Standalone Northern and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 306 Careers
The survivors of the Six Garrisons were also dumbfounded. They had never imagined that after traveling thousands of miles to Dingzhou, they were not registered as citizens as Yang Yu had promised, but were bought by powerful families to be herdsmen and serfs!
Some people wanted to make trouble that day, but this time the wealthy families in Dingzhou came prepared. They brought their servants and private soldiers, all of whom were armed.

This group of survivors from the Six Garrisons came all the way to Dingzhou, and their weapons and armor had been confiscated long ago. How could they be opponents?
Several ringleaders of the riot were executed on the spot, and those in the same team were also executed, which frightened the remaining people in the Six Garrisons.

Seeing that the people from the Six Garrisons immediately behaved themselves, Yang Jin, the governor of Dingzhou, looked at these people with a smile. Isn't it said that the people from the Six Garrisons are as fierce as tigers and as vicious as wolves?
Why do you look like an obedient lamb now?

The officials in the court, including his cousin, really overestimated the survivors of the Six Garrisons.

They are nothing but a group of stray dogs that have lost their homes. Once they are beaten, they will become obedient domestic dogs.

Next it is time for the Dingzhou nobles to share these demographic dividends.

The most fertile places in the world today are the Hedong states such as Ding, Ying, and Jizhou.

Hedong is the area east of the Yellow River.

The Yellow River forms a "J" shape in Gansu. The area inside this "J" is called the Hetao area. On the right side of the "J" there is a section of the Yellow River flowing from north to south. The east of this section of the Yellow River is the Hedong area.

The Hedong region in a narrow sense refers to the ancient Hedong County (now Linfen City, Shanxi Province), but the Hedong region in a broad sense refers to all areas east of the Yellow River.

The Jizhou Plain has a well-developed water system and has been an agriculturally developed region since ancient times.

When the Northern Wei Dynasty was established, the ancient Jizhou was divided into several states, which are now Ding, Ji, Ying and other states.

This is also the area where the aristocratic and powerful forces are the most powerful.

The disasters that occurred in various parts of the Northern Wei Dynasty over the years did not affect the Hedong states.

The Six Garrisons Rebellion in the north was blocked by Yuan Shen to the north of Hengzhou. The Southern Liang could not reach Hedong, and the rebellion in Guanzhong had nothing to do with them.

The only war was the Mahayana Dharmaqing Rebellion that broke out in Jizhou, but it was quickly put down.

The wealthy families in Hedong remained greedy for population and land. In addition to constantly annexing land, they were also keen on purchasing slaves.

When Zhang Yi's grandfather opened up Jizhou, he brought tens of thousands of "householders", most of whom were farmhands and slaves of the Zhang family.

The nobles of Dingzhou bought out the remnants of the Six Garrisons, and they also retained the organization reorganized by Yang Yu.

For the same reason, newly purchased slaves could easily escape, so their brothers and relatives were organized into a team to prevent them from escaping by collective punishment.

The nobles of Dingzhou established a cruel rule that if one person out of a team of ten escaped, the rest of the team would be killed.

The wealthy families in Dingzhou tied up the survivors of the Six Garrisons with ropes and dragged them to their own farms to work.

All this was seen by Ge Rong, the deputy governor of Dingzhou.

Ge Rong, the deputy governor of Dingzhou, held a high official position, but he was born in the Six Garrisons and was despised by Yang Jin, a son of an aristocratic family. Yang Jin only allowed him to guard Shanggu County.

Yang Jin looked down on Ge Rong, and the nobles of Dingzhou also looked down on Ge Rong. Ge Rong never got promoted after leaving the Six Garrisons.

One can imagine the resentment in Ge Rong's heart.

Now seeing the survivors of the Six Garrisons being treated like this, Ge Rong became even more furious.

In addition to his anger, Ge Rong also ignited a spark of ambition.

There are more than 200,000 households of the remnants of the six towns who were resettled in the three states this time. Even if we calculate that there are three people in each household, there are more than 500,000 people.

How many people are there in the wealthy families in the three states, and how many servants and private soldiers do they have?
This time, in order to quell the rebellion of the Six Garrisons, the imperial court borrowed troops from the Rouran. Afterwards, it could not even afford to pay for their services, and actually let the Rouran people enter the Great Wall and "take it for themselves" in Yanzhou and Youzhou.

Ge Rong was knowledgeable about military affairs and he understood how weak the Northern Wei had become.

Ge Rong also sent people to buy a few remnants of the Six Garrisons who looked to be in good physical condition, and then took them back to his own station.
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Yang Yu brought the remaining survivors of the Six Garrisons to Jizhou and Yingzhou, where he found the same solutions as in Dingzhou.

Yang Yu might know how the three states resettled the people of the Six Garrisons, or maybe he didn't know, but after handing over the last batch of survivors of the Six Garrisons, Yang Yu immediately returned to Luoyang.

Xianyu Xiuli, an ordinary townsman of Huaishuo, was also one of the slaves sold to Dingzhou.

Xianyu Xiuli and his group of survivors of the Six Garrisons were not sold to powerful families, but were settled in Zuoren City, Dingzhou as pastoral slaves to graze the cattle.

The Dingzhou government set extremely strict requirements for the herdsmen such as Xianyu Xiuli. Each of them was given three animals. The inventory was to be taken in March of the next year. If one animal was missing, the slave would be beaten with a stick. If two animals were missing, the slave would be subjected to corporal punishment. If all three died, the slave would be executed.

Zuoren City is a desolate area in Dingzhou. In the late Spring and Autumn Period, the Baidi and Xianyu people entered North China from here. It was also a border town garrisoned by Dingzhou.

Xianyu Xiuli's group of pastoral slaves, half of whom were herding and half were guarding the border, were exiled to Zuoren City.

Among them, the survivors of the Six Towns all looked depressed, as if they had seen a tragic fate in the future.

Only Xianyu Xiuli remained calm and not pessimistic at all. He often encouraged the survivors of the Six Garrisons who were traveling with him. He soon gained a high reputation among the survivors of the Six Garrisons in Zuoren City.
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Ge Rong led the remnants of the six towns he had purchased and met Yuwen and his son who wanted to see him.

Ge Rong was overjoyed. He quickly met Yuwen Gong and held a night talk with him. He then appointed Yuwen Gong as the deputy general of Shanggu County and gave the remnants of the six towns he bought to Yuwen Gong, who trained them as soldiers. Ge Rong had always been despised by Yang Jin, the governor of Dingzhou. A deputy governor of a state should have worked in the state capital with the governor and served as the governor's assistant.

However, Yang Jin sent Ge Rong to garrison outside the city. When the Rouran people swept into Yanzhou some time ago, he sent Ge Rong to garrison near Zuoren City in the north of Dingzhou.

In short, Yang Jin would drive Ge Rong out of the city whenever he had the chance. The whole Dingzhou knew about his disgust for Ge Rong, so the officials in Dingzhou all looked down on Ge Rong.

Ge Rong did not treat the people of the Six Garrisons as slaves. This news spread quickly, and some of the remaining people of the Six Garrisons took the opportunity to escape, and were all placed in the army by Ge Rong.

Yuwen Tai, the youngest son of Yuwen Gong, was very worried about this.

Yuwen Tai said to his brother Yuwen Luosheng:

"Ge Biejia gathered the troops from the six garrisons, and his plan is not small."

But Yuwen Luosheng had just been appointed as a lieutenant, and he said indifferently:
"Ge Biejia was born in the Six Garrisons. He trained us Six Garrisons' talents into county soldiers out of sympathy. My father and I have received great favors, and we must die for him."

Yuwen Tai was young, and seeing that his father and brother were determined to join Ge Rong, he stopped talking about this topic.
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Yanzhou, Shanggu County.

The six towns are divided into the east three towns and the west three towns.

Most of the people in the three towns of Woye, Huaishuo and Wuchuan followed Po Liu Han Baling in the uprising, but the three towns of Fuming, Rouxuan and Huaihuang were relatively far away from the three western towns, and they all killed their town commanders and rebelled, and did not have time to join Po Liu Han Baling's rebel army.

Therefore, most of the remnants of the Six Garrisons that Yang Yu brought to resettle were from the Western Three Garrisons, while the people of the Six Garrisons in the Eastern Three Garrisons migrated from the Six Garrisons to the interior of the Great Wall after the defeat of Po Liu Han Baling.

Shanggu County is the starting point of the Northern Great Wall of Yan State. It is the key passage from Yanzhou to the northern border, and it is also the passage for the Rouran people to plunder and move southward.

Now the Rouran people have retreated, but after the imperial court withdrew the Six Garrisons and relocated the remaining inhabitants of the Six Garrisons inland, Yanzhou became the northern frontier.

Those survivors of the three eastern towns who did not surrender to the government army also went south through Shanggu County, causing tremendous security pressure on Shanggu County.

In the past, Yanzhou enjoyed peace because of the Six Towns as a barrier. Shanggu was originally a strategic military location, but its military preparations were also lax.

After the defeat of the Six Garrisons, the northern border was in chaos. The governor of Shanggu County finally came up with a solution, which was to recruit the remnants of the Six Garrisons in Shanggu County to garrison Shanggu.

To put it bluntly, the government and local wealthy families paid money to recruit these survivors of the Six Garrisons to serve as thugs in Shanggu County.

Du Luozhou is actually similar to Gao Huan. Although he is just an ordinary townsman, he is kind and generous in his daily life and has accumulated a lot of popularity in Rouxuan.

The governor of Shanggu County recruited the remnants of the Six Garrisons to guard the border, and Du Luozhou was elected as the leader. He was appointed as the military commander by the governor of Shanggu County to lead the remnants of the Six Garrisons to rebuild the Great Wall defense line and resist the rebels of the Six Garrisons and the Rouran people.

Gao Huan, Dou Tai, Sima Ziru, and Gao Huan's brother-in-law Wei Jing all joined Du Luozhou's team.

Du Luozhou quickly gathered thousands of people. They repaired the ancient Great Wall, and then defeated some of the defeated soldiers of the Six Garrisons. They even took the initiative to attack and swept through several Rouran tribes that moved south, recovered the spoils seized by the Rouran, and also seized their weapons and horses.

The people of Liuzhen, who had nothing, burst out with extremely strong fighting power, like tenacious weed seeds taking root and sprouting.
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In comparison, the people of the Six Towns who migrated south from Wuyuan were much luckier.

Su Liang has been very busy these days. His main job is to resettle the people from the six towns.

According to Su Ze's order, soldiers were first recruited from the remnants of the six towns, and then they were separated and allocated to Hezhou and Lingzhou for resettlement.

The purpose of recruiting soldiers was to select those who had prestige and military power among the survivors of the Six Garrisons to prevent them from causing trouble in the local areas.

Separating them up and relocating them is also to prevent them from forming groups and causing trouble.

In addition, Su Ze also gave Han surnames to the survivors of the Six Garrisons, granted them land in Hezhou and Lingzhou, and registered them as ordinary citizens.

After this combination of punches, the survivors of the six towns who had migrated south were all grateful.

For a long time, the Six Garrisons were an outlier in the Northern Wei Dynasty and a bug in Emperor Xiaowen's Sinicization reforms.

While people in other places used Han surnames, people in the Six Garrisons still used Xianbei surnames.

While other places had the county system, the Six Garrisons still had the military household system with a military slave system.

Although both are grazing, the herders in Hengzhou pay less tax than the herders in the Six Towns. Although both are farming, the residents of Woye Town have to transport most of the grain to the town granary in the city, while the farmers in other states and counties do not need to bear such high land taxes.

To register all citizens and grant them citizenship, this is what the people of the Six Garrisons pursue!
Su Liang looked at these camps. The resettlement of 100,000 survivors of the Six Towns was an extremely arduous task, even with the cooperation of the officials sent by General Su.

Su Liang has to deal with various problems every day, and he is so tired that he can only fall asleep very late.

Su Liang had to deal with the land issues for the resettlement of the remnants of the Six Towns, local relations, seeds and livestock for next year's spring plowing, and pasture allocation.

In contrast, Su Ze only needed to come to the camp every now and then to comfort the refugees.

(End of this chapter)