Chapter 1441: The Imperial Examination System was born
After Li Zicheng's death, the Yanzhou Ming army was leaderless, and the main force suffered heavy losses, so it was naturally difficult to resist Cao Cao's attack.
Cao Cao fought continuously and successfully, and in just one month, he unified the five counties of Yanzhou and 78 counties of the Three Kingdoms, surrendered 400,000 soldiers and civilians in Mount Tai, and completely ended the three-year melee in Yanzhou.
Li Zicheng's military advisor Li Yan and his nephew Li Guo led the remaining Taishan Ming army to the east to join Zhu Yuanzhang.
Li Yan and Li Guo originally wanted to cross the Yellow River and seek refuge with the Ming Dynasty, but because Yanjin Ferry was occupied by General E Lai of Cao's army, the road to Hebei was completely blocked, so they had no choice but to retreat to Xuzhou to join Zhu Yuanzhang.
Li Zicheng died in battle, Li Yan and Li Guo fled. Cao Cao selected 100,000 young and strong soldiers and civilians from Mount Tai, organized and trained them into an army, and named them "Taishan Soldiers", and their popularity suddenly increased.
The unification of Yanzhou shocked Zhu Yuanzhang of Xuzhou, Zhao Kuangyin of Yuzhou, and even Qin Hao of Luoyang.
Whether it is Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhao Kuangyin, or even Qin Hao, Yanzhou is too close to them. No one wants Yanzhou to be unified. A chaotic Yanzhou is more in their interests.
However, Cao Cao's actions were too fast. He directly cut the knot and solved Li Zicheng, and quickly unified Yanzhou within a month, without giving any surrounding forces a chance to interfere.
Now that Yanzhou has been unified, after Cao Cao reorganized 100,000 Taishan soldiers, the total force under his command is nearly 200,000, and he is no longer the Cao Cao who needs to look up to others.
Although the major princes were dissatisfied with this, they had nothing to do. Instead, they needed to win over Cao Cao to prevent him from being pushed against them.
After unifying the five counties of Yanzhou and the Three Kingdoms, plus the Yingchuan County where he started, Cao Cao already had 9 counties in his hands.
In terms of the number of counties he owned, Cao Cao was second only to Qin Hao.
But when it comes to overall strength, Cao Cao, who has 200,000 troops, looks very strong on the surface, but in fact he is just a strong man on the outside but a weak man on the inside.
The internal strife in Yanzhou was so serious that Cao Cao first fought against the four major princes of Yanzhou, and then faced off against Li Zicheng's elite Taishan soldiers in Taishan. The three-year melee not only destroyed the entire Yanzhou, but also depleted Yanzhou's foundation.
A bright one.
Yanzhou was originally the hardest hit area by the Yellow Turban Uprising. Before the Yellow Turban Uprising, it had a population of 6 million, but after the Yellow Turban failure, it dropped to 3 million. It was the most severely traumatized state among the thirteen states.
After Cao Cao defeated Yanzhou, which was unified by Li Zicheng, the population of Yanzhou was only over 1.5 million, which was only a quarter of its peak.
In just ten years, Yanzhou lost three-quarters of its total population, which was nearly 4.5 million people. This clearly shows how harmful the chaos on the battlefield can be.
Although Cao Cao defeated Li Zicheng, what he got was only a broken Yanzhou. Fortunately, he recruited 400,000 Taishan people, which restored Yanzhou's vitality a lot.
Yanzhou has a total population of 1.5 million, with a population of 400,000 Taishan people, plus Yingchuan County with more than 400,000 people, the total population under Cao Cao's command is 2.4 million.
A total population of 2.4 million supports an army of 200,000?
If Cao Cao ruled the land under his rule, he could barely afford it, but obviously except for Yingchuan County, Cao Cao's territory was extremely dilapidated, so it was naturally impossible for him to afford an army of 200,000.
Cao Cao knew that Yanzhou could not afford so many troops, but insisted on maintaining such a large number of troops. This was actually a helpless move.'
The foundation of the beaten Yanzhou is too weak, but it is in a place of four battles. As long as he shows the slightest hint of weakness, the surrounding wolves will swarm up to carve him up, so Cao Cao needs at least 200,000 troops to intimidate him.
Get out of the surrounding princes who covet him.
The 2.4 million people in Yanzhou alone could not support an army of 200,000, so Cao Cao could only implement the policy of farming to reduce the consumption caused by too many troops.
While implementing the farmland policy, Cao Cao also fully imitated Qin Hao and thoroughly promoted the "Han Tianmu System" in order to restore Yanzhou to its vitality as soon as possible.
There are basically few aristocratic families in Yanzhou now, and the aristocratic families are unprecedentedly weak, so it is naturally impossible to stop Cao Cao.
In addition to comprehensively promoting the land-acre system, Cao Cao also followed the example of Yang Guang, the Sui king of Liangzhou, and abandoned the original imperial examination system and implemented the imperial examination in Yanzhou to recruit talents.
Long before the Qiang King sent troops to attack Yang Guang, Yang Guang took the lead in proposing the imperial examination system in Liangzhou in order to recruit talents from poor families.
As soon as the imperial examination system came out, it immediately caused a sensation all over the world. Not many scholars responded to Yang Guang's call to participate. Most of them criticized Yang Guang verbally and writtenly. Only local disciples from poor families in Liangzhou responded to the imperial examination.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the system of selecting officials to promote filial piety and integrity has continued from the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to this day, but Yang Guang took the lead and was the first to break the old system. This will naturally arouse criticism from people all over the world.
Yang Guang didn't care at all about this. His reputation was not good, and it was impossible for disciples from rich families to defect to him. Only by gaining the support of disciples from poor families could they be qualified to continue participating in the struggle for hegemony.
In addition, the Yelu Abaoji of the Qiang people were about to invade. If Liangzhou could not be defended, Yang Guang's reputation would be useless. Therefore, even though he knew the consequences of implementing the imperial examination, Yang Guang resolutely chose to implement the imperial examination.
After the imperial examination system was implemented in Liangzhou, although it only attracted local disciples from poor families in Liangzhou and some disciples from poor families in Guanxi, it also greatly alleviated the problem of insufficient talents under Yang Guang's command. In addition, it attracted a Liangzhou university student.
He just came to seek refuge with him, and he was Cheng Gongying.
Cheng Gongying was originally Han Sui's military commander. After Han Sui's death, he surrendered to Cao Cao. He was appointed as a military advisor, granted the title of Marquis, and became a rare resourceful man in Liangzhou.
Cheng Gongying, who was born in a poor family, had been waiting on the sidelines in this life and had not taken refuge with Han Sui. When he saw that Yang Guang proposed the imperial examination system, which was a system for a poor family in the world, he felt that Yang Guang knew what he had been waiting for, so he immediately took the initiative to seek refuge with him.
Yang Guang.
Yang Guang had also heard of Cheng Gongying's name, and was naturally overjoyed when he learned that he had come to surrender. After a long conversation, he appointed him as a military advisor to advise him.
Later, the Qiang King Yelu Abaoji invaded, and it was Cheng Gongying who went to lobby Ma Teng and Han Sui to let them and Yang Guang abandon their old feud and form a coalition to fight against the Qiang army. However, they did not expect that the Qiang people were destroyed by a strange combination of circumstances.
Completely solved the centuries-old problem of the Han Dynasty.
Yang Guang's implementation of the imperial examination in Liangzhou attracted continuous criticism, but it had no impact on Yang Guang who was far away in Xiliang. Instead, due to the remarkable effect of the imperial examination system, he became the overlord of Liangzhou.
Other princes had many concerns and did not dare to try the imperial examination system easily, but Cao Cao had to try because he had no other choice.