Guide to traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty

Chengdu, inner city.

The Yamen of the Transfer Department has become Ju Ming's "General's Mansion" Yamen.

Ju Ming looked at the list of checked supplies and asked casually: "Why don't you want to take charge of Chengdu, sir?"

Gao Jingshan said: "It's not appropriate to show up in public. It's better to stay with the general and serve as his staff."

Ju Ming smiled and said: "In Jianmen Pass, many of the soldiers surrendered with you. The news has already spread."

Gao Jingshan said: "It's one thing to spread the word, and it's another thing to have it confirmed."

In the Song Dynasty, there was a serious crime of punishing the Nine Tribes, but under the premise of giving preferential treatment to scholar-bureaucrats, no non-commissioned officer was punished by the Nine Tribes.

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

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

Ju Ming felt that it was quite nonsense. He was obviously a capable person, he had already surrendered to the thieves, and he had given many ideas to the rebels, but now he was actually timid.

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

Gao Jingshan smiled and said: "With a Taoist emperor, the Taoist priests in the world will naturally be rich. The general has never been to Fujian. The temples there are rich, and Chengdu is nothing."

"I will lead the troops to see it one day." Ju Ming said.

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

none of them.

According to statistics in the fifth year of Emperor Zhenzong's reign in the Song Dynasty, the number of monks and nuns in the country was 450,000, of which Fujian accounted for 15.5%.

When Zeng Gong was the governor of Fuzhou, he said that nearly 10,000 local people became monks every three years, and the money spent to change their household registrations accumulated tens of thousands.

Wei Jing (a friend of Zhu Xi) said that Fujian is a small country with a large population. The number of farmers who choose to become monks is half the number who choose to farm. This is similar to the account of Wang Yingchen (the official secretary of the Southern Song Dynasty). If a commoner has three sons in his family, one of them will become a monk, or two of them will become 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-Confucian scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty, explained the situation in Fujian, he took Zhangzhou as an example and said that 70% of various industries in Zhangzhou were controlled by monasteries. This resulted in Zhangzhou's tax revenue mainly coming from monasteries and monks and nuns. Compared with the monks, the wealthy households in the countryside were all poor.

So in Fujian in the Southern Song Dynasty, a strange phenomenon appeared: temples exploited the people, and the government exploited the temples!

In the late Southern Song Dynasty, when the imperial court collected taxes, the temples were closed down one after another, and the monks were forced to flee.

Ju Ming was more reasonable and left some for the monks and Taoists when inspecting the temple properties.

For example, Zhaojue Temple and the shops around the square are all reserved for monks. This is the largest entertainment and commercial venue in Sichuan, with countless hook-and-mortar buildings and various shops. Its Lantern Festival is comparable to that of Tokyo.

The monks ran businesses to make money, and Ju Ming sent tax collectors to collect taxes. It can be said that everyone got what they needed.

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

Especially Qiongzhou and Yazhou are both places for horse trading. Qiongzhou also has iron mines and coin foundries, and tea in Yazhou is the most popular among ethnic minorities. The rest, such as Meizhou and Lingjingjian (Renshou), are all salt-producing areas.

A troop was specially stationed in Tongshan County, Zizhou, which was a rare copper-producing area in Sichuan (all mined in the Ming Dynasty).

Chang Jie's army stayed in Chengdu, and Deng Chun resigned as the capital commander and led a miscellaneous cavalry to attack Lizhou.

"The commander of the Xiang Army in Lizhou of the Puppet Song Dynasty, Yu Dian, led the crowd to greet General Deng!"

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

Deng Chun smiled and got off his horse to help: "Commander Yu, don't see anyone else, we are all our own."

All the subordinate officials also came forward to pay tribute, and they were all Ju Ming's old subordinates when he was the county magistrate.

Deng Chun asked: "Are there any troubles among the barbarians in Lizhou?"

Qiao Huan replied: "Prefect Yuwen was transferred to rectify the Tea Horse Division. During that time, the barbarians were the most obedient. But Governor Yuwen soon resigned, and the Tea Horse Division began to default on buying horses again. The barbarians from all departments were deceived several times, but they were unwilling to do so. Then sell the horse to the government. Now he is ready to take action, and it is very likely to go to Han Dynasty to plunder."

"Send a message to all the barbarians that I have been ordered to form the Tengxiang Army," Deng Chun said. "As long as we send strong men to serve as soldiers, all the tribes will no longer be bullied by the government! By the way, Mr. Qiao, General Zhu appointed you as the prefect of Lizhou. .”

"A certain person will 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.

Tengxiang's troops are all light cavalry, to be precise, they are mountain cavalry.

There are 1,000 Han cavalry and 1,500 Barbarian cavalry.

There are also five hundred non-combatants, all of whom are veterinarians, military doctors, tailors, blacksmiths, cobblers, cooks, etc. These support personnel also all ride poor horses or mules.

Let them first train in Chengdu. The armor is still being built.

Sichuan has a large amount of iron ore, and gun craftsmen from Jinzhou are quickly transferred to various mines to serve as the technical backbone to build muskets and artillery.

In addition, armor is made, mainly chain armor, which is mainly used to protect against crossbows and javelins.

A bow and arrow workshop is also under preparation.

Materials for making bows and arrows, such as horns and tendons, were collected from various salt-producing areas.

The deeper the salt well is, the more animal power is needed to extract the brine. A strong farm ox can no longer hold up after a year or so, and is often killed and sold for meat before being replaced with a new one.

All winter long the rebels were marching out.

Basically, there were no major battles. Depending on the spread of the message in the southern Sichuan area, it was nothing more than sending a small force to take over the city.

Only on the other side of Kuizhou Road, the officers and soldiers of Kuizhou who were making great progress actually withdrew from Bazhou in advance. The north guarded the gate of Dazhou Gorge, and the west guarded Gongzhou (Chongqing). For a while, Li Bao was unable to defeat him.

Li Bao had no choice but to divide his troops and attack. He first captured Dazhu Town (Berlin Town, Dazhu County), and then led a thousand elite troops to cross Huaying Mountain and Mingyue Mountain in a surprise attack to capture 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 capture Lewen (northeast of Changshou) and Fuling.

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

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

When the New Year was about to begin, more than 30 people, including Zhang Boring and Chen Dong, came to Chengdu together.

"xxx pays homage to Ming Gong!"

Everyone bowed to him when they met. They watched the government in Xingyuan Mansion for three months and had already made their own choices.

…

Speaking of watching the government, the time goes back to when Ju Ming left Xingyuan Mansion.

Zhang Gen, his wife Huang, and more than fifty scholars took a boat to Hanzhong.

Some of these scholars were students who had resigned from Imperial College, two were from Guizhou, and the rest were all natives of Jinzhou.

The ship first docked in Daming Township, and Shen Yourong took over Zhu Guoxiang's place to receive them. They all stayed overnight at the inn to rest temporarily.

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

Zhang Jinping lowered his head and said: "Father, mother, my husband has done what he did, so my daughter can only marry and follow the other's side. It's just hurting the Zhang family."

"well!"

Zhang Gen sighed, could he still blame his daughter?

Really unable to find anything to do, Zhang Gen paced out for a walk, with annoying bandits always following behind him.

The rice is being harvested at this time, and the golden rice fields everywhere bring a pleasant sense of harvest. Unfortunately, I didn't see many men. All I could see were women working in the fields.

"This is the good thing the Zhu family did," Zhang Gen finally found a reason to curse, "all the young and strong people were brought out to rebel. Even harvesting rice had to rely on the old, 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 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 hilly and mountainous areas of the south. Later, it was gradually replaced by oil-burning machines.

Two people can carry it up the mountain and down the valley.

It can be easily operated by one person and the other person is responsible for cutting the rice, which is very suitable for small family production.

After Zhu Guoxiang's transformation, the whole structure is made of bamboo and wood, without the need for a single iron nail. Step on the pedal with your feet, the brown belt drive does the work, and the bamboo pieces hit and thresh.

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

Thinking of the rebellious Zhu family and his son, Zhang Gen became even more angry. Why did Duan Duan rebel? Wouldn’t it be nice to invent more convenient machines?

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

Zhang Gen knew where the refugees came from. Those stupid officials on Jingnan Road actually let several groups of refugees come over to join the thieves.

Take a day's rest and continue sailing.

Grand Po Yan, Shen Yourong, Zheng Yuanyi and others, as well as the family members of the leaders, will be taken to Xingyuan Mansion to resettle.

After Zhu Guoxiang opened his government, his shogunate was located in Hanzhong, while Ju Ming's shogunate was temporarily located in Chengdu.

Neither father nor son cared about this, they did whatever was convenient for them.

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

The southeast was actually pretty smooth, but it was a pity that there were floods again after summer.

The reason is simply that the lake has been reclaimed for land and the corresponding water conservancy facilities have not been adjusted.

Zhu Meng used too much people's power to build Huashi Gang. Not only new water conservancy facilities were not built, but old water conservancy facilities were also lack of maintenance, resulting in floods almost every year in these years. If there is a little too much rainfall, there will be a certain dyke.

Chen Dong looked at the golden rice fields by the river and suddenly said: "Fu Yuanheng and Lei Guan must have gone to work for Mr.

"Most likely, otherwise how could he have died of illness at the same time." Wei Liangchen nodded.

Chen Dong suddenly said: "I have a hunch, sir, I think it can really happen."

Wei Liangchen said: "Ba and Shu are empty, and the Western Army is in Hebei. At least one side can be separated. If the Western Army is defeated in Hebei, I will be safe 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 both looking forward to the imperial court pacifying Bashu, and I am looking forward to my husband taking over the world. The former is loyal to the king, and the latter is benevolent to the people. These two words, loyalty and benevolence, were originally one, but now I have to make a choice."

Chen Dong smiled and said: "Have you studied with Mr. for so long and you still haven't realized the original meaning of the word loyalty? Confucius did not teach foolish loyalty."

"Having said that, it is easier said than done. After all, the Song Dynasty is the orthodox destiny." Wei Liangchen sighed.

After the initial anger and confusion, these students who were advised to withdraw from the Imperial College gradually calmed down.

They still can't get over the hurdle in their hearts.

(Normal updates will resume tomorrow.)