My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 83 If you dare to order my second brother around, I will order your second brother around

It is so easy to talk to a smart brother like Zhuge Liang.

Even one thing that Zhuge Liang had not thought of.

But as soon as Zhuge Jin opened his mouth and gave him two or three points out of ten, Zhuge Liang could instantly imagine the remaining seven or eight points, and his imagination was very accurate.

Zhuge Jin could save a lot of nonsense and directly tell his brother the tasks to be completed in the next stage:

"Now that we have these two chips in our hands, which can make Liu Yao lose face and make Yuan Shu take a risk, before we play the chips, in order to gain the most benefits, we need to do some preparations:
First of all, we have to make sure that before Liu Yao can no longer serve as the governor of Yangzhou, there is a successor who is worthy of our trust and has made some contributions to the court in Yangzhou affairs.

The current achievement of pacifying Yuzhang is not enough, because this military achievement is attributed to our Zhuge family to the outside world.

This will give Your Majesty an excuse to replace Liu Yao when he resigns - at present, the most suitable candidate is Yangzhou Governor Xuande.

This achievement doesn't have to be too great, it's just a pretext anyway, it's all thanks to Liu Yao, just fight better than Liu Yao. I looked around, and the only good candidates for meritorious service are the six counties in the southern part of Danyang bordering Yuzhang, which is the territory of Zu Lang, the commander of Jing County.

This is because among the princes of Yangzhou, Sun Ce is still difficult to deal with at present, and once Lord Xuande is in a stalemate with Sun Ce at this time, his own base Guangling will become empty again, thus attracting Yuan Shu's attack.

Excluding Sun Ce, the others, such as Wang Lang, all respected the imperial court and Liu Yao, the governor of Yangzhou. Looking at it all, only Zu Lang, the Shanyue hero, was a relatively easy target.

After the busy spring farming season this year, Sun Ce will certainly take action and look for an easy target, most likely Wang Lang. We would like to advise Lord Xuande to join forces with us to pacify Zu Lang while Sun Ce and Wang Lang are entangled in a fight and are unable to split their attention.

When Lord Xuande goes out to fight, we in Yuzhang County will help Lord Xuande provide military rations. After the victory, the credit will go to Lord Xuande in name, so that he can ask for promotion in the court. In fact, the governance of the six counties in the southern part of Danyang can be handed over to our Zhuge family.

After all, there are several counties of Sun Ce between Xuande's Guangling territory and the six counties in the south of Danyang, so it is difficult for Xuande to govern this enclave. But we happen to border it, so wouldn't it be the best of both worlds if we exchange it?

Once this step is achieved, we can push Liu Yao to resign, Yuan Shu to rebel, and Duke Xuande to be promoted from Governor of Yangzhou to Governor of the state. Cao Cao will have no excuse to obstruct. "

Zhuge Jin spoke slowly and explained to his brother the next main line layout path.

Zhuge Liang listened carefully and found no problems. Everything seemed reasonable: Lord Xuande gained fame and the Zhuge family gained real benefits.

Moreover, Zhuge Liang also thought of an additional layer of meaning:
The above-mentioned distribution of interests can make Cao Cao feel more at ease about the Zhuge family - because his eldest brother had already told him how he hinted to Cao Cao to show off his "power-hungry" personality when he went on a diplomatic mission to Xu Du last year, so that Cao Cao would let him go.

The more the Zhuge family appeared to be greedy for power and wealth, and the more they occupied the administrative power of the six counties in southern Danyang, the more Cao Cao felt that it would be possible to pull the Zhuge family away from Liu Bei in the future, and the more he dared to give Liu Bei an official position.

If the Zhuge family and Liu Bei appeared to be very close to each other, Cao Cao would be more wary of this alliance and would be more likely to create obstacles when appointing officials in the name of the emperor.

Therefore, it is better to continue this "power-hungry" double act until the time comes when there is no choice but to break off relations with Cao Cao.

This is an ideal situation. If it is really impossible to do so, it is best to delay as much as possible, so that you can borrow the name of the court for a while longer and gain more benefits.

……

"So, big brother, do you want me to go to Lord Xuande in the near future to explain the above principles to him first? Let Lord Xuande try his best to cooperate with this plan and adjust the subsequent deployment?"

After listening to his elder brother's plan, Zhuge Liang naturally figured out his elder brother's purpose and took the initiative to make it clear.

Zhuge Jin didn't bother to be polite with his brother and nodded directly: "This is the most important mission, but since you are going there, you must do a few more things by the way, and there are still some things to prepare before leaving.

Didn’t I tell you that before I left last year, I promised Lord Xuande and Chen Changwen some other things about the water control in Guangling? You should also take care of the difficult and complicated problems that Chen Changwen couldn’t solve while you are there.

So before you leave, it's best to briefly study and practice the water conservancy management method I taught you, and try your hand at dredging and managing the polder fields in Chaisang. I calculated that during the busy spring farming season, it would be too late for Guangling. Spring farming starts in mid-February and the busy farming season will last until mid-March.

From the end of March to the middle of April, there is a relatively slack season for nearly a month, and then the summer busy season begins. So you need to arrive in Guangling in early March, take advantage of the last ten days or half a month of the spring busy season to investigate and understand the situation, make plans, and then start organizing the people in late March to get things done within a month.

According to this schedule, you will leave at the end of February, and I can give you about ten days to handle the affairs of the county. In addition to the practice of dredging the polder mentioned above, you have to accomplish two things in ten days:

First, you need to count and sort out how many soldiers we have captured and surrendered since the battle with Zuo Rong, and select those who are suitable to continue to serve as soldiers, and send those who are weak or have poor character and discipline back to farming. If the diehard monks are no longer useful, they will be sent to the hard labor camp.

After the troops are organized, all the Guangling soldiers in the original county will be organized into a separate army. If the number is less than 5,000, we will use the Danyang soldiers that Lord Xuande lent us to make up for it. When you go to Guangling, take these 5,000 people with you as an escort, and by the way, it can be regarded as returning the soldiers borrowed from Lord Xuande. "

Zhuge Liang quickly took out a pen and wrote down the details of the matter that his elder brother had instructed him to do.

Liu Bei borrowed 4,000 Danyang soldiers from Zhuge Jin to start his career and conquer Yuzhang County. He also asked Chen Dao to bring 300 Bai Li soldiers to serve as bodyguards for Zhuge Jin.

The Zhuge family obviously has better credibility than Sun Ce. After Sun Ce borrowed soldiers from Yuan Shu to start his own business, he never returned them, but the Zhuge family had to return them.

However, the Bai Li soldiers were bodyguards given by Liu Bei to Zhuge Jin. This was a personal gift and they certainly could not be taken back when returning it. Zhuge Jin also had to consider his own personal safety.

Many Danyang soldiers suffered casualties in previous battles, and it is impossible to restore all of them.

The final compromise was to allow soldiers to be recruited according to their place of origin: Zuo Rong had wandered around the three counties, and the county soldiers he had enlisted were from Guangling, Danyang, and Yuzhang. Now that Guangling was in Liu Bei's hands, letting the Guangling soldiers return to their place of origin could be considered to maximize morale and combat effectiveness.

Moreover, they asked for 4,300 initially, and now they still ask for 5,000. The extra 700 people can be regarded as interest, or as compensation for the "decline in the quality of soldiers", which is reasonable.

Zhuge Liang took note of this matter, and then drew inferences from it: "Brother just said that there are several things for me to deal with. In addition to this matter, it should be the one mentioned just now, writing a letter to Pang Tong and others, inviting them to come to Yuzhang to serve as officials? Give them the positions of county magistrate and county official to train them?"

(Note: Pang Tong was just 19 years old and had not yet been given the courtesy name "Shi Yuan", so he was called by this name)
Zhuge Jin nodded with satisfaction: "Yes, the other task is this. In your one and a half years in Jingzhou, besides Pang Tong, which other young talents who are not yet adults or in their early twenties have you made friends with?

I have also thought about this. If a person is 25 years old or even 30 years old but has not yet been appointed as an official, he or she will not look down on the position of county magistrate in the border area. Even if they want to start as a county magistrate, they will probably go to Xudu to seek an official position. Therefore, the people we want to win over can only be those under 25 years old. "

Zhuge Liang thought for a moment and said, "Besides Pang Tong, I only know Pang Shanmin and some of the descendants of the Kuai and Cai families. However, the talents of the Kuai and Cai families are not prominent and there is no one worth winning over. Oh, yes, there is also Meng Jian from Runan, Meng Gongwei. He is a few years older than Pang Tong and me, but no more than 25 years old. He is quite talented."

Zhuge Jin stroked his stubble. It seemed that Xu Shu and Shi Tao had not yet gone to Xiangyang. As for Cui Jun, there was no need to mention him because he was from Hebei.

Therefore, among the so-called "Four Friends of Zhuge" in later generations, only Meng Jian actually arrived in Xiangyang. After all, it is only 197 now, which is a full ten years earlier than Zhuge's appearance in history. Zhuge Jin had no choice but to settle for the next best thing: "Then write a letter to Meng Jian as well, and try to get him here if possible. I may start him as a county magistrate."

After Zhuge Liang wrote it down, he searched his memory and couldn't help but reveal a look of shame. After hesitating for a moment, he asked, "In addition to these two people, can I write another private letter and ask Tang Guang to deliver it..."

Zhuge Jin: "Who do you want to write to?"

Zhuge Liang: "Write to Mr. Huang... Big brother, you don't know that I was able to escape from Jingzhou last year, and at the banquet before leaving, I squeezed Liu Jingzhou to let me take Xingba with me. In fact, I relied a lot on the help of Mr. Huang and the young lady of the Huang family.

I made a promise to the young lady from the Huang family at that time. Although no third party knew about it, a gentleman should be trustworthy in his conduct..."

When Zhuge Jin heard this, he burst into laughter: "Are you planning to get married? Hahaha, how old is the young lady from the Huang family?"

Zhuge Liang: "Last year when the incident happened, she was only thirteen. Now she is fourteen next year. She will be able to reach the age of marriage next year... If it is decided first, or if we can invite Mr. Huang to Yuzhang to be an official, it would be fine."

Zhuge Jin was still very supportive of his brother. Hearing this, he just sighed:

"But Mr. Huang is Liu Jingzhou's brother-in-law after all, and his status is superior. When he comes to our Yuzhang, the most I can do is persuade my uncle to give him a county magistrate position, which is already the limit.

If he still doesn't like it, then we can just give up on this matter. This can also be regarded as showing the sincerity of our Zhuge family. I'm sure that when the young lady of the Huang family hears about it, she will also be grateful for your keeping your promise."

The rank of the county magistrate was not high. According to the Han system, it was only 600 dan. It was not as good as the county magistrates of the two large counties of Nanchang and Chaisang, who could receive 1,000 dan.

But the county magistrate is the deputy of the county governor after all, and it is still very good if he can hold the real power. Zhuge Jin's father, Zhuge Gui, was only the county magistrate of Taishan before his death.

Zhuge Liang was very grateful and immediately said that he would do it immediately.

……

After being given the task by his brother, Zhuge Liang worked very hard for the next ten days and did not dare to slack off.

He first spent two days writing an earnest letter to each of the talented and intelligent people he knew in Jingzhou, persuading them to come to Yuzhang to serve as officials.

Then, he began to reorganize the post-war army and sorted and resettled the prisoners of war obtained after the demise of Zuo Rong.

Of course, there must have been many grassroots generals, officers and Gongcao who helped to handle the specific work. Zhuge Liang was just in charge of the overall situation to ensure that everyone was as fair as possible.

According to statistics, there were as many as 19,000 soldiers captured or surrendered by Guan Yu in various camps of Zuo Rong. Later, two detachments that were sent out to plunder villages and towns were intercepted and annihilated, and more than 3,000 soldiers were captured or surrendered.

So in the main battlefield of Chaisang, of the 35,000-60,000 enemy troops, more than 13,000 were killed, wounded, or fled, and a total of 22,000 people needed to be dealt with later.

Another four to five thousand people were captured in Haihun and Nanchang in the south.

After careful selection, Zhuge Liang eliminated half of those who were too weak, and eliminated those who were too old and sent them back to be farmers. Finally, he screened them again according to military discipline.

It was found that among these 27,000 people, about two-thirds of those who had previously served as county soldiers could pass the screening and continue to be retained.

Even those county soldiers who were screened out were too old. They were too exhausted from fighting in recent years and had no strength to succeed.

Only 30% of the militia can pass the screening, and their shortcomings are varied.

This selection criteria is basically the same as when Cao Cao selected Qingzhou soldiers from more than 100,000 Yellow Turban men after he defeated the Yellow Turbans in Qingzhou, and the requirements for character and discipline are even higher than those for Qingzhou soldiers.

(Note: The Yellow Turbans in Qingzhou were said to have 200,000 to 300,000 men, including the elderly, the weak, women and children, so the number of males was more than 100,000)
The 17-year-old Zhuge Liang was not yet able to come up with any innovative ideas in selecting soldiers. Since there was an answer right in front of him, why not copy it? He just treated it as a practice and familiarized himself with the basics first.

Unfortunately, there were only a few captured county soldiers, only 4,000 in total, and the remaining 23,000 were either militiamen or monk soldiers.

The final screening results showed that 3,000 county soldiers were retained, 6,000 militiamen were retained, and there were more than 1,000 reformed monks who repented and resolutely stated that they would no longer believe in Buddhism.

The Yuzhang Army originally had a total strength of about 14,000 troops - before the decisive battle of Chaisang, there were 12,000 troops on the main battlefield of Chaisang, and there were 2,000 troops in Chendao, Yongxiu County.

During the previous decisive battle, the total losses added up to about 1,000 or 2,000 soldiers, and some wounded soldiers had to retire. In the subsequent pursuit battles, the total losses added up to nearly 1,000 people. After all, Yuzhang is a large area with a complex environment, and there are many non-combat casualties in the mountainous march and pursuit.

So after deducting the losses and adding in the reinforcements, the total force finally reached 23,000 people.

Among them, 5,000 people, including more than 3,000 soldiers from Guangling County and 1,700 to 1,800 soldiers from Danyang, were to be taken back by Zhuge Liang and returned to Liu Bei.

After paying back these 5,000, Yuzhang County actually had 18,000 combat troops remaining.

Compared with the Han population of about 600,000 left in Yuzhang County, the pressure of maintaining troops was not that great. Moreover, Yuzhang was geographically isolated, and 18,000 troops were enough to guard the entrance and exit of the Yangtze River.

(Note: Yuzhang County had a population of 1.6 million at its peak in the Eastern Han Dynasty, but now only about 600,000 are registered. According to estimates, there are still about 800,000 people living in mountainous areas who are out of government control and do not pay taxes or serve in the army.

The 800,000 people include the Han people who fled, the hidden households, and the people who were originally from the Shanyue tribe. The ratio between the two groups is about 50-50.)
After finishing all this, Zhuge Liang was relieved of a heavy burden. He only needed to brush up on his experience in water conservancy application, and then he could take the troops he wanted to return to the enemy and go to Liu Bei as an envoy.

However, Zhuge Jin also wrote a letter to Liu Bei, stating that Guan Yu would need to stay in Yuzhang for a while to help him train the newly captured troops to avoid potential risks in terms of loyalty and military discipline.

Considering that all 5,000 soldiers had been returned, Liu Bei would not mind leaving Guan Yu to train the remaining 18,000.

Anyway, Liu Bei would also borrow Zhuge Jin's second brother to temporarily handle tasks that require intelligence and political value.

It is also reasonable for Zhuge Jin to borrow Liu Bei's second brother to temporarily handle those tasks that require military strength and command value.

(End of this chapter)