In the first year of Taiwu, July 5, Youzhou, Dai County.

At this time, in Dai County, there was a boiling of people's voices and the neighing of cattle and horses.

At this time, the famous Wuhuan and Xiongnu of Daijun, Xianbei Xiaoshuai and Han Haoqiang were all participating in the banquet held by Beizhong Lang and Lu Zhi in the shogunate.

Neither Zhang Chong nor the first frustrated professor of the Beidi military strategy expected that our Lu Zhi would not be in Changshan Pass again, but would come to Dai County.

By the way, one more thing, now Lu Zhi is no longer the general of Beizhonglang, but Dongting and Xiting jointly canonized as the general of Zhenbei, and has the right to lead You, Ji, and all wars.

In other words, the eastern and western Kyotos relinquished power over the northern lands to Lu Zhi. And Lu Zhi didn't care who was orthodox in Liangjing, he took it anyway. In this way, Lu Zhi became the first Zhenbei general with two sections and two seals since the Han Dynasty.

So why is Lu Zhi in Dai County?

The reason is not complicated, the cantonment in Changshan Pass is to guard, and the purpose of going to the place is to attack. Zhang Chong can't be destroyed only by guarding, and only by seeking greater strength can we truly eliminate the Taishan thief force that has become big.

And the Hu forces entrenched in Daidi were the foreign aid that Lu Zhi sought.

So, Lu Zhi left 25,000 troops in Changshan Pass, monitored the war in the south, and led 5,000 horsemen to cross the Taihang Mountain to the Laiyuan Valley, and then traveled from here through the Feiarc Valley, and finally went out from the Flying Fox Pass to the Weixian Basin where Dai County is located.

Here, it is the border area where the Xianbei people, the Xiongnu people, the Wuhuan people and the Han people live together.

The Weixian Basin, where Daixian is located, is the core area of the entire Daidi, and it is also the place where the royal court of the former Daiguo is located. As soon as Lu Zhi came, he used the seal of General Han Zhenbei to pass on the name of the chief of Dihao to come to the county to gather, and specially opened a market for this gathering.

Before the Daidi chieftains came to Dai County, Lu Zhi, under the guidance of the Dairen heroes, led an army of 5,000 to patrol and show off his prestige.

It's just that Lu Zhi didn't feel good about this patrol, because he felt that the Hu people here didn't seem to be as tame as they used to be. The prey that the chieftain had offered to him did not look very good.

In fact, Lu Zhi was thinking too much, because the grassland was getting colder and colder, and more and more grassland Hu people had already moved south to the Datong Basin in advance.

The dense population naturally made the prey in this area more and more scarce, so although the prey that the Hu Renhao chieftain gave to Lu Zhi was not as good as in the past, it was also the best gift they could give.

But how could Lu Zhi have such a sense of crisis just because the prey was not beautiful? It's really because he knows that the big man is irreversible.

With the division of the two capitals and the chaos of the Central Plains, the northern land has become an isolated island. Then Jizhou, as the core of the north, was increasingly invaded by the Taishan army, and the situation in the border areas became more and more difficult.

When people are weak, their confidence is insufficient, and everyone thinks that people have other thoughts.

But Lu Zhi's sense of threat is not wrong, because as the Hu people in the hinterland of the Han people recruit troops back to Daidi one after another, the situation of the Han people is also known to the Hu people, so there is really a bit of a treacherous flavor in it.

Lu Zhi had such a crisis in his heart, so he was naturally worried that the Hu people would take advantage of the fire to rob.

But fortunately, the border defense of the Han people is still stable.

In the case of the northern part of Yanmen and Dai County, where the Datong Basin is located, it borders Bingzhou and Jizhou respectively. Therefore, if the Hu people want to go south to attack the hinterland of the Han people, they will go from these two sides.

Let's talk about the passage of Daidi and Jizhou first.

If you only look at it from the map, the Dai County of Youzhou borders Zhongshan of Jizhou, and it seems that you can go anywhere.

But in fact, this area is densely covered with lofty mountains. The famous mountain ranges alone include Heng Mountain, Wutai Mountain, and Taihang Mountain.

Therefore, in fact, the connection between Daidi and Jizhou is to pass through these lofty mountains and mountains. However, there are also basins between Chongshan and Chongshan, and there are two large basins in this area.

One is the Lingqiu Basin formed between Hengshan Mountain and Wutai Mountain, and the other is the Weixian Basin composed of Taihang Mountain and Hengshan Remnant Vein.

Therefore, whoever controls the Linqiu Basin and the Weixian Basin controls the passage from Changshanguan to Daidi and the northern part of Bingzhou.

And Lingqiu, an important city in the Linqiu Basin, and Daixian in the Weixian Basin, have become battlegrounds.

And the Han army had defenses in these places.

The defense here is weaker, because of the problems left over from history, there is no Han army stationed here, and there are only some local heroes to represent the Han people. But in Lingqiu, there are still Han soldiers, who can guard the northeast passage to the Xinding Basin.

As for the Laiyuan Valley, which is located in the Taihang Mountain area, it is the hub of the Linqiu Basin and the Weixian Basin. Both sides have to pass through here in order to get out of the Hebei region east of the Taihang Mountain.

And here in the Laiyuan Valley, Lu Zhi has already garrisoned 1,000 troops, so the Wuwu Hu people went south from this area.

But the Hu people in the Datong Basin can still go south from the direction of Bingzhou, and there are two roads to go.

One is to take a road slightly west, along the eastern foot of Luliang Mountain to Yunzhong Valley, and then along Fenshui, you can reach the northern end of the Taiyuan Basin; One is a little easterly, and it is along the cliff mouth of Heng Mountain. This gap is not far northwest of Wutai Mountain, and you can reach the Xinding Basin through here.

In order to resist the Hu people from moving south from these two places and threatening the Fenshui region and Taiyuan area in the rear, the Zhao people built two passes in these two passages.

The pass on the west side is called Lou Fu Pass, and the pass on the east side is Yanmen Pass.

These two passes are the most important points in the defense of northern Xinjiang, and there have always been border soldiers stationed in them.

To sum up, the Han people's defense system in northern Xinjiang is still effective, and although the threat of the Hu people going south is there, it is not much.

It is precisely because of this stability that he, Lu Zhi, devoted his main mind to destroying the Taishan army. Otherwise, with his view of the world, he would have led his troops to attack the Hu people a long time ago.

This time, Lu Zhi came to recruit troops on behalf of him, and he also had such a thought, he wanted to recruit more strong Hu cavalry to bring to the south, so as to reduce the pressure on the defense of northern Xinjiang.

With this thought, Lu Zhi attaches more importance to this mutual market.

The more systematic mutual market between the Han people and the grassland was during the Gaozu period. After the siege of Baideng, Liu Bang began a hundred years of peace with the Huns. And what is consistent with harmony is the mutual market.

That is, the Han exchanged a huge amount of ironware, silk fabrics and other handicrafts and grain, etc., for tens of thousands of cattle and horses of the Xiongnu.

Later, even in the Han and Wu periods, this mutual market was not broken, because it was of great interest to both parties.

For the Han people, the war horse resources obtained from the mutual market were an important source of their armament, and the cattle, donkeys, and mules in the trade had a huge role in promoting the production of the Han agricultural civilization.

Therefore, the Han people are reluctant to close the mutual market.

The Hu people want to exchange markets with the Han people, is it for the pleasure of those silks? Not quite.

For the Hu people, the biggest role of the mutual market is to obtain the grain of the Han people. Relying on these grains, the upper group of the Hu people can build an army belonging to the central government and have the basis for an alliance.

Compared with the Han people, the Hu people have a huge deficiency in the accumulation of surplus wealth.

The main survival resources of the Hu people come from cattle and sheep, but these things may all freeze to death in one winter. In addition, cattle and sheep need to be constantly relocated for grazing, and if all the people under them go to graze, who will build a central authority?

Therefore, the grain obtained from the Han land became the most important material basis for the Hu people to maintain a superstructure.

It is precisely because of this that the mutual market with the Han people was completely maintained by the upper echelons of the Hu people. Those scattered steppe tribes could only trade loosely with the Han Chinese in exchange for small things.

Therefore, in order to attract the Hu people to Dai County, Lu Zhi specially opened a mutual market in Dai County, and allowed any tribe to come here to trade.

But the Hu people have the greatest demand for food in the mutual market. Does Lu Zhi have any food? No.

Now that the central government is in decline, the transfer to the border land has stopped for a long time, and now in addition to some of the grain produced by Youzhou, it can also get some grain from Hejian, Bohai and other Jizhou areas.

This amount of food supply is already stretched thin for the 30,000 troops in his hands, so how can there be surplus grain to sell to the Daidihu people?

But Lu Zhi doesn't have food, but he has iron tools. Compared with grain, iron tools are even more hot for the Hu people. After all, if you have iron tools and other tribes have grain, then other tribes are your granary.

Hu people naturally understand this truth.

But Lu Zhi sold iron weapons to Hu Ren, wouldn't he have committed a taboo in defense? Obviously worried that the Hu people would not go south to plunder, and sold iron tools to the Hu people? Isn't it stupid!

It's a pity that Lu Zhi is not stupid, on the contrary, he has first-class wisdom.

Because he understood that if the Hu people had a large number of iron weapons imported at this time, they would not aim their swords and arrows at the Han people at the first time, but at other nearby tribes.

Why?

Because the Han people are hiding behind the passes, what if you Hu people have iron weapons? It's not that you can't get in? On the contrary, when you have iron arrows, and other Hu tribes are still using bone arrows, what will you do?

Naturally, it was to rob him and annex him.

Therefore, this is Lu Zhi's "treacherous".

He used a large number of iron tools to exchange war horses with the Hu people, and then recruited a large number of Hu people to the interior. After that, the iron tools transported were rolled up in a bloody battle in the field, and the strength of the Hu people would inevitably be weakened.

The above was just what Lu Zhi thought in Jixian County, and he was even more determined when he patrolled to Dai County later.

After he learned from the mouths of some Hu people below that more and more Hu people were going south one after another, and everyone's life was difficult, Lu Zhi was more and more sure that he would implement the iron market.

Because he planned to arm these pro-Han Hu forces with iron weapons, let them serve as a defensive belt between the Hu and Han people in the grassland, and let them fight with the Shenghu in the north.

It can be said that Lu Zhi's strategy is to play all aspects clearly, and it can be said that he does not lose his reputation as the No. 1 Confucian in the North.

But Lu Zhi also understands that everything has its own development. Even if he started it all, the final result was still beyond his control.

At the beginning, the iron mutual market policy can indeed meet many of Lu Zhi's thoughts. Weaken the power of the Hu people, and make the pro-Han Hu people become the outer defense belt of northern Xinjiang.

But power has always thrived in chaos.

The chaos caused by the massive importation of iron tools did not last forever. There will always be an Erhu hero who grows up in this chaos and annexes other tribes.

At that time, the Hu people, who have iron weapons and have grown up from the war, will be even more powerful than they are now.

Do you know about these possible consequences?

Of course he does.

But that's all he has in his hand, and he doesn't sell ironware, how can he recruit a large number of Hu Qi to go south? Without such a force, how could he defeat the Tarzan thieves in the south?

In the end, Lu Zhi could only sigh:

"Knowing my sin is only spring and autumn!"

Then I put all my energy into preparing for the mutual market in the future.

Youzhou is originally a state of iron, and there are a large number of iron officials in the territory, so once Lu Zhi made up his mind to implement the policy of mutual market of iron weapons, a large number of iron tools were gathered in the past.

And over there, when they learned that the Han general Zhenbei had lifted the iron ban and wanted to exchange iron for their cattle and horses, these Hu chieftains were crazy with joy.

They even brought out all the good horses left by the tribe and prepared to trade with the Han Chinese.

In the past, in order to maintain their advantage over the Han people's war horses, the Hu people consciously united together and were not allowed to transport good horses to the Han people.

And now, in order to get more iron weapons, these Hu people can't care about it, and they have come up with good goods, vowing to take more iron weapons than the hostile forces.

Even, in order to prevent the hostile tribes from obtaining iron weapons, the Hu people have long been fighting on the road outside Dai County. And once they arrived in Dai County, they began to sing praises to Lu Zhi again.

In short, in a peaceful cheer, the exchange between Lu Zhi and the Dai Di Hu people was a complete success.

So Lu Zhi took the opportunity to hold a banquet to entertain them, and he was also ready to talk to them about the recruitment.

And when the Hu people and Lu Zhi were staggering, in the city walls on the side of the shogunate, the Hu people also drove cattle and sheep and Han officials to exchange markets.

This is the place where the Han officials are constantly registering cattle and sheep, which will be used as part of the military rations of the Zhenbei Army throughout the autumn.

Obviously, Lu Zhi had already made a military plan to completely eliminate the Taishan thieves before winter came.

After the Hu people drove the cattle and sheep into the pen, they took a bamboo chip from the Han officials, and wrote on it the number of iron tools that could be replaced. The Hu people took this bamboo chip and went to the iron warehouse in the city to get the corresponding iron tools.

Everything is well organized. Even the brave and ruthless Hu people no longer committed crimes when they saw the hateful tribes. They just want to get the iron as soon as possible, so that they don't have too many dreams at night.

As for the blood feud and feud in the back, when they bring back the iron tools to cast knives and arrows, they will naturally have revenge and revenge.

The grass market outside is peaceful, but the military government is depressed and dignified.

When Lu Zhi said that he would recruit troops from them, he still exchanged them for iron weapons. The chieftains of the Hu people were silent, they didn't want iron weapons, but if they didn't have good young men, it would be useless to have iron weapons.

Although they don't know the Han idiom of drawing wages from the bottom of the kettle, they still know that this is not a good thing.

And now that they have iron weapons, they also have to step up their expansion of power, and the requirements for manpower are also relatively large. So as soon as Lu Zhi mentioned this request, the audience was silent.

In the end, it was Lu Zhi who coughed and took the lead in breaking the solemnity.

The monthly pass is gone, family. The final battle on the Youji Plain has come to an end, and my family has given me a monthly pass, which gives me more motivation to write a magnificent epic battle.