At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 627, Blood Debt Repaid with Blood and the Gun of Equality for All

The melee ended with Pothinus's lackeys fleeing in panic.

"Brother Sobek, Pothinus was killed by our bomb."

Sobek said, "Good death."

"Good death!" The other villagers cheered, some were excited about escaping death, and some were happy that their enemy dared to die in their hands.

The families of the villagers who died in the melee picked up scimitars and spears and vented their anger on Pothinus's body, which was soon chopped into seven or eight pieces.

Sobek said to his fellow countrymen, "This matter is not over yet. Many of Pothinus' lackeys have escaped, and sooner or later their family will come to avenge us. There is a saying in the Han Dynasty, 'He who strikes first is strong, and he who strikes later will suffer. We and the Pothinus family are now mortal enemies, and we cannot keep this enemy any longer."

"Sobek, we listen to you." In this battle, the tax farmer was killed by Sobek, and he was also the one who led them to fight back, so now the villagers instinctively listen to his command.

So Sobek gathered all the young and strong men in the village, distributed the scimitars and muskets they had just picked up, and then took away all the grenades in the village and all the extra gunpowder.

This group of Avengers bid farewell to their loved ones and embarked on the road of revenge.

Outside Memphis, at the palace of Pothinus.

The fleeing lackey brought back the news of Pothinus' death. This news was like a bolt from the blue. No one could believe it. It was just a simple taxation, but so many people died, even their master died. How could Pothinus' son take revenge?

But he never expected that Sok would lead hundreds of people to surround his house. Pothinus' family was in a state of panic and could only rely on the courtyard wall to give themselves some sense of security.

Portilus was a tax farmer, so his family was certainly not like an ordinary family. His courtyard was like a small fortress, with a wall more than 3 meters high that most people could not climb over. But he was just a small tax farmer who could afford to employ dozens of thugs, so he could not build a fortress like the East.

The most he did was to make the city walls higher and thicker, and that was enough. Although the Ptolemaic Empire had entered the Iron Age, it was still very difficult for farmers in this country to get a piece of steel. Most people only had stone and wooden tools. Having a wall like this was enough to block most attacks.

But these were just defensive measures in the era of cold weapons. When Sobek saw the locked gate of the courtyard, he directly piled more than ten kilograms of black gunpowder at the gate.

"Boom!" The door was blown open by black gunpowder.

Sobek raised his spear high and said, "Fellow villagers, charge in and avenge your grievances."

"Kill!" Hundreds of young and strong men rushed into Pothinus's house through the gate.

Pothinus's thugs had already been frightened by the previous battle and now they dared not resist. They either tried to escape through the back door or climbed over the wall to save their lives.

Under Sobek's leadership, everyone killed and hacked anyone they saw. The anger they had accumulated over decades of oppression by the tax farmers suddenly erupted.

An hour later, the house was flooded with blood, and no one in Pothinus' family was left alive.

Besok also came to his senses from his blood-thirsty state. He said, "This place is too close to Memphis. Let's clean up the battlefield and leave quickly."

Although Pothinus was just a tax farmer, he could be considered the lowest-level ruler of the country. The wealth he possessed made Sobek and others dumbfounded.

Here they found a warehouse filled with linen, wheat, dried fruits, copper coins in rattan frames, and even several pieces of silk from the Han Dynasty thousands of miles away.

But in this warehouse, a lot of linen had mold spots, obviously they had been stored for a long time, and a lot of wheat was also moldy.

Sobek and his companions gnashed their teeth when they saw this scene. The people in their village were penniless, with no clothes or food. But here, there was so much food that it was moldy, and so many copper coins that they were rusted. Even so, the tax farmers would take away their last grain of food and last copper coin. This unfair scene made everyone burst into anger.

Sobek said, "Take back all the fruits of our labor."

"it is good!"

Sobek's actions against the tax farmers ignited the hope of the farmers in Memphis, and these farmers came to Sobek's house to learn from him.

Sobek did not hold back and told them all the content behind the formation and art of war. Only then did they realize that the tax farmers, who were originally invincible, would be torn into pieces by the explosion of gunpowder.

At the same time, Sobek was also very generous. For the villagers who came to seek scriptures, he was willing to use muskets, scimitars, grenades and black gunpowder to exchange for the villagers' food.

He held up a piece of black powder and said to the villagers around him: "With this thing, we poor people can be fair to the nobles and avenge all the sufferings we have suffered. Instead of giving food to those greedy nobles, you should use the food to buy it and fight for fairness for yourselves."

Under normal circumstances, the villagers of Ptolemy did not dare to resist, but this year the tax farmers were too ruthless in collecting taxes, leaving them no way out. After all, only a few villagers could go to work in the Suez Canal, and most people could only barely support themselves. As a result, these tax collectors directly increased the tax rate three times, which directly left them no way to survive.

Now with the successful case of Sobek, it became a multiple-choice question: should you hand over the grain and starve to death, or trade the grain for gunpowder so that you can survive?

Moreover, every village in Memphis now has several books on military tactics, which record how to make black powder, grenades, and flying thunder cannons. If they don’t have enough to buy, they can make them themselves.

Thus, these simple and effective weapons became the nightmare of tax farmers. Any tax farmers who dared to go to the countryside to collect taxes would be dizzy and stunned by these weapons before their teams reached their destination, and they dared not go to the countryside anymore.

In the mayor's palace in Memphis, a group of tax farmers kneeled before the mayor, asking him to help them suppress the rebellion.

These tax farmers have no idea what is going on in this world; it is already hard for them to understand.

After the new tax system was established, they went to the countryside to collect taxes. The tax farmers focused on the laborers who returned from the Suez Canal. Everyone knew that these people had money, and robbing one of them was equivalent to robbing dozens of ordinary people. It was like a swarm of locusts passing through. Those who had money and food were robbed of their money and food, and those who had no money and food were taken away by cattle, walls, and houses. They caught people and put them in their cells, forcing them to pay money to redeem them.

Their ancestors have been paying taxes in this way for generations, and they don't think there is anything wrong with their methods. However, this system that has been running for thousands of years doesn't seem to be working well this year.

When they went to collect taxes, they were beaten with clubs, surrounded by bandits, and even robbed by bandits. This was simply outrageous. What was even more terrifying for these tax farmers was that some unruly people actually blew up their houses with black powder, and several tax farmers were slaughtered in their own homes.

This fierce resistance was unprecedented. More importantly, there was a troublemaker named Sobek. After killing the tax farmer, he directly raised the banner of justice and even united several nearby villages to start fighting back against the tax farmers. It was so that it was not safe outside the city. In order to save their lives, these tax farmers took their entire families and hid in the city of Memphis.

Now they can't even leave the city, so it is impossible to collect taxes. At this time they can only ask the city lord for help. They pay so much money every year, especially this year. If the city lord hadn't asked them to pay three times the tax, they wouldn't be so miserable.

The city lord Theodotus looked at these useless tax farmers with a headache. For some reason, it was particularly difficult to collect taxes this year. There were traitors everywhere who resisted paying taxes, and even rebellious untouchables. It was almost like war outside Memphis. Several tragic massacres occurred outside Memphis. This was the first time such a thing happened in Memphis.

Thinking of the current situation in Memphis, Theodotus was extremely disgusted with the tax farmers in front of him. If these rubbish were not useless, he would not be so distressed.

"It is your job to suppress the untouchables. If you can't even do something as simple as collecting taxes, what use do we have for you? Can you do it? If not, get out of here. How can such a big city like Memphis lack tax farmers?"

The tax farmers immediately cried out, "Lord, it's not that we don't want to collect taxes, but there are too many traitors who resist taxes this year. They rely on the skills they learned from the Han people. They don't obey the law and kill our men. In addition, the untouchables learned how to make gunpowder from somewhere. When our people go to collect taxes, they just take out the gunpowder to blow up. Moreover, these untouchables are extremely cruel. They use gunpowder to blow up the city wall and kill the whole family if they want to."

Theodotus said angrily: "Are the muskets in your hands just for show? If they dare to use black fire to explode, just pull out your guns and shoot them to death."

"They have more people, and once the gunpowder explodes, people will die. Our muskets can't play their advantage."

"Damn the cannons, damn the muskets, damn the Han people." Theodotus said angrily.

He vaguely felt that the world had changed since the appearance of muskets, cannons and the Han people. In the past, even if the untouchables dared to resist taxes, they did not dare to kill people directly like they did now. Most of the untouchables were just like lambs to die, waiting for their knives to chop their necks.

He just didn't know whether this change came from muskets and artillery, or from the Han people, or both. But Theodotus realized that the people were difficult to manage now.

Now the collection of agricultural tax alone has caused an uproar, and the king wants them to collect asset tax. How can this tax really be implemented?
They thought these people were fat pigs, but they didn't expect that they evolved into wild boars and knew how to use their fangs to kill people.

There is a very popular saying on the Internet in later generations, which says that there was no revolution in the era of breech-loading rifles, and there are still many people who believe it as a treasure.

They said they had guns in the back hall and heavy machine guns that could mow the grass with ease and suppress the rebellious forces, completely disregarding the facts.

But if we compare history, it is obvious that the success rate of rebellion was higher when there were no muskets, or that there were more revolutionary uprisings with breech-loading rifles. As the power of muskets and artillery became increasingly stronger, one feudal dynasty after another was gone forever.

How many modern dynasties have an army of hundreds of thousands, but a feudal dynasty can end if just a few hundred soldiers revolt. All of this happened in the industrial age.

So it is not that there was no revolution in the era of breech-loading rifles, but that there were more and more revolutions in the era of breech-loading rifles, and the military power of the lower-class people became stronger and stronger. In the past, if you wanted to assassinate an important figure, you had to look for so-called brave men like Yao Li, Zhuan Zhu, Nie Zheng, and Jing Ke, but the chances of success were still very low.

Now even if you are a geek, he can make you a thorough cut. Give you two shots of equality.

Therefore, in modern times, as long as there is a country with a little bit of normal order, the rulers of this country know to leave a bite of food for the lower class people. This is not because they are kind, but because the people at the bottom have truly mastered the gun of equality for all.

No matter what system it is, the upper class people only care about interests, no matter whether it is the slavery era or the feudal era, if the benefits of taking away your last bite of food are greater than the risk of killing you, then the upper class will ruthlessly take away your last bite of food and then hack you to death. This is even more true of the capitalist system, its emergence is a history of monstrous bloodshed.

However, as the power of muskets and artillery grew, no matter how greedy the rulers were, they could only push you down from the middle class to the bottom. But they would never dare to force the people at the bottom to rebel, because the success rate of rebellion was extremely low before. But now, when the huge lower class can decide to rebel, it is basically likely to succeed.

Therefore, the upper class of today is exploiting the middle class to support the lower class, such as buying for free, or occupying your house and getting legal protection. You are not the ruler of the upper class, nor are you the lower class with a large number of people and no scruples, so if you don't want to exploit them, you will be exploited.

The mayor of the city, Theodotus, shouted, "Come and arrest all these useless tax farmers."

The tax farmers kneeling on the scene looked at the city lord in astonishment. Their brains were blanked at this moment, and they had no idea why the city lord would give such an order.

But the soldiers outside didn't care about that, they only obeyed the orders of the city lord.

The soldiers rushed in, grabbed the tax farmers one by one, and then dragged them out.

The tax farmer exclaimed, "My Lord, you can't do this. I have paid tribute to you and collected taxes for you. You can't do this."

But the soldiers ignored their struggles and took them to prison one by one.

The city lord Theodotus called his confidants and said, "Send someone to raid the homes of these tax farmers and take back their property."

The city lord Theodotus was very clear-headed. Since the tax farmers were no longer able to suppress the unruly people, they were useless waste and naturally had no right to control this wealth.

(End of this chapter)