The officials in Jizhou and Bingzhou rarely initiated effective actions to pursue the fugitives.
Once a farmer flees, it is assumed that he is dead and left alone.
Therefore, very early on, starting from the Western Han Dynasty, there were a considerable number of people in the Taihang Mountains who did not belong to the imperial household registration system.
Some of them could not bear the excessive taxes and military service, so they fled into the mountains and were not subject to the control of the court. They basically did not pay taxes. Use this to obtain survival supplies.
In the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty, this situation became more and more obvious. It is conservatively estimated that there were more than 200,000 fugitive households living in the Taihang Mountains. In order to survive, they hugged each other, and large and small groups of more than ten or twenty gathered in the mountains and forests. In the Taihang Mountains, Survive with difficulty.
The chaotic situation before the formation of the Taiping Dao army in Jizhou caused a considerable number of Taiping Dao members to flee into the mountains together with their elders and children, seeking shelter from groups willing to accept them, or simply staying in groups to stay warm and occupy the hills to survive.
The arrival of these people brought some small influence of Taiping Dao ideas to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were struggling to survive in the Taihang Mountains. It also brought them news that Jizhou and even the world were about to be in chaos.
At the same time, because the Yellow Turban Army's fighting situation in the first few months was pretty good, several counties in Jizhou and Bingzhou were affected.
Some people who had nothing to do with Taiping Road but were also dissatisfied with the Han Dynasty decided to join the Yellow Turban Army and took advantage of the situation to rise up and launch a rebellion, attacking officials and bullies.
Among them, the most famous ones are Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan.
These two teams caused a stir in the Changshan Kingdom to the west of Jizhou, attacking cities and territories everywhere. The local officers and soldiers could not resist and fled in embarrassment.
Moreover, their timing was very good. They started to rebel just when Lu Zhi returned to Luoyang to accept his appointment. By the time Lu Zhi took office as the shepherd of Jizhou, due to the chaotic situation in Jizhou, they had grown to more than 100,000 people. , Changshan Country is almost their paradise.
Lu Zhi was also weak at first and struggled to cope. Fortunately, Liu Bei entrusted Qianzhao, Liu Yong, and Liu Sheng to Lu Zhi for promotion. Lu Zhi worked with Qianzhao to sort out the logistics and food matters, and with Liu Yong and Liu Sheng Sheng was appointed as the school captain and led the troops to deal with Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan.
Lu Zhi saw clearly at the time that the reason why these two people were able to become big in Changshan State was because the situation in Jizhou was unstable, there was a lack of food, and agricultural production had not recovered. Many people were affected by the war and lost their livelihoods, so they had no choice but to follow them in rebellion. .
Therefore, the important thing is not to defeat them, but to have enough food to stabilize people's hearts and let people who lack food see the hope of having enough to eat, so that they will not risk their lives to follow the rebel army and cause chaos.
Liu Bei played an important role at this time. With the Zhen family as his main support, he secured a large amount of grain assistance for Lu Zhi in Jizhou. This batch of grain assistance gave Lu Zhi the ability to open warehouses to release grain and stabilize grain prices. Confidence.
From this, Lu Zhi began to reverse the situation and announced many policies that were beneficial to people's livelihood, which stabilized people's hearts in Jizhou and made Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan's situation in Changshan Kingdom unfavorable.
Finally, he personally led troops into Changshan Kingdom, and with the help of some local armed forces in Changshan Kingdom, he successfully defeated the coalition forces of Zhang Niujiao and Chu Feiyan.
Zhang Niujiao was shot dead, Chu Feiyan fled, and more than 100,000 troops dispersed, leaving only more than 10,000 defeated soldiers who followed Chu Feiyan and fled into the mountains.
At that time, Lu Zhi did not have the extra energy to go into the mountainous areas to chase down the remaining enemies. As long as the boundaries of Jizhou were stabilized, he began to shift to administrative management, continue to stabilize the situation, promote the recovery of agricultural production, resettle the refugees, etc.
But what he never expected at the time was that Chu Feiyan not only did not disappear, but also became bigger and stronger.
After Chu Feiyan entered the mountainous area, he changed his name to Zhang Yan, and merged some of Zhang Niujiao's tribe who followed him into the mountainous area into his own army, forming a powerful fighting force, which actually opened up a new world in the Taihang Mountains. situation.
He couldn't defeat Lu Zhi, but he could defeat many others. Through constant fighting, he gained a large piece of territory to survive, and accumulated huge military prestige, and then established alliances with Changshan, Zhaojun, Zhongshan, and Shangshan. Fugitive groups in the Party, Hanoi and other places communicate with each other.
Among the fugitive leaders, Sun Qing, Wang Dang and others admired Zhang Yan's military capabilities and led their tribes to join Zhang Yan's command. Some smaller forces in the mountainous areas also obeyed his orders because of Zhang Yan's reputation.
While Lu Zhi pacified Jizhou and prevented a civil uprising from breaking out in Jizhou, Zhang Yan was still growing up in the Taihang Mountains, and was growing very well.
He gradually developed from a small force ranked in the dozen to one of the largest forces, and through several battles and diplomatic planning, he successfully annexed several large forces.
Finally, in November of the third year of Zhongping when Lu Zhi left Jizhou and returned to the Luoyang court to serve as Taiwei, he basically completed the great cause of dominating the Taihang Mountains and became the common denominator of the fugitive groups from all over the Taihang Mountains. The recognized number one person.
He is not necessarily the direct leader of everyone, but he has the strongest force and the greatest prestige, and is the most capable of fighting. Therefore, even if everyone maintains a semi-independent state, they will obey his orders and not be hostile to him. .
The fleeing forces in the entire Taihang Mountains now have a unified talker, and Lu Zhi never expected that the junior who was beaten to the point of pissing himself and running around with his head in his arms would actually have such ability.
Around October of the third year of Zhongping, Lu Zhi had already learned through some news that a bandit leader named Zhang Yan had appeared in the northern mountainous area of Changshan Kingdom. He was quite prestigious and had sent small groups of troops into Zhao State several times. The county, Changshan Kingdom, Zhongshan Kingdom and other places attacked and looted, causing instability in the three places.
He sent Qian Zhao, Liu Yong and Liu Sheng to lead Jizhou soldiers to attack the local area many times, and achieved certain results. However, the attacks were never stopped, and they even defeated the official army.
Lu Zhi inquired further and learned that Zhang Yan was Chu Feiyan back then. Not only was this guy not dead, he had become a powerful rebel leader in the mountainous area, stronger than before.
He was deeply worried, so he made preparations and wanted to lead his troops into the mountains to crusade, lest he lose his tail.
He has always known that the huge mountainous area at the junction of Youzhou, Bingzhou and Jizhou is the weak area of the Han government's ruling power. The power of the government has never penetrated deep into the mountainous area. There are large-scale fleeing groups in the mountainous area, and there are often Entering plain areas to cause chaos and disturb local security.
He was determined to solve the problem.
But just when he submitted his report to Luoyang and prepared to lead his troops to attack, the transfer order from the Luoyang court came.
The Luoyang court believed that the thieves in the mountainous area were not an important matter and could not affect the overall situation. The court believed that Lu Zhi had done a good job in Jizhou and was very outstanding. It was enough. Now he should return to the central government to take a higher position instead of continuing to stay. Fighting in Jizhou, not to mention the possibility of crossing the border into Bingzhou and Youzhou areas.
That's not his thing.
Lu Zhi went to the table twice to explain his concerns about the situation in the mountainous area. He believed that leaving Zhang Yan alone would lead to catastrophe. However, Liu Hong made up his mind and told Lu Zhi not to worry about these things and just return to Beijing directly.
Lu Zhi had no choice but to return to Luoyang with worries. He was promoted to the rank of Taiwei of the Three Dukes, and recorded the affairs of the Shangshu. He mastered vital administrative power and became one of the de facto prime ministers of the Han Dynasty, realizing his life ideal.
However, the situation in Jizhou and Bingzhou was just as Lu Zhi expected. After Lu Zhi left, it began to turn bad.
