The boat traveled to the city, Zhao Yu looked at the city, the city was heavily guarded and flags were planted all over, not only soldiers were stubbornly guarded, but also horse teams were constantly patrolling, and the city gate was closed, and the drawbridge was pulled up. The moat under the city is connected to the Yangtze River by two lakes, and although it has reached the dry season, the water in the moat still fills most of the moat, and it is not easy to cross the moat. As their fleet approached, the city's defenders immediately sounded the alarm, but in a moment the city was already full of soldiers, firing their bows and arrows at the fleet, and unleashing their bed crossbows.

"Ignore it, get away and pass quickly!" Wang Meng saw that the arrows were dense and wanted to turn left to the depths of the lake to dodge, Zhao Yu said.

"Put down the protective plate, all guns are ready to shoot, the course remains the same, and accelerate through!" Wang Meng immediately ordered.

As the protective plate on the porthole fell, the cabin suddenly became dark, but the dull sound of arrows hitting the board could still be heard, and it should be said that the stone throwers and bed crossbows equipped on the city still had a certain threat to the dragon ship. Ahead is the mouth of the South Lake and the Yangtze River, the channel is suddenly narrowed, if the counterattack will inevitably affect the speed, it is better to speed up the safety.

"It's so deceitful, they actually attack us!" Wang Meng suddenly hated the authentic language.

"Ignore it, they can't hurt us." This section of the waterway had to pass through the breakwater outside the city, where the Yuan army stationed soldiers to defend it and built a war shed. After listening to Wang Meng's words, Zhao Yu opened the observation hole on the porthole and looked out, and saw that the Yuan army guarding the causeway also shot arrows and threw stones when they saw them coming, and what made people hate and panic was that many of them were also mixed in and threw stones at them, and some even climbed to the embankment and held stones high to smash their warships.

"Your Majesty, these Diao people did not respond to the arrival of the king, but instead helped to abuse them, and they will be killed together after the city is broken!" Wen Tianxiang looked over and said angrily.

"Wen Xiang doesn't have to be angry, why bother with these people, they may just think it's fun." Zhao Hao smiled and said to Wen Tianxiang with an angry face.

"Your Majesty, since they know that it is our dynasty, the people should not be attached to the enemy, but rise up against the tyranny. But what have they done now, not only did they not fight, but they helped the enemy, shouldn't they be killed? Wen Tianxiang said even more angrily when he heard the sound of stones hitting the roof of the boat.

"Minister Wen, in order to stabilize the situation, it is appropriate to suppress a group of traitors, but if we blindly rely on killing to force the people to submit, it is definitely not the best policy, otherwise how are we different from the tyrants?" Zhao Yu frowned when he heard this.

At the beginning, in order to deter the enemy army and the people in the occupied areas, Zhao Yu carried out the White Terror after conquering Guangzhou and Quanzhou, and executed all the officials stationed in the Mengyuan Dynasty and the officials of the Yuan Dynasty, and the family wealth and female dependents were filled as officials. After the start of the Restoration Campaign, in order to quickly pacify the occupied occupied areas, an order was issued to suppress the Mongol Yuan officials, traitors, and those who attached to the enemy, but in order to prevent indiscriminate killing, the conditions were still limited.

In the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions he presided over, although a large number of Mengyuan officials and traitors were also suppressed, they did not expand, and they also involved ordinary people and ordinary traders. However, Wen Tianxiang, who presided over the battlefields of Jiangxi and Guangxi, carried out iron-blooded methods, not only executing all the Mongols and Semu, but also confiscating their property. Moreover, the repressive policy was expanded, and all ordinary people and merchants involved in the Meng Yuan were listed as targets of repression, their land was confiscated, their family property was confiscated, and the harsh repression led to the flight of many people, and the local government could not even elect suitable officials.

The reason why Wen Tianxiang is like this, Zhao Yu analyzed that this is certainly related to his jealous and hateful character, but it is also related to his experience over the years. When he was expelled from the court, he convened a righteous army to resist the Yuan in Jiannan Kaifu, and quickly gathered tens of thousands of people at first. However, with the increase of the strength of the Meng Yuan army, the situation became more and more difficult, and many people began to break away from the anti-Yuan army, and even surrendered to the Yuan court, which seriously weakened the strength of the rebel army, resulting in defeat, and its defeat and capture.

On the other hand, it is related to family matters. Wen Tianxiang has three younger brothers: Wen Bi, Wen Ting, and Wen Zhang. His Chinese Ting died early; Wenbi Xiaowen Tianxiang was one year old, Jingyan in the winter of the Yuan army stormed Wenbi garrisoned Huizhou, as the prefect of Kaicheng surrendered, Xiaowen Tianxiang thirteen-year-old Wenzhang, followed Wenbi to surrender. Two years later, in the first year of Xiangxing, Wenbi arrived in Qiongzhou, and Wenzhang retired to the countryside.

After that, Wen Tianxiang escaped and became the right minister, and moved to Qiongzhou. The people of the time had many criticisms of this matter, the elder brother was so loyal, but the younger brother did ugly things that damaged his reputation. Wenbi wrote to the court to plead guilty, and defended himself for the reasons for surrendering: first, there is no end to the sect, one of Wen Tianxiang's two sons died early, and the other was separated in the war, and Wenbi passed one of his sons to Wen Tianxiang; second, Wen Tianxiang's mother died in another country and has not been buried, and needs to be brought back to his hometown with a coffin; Third, unlike the surrender faction when the Yuan army first invaded the Song Dynasty, when it surrendered to the Yuan Dynasty, the imperial court had actually perished, and the result of the struggle could only make the people of the city unlucky.

Zhao Yun knows that in the face of heroes, Chinese often escalate their moral worship in the constant touch. If this worship is detached from its essence and loses the basic understanding and sympathy of human nature, it becomes a moral kidnapping. Some people felt that Wen Tianxiang should condemn his younger brothers, but on the contrary, he did not do what people would like, and expressed silence on the matter, which made some people very disappointed, and at the same time condemned him and wrote poems to ridicule him.

In the end, Zhao Hao made a decision to remove the fame of Wenbi, and he was not allowed to enter the office for the rest of his life. However, Wen Tianxiang was under great pressure from public opinion and mental pressure. Now that the iron-handed rape has not only an element of hatred, but also a fear that someone in the DPRK and China will make a fuss about it again, Jiangxi must be his hometown, so overkill will expand the repression. However, the situation has changed, and if it remains so, it will inevitably lead to undesirable consequences.

"Your Majesty's intentions are understood, but they have forgotten the old dynasty and are willing to serve the enemy, but they dare not act up to righteousness in anger, they are actually obedient people of the Tartars, how can we easily spare them, Your Majesty should not be too merciful." Wen Tianxiang pointed to the people in the causeway with a sense of banter, looking at the boats hiding left and right in the narrow waterway.

"Wenxiang, it is the way of heaven for the weak to eat the strong, they have to succumb in order to survive, and they are different from those who eat them, how can they treat them together!" Zhao Yu was a little bored, these scholars persuaded themselves to implement benevolent government all day long, but when it came to them, they went from one extreme to another. But he still had to be patient and reasonable.

"I see that they have already succumbed, they have long been equal to the Tartars, and there is no monarch in their hearts, otherwise why would they laugh at the humiliation of the king and not reflect on themselves." Wen Tianxiang was still not angry.

What Wen Xiang said is good, but it should also be understood that most of the people living in the grass market are begging for a living on the water, and there are businesses that make a living by operating. Now that the two armies are fighting, their ships cannot enter the river, so they have no harvest, and it is difficult for the family to make ends meet. In the same way, those merchants besieging the city of our army could not sell goods, and it was difficult to sell what they bought. And although they were oppressed by the Tartars before, they could barely feed themselves, but now that they have cut off their way of life, they are naturally dissatisfied with us, so they will have excesses. Zhao Yu knew that choking on fire could only stimulate Wen Tianxiang's anger even more and lead the conversation to the extreme, so he could only change the way.

"Your Majesty said well, when Lin'an fell, the people in the city all wept bitterly, the queen mother and the first emperor hunted in the north, the people of the city went out of the city for ten miles to send each other. Why doesn't the imperial court exist, what can those small people do? can only endure the oppression and exploitation of the Tartars, even if they have the heart to resist, compared with the wolf-like enemy army, it is tantamount to hitting a stone with an egg! Xie Fangde sighed and said.

This is true, before the country was broken, the government was sluggish, the traitorous ministers were in power, the officials were corrupt, and there were many excessive taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and the people could not eat after a year of hard work. In addition, the soldiers were like bandits, forcibly pulling servants along the way, harassing the people, ** captive and doing everything, even worse than the Tartars, seeing that the king was like avoiding the plague, the family fled. There are brave people who form a village to protect themselves against the official army, and some people see the arrival of the Tartars, forcibly open the city gates, tie up the local officials, and welcome the Tartars into the city...... The people's will is already clear! Xie Ao frowned and said bitterly.

"If you are not benevolent, the people will not love you. These faults should not be blindly blamed on the people......" Zhao Hao sighed.

When the Xing Dynasty gradually stabilized in Qiongzhou, every time there were officials coming and going between the two sides of the strait, after returning Zhao Yu for the situation in the south of the Yangtze River, all said that in the occupied area, in addition to a very small number of traitors and traitors who were willing to attach themselves to the enemy, the vast number of peasants, handicraftsmen, scholars and other patriots, based on the national righteousness, in order to welcome back the emperor to restore the rivers and mountains, have spontaneously or organized into the struggle against Mongolia.

Generally, if you hear a lot of this kind of talk, you will inevitably believe it, but Zhao Yu is not so easy to fool, and there is the real situation transmitted back by the spies of the Affairs Bureau, so that he can understand the real situation in Jiangnan. He believed that the relationship between civil society and the invaders in the occupied areas was not an absolutely black-and-white confrontation between the Han and foreign invaders, but a considerable degree of ambiguity. The common people are not patriotic and traitorous with a clear line, but should be in the 'gray area' between the two.

However, this phenomenon was not known after arriving in Qiongzhou, but was discovered as early as when he conquered Guangzhou on the way from Jiazi Town to Qiongzhou. At that time, the region had already changed hands, and the economic base had been destroyed by frequent wars and plunder. However, he found that after the fall of Quanzhou, commerce was often the first to recover, and it is not surprising that Guangzhou was originally a commercial city. But Zhao Yu found that this phenomenon was not only to meet the needs of people's daily necessities, but also that business had become the only means of livelihood for many people at that time.

The war created a large number of homeless and landless people and bankrupt craftsmen. In addition to the traditional trade products, Zhao Yu saw many second-hand daily necessities such as clothes, bedding, cloth, tableware, furniture, vases, bronze utensils, etc., and it is not difficult to imagine that there will be a small number of their own belongings that are forced to sell for life, but it is certain that most of these items are looted by soldiers or thugs from both sides. Most of the traders may be forced to sell just to survive, but at least it shows that the tradition of ethical self-discipline has collapsed.

In the face of the reality of supply blockage and the law of survival first, the moral requirements of the above-mentioned behaviors may not be too high, but there is no room for forgiveness if these two premises are lost, especially at the cost of blaming others or endangering the survival of others. This is enough to show that the profit-seeking nature of the merchants will not be changed by the change of circumstances, let alone constrained by the general sense of national righteousness, and it is not surprising that even war and suffering are not enough to change their desire for profit.

If these acts were not representative because they occurred in the early days of the fall of the country, when the social order was extremely chaotic and the merchant groups were mixed, the Mongols quickly took over power after the withdrawal of the Marshal army from Canton and immediately began to resume international trade in the area. In order to regulate the commercial activities of Canton in order to collect taxes, the Yuan court re-examined and registered merchants and established guilds, whose actions were supposed to reflect their national position.

However, Zhao Yu only saw greed and profit-seeking, hoarding, black market transactions, and smuggling and trafficking becoming the main body of commercial activities, and normal market transactions were also seriously affected by merchants' price increases and anti-price restrictions, showing a strong speculative color. Of course, this is also related to the plundering policy of the Mongols, who imposed high taxes by administrative means and privileges in order to obtain more profits, resulting in a shortage of materials and a shortage of goods in the occupied areas, which not only did not play a role in stabilizing the economic order, but instead activated commercial speculation and smuggling trade.

The subsequent conversion of the currency system and the indiscriminate issuance of banknotes in the central system caused prices to continue to rise and aggravated the shortage of goods, and merchants had to adopt hoarding and anti-price limit countermeasures. In the face of rising prices and increasingly tight supply of goods, merchants do not dare to easily get rid of the goods, even if they sell, they must add the price increase part of the next purchase to the selling price, and add the insurance coefficient because the increase is unpredictable.

In this way, prices have been further raised, but no one has taken care of the lives of ordinary people. In short, the speculative activities of the merchants who fell to Guangzhou were both self-protecting and profit-seeking, and Zhao did not see their nationalist considerations.

If it is said that businessmen pursue profit and forget their righteousness when they see profit, it is not enough to explain this problem. Scholars have always been regarded as the backbone of society and the conscience of the nation, and their positions and behaviors have an important exemplary role. Among them, after the death of the country, there are martyrs for the country, but on the major issue of right and wrong of abandoning and guarding the discipline, and at the time of the survival of the country, most of them still made a common choice, and went to a gray area between the two poles of observance and disobedience......