Vol 2 Chapter 2635: The Battle of Southern Shu ended, and the princess arrived in Qin

Chapter 2635: The Battle of Southern Shu is over, and the princess arrives in Qin

Chapter 2631: The Battle of Southern Shu is over, and the princess arrives in Qin

 Ban Chao was naturally very happy after receiving the news that the imperial court had transferred him to the post of Hanzhong Prefect. After all, the Hanzhong Prefect had much greater power than the Fufeng Prefect.

However, Ban Chao did not take up his post immediately. Instead, he took care of all the work at hand and waited until the new Fufeng Prefect took office before taking his ten guards to Hanzhong to take up his post.

Ban Chao, the new governor of Fufeng, also knew him. He was Yang Hu, who ranked fourth in the literary examination in the same year as him.

As the fourth placer in the first civil examination, Yang Hu's starting point in his official career was not much worse than that of Ban Chao. One of the positions he held happened to be the Prime Minister of Fufeng County, but he was later promoted and transferred to Chang'an due to his political performance.

Yang Hu has accumulated enough political achievements in Chang'an, and after defeating the two prefects Liu Yong and Ban Chao, he was finally appointed as the prefect of Fufeng by the imperial court.

Yang Hu had not returned to Fufeng County for nearly a year. He was filled with emotions when he returned to the starting point of his official career. In fact, his promotion speed was not slow among his peers, but he was cheated. The class of Supernatural cannot be compared.

When Ban Chao left, Yang Hu personally went out of the city to see him off. Ban Chao smiled and cupped his hands at Yang Hu and said, "Brother Yang, I will leave this Fufeng County to you. I hope Brother Yang will treat the people of Fufeng well."

“Don’t worry, Brother Ban, I am the former Prime Minister of Fufeng County, and I have no less affection for Fufeng than you do.” Yang Hu said sternly.

Hearing this, Ban Chao left with peace of mind.

Looking at Ban Chao's leaving figure, Yang Ku's eyes were full of admiration. After all, Ban Chao was obviously born in a poor family and started out as a county magistrate like him, but he had already separated himself from other Jinshi in the same class.

They are all young heroes, and Yang Hu is naturally not willing to let Ban Chao take the lead. He wants to catch up or even surpass Ban Chao, but it is not enough to only consider political achievements, he must also achieve military exploits.

Yang Hu has begun to think about getting closer to the military, but for now he must be a good governor of Fufeng, otherwise he will have no chance to get military power.

Although Ban Chao didn't look back, he still felt Yang Ku's fiery gaze.

　　With no financial background, he is regarded as a rival and a goal to surpass by a group of elites from aristocratic families. To be honest, the pressure is quite high.

But now he no longer regards fellow Jinshi scholars as his opponents.

  Hanzhong has a special geographical location. The prefect of Hanzhong is under the control of the military and political power, so there are naturally more opportunities for meritorious service. However, ordinary prefects have no access to military power at all.

 So unless someone of the same generation has made any particularly big contributions, the gap between him and him will only get wider and wider.

When Ban Chao arrived in Hanzhong, Li Jing had already left. After all, his position was the governor of Yongliang, and the governor's office was set up in Chang'an, so it was impossible to stay in Hanzhong to work.

Although Li Jing left, he left Ban Chao with an army of 50,000 men, as well as generals such as Wang Jian, Yang Jian, and Xuanyuan.

 In addition, Li Jing had already made arrangements for the expansion of the army by 50,000 before he left.

Although the imperial court decided to replenish the lost 50,000-strong army, they recruited them from the surrendered army and the weak ones in Hanzhong. From these two points, it can be seen that the imperial court did not expect this army to be strong, as long as it could defend Hanzhong. It is enough, and it is not difficult to form such an army of 50,000.

During the Battle of Hanzhong, 28,500 Shu Han prisoners of war were captured. Excluding those prisoners who were unqualified or disabled and unable to participate in the exhibition, an army of 25,000 could probably be gathered.

From this we can also see that the quality of the Shu army’s individual soldiers is actually not low, otherwise it would not be possible

As for the remaining half of the quota, they will naturally be recruited from the Hanzhong people whose families were destroyed by the Shu army and who have hatred towards the Shu Han.

The total population of Hanzhong before the war was 450,000, but during the Second Battle of Hanzhong, 780,000 people died in the war due to Shu Han's attrition tactics. Today, there are still nearly 380,000 people. It is not difficult to recruit 25,000 people from them to serve as an army.

Just as Ying Hao expected, although the people in Hanzhong resented the Qin, they hated the Shu Han even more. After learning that the Qin wanted to recruit troops from Hanzhong and the treatment of Qin soldiers, all the Hanzhong people who hated the Shu Han spontaneously joined the army. Although revenge was only one aspect, The main reason is that the treatment of the Qin army is too good.

When Ban Chao arrived in Hanzhong, 25,000 new soldiers had been recruited and trained under Wang Jian's command, while the 25,000 surrendered troops were disrupted and reorganized by Xuanyuan.

With 50,000 main troops and 50,000 new troops, the total strength of the Qin army in Hanzhong has reached 100,000. In addition, with Yongliang and Jingbei as its back, these three states can provide support at any time. Shu Han wants to retake Hanzhong It's almost impossible.

Ban Chao didn't need to worry about military matters. Li Jing had already made arrangements for him before leaving. What he really needed to worry about was the governance of Hanzhong. After all, he was waiting for a mission to take office, and Hanzhong must be restored before the war started. Stability, and the remaining time he had was obviously not rich.

 Hanzhong currently has many problems such as food shortages, public grievances, counter-espionage, etc. The most difficult problem to solve is the problem of public grievances. After all, the pain of losing a loved one cannot be eliminated in a short time.

 Ban Chao was thinking about how to govern Hanzhong on the road. He originally planned to allocate land to the people of Hanzhong after taking office, in order to win over the people of Hanzhong, but he did not expect that the first thing he would solve after taking office was the issue of counterintelligence.

Hanzhong is the place where Li Shimin started. Even though Li Tang has been destroyed, many of Li Tang's masterpieces still remain. The bad commander Yuan Tiangang defected to Shu Han again, so most of Li Tang's intelligence network was taken over by Shu Han. .

　　Compared to Da Qin and Shu Han, the people of Hanzhong are still closer to Li Tang. After all, the period when Li Tang ruled Hanzhong was the best time for the people of Hanzhong.

The bad guys of Li Tang and Shu Han lords joined forces to sow discord among the bereaved Hanzhong people, making them even more hostile to the Qin Dynasty, and even planned two uprisings.

Although these two uprisings were unsuccessful and did not pose any threat to Da Qin's rule, if they were not handled properly, they would obviously make Da Qin even more unpopular.

Before Ban Chao took office, the Chenggu County Magistrate had already suppressed an uprising, and the way of handling it was naturally to punish those who dared to rebel and kill all those who dared to resist.

After Ban Chao took office, he saw that there was an uprising among the people in Hanzhong, and he immediately realized the seriousness of the problem. This was obviously not just a simple complaint among the people, but someone behind the scenes was manipulating the confrontation between the officials and the people of Hanzhong. The meticulous work of the Shu Han Dynasty has reached such a rampant level. If it is not stopped, it will be useless for Ban Chao to deal with other problems in Hanzhong well. After all, destruction is much easier than construction, so decisive solution starts with countermeasures.

 Ban Chao changed the way he dealt with the revolting people, from encirclement and suppression to persuasion. Moreover, he would not kill them all across the board, but only punish the bandit leaders.

Ban Chao used this method to reduce killings, and he also followed the example of the surrendered rebels and arrested a large number of Shu Han, which also improved the security of Hanzhong a lot.

With the spies problem solved and no Shu Han spies causing trouble, Ban Chao started to solve other problems, which naturally became much simpler.

Ban Chao re-measured the land in Hanzhong in a more fair way than Li Tang, and adopted the standards of Qin to allocate land to the people.

In addition, Ban Chao also argued for the people to the court and exempted those people whose relatives had died from taxes for one year.

Hanzhong now relies on Yongliang and Jingbei to supply nearly 50% of its food, and a large number of crops were burned by the Shu army's scorched earth tactics. Therefore, Ban Chao personally led the people to clear up wasteland, replant, and resume production as soon as possible. At least to ensure that The harvest will only make it self-sufficient.

Under Ban Chao's series of measures, Hanzhong, which was devastated by the war, quickly recovered, and the resentment in the people's hearts was gradually resolved, and the people of Hanzhong began to gradually shift to the side of Da Qin.

 While Ban Chao was vigorously governing Hanzhong, the war between Jiaozhou and Shunan continued.

Han Shizhong took over the command of the Nguyen-Vietnam coalition and returned to Rinan County. After resting and reorganizing, he came back again. He thought he could win by relying on his superior strength, but he did not expect that Ruan-Vietnam, two pig teammates, could not lead them at all.

With the help of Da Qin, the gap between Ruan and Yue and Chu in terms of army was no longer as big as before, but the gap in generals was not shortened much, and Han Shizhong obviously could not make up for this gap.

The battle that was clearly superior and winnable was defeated due to the general's command and suffered heavy losses. Han Shizhong also realized that he was not Ma Yuan, Zeng Guofan, Ma Wu, Ma Cheng, Lin Fengxiang, Li Kaifang, or Zeng Tianyang. Waiting for a group of opponents from Chu's famous generals.

There were really not many generals available in the Ruan and Yue countries, especially the lack of strong generals, so Han Shizhong could only ask for help from home, hoping that the imperial court could send a few generals to support him.

After Great Qin received the news, in addition to sending Li Shunchen, Lu Junyi, and Huang Xie, who also had a grudge against Chu for killing his father, to go south to Jiaozhou to support Han Shizhong, they also transferred Oyama Jinmi and Tachibana Michou from Yingzhou. Snow and five thousand Japanese soldiers.

With the support of the imperial court and Yingzhou, the combat strength of the four-nation coalition forces in Jiaozhou increased greatly. Under the command of Han Shizhong, they no longer fell into a disadvantage.

In this way, the war in Jiaozhou fell into a stalemate, but the war in southern Shu ended early.

After learning that Zhang Ren had died in battle and Hanzhong had fallen, all the senior officials of the Shu Han Dynasty, including Liu Yu, exploded.

As long as the Shu Kingdom has the land of Hanzhong, it only needs to defend Hanzhong to protect the entire Shu Kingdom.

But once Hanzhong is lost, the Shu Kingdom must deploy heavy troops in the north in order to protect itself, and also divide its troops to guard several other important roads. After all, there is not only Jiange Passage from north to south, and this will undoubtedly aggravate the situation in Shu. national defense pressure.

After Liu Yu learned the news, he decisively ordered Shen Shiqi and Li Siyuan to lead all the troops back to Jiange to ensure the safety of Shu.

Although Shen Shi returned to Jiange safely, Li Siyuan fled westward into Haizhou on the grounds that his retreat was cut off by the Qin army and he could not return to Jiange.

Liu Yuzheng was so distressed by the fall of Hanzhong and Chi You's counterattack that he had no intention of caring about Li Siyuan's fate. As long as Li Siyuan did not clearly change his flag, he could only let it go.

The fall of Hanzhong made Liu Yu more eager to regain southern Shu, but Chi You was too difficult to deal with. Even though he was unable to participate in the battle due to injuries, his outstanding command ability could still cause trouble for the Shu army.

In addition, the Chu army was firmly blocked from Shengjing Pass by Zhu Rong, and it was difficult to pose a threat to the Southern Kingdom in the short term.

At this moment, news came that Qin had expanded its army on the spot in Hanzhong, with the total strength reaching 100,000. This news also made Liu Yu completely anxious.

 At this time, the northern part of the Shu Kingdom was depleted of troops. Liu Yu was worried that the Qin army would attack Shu on a large scale because of this. After careful consideration, he had to choose to temporarily call off his troops and make a truce with the southern kingdom.

Liu Yu left Su Qin, Xing Tian and others to lead an army of 150,000 to guard southern Shu, while he led the remaining troops back to Chengdu to sit in the center to prevent the Qin army from suddenly attacking Shu.

Chi You saw that Liu Xiu had left and the Shu army was no longer attacking, so he naturally had the wisdom to stop the attack. After all, if he continued to fight, the Southern Kingdom would definitely not be able to defeat the Shu Kingdom.

Chi You also decided to cease the war, recuperate and digest the results of the war. After all, although many cities were taken away by the Shu army, most of the results of the Northern Expedition were still preserved. If these territories are not completely digested, they will never be able to become Southern help.

Aside from self-cultivation, what Chi You cared most about was probably marrying Ying Nongyu who was still in Jiaozhou, and marrying the princess of the Southern Kingdom to Da Qin as soon as possible.

Although Chi You was interested in marrying Ying Nongyu, he was not in a hurry. First, he would not be able to escape when everyone came, and second, his injuries had not yet recovered.

Third, Ying Nongyu is now the leader of the Four-Nation Alliance, and she will not be able to come to Kunming before the Jiaozhou War is over.

Chi You couldn’t marry Ying Nongyu for the time being, so he planned to send the princess of the Southern Kingdom to Da Qin first.

 (End of this chapter)