My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 118: Riding a tiger is difficult, and we need to persuade them to stop fighting

In the first few days after Cao Cao heard the news of the fall of Suiyang and the serious injury of Xiahou Dun, he was in an extremely uncalm state and could not listen to anything others said to him.

At that time, his mind was full of fighting to the death with Yuan Shu and Lu Bu at the same time, and he must take revenge.

However, when Xiahou Yuan escaped safely, Cao Cao quickly calmed down.

Perhaps this is also the biggest difference between him and Liu Bei - even if someone really killed Cao Cao's brothers, he still had to calm down after the initial wave of anger.

September 9th was the sixth day after Xiahou Dun returned, and the fourth day after confirming Xiahou Yuan’s safety.

Cao Cao, who had hurried back to Xu Du the night before, managed to get some sleep amid the pain of a headache. Early the next morning, he summoned his trusted ministers to Sikong Mansion to discuss how to deal with Lu Bu.

Xun Yu, Guo Jia and others had not arrived yet. Cao's official Sima Lang was the first to feel a little reluctant. When he was helping him prepare the documents, he whispered to him, "Sikong, you have been exhausted from the journey and just came back from the front line of Chenjun. You should rest more. People with headaches should not be overworked..."

Cao Cao waved his hands impatiently: "You can't sleep if you don't have a headache. Instead, you will be tortured by headaches. It's better to discuss the business first. Maybe your condition will get better! Go get a few more cushions so you can lean on them when you discuss things."

After a while, Xun Yu, Xun You and Guo Jia arrived one after another.

Among Cao Cao's four great advisers, only Cheng Yu could not attend today's meeting. However, Cheng Yu also wrote a memorial back, stating several of his own opinions.

Since the end of last year, after Cao Cao stabilized the situation in Xu Du, he felt that the eastern front also lacked wise men, so he transferred Cheng Yu from a court official to the post of governor of Jiyin County, who was also responsible for assisting in the defense against Lu Bu.

It is not Cheng Yu’s fault that Lu Bu succeeded in the sneak attack on Suiyang. On the one hand, nothing happened in Jiyin County where Cheng Yu was in charge, but the problem was in Liang County to the south.

Moreover, Gao Shun attacked the city too quickly and broke into it in just a few days. He had to cross the Mangdang Mountain and could not carry heavy siege weapons, so he could only build flying ladders and battering rams on the spot without using any fancy strategies.

No matter how high Cheng Yu's IQ is, he can't defend against this kind of tough battle where force can defeat skill.

……

When Cao Cao saw that everyone was present, he placed Cheng Yu's memorial and Lu Bu's army's manifesto on the table, and then asked Xun Yu and the other three for their opinions:

"Wenruo, Gongda, Fengxiao, please do not be restrained. Today, just speak freely and express your own opinions. Don't worry that I can't let go of my hatred. Tell me, how should we deal with Lu Bu's invasion? And how should we fight the subsequent battle to capture Chenjun?"

Xun Yu and Guo Jia looked at each other, and then it was Xun Yu who spoke first to set the tone: "Sikong, although our army has been inspired by the righteousness of the court and the soldiers are willing to fight for their lives, the current battle with the traitor Yuan Shu has become a situation of no end.

In order to protect Runan, the base of the Yuan family, Yuan Shu will defend Chen County at all costs. Both the enemy and our army have lost tens of thousands of soldiers in Chen. Once one side gives up, all previous efforts will be wasted and the army will be defeated.

Although Lu Bu is hateful, at this critical moment, we should still appease him. Since he has issued the "Purge the Court", there may be room for negotiation."

After hearing such discouraging words, Cao Cao felt his headache getting worse. He had no choice but to take the cushion and put it on one side of his body, leaning on the couch:

"Since ancient times, I have never heard of anyone withdrawing troops after raising the banner of 'clearing the emperor's side'. Isn't this a situation of fighting to the death? How can Lu Bu be so shameless that he can withdraw troops after clearing the emperor's side?"

Cao Cao asked, glancing at the other counselors. Guo Jia met Cao Cao's eyes and added:
"My lord, when the Wu-Chu Seven Kingdoms Rebellion broke out, after Emperor Xiaojing killed Chao Cuo, he went to Wu Wang Liu Bi to announce his order and persuade him to withdraw his troops. Although Liu Bi did not withdraw, it was enough to show the world that the cause of the chaos in the world was Wu, not Emperor Xiaojing.

Lu Bu has always been greedy. He applied for the post of governor of Xuzhou last year but failed. If there is really no other choice, at most he can be given the post of governor, or even promoted to general of four directions. In this way, maybe he will stop when the court gives him a way out.

As long as he is willing to withdraw his troops and join forces with our army to attack Yuan Shu, these honorary titles can be negotiated. Lu Bu will not sincerely die for Yuan Shu. "

After hearing this, Cao Cao more or less believed that the issue of Lu Bu could be resolved peacefully.

Of course Cao Cao was a vengeful person. After this incident, he knew that he would have to kill Lu Bu sooner or later.

But Cao Cao was also very tolerant. He would not rush to seek revenge like Liu Bei did. He could concentrate on dealing with another enemy first, and temporarily keep this one on the account and settle the score later.

However, Cao Cao still could not accept the conditions in Lu Bu's letter. He sighed painfully: "Have you all read the letter? Lu Bu actually said that he was seeking justice for Yang Biao! To support Kong Rong and other loyal ministers who returned to the east!

He also said that I was taking advantage of the opportunity to purge Yuan Shu's party to eliminate dissidents in the court! How ridiculous! A man like Lu Bu, who has no political opinions at all, would come up with such an excuse. Haha, this must be the work of Chen Gongtai!"

Seeing Cao Cao sighing, Xun You, who had been silent just now, reminded him quietly:

"Mingsir, although Lü Bu mentioned these in his manifesto, judging from the details, the main blame for Yang Biao's imprisonment and other public cases in the court was placed on the head of the 'cruel official Man Chong'. If you really want to reconcile, Mingsir can still openly admit that you were not careful at the time and were deceived by your subordinates..."

"Can I really kill Man Boning just to make Lu Bu withdraw his troops?" Cao Cao lost his patience and rudely interrupted Xun You's analysis. "Who in the world will sincerely serve me in the future? Emperor Xiaojing is the Son of Heaven. Killing Chao Cuo would disappoint the wise men in the world, let alone now!"

Xun You also knew that it was not right to let Cao Cao kill his own people, so he did not rush to defend himself. He waited quietly for Cao Cao to finish venting his anger, and then he continued with a more detached and neutral attitude:

"What kind of person is Lu Bu? How could he really care about Man Boying's life or death? My Lord just said that Lu Bu is greedy and has no wisdom. This must be an excuse Chen Gong made for Lu Bu.

The real purpose of the proclamation was to cover up the secret collusion between Lü Bu and Yuan Shu, making it appear that he came to the battlefield on his own initiative and did not collude with Yuan Shu. Therefore, as long as the court made a slight statement, approved his reasons for sending troops, and gave Lü Bu a way out, he would go with the flow.

Finally, at most, Man Boning could be charged with being ignorant of the situation, using excessive torture out of greed for merit, and thus bending the law for personal gain, and temporarily dismissed from office and given a slight punishment. Then, a few school officials and cruel officials who specifically handled the Yang Biao case could be found and the blame could be pushed onto them, saying that Boning was also deceived by them.

If we do all this work and then offer Lu Bu a position, he will most likely retreat. But I cannot guarantee whether he will immediately turn against Yuan Shu, so perhaps we have to offer him a more generous position. "

After hearing what Xun You pointed out, Cao Cao finally calmed down and was willing to seriously consider this suggestion.

"Indeed, Lu Bu and Bo Ning don't know each other at all, so what grudge could there be between them? Lu Bu and Yang Biao have even less friendship. This is just a fig leaf that Lu Bu is trying to cover up. If I find a way to give him a way out, he should be able to stop..." Cao Cao thought to himself.

However, after thinking about it, he still felt that there was no certainty in this matter.

The biggest problem now is that all of this is the deduction of their own advisers, and there has been no response from Lu Bu. And the court is not in a good position to send envoys to Lu Bu now, because the court's position is there, and they can only convey the order after it is finalized, and cannot go to negotiate conditions. (Unless it is a private envoy with an unofficial status, then they can negotiate conditions)
Otherwise, once Lu Bu's news spread, it would be too cheap and would seriously damage the prestige of the court and cause other princes to become uneasy.

Even if Cao Cao sent a private envoy to contact the other princes and the other princes did not know about it, Lu Bu himself would look down on Cao Cao even more, which would not be conducive to the subsequent establishment of rules.

So the best thing now is to wait for Lu Bu to send someone to Xudu, such as Chen Deng. This way, Cao Cao can find out what the other party wants, how high the price is, and how to withdraw the troops. At the same time, Cao Cao can also completely maintain the majesty of the court.

It’s a pity that the two sides are fighting like this now, and I don’t know when Chen Deng will come.

After thinking it over, Cao Cao expressed his concerns. Xun Yu, Guo Jia and others also found it difficult to handle - this matter would definitely be accomplished sooner or later, but it was hard to say how long the trial process would take.

If the communication was smooth, the crisis could be resolved within a month or two. At that time, a month or two was very fast. Normally, it would take an envoy a month to travel from Xiapi to Xudu. Of course, Lü Bu was in Suiyang instead of Xiapi, which saved both sides one-third of the journey. It would take about 20 days for each round of communication.

It is almost impossible to reach an agreement in one round of negotiations, because bargaining is inevitable. If you bargain once, it will take 40 days for the negotiations to be successful. If you bargain twice, it will take two months.

Fortunately, within two months, Cao Cao was unable to besiege Chen County and Ku County, which were guarded by tens of thousands of Yuan troops. Therefore, the Chen County battlefield should have been in a stalemate from early September to November.

Cao Cao's attack this year was just after the autumn harvest, when the grain had not yet been stored in the warehouse. Therefore, Cao Cao's attacking army was able to obtain food from the enemy in Chen County and eat the wheat and millet that had just been harvested.

Qiao Rui and Li Feng did not have much food in stock. They only managed to collect food from Chen County and Ku County. The food from the other six counties in Chen County was taken by Cao Cao before they could gather it. Therefore, Cao Cao calculated that Qiao Rui and Li Feng could only last until winter if they relied on collecting food from one county to sustain their armies of 20,000 to 30,000.

If Yuan Shu could not send reinforcements to Chenjun to rescue Qiao Rui and Li Feng by the twelfth lunar month at the latest, then the two would have no choice but to surrender or fight to the death outside the city to try to break out. If they continued to hold on, they would starve to death.

Once the two armies of Chenjun are completely destroyed, Cao Cao can at least eliminate another 50,000 of Yuan Shu's men. This is definitely not a small number. If he attacks Yuan Shu again next year, he can crush him with ease.

After considering both factors, Cao Cao decided that he and Cao Hong would continue to besiege Chenjun. Cao Ren and Xiahou Yuan would closely guard against Lü Bu and defend Liangdi, waiting for negotiations, first stabilizing Lü Bu and preventing him from attacking again, and then slowly negotiate.

Moreover, by observing whether Lu Bu continues to attack fiercely, we can also see whether Lu Bu is sincere in negotiating.

……

The words are divided into two parts.

Cao Cao, Yuan Shu and Lu Bu fought each other throughout August and the first half of September in the second year of Jian'an, creating chaos and confusion in the three states of Yan, Yu and Xu.

Liu Bei, who was stationed in Guangling County, and Zhuge Jin, who was in Wuhu, gained two months of very stable and peaceful development opportunities.

Zhuge Jin used these two months of completely peaceful development time in Danyang to further reorganize and mine the copper mine in Tongling and the Dexing copper mine in Poyang.

By utilizing the surplus Shanyue labor, the mountain roads and waterways needed for the copper mine were finally completely rectified. The dangerous shoals and reefs in the mountain rivers were also removed, ensuring that copper mines and copper materials could be exported continuously and at low cost in the future.

At the same time, Zhuge Jin also built a copper, silver and gold heavy metal smelting plant in Tongling, Chungu County, which was definitely considered large in that era.

Although the copper mine in Poyang County was much larger than that in Tongling, Zhuge Jin also insisted that the Shanyue people use the Poyang River to transport the copper ore water to Tongling for unified smelting. At most, he would give the local Shanyue people in Poyang a slightly higher share of the profits in the ore mining and transportation links.

This is also done to protect the water resources in the Poshui River Basin. After all, such a large-scale copper mine needs to be smelted into copper, which will cause a lot of pollution. Copper smelting is a highly polluting industry. Although the ancients did not care and could not avoid it, it is still necessary to avoid pollution in the upper reaches of mountain rivers.

If the smelting is done in Tongling, the wastewater will be discharged directly into the Yangtze River. It doesn't matter if it flows into the sea, as the huge flow of the Yangtze River is enough to dilute everything. If it is done in Poyang, it may lead to a large amount of wastewater being discharged into the Pengli Lake, where the bottom layer has poor fluidity and is prone to accumulation.

Although the total amount of pollution is the same, if it is placed upstream, both the upstream and downstream will be polluted, but if it is placed downstream, more than half of the polluted area will be avoided.

After avoiding the pollution of mountain river water, Zhuge Jin could use the extra labor of the Shanyue people to build terraces in the mountains and plant tea trees, or even grow some yams.

After getting the Shanyue people to accept his rule, the Han people hiding in the mountains would be more easily detected.

In just one or two months, Zhuge Jin used both soft and hard tactics to find at least 10,000 hidden Han households, with a population of about 70,000 to 80,000, and resettled them to the Pengli Lake Plain and the lower reaches of the Ganjiang River.

If there were abandoned farmlands that could be cultivated, they would be directly divided and cultivated. Yuzhang was originally vast and sparsely populated. In later times, the entire Jiangxi Province would have enough land to support two million farmers, but the only problem was the quality of the land.

The fields around Pengli Lake are easily affected by floods and droughts, so the government further dredged the polder fields to enhance water storage. For all the new polder fields created, the government announced that it would not collect rent or taxes for five years, and would halve the rent and taxes for six to ten years.

……

While Zhuge Jin was farming in the south of the Yangtze River, Zhuge Liang was doing similar things in the north of the Yangtze River.

It's just that Zhuge Liang didn't have many hidden households, Shanyue and other population sources available, so the results were not as obvious and fast as those of his elder brother.

However, since August, Guangling County has gradually begun to feel the trend of people in the areas occupied by Yuan Shu in the upper reaches of the Yangtze and Huaihe Rivers gradually moving eastward.

The situation was most serious in Xuyi and Huaiyin. Almost every day, hundreds to thousands of people under Yuan Shu's rule fled downstream along the Huai River to Liu Bei's territory.

There are fewer people along the Yangtze River in the south, with only a wave every few days. But once they appear, they are basically in size of more than a thousand people, and they need to assemble into a civilian fleet before they can take action.

It is probably because the Yangtze River is more difficult to cross, and there are certain mountainous areas on both sides of the river, unlike the Huai River, which is flat and can dock everywhere. Ordinary people with only small fishing boats dare not go to the Yangtze River for fear of capsizing on the river.

If this trend continues, and the movement continues for a whole year, hundreds of thousands of people from Yuan Shu's rule may flee to Liu Bei's jurisdiction.

Considering that before the war between Yuan and Cao, the total population in Yuan Shu's territory was about four million, it is not surprising that hundreds of thousands of people fled to Guangling.

Historically, from the time Yuan Shu proclaimed himself emperor to his demise, the country lost hundreds of thousands to nearly a million people every year.

Three years later, the total population of the Huai River region dropped from 4 million to over 1 million, and the area changed from "sufficient military supplies" to "depopulated". Later, when Cao and Sun fought against each other, the battle between Ruxu, Hefei and Shouchun resulted in Huainan becoming a semi-no-man's land.

Now Liu Bei still stayed in Guangling, which happened to be downstream of Yuan Shu's territory. For refugees, drifting downstream along the river was the most labor-saving way to migrate, which was easier than going upstream and then crossing Tongbai Mountain to Liu Biao's Jingzhou. So originally in history, during the demise of Yuan Shu, Liu Biao had the biggest population gain, but now it has naturally become Liu Bei.

This did not require any effort on the part of Liu Bei; it was entirely achieved through natural geographical conditions.

Moreover, Cao Cao and Yuan Shu were engaged in a tug-of-war in Chen County, and there was a war in the northwest of Yuan Shu's territory. In order to avoid the war, the population would definitely flee to the southeast first.

In history, perhaps more than half of the three million people who disappeared were killed, starved to death, or died in an accident during exile. But now, as long as Liu Bei and Zhuge Jin do a good job of receiving people in Guangling, Yuzhang, and Danyang, appease the people, and give the newly arrived immigrants a bite to eat.

For example, lending life-saving grain and seed grain to the newly arrived impoverished people in exchange for them becoming farmers could help at least hundreds of thousands of people survive. (This means hundreds of thousands of people will live cumulatively over the next three years, not hundreds of thousands per year. If spread out, it could only mean an extra 100,000 or 200,000 lives per year.)
I believe that even if they lend money at high interest rates to the displaced people who are about to starve to death and make them pay high rents to repay the debts in the next few years, it would be considered a benevolent policy for them.

However, to appease so many fleeing people, Guangling’s current grain production capacity is far from enough.

Zhuge Liang was very aware of the need to be prepared for danger in times of peace, so during the past two months he advised Liu Bei to strengthen the consolidation of the polder and irrigation management in Sheyang Lake.

On the other hand, he was trying to build a new sea vessel and try out the method his elder brother taught him, which was to dig guano (acidic natural phosphate fertilizer) from offshore islands and bring it back for use as fertilizer and to treat saline-alkali land.

Finally, Zhuge Liang also set his sights on the fixed bottom drift gillnet fishing method invented by his eldest brother last year - Zhuge Jin's fishing method, which is now very popular in Guangling and Huaiyin counties.

At every location at the north and south entrances of the Hang Canal, drift gillnets are laid on the riverbed that cross the entire river channel. Large stones are used as counterweights, and thick empty bamboo tubes are used as floats on top. Many river and sea migratory fish are harvested every day.

However, the kind of drift gill net that Zhuge Jin had in mind had too few application scenarios and could not be replicated in other production environments, nor could it be promoted on a large scale. It was too restricted by the "tidal fluctuations at the canal estuary."

Zhuge Liang wanted to continue digging deeper with Huang Yueying to develop a general-purpose drift gill net that was not restricted by the geographical environment. Even if the yield per unit area of this general-purpose drift gill net was lower, it could at least expand the scale of the industry.

One day in early September, Zhuge Liang finally had some ideas and made a new version of the prototype, ready to show off to Liu Bei.

And Liu Bei happened to receive the news sent back from the front on this day -

It is about that after Cao Cao and Lu Bu went to war, Lu Bu did not quickly turn against them as Zhuge Brothers had expected before the war. Instead, Cao Cao and Lu Bu were deadlocked because of the unsuccessful negotiations.

Liu Bei wanted to ask Zhuge Liang what he thought about this, whether it would be beneficial or harmful to their side, and whether there was anything they could do.

(End of this chapter)