Hunan, Changsha Prefecture, Xiangxiang County, Heyetang Baiyangping.
A red flag embroidered with the four black characters "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" is currently flying over the Zeng family's old house, which symbolizes the brutal rule of the feudal landlord class in the Lotus Leaf Pond area! Zeng Guofan's old home has been occupied by the Taiping Army!
Xiao Chaogui, the Western King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was sitting grandly in the courtyard where Zeng Guofan once sat. He looked at the Zeng family members kneeling in front of him with a gloomy face. These Zeng family members should be close to Zeng Guofan. He has triangular eyes, hanging eyebrows, and high cheekbones, and he doesn't look like a good person.
Xiao Chaogui held a portrait drawn with a ball pen in his hand. He compared it there, looking at the painting for a while and the person for a while... he really couldn't tell the difference!
This ball-pen sketch of Shang's portrait was painted by Luo Yaoguo from memory. This angel has obviously never learned the "magic" of painting, although he has "triangular eyes", "hanging eyebrows", "high cheekbones" and other features There are all of them, but the old Zeng parent is not the only one like Zeng Guofan. I really can’t tell who is who?
After Xiao Chaogui led his troops to Baiyangping in Heyetang, he immediately asked his brigade lecturers Ma Baocai and Chen Ji to take the soldiers "directly under the lecturers" to arrest the "triangular eyes", "hanging eyebrows" and "high bones" The landlord soon arrested seven or eight people who looked like this. The oldest one looked to be seventy or eighty years old, and the youngest was only thirteen or fourteen years old - this couldn't be Zeng Guofan!
The remaining ones didn't look quite right, either because they were of the wrong age. Or they had too many calluses on their hands and their skin was too dark. They looked like the kind of small landowners whose families were not well-off and often had to do farm work by themselves. Xiao Chaogui After wandering around for a while, Chen Ji looked at Ma Baocai, one of the twelve disciples of Luo Yaoguo, and asked, "Baocai, Aji, have you been interrogated?"
"It's been reviewed!" Ma Baocai was short, thin and dark, and he looked bitter and resentful. Hearing Xiao Chaogui's question, he immediately said angrily, "Nothing is good, they are all rented from iron plates. The evil people who release the debts of the King of Hell and use Zeng Guofan’s trademark to oppress small farmers!"
Xiao Chaogui frowned, "I didn't ask you this... I asked if Zeng Guofan is among them?"
"No." Chen Ji, who was one of the Twelve Disciples like Ma Baocai, took the question and shook his head, "But they both have the surname Zeng, they are all from the Chinese generation, they are close relatives of Zeng Guofan, and they are both rich and unkind landlords. They are better than those in Etang. Mr. Huang is much worse!"
Chen Ji is a short and stocky man with yellow face, small eyes, flat nose, and a simple and honest face. His family is a tenant of the Huang family and has not yet completely gone bankrupt. When Luo Yaoguo arrived at Etang, he was "begging for food part-time." Maybe he felt that there was no way out as a tenant of the Huang family, and sooner or later he would have to be a full-time beggar, so he joined the Taiping Army in a heartbeat.
However, these days he has traveled to many places, and has also opened "wilderness" to allocate fields in several counties - that is, he takes the field allotment team down to a certain county to find a few villages with more acute conflicts and more dangerous terrain. Villages that are likely to develop into the center of the base area begin to "light up and divide the fields" to develop the backbone.
After working on it for a few days, he found that Mr. Huang Shijie seemed to be the most kind-hearted among all the local tyrants and evil gentry... Compared with other gentlemen, he was still a good gentleman!
As for the Zeng family in Baiyangping, Heyetang... they have the same moral character as those bad masters. The rent is high, the interest is heavy, they are forced hard, and they have little sympathy for the poor farmers below. They are not like a servant's family at all. Xiao Chaogui touched his beard, pointed at a Zeng family member in his thirties or forties, looked at the worst, and asked: "You, what is your name?"
The middle-aged man in his thirties or forties replied: "Your Majesty, my name is Zeng Guoshu, and he is the younger brother of Zeng Shilang."
Ma Baocai on the side said: "Among Zeng Guofan's several clan brothers, he is the worst! He has been helping Zeng Guofan's family to oppress the poor peasants. He is vicious and mean, and the people deeply hate him!" Xiao Chaogui snorted coldly and said: "Zeng Guofan's noble minister , If this is not the case, it must be you, a villain, who is using his name to do evil!"
When Zeng Guoshu heard what Rong Chaogui said, he knew that things were going to be bad. He quickly kowtowed and said, "Your Majesty, you have misunderstood. Your Majesty, please listen to this villain's explanation... This villain definitely did not use the name of Zeng Shilang to do evil, but Zeng Chuanlang..." .This is how the Zeng Shilang family is!" Xiao Chaogui raised his eyes and said, "Really? He is already a Shilang, so why does he need to skin the villagers?"
"Your Majesty, you don't know..." Zeng Guoshu lay on the ground with his forehead close to the ground and said in a trembling voice, "Zeng Shilang has been working in the Qingshui Yamen in Beijing since he became an official. Although he held the title of Shilang in eight years, he really There is no place to be greedy for money! Officials in Beijing are poor, prices in Beijing are soaring, and they have to rent a house to live. They have no savings at all. His brother Zeng Guohua moved to the Imperial College two years ago to study, and spent a lot of money. Later, he spent a lot of money. I bought a fellow magistrate of Yong'an Prefecture, hoping to make a fortune, but my mother died just after I took office, so I had to go home to Ding You.
Speaking of which, Zeng Guofan's position as an official was just a sham, with no money and no money, so his father had no choice but to exploit tenants in his hometown to make up the money..."
It turns out that Zeng Guofan was also an official. Although he did not owe a lot of debt to Beijing, his life was not much better. Naturally, his father and fellow villagers could not benefit from him at all, and they had to help him fill the holes in the officialdom. Now his family Xiao Chaogui occupied them all, the hole in the officialdom, the expenses during Ding You's period...this time I really want to die of "filial piety"!
Jian Chaogui snorted: "You are not a good person either. You helped Zeng Guofan's family with loan lending and rent collection, and you must have made a lot of money!"
"Spare your life, your Majesty, please spare your life..." Zeng Guoshu knew that he was going to be evil, so he quickly kowtowed and begged for mercy.
Jian Chaogui looked back at Ma Baocai and Chen Ji, "How about it?"
Ma Baocai had a look of jealousy on his face and snorted coldly: "I can't forgive you!" He gritted his teeth and said, "Your Highness the King of the West, if we fall into the hands of this thief, how can we be spared?" Ah!"
Chen Jidao: "King Xi, this place is sixty or seventy miles away from Xiangxiang County. It is surrounded by hills. It is also at the junction of Changsha and Hengzhou Prefecture. More than fifty miles to the southeast is Nanyue. Hengshan Mountain is a poor and remote place, and there are many people. There is little land and can be used as a base
"Okay, I'm here, but I can't come in vain!" Xiao Chaogui nodded, "Then I'll leave it to you two to open up a lot with the lotus leaf pond as the center!" "Yes!"
Baiyangping, in front of the old house of the Zeng family, almost a thousand people who came from the surrounding villages and poor farmers in Baiyangping gathered in the few buildings in Baiyangping.
In front of the brick and tile houses - these brick and tile houses are from the "Jinshi Ranking" and "Servant's House"!
The eldest son of this family, Zeng Guofan, was a high-ranking official in the imperial court. He didn't know how much money he had embezzled. Otherwise, how could he have built such a magnificent tile-roofed house?
And the Zeng family, who came out of Zeng Shilang, is also a big family in Heyetang. Most of the land in Heyetang has the surname Zeng!
In recent years, because the Zeng family has had a minister, the landowners of the Zeng family have suppressed their tenants even more harshly! And Magistrate Zhu of Xiangxiang County is a donor. As soon as he takes office, he will prevent thieves and suppress bandits for the people.
Donating to the regiment training, it is necessary to organize three battalions and one thousand five hundred regiment training... One thousand five hundred! A deputy general's league bid is only this amount, but there are so many regiment training in a county. How much does it cost?
And this burden ultimately falls on the poor farmers in Xiangxiang County!
Now is the autumn harvest season, which is also the season for paying rent, paying interest, paying autumn taxes, paying assessments, and handing in donations for group training... There is little flat land in Heye Pond, and there are many slopes, so not much food can be grown. Pay this and that.
After handing it over, there wasn’t even enough dried sweet potatoes to eat, so I had to eat more
If you take out a loan, you will get deeper and deeper into trouble!
So the poor farmers here in Heyetang have been waiting for the Taiping Army for a long time!
I heard that the farmers in the south of the Xiangjiang River are no longer so miserable. Their debts have been cancelled, their fields have been divided, there are no rents, and there are not so many exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes. There is only one item of land tax, and it is a fixed "iron plate tax".
It is equivalent to about one and a half percent of the harvest. There is no need to pay money. You can just pay the grain directly. You don’t need to send it to the county seat yourself. You can pay it in the town. It is very convenient... There are many poor farmers there.
Happy!
Chapter completed!