Simple or not, Huang Zongxi's mind is just an idea. Without enough information, he couldn't be sure if what he was thinking was right. Especially in Yu, if they continue to do it according to Chen Kai's plan, then the biggest advantage for them is that they will not become the target of the Zhejiang Qing army in the next period of time, but if they want to find an opportunity, they can only look at the actions of Fujian.

The timing of influencing one's own destiny is in the hands of others, and this will not be a happy thing in any way. But after thinking about it, Zhejiang's anti-Qing movement has reached this point today, even if it is a great opportunity today, it is actually brought by the Fujian Ming army, and even if it is only Zhang Mingzhen and Zhang Huangyan, it is likely that they will be beaten down on Zhoushan Island, just like when they were in Chongming earlier.

It is a game of power that determines fate, and those who are weak often have to resign themselves to fate. This is not what Huang Zongxi is happy to see, and it can even be said that he hates this state of affairs deeply. But in the current Zhejiang, what is more important than the word happiness is long-term interests. After all, only by staying alive can we see a farther future.

"Perhaps, Chen Kai has foreseen something."

………………

The trough of Zhejiang's anti-Qing movement originated from the encirclement and suppression of the Qing army in the Siming Mountain and Zhoushan areas in the fourth and fifth years of Yongli, and it was also in these two years, the anti-Qing movement in Jiangxi was also suppressed by the Qing army in Jiangxi, Southern Jiangxi, and Fujian during this period.

It was in the fifth year of Yongli that Chen Kai passed through Jiangxi, and some opinions and suggestions affected the development of Jiangxi's anti-Qing movement, but they did not completely rewrite their downfall, but only delayed a little.

In Southern Jiangxi, this was not the main battlefield for the Qing court to suppress the anti-Qing movement in Jiangxi, but the head of the fourth battalion of the Yan Luo General Commandery, which was the most powerful in the Ming army and the righteous army in Jiangxi at that time, was destroyed here. At that time, Luo Rong, the governor of the five armies who promoted the head of the fourth battalion, was killed in Ganzhou, and the Qing court excitedly declared that "if you get this ditch, you will win and kill hundreds of thousands."

In fact, after the destruction of the four battalions of the Yan Luo Headquarters, although the Southern Jiangxi region was still troublesome, it was also because it was located in the key places connecting several provinces, Guangdong, Huguang, Jiangxi, and Fujian, but whenever there was a tight war, they always needed their reinforcements.

Especially in Guangdong, since the fourth year of Yongli, in the strategy of the two feudal domains against Guangdong, aside from the soldiers of the two feudal domains, the Qing army from Southern Jiangxi jumped up and down the most. For example, Hu Yousheng, Gao Jinku, Su Yangzhi, Guo Hu, Liu Bolu, Xianqiyu, Kong Guozhi, etc., etc., almost all the generals of Southern Jiangxi have been to Guangdong, some have been to Guangdong, and some have gone and returned, but no matter which one it is, in addition to the looted gold, silver, jade silk, and local specialties when they left Southern Jiangxi, there are more than a lot of butcher knives stained with blood and the slaughter of the Han people, so they were rewarded by the Qing court, and they were also full of money.

Compared with the ups and downs in Guangdong, Fujian and Huguang in the next few years, the local anti-Qing forces in Southern Jiangxi were suppressed and there was almost no room for survival, but it was relatively quiet.

Ruijin County, the easternmost part of Ganzhou Prefecture, is surrounded by mountains. The name here originates from the gold mine of Xianghu Town, and is named after "digging the ground to get gold, and gold is Rui". It's just that although it produces gold mines, it is not a rich town. However, there are always advantages of small places, and in the basin, there is always less interference from the outside world. If there is a peaceful year, or even just the oppression of the government is not too strong, the people will always have a sense of contentment.

The official road connecting the capital city of Ganzhou and the capital city of Tingzhou passes through here, and on both sides of the official road are divided into fragmented acres by streams, canals and man-made ridges. Find out where the higher ones are, look down, but there is also a bit of a sense of jigsaw puzzle. If you have a little imagination, mountains, rivers, flowers and birds, animals, ladies, only what you can't imagine, and there is nothing that you can't laugh at. Then you have to accompany a few glasses of water and wine, or if you are in a little interested, you can do a poem, whether it is delicate or clumsy, you can also depict the scenery here.

In the autumn harvest season, the golden rice waves are dotted with a little greenery. The majestic wind blows, the waves roll, like the waves, and like the sea of clouds, but there is no stormy waves, and there is no ethereal, some are just the fragrance of rice wandering in the meantime, which is intoxicating.

In a farmhouse not far from the entrance of the small village where the house in Taoqian's countryside is located, the rice in the field was cut down little by little by a sickle. Putting away a bundle, the second child of the family who has not yet married a wife moved it to a wooden barrel, held the back of the rice stalk with both hands, first raised to the right, and then slapped it hard to the left inner side of the barrel. This is to prevent the millet from falling apart in the next ascent, and inside the barrel, a worn-out mat is erected, which obscures the view of the second child on the opposite side, and also blocks the path of the millet splashing forward.

On one side, the rice was cut down in full swing, and on the other hand, the grain was pulled down from the stalks with all the strength. The harvest season is the busiest one, and the whole family goes out together, especially to see God's face. When the grain from the threshing bucket was brought home, the women of the family laid out straw mats in the sunny part of the yard beforehand, poured the grain on it, bulldozed it and turned it, and the warm sunlight sprinkled on it, steaming away the dampness.

At this moment, the sky is beautiful, and there is no miserliness when there should be rain, but now, the sky is clear. After only a few days, when the millet has dried out, it will be sent to the husk immediately, and some of them who have stone mills at home can do it slowly at home, and those who do not take advantage of such things as their family also have in the compound of the mutual aid association, so they have to queue up.

When the grain is shed, it is necessary to store it well - to eat it at home, to keep it as seeds, and if it is a tenant, it is necessary to pay rent, and even the payment of public grain has no other meaning at this time. Although those who have paid the government and the landlord have not enough to eat, if they save money and pick some wild vegetables, hunt some wild things, and do some handymen, they may still have a little survival in a year.

The harvest season is always the most mixed time of the year for farmers. It is always inevitable that the grain is hungry and the grain is cheap and hurts the peasants, but looking at the harvest of a year's hard work, the farmers' hearts are always inevitably happy, because with these, life can continue to live.

As long as there are no wars and famines, such scenes will be staged in summer and autumn every year. is to catch up with the year that is not too peaceful, or a famine year, as long as it is not too serious, the people mostly choose to suffer in their hometowns. Perhaps, it is in response to the sentence that people leave their hometowns. But if you really can't survive it, escaping the famine is also the least indispensable drama, after all, you still have to live.

Today, the sun is still shining all over the earth, and the warm wind is blowing Tao Qian's face, which is so uncomfortable. In a trance, it seems that it is really back to the last year.

However, standing at the entrance of the village, the worry in my ears came, and when I opened my eyes, the rice waves in the fields were much smaller than in previous years. Some are cutting, while others are not planted at all, only the color of the soil is exposed, and in the golden waves of rice, it looks extraordinarily incongruous. As for this inconsistency, some of the people evaded taxes and forced labor, and simply left the country, while others had a large number of people in their families and had already completed the harvest. Just looking down from here, the whole area looks like it's potholed.

Last year and this year, on the side of the Ming Court, it was the eighth year of Yongli and the ninth year of Yongli, and on the side of the Qing Court, it was the eleventh year of Shunzhi and the twelfth year of Shunzhi, and in the eyes of the people, it was as simple as last year and this year.

Regardless of the definition mode, it doesn't seem to make much difference. However, the outbreak of war in Fujian and Guangdong last year had deeply affected this land, and the two provinces fell, and the southern Jiangxi region was attacked by the Ming army on two fronts in the south and east. Especially in the direction of Fujian, the Ming army had already entered the Tingzhou Mansion, which was under the jurisdiction of the Yamen of the Southern Jiangxi Governor, and occupied all the cities except the capital city. The capital city of Nating Prefecture is sixty or seventy miles east of Ruijin County. Once it falls, it will only take a day or two for the Ming army to approach the city of Ruijin County!

"We have also served the conscription, we have all levied the master a few times, and if there is something wrong in the Tingzhou Mansion, let's just take the people of Ruijin County to make up the number."

"It's okay to be charged, I heard the third brother Wang say that he let them go up to the city wall last time. Fortunately, the Ming army didn't do it, otherwise it would be a matter of two to say whether he could come back with all the mustaches and shadows. ”

"That's it, I've heard that the Ming army's Huang Admiral has a black horse under his crotch, and a snake spear in his hand can behead a general in a million army. It's good that there was no fight, otherwise, even the Eight Banners Army might not be able to beat others, just rely on the third brother Wang and their group of croppers, and they are not going to send people to the first level. ”

“……”

The Qing court had only such a capital city left in Tingzhou Prefecture, and most of the villages and towns in Changting County, including the attached Guo, also fell into the hands of the Ming army. From time to time, the city had to be repaired, and the people in the city alone were not enough to see. In this way, reinforcements from the southern Jiangxi region are needed—soldiers, auxiliaries and even civilians, who have been pouring into Tingzhou Mansion through Ruijin County since October last year, and this Ruijin County is even more inevitably regarded as a building near the water by the Qing army in Tingzhou Prefecture. Otherwise, there would have been no war or famine, so how could so many people have fled?

"Master Tao, you have a word, everyone is still pointing to you as our master."

"I know."

When he opened his eyes again, Tao Qian's nose spewed out two streams of turbidity. However, he can only be like this here, and he can't do anything happy and hateful: "According to the rules of the summer tax, those of our mutual aid association must help each other, those who have completed the harvest must help other families, and the men, women and children of each family must move." Especially for those men in the family who are pulled to be masters or serve as servants, there is no reason to watch the slowly rising harvest of the women and children of the family! ”

The Mutual Aid Association has been in Ruijin for more than three years, and at the beginning, most of its members wanted to seek some shelter in taxes and forced labor. Gradually, however, the Mutual Aid Society took charge of more and more things, and its members helped each other to show their strengths, and even if there was a legitimate reason for money to be tight, the Mutual Aid Society would borrow some money from the grain reserves of the public land at low interest rates, so as not to become a lamb under the knife of usury.

At the same time as the number of members increased, the gentry who organized mutual aid associations like Tao Qian also became more and more in the Ruijin territory, and even in the Southern Jiangxi region and even the whole of Jiangxi.

These gentry used their fame to bargain with the magistrates, for example, the mutual aid association organized the local people in their own townships to repair water conservancy, build roads and bridges during the agricultural slack, and at the same time counted as the achievements of the local officials, they were also regarded as servitude - the mutual aid association's work method of resting when tired and continuing to work after rest was much easier than having the vigilant eyes of the officials behind it, and the whipping of the officials and helpers.

Political achievements, of course, are what the magistrates need. But that's not all there is to compromise. The existence of the mutual aid association has given the people a grassroots support, and while the bankruptcy rate has dropped significantly, the things that are important to the government in terms of population, food production, and taxes and servitude have also been effectively guaranteed. On weekdays, the officials regarded the gentry who organized the mutual aid association as local elites, and the gentry flattered their parents in the county as Bao Zheng and Hai Rui.

During this time, Tao Qian instructed the matter of the Mutual Aid Association, and the villagers and those activists immediately responded. Speaking of which, they are actually very anxious, especially yesterday, when the weather was cloudy for most of the day, the millet was not easy to dry, and they were afraid that a rainstorm would come down, and the rice that had not had time to be cut would rot in the ground. Although most of them have already done a lot of work, this mutual aid association is not just a few of them, if the other members can't survive and escape the famine, when it comes to their conscription or husband's son in the future, no one will be able to help them anymore, and the wives and children in the family will be left with a dead end.

Several people rushed back to their respective villages to convey the orders of the mutual aid association, and each family quickly adjusted their labor distribution in order to get help from others in the future, and threw themselves into the work of harvesting.

There are other people who want to join the mutual aid society, and the list goes on and on in the last year. And here, Tao Qian didn't care about continuing to develop members, he had already made an appointment with some other gentry in the county who had organized mutual aid associations, and wanted to go to the county government together to find the county magistrate of the county to talk to him. Even if it may not be able to reduce the pressure on the county to help the Tingzhou government, it is necessary to ensure that the members of the mutual aid association can take a breath as much as possible.

Riding the carriage, Tao Qian hurriedly entered the county seat. The agreement was tomorrow, and he came a day earlier to visit his father-in-law, Old Taishan.

After entering the house, the eldest brother treated him a little more kindly than before. There is no other reason, he won the township examination last year, although the ranking is not good, and this year's examination did not go to Beijing, but the fame has been very different. This is not exempt from vulgarity even if it is a relative.

"You came to the city to find the county lord for the matter of the mutual aid association?"

When I entered the study of the inner house, my father-in-law was sitting on it and smoking a cigarette pouch. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were many smokers, and it was generally believed in medicine that smoking tobacco could remove moisture from the body and be beneficial to health. Therefore, not only adults and the elderly, but also children have a cigarette pouch and pot in their mouths.

My father-in-law smoked the tide smoke grown from Chaozhou, and it was okay to inherit the usual, and the tide smoke was exported to all over the country, and naturally Ganzhou was indispensable. But now, this thing is a shunt-after commodity, and the Qing court's government is very strict in checking the checkpoints, for fear that the Ming army will collude with the local anti-Qing forces, and the things that can be obtained are basically smuggled over, and the price is much more expensive than before.

My father-in-law has been good in this life, and his eldest brother naturally wants to be filial. Tao Qian walked closer, his father-in-law's bag of cigarettes had just been lit, and he was always smiling when he saw this uncle on weekdays, especially when Tao Qian had just been lifted. But the last two meetings are inevitably cold, and the two of them know why, so they tacitly understand.

"Back to my father-in-law's words, the neighbors begged hard, and the son-in-law had to be cheeky to beg the county respect."

is also a fame, but in the face of his father-in-law, Tao Qian has no rudeness. He said this with low eyebrows, but his father-in-law put the cigarette pouch and pot on the table, waved away the scholar who was waiting, and when only the two of them were left in the study, he said earnestly: "It is right that the virtuous son-in-law can maintain the township, but it is necessary to distinguish the priorities clearly." ”

"The lesson of my father-in-law is that my son-in-law reads poetry and books hard at home on weekdays. This is not the recent autumn harvest, which is related to the well-being of the villagers, so I have to make a trip. ”

In the township examination last year, Tao Qian's ranking was low, and he claimed that he was not good at learning and was lucky, so he didn't go to participate in this year's examination. After saying that, I really didn't go to the exam. Ganzhou Shilin praised this "self-knowledge", at first Tao Qian's father-in-law only persuaded him to go to a long time, but he didn't persuade him again when he knew that he couldn't say anything.

However, in the summer, Tao Qian went into the city to visit, and mentioned the matter of the Yiwei examination, and inadvertently mentioned the answer to an exam question during Tao Qian's township examination, which was related to the knowledge points of their son-in-law earlier, and his father-in-law clearly remembered that Tao Qian's answer at that time was very good, but he wrote much worse during the exam. Tao Qian explained that he was nervous in the field, so he forgot about it, but in his eyes, it was clearly another matter.

"Knowing that hard work is the best, three years is enough."

There was something in his father-in-law's words, and Tao Qian naturally understood it. Speaking of which, his father-in-law naturally hopes that he can be admitted to the Jinshi and become an official, which is also a great benefit to his wife's family. Even, when his father-in-law was willing to give him his baby daughter, he also took a fancy to him, and he had a past when he was tested in the Longwu Dynasty.

However, Tao Qian didn't seem to want to be an official too much this time, which made him very puzzled for a while. The last time Weng and his son-in-law met, his father-in-law hinted at Tao Qian, and he had to let go of what should be put down, especially since Emperor Longwu had been dead for so many years, and the love between the monarch and the minister had long been over. Now that they have all participated in the imperial examination of the Qing court, it is naturally the most normal thing to become an official.

In response to his father-in-law's hint, Weng and his son-in-law chatted for a long time, and most of them talked about scientific research and Nanjiang officialdom. As for the great changes in Fujian and Guangdong, which are close at hand, they seem to be secretive. Tao Qian knew very well that his father-in-law had seen too much of the brutality and tyranny of the Qing army, and he didn't believe that the Ming army could really turn the sky upside down. And he didn't want to say anything more, so the two of them chatted until dinner, which was the end.

After informing him of the appointment with his friends tomorrow, Tao Qian went to the guest room by himself. Behind the main hall is brightly lit, and the moment you turn into the courtyard gate, the slightly dim corridor seems to lower Tao Qian's world by a few degrees. Looking back, Tao Qian's gaze did not linger, and he immediately turned his head and dived into the deep path.

"Father-in-law, you don't understand what a great thing we're doing!"