Nearly 10,000 people who had been recruited from around Jicheng had left Macheng, Ningcheng and Quang Ninh one after another, and they were all happy when they left, and it seemed that they had gained a lot from this trip.

Those who came out with their own wagons and ox carts were compensated higher than the original price if the carts were destroyed, and if the pack horses and oxen were seriously injured or died of disease, they received one or more horses from the army as compensation. Cattle are more expensive than horses, so farmers who die or injure cattle can be compensated for several horses.

The horses that were paid to the people were all eliminated from the army this time, and although they were not good horses with big teeth, they were still much better than the horses used by the people themselves.

Kebineng went south this time, but he lost his old capital, not only "gifted" Liu He more than 5,000 good horses from Mobei, but also more than 6,000 strong laborers, the combined value of these two is enough to offset all kinds of losses in Youzhou.

With this Xianbei good horse, Liu He just replaced the old and weak horses in the stables of various cities, and how to deal with these war horses that were eliminated by the army is also a matter that needs to be cautious.

Horses are an extremely scarce strategic resource, good horses can be used in the army as war horses, medium horses can be used as officials and common people to ride, and inferior horses can be used for ploughing land and pack goods, in short, there is no shortage of uses. Don't think that only oxen can plough the land, in fact, horses can do the same, but with less strength, before the invention and application of the Quyuan plow, many farmers in the north are using horses to pull the plow.

Looking at the entire Han Dynasty, the places where horses are produced today are none other than Xiliang and Liaodong, and the original places where horses were produced were merged with Zhou and Youzhou, but the number has decreased sharply, and some are in short supply. The horse-producing areas of Bingzhou are now controlled by the small Xianbei, the attached Southern Xiongnu, and the Hexi Qianghu, so the Han people need to pay a high price to buy them. The horse-producing area of Youzhou is in the area of western Liaoning and Lingzhi, and now it is controlled by Gongsun Zhan, and it is difficult for outsiders to set foot and interfere at all.

After some thought, Liu He decided to compensate part of the eliminated military horses to the people who came to transport grain these times, and the rest was temporarily raised in the city, and after the beginning of spring, it was distributed to the households in Shanggu and Dai County to open up wasteland and cultivate land.

In addition to capturing thousands of high-quality horses from the hands of the Xianbei people, after several battles, there were more than 3,000 horses killed and seriously injured on both sides.

The largest part of the meat is naturally horse meat, although it is not as delicious as beef, but it is also meat, and in this era of great destruction of productivity, everything that can be eaten is extremely rare, let alone horse meat that is rich in nutrients and fat. Now that it was the coldest time of winter, Liu He had the soldiers cut the horse meat into thin, long strips, then take out the salt from the warehouse, salted the horse meat, and hung it to dry so that it could be stored for a long time.

At this time, salt and pig iron were important materials under the unified control of the government, and it may be difficult for ordinary people to get a lot, but Liu He could move all the reserve salt in the warehouses of each city out for use with an order.

For this reason, Wei You also reasoned with Liu He for a long time, saying that he couldn't waste precious salt in order to marinate horse meat, but Liu He was full of words, patting his chest and promising to get the salt that he couldn't eat in a short time!

After marinating the horse meat, according to the number of heads of the garrisons in each city, Gao Liu received the equivalent of the meat peeled from seven hundred horses, Macheng received five hundred horses, Ningcheng received six hundred horses, Guangning received five hundred horses, and the remaining about a thousand horses were transported by the people who returned to Jicheng, a small part of which was used as transportation for them, and most of them were New Year's gifts from Liu He to his father.

According to the calculation that a horse can peel 400 catties of meat, the horse meat of the 800 horses that Liu He gave to his father is also more than 300,000 catties, which is definitely a valuable New Year's gift.

In addition to horse meat, there are also horse skins, horse bones, and horse internal organs, and Liu He has no waste. Among them, horse skin can be made into various leather goods, horse bones can be ground into horse bone powder for medicine after drying, and horse internal organs can also be stewed into vegetables and eaten as meat. When dealing with the horse's internal organs, Liu He also deliberately explained that all the horse liver must be left and not discarded.

After dealing with these captured live and dead horses, Liu He came to deal with the more than 6,000 captured Xianbei and young people.

Liu He's method was somewhat complicated, he did not brutally order these captives to be beheaded one by one, nor did he painstakingly educate these Xianbei people to jointly maintain the "national policy" of friendship between Hu and Han, and then give them money to go home and release them.

Liu He asked his subordinates to make statistics, and anyone who wanted to return to the tribe wrote down all the names, and then made a list, and these people were concentrated and imprisoned in Ningcheng, where Zhao Yun was stationed, waiting for Kebi, who had fled back to the grassland, to receive Liu He's letter and exchange it for money or something.

Some Xianbei captives were slaves among the tribes, and when they heard that they could stay in Youzhou, and that in the future the Han adults would take care of their food, clothing, and better than the original masters, they immediately expressed their willingness to change camps and obey the domination of the Han people in the future.

Liu He did not believe in their loyalty to such captives, but put a special mark on their faces, and prepared to raise them for a period of time, and then send them to the soon-to-open Xindu "Free Trade Center" to sell them as high-class slaves. I believe that some people who want to have cavalry will not let go of this good opportunity.

According to statistics, there are more than 4,100 Xianbei people who want to return to the tribe, and more than 2,400 Xianbei people who want to stay in Youzhou, which is almost a ratio of two to one.

After Liu He had disposed of the two most important trophies, the prisoners and the war horses, it was almost Chinese New Year's Eve, and the smell of the year in the city was getting stronger and stronger.

When the Xianbei people first attacked the city, many merchants and residents in the city fled to the Wubao and Zhuangzi in the countryside to avoid trouble, and there were a few brave ones who stayed to accompany Taifu Liu. Now that the news of Liu Hegongzi's defeat at the revenge water has spread all over Youzhou, some clever merchants have rushed back to the city, and they are ready to make a fortune from the soldiers and uncles with all kinds of daily necessities purchased from the countryside and various dock forts.

Liu He's attitude towards these returning merchants was very tolerant, neither asking them what entrance fees they charged, nor sending his subordinates to extort some benefits, but just asking his subordinates to do a good job of meticulous registration and registering, and secretly checking from house to house to find out if there were any spies involved.

Merchants have a profit-seeking side, but they also have an active market side. Now the garrison of each city is more than 5,000, which is not a small number, and after the soldiers have received their salaries, they always have to find a place to spend money, and if there are no such merchants, they will also find a way to go outside the city to the nearby market town to spend money.

In Liu He's plan, these big cities in the border fortress will not only be important military fortresses in the future, but also serve as ports for foreign trade, bringing huge profits and returns to themselves. Scholars and doctors don't like to talk about money and profits, and they think it's particularly cheesy because of the smell of copper, but Liu He never thinks so. A rich country and a strong army have always gone hand in hand, and without a strong economic and logistical support, how can a strong army be?

In order to boost morale and unite the soldiers, Liu He also gave the soldiers a holiday, allowing them to return to their hometowns to visit their families in batches, and they could also take their families with them when they returned.

Liu He had already thought about it, and after the New Year, he began to reclaim fields and land near the cities, and in the future, these fields reclaimed by the soldiers will be used as military fields under the name of the Captain of Wuhuan, and no individual or large household can forcibly occupy and buy and sell. When the time comes, Liu He will distribute fields to their families according to their rank and military exploits, and these fields will not have to pay grain rent for the first few years.

In such troubled times, only by holding the army can we have a chance to survive, and only by ensuring survival can we talk about follow-up development and construction. The most effective way to control an army is not strict military discipline or temporary rewards, but the distribution of land to the soldiers and their families! This point is still valid even after more than a thousand years, even in the nineteenth century, when we enter the era of hot weapon warfare.

It will take at least a few months for the official appointment of the imperial court, before that, Liu He can only exercise power in Daijun and Shanggu in the name of the eldest prince, although it is a bit of a "son fighting father's power", but he has nearly 30,000 soldiers and horses in his hands, and he is also equivalent to a "small one" warlord, if anyone is not satisfied, there are naturally fierce generals Zhao Yun and Sun Li to clean up the food for him.

Liu He had already thought that he would continue to follow his father's practice in the past, and not set up Taishou posts in Daijun and Shanggu, and directly issued various decrees to the counties, and restored agriculture, commerce, and handicrafts in the two places on a county basis.

This management model is called "flat" management in later generations, the biggest advantage is efficient and fast, the biggest disadvantage is that the overall planning ability of managers is very high, and it will make the managers at the top very tired.

Liu He is not afraid of being tired, nor is he afraid of not being able to manage it, and when Xian Yuyin returns from Liaodong this time, Liu He estimates that he can at least bring Tai Shici and Liu Zheng back to him, as for Wang Lie, Bing Yuan and Guan Ning, who are pretentious and high-minded, love will not come.

Liu He's civil officials currently have Li Yan, Liu Fang, and Xu Miao, and there may be Liu Zheng to join later, if Xu Miao can invite some of Lu Zhi's students out of the military capital mountain, then the civilian side is enough for the time being.

Although Liu He's previous life was not from a management background, he also knew some basic management methods and concepts, as long as he put forward some of his ideas, let Li Yan and Liu Fang help them revise and improve them to be able to keep pace with this era, it can greatly improve the efficiency of everyone's work. This is also the reason why Liu Hewei taught Li Yan and Liu Fang to learn new numeric symbols, punctuation marks, and operation symbols whenever he had free time.

Liu He didn't have too many "golden fingers" in his head, but he knew that there were some things that should not be rushed, and before he had enough resources and strength, he would push out some ideas and designs too early, which would not only not have the effect of change, but would cause greater confusion on the contrary.

PS: It feels so good to be home! By the way, I asked for a recommendation ticket.