Chapter 429 Destruction of the Ming Dynasty. Mutiny III
Yin Feng seems to have regained his true nature and hobbies more and more recently. The tedious government and military affairs have begun to be assigned to various departments of the newly established Royal Government Affairs Council and Xu Hongji and other secretaries. He is busy establishing the Chinese University Hall and researching Chinese military weapons. Research work within the department.
He was originally unwilling to take action against the Ming Dynasty immediately when the Northeast War had just come to an end.
The strategy proposed by Yin Feng, who likes to play it safe by nature, at the shareholders' meeting at the beginning of the year is actually the result of the clamor of the generals of the Chinese Army. The Chinese Army and the Chinese Company have always emphasized military and business. Over the years, the Chinese Army has made outstanding military achievements, and the status of military personnel has been increasing day by day. A large number of Young people became officers of the Chinese Army. Under Yin Feng's decree, a large number of veterans became village heads of farms in various places, village chiefs of immigrant villages, and leaders of their respective guard regiments and pioneer regiments; at the same time, with the "Military Merit Distribution Order" "After the promulgation of Yin Feng's ruling area, veterans became the leading figures in the immigrant villages. They gained real power in the villages, farms, and plantations of various colonies. The Chinese military's influence was both economic and political. It has been able to compete with the large business groups of the Chinese Company.
Therefore, the people who are most anxious to destroy the Ming Dynasty are these Chinese soldiers. They desire more meritorious deeds, that is, more wealth, land, honor, and status.
The place where Yin Feng expanded his territory was a coastal area where the influence of traditional Confucian culture was very weak. Confucian culture relied on subtle influence to influence the people at the bottom. It never had the spirit and fighting power of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam to open up to the outside world. Therefore, Yin Feng's ruling area The Han residents quickly accepted his set of Western miscellany and the so-called Mohist and Taoist knowledge. Yin Feng established a local political organizational structure with veterans as the backbone. It demonstrated high efficiency in terms of village autonomy, public security, and mobilization. .The operation is much better than the scattered small-scale peasant system of the Ming Dynasty; due to the need to open up a large amount of land, the relative lack of labor prompted the weapons research department and the company's factory department to invent many labor-saving machines, which were used in large-scale military industry, silk , ceramic processing, grain processing, etc. This gave the Chinese military-controlled areas a technological advantage over the Ming Dynasty's interior.
Under the Central Plains of China, the ethical state is the only place where the ruling and opposition parties can rely on themselves and defend themselves. If this is shaken, it will shake the belief foundation of the literati and bureaucratic class. However, the words and performances of the Chinese Army and Yin Feng have just shaken this. One point. It shows that the imperial court is inferior to others in everything, from the utensil system to the knowledge and people's hearts. This simply makes some scribes who were loyal to the Ming Dynasty feel like they are mourning for their heirs and feel that the world is falling.
However, most of the scribes of the Ming Dynasty who came to Yin Feng in the later period adhered to the tradition of "what is good from above and must be imitated below" in Chinese culture. On the surface, they strongly praised Yin Feng's knowledge and worked hard to study Western miscellany. Yin Feng Although the imperial examination also tests the Four Books and Five Classics, the main content of the examination is policy and practice. It even tests arithmetic and official document writing.
Originally, as long as they could live a stable life, the Chinese people had no opinions on who should be the emperor and who should rule the world. Therefore, in fact, in the area ruled by Yin Feng, the influence of the Ming Dynasty has almost disappeared. Even some knowledgeable scribes There is no market for Confucian academics such as Western learning, miscellaneous studies, Neo-Confucianism, and psychology at all levels. Therefore, in fact, if King Jinghai of China wanted to overthrow the Ming Dynasty and replace it, there would basically be no one in his ruling area. What was the resistance? Except for those officers of the Chinese Army, the scholars and scholars who wanted to become ministers of Conglong as soon as possible were even more anxious than Yin Feng himself about overthrowing the Ming Dynasty. Especially after Yin Feng's Chinese Army landed in Liaodong. Many frustrated scribes crossed the sea to join him. He advocated that China in the sea was the orthodoxy of China. He cited Dayu's flood control on the coast of the East China Sea as an example. He encouraged Yin Feng to immediately cross the sea to attack the Ming Dynasty. The imperial examination candidates and scholars of the Ming Dynasty became famous one by one. The most active anti-Ming fighter.
After Yin Feng ordered the postponement of the end of the Ming Dynasty, he devoted himself to the preparations for the construction of the University Hall. Under Yin Feng's promotion, the China University Hall was about to be established. It will include the Technical College originally run by the China Company, the Government Affairs College, and the Navy's former The advanced section of the Sailor School will also set up subjects such as medicine, art, arithmetic, and engineering. A large number of Western technological development achievements and traditional Chinese technological achievements will be introduced in the teaching content. Yin Feng said to Mr. Zeng, who is already over 80 years old: "My university will integrate Chinese and Western knowledge, and combine the strengths of hundreds of schools of thought. A hundred years from now, my military exploits may be forgotten, but this university will be famous for generations to come."
The Zeng family is most concerned about Yin Feng's career. Now the Zeng family is tied to Yin Feng.
However, in Yin Feng's ruling area, military merit is the most important thing for the upper class. However, the power of the Zeng family has not developed much in the Chinese army. Zeng Rui's military intelligence department instigated the rebellion of the new army without authorization. This is the Zeng family's attempt to add weight to the family's military merit. an effort.
Although Chen Zhongji, the general manager of Jiangnan Province, ordered the withdrawal of all military intelligence personnel from Zhejiang and tried hard to get part of the rebel army to break away from the brigade. However, the Ming Dynasty army in the south of the Yangtze River started a pay rebellion, but it could no longer be stopped. At this time, the Ming army. Due to the war in Liaodong and the loss of the wealth land in the south of the Yangtze River, as well as the natural disasters in the north and south of the Yellow River for many years, farmers were displaced everywhere and famine spread everywhere. A large amount of taxes could not be collected. Even if the taxes were collected, they had to be given priority after being exploited by the Ming Dynasty bureaucrats. Those sons and grandsons of the Zhu family. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty's finances were actually bankrupt. It was a very common phenomenon for the army to be in arrears with pay.
As the provincial capital Hangzhou was surrounded, news of the pay riots among the troops in the wealthy land of Jiangnan spread quickly to the surrounding areas. The Nanjing garrison of the Ming Dynasty and the governor of Jiangnan immediately mobilized troops from surrounding provinces to suppress the rebellion. The problem was that these Ming troops who had received the transfer orders Soldiers generally have the problem of being unpaid. No one wants to go to war hungry, especially when the relatives of these soldiers are also hungry.
Around Nanjing and Taihu Lake, the Ming Dynasty army deployed a line of defense against the Chinese Army's Jiangnan controlled area. The total number of these Ming Dynasty troops was no less than 100,000. They practiced confrontation with 20,000 Chinese Army regular troops and more than 20,000 self-defense regiments. Due to the temporary peace between the two sides, the Ming Dynasty defended The army was able to do business with the Chinese army-controlled area opposite. They bought and sold rice, silk, cloth, tung oil, ceramics, clocks and other items. Not only the small officers of the army and the army had a good life, but also the ordinary soldiers below. After having a full stomach, they sent some silver back to their families. Suddenly, an order came down from the superiors, asking them to leave the garrison and go to Zhejiang to fight.
At this time, it is the lean season. Spring has just begun. The food and grass needed for the army soldiers to set out have not yet arrived. In the army barracks in Wuxi, Suzhou and other places, under the clamor of the soldiers, the junior officers took the lead to go to their old camp headquarters. The accountant asked the general who led the army for back wages, departure expenses and settlement expenses.
The Jiangxi soldiers in the Suzhou Beicheng Military Camp first made a big fuss. Jiangxi Deputy Commander-in-Chief Lin Tao ordered his soldiers to kill several junior officers in his army who took the lead in making trouble. As a result, a bigger riot occurred in the evening. Thousands of Jiangxi soldiers were killed. Entering the old camp, he killed the deputy commander Lin Tao on his bed. Then he robbed the warehouse and looted all the property of the nearby rich households. He gathered a large group of troops and surrendered to the Chinese army in the east.
Immediately, mutinies and riots broke out in the military camps of the Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers who were transferred to Hangzhou to suppress the rebellion in Wuxi, Taicang and the area along Taihu Lake. Two deputy generals, three deputy generals, and dozens of generals and other officers were killed. Several officers were killed. After tens of thousands of rebellious officers and soldiers robbed the treasury, some of them were disbanded on the spot, and some of them went to join the Chinese Army on the other side of the defense line. The imperial court's plan to mobilize troops to suppress the rebellion of the Zhejiang New Army had to be postponed again and again.
The mutiny between the Jiangnan officers and soldiers due to lack of pay from the imperial court soon spread to the entire Ming Dynasty ruling area.
In the early part of the next month, mutinies broke out one after another in Xuzhou in the north of South Zhili, Dezhou in Shandong, Dagu, Tianjin, Jizhou and other places in North Zhili.
Soon, a section of the Guangzhou city government army also rebelled. They fought in melee with the government troops who came to suppress them for two days, and burned down half of Guangzhou city in one fell swoop.
In March, a mutiny broke out in Jinzhou among the officers and soldiers of western Liaoning who had just entered spring. Subsequently, mutinies broke out all over western Liaoning as the officers and soldiers fought over pay. Zeng Shan, the general manager of Liaodong appointed by King Yinfeng of Jinghai of China, and Zhao Tie, the general manager of Liaodong March, took the opportunity. They sent troops to cross the Liao River, captured several official and military forts west of the Liao River, and established a bridgehead for the Chinese army to cross the Liao River westward. At this time, the main force of the Chinese army in Liaodong was going deep into the Heilongjiang River Basin to pursue the remaining Manchu tribes. The Korean State suppressed the coup in the Korean Kingdom. Therefore, it was unable to expand the results of the victory.
The Military Intelligence Department of the Chinese Army discovered that at the end of last year, in order to win over the Horqin tribe in Chahar Mongolia, Zengshan sent a large amount of food to the Horqin tribe. As a result, at the beginning of this year, the Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers in western Liaoning had to go to Mongolia due to lack of food. The tribes bought food to survive. What they traded were the weapons in the hands of the soldiers.
The miserable living conditions of the officers and soldiers in western Liaoning can be imagined. Therefore, the scale of the mutiny among the officers and soldiers in western Liaoning was out of control.
Zhao Tie anxiously asked Yin Feng from Taiwan for reinforcements and took the opportunity to capture western Liaoning in one fell swoop. He dispatched three communication ships - clippers belonging to the Chinese Army in Liaodong - one after another. He trained every day outside Liaoyang City with the pioneering regiment. , the Liaodong Division formed by the regiment training militia. The arsenals in Jinzhou and other places went all out to produce arms. Lu Xiaotian's cavalry troops were all transferred back from the Heilongjiang River Basin. Zhao Tie also sent a letter to Yan Siqi, asking him to go north immediately. With the first The Fifth Division went south to North Korea and quickly pacified North Korea. Then they could launch an attack on western Liaoning.
During the same period, the Madaram Kingdom on Java Island launched an anti-Chinese rebellion. Malacca was attacked by the Aceh Kingdom’s army. The indigenous people from various parts of Southeast Asia were ready to take action.
Insufficient troops. Insufficient troops. The Chinese Army sent requests for reinforcements to Yin Feng one after another across the thousands-mile-long sea frontier. Officials of the Chinese Army's Logistics Department and Staff Officers of the Operations Department complained endlessly. They repeatedly went to Yin Feng to ask for instructions. Yin Feng was very worried. He reluctantly left the machine tools of the weapons research department and convened a meeting in his study with the senior officers of the old battalion who had stayed behind.