Chapter 413 Blood Debt
Although Yongzhou is north of Wuling, it is also an extremely remote and backward place. In the eyes of the Central Plains people today, Yongzhou is actually a barbaric place.
Going to Yongzhou to be an official is no different from being relegated to Lingnan.
Many people in Chang'an don't know that there is such a place as Yongzhou. Those who know only know that Yongzhou is famous for its poisonous snakes. This is also due to a snake wine from Qinjiaguogong Winery, which mostly uses Yongzhou snakes.
Yongzhou was placed under Jiangnan Road, and then Jiangnan Road was divided into east and west, and it was affiliated to Jiangnan West Road, referred to as Jiangxi. The place is quite large, but it is the southwesternmost end of Jiangnan West Road. Like many places, it is remote and congested, with inconvenient road transportation, backward economic development, barbarians everywhere, high mountains and dense forests.
Venomous snakes are everywhere, and beasts are everywhere.
At this time on Siming Mountain, Qin Lang was looking at the map.
Northerns are afraid of heat and are not good at fighting in the mountains. Even Yinhammer Taibao Qin Yong advised Qin Lang to retreat first, at least back to Xiangyuan County first.
"You have also seen the governors in Yongzhou City. Most of them are officials who have been demoted. Many people are just doing nothing. They stay in Yongzhou City and even think that this is the case. The second time was a small disturbance in some barbarian villages, and it is estimated that even Xiangyuan County was breached and looted without knowing it."
Qin Lang analyzed the current situation.
None of those guys in Yongzhou City are useful, and Yongzhou City is very small and dilapidated. The key is that Yongzhou doesn’t even have a commanding army mansion.
As for waiting for reinforcements, although the Jiangnan West Road is quite large, it is basically the Jiangxi and Hunan provinces of later generations. As far as the current traffic is concerned, Jiangnan West Road is indeed divided into two parts. The eastern part is the Jiangxi of later generations. It is a little bit more developed, but the mountain is separated from the western part of Hunan. The traffic is inconvenient. .
The part of Hunan in the west is also divided into two parts, the north and the south. Of course, Changsha in the north is not bad, but the further south you go, the worse the actual control ability of the imperial court.
Like Yongzhou, it belonged to Lingling County together with Daozhou in the Sui Dynasty. During the Kaihuang reign of the Sui Dynasty, the entire Lingling County had only five counties, with a total of 6,845 households.
At that time, Qinghe County, Jingzhao County, had more than 300,000 households, Henan and Yingchuan also had more than 200,000 households, and counties in Hebei and Henan basically had more than 100,000 households.
A county in Lingling is not as large as a county in the Central Plains, with only over 5,000 households in the entire county.
In the Tang Dynasty, Lingling County in the Sui Dynasty was actually divided into Yongzhou and Daozhou. Although Yongzhou was divided into three counties, the actual population was only more than 2,000 households, and the average number of households in each county was less than 1,000. , Half of the more than 2,000 households in Yongzhou are in Lingling County, and the other two counties add up to only 1,000 households.
We can see the degree of backwardness here.
But on the other hand, the number of mountain barbarians not included in the household registration statistics is actually quite astonishing.
Mountain barbarians live together in the mountains, large and small cottages and brooks, small stockades with dozens of people, large ones with thousands of people, the five hundred li Yuechengling mountain range, although it is located among several states, the total number of barbarians must be tens of thousands The population far exceeds the population of the surrounding court states except Guizhou.
So once they rebelled, they were indeed very fierce. A frontier state like Yongzhou didn't even have any regular government soldiers and military government.
Yongzhou has no reinforcements.
Not in Daozhou, nor in Wuzhou.
There are no government soldiers in Hengzhou, which is farther away. The nearest military government is in Changsha, thousands of miles away.
Even Guizhou didn’t have a commanding army mansion of the imperial court. When Li Zhan was there, there were quite a few native soldiers. During the Sui Dynasty, Li Xizhi recruited and trained on the basis of the prefectural and county soldiers of the Sui Dynasty. There were Han and barbarians, but Now across the Yuechengling mountains. Furthermore, Li Xizhi had already been summoned to the court, and no one knew whether those people in Guilin would still listen to him, Qin Lang.
There are no soldiers nearby, but Qin Lang has soldiers.
He still has quite a few soldiers under his command.
He has five soldiers of the Duke of Wei, a total of five hundred, and they are all elites. Some are from the Turkic Yushe Department attached to the Wolf Guard Jingqi sent by Qin Guozhong, and there are Lingnan Shanyue barbarians sent by Geng Guogong Feng An and his son. Hu Qi was recruited from Qidan, Xi, Mohe and other ministries when he was in Youzhou, and he was recruited and trained from Shayuan horse thieves at the earliest.
A total of five hundred.
Not to mention that in addition to this elite army of the Duke of the State of Wei, he also has 800 members of the Duke of Wei's family and tents, 300 cavalry of the Duke of the Kingdom of Wei, and 500 warriors in the tent, all of whom were recruited from Chang'an. The warriors, etc., are basically the **** of the nobles and powerful people, all of them are skilled in martial arts, and the knights are even more proficient in riding and shooting.
These 800 people, because of their good backgrounds, basically each of them brought an entourage.
Each of the three hundred noble-born knights brought two or three knight attendants, and the samurai also brought one or two attendants. These attendants are actually family members of these people's families, and they are all skilled in martial arts. Very robust.
These attendants accompanied their masters to the south, and they were going to serve as stewards in their knight fief and warrior fief.
Calculated, in fact, Qin Lang has more than 3,000 soldiers capable of fighting and equipped.
Five hundred relatives, eight hundred retainers, and more than a thousand attendants.
"But now we don't even know who our enemies are, let alone where they are. The mountains are high and the forests are dense here. We are not familiar with the place, so it's better to be cautious."
In fact, apart from these capable soldiers, Qin Lang also brought about 2,000 people with him. Those were obtained by him in the Chang'an underground city. The fugitives and beggars in the city, etc.
They are still in Xiangyuan County, and Li Daliang, the governor of Jiaozhou, is guarding there with some followers.
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The dilapidated Xiangyuan County looks a little lifeless in summer.
Li Daliang is organizing the people left by Qin Lang to repair the county.
Xiangyuan County is very small. In the Sui Dynasty, it was only a county with a population of 500 households. At that time, half of the households were outside the city, so there were only about 200 households in the county.
A county like this actually looks like a stockade, and this place was indeed a stockade before.
Because it is on the only way south to Lingnan and near the source of the upper reaches of the Xiangjiang River, it has continued to exist since the Qin Dynasty, but it is difficult to grow and develop.
The Sui chaos in the Central Plains actually affected this remote small county. When the Central Plains was in chaos, the barbarians refused to accept control. The same was true in Yongzhou.
Before Xiangyuan County was breached this time, there were actually less than a hundred people in the city, and the unlucky county magistrate was not as many as a person in charge of a village in the Central Plains.
The barbarians came in the middle of the night. A group of people sneaked up, climbed up the wall, and opened the city gate.
At that time, there were only two old-fashioned servants guarding the gate, and there was no hindrance.
Qin Lang and the others came a day late.
The thieves broke into the city in the middle of the night and robbed wantonly all night.
In fact, there is nothing to snatch, but in the eyes of those barbarians, the things of the Han people in Xiangyuan County are actually good things. They even snatched the furniture. It is empty.
If it weren't for the remains of those earthen walls, people would suspect that this is a wasteland at all. The few decent houses in the city, the county government office, warehouses, and the houses of several landlords and merchants were all destroyed by those mountain barbarians. After looting, the furniture was also emptied, and even the barbarians who arrived later had nothing to rob, so they robbed all the bricks, tiles, beams, and columns of the house.
There are only adobe brick houses and thatched houses left.
Li Daliang actually felt that those mountain barbarians were quite pitiful, they even robbed roof tiles, how poor they are.
There were only a hundred people in the county town, and no one escaped. They were either killed or taken away.
"Take those corpses under control. This is a blood debt and needs to be liquidated."
Although Li Daliang came from the chaos of the Sui Dynasty in the Central Plains, he also saw countless tragic images in his early years. During the chaos in the Central Plains, the tragic scene there was hundreds of times worse than here, which is really nothing.
But don’t do small evils.
Blood debts must be paid in blood.
"Duke Wei has been chasing him out for a day, but he hasn't sent anyone back to report a letter. I don't know what's going on. This dangerous mountain and river will be ambushed?"
A follower said to Li Daliang.
"Don't look young, Wei Guogong. He beat Wang Junkuo in Youzhou, Luo Yi in Binzhou, and Xieli begging for mercy in Hetao. How many barbarians can count on him?"
Li Daliang has great confidence in Qin Lang. Qin Lang is indeed young, but this kid has always acted cautiously, and besides, he has more than 3,000 horses with him.
Among the Yuechengling mountains, which barbarian tribe has the strength to ambush Qin Lang?
"Actually, the Duke of Wei might be looking forward to the savage barbarians who want to ambush him, so that he won't have to look for them everywhere."
A few servants from Chang'an wiped the sweat off their faces, looked at the scene around them, and sighed, "I used to know that the snake wine in Guogongfang used Yongzhou snakes, but I really didn't know that The place is so remote."
Xiangyuan County was breached by the barbarians the night before yesterday. It was emptied at dawn yesterday, and the barbarians didn't stay any longer. They all left before noon yesterday.
They arrived in Xiangyuan this morning, only to find out that the county town was gone, and there was no news at all on the way they came.
Qin Lang found out that the barbarians had not left for a long time, so he let him stay here and led his troops to chase after them.
Li Daliang also hoped that Qin Lang could catch up with those **** barbarians, and it would be best to kill some of them viciously.
But now there is no news, he feels that the matter is more serious than expected.
"Even if you catch a few savages and come back to ask for news, it's fine. Now that your eyes are dark, it's really worrying!"
"Why are these barbarians so bold?" an official asked.
Li Daliang tugged at the neckline, letting a sliver of wind cool him in. "It's probably caused by the naturalization. Every year because of this naturalization, the barbarians in many places make trouble."
For the barbarians, they just want to live a free life. Even the familiar barbarians who have a lot of contact with the Han people are not willing to be naturalized. To build cities and pave roads, etc., and the burden of taxation and labor is not easy.
The barbarians are afraid of the guards. Once the government forces naturalization, as long as someone is willing to take the lead, they will follow and rebel.
This time, at this juncture, the barbarians here are in chaos, and I don’t know if there is a deeper reason, but the barbarians are in chaos, dare to break into the county seat, and kidnap the county magistrate. This is not just against naturalization. It was already a rebellion that killed officials and destroyed the city. It was extremely bad in nature, and the court would never despise it.
The question before Li Daliang is how many barbarians are there in the rebellion this time!
(end of this chapter)