to be solved is how to deal with the major surnames in Nanzhong after the war.
Needless to say, the Li family, as a great contributor to the suppression of the rebellion, must definitely go up to the table and ask for a seal.
Therefore, Zhang Xi went to the table and asked the King of Hanzhong to grant Li Hui a reward.
As for the Meng family, although they were part of the rebellion, they continued to perform meritorious services and contributed a lot to the pacification of Nanzhong. Therefore, they had to petition the King of Hanzhong and request the King of Hanzhong to reward and punish the Meng family. But Zhang Xi made some suggestions.
In addition, many of the prefecture officials in various counties were killed due to the war, so the King of Hanzhong had to send new prefects, but Zhang Xi also made some suggestions in the table.
After all, Zhang Xi is not Zhuge Liang, and Liu Bei is still here. This kind of awarding of meritorious officials and arranging the affairs of local officials must be done "from the highest point of kindness". Zhang Xi will not have such a low EQ and do things for others.
As for the Jiao family and the Cuan family, although they had meritorious service during the counter-rebellion period, they inevitably had a clumsy style of doing things, which Zhang Xi didn't like very much.
Although Zhang Xi would also report his story to the court, his suggestion to Liu Bei in the memorial was to give the two families a symbolic reward so that they would not be resentful, and there was no need to give too many benefits.
After dealing with the post-war problems of dealing with these powerful people, Zhang Xi had to face a more troublesome problem - the population allocation of Nanzhong.
Because Meng Huo was very competent in leading the way, many barbarian kings in Jianning County who had been huddled in the mountains and were semi-cooperative and semi-antagonistic to the local government were basically eliminated. These mountain barbarians who had lost their leaders were moved as a whole by Zhang Xi Settled on the plains.
Although Meng Huo and Li Hui agreed to treat these barbarians as auxiliary tribesmen and work as laborers in mining, the number of barbarians migrating out this time was too large, as high as hundreds of thousands, and they were almost reaching the south. A quarter of the total population of the four middle counties.
By the way, this population size also shocked Zhang Xi.
Jianning County can bring out more than 100,000 Yi people. How many Yi people are hidden in Yongchang County, Yuexun County, and Xianggao County? !
The population of Nanzhong cannot be doubled? !
Therefore, in this era, although the population has indeed dropped sharply due to the war, the number of people hiding in the mountains and fleeing from aristocratic families is also quite large.
The hundreds of thousands of barbarians in Jianning County, the Li family and the Meng family combined cannot eat such a large population, and even if they have this ability, these two families would not dare to swallow hundreds of thousands of people if they are clear-headed. , who can trust the two families? !
Therefore, the Li family and the Meng family only divided a quarter of them, a total of more than 40,000 people. The rest was not given to Zhang Xi's family and was uniformly placed in the southwest of Jianning County.
This place is the most troubled place in Yongkai. After the war and fleeing from famine, the population has dropped sharply. It is just used to register and replenish the population.
At the same time, in order to prevent so many Yi people from gathering together and causing unnecessary trouble, Zhang Xi selected 10,000 young men from these Yi people and asked Wang Ping to train them into an army, and then brought them back to Chengdu and handed them over to the King of Hanzhong. Liu Bei handled it.
As for whether he can become a "Wu Dang Feijun" again, it depends on the needs of Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei.
Among the remaining people, Zhang Xi selected thousands of Yi people who were in good physical condition and divided them into five divisions. At the same time, he established the Five Divisions Captain's Mansion, with Zhang Yi as the school captain and the commander-in-chief of the five divisions. A stable place.
Unlike Zhuge Liang's approach of assigning the five captains to the powerful, Zhang Xi had no intention of coddling these lowly Nanzhong wealthy families.
Zhang Xi wants to give the wealthy families in Nanzhong an intuitive concept. If you help the big man, the big man will not forget your benefits. If you don't believe it, just look at the Li family and the Meng family.
But if you like to be a coward and listen to whoever is forced, then when the distribution of benefits after the war is blocked, don't blame me for not taking care of you.
Of course, if you think it's unfair, you can start a rebellion now and speak with your fists, and I won't stop you.
But obviously, it is impossible for a group of useless families to have such courage. Now that the Li family and the Meng family have defected as guards, it is simply unrealistic to think of a large-scale rebellion in Nanzhong.
In this way, after several screenings, nearly 100,000 Yi people were placed in the southwest of Jianning County by Zhang Xi and registered like Han citizens.
However, this does not mean that these Yi people can enjoy the same treatment as Han people. According to Zhuge Liang's ideas and suggestions, Zhang Xi made an agreement with these Yi people that as long as they can pay taxes to the government and serve for more than ten years, they can enjoy the treatment of Han people. If someone in the family joins the army and performs meritorious service, they can immediately enjoy the treatment of Han citizens.
This is called "when one person joins the army, the whole family will be honored."
After giving hope, Zhang Xi could not ignore the life and death of these barbarians. Otherwise, with the level of farming of these barbarians, even if they were killed, they would not be able to complete the government's tax service.
Therefore, they must also be taught how to farm.
This kind of thing is actually easy to handle. Before joining the army, Han soldiers were basically qualified farmers.
Zhang Xi divided these barbarians into groups of ten households and sent a soldier to guide the farming. The government only gave the annual farming time and guidance. At the same time, light corvee and low taxes were implemented in the first two years, which should be able to initially teach the people. These barbarians farmed.
The Yi people are also human beings. As long as they have a fixed income and the government does not oppress them too harshly, no one will be willing to go back to the mountains and fight against nature for food.
After Zhang Xi arranged the aftermath for these Yi people, he discovered a very serious problem - Nanzhong's food reserves seemed to be insufficient.
After all, these Yi people had just come out of the mountains and were abducted by the Han army. They did not have much food left to eat. And given the climate in Nanzhong, it is a bit late to plant rice now. Although they have been replanted, it is estimated that there will be two crops a year. It is very difficult. It may only be harvested once a year, and the income in the first year will be reduced.
Although the climate conditions in Jianning County are good, and the rice here can be harvested twice a year, the problem is that the development of many places in Nanzhong simply cannot keep up, and the arable area is quite small.
In previous years, Nanzhong could barely be self-sufficient with two crops a year. Now that there is one less crop of mature rice, the people of Nanzhong are likely to be hungry before the end of the year. Nanzhong will not be able to provide relief at all.
Therefore, Zhang Xi had to ask Chengdu for help.
At the same time, considering the continuous campaign, Chengdu may not have much surplus food, and it needs to arrange military food hoarding in preparation for the Northern Expedition to help the Han Dynasty. Therefore, Zhang Xi made a suggestion to Liu Bei - to allow powerful families in the south and central China to contribute as much food and grass as possible. Obtained the distribution rights of the Jianning County copper mine.
Zhang Xi sent people to re-examine the distribution of copper mines in Jianning County. The reserves are astonishingly large. Although nearly half of the copper mines cannot be mined on a large scale with current technical capabilities, from the perspective of this era , the exploitable part is already an industry that can be spread for hundreds of years and make the country rich.
There are so many copper mines that everyone in Liu Bei Group can't afford to pay for. If you want to quickly obtain copper mines, you must allow local powerful people to join in.
Even what Liu Bei Group needs to consider now is really not to compete with the family for the ownership of copper mines, but to formulate relevant laws and strictly control the right to mint and issue currency.
As long as they hold these two rights, no matter how much copper the aristocratic families mine, it will only serve as a wedding dress for the Liu Bei Group.
No matter how arrogant the family is these days, they don't dare to pursue the idea of minting rights. That would be a thing that no one would sympathize with if the entire family was destroyed.
Therefore, even if the family mines a large amount of copper mines, they cannot sell all the copper mines to the Liu Bei Group and make them into bronze vessels for burial, right? !
Regarding this point, Zhang Xi did not need to remind him. Zhuge Liang had already pulled Fazheng, Mi Zhu, Li Yan and others to start formulating laws and strictly control them.
None of these people are human beings. How could they not see what Zhang Xi could see.
As for the distribution of copper mines in Jianning County, the wealthy families in Chengdu are almost confused.
Just at this time, a team of surveying craftsmen sent by Zhang Xi discovered a very large tin mine on the south side of Fairy Lake. Along the Lushui River and its branches, a large number of gold ore and iron ore snow areas were discovered. To the west of Guchang in Jianning County, a large number of salt mines were discovered, and there was also a salt supervisor that had been established since the previous dynasty. It could be mined directly with a little repair.
Okay, now Liu Bei couldn't sit still. Zhuge Liang even directly asked Liu Bei for instructions and went to Wei County, where the Governor's Mansion was based, to take charge of the distribution of benefits.
(End of chapter)
