Yuan Shao seems to have the courage to embrace all rivers and is willing to accept heroes from all over the world to work for him, but he cannot control and control these talents under his command well, and cannot maximize their power.
He seems to think that he only needs to recruit talents to his staff, and then just let them use their abilities. Nothing else matters.
Under the banner of the Fourth and Third Lord Yuan, these talents will definitely devote all their strength to him. Others are not the most important. If the people below fight, let them fight. This may be better.
Just like now, Liu Bei sorted out the quality of talents under Yuan Shao's command and found that Yuan Shao's command was really a big dyeing vat.
From the perspective of the school of Confucian classics, Yuan Shao has the ancient Wen classics school and the modern classics school under his command.
are opposed to each other.
From the perspective of regional origin, Yuan Shao's subordinates include people from Runan, Hebei, Luoyang, Central Plains, and Youzhou in the north like Liu Bei.
They are not harmonious with each other and often engage in regional discrimination.
In terms of family background, some were from local powerful families, some were from official families, and some were from scholarly families.
There is also a clear chain of contempt between them.
From the perspective of official position and power, there are two thousand stone prefects and white civilians.
Is there no difference between officials and civilians?
From a political point of view, there are people who are from the scholar group, and there are people who are from the eunuch group.
This is even more the enemy of life and death and the main contradiction.
Even the political spectrum of the late Eastern Han Dynasty could not accommodate such a team composition that was so out of touch with the original spectrum.
But Yuan Shao didn't take this kind of thing seriously.
He chose to let his subordinates form cliques to unite with each other, and did not restrict, guide, or suppress the ideas and practices of a certain faction. He sat back and watched the gaps between the teams gradually emerge, and never took any means to suppress or bridge the conflicts between his subordinates.
For example, Yuan Shao didn't care that Cao Cao was isolated by many small gangs, and he didn't take the opportunity to take Cao Cao back to his heart, making Cao Cao truly his confidant and making suggestions for him.
He may have accepted Cao Cao just to complete a political mission.
So the depressed Cao Cao could only move closer to Liu Bei, the only one who didn't mind his origin, and formed a very good relationship with Liu Bei, even to the point where Liu Bei was the dominant one and Cao Cao was the auxiliary.
Yuan Shao didn't seem to care about this.
Liu Bei then took to his platform like a fish in water to make friends and raise his social status. It can be said that he talked and laughed with great scholars and no idle friends. As his reputation grew, his political future was also secretly optimistic by many people.
Many people believe that Liu Bei, as a disciple of the great scholar Lu Zhi and a good friend of Yuan Shao, will definitely be able to reach a higher level in the future. Although he is only a minor official at the moment, once he has the opportunity, he will definitely be able to rise to the top and become a high-ranking official.
However, Liu Bei had not yet waited for the opportunity to be promoted, but he happened to be hit by a wave of aftermath of the party's imprisonment.
The cause of the incident is that in the first month of the fifth year of Guanghe, Emperor Liu Hong of the Han Dynasty did not know whose advice he listened to, or it was his own thought. He issued an edict to harm the people and neglect state and county officials, intending to launch a wave of "for- "to eliminate harm to the people" and remove incompetent local officials.
This order came very suddenly and strangely. There was no news beforehand, but the order was issued suddenly, leaving many officials in the court at a loss.
Lu Zhi didn't know about this beforehand and felt that he was caught off guard. Many officials in Shangshutai felt that this order was a bit inexplicable.
"The annual mid-year exam for state and county officials should be in charge of the Third Duke Cao. It was completed last year, and the assessment of merits and demerits was also completed. Logically speaking, this should not happen again. Why are you suddenly reporting officials who harm the people?"
Lu Zhi was very worried about this. He told Liu Bei privately that he suspected that this was another good thing done by the eunuchs.
They plan to eliminate dissidents and strengthen their power again.
Sure enough, how could the eunuchs let go of such a good opportunity to break away from the rules and eliminate dissidents?
According to regulations, the Third Duke Cao of Shangshutai has the power to evaluate the performance of state and county officials all over the world. This is an institutional power and is currently not controlled by eunuchs, so they did not do what the eunuchs wanted to see during the year-end exams.
So they took this opportunity to stir up trouble and stir up a rhythm.
They quickly mobilized their power in the court, using Taiwei Xu Kuan, Sikong Zhang Ji and their minions from the Afu eunuchs to launch another sudden attack on the forces of the non-eunuch group.
They did not attack the county governors and governors who were corrupt and corrupt in the local area. Instead, they attacked the 26 border state and county officials who were deemed to have no problems after last year's assessment, and slandered them as corrupt officials. , reported to Liu Hong, demanding their removal.
It is conceivable that after these twenty-six local officials who are not affiliated with eunuchs are deposed, they will be immediately assigned to eunuchs. The power of the eunuch group will be further strengthened, and the power of the scholars will be further weakening.
Originally, it was not Liu Bei's turn to express his opinions on this matter, because even Lu Zhi had no ability to intervene in this matter, let alone Liu Bei, who was just the official of Shangshutai, so Liu Bei had no intention at the beginning. Get involved in this matter.
But Liu Bei was still passively involved in this political turmoil.
Because among the twenty-six county officials who were framed by the eunuch group and participated in the performance, there was the name of his father-in-law, Grand Administrator Han Rong.
He was promoted to Xiaolian by Han Rong before he could arrive in Luoyang to serve as an official. Not to mention that Han Rong was still his father-in-law. Due to emotions and reasons, he had to be involved in this matter and work hard for his old father-in-law, otherwise Is he still a human being?
What's more, as far as he knew, Han Rong didn't have any big political achievements, and his hands and feet as an official were not very clean. He had served as a local official and made a lot of money from the profits of salt and iron.
However, he was tolerant in his politics and did not like to torment the people. He did not engage in ostentation and political performance projects. He was one of the shortest generals to choose generals. During his tenure, the people lived a peaceful life and ate a few more mouthfuls of rice bran.
Therefore, Han Rong has no great achievements and is not considered an upright official, but he is definitely not a corrupt official who is harmful to nature and justice.
The eunuchs did this simply because they wanted to replace these disobedient county guards with their own people so that they could control more political resources and economic interests. This was a competition for power in the world.
The struggle between the scholars and the eunuchs has actually failed. The emergence of the disaster of party imprisonment is a sign of the failure of the scholars. The eunuchs have the upper hand, while the scholars are at a disadvantage and find it difficult to resist. Even parrying for a while is difficult.
The reason why the eunuchs did not kill all the scholars was mainly because the scholars had the knowledge of governance, and the educated people of the eunuchs' children and the attached eunuchs were not enough to completely replace the scholars.
The establishment of Hongdu Menxue was an attempt by new forces to break the scholar's monopoly on official positions.
This attempt seems to be relatively successful so far. Many local tycoons and other people who have not entered the ranks in the past have obtained the care of eunuchs through the relationship with Hongdu Menxue, so that they can serve as county magistrates, governors, governors, and become eunuchs' minions. , competing with the scholars for power in the local area.
The current situation was actually caused by the scholars who had gone too far before.
Through the Baihuguan Conference, the first-mover scholar families monopolized almost all political power. Even the later-mover scholar families had to rely on the ancient scriptures to compete for political interests with the first-mover, let alone the local tyrants who did not even have control of the Confucian classics.
However, local tycoons who own land, population, and money will naturally pursue political power. Just being a local official cannot satisfy their political needs.
Now that the eunuchs are in control of the Hongdu sect, they instigated Han Ling Emperor Liu Hong to select the Hongdu sect, and a top-down path was created for them. There must be ambitious people among them who join the eunuchs and change their fate against fate. .
If Liu Bei had known that he was not Liu Bei, he might have followed the path of a eunuch, entered the Hongdu sect, and become a county magistrate or county guard.
When the time comes, the world will be in chaos anyway, and if you raise an army, who cares whether you are from the Hongdu School or not?
Everyone has to rely on knives to survive.
But now that Liu Bei has become one of the lucky ones who has successfully changed his social class, he naturally has to make good use of this social status to gain more advantages for his goals.
Moreover, although the eunuchs objectively broke the scholars' strong control over political power and enhanced social class mobility, subjectively they were only for their own selfish interests.
Most of the people they selected were the children of their own families, their own people, and even people who bought offices. After taking office as officials, their actions were mostly to prey on the people and harm the village, which did not have much positive significance.
They are just a group of opportunists. They will follow whoever wins and becomes more powerful. If the scholars are really willing to accept them, they will never cling to the eunuchs.
Eunuchs and scholars are evenly matched. Two bastards are more bastard than the other. Therefore, there is no need for Liu Bei to change his position as a scholar, and even if he wants to change, it is not now.
In the current situation, the eunuch is undoubtedly his enemy.
