Chapter 1094: Journey to Pingcheng
Chapter 1094: Journey to Pingcheng (Part )
When Hu Tou left Beijing, he heard that Taibao Pan Tao had passed away, and he couldn't help but sigh.
The Pan family of Xingyang and the Yu family of Yingchuan were very close, but Hutou had a good relationship with Pan Dan, the grandson of Pan Tao.
Pan Dan was five years older than him, but the two had known each other since childhood, often traveling, hunting, and enjoying music together. Because of this, Pan Dan did not follow his family's political inclinations, but joined the Prince of Yan's palace as a left attendant, and is currently in Youzhou with county officials to check the household registration of food fiefs.
Of course, now he has to go home to observe mourning.
Hu Tou temporarily postponed his trip, went to pay his respects, and then headed north.
The number of guards had been expanded to 400, most of whom were sons of soldiers from Chenliu and Henan counties.
The title of prince was quite useful. He was able to recruit hundreds of people just by raising the flag, and they were all strong and powerful men with certain martial arts and warfare skills.
As for the soldiers of the Right Cavalry Guard and the Left Jinwu Guard, the Prince of Yan also helped them solve the problem of too many people in their families, so that these nephews and nieces had a place to go, which was a win-win situation.
When passing through Shangdang, Liu Runzhong hosted a banquet to entertain the group, and during the banquet he asked his daughter to come out to toast and dance.
Good fellow, they wanted to give the daughters that Shao Xun hadn’t given away to the King of Yan, the Hu people are really unprincipled…
Hu Tou declined.
He stayed in Shangdang for a few days, on the one hand to replenish water and raise horses, and on the other hand to observe the sentiments of the people of Shangdang.
Sheren Guo Shi was from Taiyuan, and he saw it most clearly: "There are many more schools. I heard in the past that counties with more Hu people, such as Kelan, Pingyang, and Taiyuan, have set up county doctors and county doctors to recruit Hu and Han children from the counties and prefectures to study, with dozens of people in each school. Now Shangdang also has one, and almost every county can hear the sound of reading. Given time, the Hu style will gradually disappear, and the Chinese style will become stronger, and the people's sentiments will definitely change greatly."
Tiger Head chewed half a stick of cheese and said after listening: "I think Liu Runzhong and his generation have a bigger role in building a mansion and living a noble life. As the saying goes, what goes up leads to what goes down. If the clan leaders and tribal leaders who have a little money see this, won't they follow suit?"
"Your Majesty is right." Guo Shi smiled and said, "The Taiyuan Guo family has experienced wars for a long time. In order to protect the family, the family members scattered in various counties of Taiyuan and even Weijun. Many of them have lost their family business long ago, but they have a little heritage left by their ancestors, so they are admired by the chieftains of the Hu people and are vying to imitate them. They have changed their clothes and hairstyles, and their sons and nephews are also learning Xia Yan. If we compile a family tree, I'm afraid no one will be able to tell whether they are Han or Hu in a few decades, unless they are people like Liu Runzhong who look very different."
"No matter how different they look, I think they're almost the same after living together for several generations. Liu Runzhong regretted letting his first two sons marry the daughters of tribal leaders. His later sons basically married into the nobles and powerful families in Bingzhou. Who did the one who got married yesterday marry?" asked Hu Tou.
"The descendant of Shen Yi, the real Marquis of Cao Wei." Guo Shi replied.
Shen Yi was originally General Jianxin and Prefect of Xicheng of Shu Han. After surrendering to Wei, he was granted the title of Marquis of Zhengxiang. His son Shen Zhe served as Prefect of Shangdang during the Qinglong period, so he settled here.
By this time, the Shen family was no longer listed in the genealogy of aristocratic families, but the family took the path of strengthening the family through military force and had a fortress and manor in Huguan County.
Although Liu Runzhong was a minister of the time, he still felt inferior because of his Western Hu ancestry with a high nose and deep eyes. The big nobles also looked down on him, so he could only marry into small noble families, impoverished families, or local tyrants whose ancestors were nobles.
When I married my daughter to the Sun family in Taiyuan, the dowry was so generous that it was shocking. Maybe I also wanted to vent my anger - you always think I'm a new rich with no background, so I'll spend money to show you!
As a local powerful group that has been entrenched in Shangdang for a hundred years, it is normal for Liu Runzhong to marry a local tycoon. In the past, people may have looked down on the Liu family.
"The Shen family of Huguan, the Bao family of Tunliu, the Cui family of Tunliu, the Feng family of Luxian, etc., either married off their daughters or married their wives, which shows Liu Runzhong's determination." Hu Tou smiled and said, "Although they are all poor families, Liu Runzhong thinks it's good."
Guo Shi couldn't help laughing. The King of Yan really didn't give face to these local nobles in Shangdang.
To be honest, he also felt that the quality of these Shangdang nobles was much worse than those in other places. Many of them had glorious ancestors, but now they were really in decline, and their family tree might not be true.
For example, the Feng family of Lu County, their ancestors were all related to Feng Ting, the prefect of Shangdang in Han State, but it is not known whether this person was the direct fuse of the Battle of Changping between Qin and Zhao.
After the land was measured, life became even more difficult for these powerful families, and marriage with Liu Runzhong was inevitable.
To put it bluntly, the Jie people were the main population of Shangdang, and there were fewer Han people than the second largest ethnic group, the Wuhuan, so they also needed strong support.
"Have you seen what they do for a living?" Hu Tou asked again.
"I saw it," Guo Shi replied, "the Jie people, Wuhuan people, and Xiongnu people are actually building ponds."
When talking about this, Guo Shi always feels disillusioned.
In the past, it was said that the Xiongnu people cultivated the land, but they "rely on the weather for their crops" and did not give up animal husbandry. In fact, grain planting may have been just a supplement to allow them to survive the years of famine and avoid large population losses.
But now it is clear that they are moving towards more sophisticated agricultural planting, which is strongly promoted by the court and also their own choice. In the next few years, they will put more and more energy on planting and less and less energy on livestock, gradually making farmland their main source of income, and the proportion of income from animal husbandry will decrease year by year.
This trend is irreversible, and the impact it brings is far-reaching. Hu Tou is very clear about it.
"Just as the Wuhuan tribe in Guangning County of Youzhou disintegrated, the Jie tribe in Shangdang will disintegrate in the same way." He laughed and said, "In the future, there will probably be no more tribe leaders, only Jie fort owners and manor owners. The clan leaders will become county and township tyrants, and the tribal leaders will also become tyrants. Gradually, they will no longer be subordinate to each other, and the prefects and county magistrates appointed by the court can directly control them."
"Your Highness is wise and his talent is unmatched." Guo Shi said sincerely.
Hu Tou pretended to hit him, but Guo Shi shrank his head and didn't dare to hide.
Hu Tou withdrew his hand and said, "Let's go to Pingcheng. Urge the teams that are delivering food so that they don't delay the journey."
******
From Shangdang, we headed north and soon entered Taiyuan County, a place with a strong flavor of government soldiers.
The 9,600 soldiers and followers of the Right Jinwu Guard, totaling nearly 40,000 households, constituted the majority of the population in Taiyuan counties.
The once arrogant nobles were first destroyed by the war, and then they were suppressed and liquidated after the war, and they were all in disgrace. When the land was measured, they couldn't resist even if they wanted to. After all, if one man from the Right Jinwu Guard was sent out, theoretically, nearly 40,000 soldiers with rich war experience could be dispatched. The impoverished Taiyuan nobles had no ability to resist, let alone the idea.
Shao Guang, the governor of Taiyuan and the marquis of Yuancheng County, was a member of the royal family. He had been stationed in Jinyang many years ago and guarded this important city north of the capital for the Shao Liang Dynasty.
Hu Tou stayed here for a few more days.
During this period, I took time to visit Loufan and other counties in the west to see what the areas where the Hu people lived looked like.
He even recruited hundreds of Huns who were skilled in riding and shooting to serve as horse archers in the royal guard.
In general, also because of the existence of the government soldiers and the strong pressure, the Hu people living on the mountain pastures were relatively honest. Like in Kelan County, they gradually developed the custom of planting in the spring, then grazing in the mountains, and returning to the mountains in autumn to spend the winter. This is what is meant by farming and grazing at the same time.
Basically, most of the tribes had a small piece of land, simple houses and livestock pens at the foot of the mountain, and the number of registered households was increasing. The imperial court was gradually able to manage the middle and lower classes of these tribes, instead of only being able to deal with the upper class of the tribes as in the Cao Wei and Sima Jin periods.
The more Hu Tou looked at it, the more impressed he was. The soldiers were really a powerful weapon to protect the country. The most important thing was that they were very good at fighting. If they were well maintained, this set could probably be used for a hundred years.
He also understood better why his father tried every possible means to relocate the remaining soldiers from the government. The purpose was to ensure that the soldiers' families could maintain their land without being divided and to prolong the life of this system as much as possible.
So he also recruited the sons of palace soldiers, and got more than 200 people, and all of them were organized into guards - the guards of Prince Yan now had more than 700 infantry and cavalry.
On the third day of July, the group crossed Shiling Pass and entered Xinxing County, then passed Yanmen and entered Mayi.
On the way, Hutou recruited more than a hundred sons of soldiers from Xinxing and Yanmen counties as usual.
On July 15, everyone arrived in Pingcheng, and Dai State Prime Minister Wang Feng came to greet them in person. As for Lady Wang, she took her son and daughter and Dai Gong Tuoba Shiyijian to Liangcheng State to escape the summer heat.
"My lord, the 300,000 hu of grain and 40,000 pieces of silk are gifts from the imperial court. I hope you will use them well." When entering the city, Hu Tou looked at Wang Feng, whose face was full of joy, and said softly.
Wang Feng nodded repeatedly, but still felt a little skeptical.
How much can a sixteen-year-old boy of noble descent know? The grain and silk were used to bribe the chieftains, divide the opposition forces, and maintain the Wang family's rule. After all, the grassland situation has changed again.
Do you, a young boy, understand the inside story?
However, he was the Prince of Yan in Daliang after all, and his grandfather was Prime Minister Wang Yan, so he could not be offended. Therefore, Wang Feng had a good attitude and only heard him ask, "Does Your Majesty have any other instructions?"
"Where is Tuoba Jing?" asked Hu Tou.
"In Liangcheng." Wang Feng replied.
Madam Wang gave birth to two sons for Shao Xun. The eldest son, Yuan Zhen, is six years old and is still in Luoyang, receiving education together with other princes and princesses. Liangcheng State was handed over to the ministers to manage.
There are more than 50,000 people in the country, basically they are the old, weak, women and children from various tribes who were captured when the rebellion was suppressed many years ago. They were dispersed and mixed to form a new tribe called "Yuanbu".
The second son was born in October last year and was named Tuoba Jing. According to his lunar age, he is already two years old, but in reality he is only nine months old.
However, although Tuoba Jing was a small-time official, the Dai Kingdom was already discussing conferring a title on him.
There is no doubt that this was another disturbance, which led to the incident of Hutou escorting 300,000 hu of grain and 40,000 pieces of silk here.
Of course Hu Tou knew that he was here to clean up his grandfather's mess, he didn't mind and wanted to tease the new brother, which must be fun.
Of course, the fake brother Tuoba Shiyijian is more interesting, and Hutou will not let him go.
"I'm going to Liangcheng in a few days." said Hu Tou.
"I will send someone to report to the Madam right away." Wang Feng nodded.
Hutou pulled the reins and turned the horse's head.
"Where are you going, Your Highness?" Wang Feng asked in surprise. He was already preparing the banquet.
"The Shanyu Protectorate." Hu Tou answered succinctly, "We can have the banquet anytime, this matter is more urgent. If something goes wrong, I'm afraid my father will hang me up and beat me when I return to Luoyang."
After that, he rode away.
(I wish all book lovers a happy new year and all the best!)
(End of this chapter)