All Heavens and Worlds Modified History System

Chapter 84: Difficult? Then don't do it! (Please subscribe~~~)

King De’s original fief was in Dezhou.

The first King De was disdainful of Dezhou's poverty, so he asked his father, the famous Oirat student Zhu Qizhen, to change his fiefdom to Jinan Prefecture.

Like other princes, the successive kings of De, while enjoying the splendor and wealth in the palace, did not forget to use all sorts of means to annex fields everywhere and force the farmers to go bankrupt and become their tenants.

The local princes were almost all the largest landlords in the areas where they were enfeoffed.

Jinan Prefecture resisted, and Prince De even took out the palace's savings to recruit able-bodied men to defend the city.

Then they held out for three days.

"Zhu Youli." Chen Ran looked at the Prince of De who was tied up like a dumpling in front of him and couldn't help but laugh immediately. "When you sent people to the Forbidden City to rob the emperor, did you ever think about today?"

"Grand Commander, it's unfair~~~"

Unexpectedly, Prince De Zhu Youli was full of grievances and shouted loudly, "I didn't do this, it was Yu Dacheng who did it in my name!"

"Yu Dacheng?" Chen Ran put away his smile. "Where is the Governor of Shandong?"

"He fled before the siege." Zhu Laitong recounted the intelligence he had gathered. "I heard he fled to Denglai to seek reinforcements."

The local administrative divisions of the Ming Dynasty were very different from those of later generations.

For example, the Shandong Provincial Government had Denglai and other places taken away from it and put it under the jurisdiction of the Denglai Governor.

It was originally a reserve base for resisting the Jiannu, building warships, training troops to use firearms, storing food and military supplies, etc.

Strategically speaking, this arrangement by the Ming Dynasty was a rare success. Even the selection of the Governor of Denglai was very appropriate, which could be called a stroke of genius.

But the historical results are very dramatic.

This strategic reserve group was actually destroyed by its own people because of a chicken raised by a servant of the Donglin Party, because of the local gentry's extreme contempt for soldiers, and because of the arrogance of civil servants.

They forced the soldiers to rebel and took the governor hostage.

The elite troops who had been trained for many years were destroyed in an instant, and the cost of suppressing the rebellion was extremely huge.

In the end, the remaining elite troops crossed the sea and joined the Jiannu, allowing the Jiannu to gain benefits for nothing.

Not only did capable people like Sun Yuanhua lose their lives for this, but also Xu Guangqi and other capable ministers lost their power.

Thinking of this, Chen Ran immediately called Kong Youde.

"Grand Commander." Kong Youde rode over, bowed and waited for orders.

"You lead the troops to Wuqiao." Chen Ran simply ordered, "There is a local prominent family there, and they are members of the Donglin Party and are listed in the Donglin Generals Records, nicknamed 'White Stripe in the Waves', Wang Xiangchun."

Kong Youde looked confused. They were fighting a good war, why were they talking about the Donglin Party again?

Wasn't the Donglin Party already despised by the world and regarded as a gathering place for idiots?

"After you go there, just kill their entire clan. Especially Wang Xiangchun and his sons. Buy all the chickens in Wuqiao and feed them to them. Let them eat until they are full!"

In history, Kong Youde was despised by local gentry when he was in Wuqiao and was not allowed to sell things to his subordinates.

A soldier stole a chicken to eat, but he never expected that the chicken had an extraordinary origin. It was actually raised by a servant of Wang Xiangchun, a famous figure in the Donglin Party!
Even if he was just a servant, his status was much higher than that of the soldiers.

The servant told Wang Xiangchun that although he had no official status, he had a good father.

This powerful son put pressure on the government office in Wuqiao, which resulted in the soldier who stole the chicken being shot with arrows.

The soldier was humiliated and killed the servant in anger.

Wang Xiangchun's son took action again, demonstrating his powerful network in Wuqiao and killed the soldier.

This incident completely enraged the soldiers under Kong Youde's command. They coerced Kong Youde and others into launching a rebellion, which is known in history as the Xinwei Rebellion.

"I just stole a chicken."

"Fines and compensation, even beatings are fine. They have to look down on the soldiers to show how strong their local network is. The overall situation is often ruined by villains!"

It is said that the Jiannu were blessed with destiny. This is true considering that the Denglai Group was destroyed by its own people and the remaining elite crossed the sea to join the Jiannu.

Chen Ran never admitted this, but whenever he encountered any suspicious situation, he would smash it into pieces.

'God's will? Pfft!'

Wang Xiangchun was only in the Military Affairs Department, and at the end of his career he was only a Langzhong in the Examination Department of the Ministry of Personnel in Nanjing.

However, these Donglin Party members who had never even served as ministers owned large estates in Wuqiao, and their relatives were local overlords, like local emperors.

Wang Xiangchun originally lived in Jinan City, leading a comfortable life in a mansion in Baihuazhou by Daming Lake, and even took a nearby woman named Xia as his concubine.
Then Chen Ran's army arrived, and Wang Xiangchun hurriedly fled back to Wuqiao with his new concubine.

He never thought that such a lowly person like him, who had long lost his power, would actually catch the attention of the Grand Marshal's Office.

The army went straight to Wuqiao. All the connections and relationships that once made the local people despair of the powerful Wang family were destroyed in front of the army like snow in spring, and they were completely destroyed!

Before he died from eating too much chicken, Wang Xiangchun couldn't understand when he had offended the commander-in-chief and why he ended up like this.
Kong Youde strictly followed the order. After feeding Wang Xiangchun and his son chicken, he immediately swept away the local powerful gentry and took down all the local government offices, replacing them with soldiers who had retired due to injuries and fast-track students who had graduated from school.

That night, Kong Youde fell asleep peacefully in Wang Xiangchun's manor, holding his concubine named Xia.

The concubine was bold and careful, and knew how to serve a man. She made Kong Youde very happy, and he asked her name.

"My name is Xia Yuhe. There are many daughters in my family, and every generation has been named this. From now on, every generation of the girls in my family will also be named Xia Yuhe."

When the news reached Jinan Prefecture, Chen Ran laughed out loud, almost laughing to tears. "Sword goods! Move this Xia family to an island!"

After putting down the secret report, he walked out and entered the banquet hall held to welcome Sun Yuanhua.

"Greetings to the Grand Commander~~~"

Sun Yuanhua brought the civil and military officials of Denglai to pay their respects.

"Everyone, take a seat." Chen Ran sat down on the main seat and waved his hand, signaling everyone to take a seat. "I am very happy that you can abandon the dark and join the light. We can talk about other things tomorrow. I am happy tonight, just drinking!"

Yu Dacheng, the governor of Shandong, went to Denglai to ask for reinforcements.

Unexpectedly, Sun Yuanhua and others understood the general situation and directly kidnapped Yu Dacheng and sent him to Jinan Prefecture as a gift of surrender.

Chen Ran gave them face and hosted a banquet to express his gratitude.

However, after the banquet, people from the East Factory, West Factory, Jinyiwei and Supervisory Department came to the house the next day and interrogated everyone from top to bottom.

We welcome your voluntary surrender, but you will still have to collect your salary.

What Chen Ran wants is not to settle the matter by issuing an edict, but to clear out the profiteer groups that have been entrenched in the local area and have been exploiting the people for the past two hundred years.

It is easy to decide by issuing an edict, but after two or three hundred years it will be the same cycle again.

In that case, it would be better to make it difficult at the beginning.

It took more than a month to initially complete the reconstruction of government offices in various places under the Shandong Provincial Government and the cleaning up of local gentry.

The next step was to redistribute the land with veterans as the main body and landless people as the auxiliary.

Of course, this will involve counterattacks from various forces.

The gentry instigated scholars to cause trouble, arranged for clerks and yamen runners who had lost their jobs to cause sabotage, and even colluded with local bandits and horse thieves to attack retired soldiers and local civilians. Even people from the East and West Factories were attacked and killed.

The news finally came into Chen Ran's hands.

"Is it difficult to do it? Then don't do it!"

Chen Ran flipped the table. A large number of soldiers rushed out and went to various places to clean up.

Gentry, scholars, clerks, yamen runners, tax collectors, grain merchants, etc. were all locals and could not escape at all.

As for the bandits and horse thieves, they are not like the roving bandits who can run around everywhere. They also have their own strongholds and bases.

Before, when facing retired soldiers and even the guys from the East and West Factories, he might have been able to deal with them easily.

But when the army came, they all became useless.

After all, for the military, all it takes to suppress a rebellion is coordinates.

The leading generals obtained the coordinates of some town or village and marched straight to them, crushing the entire place.

The fully armed army swept through like fallen leaves in the autumn wind.

All the famous gentry, village tyrants, town tyrants, clerks, yamen runners, and bandit kings were in ruins and swept into the garbage dump.

After more than a month of pacification operations, the entire Shandong Provincial Government gradually regained stability.

Subsequent troops from Liao and northern Zhili gradually arrived and took over the garrison tasks in various places.

Except for a set of clothes, Chen Ran took away all the property of Prince De Zhu Youlie.

The land was distributed to the common people and soldiers, the houses were converted into schools, the property and grain were used as military supplies, and the servants' indentures were all burned and they each went out to find a living.

Zhu Youli, who was completely alone, went all the way to the capital under the protection of the East Factory guards. He went to a heavily guarded imperial farm outside the city, where he farmed the land and raised chickens with Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youjian.

Zhu Yuanzhang struggled his way from being a beggar to becoming an emperor, but in essence he still had the idea of ​​ruling the country with his own family.

He treats his descendants too well, and supports them with the hard-earned money of people all over the world.

Now, even the basis of people’s livelihood is not spared!

As for how the people lived their hard lives, Old Zhu probably never thought about it.

He may have forgotten that when he was young, he also asked, "Why not report to the police!"

The army continued to move south along the Grand Canal and gradually entered the area of ​​Southern Zhili.

It is still the same as before, and most places are fleeing.

After all, the world was in chaos at that time, and military men with military power gradually rose up, forming de facto separatist regimes in various places.

They may have bad character, but they still have basic discernment.

It's like knowing that the army under his command, which is said to have tens of thousands of people, actually has only a few thousand people, and among the thousands of people, there are only three to five hundred servants who can fight.

But General Chen came with tens of thousands of elite servants!
Why should we fight against tens of thousands of enemy troops with only a few hundred servants under our command?
Do you really think that everyone can be like Cao Bianjiao, who could launch a desperate attack and scare Huang Taiji so much that he fell off his horse and fled?
In fact, many people wanted to surrender to the Grand Commander, but the Grand Commander was too cruel.

Not only will their troops and territory be swallowed up in one gulp, but nothing will be left for them.

What's even worse is that the Grand Commander tortured the soldiers.
Not only will he torture his opponents to death, he will also torture those who surrender to him!
There were rumors in the capital that even the Grand Commander's father-in-law, Taishan, had been tortured.

What's even more exaggerated is that in addition to torture and taking away all property, the Grand Commander also has to evaluate the past, and those who have done these things will not even be able to save their lives.

Because of this, when the warriors from all over the country saw the commander-in-chief coming, they simply abandoned the city and ran away.

Even if I can't beat you, I can always outrun you~~~
The few who held on basically did not last more than three days.

After all, even Jinan Prefecture was only defended for three days.

Going all the way south, we finally arrived outside the city of Yangzhou.

"Grand Commander." Zhao Lujiao, who had led his troops to join the group, stepped forward with a look of shame on his face and saluted. "I have failed the Grand Commander's trust, and I am here to apologize!"

"Victory or defeat is standard issue."

When this classic exculpation was uttered, many people around him either breathed a sigh of relief or felt disappointed.

After Man Gui went north, Zhao Lushio became the second-in-command of the gradually formed military group.

Many people want to see him in trouble and take his place.

After they sat down, Chen Ran asked, "Where did Li Zicheng go?"

"Grand Commander." Zhao Lujiao hurriedly bowed and responded, "Li the thief failed to break the siege of Yangzhou, and turned around to cross the river to the south. I was ordered by the Grand Commander to stay and wait, and did not chase him across the river."

"Alright." Chen Ran said loudly, "Then let Li Chuang turn Jiangnan upside down first, and we will clean up the mess later!"

The generals laughed along, their smiles were warm and standard.

"As for Yangzhou City"

He thought of the historical city of Yangzhou, where the Qing Dynasty planned and systematically carried out a massacre after it broke into the city. The soldiers did not stop killing for ten days, and almost all the people in the city were wiped out.

He shook his head and shook off the thoughts in his mind. "What did the envoy say? Are you willing to surrender?"

"Those with some status in the city have already fled across the river." Zhao Lujiao, who arrived earlier, took on the task of explaining, "The Salt Merchants Guild is now in charge of the city."

"Salt merchant~~~"

Yangzhou City is a city that prospers because of salt.

The salt merchants who controlled the supply of salt in Lianghuai, Jiangnan and other places were truly the richest people in the world.

"Yeah." Chen Ran's voice was loud and calm. "What did they say?"

"They are willing to submit to the Grand Commander and have also expressed their willingness to contribute a large sum of money to help the Grand Commander." At this point, Zhao Lujiao raised two fingers, "Two million taels of tribute."

The generals around were all moved.

You should know that in the early years of Chongzhen, the court received only about four million taels of cash each year.

This Yangzhou salt merchant is indeed the richest man in the world.

Zhao Lujiao's critical strike was not over yet. "The head of the Salt Merchants Guild said that he is willing to pay this amount every year!"

"Hiss~~~" Some less experienced generals could not help but breathe heavily.

Wu Xiang, who was at the back of the crowd, sneered and said to his son in a low voice, "Just wait and see. The Grand Commander will definitely not allow it."

Wu Sangui was puzzled and asked, "Why? Two million taels a year."

"Because the Grand Commander likes to eat alone."

Sure enough, I heard Chen Ran ask with a smile, "What do they want?"

“The salt policy remains unchanged.”

The salt policy of Ming Dynasty initially used the "Kaizhong Method" and later changed to the "Gang Method".

The rules are complicated, but the simple explanation is that "all business related to salt is handed over to salt merchants, and these salt merchants can be hereditary!"

This is the 'salt merchant monopoly'!
Chen Ran laughed again. "Now it's two million taels per year. In the future, there will be various means and reasons to gradually reduce it. Maybe in the future, we can only pay a few hundred taels per year. I understand the means of salt merchants."

"Send someone to tell the salt merchants in the city."

He laughed at first, then put away his smile and said, "Tell them, no!"

(End of this chapter)