I have a cornucopia

Chapter 256 The Birth of a Nation
"The rise and fall, everyone is responsible!"

Prince Yang wandered back to Nanjing like a ghost, and looked with emotion at Gu Jiang who was shouting slogans on the Golden Stage.

Because the regent had given up, it was actually impossible for the authorities to stop Li Zicheng and the emperor...

The Cabinet and the Nine Ministers Conference could have passed similar resolutions. After all, most of the cabinet and the Nine Ministers were from Southern Zhili and Zhejiang and Jiangxi. But the problem was that the resolutions of the conference had to be passed by the Prime Minister Ma Shiying and turned into an imperial decree by the Regent, and then be stamped and signed by the Regent to be valid. The Regent had already made it clear that she would not sign or stamp, and it was impossible for her to refuse her father as a daughter.

So there's no point in passing.

Unless Liu Daru and others bring soldiers into the palace and force the regent to sign and seal.

But that would require a fight, after all, the guards of the palace were Yang Feng's followers, and if that happened, they would have no way of retreat.

Old guy!

You should always leave a way out.

Therefore, their final choice is to bypass the official system, just like they did last time when they rejected Li, and directly use private means.

But this would require a de facto joint command system among the three provinces...

This is actually very simple. The elders of the three provinces will nominate elders. They can no longer be called elders. They must be former important officials, and they may even be elders of two or three dynasties. This is actually very easy to achieve. After all, Taichang is also considered an elder, so it is easy to find elders of four dynasties. Then they will go to Nanjing to form the Elders Council, which will serve as a temporary coalition government. They will also find a commander for the next joint military action and grant him the command of the coalition forces.

The taste has become more and more pure, and the East and the West have reached the same destination through different paths.

After all, in February this year, the British Parliament has decided to form a new model army, but it is not known who will be the Cromwell of the Ming Dynasty.

And today is the day when the Senate is established.

As for Gu Jiang’s speech…

These days, Huang Zongxi and Zhu Zhiyu take turns to indoctrinate the people with their new world theory, and it is not just Nanjing, but also major cities. Local newspapers and publications such as Huang Zongxi's Datongguo are also frantically indoctrinating the people. For a time, the whole of Jiangnan seemed like the Beiyang era. After all, the first step is to make the people understand this magical world. Everyone can understand rejecting Li Zicheng, but rejecting Li Zicheng and Chongzhen is obviously a bit weird. Isn't that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty?

No matter how incompetent he was, he was still the emperor for nearly twenty years.

Reject him?

Isn't that treason?

Ordinary people are very simple, but they don't have as many cunning minds as them.

So we need to solve this problem first.

"But you can't just ask them to take responsibility, you have to benefit them too. The world belongs to everyone, but the peasants don't feel it, right? You can't just talk about it, you have to make them feel it, otherwise who will follow you? Every man is responsible for the fate of the world? Are you trying to get something for nothing? You just want to trick others into following you, but don't give them any real benefits?"

Yang Feng then said with contempt.

This is also the main problem faced by new scholars now.

The people don’t understand them!
Their thoughts have indeed reached a new height, but it is obviously impossible to make the people think the same as them. No matter how they redefine the world, the monarchy, and other things, they have no meaning to the people. They still have to pay rent and taxes, and they still have to eat coarse food. The gentry can indeed shout that the world belongs to everyone, after all, they really enjoy it, but you want the poor to share the fate of the world with you, that's a bit too much.

Poor guys don’t enjoy any of the benefits of being part of the world, so why should I be responsible for you?

It was not so bad when facing the Jianlu, after all, there was a foreign race as an explanation. When facing Li Zicheng, we could also use traditional loyalty and righteousness to explain it, but now it is Chongzhen.

It's hard to explain.

Ultimately, we have to bring out tangible benefits.

Last time, the Jiangxi Elders Association at least announced rent and interest reductions, and in fact took the lead in doing so, although in the end not many people actually reduced rent and interest...

This is inevitable.

From the beginning to the end, for the Jiangxi gentry, it was just an emergency choice when facing Li Zicheng's clamp, but Li Zicheng had withdrawn his troops, and it would be too stupid to fulfill the promise. Is it because the militia is incapable of suppressing the unruly people? For them, they would rather spend military funds to support the militia to suppress the unruly people than to fulfill their promise to give benefits to the unruly people. However, there is still Yang Feng as a guarantor, so it can't be too ugly, so they use various reasons to temporarily delay or reduce it more or less.

Even if the weight is really reduced according to the standard, we will find ways to get it back.

But in general, at least it has been completed officially, but that’s all. Besides, the official loan sharking is all about interest.

This was decided by Zhu Yuanzhang.

But the problem is that this time the elders don't even want to make such a promise.

Council of Elders.

This venue is the Temple of Confucius.

"They are so inflated, too inflated, that they no longer take Li Zicheng seriously."

Because the venue was not closed, Yang Feng, who was wearing a scholar's robe, was crowded outside the Dacheng Hall with other scholars, watching the white-bearded old man who was making an impassioned speech inside...

"We have received the emperor's grace for generations. From the temple to now, we have experienced four dynasties. The country is in crisis. Why should we die? The rebels held the emperor hostage to control the princes. They are Ming ministers, but they are Ming thieves. Even if we cannot assist Zhaolie like Kong Ming, we cannot get along with them like the Sun family. This time, the rebels held Your Majesty hostage and went south to threaten Your Majesty. However, there is no need to say which is more important, the country or Your Majesty. We cannot destroy the three hundred years of Ming Dynasty with the safety of Your Majesty alone. Xiaoling Mausoleum is beside us, and we should fight to the end with the rebels.

The regent cannot use his daughter to reject his father, but we should use the people to protect the country!"

Qian Shisheng, the seventy-year-old top scholar of the Wanli Dynasty and the Grand Secretary of the Chongzhen Dynasty, raised his arms and shouted with awe-inspiring righteousness.

There was excitement inside and outside the hall.

Indeed, these guys have clearly swelled up.

Li Zicheng's defeat in Jiangxi had made them understand the comparison of strength. In the Battle of De'an, both the Jiangxi and Zhejiang militias showed their ability to defeat Li Zicheng, especially the Zhejiang militia, which even defeated Li Zicheng's cavalry many times. They knew that after investing real money, they really gained powerful military force. In front of cannons and bane guns, all enemies were scum. The elite of Jianlu would be smashed by cannons, and Li Zicheng's elite would also be smashed by cannons.

What they lack the most is cannons. Due to the booming military industry, there are now red cannons mounted on the walls of every county town.

There are as many cheap steel-bore cannons as you want.

Even now, huge cannons weighing thousands of pounds have been installed on the walls of Jiujiang city.

What did Li Zicheng have? He couldn't even defeat the Jianlu back then, but now the militias in Zhejiang and other places have even defeated the Jianlu many times. This is indeed the case.

At present, Li Zicheng really cannot defeat the militia group that has given its all.

Especially if he wanted to go down the Yangtze River, he had to take over the fortresses like Jiujiang.

Jiujiang today is no longer the same as it was before. Not only have more heavy artillery been installed, but even the city walls have been remodeled. To avoid being blown open by heavy artillery, a similar slope was built outside the city, imitating the slope in front of the bastion. Furthermore, a circle of water surface was created by digging the soil on the slope. The outskirts, which were originally full of water, have completely turned into a swamp.

The heavy artillery was simply unable to get close enough to fire directly at the city walls.

But the heavy artillery on the city wall can completely cover the surrounding area.

In addition, there are dozens of new warships on the Jiujiang River, modeled after Zheng Chenggong's warships, but with a flatter bottom for use on the Yangtze River...

In fact, it is a sailing version of a shallow-water heavy gunboat.

The wooden boards are extremely thick and move slowly, but they are very effective in blocking the Yangtze River.

Because Li Zicheng also built a navy upstream, and his main means of attack was fireboats, Jiujiang also pulled up iron chains to lock the river.

There are river-locking iron chains everywhere on the Yangtze River. There is Li Zicheng's river-locking iron chains in Huangzhou upstream of Jiujiang, and there are also river-locking iron chains between Xiaogushan and Penglangji downstream. These huge iron chains block the Yangtze River just like the national highway toll stations back then.

In short, it was a giant fortress complex with 20,000 Jiangxi militiamen stationed there, and there were many new bastions on the periphery, especially Mahuiling to the south, which had also become a fortress.

Li Zicheng really didn't have the ability to open it, so Li Zicheng's original purpose was really to take Chongzhen south to extort money, but now it's hard to say, because the downstream gentry have obviously seen his strength and have begun to get rid of his threats, that is to say, if he can't win a battle, then it's probably impossible to get money and food this year. In the past, he could still play the Chongzhen card, but now this card is useless. After all, the two sides have torn their faces, and they have publicly shouted the slogan that only one can be saved between the country and Chongzhen, and they can abandon the emperor when necessary.

So he had no other choice.

Of course, even if he didn't go south, Nanjing probably wouldn't give him money and grain this year. This was clear from the fact that he was promoted to the position of Crown Prince and Regent.

This might even have been intentional, intended to provoke Li Zicheng into taking action, and then to unite the gentry from all over the country and abandon Chongzhen together.

All very cunning.

Everything is planned.

Prince Yang quietly squeezed out the excited scholars.

then……

Of course, continue to hide.

If he doesn't continue to remain invisible, how can all the forces jump out?
There are still many things that need to be jumped out, such as Dorgon on the north bank. This civil war in the Ming court was just a timely rain for him, instantly extinguishing the catastrophe that the Qing Dynasty was facing. If there had not been this civil war, the Northern Expedition Army would have probably already killed its way to Fengyang, but now there is no need to worry about it in the short term. He can even take advantage of the opportunity to reap the benefits. After all, once Li Zicheng and Nanjing fight, he can easily decide the outcome on the north bank. Last time, he was suppressed by Yang Feng, and he didn't have the courage to take action after the defeat. After all, if he really took action, Li Zicheng and Yang Feng might team up to beat him first.

But it's different now.

There are also Fujian and Guangdong.

The goal of the Fujian and Guangdong gentry has always been to get rid of the imperial court. No matter which court it is, they don't want to listen to the Nanjing court or the Xi'an court.

What they love most is playing local autonomy.

On this point they agree with the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River.

But because of their agreement, they did not want to see the Jiangnan Group win, because a strong Jiangnan Group would be very bad for them, and the latter would be very keen to steal their business. For example, the last time the Zhejiang sea merchants tried to get involved in the maritime trade controlled by the Zheng family. It was also because of this that the Fujian and Guangdong officials headed by Huang Daozhou did not interfere in Nanjing. Last time Huang Daozhou met with Zeng Ying, he did not persuade the latter to withdraw his troops, but supported him to enter the city.

and so……

In fact, there is a high probability that they will join forces with Li Zicheng.

O loyal minister!
They are all loyal ministers. Whose side should they stand on if not the emperor?
As for the Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan Group, it is certain that they will not send troops this time, because in the last confrontation, Wang Yingxiong and Mu Tianbo had already written to the Nanjing court, asking for an explanation. Their soldiers traveled thousands of miles to Nanjing to participate in the Northern Expedition to serve His Majesty, but you Jiangnan militia fired cannons at them. What does this mean? Mu Tianbo made it clear that if he could not get a reasonable explanation, he would not rule out recalling the Yunnan Camp. After all, now that the King of Donghai was missing, it seemed difficult for the Northern Expedition to continue.

Huguang...

Of course, Huguang just stood by and watched.

However, the current Huguang, or more precisely Hunan, only has Wuchang Prefecture and Jingzhou Prefecture that have not been controlled by Li Zicheng.

The rest are from modern Hunan.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty had already been torn apart by him. The reason why the chaos did not really start was largely because he was suppressing it. It was precisely because he supported the regent that all places had to submit to the regent court even though they were actually governing themselves. Similarly, Li Zicheng did not dare to go south because of his existence, because he was not sure whether Yang Feng would intervene directly. He was sure that he could not defeat the combination of Yang Feng and the Nanjing Group.

Therefore, a bottom line must be maintained, a bottom line that Yang Feng can acquiesce to, and the fight can be carried out without touching this bottom line.

Including last time as well.

What forced Li Zicheng to accept reality was not the strength of the Jiangxi militia, nor the joining of the Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan groups.

But he didn't dare to let go, because Yang Feng drew a line for him.

He can’t cross the line.

If there was no such line, he would just let go and play the bandit mode, looting and destroying all the way south like Zhang Xianzhong did in Huguang before. With the limited ability of the Jiangxi gentry, how many holes could they plug?
But the problem was that Yang Feng would take action if that happened, so Li Zicheng could only honestly fight a boxing match with the Jiangxi militia in De'an.

There was also a maritime trade conflict between Fujian and Zhejiang. The Zhejiang Elders Association called for the transfer of Zhejiang militia to the south to attack Xianxia Pass. Why did Ma Shiying force them to negotiate honestly?

Ma Shiying was pulling her to negotiate, and if he didn't give her face, he should let the regent call her Brother Yang.

It was Yang Feng's existence that forced all parties to abide by a bottom line and maintain the minimum respect for the imperial court.

Rather than just ignoring it.

But now that Yang Feng is missing, it’s hard to say what will happen.

Of course, what Yang Feng wanted was for them all to jump out. Now that Dorgon was no longer a concern, it was time to clean up the mess he had made.

(End of this chapter)