Red Mansion: Seizing Jiangdong, starting with pirates

Chapter 30, Rapid Growth

However, the rebel Feng Tai quickly occupied Jinling with the force of fire and water.

After occupying Jinling, Feng Tai proclaimed himself the King of the South, bestowed titles on his meritorious men, and raised all the wealth in the city to join in the celebration.

Under Feng Tai's command, there was a man named Wu Yuan, whose courtesy name was Yuanhao.

This man was the top scorer in the 24th year of Kangning. He was dismissed by Emperor Kangning due to his ugly appearance during the palace examination. Afterwards, he could not bear the humiliation and resolutely joined the White Lotus Sect. He devoted himself to the rebellion against Daxi. He struggled for fifty years and is now over seventy years old. He has considerable prestige in the White Lotus Sect.

After seeing Feng Tai's actions, Wu Yuan urged Feng Tai not to be greedy for the prosperity of Jinling and stay in Jinling.

Nanjing was surrounded by enemies on all sides, with no strategic locations to defend. Once the imperial court reacted and assembled a large army to attack, it would surely suffer a devastating disaster.

At this time, we should take advantage of the fact that the court is not ready yet, raise troops to attack Chuzhou, and then seize the land in Huainan. Only then can we use offense as defense, advance to survive, and carve out a smooth path.

Feng Tai generally agreed with Wu Yuan's advice.

But the only thing Feng Tai found unpleasant was, what did it mean to be greedy for the wealth of Jinling?
Didn't he just confer the title of king on himself, build a princely mansion, use princely etiquette when traveling, take in many beautiful concubines, and collect millions of taels of silver?

Is this what you call greed for the wealth of Nanjing?
Feng Tai felt that if he listened to Wu Yuan's advice immediately, it would prove that he was greedy for the wealth of Nanjing. That would be too embarrassing, and he couldn't do that.

But what Wu Yuan said seemed to be correct.

So, after thinking about it, Feng Tai decided to adopt Wu Yuan's opinion, but not completely.

Feng Tai decided to delay in Jinling for a while, and then find a reason to attack Chuzhou after a while. In this way, attacking Chuzhou would be his own decision, and it would not be considered as following Wu Yuan's advice.

So Feng Tai stayed in Nanjing for half a month.

On the other side, Fang Yong led his troops to attack Sanhe County.

This was Fang Yong’s first time attacking a city, so he was fully prepared.

He did his best to make all kinds of siege facilities, equipment and tactics to the best of his ability, striving to avoid mistakes.

Then, the entire city of Sanhe County surrendered!

In fact, for Sanhe County, they did not completely believe in a traitor like Fang Yong.

But they really don't have the strength to fight against Fang Yong.

County Lieutenant Ma was one of the most famous military strategists in the entire Sanhe County. He once commanded a battle of a hundred people and led hundreds of officials to attack the unruly people who resisted paying taxes. This was the largest battle ever fought in the entire county.

As for surrendering the bandits, we would never dare to do that.

As the saying goes, when there are more than ten thousand people, there is no limit.

Looking at the huge army outside the city, like a dark cloud, County Lieutenant Ma immediately became scared.

"I have admired General Fang for a long time. Meeting him today is like seeing the sun after the clouds have cleared. My eyes are suddenly opened..."

In this way, Sanhe County surrendered to Fang Yong, and the officials and wealthy families in the city offered a large amount of money to reward the army. Fang Yong successfully occupied Sanhe County without losing a single soldier.

Of course, these surrendered people also made preparations. They let the direct members of the family escape alone with some money, so that if Fang Yong launched a massacre in the future, they would not be wiped out.

As the saying goes, a horse's bones are worth a thousand gold coins. As the first city to surrender voluntarily, Fang Yong attached great importance to it.

In order to set a good example, when taking over Sanhe County, Fang Yong gave his soldiers three rules with a serious face.

No looting.

Do not commit adultery.

Don't kill people.

Anyone who commits these three crimes will be beheaded!
That day, the army entered the city.

Fang Yong's army was built up with real food and land, not with empty promises like the White Lotus Sect, so compared with other rebel armies, Fang Yong's army was definitely disciplined. It's not to say that they didn't harm the people, but at least they didn't commit any major crimes.

Fang Yong also promptly punished some soldiers who made mistakes.

Those wealthy officials were relieved to see that Fang Yong did not take action against them.

In this way, the people in Sanhe County quickly stabilized. However, Fang Yong ordered these wealthy officials to stay in the city and not leave.

These people speculated: Fang Yong might be worried that they would tip off the government troops!
This is human nature, and the wealthy officials in the city can understand it.

Little did they know that Fang Yong treated them as fat pigs raised in the city.

After entering the city, Fang Yong immediately liberated all the laborers in Sanhe County and absorbed them into the army.

The number of troops reached 40,000.

This needs to be mentioned here.

Fang Yong’s direct troops in the water fort received one or two taels of silver in food and wages every month.

The monthly food and salary for these troops who joined later was only 500 coins, and their resettlement fee was replaced by leased land.

There is no way around it, because as the number of soldiers under his command increases, military expenditure also increases dramatically.

Xue Dacui originally had a savings of 500,000 taels of silver, most of which he used to buy grain for storage. Later, Fang Yong raided wealthy households and obtained a large amount of silver and grain, but as the number of troops and population under his command increased, the money gradually became insufficient.

Therefore, Fang Yong was also controlling the number of his troops.

He planned to stop when the number of troops reached 50,000, and send the rest of the young and strong men to the rear to take charge of farming and logistics, in simple terms, as a reserve force.

Fifty thousand soldiers is already a very large number for Fang Yong now.

The quality of the army is more important than the quantity. Fang Yong lacks generals who can command the army. If he has too many troops, chaos will occur and he will be unable to command them.

The number of 50,000 is just right and sufficient for Fang Yong’s current use.

If there is an emergency and a large number of troops are needed, he can just call up the reserve forces.

During this period, Fang Yong also encountered a small incident.

When Fang Yong led his troops past a brothel in Sanhe County, someone suddenly called him from upstairs.

"Brother Yong, save me!"

It was a little girl, and Fang Yong had some impression of her.

She is from Fangjiazhuang. When the new policy was implemented to divide the land, she and her mother were arrested by officials. Since then, there has been no news of them. Now she has been sold to a brothel.

After all, they knew each other, so Fang Yong rescued her and kept her by his side as a maid.

In the following period, Fang Yong's power continued to expand, using the previous model to spread to the surrounding areas step by step. Soon, he successively conquered the surrounding Hong County and Siyang County, and headed straight for Huaizhou City.

Among the three counties conquered by Fang Yong, the magistrate of Hong County was the most courageous. He personally organized some local militia to resist Fang Yong.

It just so happened that Fang Yong was short of money, so he used this as an excuse to start a massacre in Hong County, executing all the wealthy people who participated in the resistance and making a good recovery.

Afterwards, at the suggestion of Jia Yucun, Fang Yong sold the shops, courtyards and other properties that could not be transferred from the wealthy families who were slaughtered as rewards to those wealthy families who did not resist at low prices, and publicized it widely.

In this way, many people knew Fang Yong's style of doing things. Those who resisted would be massacred, while those who did not resist would be treated preferentially.

Those wealthy people who received rewards had to stand on Fang Yong's side.

Because they accepted Fang Yong's reward, according to the style of the Daxi court, they will definitely be counted as part of Fang Yong's camp after knowing about this matter later. This is an open conspiracy, and they can only follow Fang Yong to the end.

After all three counties were captured, Fang Yong's army successfully expanded to 50,000. The three counties were surrounded and headed straight for Huaizhou.

At the same time, Beijing.

It was snowing auspiciously, and Emperor Longqing held a banquet in the palace to entertain his ministers.

The emperor was seriously ill and could not go out, which was great news for Emperor Longqing.

Looking at his ministers and gazing at the mountains and rivers under his rule from afar, on this New Year's Day, Emperor Longqing could not help but recite a poem in this scene of thriving vitality.

"Report! Urgent report from 800 miles away, the White Lotus Religion has started an uprising, and Nanjing has fallen!"

(End of this chapter)