The Revolt of the Three Feudatories: All-in at the start in Beijing

"Send word to the entire army: I am going on a northern expedition!"

Wu Sangui finally recovered and immediately slammed his fist on the table, ready to strike, before looking at Fang Guangchen.

"What about Shang Zhixin? Hasn't he won over Shang Kexi yet?"

Fang Guangchen felt a headache coming on. He should have launched a northern expedition when he should have. Emperor Kangxi had secured Nanjing and Wu Sangui hadn't touched Hubei or Henan. Why didn't he seize the opportunity to take action?

I'm getting old!

However, Wu Sangui treated his advisors quite well; they were good to him except for those who didn't listen to advice.

Fang Guangchen shook his head after thinking about it.

"Shang Zhixin wrote that he will place Shang Kexi under house arrest in the next few days. At that time, his troops will march out of Jiangxi. If all goes well, they will join forces with our army in the Jiujiang area to attack the main Qing army force from both sides!"

"But Shang Zhixin is untrustworthy. Unlike his father, he is a treacherous and disloyal man. If our lord suffers even the slightest setback, he will likely turn against us and surrender to the Qing immediately!"

You're a traitor! What about me?

But Lao Wu won't hold it against you.

"Enough, enough, in the end the Manchus were the real scourge!"

"If we had listened to you earlier and broken ties with the Manchus ten years earlier, they probably would have already reached the gates of Beijing, and we wouldn't have let those nomadic barbarians into the capital!"

Fang Guangchen felt even more distressed upon hearing this. In the first year of the Kangxi Emperor's reign, Wu Sangui controlled the military power of the three provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, commanding more than 300,000 battle-hardened soldiers. He had advised Wu to rebel directly.

However, Wu Sangui decided to give up.

They act on a whim!

……

Unlike the storms outside, Beijing has become increasingly prosperous in the past two or three months, with small vendors starting to appear on the streets of the outer city.

These Beijing residents, who joined the attack on the Manchu city, all made some money, and with the money they exchanged it for Hanfu (traditional Han clothing) and discarded their previous Manchu attire.

However, the 200,000 Han Chinese in Beijing still lived in the hutongs of the outer city, and only entered the inner city area when they went out to work.

Yes, hundreds of thousands of Manchu families were killed in the inner city, but the inner city was still not open to the public. Officers of the Plain Blue Army were all moved to the outer city.

Besides rewarding those who have made contributions, the main purpose of relocating wealthy households, specifically local families with a history of good deeds, is to relocate them. Not just anyone is accepted; firstly, one's family assets must exceed 50,000 taels of silver to qualify.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to survive even if I came to Beijing.

This is also learning from Emperor Wu of Han's methods.

Because this method can actually make money.

The key is that wealthy families can't refuse to go. The emperor sending you to the capital is a great honor, a sign of good fortune. Are you still not satisfied? Do you expect the emperor to draw his sword?

Currently, 500 households in Shandong, Shanxi, and Hebei have begun to migrate, all concentrated on both sides of Zhengyangmen.

These wealthy people who move to the city will need housing, right?

This house will cost money. It's a standard courtyard house with more than a dozen rooms, enough for a large family to live comfortably.

The price wasn't high either, two thousand taels of silver.

It's only ten times more expensive than the normal price.

Don't underestimate this million taels of silver. This is surplus grain in an agricultural society. A 1,500-jin (750 kg) cannon is worth no more than 1,000 taels of silver.

That's a hundred cannons.

It was enough to collapse the walls of an ordinary prefectural city.

Moreover, the profits were not limited to that. The Manchu families who lived in the new house had all been beheaded by the Han army. Some people always said that they heard ghosts howling at night and saw dark clouds covering the top of the capital during the day.

As a result, many wealthy households went to the outer city to find carpenters and bricklayers to repair the structures, or to hire monks and Taoist priests to handle the repairs. The common people who entered the inner city were there to do this.

The labor costs used by these wealthy households, plus the food and drink expenses of their employees—isn't that how the economy operates?

Upon entering the capital, one might consider acquiring property. While land is unavailable, shops are certainly possible, and these five hundred households would represent at least five hundred shops.

Once the shop is open, there will need to be employees, and the employees' families can be fed.

Emperor Wu of Han was truly a genius.

Compared to Emperor Wu of Han, the Manchus seized wealth entirely through plunder, but they did not uproot wealthy households because they would harvest them regularly.

This led to wealthy households exploiting the common people, as they were never going to lose money.

Because of this process of plundering wealth, the Manchu royal family became extremely wealthy, and the rich remained rich, but the poor suffered the most, with poverty reaching an all-time low.

At this time, perhaps the only bad thing about Beijing was that the Imperial City was still dilapidated, with many places still bearing traces of burning.

Most of the palace maids and eunuchs were dismissed.

Galdan didn't trust anything that the Qing dynasty had used!

At this time, Galdan was not in the capital, but was in Guihua City overseeing the herding of the Mongols.

The number of Mongols gathered around Guihua City has now reached a terrifying 800,000, of whom more than 200,000 are former slaves.

Although most of the cattle have been relocated, the remaining sheep and horses have grazed the grasslands around Guihua City clean, so pastures need to be arranged as soon as possible.

At the north gate of Guihua City, Galdan stood on a high platform, below whom gathered more than eight hundred soldiers and an equal number of literate Han Chinese.

"Do you know where you're taking the tribe?"

Upon hearing Galdan's question, everyone answered in unison, "Raise enough livestock and the bravest warriors according to the pastures and plans allocated by the court!"

Galdan nodded in satisfaction. These people were all meritorious, and in Hal's army, they were basically officers of the rank of colonel or above.

These eight hundred commanders, once deployed, can occupy most of the high-quality grasslands in southern Mongolia, providing not only livestock for the Han Dynasty but also excellent cavalry.

Those scholars were selected from among the lower-level intellectuals. Their role was to educate and resolve disputes among the herdsmen, and to prevent the five-year term officials from seizing power.

These scholars were also required to bring basic medical books to learn how to treat fever and shivering.

If, three years later, the tribe has a large number of newborns, a high literacy rate, and a large number of cattle and sheep, then he can enter the Han court and become a county magistrate.

The main focus of this allocation is the Horqin Grassland, with two hundred households directly assigned to it, covering the entire Tongliao City area plus the eastern part of Chifeng City.

Two hundred more thousand-household units were assigned to the entire Xilin Gol League in later generations, plus the northern region of Ulanqab City, which is already close to the northern desert.

Of the last four hundred households, three hundred were assigned to the area at the foot of the Yin Mountains, which later became Bayannur, along the Yellow River to Hohhot. This area was the most fertile pasture and the most important arable land.

Those Han Chinese were the main force here.

The remaining one hundred thousand households comprised a large area from Ningxia to Yulin, Shaanxi, which later became the Ordos Grassland, a region characterized by its fragmented grasslands.

The herders settled here not only need to graze livestock, but also frequently change pastures, and most importantly, they need to plant trees.

In later generations, the northern and northwestern parts of China suffered from severe sandstorms, requiring decades to control them. Although the results were significant, it was extremely difficult.

Now is the time before it becomes completely desertified.

Planting more trees is never a bad thing.