Zhang Xi's splitting of Xiangyang County and Jiangling County has different political implications.
Among the Jingzhou aristocratic families, the most powerful one was always the Xiangyang aristocratic family headed by the Pang family and the Ma family, followed by the small and medium-sized aristocratic families in Nanjun, Nanyang and other places.
By the way, the Huang family's base camp was originally in Jiangxia and Jingnan, but now that people are changing back and forth between these two places, the Huang family has long sensed that something is wrong. Except for leaving some people to express a sense of presence in Jiangling, most of the Huang family The clan members followed Zhuge Liang and his family to Chengdu, regarding that place as the focus of development.
As for the Kuai family, after Kuai Liang and Kuai Yue surrendered to Cao Cao, the Kuai family had basically moved north to Luoyang, and even developed in Hebei. The power of the branch family who stayed in Xiangyang was far less than before.
As for the Cai family, I'm sorry, but now within the Xiangyang family, there is no place for the Cai family at all.
No matter what, the Xiangyang Family must be the largest interest group in Xiangyang, and their base must be around Xiangyang.
However, there is an awkward part here.
Xiangyang is the administrative center of Jingzhou. Whether it was during Liu Biao's period or later after Guan Yu regained Xiangfan, it has always been positioned like this.
However, Xiangyang was subordinate to Nanjun, and the county government of Nanjun was Jiangling. Later, when Zhang Xi served as the prefect of Nanjun, he always stayed in Jiangling to work.
Coupled with Jiangling's important geographical location, it is an important first-line city in the defense of Soochow. This leads to a great conflict between Xiangyang and Jiangling regarding the proportion of internal resource deployment in Jingzhou.
When Guan Yu was here, everything could be suppressed, but in the more than half a year after Guan Yu died of illness and when Zhang Xi took office in Jingzhou, there were actually many conflicts.
In short, the Xiangyang family hopes to gain actual control around Xiangyang to protect their interests, but the officials of the Nanjun family and Jiangling certainly do not want to do this.
Although these Nanjun aristocratic families cannot defeat the Xiangyang aristocratic families in terms of power, the problem is that they occupy the legal basis.
After all, Xiangyang is just a city under Nanjun. Although all the previous chief officials of Jingzhou have stayed in Xiangyang, no one knows clearly that Xiangyang is governed by Jingzhou Prefecture.
This has resulted in Xiangyang's current embarrassing status, and it urgently needs a chance to clear its name.
Such a division by Zhang Xi is equivalent to dividing Xiangyang separately and making it a county. Since it is divided into a county, it is definitely impossible for there to be only one city like Xiangyang, Fancheng in the north, Yicheng in the south, or even Can Dangyang, Linju and other counties also be placed under Xiangyang? !
To the north, the Xiangyang family can seize the interests that originally belonged to Nanyang County. To the south, the Xiangyang family can compete with the Jiangling family for the interests of the counties that were originally out of their hands. What else can the Xiangyang family be unhappy about.
And as long as the Xiangyang family can be stabilized, there will be no chaos in Jingzhou.
In addition, Zhang Xi took the initiative to move his seat of Jingzhou Mu to the south to Jiangling, which was tantamount to stating that he would not interfere in the distribution of interests among the Xiangyang families. It also showed that Zhang Xi's main purpose of coming to Jingzhou this time was to guard against Dong Dong. Wu.
Really, although the Xiangyang family has been tortured by Guan Yu's "Northern Expedition" in recent years, and now it gives them a headache when they hear the word "Northern Expedition", but when it comes to attacking Soochow, the Xiangyang family does not have such a big reaction. .
First of all, Jingzhou and Soochow are feuding.
This feud is not only due to Huang Zu's hatred for killing Sun Jian, Sun Ce, and Sun Quan for invading Jingzhou several times, but the most important thing is that the Jiangdong locals always want to invade the interests of Jingzhou aristocratic families.
There is still room for change in the former, but the latter is the kind of hatred that will never end until death.
Secondly, compared to the hard-to-beat Cao Wei Group, the Soochow Group in the east can be said to be a soft persimmon in the eyes of the Jingzhou family.
It is true that the Han Dynasty court has always made concessions to Soochow in recent years. In fact, the Jingzhou family is also very dissatisfied.
During Liu Jingsheng's time, he could hold down Jiangdong and beat him up. Now that he has strong soldiers and horses, can the people of Jingzhou still be afraid of those Jiangdong bumpkins? !
Finally, the use of troops against Soochow means that Jiangxia County and Jingnan County are all possible to take back. These places have always been places where the Xiangyang family wanted to intervene, but have never had the opportunity to do so.
In the past, Jiangxia County was the territory of the Huang family and no one else could get involved.
After finally waiting for the Huang family to go to Chengdu, Jiangxia County was also taken back from Soochow. The Jingzhou family had just reached out and invested a lot of money and food, but before the cost could be recovered, Jiangxia was taken over again. If Soochow was taken back without any loss, it would be considered a good thing.
The biggest losers here are the aristocratic families in Jiangling. They are still holding their anger.
As for the four counties in Jingnan, the Xiangyang family in the past would not be tempted by such remote places, but it is different now.
Since Zhang Xi went to Jingnan to carry out a project to convert silt into farmland, over the past ten years, the swampy silt land near Changsha, Guiyang, and Lingling has been transformed into large areas of fertile farmland.
Of course, those who contributed the most money and efforts here must be the gang of locals in Jiangdong. Without their continuous investment in Changsha and Guiyang, such a large-scale fertile land plain would not have been possible.
But the Jingzhou family doesn't care. These places are Jingzhou's territory. Why do you Jiangdong people come to Jingzhou's territory to do anything? !
This is not because we are coveting that bit of land. The main thing is that the ownership of the four counties in Jingnan must be clearly stated. Those are the four counties in Jingnan in Jingzhou.
Among other things, Changsha, Guiyang, and Lingling counties must be captured.
Therefore, for the Jingzhou family, Zhang Xi's departure from Jiangling is more good news than bad news to a greater extent.
In this way, after appeasing the Xiangyang aristocratic family, Zhang Xi stayed in Xiangyang for almost a month, coordinating and handling various accumulated official affairs in Jingzhou. He was busy until mid-June before setting off for Jiangling.
Accompanying him were 30,000 soldiers from Jingzhou County who were resting after the Northern Expedition.
And as Zhang Xi led 30,000 Jingzhou County soldiers south to Jiangling, the first person who couldn't hold on was the public security guard Lu Kai.
At the end of last year, as the Jingzhou Army successively returned for reinforcements, Soochow saw that its goal had been achieved and chose to withdraw its troops without hesitation.
Zhou Yu withdrew to Jiangxia, while Zhu Ran withdrew to Lukou.
As for the captured Gong'an County, they had to be guarded. After all, across the river was Jiangling. Since such an important place was captured, it must be defended.
Zhu Ran left Lu Kai and five thousand soldiers to guard the public security.
In the past, facing Shi Bao and more than 20,000 defenders in Jiangling City, the pressure on Lu Kai's defense was not too great.
After all, Shi Bao has to consider the defense of the entire area near Jiangling, not just a public security county. Therefore, although Shi Bao has the advantage in military strength, it is really unlikely that they will attack the public security forces in full force.
In addition, Jiangdong has enough naval advantages to block the river before Jiangling launches an attack. Therefore, Jiangling's threat to the public security is really not great.
But it doesn't work anymore. If we count the 30,000 soldiers brought by Zhang Xi, the entire Jiangling City has accumulated more than 50,000 Jingzhou County soldiers. What is it going to do? !
It doesn’t take that many troops to defend an area, right? !
After receiving the news, Lu Kai did not hesitate to order the preparations to start fighting, and at the same time quickly asked Zhu Ran in Lukou for help.
In addition to Lu Kai feeling nervous, Zhu Ran and Zhou Yu also began to respond on their own.
These two people are stronger than Lu Kai in terms of strategic experience and strategic sense. It is impossible for them not to detect the dangers that Lu Kai can detect.
Zhu Ran's response was simple. He sent a large number of navy troops to patrol the Yangtze River to prevent Jiangling from sneaking across the Yangtze River and launch a surprise attack on the police.
Then Zhu Ran quickly reported to Sun Quan, the great emperor of Wu, and asked him to prepare reinforcements in Yuzhang and other places. He also wrote to Zhou Yu, hoping that Zhou Yu would make protective defenses on the Lukou flank and protect the safety of the Lukou flank.
After Zhu Ran's own judgment, he believed that the Shu thieves were likely to use force against the police.
As for Zhou Yu, Zhou Yu actually agreed with Zhu Ran's judgment, but the problem was that Zhou Yu could not veto the possibility that Zhang Xi would take advantage of the situation and attack Jiangxia from both land and water lines.
Therefore, Zhou Yu also made his own response - he personally led the navy to station in Xiakou to guard the passage of the Han River to the Yangtze River. At the same time, he asked Zhang Cheng to lead 5,000 soldiers to station in Jingling to prevent Zhang Xi from invading Jiangxia County by land.
As for Zhu Ran's request, Zhou Yu's settlement in Xiakou was equivalent to defending Lukou's flanks, killing two birds with one stone.
The response was completed, but Zhou Yu was still hesitant.
It wasn't that he was hesitant about whether there was anything wrong with such a military arrangement, but that he was full of doubts about Zhang Xi's purpose of action.
Are Shu Han really ready to fall out with Da Wu? !
Not only Zhou Yu was unsure about this issue, Sun Quan, who was now in charge of Jianye, was also somewhat unsure.
Although both Lukou and Jiangxia came to report that the Shu Han had abnormal troop mobilization and might launch an attack on the Soochow border. But this was not the case, and Sun Quan still had doubts.
Are they really going to fall out like this? Where does Shu Han get the confidence? !
Didn’t you just finish a battle? It’s only been half a year and you’re finally relieved? !
Or is it that Zhang Gong's judgment was wrong and that Shu Han actually had no intention of maintaining the status quo with Da Wu? !
As a last resort, Sun Quan once again sent people to invite Zhang Zhao to come over to discuss the matter. This was not right. Why not sit on the mountain and watch the tiger fight? !
At the same time, Zhou Yu received a letter.
The letter was from Zhang Xi, which was already very new. How many years had it been since the two of them had written letters? !
The content of the letter made Zhou Yu even more vague. The letter said that Zhang Xi held a small banquet by the Wulin River and invited Zhou Yu to cross the river.
What is this bastard boy up to? !
Is there another demarcation banquet? !
(End of chapter)
