Jiangyin County, Changzhou Prefecture, Southern Zhili.

Speaking of Jiangyin County, we have to mention a person from more than a hundred years ago. His name is Xu Jing. He was not only a wealthy man in Jiangyin, but also loved studying when he was young, and was determined to obtain fame and honor, and shining his family.

After all, everything is inferior, but reading is high.

The reason why Xu Jing was determined to take the exam was mainly because the status of merchants in the Ming Dynasty was low, and even if they were rich, they were not as good as ordinary people in social status. For example, merchants could sell sedan chairs but not sit in sedan chairs, and could sell silk and satin but not wear silk and satin. In the early Ming Dynasty, merchants' offspring were not even allowed to take the imperial examination.

In order to improve the status of the Xu family, Xu Jing was determined to take the imperial examination. Because the Xu family was the richest man in Jiangyin, Xu Jing had many relationships with scholars in Jiangnan. After all, all literati like to make friends with rich people. One side takes the name and the other side takes the advantage. Both sides have their own advantages, and each side has their own choices. Everyone is happy to carry the flower sedan chair.

Xu Jing’s best friend is Tang Yin from Suzhou. If you have a good relationship, you can sleep in the same bed together.

When the year of the competition, Xu Jing asked Tang Yin to go to the Beijing Examination together. Because his family was rich, Xu Jing brought more than a dozen servants, and he hired Tang Yin in the Beijing every day, attracting attention. As a result, the examination was over, and rumors spread in the Beijing Examination, all of which were said that Xu Jing, a rich man from Jiangyin, had bribes and received the test questions.

This matter fermented quickly. Although Grand Secretary Li Dongyang and other examiners reviewed it, it proved that Xu Jing and Tang Yin were not on the admission list. The so-called buying of the title was incomplete. However, public opinion was still noisy. In order to calm the public's discussion, Emperor Hongzhi sent an imperial guard to interrogate the Jinyiwei, but there was no evidence.

Finally, on the grounds that Xu Jing had given a meeting gift when he went to Beijing to meet the examiner Cheng Minzheng, Tang Yin also used a gold coin to ask Cheng Minzheng for literature to send Liang Chu, the head of the provincial examination seat, and was dismissed from the officialdom and was appointed as a minor official of the county government for use.

Afterwards, all three defendants were dissatisfied. Cheng Minzheng died of anger after returning home.

Tang Yin was ashamed to be a clerk. After returning home, the couple turned against each other. They were negative and decadent. They built a "Taohuawu" to entertain themselves. They drank some wine for nothing, and invisibly became a master of calligraphy and painting.

Xu Jing had no chance of career, so he went home and focused on inheriting the wealth left by his ancestors. He became the richest man in Jiangyin. Later, his industry grew bigger and bigger, and the richest man in Jiangyin became the richest man in Jiangnan.

After Xu Jing's death, the Xu family's property was inherited by three sons. After decades, the Xu family produced another famous figure. This person was Xu Jing's great-grandson, Xu Xiake, who traveled all over the Ming Dynasty.

Although the Xu family's current family is not as rich as that of the great-grandfather Xu Jing, it is still rich. Therefore, Xu Xiake grew up with a golden spoon when he was born. His family's industries are spread all over the prefectures in the south of the Yangtze River, with more than 12,000 acres of fertile land and more than 300 slaves in the family. There are countless other ancestral properties and existing silver.

Such a wealthy person naturally made Xu Xiake not want to study or work, and travel around the mountains and rivers all day, but it was not useless, but it left some travel notes for the world.

Xu Xiake passed away in the 13th year of Chongzhen. After his death, the Xu family was inherited by his son Xu Qi. The Xu family returned to normal and continued to engage in the old business of doing business and saving land for his ancestors. The family's background was much better than when Xu Xiake was there.

However, like many wealthy families in Jiangnan, the Xu family is extremely strict with slaves, and they beat and scold them at all, and do not regard slaves as human beings at all.

In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, once rewarded the minister Li Shanchang with more than 100 "slave army". After the successful rebellion of the rebellion, Zhu Di, the king of Yan, cleaned up a large number of "unattached Yan soldiers" and all his family members were enshrined as slaves, especially the female family members who were the most miserable, and they entered the Jiaofangsi as official prostitutes.

Since Zhengde, the economy in the Jiangnan region has become more and more prosperous. Due to the inevitability of economic development, many farmers sold their land for cash, and a large number of handicraftsmen went bankrupt under the influence of the "market economy", so these people sold themselves to wealthy families as slaves in order to make a living.

Due to the rapid expansion of wealth, wealthy families also needed a large number of slaves to manage their property. In some wealthy families, there were thousands of slaves, such as the family of Xu Jie, a famous official of the Jiajing Dynasty.

The slaves who signed the contract for sale have been born for generations, and their descendants cannot escape from their humble family. Except for Jiangnan, the wealthy families in other provinces have also become a trend of slaughter.

If the wealthy family who is the master can treat their slaves well or treat their servants slightly equally, the conflict between the master and servants will not be too intense. After all, the laws of the Ming Dynasty not only recognize the protection of slaves, but also have considerable constraints on the lives of slaves and their masters.

However, in the world, money can always make the devil push the mill, money can always make oneself superior to the king's laws, and money can always be above the top.

As a result, there are endless things that the master bullies the slaves, and countless people harm others' lives. The wife and daughter of the slave are commonplace.

Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance.

Influenced by the peasant uprisings of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong in the north, many slaves in the south also resisted.

For example, during the Chongzhen period, slaves in Yongxin and other places in Jiangxi tied their masters to ask for their contracts, questioning the rich masters why they called them slaves, and even shouted the slogan "Shut the master and servant, the noble and the poor, the rich and the poor, and the poor!" The slave army that was in charge occupied the land and distributed food. Although they were eventually suppressed by the Ming army, the impact was extremely far-reaching and spread the seeds of resistance to the Jiangnan region.

There is a slave in Xu Xia's Hakka named Xu Youliang. This person secretly participated in the "nose cutting shift", and this "nose cutting shift" is an underground organization secretly established by slaves from Jiangxi's great wealthy family.

The purpose of this organization is to call on Jiangnan slaves to rise up and resist their masters and gain equality, so they are very slaves. In more than two years of development, tens of thousands of members have been distributed in Songjiang, Suzhou, Changzhou, Yingtian, and even Huzhou in Zhejiang.

A few days ago, when the owner's family ordered him to go to the countryside to collect the land rent, a widow was exempted from a five-cent rent. Xu Youliang was ordered by the head of the family, and his injuries were not healed and asked him to go to the countryside again to collect the five-cent rent that the widow's family would be exempted from.

Xu Youliang, who was so angry that he found Gao Erye, the head of the Jiangyin area of ​​the "Nice Slitting Society", complained.

This second-year high school master is not a native of Jiangyin, but a fleeing famine in Henan. It is said that he was a slave of the Fu Palace before.

After hearing what Xu Youliang said, the second master of high school was so angry that he came to him. After drinking a few bowls of wine with Xu Youliang, he advised Xu Youliang to just bring everyone to agitate. He found a way to get some weapons for Xu Youliang and the others. Otherwise, Xu Youliang would have offended the head of the Xu family and would be afraid that he would not live a better life in the future.

I don’t know if it was because of the dissatisfaction with the head of the family or because of alcohol, Xu Youliang actually agreed to the second master of high school. The two wrote a blood letter on the spot to make an uprising.

After sobering up the next day, Xu Youliang did not regret his decision last night. He immediately found more than a dozen Xu slaves who participated in the "Nose Cutting Club" with him, and told everyone that the "Nose Cutting Club" would fully support Jiangyin's action. If Jiangyin's affairs were successful, it might force Nanjing to amend the law and still have the slaves free.
Chapter completed!