Chapter 82: Killing Hu to Redeem His Death
Qiao Yan himself was well aware of the drawbacks of the first-merit system, so when perfecting each detail, he had to balance it with the situations he would face in subsequent battles.
To give a more extreme example, just like what she thought of two days ago, Dian Wei killed the enemy on the battlefield. If rewards were calculated based on the casualties caused after a war, it would inevitably lead to an imbalance in the salaries of civil and military officials.
But obviously, the problems that Guo Jia was talking about at this time were definitely not of this kind, otherwise he would not have had the need to come and "find fault".
The fact that he would even say such words shows that he is optimistic about Qiao Yan.
In this situation, his first suggestion became particularly important, because it was equivalent to establishing his position in this power camp.
Qiao Yan replied: "Come with me."
This kind of thing is obviously not something that should be said in public.
Guo Jia followed her into the main tent and they took their seats.
Qiao Yan did not ask him why he knew about the implementation of the first merit system - there would be no other possibility if Xi Zhicai had not told him.
But at this moment, this just-right disclosure could not be considered a leak, but rather adding fuel to the fire, at least at this time Guo Jia was already sitting in front of her.
After she opened the conversation with "I'd like to hear more", Guo Jia asked, "The idea of taking prisoners as the leader is to save their lives and expand the population of Leping. It's a good idea. It's not difficult to make them defect by offering them a place in Leping and rewards for every battle. But may I ask, Lord Qiao, how do you restrain or deal with prisoners?"
"Or in other words, how can Lord Qiao be sure that they will not side with you today and side with someone else tomorrow? After all, when they joined Lord Qiao's army, they were soldiers' merits in battle. Once they were accepted by Lord Qiao, they became his own people."
Unless Qiao Yan can always maintain sufficiently superior conditions.
But this sentence is simple to say but not so easy to do.
Just like what she had thought of before, the situation where Cao Cao recruited the Qingzhou army.
After he suffered the defeat in Wancheng, the lax military discipline of the Qingzhou troops, and even their evil and looting activities, would become a knife stabbing him.
Just as Guo Jia said, if there were no restrictions or early punishments on him, if he was captured today, he could take up arms and go into battle tomorrow, behead the enemy, and receive thirty stone of rice as a reward for his military merits.
It seems that the population expansion is like a snowball, but what is the reality?
Qiao Yan tapped the table with his fingertips, thinking about something, and then he heard Guo Jia continue to say, "Not everyone is like the Black Mountain bandits. They have been under the command of Marquis Qiao for three years. During these three years, they have shared the joys and sorrows, enjoyed the harvest together, and been educated in virtues. All of these have made them no longer Black Mountain bandits, and they now regard themselves as Leping people."
"Even as Yi Jia heard, they did not enjoy the current treatment from the beginning. Instead, they first worked as prisoners, gradually received wages, and then had Leping household registration. Now there is the implementation of this first merit system."
This is a gradual process.
But the premise of this gradual progress is to have such an environment of slow development.
This can be done while the authority of the Han Dynasty can still be maintained and Bingzhou has not yet fallen into turmoil due to those foreign races, but what about the future?
A rather brainless approach is to let these people go through the same process that the Black Mountain Bandits went through, starting with the lowest-level farming soldiers and going through a process of naturalization and teaching. However, in most cases, there are only four words to describe it -
Time waits for no one.
Soldiers who have experienced actual combat on the battlefield often have a clearer understanding of the battlefield than ordinary people and are more lethal.
Well, in the case of an extreme lack of combat power, there is absolutely no condition to come up with something like a three-year training plan. The most that can be done is to divide them up and disperse them and send them directly to the next battlefield.
As for dividing the soldiers into different levels, demoting them to the lowest level and then promoting them step by step, this may be a feasible method for a while, but there are still many major hidden dangers.
The chain of contempt within the army, especially the chain of contempt between original soldiers and surrendered soldiers, must not be formed!
Once this precedent is set, it will easily lead to rifts in the army due to the emergence of acts of oppression.
This rift is, at best, just a minor problem in coordination; but at worst, it is the beginning of the enemy's attempt to stir up internal conflicts within us.
Therefore, Qiao Yan calmly and resolutely replied at this time: "The first merit system cannot be implemented only for a certain group of people."
In the face of the above problems, this is a bottom line that must be strictly enforced and cannot be compromised.
"Yes, this is inevitable." Guo Jia replied, "But taking this as an example, Marquis Qiao was determined to defeat the Baibo bandits, which led to the three previous battles that were not fully successful. But if Marquis Qiao captured the Baibo bandits and made them his soldiers, and directly recruited them into his camp, then-"
"Then judging in a way that doesn't care about thinking the worst of people, I'm afraid that the bandits will no longer be afraid of being hostile to Lord Qiao, because once they are defeated, they can just surrender! Not only can they avoid being beheaded, but they can also enjoy the excellent treatment of the Leping soldiers who behead people for meritorious service, with 30 stones for each head."
"I'm not trying to be alarmist here."
He was also right in saying this.
Why did so many warlords in the late Han Dynasty often kill prisoners and massacre cities? On the one hand, it was naturally because of food shortages and they could not afford to feed so many people. On the other hand, it was also a way to intimidate others.
If you stand on the side of their enemy, you may be recruited, or you may be directly killed as a warning to the enemy.
But just as Qiao Yan felt that the implementation of the first merit system and its supplementary regulations must be the bottom line to be adhered to, the matter of massacring the city and exterminating the clan...
Even though she realized that she had traveled to such an era and started to fight for the position of Marquis of Leping, she had to make sure that she had enough initiative before any of the future princes. She also had the ambition to compete for the world, but she always felt that she would never massacre the city or kill all the prisoners.
This is another bottom line.
She lowered her eyes and thought for a moment before asking, "So in Fengxiao's opinion, how should we restrain these captives?"
What she said was restriction rather than disposal, and it was not difficult for Guo Jia to hear the tendency revealed in her words.
But this was obviously not a hesitant act driven by kindness, otherwise Guo Jia would not have seen her arrangement for Zhao Yun's action in the letter she wrote to Xi Zhicai, and Qiao Yan would not have killed them all in the battle in the valley when she first rescued him and Mi Zhu.
Killing people to deter others is obviously not something that Qiao Yan cannot do.
But the situation is like this, and times have changed.
Now she just wants more people, what's the problem?
On his way to Pingzhou, Guo Jia went there under the pretext of relaxing, enjoying the scenery and sobering up, but in fact he was riding on horseback, thinking clearly about what he was going to say in the form of a mental draft.
Hearing that Qiao Yan only wanted to listen to further suggestions rather than reject his idea, Guo Jia breathed a sigh of relief.
He looked at Qiao Yan at the top and continued speaking more calmly, "Threshold."
Use thresholds to restrain captives.
"Once a surrendered person is recruited by the Lord, if the reward system for military merit is based on the first merit, then Lord Qiao should set an appropriate recruitment threshold instead of blindly taking captured soldiers as his own followers."
When Guo Jia was led into the Ping Zhou camp, he saw the prisoners captured from the previous battle in the mountains.
Seeing that the guards and restraints these people received were not very strong, it was not difficult for Guo Jia to guess that some of them who looked brave enough might have been selected by Qiao Yan to be included in his team.
This was to reassure these people, indicating that she had no intention of executing them in the same way as ordinary bandits.
However, in Guo Jia's opinion, her approach was not entirely appropriate because it did not give the other bandits the chance to think, "Why not give it a try? If we lose, we can surrender anyway."
At least, one more supplement needs to be made.
He continued, "Perhaps this can be put another way. Instead of calling it a threshold, it can be said that since there is a reward for first merit, there should be a penalty for redeeming death. However, the Han Dynasty's rules for redeeming death are based on gold, silver, and cloth, but Marquis Qiao should use a different method."
"Tell me about it." As soon as the word "redemption" was mentioned, Qiao Yan became interested.
Guo Jia's tone suddenly became heavy, and he said, "Three days ago, Guyang County in Yunzhong was attacked and captured, and the people in the city were slaughtered. The property in the city was looted. Before I set out from Leping, Mr. Zhongde had just received this letter. It was probably because Marquis Qiao was concentrating on eliminating the Baibo bandits first, so the Bingzhou Governor's Office sent the news to Leping first. He also entrusted me to bring this news to Marquis Qiao."
"No one survived the Guyang Incident, but who did it? With Lord Qiao's intelligence, he will definitely guess."
Upon hearing this news suddenly, Qiao Yan was shocked, but he suppressed the shock on his face and subconsciously clenched his fists.
Guyang...
During the three years she was in Leping, she had studied the map of Bingzhou almost every day, and it was no exaggeration to say that she knew it by heart.
She would never make a mistake in where Guyang was.
The border area divisions in Bingzhou during the late Eastern Han Dynasty were very strange.
The northernmost border of Xihe County is actually not far from the territory outside the Han Dynasty, but parts of Wuyuan County and Yunzhong County overlap in the middle, and Guyang is on this line.
In other words, Guyang was sandwiched between the naturalized Southern Xiongnu and the non-local Northern Xiongnu.
However, the Northern Huns were now gradually migrating westwards, and the one living to the north of Guyang was a Hun tribe, namely Xiutuge.
The location of Yanmen prefect Guo Wei and Wu Meng's associate Zhang Liao, who were guarding the border, was in the area of Yunzhong Dingxiang and the northern border of Yanmen. This was to prevent the Xianbei from having a new leader, and then Kuitou and Budugen would invade the border in order to demonstrate the Xianbei's authority.
Under such circumstances, Xiu Tugehu was given an opportunity to take advantage of.
After Qiao Yan read out these four words in a heavy tone, he received an affirmative answer from Guo Jia.
Guo Jia replied, "It was the Xiu Tuge Hu, but because of the deaths of the people in Guyang City, they came at night and left at dawn, leaving no evidence. Unfortunately, the current Bingzhou border guards do not have the ability to allocate a sufficient number of people to pursue those traces and avenge them in the spirit of blood for blood!"
"If I were Marquis Qiao, once the Baibo bandits were captured, I would drive them north, with the Baibo bandits in the lead and the Black Mountain Army in the rear. Those who kill people will be included in the list and judged according to the first merit system, and those who are killed will be put to death, which can also be regarded as a punishment for them following the bandits."
"It's like this today, and it can be like this tomorrow. Marquis Qiao lives at the border of Bingzhou, isn't that the most suitable place to redeem his death!"
His words undoubtedly made Qiao Yan think of some people, the same people who had luckily survived the previous Yellow Turban Rebellion after her debate with Zhang Jue.
Some of these people were sent to the camp under the command of General Du Liao, and some were sent to Youzhou, which was also a kind of redemption of death.
Qiao Yan had been planning to go and see what Liang Zhongning's current situation was, but first there was the difficult developments in Leping, and then there was the locust plague in July. After she ended her house arrest, she chose to start with the Baibo bandits, so naturally she forgot about the matter for the time being.
But this was not the time to consider these people. She withdrew her thoughts and focused on the suggestion made by Guo Jia.
The murderer will be included in the list, and the murdered will die.
This is indeed a threshold for screening people.
Having such a screening process will undoubtedly make people pay more attention to the result of being able to join her team.
but……
"What if the Baibo bandits who led the front line turn around and join forces with the Qiang and Hu? Or maybe it's not limited to this time. What if they continue to do this in the future and help boost the momentum of the Hu people on the border?"
Baibo and the Xiongnu joined forces to cause trouble, which is exactly what happened in history and may even happen in the near future.
But Guo Jia looked at Qiao Yan with some confusion, and said, "Lord Qiao, this is exactly the thing you don't have to worry about. Isn't it enough for you to always be stronger than the Xiongnu and Xianbei outside the border?"
Qiao Yan was shocked.
She suddenly realized that this statement was not just made because Guo Jia was young and dared to think about it.
Faced with the reality of "whoever offends the mighty Han will be punished no matter how far away they are", the Xiongnu might not even have known that the Han Dynasty was unable to make any favorable counterattack, and that they turned the entire northern border of Bingzhou into a paradise for foreigners to gallop on horseback, if the Xiongnu had not attempted to resist conscription and kill the governor of Bingzhou in the fifth year of Zhongping.
And if the Baibo bandits had not negotiated and joined forces with them, they might not even know that the people within the Han territory could still be their own people under such circumstances.
At that time, there was no Five Barbarians' Invasion, which caused the Central Plains to fall into a complete state of moral collapse and social disorder.
Therefore, Guo Jia could say with confidence that as long as he was always stronger than the Hu people outside the border.
The captives who fell into Qiao Yan's hands could also face such a choice -
Continue to be her enemy, or choose a slightly simpler path and participate in the border war, using the military merit of killing the Hu people in exchange for the opportunity to be included in the Leping first merit system.
There is a comparison of difficulty here.
The situation where the Huns only cared about eating and not fighting, originally in Xi Zhicai's view, would be a regular expenditure of military rations as a reward for meritorious service. However, because of Guo Jia's suggestion, it is very likely to become a key link in the industrial chain of replenishing military personnel.
If Guo Jia had not pointed this out with the thoughts of people in today's era, Qiao Yan would have almost gone astray.
His advice is indeed crucial!
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