Han Ji

Zhang Fei, mounted on his horse, looked at the scorched fields without saying a word.

Liu Bei set up a large camp outside the city. Guan Yu surrounded the south gate, Zhang Fei surrounded the east gate, and Zhao Yun's cavalry patrolled outside the city. Zhang He's Ji Province camp blocked the official road from Xindu to Qingzhou, which was Yuan Tan's only way out.

Jia Xu accompanied Liu Bei on a tour around the city. The walls of Xindu were well-maintained, with no damage to the crenellations, and the defenders stood relatively orderly. Qian Zhao's scouts had ascertained the situation inside the city: Yuan Tan had 10,000 soldiers, and enough provisions for about a month. The recruits were mostly new and their morale was low, but Yuan Tan was personally overseeing the battle from the walls, so the city wouldn't collapse for the time being.

Liu Bei said, "Surround them. First, cut off their supplies and their supply lines."

The siege began in early March. Liu Bei's army dug up all the official roads surrounding Xindu, and Zhang He's men cut off the water source upstream of the moat, causing the moat's water level to slowly drop.

Zhao Yun's cavalry patrolled between Xindu and Qingzhou, intercepting two groups of messengers sent by Yuan Tan, both requesting reinforcements from Cao Cao. When Zhao Yun delivered the letters to the central command tent, Jia Xu read them and passed them to Liu Bei.

After reading the letter, Liu Bei said that Cao Cao would not come. He put the letter aside without burning it, saying that he would keep it and have someone read it to Yuan Tan from below the city walls when the city fell.

In mid-March, food became scarce in the city. Yuan Tan reduced rations to a single bowl of thin porridge per day. Soldiers standing on the city walls felt their legs go weak. Qian Zhao'an's spies planted in the city reported back that some of the guards at the east gate were plotting to escape, but they had been reported.

Yuan Tan personally led men to the east gate and hanged the two ringleaders on the gate opening. Their heads remained hanging for two days before being taken down. Some people still tried to escape, so a few more were hanged.

By the end of March, the city's food supply had completely dried up. Soldiers began killing horses, then rats, then tree bark. The guards on the city walls fainted from hunger and fell off the walls, landing at the bottom of the dried-up moat; no one came to collect their bodies.

Early April. Xindu.

The city's food supplies were exhausted. Yuan Tan sent men to search the people's homes for the last remaining grain, but the food they found wasn't enough to feed the defenders for even a day. The tree bark had been stripped away, and even the rats were gone. Soldiers began to starve to death, their bodies piling up behind the crenellations on the city walls, too weak to bury them.

Yuan Tan was so thin that his cheekbones protruded and his eyes were sunken. He stood on the city wall, looking at Liu Bei's camp outside the city. The camp was brightly lit, and the smoke from the cooking fires rose and was blown away by the wind.

He turned to Guo Tu and said, "We can't hold on anymore."

Guo Tu bit his lip and remained silent. He had also lost a lot of weight, his lips were cracked and bleeding, and his face was covered in ash.

Yuan Tan asked, "Is it still possible to break through from the north?"

Guo Tu said, "Zhao Yun is to the north. We can't break through."

Yuan Tan remained silent. Then he said, "Go east to Qingzhou. If Cao Cao doesn't send troops, I'll go and beg him in person."

That night, Yuan Tan led several dozen of his personal guards out from the east of the city. The east of the city was Zhang He's defense zone, but Zhang He's troops were scattered along the official road from Xindu to Qingzhou, leaving a gap in the patrol.

Yuan Tan changed into the armor of a common soldier, abandoned his warhorse, and groped his way forward in the dark on foot. His feet sank into the mud, his boots getting stuck and then being pulled out, only to sink in again.

He walked all night. When he looked back at dawn, the outline of Xindu City was still on the horizon. The city was still there, but it no longer belonged to him.

The day after Yuan Tan left, the gates of Xindu opened. The garrison piled their weapons in the gatehouse and came out to surrender.

Zhang Fei was the first to enter the city. He ordered his men to count the surrendered soldiers, and there were only a little over three thousand left. Most of them were too hungry to stand and collapsed in the city gate.

When Yuan Tan reached Qingzhou, he had fewer than ten men left. They found an abandoned house in Pingyuan County and spent the night there. At dawn, they continued eastward to Le'an, where they found the remnants of the Yuan clan.

April to June. Eastern Jizhou.

After the fall of Xindu, the counties of Bohai Commandery surrendered one after another. The prefects and magistrates of Hejian, Bohai, Anping, Qinghe and other commanderies successively sent envoys to Ye City to submit their surrender documents. Liu Bei ordered Jian Yong to lead people to take stock of the household registration and grain reserves in various places, and also ordered Zhang He to lead the Jizhou camp to garrison the Bohai area.

Most of the former officials in the prefectures and counties were retained. Liu Bei summoned these people to Xindu and said, "The Yuan family is the Yuan family, and the imperial court is the imperial court. You have governed the regions for the Yuan family, and your past actions will not be investigated. From today onwards, govern the regions well for the imperial court. Starting next year, taxes will be reduced by 10%, and those in disaster-stricken counties will have their taxes halved."

Bohai is a region with abundant saline-alkali land and poor soil. Liu Bei ordered Jian Yong to measure the land. The taxes on the poor land were reduced, and the saline-alkali land was treated as unclaimed wasteland, to be owned by whoever cultivated it. Salt farmers were uniformly incorporated into the government-run system and received monthly rations, which were 30% less than the quotas during Yuan Tan's time.

After the eastern part of Ji Province submitted, Liu Bei reorganized Ji Province according to its counties and prefectures. The garrison troops of Wei Commandery, Zhao Commandery, Julu Commandery, Handan Commandery, Hejian Commandery, and Bohai Commandery were unified and reorganized, with the old and weak being eliminated and the able-bodied being added to the various camps. The number of troops was controlled within the scope of the provincial government's levies and was no longer privately supported by the individual commanderies.

Qian Zhao set up eleven contact points on the official road southeast of Xindu, while simultaneously monitoring the movements in Qingzhou and Zhongshan. Yuan Shang was still in Zhongshan, while Yuan Tan had fled to Qingzhou.

Yuan Shang sent envoys from Zhongshan to contact the Wuhuan, but Qian Zhao's men intercepted them. The letter said that the Wuhuan were willing to send troops, but Qian Zhao's scouts outside the Great Wall reported that Tadun Chanyu had dispersed the assembled cavalry. It wasn't that they didn't want to help Yuan Shang, but that Liu Bei had signed trade agreements with several tribal leaders when he collected horses last year, and the various Wuhuan tribes disagreed on sending their main force. After arguing for a few days, they returned to their original positions.

By mid-June, the entire territory of Ji Province was basically pacified. Liu Bei returned to Ye City from Xindu and convened a military and political conference with the governors of all the counties in Ji Province. He spread out a map of Ji Province, on which all the counties were now marked with blue.

Jia Xu stood to the side, holding the chess piece in his hand. Jian Yong flipped through the account book and said that the registered population of the nine prefectures and forty-two counties in Ji Province had recovered to 70% of the pre-war level, and the grain stored in the Ever-Normal Granary was enough to cope with a small-scale requisition.

Guan Yu stood by and listened without saying a word. Zhang Fei sat for a while, then stood up and said he needed to return to the eastern camp to oversee the troops. Zhao Yun said the cavalry needed to change horses in the autumn, and the horse merchants from Liangzhou were already on their way.

Zhang He volunteered to lead the Jizhou camp to continue clearing out the remaining bandits and defeated soldiers in several mountainous areas of eastern Ji. Liu Bei agreed. Some of Yuan Tan's former subordinates refused to surrender and fled to the mountains to become bandits. Zhang He led his troops to clear out the mountains for more than a month, besieging the last large group of defeated soldiers in an abandoned fortified village on the upper reaches of the Qinghe River. After a three-day siege, they surrendered.

Shen Pei was still imprisoned in the courtyard north of Ye City. After the entire Ji Province was pacified, Liu Bei visited him again and asked if he was willing to come out and serve. Shen Pei sat on the couch, the old wound on his left shoulder had scabbed over, and he still couldn't raise his hand high.

Shen Pei said, "The late lord's legacy is all gone. How can I have the face to serve?" Liu Bei replied, "Yuan Shao's legacy wasn't your fault." Shen Pei remained silent.

Liu Bei turned and left. As he reached the door, Shen Pei spoke up, asking if the young master was still in Zhongshan. Liu Bei replied that he was. Shen Pei pleaded with the Prime Minister to spare his life. Liu Bei said that if he surrendered, he would not kill him. Shen Pei lowered his head and said nothing more.