There is no such thing as the Kangxi and Qianlong eras

Chapter 368 Decay
Emperor Jiaqing was too young; he actually sent the Solon cavalry into the pass so quickly.

It's important to know that even before Emperor Qianlong passed away, he didn't actually use the Solon troops. This is because the Solon troops were basically pure cold weapon cavalry. Although they were indeed brave and capable in battle, their numbers were too small to deal with the White Lotus rebels who operated as guerrillas in the mountains.

Furthermore, the strategic deterrent value of the Solon troops far outweighs their practical combat value. As the last deterrent trump card of the puppet Qing dynasty, the Solon cavalry has not been deployed for almost ten years.

The most recent one was the fight against the Gurkha. In that battle, the Qing army dispatched 1000 Solon and Daur cavalrymen, killing 840 Gurkha soldiers, and then the entire Tibetan territory was recovered.

The Gurkha submitted their petition of submission, and the Shamarpa of the White Sect decreed that reincarnation was forbidden, and all disciples were to convert to the White Sect.

This is normal; the permanent population of the Tibetan Plateau is indeed very small, not to mention its fighting capacity.

This place is truly unsuitable for human habitation. Back then, when Tibet and the Tang Dynasty were both powerful, it was because the climate was warming up. Even with only a small amount of river valley land, Tibet was able to support a large population.

Later, the Tibetan Empire declined, partly due to the climate cooling down again. The limited river valleys could not support the vast Tibetan army and tribes, and the empire never recovered.

When Emperor Qianlong was alive, he never deployed the renowned Solon cavalry.

Since the White Lotus Rebellion primarily employed guerrilla warfare, deploying Solon cavalry would be ineffective; a slow and methodical approach was still necessary. This also stemmed from Emperor Qianlong's fear that the Solon cavalry, armed only with cold weapons, were outdated.

Ten years ago, it took a lot of effort to defeat the Gurkha. The results looked impressive, with a thousand cavalrymen forcing the Gurkha to surrender. But in reality, the battle was a complete mess.

We won, but it wasn't a decisive victory. We only won less than a thousand rounds in total, and the battle lasted for several months, during which we suffered a few minor defeats due to ambushes.

Fortunately, the Gurkhas were even worse, surrendering and admitting defeat quickly; otherwise, the invincible myth of the Qing Dynasty's Solon soldiers would have been shattered in one battle.

No, it should be said that it still couldn't be saved.

Because Emperor Qianlong did not dare to mobilize the Solon troops, but Emperor Jiaqing did, and he even mobilized 2000 Solon troops into the pass at once, twice the number in the Gurkha War ten years earlier, and also brought more than 10,000 Shengjing Eight Banners troops with him.

Emperor Jiaqing truly believed that the Solon soldiers were invincible and the Eight Banners of Shengjing were skilled in battle, so he placed all his hopes on them.

Henan is practically in complete chaos right now!

First, the Qing army from Zhili entered Henan, catching Liu Zhixie off guard. Fortunately, Jiaqing intervened in time, dismissing the governor of Henan, which caused a major problem in the Qing army's logistics and supplies. Liu Zhixie, who had received support from the Han, was caught off guard.

Then, the new governor, Wu Xiong Guang, was a formidable figure. Upon arrival, he seized command of the army, causing the Qing army to suffer a crushing defeat on the Henan battlefield.

They almost lost even Kaifeng, but fortunately, a new governor, Yinghe, was appointed at the end of last year, along with Grand Secretary Liu Yong as his advisor.

In addition, there were 2000 Solon soldiers and 10000 Shengjing Eight Banners soldiers, bringing the total to 12,000.

The situation in the Henan campaign finally took a turn for the better. Liu Zhixie had never encountered such daring and aggressive Qing troops, nor had he ever seen such fearless cavalry. Caught off guard, he suffered a series of defeats.

The messenger from the Han army stationed next to Liu Zhixie then noticed the presence of the Solon soldiers.

After extensive investigation, it was finally confirmed that the enemy was none other than the Solon soldiers, whom the pseudo-Qing dynasty claimed to be invincible.

Currently, the battle in Henan is in a stalemate with repeated back-and-forth fighting between the two sides.

Aside from an initial surprise attack on the White Lotus sect in Henan, the Solon troops struggled to achieve further success. While excellent cavalry are indeed invincible on plains battlefields, they are still flesh and blood, and flesh and blood can be killed.

Liu Zhixie's White Lotus Sect was indeed mostly a rabble with questionable training and combat capabilities, but don't forget that this charlatan had cannons and muskets in his hands. Although they were all junk discarded by the Han army, they were still good guns and cannons that could go toe-to-toe with the Qing army.

Discovering that the Qing cavalry were particularly capable in battle, Liu Zhixie, on the advice of the Han army messenger, quickly changed his strategy. Instead of initiating aggressive battles, he retreated to defend the city and engaged in a protracted war of attrition with the Qing army.

This left the Qing army dumbfounded!

Emperor Jiaqing's decision to send the Solon troops into the pass was intended to quickly resolve the White Lotus Rebellion in Henan, and then concentrate his forces to march south and destroy the puppet Han regime.

Now, they can't even deal with the White Lotus Sect in Henan, and they've even bogged down the Solon army in a quagmire of war there. If they withdraw the Solon army, their myth of invincibility will be shattered. If they can't even defeat the White Lotus Sect, what makes them invincible?

Continuing to get bogged down in this would be equally bad; it would not resolve the situation in Henan and would instead drain the Qing regime's finances and resources.

Moreover, the war has been going on for so long, at least two years. Even if Henan is not completely destroyed, it has suffered heavy losses in terms of population and economy.

To escape the war, a large number of people fled and became refugees. Some fled to other prefectures and counties to try their luck in making a living, while others cut off their queues and fled south to Han lands to seek survival.

More and more farmland in Henan is being abandoned. It's not just people fleeing from the battlefield who are abandoning their land; people in counties and prefectures that weren't affected by the war are also abandoning large amounts of land.

When the cannon is fired, there is a thousand taels of gold.

When fighting in Henan, the Qing army could not transport all the grain from Zhili. A considerable portion of the grain came from local grain taxes in Henan. However, the grain collected during the war was not included in the taxes that the people would have to pay later.

After paying the military rations, taxes still need to be paid later.

Because the war had dragged on for so long, the Qing dynasty's treasury was empty, and extra taxes had to be levied.

Good heavens, who could stand this?
Not only were more and more tenant farmers fleeing under the cover of night, but even many small landlords and self-cultivating farmers couldn't bear it and preferred to give up their land in order to escape Henan with their families and children.

The more people fled, the lower the average grain output in Henan became, the more additional taxes and corvée labor the Qing government had to levy, and the heavier the burden of taxes and corvée labor became.

The taxes and corvée labor became heavier, and even more people had to run around... This created a vicious cycle.

Henan is rotten!
The Jingzhou authorities sent a letter to Nie Yu in Nanjing, both to inform the Qing court that the Solon troops had been mobilized to enter the pass, and to analyze the evolving situation in Henan.

As the saying goes, "one can know the whole leopard from a single spot," the extent of the corruption in Henan was enough to roughly deduce the state of the Qing dynasty's finances and how dire the situation had become.

The analysis by the Jingzhou cabinet concluded that the Qing dynasty's national treasury was already close to matching that of the late Ming dynasty.

To be more specific, it was roughly the eighth year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign in the Ming Dynasty.

That year, the Ming Dynasty's encirclement of the peasant army began to crumble, and Emperor Chongzhen was forced to issue his first edict of self-reproach.

Of course, these were all incidental. What the cabinet really wanted to ask, or rather, what it wanted to inquire about, was when the Prince of Han would visit the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum.
Although the banner raised by the Great Han was "Overthrow the Qing and Restore the Han," rather than the "Overthrow the Qing and Restore the Ming" of the Heaven and Earth Society or the White Lotus Sect, the Ming Dynasty was ultimately the last Han Chinese dynasty, and the legitimacy of its banner was unparalleled.

Frankly speaking, in terms of the legitimacy of their banners alone, the Great Han might not even be as good as the Heaven and Earth Society...

Therefore, since the Han Dynasty had already recovered Nanjing, it had clearly changed the name of Jiangning City back to Nanjing City.

As the King of Han, it is time for him to choose an auspicious day to visit the mausoleum of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Taizu who also drove out the Tartars and restored China four hundred years ago.

Upon receiving the explicit inquiry from the cabinet, Nie Yu pondered briefly before instructing the telegraph operator in Nanjing to reply: "Agreed."

He further suggested that the various departments of the cabinet in Jingzhou should not be in such a hurry to relocate entirely; half of them could be moved first, and the other half could be moved gradually later.

When visiting the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, Nie Yu had no objection. Zhu Yuanzhang did not only expel the Tartars and restore China, but he also recovered the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, which had been lost for 455 years.

what is this concept?

The Ming Dynasty fell less than 400 years ago!

(As an aside: The Ming Dynasty did not revive the practice of funerary sacrifice. A simple search of any historical record compiled during the Ming Dynasty will not reveal such a practice. So where does it originate? It's quite simple: it comes from the unofficial history *Gongwei Jiwen*, written by a Qing Dynasty scholar.)

Furthermore, the Ming dynasty's imperial family squandered the dynasty's resources. In the late Ming dynasty, the imperial family's expenditures amounted to one-tenth of the national revenue, and they were also subject to exploitation by local officials. In contrast, in the late Qing dynasty, their expenditures accounted for a quarter of the national revenue...
(End of this chapter)