Wei School's Three Good Students

Chapter 204 The Mutiny in Yaodu.

In the second year of the Tongzheng era, within Yuhua Prefecture, Zhao Cheng examined a pure white porcelain bottle. This was a bottle of Herbal Elixir, which his advisors had acquired at great expense.

It is said that in recent years, the governance of the local area by Lord Xuan Chong has become so effective that it has made the whole country envious.

The land of Zhen was rich in resources and its people were prosperous. The prices of ironware and grain were lower than in other parts of Dayao, so much so that many scholars who hated Xuan Chong's tyranny gave him the label of being a woman with a soft heart.

While Zhen was undergoing reforms, Xuan Chong, disregarding the local aristocratic families, failed to win over the scholars. "It's simply not right!" Although Xuan Chong governed very well, many scions of aristocratic families still flocked to serve Zhao Cheng. This allowed Zhao Cheng to gain a profound understanding of Zhen's reforms from the perspective of the aristocratic families.

However, this was all. When Zhao Cheng wanted to exchange gold and silver jewelry for valuable strategic materials, the Zhen region implemented strategic material control measures.

Just like in the Battle of Gushou Pass, the sparrow did not plunder a single grain of food.

This was a chilling problem for Zhao Cheng. The powerful families under Wu Yuanchang were all disloyal, yet their control over strategic materials was impeccable! Xuan Chong had created a phenomenon that Zhao Cheng found hard to understand.

In Zhao Cheng's view, merchants are profit-driven and untrustworthy, and are naturally inclined to "exchange goods and services" for profit.

In the area governed by Xuan Chong, the prices of grain and ironware were extremely low, benefiting the people, who were grateful to Xuan Chong. However, merchants, seeking greater profits, would secretly make connections with external forces. Moreover, they also had local scholars under Xuan Chong's command acting as intermediaries.

Note: Even the Ming Dynasty couldn't prevent stable regions like Shanxi from supplying iron and provisions to external plundering groups. The Qing Dynasty also couldn't sever the trade links between the southeastern region and the Zheng regime. Therefore, they resorted to a drastic measure: evacuation and a maritime ban.

Any country that can "completely block trade along its borders" possesses a level of control comparable to that of a modern nation.

In the past few months, when Zhao Cheng's advisors contacted the powerful families under Xuan Chong's command and discussed businesses such as grain and ironware, each family shook their heads, indicating they dared not participate.

Because Wu Xiaoque was too tyrannical. Grain procurement was assigned to merchants in specific areas for purchase and sale, and the same applied to ironware.

Merchants in these areas can only expand their channels after their families act as guarantors, and only then will the local commercial department provide them with such channels.

If a merchant from one region has a large amount of goods flowing out of the region, merchants from other regions can report that region's share.

Furthermore, a family could only vouch for one merchant, not multiple ones. This resulted in a clear division of power among merchants in the region!

Of course, this alone wouldn't be enough! Even in the Ming Dynasty, there were travel permit policies, but collusion between officials and merchants still existed. However, Wu Xiaoque's enforcement of these policies was extremely violent!
…comparable in intensity to the US tax audits…

With a loud bang, the Liu family's gate was kicked open.

When the cruel official arrived, he shouted, "Your family has been exposed. Get ready, get ready, pack your bags and get going."

The old man of the Liu family cried out in alarm, "My lord, my family is innocent! Innocent!"

The cruel official said, "Your servant has been caught red-handed smuggling grain, and the army is demanding his return."

Old Master Liu: "That murderer is not a member of my family. I expelled him from the family three days ago!"

The cruel official laughed: "Sir, you didn't tell us you were kicking your servants out of the house!"

The eldest son of the Liu family immediately came over and slipped some money into the cruel official's sleeve. He smiled obsequiously and said, "Please be lenient."

The ruthless official chuckled and tossed the money to him. He said coldly, "Sir! It's not that I don't want to help you, but the people arresting smugglers are from the military. They have quotas. If we don't take a hundred men between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five, our own brothers will have to go to the southern border. You'd better behave yourselves. Going to the southern border isn't so bad; there's land to cultivate there."

Then the cruel official looked at the servants holding sticks and said, "Come on, hit me on the head, and I'll submit to you. But let me tell you, resisting the law will make your whole family slaves. It's easy to be registered as a slave, but it's hard to get out of it."

His irritating appearance infuriated the young master of the Liu family, who was skilled with spears and clubs, to the point that he was as furious as a blue-faced beast. The servants around him also held him back, preventing him from acting impulsively.

A few months later, the whole family set off, and the house deeds were sold to Wu Jiajun.

The Liu family wasn't the only one caught in the crossfire; five out of fifteen prominent households in the county were relocated.

…Sparrow's scheme…

Southern Xinjiang is short of manpower! If the smuggling issue cannot be thoroughly investigated, Xuanchong will relocate all personnel to Southern Xinjiang, threatening to "raze ten miles of land"!

Even those who had rendered meritorious service were not spared. They were given a "debt of leniency" and then given a local maintenance committee title, and their entire families were relocated to the reclamation area south of Lingjiang to enrich the local population.

Zhao Cheng was gathering his opportunists, and Xuan Chong was taking advantage of the situation! The goal was a major purge.

During the time Xuan Chong spent in the southern border region, his various groups of cruel officials were arresting people, causing great anxiety among the various aristocratic families and clans in the region.

Of course, Xuan Chong still left a way out for the aristocratic families: they could send literate young men from their clans to become officials, and in return, they could divide their households. Moreover, these officials had to be tied to twenty mu of clan land.

People and fields must be recorded. If someone in the clan commits a serious crime such as colluding with foreign countries, ten officials can guarantee that the case will not be pursued for the time being (this is to encourage all large clans to offer up all their young people).

Of course, if an official is unwilling to protect his own family, the official will not be implicated (this is to ensure that what large families hand over is the core of what the family can do).
In order to avoid being "purged," many aristocratic families were forced to participate in the cooperation. They began sending their disciples to serve as officials in local government offices.

In the past, these scions of aristocratic families looked down on officials who served the imperial court and local officials. They coordinated local affairs and promoted their own virtuous reputations all in the name of their own families.

As for the court's dissatisfaction? Could the court really go to the countryside to forcibly kill off powerful families in various regions just to maintain its authority?

Xuan Chong: I will not indiscriminately behead people; I only hope that you will all contribute to the great cause of the Southern Frontier.

As a result, these local powerful families found the water too cold and needed to be near the sun to warm up. — Emperor Wu of Han did just that, relocating powerful families from the traditional heartland of the six former states to remote and undeveloped areas.

Of course, Xuan Chong's approach was even more meticulous than Emperor Wu of Han's. While imposing penalties for border service, he also facilitated sending his sons to become civil servants.

However, civil servants didn't serve for free. Each son sent there had to bring twenty mu of land from his clan to become the county government's collective land. This collective land was the source of every civil servant's salary in the county government.

Parachuted-in county officials and recruited clerks and other non-staff personnel were not allowed to receive the allowance. Furthermore, each person's share was directly linked to the acreage of their land, and county officials were not allowed to misappropriate it. Moreover, for any land they brought that exceeded twenty acres but was less than forty acres, the prefectural government would supplement their annual allowance with 30% of the land as a public fund.

The land pooling system only records the total amount of land each person brings, but the specific plot of land that belongs to them cannot be determined before retirement. The state government conducts a unified land survey annually to ensure the accuracy of the plots before distributing public funds.

In other words, every instance of extra land deposited into public fields must be accounted for with absolute accuracy; it is unacceptable to fraudulently claim public funds without actually depositing the land. The purpose of issuing public funds is to ensure that higher-level state governments are always aware of the amount of public land.

Note: This system of raising funds for land to guarantee the welfare of grassroots civil servants was inspired by the clan land system established by Fan Zhongyan to ensure that families could produce scholars; however, Xuan Chong used this system to transfer it to the civil service system and turn it into local government funds to support people.

Wu Juwang remembered Xuan Chong's teachings from years ago in Bohai. He began the work of dismantling the local powerful clans. Xuan Chong said: Every hero has a weakness where he is stumped by a single penny; we cannot let the local powerful clans fill that gap.

The scions of prominent families across the land could no longer idly chat in their thatched huts; instead, they were busy clocking in and out for work. They were now being meticulously instructed on the tasks assigned by their superiors!

What makes them feel gratified is that their civil servant land, after being forcibly exchanged and integrated into a standardized large area by various powerful clans, is not subject to taxation, and their annual pay slips are printed uniformly and distributed equally.

The public land parcels allocated to civil servants are ultimately decided through collective discussion among the local civil servants; they won't allow themselves to be disadvantaged. Wu Xiaoque's army has just arrested some powerful families, and their deterrent power is undeniable!
As for the lands of local powerful families that border the public lands of civil servants, the proximity of these lands means there will be disputes over water and changes in the boundaries of irrigation canals! These are all major issues involving "employee welfare," and civil servants must pay attention to them.

The county magistrates dispatched by Wu Juwang all began to make a big splash with the new official governance system.

County Magistrate: "Investigate! Investigate thoroughly! Don't let family members investigate each other; let civil servants conduct cross-investigations!"

In this way, Xuan Chong acquired an unprecedentedly high-quality cadre team in the local area, and the finances for supporting the cadres also broke away from the traditional practice of extorting money and bribes from ordinary people.

Ultimately, the military that needed to arrest people was satisfied, the bureaucrats who were sent to manage the situation were satisfied, and even the civil servants were satisfied. After all, once they understood the rules and regulations, they realized that the money and goods they received could not be deducted in any way, and they could not be dismissed at will. This was much easier than receiving stipends at home because of the respect of their elders.

However, this will be tough on the aristocratic families.

Xuan Chong: Why don't the aristocratic families breathe air into the air? Why do they only shout outside, "Every household is clean," but why don't they rise up and resist tyranny? It's so strange.

…the cleanliness of the ground was unprecedented…

Returning to Zhao Cheng's perspective, before the second year of the Tongzheng era, he could occasionally smuggle grain from Xuanchong, but he always brought it in small batches. Without large-scale convoys for transportation, the grain that Zhao Cheng purchased was not much cheaper than the grain price in his local area.

However, two years after the Tongzheng era, with the establishment of a powerful bureaucratic system in Xuanchong, Zhao Cheng could only see disciples of aristocratic families coming over, but he could no longer obtain a batch of grain from Xuanchong's territory.

In the latter half of the following year, another group of merchants emerged who were willing to "take the risk of selling grain," but these merchants were clearly not normal. Zhao Cheng could tell that they were people Xuan Chong had deliberately sent.

Moreover, these were all unscrupulous merchants; the grain they delivered was mixed with water and sand, making the rice gritty and difficult for Zhao Cheng's soldiers to eat. Zhao Cheng, sharing the hardships with his soldiers, tasted the rice and immediately recognized the malpractice of "Wu Xiaoque" (Xuan Chong had disposed of the old grain before sending it).
These smugglers preferred to forgo gold and silver treasures and instead sought manpower.

The smugglers explained the policy: the ruler encouraged people to go to the southern border, and the government had quotas for new recruits. To ensure these quotas were allocated to households, they could overlook the activities of these small merchants carrying grain sacks. Zhao Cheng's side had no shortage of gold, silver, and other valuables; the army had seized a great deal after conquering the city, and they also had some people, which could be used to exchange for grain.

However, Zhao Cheng sensed that the current trade trends in Zhendi were deliberately orchestrated by Wu Xiaoque, concealing a sinister plot that he had not yet discovered.

Wu Xiaoque has a criminal record. For example, last year Zhao Cheng discovered that the people in his military reclamation area were raising rabbits, claiming that rabbit fur could be exchanged for grain and cotton cloth.

Zhao Cheng was well aware of Guan Zhong's strategy of seeking hegemony. He had to severely punish all the rabbit-trading farmers, but the corrupt practices continued to spread. This was because the grain and fodder cultivated by the serfs had to be handed over to the army, but rabbit pelts could be exchanged for real money. For these serfs, all they had to do was save up enough money and head west.

…Wu Xiaoque will never lose out…

Back to the present, this bottle of Herbal Rejuvenation Pill was obtained by exchanging more than a hundred able-bodied men. Zhao Cheng couldn't help but smile wryly, "Although the two sides have never met before, they have both tried to figure out each other's intentions many times. Although Wu Xiaoque is stalemate and avoids war, Que has always been preparing for war. Therefore, apart from military operations, all interactions are aimed at not suffering losses."

He returned the liquid to the public warehouse, paused, and said: It seems he won't have time for this game again.

Only after confirming that Xuan Chong was still in the south did Zhao Cheng feel at ease to continue his advance in other directions of Dayao. Within two years, he successively seized Xiangzhou and Mazhou, drawing the attention of all the feudal lords in the land.

Meanwhile, after Wu Hengyu took over Dai County, he began to advance towards the southeastern lake and marshland area, where there were refugees he had resettled from Yongzhou years ago.

After these outsiders had rested and recuperated for several years, they joined the uprising in coordination with the arrival of Wu Hengyu's army.

While Xuan Chong was still in the south for those two years, the first phase of the struggle for supremacy among warlords in the north had already passed, with more than ten battles, large and small, taking place. It's impossible to go into detail about them all.

The local warlords, who had initially been ambitious and thought "I could do it too," have now become exasperated, thinking, "Damn it! Why are you (Zhao Cheng or Wu Hengyu) chasing after me?!" and "I have so many strategists, why are their plans failing me?"

…The situation is like a pile of dung…

In the second year of the Tongzheng era, a major event also occurred in Yaodu, or more accurately, in the second year of the Ming Dynasty.

The reason was that Zhao Cheng continued to strategically approach, forcing the troops of Yuzhou to leave the capital to coordinate with the various lords in the western region.

Among the various armies defeated by Wu Hengyu in the northeast of Da Yao, there was one army called the E Family Army. This army was summoned by a certain faction in the court and stationed near the capital.

Clearly, the practice of using foreign troops to control the court gave other court officials something to think about.

Therefore, some court officials prepared to place the E family army in the court to achieve a balance, which was also secretly instructed by Emperor Ming.

Ji Yan discovered this behavior. However, upon learning that Emperor Heming was involved, he was unable to take action and could only secretly obstruct it. Consequently, due to Ji Yan's interference, the defeated army was not properly settled. This action caused a great disaster.

Years of peace led the ministers in Yaodu to have a flawed understanding of the dangers of "soldiers." They equated defeated armies with weak ones, but weak armies were not necessarily easy to bully. This "weakness" was relative to the enemy forces on the battlefield. Back in the rear, these "weak armies" were like ticking time bombs, ready to explode at any moment.

He was adept at political infighting, but during the long period of peace under the emperor, he was unaware of the dangers of war.

Even a monarch like Wu Fei, who holds the power of life and death over the various armies in the southern border, would immediately deal with any "whining" or "pouting" complaints from the troops to ensure that the army would not take any outrageous actions.

Xuan Chong: Once an army goes astray, no matter how weak the unit is, it will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. It will be disbanded and abandoned, and the relevant responsible persons will be investigated. Subsequently, other units will be checked to see if there are any problems.

Someone's trying to use troop deployment to suppress dissent? Ha! Those responsible will certainly die. But even those without responsibility, who stand idly by while these scoundrels make mistakes, will be sidelined for life!

Taking the "coup in Turkey" that Xuan Chong witnessed in his youth as an example, the number of unreliable elements that had to be purged from the civil service system was definitely more than the number of defectors in the military.

Even the cultural sphere would be subjected to a purge. Any novel or play that dared to instigate a "coup" and allow the protagonist to profit during a narrative of high-level power struggles would be sent to the frontier to be taught a lesson.

Because of the subtle influence of cultural works, some fools in the second and third generations, raised by women, may actually believe it.

Is such a dangerous thing as a coup d'état just a game played by the higher-ups?

Xuan Chong: Let's not even talk about ancient history, just modern history. During the European Wars, when the major powers were exhausted, the most dangerous situation was no longer when enemy troops reached the capital, since trench warfare had stabilized. Rather, it was the accumulated frustration and discontent in the rear that erupted within the army. In the end, Tsarist Russia was the first to explode, followed by the sailors in Germany. If the enemy hadn't collapsed first, France would have exploded too.

Even a defeated army, armed and obediently sent out to fight under orders from the central command, is still in need of appeasement. If appeasement fails, it must be quietly redeployed to a controllable area far from the city to minimize its destructive potential.

During the Ming Dynasty, the head of the court officials did something absolutely foolish. When faced with a force that was not of his own faction, he used various procedures to delay the allocation of provisions to the Yu family, but cartloads of provisions were sent to the Yu family's headquarters in the west, where they were joining forces with other armies.

Those courtiers who secretly opposed or concealed their opposition were even more foolish.

When Jiyan cut off supplies, they colluded with the E's army, informing these soldiers and increasing their resentment towards Jiyan. These ordinary soldiers had no idea about the factions in the court, and the increased resentment was all directed at Yaodu.

These desperate opposition members had hoped to intimidate the foreign troops by announcing the dire situation. Indeed, being born in Yaodu, they believed that foreign armies should obey them.

The E family army was defeated by Wu Hengyu's attack from the east. It was already an unstable black powder. The soldiers in the army were worried that Emperor Heming would shift the blame for the loss of the border.

So, on this night, in the dimly lit camp of the Evil Family Army, where even lamps couldn't be lit, a bearded man with hawk-like eyes used his sword to carve a map and marked key points such as city gates and armories with stones.

Because the Ming Dynasty officials did not take it seriously, and the lower-level officials, who had no sense of the big picture, naturally did everything they could to destroy the defeated army. Not only was their encampment located near a mass grave far from the official road, but the place where several thousand men were stationed did not even have a well, and their necessary military pay was also withheld.

And these officials from the capital region, five miles away, drank wine inside the city gates, watching the E'jia army being driven to camp on the desolate mountains. They laughed and joked with righteous indignation: "Defeated soldiers deserve to starve to death."

Time slowly passed.

On the dirt road, white lanterns hung above the city gate. A small table stood before the gate, laden with wine and fried tofu. The city gatekeeper, savoring each bite and speaking with utmost gusto, looked at the beleaguered E's army encampment: "What's wrong? These incompetent fools, defeated time and again, dare they rebel?"
On the side of the asphalt road, under the surveillance cameras lined up alongside the streetlights, an arrogant white-collar worker said: "You lowly loser in your forties or fifties who's still doing manual labor, you don't mean to stab me with a knife, do you?!"

…The Taoist priest muttered to himself: “Stab it, stab it quickly…”

On February 12th of the second year of the Heming calendar, a mutiny broke out at the very heart of Da Yao. The officials of Yao had enjoyed centuries of peace and had no experience in handling mutinies. Upon initially learning of the mutiny, they treated it as a civil uprising, dispatching yamen runners and the Demon Suppression Division to suppress it and arrest the noisy officers.

These courtiers naively believed that as long as the imperial edict was proclaimed, the rebels would realize their defeat and the leaders would obediently submit to the law.

Military mutinies and popular uprisings are fundamentally different. The primary objective of popular uprisings is to obtain essential survival resources. Even if they cause destruction, their retaliation will be focused on the rice shops that oppress them and the restaurant owners who refuse to give them leftovers. Their targets are limited to the levels they can access daily, and they will not challenge higher levels.

During the uprising, the group gathered near the checkpoints was the most organized. Once they broke through the checkpoints, they would go to the grain stores to buy food for free, and those who had enough to eat and were still strong would then besiege the government offices. At this point, the government's suppression forces only needed a few hundred men to handle the situation.

However, military mutinies are several orders of magnitude more serious than civilian uprisings.

After the E's army mutiny, the northern garrison city of Yaodu was breached. Yaodu was now wide open. Further inland were the city walls of Yaodu, located at a feng shui node below the Nine Palaces area. Most of Yaodu's inhabitants were unprotected by the city walls.

The armory, granary, and government offices in the northern garrison city were seized almost simultaneously, and the incompetent Zhanlu garrison soldiers were all beheaded; the E'jia army and its mutinous troops quickly gathered the city's resources. Meanwhile, the suppression forces assembled by the imperial court within the city had only just set out.

Half an hour later, these soldiers from Yaodu, each wearing two suits of armor, suddenly found themselves facing the dark muzzles of guns and crossbows on the road. The commander of the troops from the capital, seeing this, forced a smile and stepped forward: "Brother, what's this?"

However, before he could finish speaking, a gunshot rang out, and the officer in charge exclaimed in disbelief, "These barbarians!"

A few minutes later, all the officers and soldiers sent to suppress the enemy were turned into headless corpses, and the blood-stained armor was draped over the officers of the Evil Family Army.

Meanwhile, the E family, who were responsible for the mutiny, arrested the scion of a prominent family who was in contact with them at their manor in the capital.

The elder of this aristocratic family originally intended to conceal the truth.

At this moment, in front of the fierce and beast-like mutinous soldiers, this scion of a noble family, who had spoken eloquently and made the soldiers obey him a few days earlier, was terrified.

The scholar who had wet his pants recalled the confident words of his family a few days earlier, in which they had assured him that the E's army would be able to enter the capital. He said tremblingly, "Why has the commander summoned me here? My father is working on it for you."

However, the weathered general of the Evil Family Army, whose face was pockmarked and worn, revealed a chilling smile: "My brothers and I can't wait any longer."

Just kidding, the highest-ranking general of the E Family Army knows what the forces behind this aristocratic family want to use him for. It's nothing more than balancing the Yu Family Army, but why confront the Yu Family Army head-on? This E Family Army is under orders from the imperial court to contain the Bohai troops, which were originally the Dongshi Army. What was the Dongshi Army's specialty in its battles against the Hao Army in previous years? It was to seize cities by surprise.

They are like stray dogs; after capturing a city, they grab whatever they can and leave!
…Today, the moon in the hexagram is red, a mix of blue and some purple…

At night, under the blue, evil moonlight shining on the city wall of Yaodu, the eastern gate of Yaodu was unguarded because the gatekeeper was drunk. After the E's army passed through the gate, the moonlight turned red.

The chaotic and disorderly E family army charged directly into Yaodu. This imperial capital began to experience chaos unlike anything seen in a thousand years.

In an instant, the gates of noble families were broken down, their arrogant servants were beheaded, their young ladies were brutally raped, their treasuries were looted, and numerous pavilions were burned down. The once bustling houses along the riverbanks were now ablaze with flames, their reflections shimmering in the canal's pools.

(End of this chapter)