Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 358 0353 [Government [-]]

Chengdu, inner city.

The Yamen of the transfer department has become Zhu Ming's "Great General's Mansion" Yamen.

Ju Ming looked at the list of confiscated supplies, and asked casually, "Why doesn't your husband want to take charge of Chengdu?"

Gao Jingshan said: "It's not appropriate to show your face in public, it's better to stay with the general and be an aide."

Zhu Ming said with a smile: "In Jianmen Pass, the soldiers of Youdo surrendered with you, the news has already spread."

Gao Jingshan said: "It's one thing to spread the word, but another thing to confirm it."

In the Song Dynasty, there was a serious crime of killing the nine clans, but under the premise of preferential treatment for scholar-bureaucrats, no Jinshi officer has been punished for the nine clans.

Moreover, the Gao family belongs to the Shandong clan.Even if Gao Jingshan is really a thief, his younger brother Gao Jingyun can continue to be an official, but he will definitely be implicated and relegated.

These are nothing, mainly because my hometown may not be polite when collecting taxes.

Zhu Ming felt that it was quite nonsense, he was obviously capable, he had already offered himself up to the bandits, and he had given many ideas to the bandits, yet he was timid even now.

"It's up to you," Zhu Ming muttered as he flipped through the supplies, "The temple is really rich, even the Taoist priests are so rich."

Gao Jingshan said with a smile: "There is a Taoist emperor, and the Taoists in the world are naturally rich. The general has never been to Fujian, and the temples there are rich. Chengdu is nothing."

"I'll lead the army someday to see it." Zhu Ming said.

Throughout the Song Dynasty, Fujian had the highest proportion of monks and Taoists in the population.

none of them.

According to the five-year statistics of Song Zhenzong Tianxi, the number of monks and nuns in the country is 45, of which Fujian accounts for 15.5%.

When Zeng Gong was the prefect of Fuzhou, he said that there were nearly ten thousand local people who became monks every three years.

Wei Jing (a good friend of Zhu Xi) said that Fujian is small and crowded, and the number of farmers who choose to become monks is half of the number who choose to farm.This is similar to the description of Wang Yingchen (Shangshu of the Ministry of Officials in the Southern Song Dynasty). If there are three sons in a common family, one of them will be a monk, or two will be monks.

Don't think that temples do nothing, they also engage in industry, agriculture and commerce, and form a unique temple economy.

When Chen Chun, a Neo-Confucianist in the Southern Song Dynasty, explained the situation in Fujian, he used Zhangzhou as an example, saying that 70% of the various industries in Zhangzhou had been controlled by temples.As a result, Zhangzhou's tax revenue mainly comes from monasteries and monks and nuns. Compared with monks, wealthy households in the countryside are all poor.

So in Fujian in the Southern Song Dynasty, a strange phenomenon appeared: the temples exploited the people, and the government exploited the temples!
At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, when the imperial court collected taxes, the monasteries were closed down one after another, and the monks were forced to flee in various ways.

Zhu Ming wanted to reason a lot, and left some for the monks and Taoists when he inspected the temple properties.

For example, in Zhaojue Temple, the shops around the square are reserved for monks.This is the largest entertainment and commercial place in Sichuan. There are countless Goulan houses and various shops. Its Lantern Festival is comparable to Tokyo.

The monks run businesses to make money, and Zhu Ming sends tax collectors to collect taxes, so it can be said that everyone gets what they need.

In the middle of winter, the rebel army stationed in Chengdu divided into several groups to attack the territory.

In particular, Qiongzhou and Yazhou are places where horses are bought from each other.Qiongzhou also has iron mines and coin castings, and tea in Yazhou is the most popular among ethnic minorities.The rest, such as Meizhou and Lingjingjian (Ren Shou), are all salt-producing areas.

In Tongshan County, Zizhou, a special force was stationed there, which is a rare copper-producing area in Sichuan (the mining was exhausted in the Ming Dynasty).

Chang Jie's army stayed in Chengdu, and Deng Chun stepped down as the commander of the capital, and took the miscellaneous cavalry to attack Lizhou.

"Commander Yu Dian of the Lizhou Xiang Army of the Puppet Song Dynasty, and lead the crowd to welcome General Deng!"

Before Deng Chun arrived outside the city, Yu Dian, who was depressed and frustrated, teamed up with Qiao Huan and other subordinates to tie up the prefectural and county officials and surrender.

Deng Chun smiled and got off his horse to help him: "Commander Yu, don't meet outsiders, they are all of us."

All the subordinate officials also came forward to salute, all of them were old subordinates of Zhu Ming when he was the county magistrate.

Deng Chun asked, "Is there something wrong with the barbarians in Lizhou?"

Qiao Huan replied: "Prefect Yuwen was transferred to rectify the tea and horse department. At that time, the barbarians were the most obedient. But the prefect Yuwen resigned soon, and the tea and horse department began to default on horse purchases. The barbarians of various departments were fooled several times, but they were unwilling." Then sell the horse to the government. Now it is ready to move, and it is very likely to go to Han to plunder."

"Send a message to the barbarians. I was ordered to form the Tengxiang Army," Deng Chun said. "As long as you send strong soldiers to serve as soldiers, all the ministries will not be bullied by the government anymore! By the way, Mr. Qiao, General Zhu appointed you as the prefect of Lizhou .”

"A certain person must do his best!"

Qiao Huan was overjoyed.

Deng Chun came with a mission to recruit barbarians to form the "Tengxiang Army" in Lizhou, Yazhou, and Qiongzhou.

The Tengxiang army is all light cavalry, to be precise, mountain cavalry.

There are 1000 Han cavalry and 500 wild cavalry.

There are also [-] non-combatant soldiers, all of whom are veterinarians, military doctors, tailors, blacksmiths, cobblers, cooks, etc. These logistics personnel also all ride bad horses or mules.

First let them train in Chengdu and the armor is still under construction.

There are a large number of iron mines in Sichuan, and the gunsmiths in Jinzhou are quickly transferring to various mines to make guns and artillery as the backbone of technology.

In addition, it is to build armor, mainly to make chain armor, which is mainly used to defend against crossbows and javelins.

The bow and arrow workshop is also under preparation.

Materials for making bows and arrows, such as ox horns and tendons, were collected from various salt fields.

The deeper the salt well is drilled, the more animal power is needed to extract the brine.A healthy cattle can't last for a year or so, and they are often killed and sold for new ones.

Throughout the winter, the rebels were sending out troops.

Basically, there was no big battle, and it depends on the spread of the southern Sichuan region. It is nothing more than sending a small group of troops to take over the city.

Only on the other side of Kuizhou Road, the officers and soldiers of Kuizhou, who were advancing triumphantly, even withdrew from Bazhou ahead of schedule.Guarding the gate of Dazhou Gorge in the north and Gongzhou (Chongqing) in the west, Li Bao couldn't fight for a while.

Li Bao had no choice but to divide his troops to attack. First, he went to capture Dazhu Town (Berlin Town, Dazhu County), and then led a thousand elite soldiers, successively crossed Huaying Mountain and Mingyue Mountain, and raided and captured Liangshan Army (Liang Ping).

The Kuizhou army was so frightened that they abandoned Dazhou and retreated all the way to Kaizhou.

Li Bao recruited troops on the spot and went south to attack Lewen (northeast of Changshou) and Fuling.

Trapped on three sides, the officers and soldiers of Gongzhou (Chongqing) surrendered without a fight.

So far, in the entire Chuanxia Fourth Road, Chengdufu Road, Zizhou Road, and Lizhou Road have been taken, and only half of Kuizhou Road is still in the hands of the imperial court.

When the new year was about to come, more than [-] people including Zhang Tong and Chen Dong came to Chengdu together.

"xxx pays homage to Duke Ming!"

Everyone worshiped when they met, and they had already made their own choices during the three months of observing politics in Xingyuan Mansion.

……

When it comes to watching politics, let’s go back to the time when Zhu Ming left Xingyuan Mansion.

Zhang Gen, his wife Huang, and more than 50 scholars left for Hanzhong by boat.

Some of these scholars were retired students from Taixue, there were two scholars from Guizhou, and the rest were all natives of Jinzhou.

The ship docked at Daming Township first, and Shen Yourong took over Zhu Guoxiang's reception, and they all temporarily stayed overnight at the inn.

Zhang Gen and his wife went to see their daughter, and the family of three looked at each other speechlessly.

Zhang Jinping bowed his head and said: "Father, mother, my husband has done such a thing, and my daughter can only marry a chicken and follow the chicken. It just hurt the Zhang family."

"Ugh!"

Zhang Gen sighed, how could he blame his daughter?
Since he couldn't find anything to do, Zhang Gen paced out for a stroll, always followed by annoying bandits.

The rice is being harvested at this time, and the golden rice fields all over the place bring a pleasant sense of harvest.It's a pity that I didn't see many men, and all I could see were women working in the fields.

"This is what the Zhu family and his son did." Zhang Gen finally found a reason to curse, "All the young and strong are taken out to rebel, and even the harvest of rice depends on the old, the weak, women and children."

Zhang Jinping said: "With the threshing machine, it is not too difficult for women to harvest rice."

Zhang Gen pointed to a machine in the field: "Is that a threshing machine?"

"Yes." Zhang Jinping nodded.

This kind of foot-operated threshing machine was popular at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. It was mostly used in the southern hilly and mountainous areas, and was gradually replaced by oil-burning machines.

Two people can carry it up and down the mountain.

One person can easily operate it, and another person is responsible for cutting rice, which is very suitable for small family production.

After Zhu Guoxiang's transformation, the whole body is made of bamboo and wood, without a single nail.Step on the moving pedal with your feet, the brown belt drives to do work, and the bamboo chips are hit for threshing.

Zhang Gen took off his shoes and went to the field to check. After careful study for a while, he nodded and said, "This is convenient and can save labor."

Thinking of the rebellious Zhu family father and son, Zhang Gen became even more annoyed. What rebellion?Wouldn't it be nice to invent more convenience machines?

Zhang Jinping said: "When more refugees are resettled, some women in Daming Township will go to Chengdu to reunite with their husbands."

Zhang Gen knew where the refugees came from, and those stupid officials on Jingxi South Road actually let several groups of refugees come to serve as thieves.

Rest for a day and continue sailing.

Grandma Yan, Shen Yourong, Zheng Yuanyi and others, as well as the family members of the leaders, all had to be taken to Xingyuan Mansion to resettle.

After Zhu Guoxiang opened the mansion, his shogunate was set up in Hanzhong, while Zhu Ming's shogunate was temporarily set up in Chengdu.

Both father and son didn't care about this, they came as it was convenient.

All the way west by boat, autumn harvests are everywhere along the way. Hanzhong (including the whole of Sichuan) is a bumper harvest year this year.

The southeast is actually quite smooth, but it is a pity that it was flooded again after summer.

The reason is nothing more than excessive land reclamation by enclosing the lake, and the corresponding water conservancy facilities have not been adjusted.

Zhu Xi used too much people's power to engage in Huashigang. Not only did the new water conservancy facilities not be built, but the old water conservancy facilities were also lacking in maintenance, resulting in floods almost every year these years.If there is a little too much rain, somewhere a dike will burst.

Looking at the golden rice fields by the river, Chen Dong suddenly said, "Fu Yuanheng and Lei Guan should have gone to work for you, sir?"

"Most likely, otherwise how could they die at the same time." Wei Liangchen nodded.

Chen Dong said abruptly: "I have a hunch that something will really happen, sir."

Wei Liangchen said: "Bashu is empty, and the Western Army is in Hebei. At least one side can be separated. If the Western Army is defeated in Hebei, sir will be stable in Sichuan."

"If the Western Army comes back to quell the chaos, which side do you expect to win?" Chen Dong asked.

Wei Liangchen said: "I don't know. I am looking forward to the court's pacification of Bashu, and my husband sweeping the world. The former is loyal to the emperor, and the latter is benevolent to the people. The two characters of loyalty and benevolence are originally one, but now we have to make a choice."

Chen Dong said with a smile: "Have you studied with Mr. for so long, haven't you realized the original meaning of the character Zhong? Confucius didn't teach foolish loyalty."

"Having said that, it's easier to know than to do. After all, Da Song is the orthodox destiny." Wei Liangchen sighed.

After the initial anger and confusion, these Taixue expelled students gradually calmed down.

They still can't pass the hurdle in their hearts.

(Resume normal updates tomorrow.)
(End of this chapter)