At this time, the chaos in She'an has spread like wildfire to Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi and other places in the southwest. Even mature areas such as Hunan have begun to become unstable.
In June of the third year of the Apocalypse, She Chongming's general Fan Long led his troops to Chengdu. Sichuan Chief Envoy Zhu Xieyuan and others saw that She Chongming's soldiers were very sharp. At night, they gathered all the garrison troops in surrounding counties into Chengdu. She Chongming " Enter the city of Bo. Hang the tribe's lurking call and attack from all sides."
There were only more than 2,000 defenders in Chengdu. Including the soldiers and horses from all walks of life that had just been summoned, the total number was only 4,000. Under the careful deployment of Zhu Xieyuan and others, they repelled She Chongming's several attacks on the city. The Ming court urgently mobilized reinforcements from all over. Most of the southwestern chieftain soldiers did not participate in the rebellion. Most of them maintained a wait-and-see attitude. Although Qin Liangyu, the maiden of the Shizhu Xuanfu Division, was very loyal to the Ming Dynasty, she had always fought the hardest for the Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, the main force of the Shili Baigan soldiers had already attacked along the Yangtze River. When Qin Liangyu learned of She Chongming's rebellion, he sent a messenger to summon his nephew Yiming to lead troops from the Yangtze River front line to return to Sichuan. However, although the war along the Yangtze River ceased, the Ming army still had to maintain its strength to defend against the Chinese army. He would not be able to come back. In desperation, Qin Liangyu had no choice but to lead 1,000 of his own soldiers up the river towards Chengdu. At this time, the Ming army troops transferred back from along the Yangtze River successively arrived around Chengdu and recovered Anyue, Lezhi and other counties.
The large-scale rebellion of the barbarians in the southwest is also related to the Ming Dynasty's "returning from the native land". It is also related to those Ming Dynasty officials who acted wantonly, corruptly and exploited. For example, some exiled officials extremely looked down on the local indigenous people. Their subordinates treated the chieftains They beat and scolded them at will. Therefore, more and more minority tribes such as the Miao, Yao and Yi joined the She'an rebellion.
At this time, Guiyang and Chengdu were surrounded by the She'an rebels. However, the Ming army troops along the Yangtze River were still unable to be mobilized. As a result, various places in the southwest reported to the court one after another.
At this time, the wiser people in the Ming court felt that peace should be reached with the pirates as soon as possible. However, Wei Zhongxian's group, who originally opposed the peace, began to shout that Xu Guangqi and others were hurting the country and the people by delaying the negotiations.
At the end of June, a ship under the flag of the Ming Dynasty entered Taiwan Port. This was the first ship under the flag of the Ming Dynasty to enter Taiwan after more than five years after the Ming Dynasty issued a sea ban.
This ship was sent by Shen Yourong, the commander-in-chief of Fujian Province in the Ming Dynasty on the other side. On the ship was an envoy sent by Sun Chengzong, the Minister of War in Nanjing who was in charge of the formation.
This envoy is a colleague of Yuan Chonghuan. He is also the chief of the Ministry of War's Staff Division. A year ago, he followed Sun Chengzong south to prepare for the counterattack against the Chinese army. The full name of the Ministry of War's Staff Division is "Jifang Qingli Division". It is one of the four departments of the Ministry of War. In charge of the atlas (map) of each province, the narration of military officers' merits, reviews, rewards and punishments, pensions, and military inspections and tests. There is one doctor each, one member and one foreign doctor, and two directors. The name of the chief is Xie Xuecheng. Together with Yuan Chonghuan In the same year, he passed the imperial examination. He is forty years old this year. He is a descendant of the Xie family in Yuyao.
The Ming Dynasty ship entered Taiwan Port. The Fujian side had already contacted the Chinese army stationed in Quanzhou beforehand. The port side had already known the news. Otherwise, the ship would not have been allowed to enter. No matter what, the appearance of the Ming Dynasty flag It still caused a small commotion. There were many people watching. Fortunately, Yin Feng's personal guards learned the news and quickly sent a sentry to the dock to pick up the person.
Since Xu Guangqi and others set out to sea from Jinshanwei, due to the long sea voyage against the wind, contact with the Ming Dynasty was temporarily interrupted. After arriving in Taiwan, they had to discuss with the Chinese army and communicate with the Fujian government on the other side through the Chinese company ships that traveled to and from both sides of the strait every day. get in touch.
The arrogance and angelic demeanor of Xu Guangqi and others have been almost worn away. The Chinese Army also planned to negotiate well, so it agreed to their request. In this way, Xu Guangqi and others sent letters to the other side every three days. Fujian General Soldier Shen Yourong set up a transit station and forwarded these memorials to the capital. Only then did the Ming court know that Xu Guangqi and others had arrived in Taiwan safely.
Today, the head of the Staff Department of the Ministry of War came to Taiwan Port. This was the first time that the Ming government took the initiative to send an envoy to contact Xu Guangqi and others.
Sun Chengzong wrote a handwritten letter to Xu Guangqi. After Xu Guangqi received Xie Xuecheng alone, he could not sleep that night. As a result, he had red and swollen eyes at the negotiation table the next day and was in poor spirits.
In the negotiations of the past few days, the Ming court and the Chinese Army have reached an agreement on the general direction of a truce between the two sides, and the Chinese Army's surrender and payment of tribute. The following negotiations involve countless specific details. Yin Feng is impatient to do these, so he has full authority to do so. Zeng Yue represents himself. Starting today, Yin Feng will no longer appear at the negotiation site.
This made Sheng Yihong very dissatisfied and he yelled for a long time.
On this day, Xu Guangqi made a request from the Ming court: the Chinese army should stop the policy of "humiliating the gentry" in the Jiangnan area and other places. Specifically, it refers to the "three-year tax exemption" vigorously promoted by the Chinese army and "the gentry all receive food as one body". As well as the "sharing the land" policy that abolished the poll tax. These policies mainly hit the interests of the large bureaucratic landowners in the Ming Dynasty. The damage to small and medium-sized landowners was limited. For ordinary tenants and small farmers, these policies were completely beneficial. Their.
Many of the Jiangnan aristocratic families are large families that have been passed down for hundreds of years. They are married to each other and have classmates and hometown connections. They can almost be said to be in the same spirit, and both will be harmed. They all have imperial examination titles and official gentry status, and enjoy a lot of privileged status. For example The number of wives, concubines, farmhouses and servants was larger than that of common people. There was no need to pay taxes on land. Such privileges had been going on for hundreds of years in the Ming Dynasty. Suddenly these privileges were broken by the Chinese army. The shock caused in Jiangnan can be seen It is said to be earth-shaking. On the other hand, the Chinese Army did not touch the basic land system. It still protected the large landowners who cooperated honestly. At the same time, the Chinese Army received the support of small farmers and tenants, and also introduced many wealthy seafarers. Businessmen came to Jiangnan to sell land and buy properties, which caused the unity of the local gentry and landlord class to collapse.
When the Chinese army first occupied half of the land in the south of the Yangtze River, the three-year tax exemption policy had already won them the support of the owner-peasants and tenants. Later, when they implemented policies such as "the gentry pays the grain as one body" and "share the grain into the acres", the Chinese army continued to All the rebels were suppressed by force. They showed no mercy to the big officials and gentry. Several gentry families that had been passed down for centuries were uprooted, including Dong Qichang, a master of calligraphy and painting who was dismissed from office and living in Songjiang at this time. He also resisted the policy of the gentry receiving food from one person. .He was found out by Chen Zhongji’s people for conniving his slaves to break the law. He mobilized the newly established militia to raid Tong Qichang’s mansion.
Therefore, Chen Zhongji, the garrison envoy of the Jiangnan garrison, has always been known as "Chen Butcher" in Jiangnan.
Xie Xuecheng, a new member of the Ming Dynasty negotiation delegation, almost burst into tears, accusing Chen Zhongji of atrocities. He demanded that the pirates and Chinese troops immediately withdraw from Jiangnan and compensate the Jiangnan gentry for their losses over the years.
Xu Guangqi sat there helplessly and said nothing. Yuan Chonghuan and others were a little confused. However, Sheng Yihong's group stood up to support Xie Xuecheng's opinion. He pointed at the representative of the Chinese Army opposite and cursed "rogue bandits..."
This time, it was the turn of the Chinese military negotiators to get angry. Taking the lead, Zeng Yue, Xu Hongji and others, they collectively walked out and stopped talking.
Xu Guangqi was helpless at this time. This was simply an unnecessary extraneous matter. He himself also came from a wealthy family in the south of the Yangtze River. He understood the situation in the south of the Yangtze River very well. Through Sun Chengzong's letter, he already knew: Xie Xuecheng broke out of the negotiation halfway. The terms were basically concocted by the descendants of the Jiangnan aristocratic families who were hiding in Jinling City. They wanted to take advantage of the Ming Dynasty's opportunity to appease the pirates, drive them away, and preferably recover some of their losses over the past few years. They They simply don’t understand the actual situation. They are blinded by greed: among the Ming Dynasty and the Chinese Army, the one who wants peace the most and hopes for a temporary truce is the Ming court. However, the strategic initiative between the two sides is still in the hands of the Ming Dynasty. On the side of the Chinese Army, these Jiangnan gentry families have not seen this cruel fact clearly.
That night, Yin Feng ordered his personal guards to dispatch and blockaded and surrounded the Anhai Pavilion where the Ming Dynasty envoys lived. Xu Guangqi and others were once again placed under house arrest. At the same time, Zeng Yuelai sent a message saying: The ship owner, King Yin Feng, is now sending more troops to Jiangnan. All lowly servants in Jiangnan must be released.
A slave is a slave in a wealthy household. In ancient times, it was called Zang Huo or Cangtou. In the Yuan Dynasty, it was called Qikou. In the Ming Dynasty, it was called untouchable. Those whose descendants have been slaves for generations are called servants. The slaves belong to the entire family of the master and have a very low status. In "Da Ming Law" Slaves can only marry among themselves. For example, they are not allowed to marry a good family, unless a good family voluntarily marries the daughter of a slave. As for a slave marrying a woman from a good family, it is absolutely prohibited by law and society. Privately kill a hundred oxen and horses with a stick, and beat the slave to death. For example The life of an ordinary person is reduced by one level. The rod is one hundred and seventy. The life of a slave is the same as that of an ox or a horse.
After Jiajing, the economy in Jiangnan developed. Among the gentry and aristocratic families in Jiangnan, there were especially many wealthy households. The number of bankrupt farmers and handicraftsmen sold as private slaves increased day by day. Some wealthy households kept as many as one or two thousand slaves. All such slaves were established. There was a contract of selling oneself, and the descendants could not leave their nationality for the rest of their lives. Slaves in the north of the Yangtze River were hired by the Jin gentry. Slaves were common in Henan, Shandong and other provinces. However, the number was less than that in the south of the Yangtze River.
At the end of the Wanli era and at the beginning of the Apocalypse, when the Chinese army invaded the south of the Yangtze River, slaves from all over the south of the Yangtze River began to rebel against their masters. Slave revolts spread throughout Hubei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and other places. The slaves took advantage of the situation to riot, and the slaves occupied the master's property and spread the virus. He took the food from the master's house and tied up his master, asking, "Why do you call me a slave?"
In this Jiangnan battle, the Chinese army expanded its occupation area in Jiangnan. There were more organized slave rebellions. There was a slogan of "Eradicate masters and slaves, high and low, and equalize the rich and the poor", which pointed directly at the oppressive relationship between masters and slaves. Jiangsu Slaves in Jiading and other places were engaged in sochi (a contract to sell themselves), and more than tens of thousands of people were sitting there to ask for the deed, and the momentum was huge. In some areas, slaves had their own organizations, such as the "Liren Society" in Macheng, Hubei, and the "Liren Society" in Taicang, Jiangsu. There are "Oolong Club" and "nose-cutting classes" in Jintan and other places.