Tiger Guards

Chapter 235 Spring and Snow
To the south of Nie County is Tongdi.

The Li family in this county raised a thousand volunteers. They did not even dare to enter the city to defend it, but instead camped outside the city.

In this way, he could get rid of suspicion and avoid being suspected by the "king's teacher".

Even though Li was so humble, when the emperor arrived in Nie County, he was informed of the treatment to be taken against Li.

The Li family was given two choices: either move the entire clan to Taiyuan, or go to Heluo and enrich Luodu.

Of course, they can also choose to enter the city immediately, defend the city to the death, and resist the royal army.

Then wait for the powerful people from all sides to raise troops to help, repel the emperor, and turn Shangdang into Shangdang for the Shangdang people.

"This must be the way out presented by Lord Zhao. The way out lies in the west, not the south."

The elders of the Li clan gathered together, and to be honest, no one wanted to leave their ancestral graves and move to another county.

But now the decision-making power lies with Zhao Ji, and allowing them to move to Taiyuan is already a rare act of generosity and kindness.

Look at the Taiyuan clan’s family background and clothing. When the Taiyuan clan’s family looked at the Tongdi Li family, it was like looking at monkeys in the mountains.

The nobles of Taiyuan were disrespectful to the emperor and were all killed by Zhao Ji. Who could find fault with them?
Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, entire families have been executed for gross disrespect. What's wrong with that?

More than thirty people from the Li family gathered together. After an elder made a proposal, no one responded for a long time.

They were reluctant to move away from Tongdi. People were looked down upon when they left their hometown. If they went to Taiyuan, they would be unfamiliar with the place and would be subject to the legal system.

Starting over, building up a family fortune, and managing a network of personal connections are all very tiring tasks.

As long as they stay in Tongdi, they are the uncrowned kings.

It is really difficult to make a decision between being the king of death and being a hardworking imperial bee.

As for defending the city, what chance of winning can we have?

If they move to Taiyuan, there will be a day when they can rise again; but if they resist, the customs of Taiyuan will serve as a lesson for them.

If they had known about this arrangement a month ago, they might have actively united with their fellow villagers, exhausted all their potential to mobilize armed forces, and then supported senior officials and fought to the death against Zhao Ji.

In this way, even if we surrender, it can be a conditional surrender, and we won't be in such an embarrassing situation as we are now.

After a long silence, a middle-aged man named Li Jiao spoke in a hoarse voice, "I believe that the Marquis of Zhao is a man who can accomplish great things. Moving to Taiyuan and accepting the arrangements made by the Marquis of Zhao will also be an opportunity for my family."

As soon as he spoke, the conservatives also spoke up: "Yes, Taiyuan has been completely destroyed. We will move in and cultivate the land carefully. In the future, we can still be a famous Taiyuan family."

"And then have another Zhao Hou exterminate all the male members of the clan?"

Someone made a sarcastic remark, causing many people to stare at each other. The man smiled bitterly and said, "I'm not dissatisfied with the Lord of Zhao. I just feel that even though Shangdang is surrounded by mountains, even though it's not rich, it has a lot to offer. Moving to Taiyuan is better than moving to Xihe."

Xihe County was in a miserable state. Almost all that remained of each county were place names, and the area was filled with Xiongnu, Qiang, and other mixed-race peoples.

When he mentioned Xihe County, everyone fell silent again.

Their luck may not be the best, but it is definitely not the worst.

If they handed over their food, land, servants, tools, and weapons and accepted the arrangement to go to Taiyuan, then the Marquis of Zhao would most likely use more harsh conditions to deal with the next family.

Thinking of this, everyone felt better for some reason.

Seeing this, the most senior elder in the clan said, "Send an envoy to the Marquis of Zhao to announce that our family wishes to relocate to Taiyuan. Don't demand any conditions from him; only when you are alive can you have a chance. In my opinion, even if the Marquis of Zhao doesn't care about our difficulties, Lord Yuanming will certainly understand and offer some assistance."

Even though there are more than a thousand volunteers now, after accepting Zhao Ji's migration conditions, most of the volunteers consisting of followers and servants will become Zhao Ji's property.

Once freedom is returned to the subordinates and servants, it will be difficult to get it back.

Zhao Ji would not leave Nie County until he dealt with the Tongdi Li family.

The surname of Tongdi Guan is Li. After Li surrenders, the powerful families who have been related to the Li family for generations will also migrate... As for those families that are not on good terms with the Li family, they have no better choice.

If you really don't want to migrate, just hide in the mountains.

But in areas like Shangdang, if you give up your land, you can never get it back.

If you avoid or resist the imperial court's migration, you will be a refugee; if you want to seize land and houses in the future, you will be no different from a bandit.

Of course, small and poor families with only three to five hundred acres of land are not eligible to move to Taiyuan.

If they still operate or monopolize any industry, these small and isolated families will also be relocated.

When the Tongdi Li family surrendered and accepted the relocation with the local gentry, Zhao Ji's relocation order was sent to Tunliu.

Along with the military order arrived Xu Huang's 5,000-man army. By the time they reached Tunliu, they had already recruited and assembled 3,000 young and strong men from various volunteer forces. Xu Huang did not enter the city, but instead formed his battle array and camped outside, awaiting the city's decision.

There are three clans in Tunliu: the Bao, Shentu and Cui clans. When these three clans unite, they also have more than 2,000 clan soldiers.

Because they had to fight against the nearby Huguan, these clan soldiers and other volunteer soldiers were in Tunliu City.

Before the three clans could gather to discuss, Shentu led his relatives and fellow villagers out of the city and surrendered their weapons.

The Yanmen County Magistrate Shentu Bei came from the Shentu clan. There was no need for the Shentu clan to fight against Zhao Ji. As long as they cooperated well, they would not suffer any loss no matter what happened.

When Shentu went out of the city to surrender his weapons, he also left the city gates wide open... Bao and Cui did not want to destroy themselves, so they had to rush out of the city to surrender their weapons.

Xu Huang led his cavalry into battle array. Seeing the various families and their followers surrendering their weapons, he could not help but sigh to the Commander-in-Chief, Wang Qi, "I never thought that the Shangdang commander would be the first to surrender!"

Wang Qi also had mixed feelings. His family wasn't even eligible for forced relocation.

Now the hidden dangers of entering Huguan have been eliminated, the manpower available on the front line has increased rapidly, and the most important thing is that ready-made food has been obtained, which has alleviated the logistical pressure.

Shangdang did not experience much unrest and was a small paradise for scholars from surrounding counties to escape from chaos.

Therefore, each family has relatively sufficient grain reserves...much better than Hedong.

Only after they attacked Shangdang did Xu Huang and Wang Qi realize the abundance of Shangdang's resources and treasury, which was something they had never imagined before.

They all felt that it was difficult to irrigate the fields in the mountains and highlands, and with the Black Mountain Army coming and going to plunder, it must be a ruined county, not much better than the border counties.

But at present, the total number of registered and hidden households in Shangdang County is no less than 200,000.

The population of Shangdang County throughout the ages was only over 300,000 at its peak; when the population was counted more than 50 years ago, there were only 120,000 people left in Shangdang County.

During the Western Han Dynasty, Taiyuan had a population of nearly 700,000; when statistics were taken more than 50 years ago, it was only 200,000.

During this period, the registered population of Taiyuan County was 470,000...this does not include the nomadic Huns.

The population of all counties in the world, except for those famous strong and large counties, is decreasing, and the number of people starving to death is increasing.

If half of the household registration is concealed, it would be like eating up half of the population, which would make officials and powerful people hungry.

It is normal to consume two-thirds of the population... If it is more, the taxes will not be enough to operate the counties; if the registered population continues to be dismantled, the remaining population will be crushed by the fixed county fiscal expenditures and will be forced to rebel or go into exile with their families.

Since it's a dead end anyway, many people will naturally fight back.

Therefore, if you eat up two-thirds of the registered households, it will reach the critical point, and it will be dangerous if you eat up more.

The most exaggerated case was Xihe County, where the population declined from 700,000 in the Han Dynasty to 20,000 registered residents.

This was no longer as simple as eating the hidden households; the Huns had really moved in; but it did not mean that there were only more than 20,000 Han border residents left, and the local tyrants still lived a carefree life.

Given the Huns' habits, they did not rob all the remaining registered households, which shows that the local powerful people still had the power to resist the Huns.

Therefore, if Xihe County counts the population, excluding the Huns, the registered population will at least reach 150,000.

It’s just that it’s not appropriate to do these things in Xihe at the moment, as it will affect unity.

It just so happened that Zhao Ji maintained a special friendship with the Huns, and suppressed the powerful people in Xihe. If they dared to join forces in rebellion, the Huns would bring plates, knives and forks and take the initiative to help Zhao Ji eat them!
Sometimes it is like this, foreigners can provide greater help because there are too many potential rebels among the same ethnic group.

Dealing with Xihe County is a distant issue.

But now, the powerful people and commanders of Shangdang are so vulnerable.

Zhao Ji even disdained to show up in person to make oaths and persuade people.

Like the best of springtime, as Zhao Ji approached, all these powerful families that had been rooted there for generations melted away.

In this regard, Xu Huang, a man from a poor family, expressed his feelings for a while and had no other thoughts.

What kind of bloody scenes has he not seen over the years?

To be fair, the Shangdang nobles were very lucky to have settled down like this.

Even though the Su family fort in Guanzhong blocked the siege of Li Jue and Guo Si, there will definitely be another round of siege against the Su family in the future.

Once the defense is broken, how many people in the Su family can survive?
As for Zhao Ji's current silent way of conquering, although Jia Xu and Zhao Yan are involved in the planning and layout behind the scenes, Zhao Ji is able to remain stable on the front line and act according to the established steps, which means that all variables are within the controllable range.

If the powerful people of Shangdang move to Taiyuan, their future will definitely be better than if they stay in Shangdang.

(End of this chapter)