Overlord!

Chapter 268 Lü Meng wins
With Jiangdong prospering, the new year entered the fifth year of Jian'an (AD 200).

Sun Ce is 25 years old this year, an age when he is full of heroic spirit.

Historically, the Little Overlord was assassinated by Xu Gong's disciples this year, resulting in his untimely death.

However, the current situation can be said to be very different from history. Sun Ce was not only extremely popular in Jiangdong, but also established the Xiuyi Guards, and his control over his subordinates, especially Jiankang, reached an extreme level.

And because the brocade workers in Jiangdong were very prosperous, a skilled female brocade worker could only weave three or four inches of brocade in a day, or only one piece of brocade in a hundred days.Basically, a skilled female worker can produce three to four horses a year.

One hundred thousand brocade workers produced more than 30 pieces of brocade a year, of which the government treasury could obtain more than 20 pieces. Sun Ce himself had more than [-] pieces, and the remaining [-] pieces went to the private sector.

But even if Sun Ce had more than [-] pieces of brocade, it would be enough to transform all the embroidered guards into brocade guards.

And Zhao Yun, the commander of Xiu Yi, could not be bribed by powerful men, so Sun Ce almost eliminated the possibility of being assassinated.

No one can assassinate him within three feet, but beyond three feet, he is invincible.

Now his power is much stronger than in history. Not only did he capture the six counties east of the Yangtze River, but he also captured Jingzhou to the west, engulfed Huainan to the north, and even crossed Huaibei to occupy Xuzhou.

Now, in addition to the original eleven counties and 110 nine counties, he now has four counties and fifty counties in Xuzhou and seven counties and 79 counties in Jingzhou.

Although Xuzhou has a small population, it has a complete set of counties and counties. As long as it recruits refugees and common people and the scholars who have been exiled in the south return to their hometowns, the population will soon recover.Guangling County, in particular, had suffered very little damage before and absorbed a large number of displaced victims from the north.

After adding Guangling County, Xuzhou's population of 200 million is unthinkable, but 40, 50, or even [-] is still possible.

Jingzhou, on the other hand, is vast and has many people. Even if Nanyang is lost, it is still one of the top states in the world.

Especially Nanjun, with a population of more than [-], was split by Sun Ce into two counties, Xiangyang and Nanjun.

Now Sun Ce has 22 counties and 240 eight counties in three states, which is third in the world, and in terms of the vastness of the territory, it is almost divided into half of the world.

With such a vast territory and the strategy of not establishing a land system, agricultural productivity was greatly liberated, and farmland and water conservancy were developing rapidly under Sun Ce's rule.

This includes the reclamation of new fields in the Jingyang land in the south, and the restoration of wasteland in the vast plains of Xuzhou.

Almost every month, the three envoys would review the wealthy families and powerful people that Tian Cao officials wanted to kill.

Even though the General Office has repeatedly issued documents emphasizing the policy of leniency and caution in punishment and killing, in the face of such acts that directly challenge the majesty of the law, there is still no tolerance and tolerance.

Every month, 30 to [-] powerful people and ordinary people were executed because they were found to be hiding land.

Two 30 people, this is not a small number.

Under many benevolent reigns, only two to three hundred people were executed in the entire world a year.

In Jiangdong, the land tax inspection alone exceeded the total number of people killed by various crimes in the entire world of the Unified Dynasty.

There was no other way, so Sun Ce could only strictly impose restrictions while encouraging the population to have children.

Although he was not like Sun Quan, he did not hesitate to marry his concubine to him when he saw the people were lonely and widowed.But he also personally contributed money to help poor people buy property and get married.

Young people, or young men, are definitely a very precious resource in this troubled world.

Due to the nearly ten years of turmoil, household registrations in the world have been greatly reduced, and corvee and military service have flourished. Countless young people are suffering from the cold on the road, and zombies are sleeping next to each other, so the ratio of men to women is seriously imbalanced.

Counties in Jiangdong were counted last year, and the ratio of strong men to strong women was almost one to two.

The term "strong woman" has been around since the pre-Qin Dynasty.In addition to the eldest ladies from official families, what the people pursue are young, strong and virtuous women who can farm and reel silk.

Since ancient times, in the Central Plains, one has to marry a virtuous wife rather than a lustful one, which means marrying a virtuous daughter who can take care of the housework.

The imbalance between men and women in the world is so great that even Sun Ce has no choice but to pay more attention to men and encourage men to marry more than Na.

Therefore, for those young men who were unable to find wives and concubines, the General's Office personally financed their marriages.

Otherwise, we can't watch nearly a million women starve to death in Jiangdong, right?

The industrial age of later generations has greatly flattened the physical gap between men and women, so women can claim that men and women are equal.

But in this agricultural era, a young and strong man is the backbone of the family in an absolute sense.In terms of farming, one man is worth at least two or three women.

Moreover, in order to promote the development of agriculture, local governments collected fishing and hunting tools from the people and allowed them to participate in farming and open up paddy fields.

Except for the fishing grounds along the coast where boats could be set up to go out to sea, all those who fished and hunted had their tools taken away.

Can fishing support a family?The Air Force is the norm!

Encouraging farmers to teach farming has become an important evaluation criterion for all officials, and the General's Office has issued a strict order. Every year, the household registration statistics of Tiancao are calculated. As long as the registered land registration decreases, the Tiancao in the county will be demoted immediately.

If the land registration of three or more counties in the county decreases, the county land Cao Yu will also be directly deposed.

Therefore, officials in various counties and counties attach great importance to the reclamation of fertile land.

Even in order to be promoted, many officials would patrol the county with county officials during spring plowing. Any cunning, cunning and lazy people would be beaten with a cane and then rushed to the fields to cultivate.

Of course, it is inevitable to falsify land registrations, and some officials force people to cultivate new fields.Even if the people have good land, they are not allowed to cultivate it. Instead, they are required to open up wasteland just to increase their land holdings and satisfy their desire for promotion.

This resulted in the people suffering from land reclamation, local people struggling to make a living, and the harvests being much lower than before.For a time, people in certain counties and counties were in dire straits.

However, this situation was quickly corrected.

Because there is a very big advantage in Jiangdong, that is, those in charge of taxation actually have no administrative power.Those in charge of administration have no financial power.

If taxes are reduced, the salaries of all officials in the entire county will be affected.

And once a civil unrest is triggered, it is the local administrative officials who will be held accountable.

The chief officials of Tiancao took all the benefits, but all the blame was borne by local administrative officials. How can such a good thing happen in the world!Soon, local governors and county magistrates came to the general's office, Shi Jin, and asked him to investigate the things Cao Tian did that harmed the people.

The local officials were all responsible for Zhang Zhao, the chief minister, in terms of government affairs, so they would not care about the attitude of Bu Zhi, the envoy of the third division. Once the matter was brought to Zhang Zhao, it would be quickly investigated thoroughly.

Bu Zhi was reprimanded by Zhang Zhao and Sun Ce, and he quickly began to clean up the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Bu Zhi was also a capable minister. Before he took charge of the affairs of the three divisions, he had thought that officials would deliberately falsely report their land registration and increase the burden on the people. Therefore, he had already stated the law that tax collectors who harmed the people would be punished as the first among all the crimes. , he was immediately demoted and moved to Shibian, his hometown in Shanyue, such as Wuxing, and was not allowed to participate in scientific research for three generations.

This punishment is almost equivalent to the contemporary exile to Lingnan, but now the exile does not need to be that far away, and the north of Guangdong and Guangxi has not yet been developed.Wuxing County is still within the territory of Kuaiji and actually belongs to Fujian.

Exile to Chongbian, Fujian Province is also a unique feature of this era.However, the hometown of Shanyue has been quelled by He Qi's elite troops. There has been no military rebellion for two or three years. If the population can be enriched and the customs can be changed, Shanyue will soon disappear completely under the rule of Soochow and become a part of history. dust.

And just when Sun Ce thought that this year's meeting would be all about recuperating and accumulating grain for military training, as soon as February entered Yangchun, a great piece of good news came from Jingzhou.

Lu Meng defeated the Wuling barbarians in Wuling and recruited more than [-] men and women!

But this time, before he had time to resettle the population, the men and women he captured were robbed!

In Changsha, Poyang and even Wu County, there were wealthy families who spent huge sums of money to buy young men and women prisoners of war from the army.

Because there is no land system, Jiangdong is really short of customers!
The customers are a group of people who do not own land or homes and make a living by cultivating the land. Of course, they do not need to pay land tax.

Often a powerful family would hire dozens of families to cultivate fertile fields for them.

The host family provides land, cattle, seeds and farming equipment, and the client family devotes their energy to farming for the big family. The income is almost equally divided between the host and the client. Some generous household heads will even share the income with the client family [-]-[-] or even [-]-[-]!

Excluding the grain given to customers and the field tax paid, they themselves can get [-]% to [-]% per mu.

This profit rate is extremely impressive. Large families have a lot of land, even thousands of acres, or even tens of thousands of acres. They can harvest thousands or tens of thousands of dan of grain a year without having to do anything.

It is precisely because of this overwhelming wealth that wealthy families are competing for customers.After the war, there were a lot of deserted fields, especially in Xuzhou's new areas. Many customers living in the south returned to their hometowns.Without land, there are fewer and fewer tenant farmers willing to work for others!
Many large households have to offer more favorable conditions to win over customers to farm for them.For example, some wealthy clans promised that as long as their tenant farmers farmed for them, their children could attend the clan's schools and learn literature and martial arts with their own clan children.

Some promised that as long as they farmed for themselves, they would buy a house for them, reward them with cloth, etc.

But even so, the number of customers is decreasing every year, especially in prosperous places such as Wu County, where there is no open land. As long as the people open up some fertile land and plant rice and fruit trees, it will be a wealth that can be left to future generations.

As a last resort, the wealthy clans could only turn their attention to the captives of other foreign races.

Wuling Man appeared at this time, and its people valued sacrifices and believed in witches and ghosts.The main occupation is farming, animal husbandry and hunting.

They know how to farm, but their aspirations are different from those of Hua.

The government is having a headache as to how to disperse them and prevent them from gathering together and causing another rebellion.

At this time, the wealthy and aristocratic families took action decisively and robbed these [-] men and women with huge sums of money, leaving only a few thousand disabled, old and weak.

At this time, their threat was greatly reduced. Even if they were placed in the village, they would not have the strength to start another rebellion.

Once this incident happened, it immediately attracted the attention of countless civil and military officials from Sun Ce and Jiankang.

Sun Ce personally ordered Lu Meng to hand over his troops to Jiang Qin, and he went to Jiankang to offer prisoners.

Lu Meng did an impeccable job in this regard. He prepared more than [-] young and strong Wuling barbarian men and women to be escorted to Jiankang. Among them, he sent one in ten thousand beauties to the middle school attached to the general's mansion to serve as Sun Ce's inner court.

The remaining more than a hundred women were sent to the Weaving Department and became weavers.Strong men were sent to mine. Danyang was rich in copper and iron, and there were many government-run mines that needed young and strong labor.

After meeting Lu Meng, Sun Ce said with a smile: "You have been tanning a lot since you were in Jingnan for a long time, but you are also more calm. Now you are a general with rich merits and qualifications."

There are many military generals in Jiangdong, and there are countless people who are good at conquering and fighting.

But hundreds of birds of prey are not as good as one osprey.

Sun Ce only trusted Taishi Ci, Zhou Yu, Lu Meng, Lu Su, Zhuge Liang, Zhang Liao, Xu Huang and others.

But among them, Zhang Liao and Xu Huang were surrendered generals, Taishi Ci and Zhou Yu were generals, and only Lu Meng, Lu Su and Zhuge Liang were direct generals promoted by Sun Ce.

Among them, Zhou Yu was not only Sun Ce's best friend, but also his relative, and the most trusted.

Then there are Zhuge Liang and Lu Meng. They are the youngest, about the same age as Sun Ce, have similar spirits, and can take care of their future affairs, so Sun Ce has been deliberately giving them opportunities to experience.

Lu Meng and Zhuge Liang also lived up to Sun Ce's high expectations and made outstanding achievements.

However, these two men have different styles of leading troops in war, and they are exactly two opposite models.

Needless to say, Zhuge Liang is a typical representative of the Jigu military training sect. The most important reason why he can enter the martial arts temple is that he is good at military training.When an army is well-trained and disciplined, it can move forward and retreat according to the formula. The states and towns it passes through will not commit any offense, and the streets will no longer be noisy.Then use this elite force to crush the enemy head-on.

Lu Meng is just the opposite. He is a man of extraordinary resourcefulness and a natural talent for fighting. Even though he only has a little bit of strength in his hand, he can still defeat the enemy with surprise and display his full strength.

The same was true in the battle to pacify the Wuling barbarians. The Wuling barbarians and others took advantage of their dangerous passes and resisted the prefectures and counties.

Lu Mengnai secretly sent out troops, marched in the morning and at night, and traveled through dangerous mountains for two thousand miles. He sent military officials Gao Rui, Liu Zan, and others to recruit the dead soldiers to climb up first, and led them with ropes, and then killed the evil people in Wuling who harbored evil intentions from the fortress. The leader has more than a hundred men and his branches have more than a thousand ranks, and the Wuling barbarians are all in peace.Kill two thousand levels below the chieftain, and gain thousands of lives.

So the county was frightened, and no one dared to rebel again.

However, in this battle, Lu Meng sent only more than [-] troops, which was not really considered a mass mobilization.

Hearing Sun Ce's praise, Lu Meng immediately replied respectfully: "The victory of this battle is all due to the general's majesty and virtue. China is shaken, and you are stupid and barbaric. Everyone will surrender. The soldiers also used their lives and worked bravely. I am just following the times." Respond to the situation and lead your troops forward."

Sun Ce nodded with satisfaction, his calmness made him look more like a general.

If other generals had such a great victory, I don't know why they would be so proud and arrogant.

Sun Ce then asked: "I heard that you have gained a lot from your attack on Wuling Man this time, and the Jingnan treasury is full?"

(End of this chapter)