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Chapter 2055 After the Twelve Gold Medals [Free]

[I wrote a lot of historical stories about Yue Fei, so I'll give you two chapters for free.]

That’s right, because the fake Liu Xu finished writing the manuscript early, so Liu Xu knew clearly that in the author’s world, four months later, Yue Fei would face the final ending of Fengbo Pavilion.

Some readers may find this outrageous. It has been nearly 10 years since the twelve golden medals were issued to recall Yue Fei. How bad was this fake Liu Xu to be able to finish writing The Death of Yue Fei at Fengbo Pavilion in just years?

Actually, from the return of the army with twelve golden medals to Yue Fei's death at Fengbo Pavilion, the whole process was not a quick success as most people believe, that Yue Fei was thrown into jail as soon as he returned with the army, and was beheaded within a few months.

In fact, a full year and a half passed in between, and Yue Fei died tragically a year and a half after he was recalled.

After all, no mature politician would ever do such a thing as to capture and behead a general directly from the army, especially from an army named Yue Family Army. Isn't this obviously an attempt to force the entire Yue Family Army to rebel?

Only in certain novels can one find such an outrageous operation of killing a powerful general with just one order.

Anyone with a bit of common sense thought that directly killing the army might lead to a rebellion, so they hit their heads and came up with a better and seemingly more reasonable approach, which was to directly mobilize 200,000 troops and kill every single one of the 70,000 border troops, from the generals to every small soldier, leaving no one alive, and destroying all traces, thus eliminating the greatest threat to the imperial power!

I can only say that this method is really awesome, and this brain is really awesome. There have been so many ruthless people in Chinese history, but no one has ever accomplished such a feat of 20 people destroying 7 of their own people.

Not to mention whether this task itself can be accomplished or not, it should be noted that 70,000 people were killed. These 70,000 people were absolutely elite, the cream of the entire border army. Moreover, the commander-in-chief was an army that nominally had no intention of rebelling and obeyed the orders of the court. If you killed these 70,000 people directly, half of the military force of this dynasty would be destroyed.

Which emperor dares to play like this?

If the Northern Song Dynasty ordered the destruction of the Western Army, how many years do you think the Northern Song Dynasty could survive?

In addition, these 7 people are not lonely ghosts, they are all the protagonists of Qidian Orphanage, without father, mother, wife or children. After all, an army of people is full of various aristocratic families, sons of generals, nobles in the court, and all kinds of relatives and talents.

These people have parents, wives, and various relatives. If you kill 7 people in one breath, you really don't deserve to be the emperor. The nobles and civil officials will join forces to overthrow you as the emperor.

Of course, there have been similar tragedies in history, but it was not 70,000 elite soldiers, but the last 3,000 Qi family soldiers. After Qi Jiguang wiped out the Japanese pirates, he was transferred to Jizhen, where he suppressed Liaodong for more than ten years, and the Northeast was as stable as Mount Tai.

Then after Qi Jiguang's death, the Korean Rebellion broke out. Qi's army was also the main force in pacifying the Japanese pirates. However, by this time the main force of Qi's army suffered heavy losses, with only about 3,000 people left. In addition, they were at odds with the military leaders in the north, and had been suppressed in the northeast.

At the same time, as the financial situation deteriorated and corrupt officials at all levels embezzled money, the Ming court began to habitually owe soldiers wages. The remaining 3,000 soldiers of the Qi family army were owed wages for several years. They could not survive and could only riot. As a result, Wang Bao, the general of Jizhou at that time, said that he would pay the arrears to these soldiers of the Qi family, but in fact he trapped them in a besieged city, surrounded them by other northern soldiers, and then fired thousands of arrows at them. Before these soldiers of the Qi family army could react, they had all died in the hands of their own people.

The consequences of this incident were extremely serious. From then on, the entire Liaodong region no longer trusted the imperial court. Soldiers would not fight at all if they did not receive their pay, or they would slack off and deliberately lose battles that could be won.

This directly led to Nurhaci's raising of an army with only 13 sets of armor... In fact, the Ming army beat Nurhaci numerous times in the early days, but each time Nurhaci was able to make a comeback, and the battle became bigger and bigger, in order to nurture the enemy and force the court to pay the army. In order to pay the army, the court had to add a new tax called Liaoxing, further exploiting the people, and eventually the whole north was in turmoil, with people rebelling everywhere, and then the Ming Dynasty fell.

It can be said that when the Ming Dynasty could not pay the military but was able to kill the elite troops who owed them wages, the Ming Dynasty was doomed to perish!
Okay, we've gone a little off topic, let's get back to the point. Even if Zhao Gou was stupid, he would never have done something like capturing Yue Fei from Yue Fei's army and then beheading him.

Therefore, the entire operation to kill Yue Fei must have been carefully planned and meticulously laid out. Yue Fei would only be killed after ensuring that Yue's army would not rebel and that the most elite troops of the Song Dynasty could be stabilized and absorbed again!

So after Yue Fei withdrew his troops and returned to the capital, the first thing he encountered was not beheading, but promotion!

After Yue Fei returned to the court with the twelve golden medals, Zhao Gou issued three imperial edicts in succession. Each edict promoted Yue Fei and rewarded him with a large amount of gold, silver and treasures. The entire Yue Family Army was also continuously rewarded. At the same time, Zhao Gou also asked Qin Hui to reward the three armies and gave continuous rewards to many generals of the Yue Family Army, making the entire Yue Family Army grateful to the court.

Except for Yue Fei himself who lamented that his ten years of hard work had been wasted, the other officers of Yue Family Army were actually very happy.

After making Yue Fei's army happy, Zhao Gou and Qin Hui used their second trick, which was to completely transfer Yue Fei away from Yue Fei's army.

The whole process was quite straightforward and simple. In April of the second year, Zhao Gou issued an edict to promote Yue Fei to the position of Deputy Privy Councilor.

What kind of position is this?

It was probably like being promoted from the chief officer of an army to the deputy minister of the Ministry of National Defense. From the perspective of official position, it was definitely a promotion. However, in this way, he would retire from the position of directly leading the army and thus lose direct control over Yue's army.

Even a fool can see through this method of apparently promoting a promotion but secretly demoting someone.

So how did Yue Fei deal with it?
He went to work happily.

This is not to say that Yue Fei was stupid, but that Yue Fei was very smart and knew that this was the best way to protect himself. However, he did not expect how shameless and cruel Qin Hui and Zhao Gou would be.

According to the practice of the Song Dynasty, military officers were not allowed to stay in the same army for too long. In order to avoid future mercenaries becoming self-reliant, the final fate of military officers was actually to serve as officials in the Privy Council.

In this way, the generals surrendered their military power and received a lot of honors and rewards. They could live a rich life in the future, and their descendants would enjoy endless wealth and splendor. Although the emperor paid a little gold and silver, he did not have to worry about another Zhao Kuangyin appearing in the future, who would wake up and wear the yellow robe, and he would have to abdicate.

This was actually a practice that had already been formed as early as the time of Emperor Taizu of Song. This is also known as the practice of releasing military power over a cup of wine. The emperor gave the generals endless wealth and the generals handed over the weapons that could threaten the emperor. It was a win-win for everyone.

Yue Fei thought so too, and the entire Southern Song Dynasty thought so too at the time. They all believed that this was a very normal process of giving up military power over a cup of wine. After Yue Fei handed over the military power, relying on his military achievements, he would surely enjoy endless wealth and glory in the Southern Song Dynasty in the future. He was extremely lucky.

Why is Yue Fei so lucky?
(End of this chapter)