Chapter 1600: Andong Great Development 4

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No matter how open Liu Xu's policies in Andong were, or how effective his measures, they all rested on two foundations.

The first was, of course, the recognition and support of the imperial court. Without that premise, no matter how many ideas Liu Xu had or how much strength he possessed, he could not confidently put them into practice.

Setting aside everything else, consider just one point: the strongest, most fundamental, and most reliable guarantee in the Andong region—those eighteen thousand garrison soldiers—were firmly in the hands of the imperial court. The cost of maintaining the army came from the central treasury, and military logistics were dispatched by the Ministry of War.

The second was maintaining a relatively stable environment and situation. If the Andong region remained in a constant state of turmoil, then even the best policies would become castles in the air.

And in fact, over the past five years, the Andong region could hardly be called peaceful. The source of the unrest lay in the local natives and remnant forces scattered throughout the wild mountains and dense forests. From armed migration to armed merchant caravans, without a certain foundation of military force, it was simply impossible to carry out normal farming and commercial activities in Andong—this in itself was indirect proof of how volatile the local situation was.

Of course, this was hardly surprising, and was even within the expectations of the Governor-General's office. In response, Liu Xu discussed the matter with Gao Huaide and drafted a basic, long-term public security policy.

The basic goal was to ensure the safety of the major towns under the Governor-General's jurisdiction, the stability of the armed migrants, and the security and unimpeded flow of trade routes. Clearly, this complemented Liu Xu's Andong development plan.

The Andong garrison troops also spent nearly two years before they could barely accomplish one thing: clearing out the native barbarians around the main transportation routes.

Of course, this was also because the natives, under the powerful suppression of the Han army, had no choice but to retreat and hide in the mountains and forests, shifting to outright raids and harassment.

Forces that dared to confront the Han army head-on basically no longer existed, and those that had dared to resist directly had mostly been destroyed during the Han army's initial advance into Andong.

In fact, there had been a brief period of peace in Andong, when the Han and the natives reached a fragile tacit understanding: the Han occupied the towns and plains, while the natives held the mountains, forests, and marshes.

But this fragile balance was quickly shattered as the scope of Han activity continued to expand. The most fundamental contradiction between Han and barbarian lay in the conflict over living space. With the massive influx of Han soldiers, Han settlers, and Han merchants, the impact on the region's primitive state was significant, and it fundamentally encroached upon the very soil of their survival.

The various tribes and natives of the Andong region, large and small, were no strangers to being conquered by outsiders. For thousands of years, they had existed in a state of rising and falling, annexing and being annexed, conquering and being conquered.

The most recent conquerors had been the Khitan of Liao, but under Khitan rule, they still enjoyed a great deal of autonomy. The white mountains and black waters, the wild mountains and dense forests, remained their territory, their ancestral lands.

But these Han were clearly different. Opening their gluttonous maws, brandishing steel blades and fangs, they intended to wipe them out completely—not only seizing their lands and destroying their homes, but also enslaving their tribesmen.

There was no doubt that the slave-catching practices in Andong bred hatred and intensified conflicts, but the expansion of a people could obviously not be accompanied by peace and harmony. It had to be supplemented by iron-fisted means, and what it brought to other peoples was often disaster and destruction. Even the "gentle, kind, courteous, modest, and yielding" Han settlers, once they arrived in Andong, became equally greedy and cruel—this was a contest between survival and annihilation.

Whether out of revenge or resistance, the harassment by the local barbarian tribes never ceased. Since they dared not provoke the Han army, they could only target the Han settlers and Han merchants.

And in fact, even without other reasons, the barbarians' harassment of the Han would have continued anyway. After all, these Han possessed far too many good things—grain, cloth, salt, iron, tea, and wine—all survival resources that the barbarians struggling in the wild mountains could never have enough of. For the sake of survival, burning, killing, and looting were all commonplace.

By the sixteenth year of Kaibao, driven by the increasingly frequent raids of the barbarian natives and the mounting losses suffered by Han merchants and settlers,

the Andong Governor-General's office once again organized a large-scale military suppression campaign.

This campaign was not only larger in scale and more brutal in methods, but also went deeper. According to the Governor-General's plan, they were to venture deep into the mountains to punish the enemy, resolutely and thoroughly eliminating those endlessly troublesome barbarian natives, so as to restore normal order in Andong and protect the lives and property of officials and civilians.

Of course, as the main force of the campaign, the lives of the Han army soldiers were precious. The Governor-General's office (mainly Gao Huaide) was also unwilling to send the sons of the Great Han deep into the treacherous and dangerous wild mountains and dense forests to fight the barbarians on their home turf.

Therefore, the vassal cannon-fodder troops were once again put to use. The pattern of things was always thus: for every tribe that resisted the Great Han's rule, there were bound to be those that submitted. Whether in Liaodong or Andong, there were numerous tribes under their jurisdiction that depended on the imperial court for survival—for example, the various Jurchen tribes represented by Wanyan and Dalugu.

And being conscripted for battle was precisely how these tribes survived by relying on the Great Han. For the great sweep and suppression of the sixteenth year of Kaibao, the Andong Governor-General's office directly promised that all war booty would belong to the tribes that went out to fight, and temporary trading posts were set up in the rear towns specifically for them to trade and liquidate their spoils with Han merchants.

At the same time, the cannon-fodder tribesmen participating in the sweep could also receive combat bonuses from the Governor-General's office, as well as supplies of weapons and military provisions. For many tribesmen, fighting for the Han army at least meant they could eat their fill at every meal, and they could also get new clothes, new shoes, and new weapons. The tribes that provided the men likewise received benefits from the Governor-General's office, especially trading privileges for various goods.

Enticing with profit, using barbarians to control barbarians—this strategy was one Liu Xu wielded skillfully in Andong. There was no doubt that he had been influenced by the late Emperor.

Thus, in the great Andong bandit-suppression of the sixteenth year of Kaibao, the course of the war unfolded as follows: the vassal tribesmen were responsible for scouting and attacking—all the dirty work, hard work, exhausting work, and dangerous work fell to the vassal troops—while the Han army advanced from behind to support and provide a safety net, handling the cleanup work, or sometimes not even doing the cleanup, merely holding the line in the rear, almost like spectators.

And behind the front lines of the suppression, at those temporary trading posts, a state of wartime prosperity emerged. Whenever a combat mission ended, the vassal tribesmen would bring their captured booty to trade with the gathered Han merchants, exchanging it for salt, tea, wine, cloth, and other goods, or even for the copper coins commonly used by the Han.

And the most valuable of all were clearly the captives. Whether they were able-bodied barbarian men or women and children, they were all hot commodities. The Han nobles, merchants, and even ordinary Han settlers were all very interested and willing to spend money or goods to buy them.

After several years of development, it wasn't just the sons of meritorious nobles or merchants coming to Andong who were buying people—even the armed Han settlers were participating, expanding the scope and scale of their own land reclamation. Farming entirely by oneself was too hard, and the harvest was too slow and too little; increasing labor was the most effective solution.

Morality still existed on the soil of Andong, but it applied only to fellow Han of the same race and clan.

In fact, by the seventeenth year of Kaibao, one could no longer say that Andong lacked people. Compared to able-bodied male laborers, women were the scarcer commodity—indeed, in the market, the price of a woman of marriageable age was even higher than that of an able-bodied male laborer.