The number of bandits in Baoyuan Mountain is a bit large.

Indeed, Baoyuan Mountain is a large mountain, or a series of peaks.

But in Zhang Xi's concept, there are only about 100 people killed by a cottage, and on the entire Baoyuan Mountain, there is a cottage on each hill, which is the den of more than a dozen bandits.

In this way, it is just a thousand people.

But Zhang Xi never expected that before December, there were more than 1,000 bandits who came down from the mountain and surrendered.

Of course, some people did not go down the mountain to surrender, but gathered their accomplices and wanted to go down the mountain to break through the obstacles of the officers and soldiers and escape. With such a person, Zhang Xi will not be soft.

How can an ordinary bandit be an opponent of the regular army.

The regular army has crossbow arrows and long ges in their hands, while the bandits can't even make a short knife in their hands.

In addition, Zhang Xi kept asking people to shout into the mountains, saying that as long as they went out of the mountain and surrendered, they would ensure the survival of these bandits, and they would not be slaughtered, anyway, they would attack the heart and besiege them, causing more and more people to choose to go down the mountain and surrender.

From the beginning of December, some people could not endure the cold and lack of food in the mountains, and successively descended the mountains to surrender, until the end of December, in Zhangxi's camp, the number of people who went down the mountain to surrender had exceeded 1,000.

Zhang Xi couldn't sit still now.

The soldiers who stayed in the camp were about 1,500 people, and it felt a bit of a loss to see the more than 1,000 bandits who had surrendered, and they had to spend food and grass to supply.

Therefore, under Deng Ai's suggestion, Zhang Xi made a reorganization and reorganization of the more than 1,000 surrendered bandits, divided them into several teams, and then sent people up the mountain to find a few salt springs near the camp, sent soldiers to guard the periphery, and then let these surrendered bandits boil salt inside.

Salt in exchange for food.

On the one hand, Zhang Xi can also have a little income subsidy, on the other hand, it is also for the bandits on the mountain to see, after you go down the mountain and surrender, there is actually no difference, it is nothing more than boiling salt, but this time it is boiling salt for the government, not for the big families.

Cook salt for the family, people don't give you any guarantees, and the food you can exchange is limited.

But if you boil salt for the government, not only will you have tents to sleep in, but you will also have soldiers to protect you, and the most important thing is that there is really a lot of food to be given.

One pound of salt can be exchanged for twenty pounds of grain Well, Zhang Xi himself feels as if he is a little black-hearted, but for the bandits, this is indeed a very big attraction.

The official price of salt in these years was one pound of salt for fifty pounds of grain, but this was to let the people exchange grain for salt, not that salt households could also get the same amount of grain.

There is no idle land in the four seas, and the farmer is starving to death, which is not new in this troubled world.

The bandits on the mountain are actually equivalent to the salt farmers raised by the family on the mountain, so the price given to them by the family is one pound of salt for ten pounds of grain.

This ratio is just to allow the bandits on the mountain to live and continue to work for the family.

Now Zhang Xi has doubled the price, which is a huge attraction to the mountain bandits.

And with the previous group of bandits who went down the mountain and surrendered as an example, the rest of the bandits suddenly began to loosen their hearts.

And the only key problem that is still restricting them from going down the mountain and surrendering is that many of them are not Han Chinese.

The 1,000 people who went down the mountain first and surrendered were basically Han Chinese, and they were basically the original salt households of Padang County.

Dahan is a salt and iron official camp, so the salt households in these years were supported by the government, giving a certain amount of support every month, and then exchanging salt for food, which is somewhat like the current piecework system.

If it is in a peaceful and prosperous era, then being a salt household, in addition to not having any freedom in life, is also very good.

But once the times of turmoil, the price of grain rises, the government collapses, and there is no one to provide for the salt households, and at the same time they do not exchange food, these salt households will be the first to survive.

These more than 1,000 people basically lost their support in a series of wars when Liu Bei entered Sichuan, and had to work for the family.

Now going down the mountain to surrender to Zhang Xi is just a change of work object, for them, there is not much difference, not to mention that Zhang Xi has given enough food.

But the remaining thousands of bandits on the mountain, they are not salt households, and even most of them are not Han Chinese, but people.

These people have no interest in being salt farmers, and they are more worried about whether the Han people are going to exterminate them.

In fact, these people were not originally from Padang County, but moved from Pasir County.

They belong to the peripheral forces of the Han people, because they have been with the Han people for a longer time, and the sinicization is more serious, except for retaining their own ancestor worship methods, there is not much difference from the Han people.

With the influx of displaced people from the north, the foreign population in Yizhou is increasing, which further compresses the living space of the people, so some people run from Pasir County to Padang County to make a living, and just in time for the salt springs in Baoyuan Mountain to be temporarily unattended, some people occupy these salt springs, exchange food and goods with the Han people under the mountain, and want to take root in this place.

Now that the Han people want to take back these salt springs, it is equivalent to cutting off their way of life, and if they go down the mountain and surrender, what will the Han generals under the mountain do to them, the people really don't know how to do it.

Therefore, the leader of the people recommended a young man who could speak well, and came down the mountain to negotiate terms with Zhang Xi.

The requirements of the people are not high, that is, they can be placed and let them have a way to live.

Anyway, their degree of sinicization is quite high, they can speak Chinese, and they can farm, as long as there is a place to place them, it is not impossible for them to go down the mountain.

But if the Han generals really don't want to give them a way out, then they have lived in the mountains since they were children, and it is not so easy for the Han generals to exterminate them, but there are many salt springs in the mountains, which is not easy to say.

Zhang Xi is depressed, I just went into the mountains to suppress a bandit, I didn't meet the family to make trouble, why did a national problem suddenly arise What should I do about this? !

Zhang Xi really has no experience in this regard, and he doesn't pay attention to the equality of everyone in these years, the difference between Han and Yi is very important, even if Zhang Xi thinks so, in case Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang don't think so, what should be done? !

Besides, in such a big place in Patong County, the problems of the big families have not been solved, the land ownership has not been redistributed, and where is the land to settle these people.

Let these people go to Tuntian and be Tuntian guests?!

That's not going to work.

The entire Jihan Dynasty, because of the support of the grain of the Chengdu Plain and the hard currency of Shu brocade, has always been quite stable, so it did not engage in tuntian in the early days.

To Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition to be stationed in Hanzhong, because of the inconvenience of transporting grain, a small-scale military camp was carried out.

Until then, the entire Liu Bei group was trying its best to maintain the number of yeoman farmers, so once it was to be resettled, it was necessary to come up with enough land.

Zhangxi really doesn't have that much land.

In desperation, Zhang Xi had no choice but to write to Zhuge Liang for help. Big guy, there are three or four thousand people here, both old and weak, and now they are asking to be attached, but I really can't accommodate it here, see if there is any way to deal with it?!

Zhuge Liang heard that there was such a good thing?!

This is a political event with a very big impact, okay, no matter how much, it must be set up as a typical propaganda.

Again, there is no land resettlement over there, but I have.

Originally, Zhuge Liang was still worried about the lack of manpower to renovate Dujiangyan, but now it's okay, and the manpower is sent to the door by himself.

Although Dujiangyan is very close to Chengdu, there are only three or four thousand people, including the old and the weak, even if they are arranged near Chengdu, they can't make waves.

Zhuge Liang asked Zhang Xi to send these people to Chengdu as soon as possible, reward them well, and then arrange them to be yeoman farmers near Dujiangyan.

In recent years, because of the disrepair of Dujiangyan, the Chengdu area has guarded this famous water conservancy project, but there are still large areas of barren farmland, and there is no one to farm.

Zhuge Liang doesn't care who these barren farmlands originally owned, as long as no one planted them, they are ownerless, Zhuge Liang used to settle and repair the people of Dujiangyan, what's the problem?!

But as long as these families are willing to pay some money to repair Dujiangyan, it will not be blocked into the current state, and there will be no barren farmland.

With Zhuge Liang's support, Zhang Xi immediately carried out propaganda to the people on the mountain, and in less than half a month, four or five thousand people came down from the mountain to surrender.

There are not only the donors, but also the homeless, the homeless who want to have arable land.

And Zhang Xi immediately put these people in place and sent five hundred soldiers to escort them, all of whom were sent to Zhuge Liang.

And then again. It's time to go back and clean up those shameless families.

Originally, Zhang Xi felt that if he solved the matter of the bandits, reoccupied the salt spring of Baoyuan Mountain, and cut off the wealth of the family, these families would definitely have a large-scale rebound.

Let's not talk about rebellion, create some turmoil and make Zhang Xi have a headache, there should be.

But the families of Patong have to say that Patong is really a good place.

There are really no large families in this place, and there is not a single representative of the family who can speak in front of Liu Bei, and they are basically branches of some big families.

And these big families were originally unwilling to easily offend the core figures of Liu Bei Group like Zhang Xi because of the development of branches.

In addition, the matter of private salt, in fact, in the eyes of the family, it is not so important.

Zhang Xi's cognition is somewhat biased.

The salt of this year is from the government.

From salt production to salt sales, the government has the final say, and the government has the final say on the price of salt, and the people and families have no pricing power.

Although some people will buy private salt, as long as the government regains control of the salt mine and reorganizes production, the price of this salt will definitely fall, and the family's private salt will not be sold.

In this way, the family has become a tool to work for the government and stabilize the price of salt.

Of course, if Liu Bei decides to delegate the right to sell official salt one day, that is, to sell salt. That's another story.

Once given the opportunity to control the pricing power of a major livelihood transaction, the Maisons will not have much to worry about.

Not to mention Zhang Xi, even Liu Bei himself, dared to touch their salt lead, and they also dared to oust him from power.

But under the salt and iron official camp policy in this era, there is no living soil for characters like Ming Yuzhen and Zhang Shicheng.

Therefore, for the family, one of the selling of illicit salt does not last long, and the other is taboo for those in power, this kind of thing, if you have the opportunity, you can do it privately and make a little money, but you will definitely not pay too much price for it.

In addition, Zhang Xi didn't want to kill all the families, let alone let these families spit out the salt profits that they had secretly swallowed before, but just tightened the rules and returned the salt profits to the government.

In this case, unless the family is short of heart, why should they fight against a county Taishou who holds military power?!

For such a small thing, if you create turmoil or directly rebel, don't go to the ancestral grave if you die, and the province will affect your family.

(End of chapter)