Three Kingdoms: I am not Liu Bian

Chapter 4: The Son of Heaven, the one with strong soldiers and horses should be the one to win!

In order to survive and prevent the country from being destroyed, Liu Bian’s most urgent need now is to control an elite force!
天子，兵强马壮者当为之。

Whether it is consolidating the government or dealing with the upcoming rebellions, without a strong and loyal army, everything he has done before will be in vain.

Even if he still cannot stabilize the government in the future, the worst that can happen is that he will overturn the table and let everyone stop doing anything, and let the truth come out under the sword.

The Five Schools of the Northern Army is such an army that he can rely on!
But the five battalions of the Northern Army alone are not enough. As a full-time regular army, the soldiers of the five battalions of the Northern Army are indeed elite, but the soldiers are strong but the generals are weak.

Although these captains have been loyal to the royal family for generations and have never been in cahoots with the aristocratic families, their ability to lead troops is really not good enough. If they are really sent to the battlefield, they will not be able to exert much of their combat effectiveness.

Therefore, he must recruit a group of talented confidants who can be used by him.

"Awang."

Liu Bian called out to the side, and a middle-aged eunuch immediately stepped forward.

He was the youngest among the eunuchs, and was also the eunuch beside Liu Bian and the chief physician, and was highly trusted by Liu Bian.

"Draft an imperial edict and issue it in the name of the Emperor to recruit officials for the Crown Prince's Palace."

"promise."

Gao Wang took out a piece of silk from his sleeve, and some thoughts came to his mind.

The Crown Prince couldn't even recognize all the three dukes and nine ministers, so how could he know the world's famous people? If the Crown Prince asked him, could he take the opportunity to recommend some of his own people?

But while Gao Wang was hesitating, Liu Bian had already come up with a plan.

"Zhong Yao and Zhong Yuanchang from Changsha, Yingchuan, Yuzhou; Xu Chu and Xu Zhongkang from Qiao County, Pei State, Yuzhou; Cheng Yu and Cheng Zhongde from Dong'e, Dongjun, Yanzhou; Dian Wei from Jiwu, Chenliu, Yanzhou; Gao Shun and Gao Xiaofu from Yu County, Chenliu, Yanzhou; Dong Zhao and Dong Gongren from Dingtao, Jiyin, Yanzhou; Liu Bei, styled Xuande, from Zhuo County, Youzhou; Sun Jian and Sun Wentai from Fuchun, Wu County, Yangzhou; Chen Lin and Chen Kongzhang from Sheyang, Guangling, Xuzhou; Huang Zhong and Huang Hansheng from Wancheng, Nanyang, Jingzhou."

Liu Bian leaned against the head of the bed and said ten names in one breath, even specifying the county of origin and courtesy name, making it almost impossible to find the wrong person.

Gao Wang's hand paused slightly, and he was startled, but the white brush in his hand did not stop.

How did the prince know about these people?

He has been accompanying the prince since he returned to the palace, and the prince has never met any outsiders without his knowledge. How did he know these people?

Moreover, Gao Wang was familiar with the list of local gentry. Except for Zhong Yao and Chen Lin, he had never heard of the others.

Liu Bian noticed the fleeting look of surprise on Gao Wang's face and guessed what he was thinking.

Eunuchs have no descendants and are disabled. What they seek are dignity and wealth.

In order to obtain these two, the pursuit of power and status has emerged.

Now, in order to protect himself, he naturally wants to place more of his own people in the court.

He did not point out Gao Wang's little thoughts, nor did he explain to him how he knew these people, leaving Gao Wang to guess.

Besides, Liu Bian couldn't explain it, so it would be better to let Gao Wang think that he had some secret channel to understand the affairs outside the palace, covering himself with a layer of mysterious cloak, and making the eunuchs more afraid of him. But after saying these nine names, two more names emerged in Liu Bian's mind.

There should be no problem in recruiting the above nine people. Although some of them are currently serving as local officials, the highest position they hold is only the head of a county. How can they be compared with entering the Prince's Palace, a place where one can ascend to heaven overnight?

What Liu Bian hesitated about was the hometowns of the two people he had just thought of. These two places were a little too special.

The Han Dynasty nominally had thirteen provinces, but the scholars in Liangzhou and Bingzhou were at the bottom of the food chain in the Han officialdom.

Every state has quotas for recommending filial and honest officials, but these quotas are based on the population base. Places with a large population naturally have more quotas, while places with sparse populations such as Liangzhou and Bingzhou naturally have fewer quotas.

This one point alone directly blocked the people of Liangzhou from a systemic perspective, because in terms of population, Liangzhou could not compare with developed inland areas such as Jizhou and Yuzhou.

Those who promote filial and honest officials to power will inevitably promote their old friends, old officials, and fellow villagers. With generations of filial and honest officials being promoted, how can people from Liangzhou have a seat in the court?

Nowadays, high-ranking officials from Liangzhou are rare in the imperial court, and it’s safe to say there are none. Finally, a Liangzhou Sanming emerged, but what happened?

His later years were miserable, and he died in a fight in the court. Even within Liangzhou Sanming, people were fighting against each other for the recognition of eunuchs or scholars. Nowadays, there are almost no officials from Liangzhou in the court.

Bingzhou was relatively better off. After all, it still had aristocratic families like the Wang family of Taiyuan. Furthermore, most of Bingzhou's land had belonged to the Chinese during the Warring States Period, so the Han scholars were quite accepting of Bingzhou. However, discrimination against the people of Liangzhou was severe, and some even refused to consider them Han Chinese. During the Eastern Han Dynasty alone, during the reigns of Emperor Guangwu and Emperor An, officials twice discussed abandoning Liangzhou.

At this time, he had just come to power. If he recruited people from Liangzhou and the border counties of Bingzhou at this time, he was worried that it would cause resistance or even protests from the scholars.

After all, the means by which he came to power were not glorious, just as Cao Pi had to use the Nine-Rank System to win the hearts of the gentry in order to become emperor.

Twisting the corner of the quilt and rubbing it back and forth, Liu Bian weighed the pros and cons.

"Never mind, these two are worth a gamble!"

After much hesitation, Liu Bian still insisted on his idea and continued to read: "Recruit Jia Xu, Jia Wenhe, from Wuwei and Guzang in Liang Province, and Lü Bu, Lü Fengxian, from Wuyuan and Jiuyuan in Bing Province!"

Gao Wang sorted out Liu Bian's order, slightly modified the wording, and wrote it on the silk book. Liu Bian also stamped the jade seal symbolizing the emperor without hesitation, and sent someone to send it to the Secretariat to issue it.

Fortunately, the Secretariat was no longer in an era where the gentry could manipulate it at will. The emperor's will could be implemented through the Secretariat bypassing the Three Dukes and Nine Ministers. Otherwise, Liu Hong would not have been able to do so many bad things.

I just don’t know whether all these people will accept the call.

He was not worried about those warriors, Liu Bei and Sun Jian. Even if it was not the Song Dynasty, it was not easy for warriors to come to the fore. What Liu Bian could provide to the warriors now was a good platform for promotion, and the minds of the warriors were also simpler.

What really made him feel unpredictable were the scribes.

Even though they were recruited in the name of the emperor and were to serve as officials in the prince's palace, there was no guarantee that some of them would choose to protect themselves and refuse by claiming illness in order to avoid being involved in the struggle in the court. Zhong Yao, Cheng Yu, Dong Zhao, and Chen Lin were all wise men and might not choose to get involved in this struggle, especially since there was also Jia Xu, who was thinking about a way out before anything was done.

Sighing, Liu Bian threw back the quilt and prepared to get up to deal with the follow-up matters of yesterday's palace coup.

The coup was successful, but he had to digest as many fruits of victory as possible before the grand court meeting to consolidate his position, so that he could be considered to have initially grasped power.

(End of this chapter)