Late Yuan Dynasty: I am the true emperor

Chapter 405: Destruction and Rebirth, Jinhua's Surrender

After Grandpa Tao took the first dose of medicine, the group returned home. However, Tao Guangyi was worried all the way back, and became even more listless after arriving home.

The main thing was that the discovery in the clinic this time somewhat overturned his cognition. The good news was that someone had achieved his dream of flying. The bad news was that flying did not mean becoming an immortal.

In addition to this, there is also the origin of Gongshu Jin. If he is really the descendant of Gongshu and possesses mysterious powers, then does he still need to defend Jinhua?

Another thing is Lu Jin's spies, who infiltrated Jinhua a year ago, and the way he developed his spies was probably from the local people. This makes it very difficult to deal with. If they were outsiders, it would be easier to catch some of them, but the locals all have background information and can withstand investigation, so it is almost impossible to find them.

Lu Jin also has powerful weapons like artillery. Once the real fighting starts, with the spies working together inside and outside the city, won’t they definitely lose?

Moreover, as time went by, and with Lu Jin's deliberate dissemination, some news from the north gradually reached Jinhua.

Now Lu Jin occupies Jianghuai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and has cut off the Yangtze River shipping. The entire area east of Dabie Mountains has been occupied by him, basically cutting off the main land route to the south. Jingmen west of Dabie Mountains has been occupied by Xu Shouhui, and this route is also cut off. Now if the Yuan court wants to contact the south, it can either go to Fujian by sea, or take the route of Shaanxi, Hanzhong and Sichuan, or go directly to Yunnan through the snowy plateau.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Yuan court had actually lost control of half of the southern part of the country. Correspondingly, the south also lost the command of the central capital, and news was directly cut off. Even if news occasionally came in, it had almost no timeliness.

For example, this time, in order to promote the nine-level tiered tax, Lu Jin made the local officials come clean and announced some of the Yuan court's outrageous actions, such as dismissing Tuotuo and disbanding the front-line troops, so that they would lose confidence in the Yuan court and not expect it to fight back.

But there were always those stubborn landlords who were unwilling to lose their land and openly opposed the new government or even rebelled directly!

However, in core areas, such as areas north of Hangzhou, they certainly did not dare to rebel. The density of garrisons and the completion rate of officials here were still quite high. In addition, there were the newly formed internal guards and the surveillance of the people who were loyal to the Marshal's Mansion. The landlords did not dare to openly resist and could only take advantage of loopholes in secret.

However, the situation is different in frontier areas like Pujiang, which borders the Yuan court's territory in the south. It was recovered relatively late, and some officials have not yet arrived. Some counties only have a civil affairs chief but no local officials. Some are even still under military control, with military instructors performing the duties of local officials and waiting for them to take office.

Without local government to do the work, there would be no way to register the people, and the conscripted army such as the Internal Guard could not be formed for the time being. The actual control ability was certainly not comparable to those of the prefectures and counties north of Hangzhou. In addition, this place was close to the border, and if the landlords really wanted to make trouble, even if they could not defeat them, they would find a way to get into the Yuan court's territory. Therefore, it was not surprising that a rebellion broke out here.

In late February, two landlords surnamed Wang and Shi in Pujiang County planned a rebellion. Both families had more than 10,000 acres of land, and were subject to the highest tax of two-for-one. Unfortunately, these two families were nouveau riche, the kind of nouveau riche who had grown up relying on the Yuan court's tax-farming policy, exploiting the people and lending money. They had no background, and no talented students in their families.

They had no intention of taking part in Lu Jin's imperial examination, but they not only had the idea of ​​opposing the new government, but were also very bold in doing so.

Especially after several landlords took the initiative to divide up the land and donated their excess land to the government, the government also reduced the rent of government land to 40%. When this news was announced, the poor peasants in Pujiang County were shocked.

Pujiang County is located in the mountainous area of ​​central Zhejiang. It was originally a small piece of flat land in the mountains. There were not many arable lands. The two landlords, Shi and Wang, together occupied more than 30,000 acres, which was not a small amount for a county in the mountains.

Especially Wang, the worst rent this guy has is 60%, leaving only 40% for the tenants. There are also some 50-50 lands, but the tenants are required to pay two to three years of rent in advance, two deposits and one payment, three deposits and one payment. Damn it, even tenants have to pay a deposit first to cultivate the land!
The landlord surnamed Shi was even worse. Like most landlords, he shared the rent with the tenants in a 50-50 split. However, he was very good at lending money. Usury and compound interest were just the basics. He had come up with all kinds of lending methods, even using things like 'golden rooster on the shelf', which meant daily interest, 'from dusk to dawn', which meant calculating interest every other night, 'dog chasing rabbit', which was a short-term loan of three to five days with extremely high interest, 'continuous kicking', which was a method of calculating interest by the hour, and so on and so forth.
If the tenant farmers could not pay back the loan, their families would be ruined. If they really had no money to pay back, their tenants would be taken away and sold to Semite merchants as slaves. The landlord surnamed Shi had many slaves in his own home, all because the tenant farmers could not pay back the usurious loans and were forced to use their tenants as collateral.

Now, as soon as Lu Jin's officials arrived, they directly announced that the trafficking of human beings was illegal, and slaves were prohibited. All households with slaves had to change their contracts into employment contracts, pay commissions, and could not restrict the servants from staying or leaving. Violators would be punished by restricting personal freedom, kidnapping, and setting up private criminal courts.

More importantly, the new government did not recognize loans with an annual interest rate of more than 20%, let alone compound interest. This was tantamount to announcing that all the IOUs of all tenants who owed debts to the Shi family would be written off and no one would have to repay them. They could also get back family members who were forcibly taken away as slaves to pay off debts, because the new government did not allow the keeping of slaves, and it expressly prohibited the restriction of personal freedom.

Reducing the rent of government-owned land, cracking down on usury, prohibiting the trafficking of human beings, prohibiting the keeping of slaves, and adding a nine-level tax tier, almost every move hit the vital points of the Shi and Wang families. They certainly would not be willing to lose the prosperous life they had just gained, so resistance became inevitable.

However, the Shi and Wang families were the main targets of Pujiang County's new policy. In addition, these two families owned the most land in the area, so they would of course receive special attention from local officials. As a result, the two families had just started to collude and had not officially started when their tenants came to the government to report them.

Those tenants saw that the new government was on their side, abolished usury, and reduced the rent of government-owned land. They all hoped that the land of these two families could also be used as government land. In the future, they would directly farm the land for the government, and thus they could pay 10% less rent.

Upon receiving the news, the local officials immediately found Guo Zixing who was stationed there and immediately dispatched two battalions of regular field troops, nearly two thousand soldiers, to suppress the two rural landlords, which was a very decisive move.

Seeing the army coming to search their homes, the oppressed tenant farmers of the Shi and Wang families brought their own farm tools and followed them to fight. Before the regular troops of the Shengwu Army could take action, the houses of the two families were first breached by the angry tenant farmers.

The Shi and Wang families were ransacked and their homes were exterminated on the spot. Some people were beaten to death by angry tenants. Some of those who were caught were taken to the county government for public trial and sentenced severely according to the interim law. Considering the bad things these two families had done, it would not be a loss to kill them all. All the land and property of the Shi and Wang families were confiscated and designated as government land. The tenants who rented these lands had to pay 40% rent. Countless people were immediately overjoyed and enthusiastically supported the new government.

However, although these two families were destroyed, some of their relatives escaped. Some relatives who did not live together fled into the mountains in advance after receiving the news. Pujiang and Yiwu are adjacent to each other and are surrounded by mountains. It is not worth it for a large army to search the mountains for a few people. The government only issued a reward warrant and did not care about the matter anymore. It was the relatives of these two families who fled to Yiwu and brought the news from the north.

In this way, Lu Jin was implementing a new policy in eastern Zhejiang, reducing rent and interest, cracking down on usury and human trafficking, implementing a nine-level tax system, and summoning scholars from all over the country to Jiankang to take the imperial examinations. In addition, the Yuan army in Huaibei was making a big move. Tuotuo was dismissed from his post as prime minister, the Yuan army in Huaibei was disbanded on the spot, and the 200,000-strong army was completely taken over by Lu Jin. All of this news spread to Jinhua and was learned by senior Yuan court officials in Jinhua. A group of people held an emergency meeting for this, but it was mainly to complain.

Yang Hui, the inspector of eastern Zhejiang, said that Lu Jin's new policies were unpopular and there would definitely be internal unrest. The rebellions of the Shi and Wang families were examples, and there would definitely be greater unrest in the future. When eastern Zhejiang became chaotic, it would be an opportunity for the Yuan court to recover lost territory.

However, Ning Anqing, a colleague of the Privy Council, complained, "He has 300,000 troops stationed in eastern Zhejiang just to cooperate with this new policy. If two gentry start a rebellion, they can dispatch 2,000 soldiers to suppress it. With so many garrisons, almost every county has at least one regiment of their troops. What can those gentry do to make trouble? Before they can really make trouble, they will be suppressed by the rebel army." And is the rebel army's new policy really unpopular? The nine-level tiered tax was not his original idea. The former Song Taizu established a nine-level household registration system, with the rich paying more and the poor paying less. The system of paying taxes according to ability already existed in the former Song Dynasty, but it was not as harsh as his.

"Although he collected taxes ruthlessly, he allowed the division of households and land. As long as people took the initiative to divide the land and households, they could avoid paying heavy taxes. Besides, he also had the imperial examination system and vigorously promoted Han officials. Did the imperial court have these?"

Everyone fell silent for a moment. Everyone knew what the Yuan court's imperial examination was like. It was extremely unfair to the Han people, and there were only a few sessions in total. Now that Lu Jin was holding an imperial examination, he mainly promoted the Han people. What do you think the gentry and powerful people would choose?
Ning Anqing continued, "Besides, the human trafficking has long been a scourge. Do you think the imperial court doesn't want to intervene? They want to intervene but can't. Even the imperial court can only buy Mongolian refugees at the harbor to prevent them from being sold overseas. The imperial court doesn't care about the Han refugees at all. Aren't there enough Han refugees sold to Southeast Asia?
"Now, the rebels have used their 300,000-man army to force the implementation of new policies, and all the problems that the imperial court could not control have been solved."

At this point, Ning Anqing was even more disheartened and sarcastically said, "The rebels were able to deploy 300,000 troops to implement the new policy in the rear without worrying about insufficient troops on the front line, all thanks to the treacherous villains in the central government who resorted to such despicable means at such a critical moment, dismissed Prime Minister Tuotuo, disbanded the front-line army, and added 200,000 troops to the rebels out of thin air, freeing up their hands to clean up the rear!
"Let's not talk about the Red Turbans of Liu Du in Yingzhou and the Red Turbans of Xu in Anlu. Gongshu Jin of Jiankang alone has 300,000 troops in eastern Zhejiang, 200,000 troops in Huaibei who surrendered to the enemy, plus the bandit Li in Xuzhou who joined him, as well as the bandit troops in Luzhou, Anqing and other places. The total number of bandit troops is no less than 700,000!
"Gongshu Jin can produce his own armor, muskets, and artillery. When his new policies are implemented, he will win the hearts of the common people. When the imperial examinations are over, he will win the hearts of the gentry. When his armor and soldiers are replenished, he will have elite soldiers and officials. When the time comes, the 700,000 tiger-like troops that have benefited from his kindness will attack us. What can we do to stop us, Jinhua? Humph! What a stupid thing the court did!"

After Ning Anqing finished cursing, he immediately stormed out, leaving everyone looking at each other in bewilderment. The others were speechless as well. It was really hurtful that the Yuan court had done such a shameless thing by dismissing the prime minister at the last minute.

Previously, these Jinhua senior officials had been very active in training troops, raising food and fodder, strengthening city defenses, and modifying firearms, in preparation for resisting Lu Jin's attack this year and buying time for the court to counterattack and recover lost territory. However, when they learned of the court's outrageous actions, they immediately lost all their enthusiasm.

Now on this broken ship of the Yuan court, the sailors were trying their best to plug the holes, but this could not stop the captain and the first and second mates, who were chopping at the bottom of the ship with axes!

Even the imperial court has given up and handed over 200,000 troops to the rebels. Even if these local officials try harder, can they fill the bigger hole created by the imperial court?
After this meeting, the Yuan court's Jinhua high-level officials obviously began to give up, their morale was low, and they were unable to lead the troops. Ning Anqing drank all day and did not go to training.

Yang Hui is in charge of strengthening the city, and now he is too lazy to supervise the construction site.

Li Xiang was only the clerk of Wanhu Mansion. Compared with other bigwigs, he could only be regarded as a small official. Now that the Yuan court's broken ship was about to sink, and he himself was a Han Chinese, he could not help but glance at Lu Jin's ship next to him, ready to jump off the ship at any time.

Temurei, the Imperial Censor of the Southern Court, was a Mongolian. Of course, he did not want the Yuan court to sink, but the court's dismissal of Toghto was too hurtful. He thought that the prime minister must have been framed by the treacherous officials in the court. So he wrote a memorial to the emperor, trying to persuade Emperor Shun of Yuan to bring Toghto back and let him continue to preside over the situation.

But after he finished writing the memorial, he couldn't find a way to send it to the court. All the roads to the north were blocked by Lu Jin, and the sea route was not safe. He couldn't send a memorial from Yunnan to the snowy plateau for tens of thousands of miles to Dadu, right? That was too ridiculous.
So Temuris, who had already written a memorial but could not send it out, became discouraged. Although he was the Imperial Censor, what could he do at this time?

Tao Guangyi had already suffered a blow, and after this meeting, he became even more depressed after learning about the court's outrageous operations. After he had completed his Divine Fire Flying Crow and Divine Machine Arrow, he should have continued to study the imitation of muskets and artillery, but now he had no motivation. He even stopped going to the Wanhu Mansion and stayed in the Tao's Academy on the mountain all day, reading Lu Jin's book Gongshuzi over and over again.

In this way, it was the beginning of March. The spring imperial examinations in Lujin were all over, but Jinhua was still in a mess. Tao Guangyi had not been home for nearly half a month. He did not go back even after his father recovered. So his wife Zhao Yuanzhen came to him with their son.

"I went to the Wanhu Mansion to look for you, and they said you hadn't been there for half a month. The construction of the city had stopped, and Ning, the assistant minister of the Privy Council, had stopped training the troops. What happened to you? What on earth happened?"

Seeing that his son had also arrived, Tao Guangyi told him about his previous discoveries at Zhu Danxi's place, the news told by the wealthy family who had escaped from Pujiang a while ago, Lu Jin's new policies, and the Yuan court's outrageous operations, and then he spoke.

"Gongshu Jin now has 700,000 soldiers. He also has mysterious powers and can make muskets and cannons. The imperial court is still holding us back. Even if we train soldiers and build cities, can we definitely stop Gongshu Jin's army?"

After hearing this, Zhao Yuanzhen immediately put on the airs of a mistress. She was a former member of the royal family of the Song Dynasty, and a young lady from an official family. She had some knowledge and courage. Upon hearing this, she said, "Then you shouldn't be so depraved. Can you hide in this academy on the mountain and stop the 700,000-strong enemy army?"

Tao Guangyi was confused and said, "If I'm not in the academy, what else can I do?"

Zhao Yuanzhen was angry that he didn't argue and said, "It's just a change of dynasty. Since the barbarian court is unreliable, and a wise Han ruler has emerged, why don't you make plans early? Since the court is unreliable, then change it. After all, my uncle is old, and you are the head of the Tao family. Even if you don't consider others, you should at least consider this family, right?"

Tao Guangyi was stunned when he heard this, and said in disbelief, "You mean, you want me to join the thieves?"

Zhao Yuanzhen said, "You have been reading the traitor's book over and over again all day. Don't you have a plan in mind? I am just helping you make up your mind."

Tao Guangyi was stunned and looked at the book in his hand. His wife was indeed right. He did have an urge these days to find Lu Jin and personally ask him whether the records in the book were true or false. He just couldn't make up his mind. He didn't expect his wife to directly expose his thoughts.

Tao Guangyi thought for a moment and said, "But looking at the situation, Gongshu Jin probably has no plans to send troops to Jinhua in the short term. Even if I contact him now, what's the point? His troops won't come. If I contact him in advance, there's a risk of the news leaking out."

Zhao Yuanzhen pointed at his head and said, "You are so stupid. It is precisely because he did not send troops to Jinhua that you should take the initiative to contact him. Being forced to surrender when the enemy is at the gates of the city is the same as taking the initiative to contact him and help him capture a city. The credit will be the same. Even if you don't consider yourself, you should consider Ming Ge'er."

Tao Guangyi looked at his son and made up his mind, "Okay, then I'll find someone to take a letter to him and discuss how to surrender the city."

At the same time, in Jiankang, which had just finished the spring imperial examination, Lu Jin also recruited a large number of officials. Many people were admitted this time, and it was also in preparation for this year's expansion. Even the reserve officials from Shandong, Henan, Jiangxi and Anhui were recruited. At the same time, some smart talents were selected from them to form a northern intelligence network.

(End of this chapter)