Early the next morning, when he heard a knock on the door, Yuan Xi turned over and sat up, feeling angry and resentful as he woke up.
He came back very late last night, finally fell asleep, and then had a dream.
I dreamed that I was rolling over on the bed with a young woman in my arms, but I couldn't see her face clearly.
When Yuan Xi wanted to take the next step, there was a knock on the door and his dream was interrupted.
Knock it on, knock it on!
He cursed and opened the door, only to see Sun Li and his wife standing outside the door waiting.
Yuan Xi recognized this girl. She was attracted by Sun Li when she went out to harvest wheat in the city a few days ago. The two got married just a few days ago.
Yuan Xi looked at this young couple who were only 14 or 15 years old, and felt angry for no reason. The little kid already had a wife, while he, a 20-year-old prince, was still a bachelor!
He said aloud: "What are you doing here?"
Sun Li gritted his teeth and said, "I'm here to ask for help from eldest brother!"
"Big brother is leaving the city this time. Except for me, all the personal soldiers who are with him are chosen by big brother Qu. He is looking down on others!"
"Although I am young, in what way am I worse than them?"
Yuan Xi said: "Didn't I tell your mother last night?"
"This trip is dangerous, I don't take anyone with me who has never given birth!"
"You just got married, let's talk about this big fat boy!"
After hearing this, Sun Li was still unconvinced, "My eldest brother is already old and has not yet gotten married, why can't he still go to the battlefield?"
Yuan Xi suddenly became angry. He was already unbalanced, but this little brat was still rubbing salt into his wounds?
He said angrily: "Why are you so stubborn like a cow? I won't tell you anymore. Take your wife back quickly. Don't let your mother be sorry."
Sun Li muttered: "My mother said that our lives were saved by my eldest brother. If I don't follow my eldest brother, I will not repay my kindness!"
"Besides, the eldest brother is not married and has children. If something happens to him, wouldn't he be sorry for his parents?"
"dont you agree?"
He said the last words to the girl next to him. After hearing this, the girl nodded quickly.
Yuan Xi was hit hard again, and he was so angry that he went up and kicked Sun Li: "How can you talk like this? Gungun, don't bother me!"
Seeing that Yuan Xi was angry, Sun Li had no choice but to run away in despair with his wife.
Yuan Xi sighed.
To be honest, Sun Li is not too young for a soldier at fifteen years old.
In troubled times, more than half of babies will die when they are born. Until the age of fifteen, they will experience hunger, disease, natural and man-made disasters, and half will die again. Very few of them survive.
It is a very common phenomenon for villagers like Sun Li to do laundry and cooking at the age of five or six and go to work in the fields at the age of seven or eight.
If the warlords of the feudal lords raise their armies, recruitment from various places is often half forced and half lured to recruit strong men. If they can withstand a wooden spear and swing it a few times, they are already qualified soldiers.
This is also the reason why 10,000 soldiers can be recruited from a place with a population of less than 100,000.
Of course, this kind of new recruits have not been trained on the battlefield, and when they meet veterans wearing armor who have been trained well, they will be killed like melons and vegetables.
The reason why Yuan Xi is unwilling to recruit soldiers is that on the one hand, he believes that soldiers are more valuable than more elite soldiers. Such recruits will directly go to the battlefield to die, without going to farm the land and become craftsmen.
In addition, he cannot afford to feed so many mouths. With his current resources, a few hundred armored soldiers is already his limit.
When Yuan Xi read the history of the Three Kingdoms, he discovered a very cruel fact.
Whether it is soldiers or civilians, the more the better.
A rather counter-intuitive fact is that the population at the end of the dynasty was much larger than that during the Great Rule.
In ancient times, farming technology was underdeveloped and there were no chemical fertilizers. The yield per mu of land was often only about three shi.
About four hanmu is equivalent to one acre of land today, and two hanjin is equivalent to one catty today. If converted to modern times, the yield per mu of one acre of land is only about 200 catties.
Excluding taxes, ten acres of land in the Han Dynasty could produce four hundred kilograms of grain, barely enough to feed one person. This was still a situation of good weather.
In the Han Dynasty, a household had an average of five to ten people, and it took fifty acres of land to support one household, and there were often tens of thousands of households in a county.
There are often many hidden illegal households in various places, and there is not as much arable land as in later generations. The Yellow Turban Rebellion in the late Han Dynasty meant that the population was growing and there was not enough arable land. At this time, natural disasters occurred frequently and grain production was greatly reduced.
Then the only thing the farmers feared happened.
No food to eat.
This is also the most direct factor in peasant rebellions and uprisings for thousands of years.
There is a joke from a certain dynasty. It has not rained in a certain place for a year, the land has dried up, and there is no harvest. The local villagers are so hungry that they have no choice but to rebel.
Everyone selected a day, picked up their hoes and kitchen knives, and swarmed to the entrance of the village, preparing for a big fight.
At this time, it happened to be raining.
Everyone present immediately dispersed, rushed home, and went to sow seeds in the fields.
These are ordinary people. As long as they have a piece of food to eat, they will not rebel.
Therefore, the law of a dynasty is that at the end of a dynasty, when the population is large, there will be famine, the whole country will revolt, and then they will kill each other, the population will decrease, and a new dynasty will be established.
The New Dynasty had a small population but a lot of arable land, which ushered in great rule. As society developed and prospered, the population experienced explosive growth.
After hundreds of years, the population was saturated and there was not enough arable land. Then there were natural and man-made disasters, foreign invasions, and not enough food to eat, so the whole country revolted and killed each other.
A new cycle has begun again.
Therefore, rational and ruthless rulers will try to control the rate of population growth when commercial agriculture does not improve significantly.
In the years of peace, rulers often have the illusion that the world is prosperous and the more the better, so they encourage childbirth and lower the age of marriage.
By the time the population exploded and the rulers reacted, it was already too late. Natural and man-made disasters arose, thieves sprang up, and the people were coerced into rebellion.
The Yellow Turban Uprising took place in this context. When millions of Yellow Turban troops appeared in an area with a registered population of only a few hundred thousand, it really shocked Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty and his ministers who were ignorant of the situation and felt good about themselves.
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It has been ten years since the seventh year of Emperor Guanghe of the Han Dynasty (AD 184).
After ten years of war, the population in various places has dropped significantly. There is gradually no shortage of land, but another problem has arisen.
Water flows to lower place, man goes to higher position.
In areas with severe wars and disasters, the economy has completely collapsed, and they are constantly harassed by soldiers and bandits. The people are miserable, so they migrate in groups to areas with stable economies and no war.
So within ten years, the population began to slowly gather in the wealthy states.
For example, Yuan Shao's Jizhou, Tao Qian's Xuzhou, Liu Yu's Youzhou, etc.
That's right, although Youzhou is considered a bitter cold place in this world, the land is fertile and salt and iron are extremely developed.
Among them, Xuzhou has the best economy. Tao Qian managed it well and was hardly affected by the war. Many people came to settle in Xuzhou.
However, Tao Qian has already formed an alliance with Yuan Shu and Gongsun Zan, and is by no means a figure without ambition.
Even in the fourth year of Chuping (AD 193), while Cao Cao and Yuan Shu were attacking, Tao Qian sent troops into Cao Cao's Yanzhou territory and occupied the two counties of Taishan and Rencheng.
Although there are many twists and turns in this matter, Yuan Xi still believes that Tao Qian was premeditated.
Of course, Cao Cao couldn't swallow this, so he led his troops to counterattack Tao Qian, conquering more than ten cities in a row, and beating Tao Qian to the point where he could not leave the city. He did not lead his troops back to Yanzhou until the spring of the next year.
During this period, Cao Cao massacred Xuzhou, killing countless people, and the Si River was cut off.
Yuan Xi felt that in this matter, if Cao Cao did not engage in massacre, he would actually have some sense.
Unexpectedly, he vented his anger on the people. Although he could inspire the soldiers, he also formed a deadly feud with Xuzhou and resisted constantly. In later generations, until Cao Cao's death, Xuzhou was not completely stable.
What Yuan Xi has to do now is to prevent Cao Cao from using Cao Song's murder as an excuse for the second massacre.
According to records, the number of dead may be as many as 100,000.
In later generations, because too many people died in Xuzhou and other places, Cao Cao moved hundreds of thousands of people from You and Bashu to the interior. As a result, the population in the border areas was sparse, and foreigners took advantage of it, creating a situation of chaos in China.
If it weren't for this reason, Yuan Xi really didn't want to confront Cao Cao.
Cao Cao put too much pressure on him.
Unlike Liu Bei now, except for Guan and Zhang, he has almost no counselors and generals, and it takes a long time to suffer losses before he can become successful.
Although Cao Cao only has half of the state now, all the famous counselors and generals are already under his command, and they are almost complete!
But precisely because of this, Yuan Xi could not let go of this rare opportunity. If successful, he could save the lives of the people, gain fame, and form a private alliance. This would be a plan to kill three birds with one stone.
Yuan Xi wanted to see, if Cao Song and his family were still alive, how would Cao Cao attack Xuzhou without the most honorable reason of filial piety?