On December 4, a group of hundreds of civil and military ministers led by Qian Mengjiu, a scholar of the Tang Dynasty, a minister on duty in the imperial study, and a secretary of the Ministry of the Army, traveled through several provinces and finally successfully arrived in Jinling City.

At this time, Jinling City was already under the strictest military control!

In fact, not only Jinling City, but also many cities in the entire Jiangnan region, including Zhejiang, are under military control, even if there is no military management of the city, but it is also carried out extremely strict martial law measures.

And all this is to avoid turmoil in Jiangnan.

Although in the past, after the Tang Dynasty captured a place, it would also carry out military management of a certain place for a period of time, but the duration was generally not too long, at most it was just a few days in front of it, and soon the management power would be completely handed over to the officials of the civil affairs department, and the military would only assist in suppressing the situation in the city, but it generally did not interfere in the management.

However, this is an exception in the Jiangnan region, where many cities, including the first captured Chizhou Prefecture, are now under military control.

This is because the Datang Army's strategic advancement in Jiangnan is too fast, although it began to march in October, but by November it was basically in control of the situation, and by November it had basically entered the final stage.

The speed of the military's advance has led to the fact that the cabinet has not had time to take over a large number of jurisdictions.

According to the experience of previous years, the cabinet believes that even if the Jiangnan strategy is in line with the trend, the large-scale war should continue until January and February next year, and the cabinet will gradually transfer officials from other places to follow the rear of the army and station them in various parts of the southern part of the Yangtze River.

However, the speed of the military's advance was too fast, and in just over a month, almost the entire Jiangnan was defeated, and this time was not even enough for the officials selected by the Ministry of Officials to go to Jiangnan from their original districts.

In desperation, on the one hand, the cabinet began to transfer officials from various localities to various parts of Jiangnan in a hurry, and on the other hand, it directly recruited and selected officials from Guozijian and many colleges and universities, and at the same time, it also selected officials from the promotion and talent to fill a large number of vacancies after the transfer.

However, even so, the official gap in the Tang Dynasty is still very large, mainly because although the place in the south of the Yangtze River is not big, it is a typical rich place, with a large population, and the jurisdiction of the prefecture and county is not too large, so that more officials are needed.

Because of the severe shortage of officials, it is not so easy to fill the large number of vacancies that have arisen after a large number of officials have been transferred from other existing provinces.

Of course, the shortage of officials is only temporary, and giving the cabinet a few months of buffer time can be solved immediately, and it is not easy to find someone to be an official in these years, and what the cabinet lacks is only the time to select talents and send officials to take office.

In order to avoid turmoil in various parts of Jiangnan, the military has inevitably assumed responsibilities that did not belong to them and continued to maintain high-pressure military control over all parts of Jiangnan.

The Cabinet and the military coordinated that the Cabinet did not expect the military to do anything, but only demanded that the military maintain stability in Jiangnan, preferably as it was, and then wait for the officials sent by the Cabinet to take over one by one.

Therefore, the military control of the Second Army and the Third Army in Nanzhili and Zhejiang was also different from that in other places, and first of all, the strictest martial law policy was implemented, and no entry or exit from the city was allowed unless special permission was given.

This is to avoid mass movements of the population, which can cause unrest!

Second, another very important measure is that at the request of the Cabinet, the military should strongly control the prices of grain in various localities, and grain prices must fluctuate within the limits set by the Cabinet.

And any grain merchant must be open to selling grain to the outside world, as for them hiding and not selling? It doesn't matter, most of their grain warehouses are under military control, and if they don't want to, they must be willing.

From November to October, after the war, there was a strange calm, and this calm also allowed Jiangnan to quickly restore calm after the war, and there was no large-scale turmoil that the Tang Dynasty was most worried about.

However, this peace was broken after Qian Mengjiu arrived in Jinling with more than a hundred civil and military ministers.

After Qian Mengjiu arrived in Jinling, he directly announced the holy decree he had brought with him, changed Tianfu to Chengtianfu, set up a Beijing division, and announced that the holy driver would move to Beijing next year.

Although this news has been announced in the previous Tang Dynasty newspaper, after Qian Mengjiu arrived in Jinling City, he directly announced it publicly in front of many people, which also made many local people finally believe that the pseudo-Tang Dynasty, no, the Tang Dynasty Son of Heaven is really coming to Jinling.

At the same time, Qian Mengjiu was also ordered to deal with many Ming Dynasty demotion officials in Jinling City and the state capitals in the south of the Yangtze River.

Above the fourth rank, there are more than a hundred officials wearing red robes, and there are even more below the fourth rank.

And these demoted officials will not be dealt with uniformly, first of all, those who surrender to the Cheng officials, they are all willing to continue to serve the Tang Dynasty, although most of these people are middle and low-level officials, but there are a lot of them, in most cases, these officials are temporarily retained, with them as the main thing to maintain the current stability in the Jiangnan region.

After the officials sent by the cabinet arrive, these defective officials will also be dealt with separately, and most of them will be assigned to other positions, but this official hat can basically be kept, and the glory and wealth can also be kept.

There are also some who were forced to surrender when the city was broken, these are the real surrender officials, and they will also be identified, and the officials who are willing to surrender to the Tang Dynasty will be temporarily demoted, while those who are unwilling to surrender are temporarily imprisoned.

There are also some who did not intend to surrender, but were captured when they fled or hid, and there are also some who were stubbornly unwilling to surrender and were captured in failure, there is nothing to say about these people, and the circumstances are serious and they are generally killed on the spot, and the remaining part of the circumstances are not so serious, they are currently being detained, and they are beginning to confiscate property!

However, all of the above cases are aimed at mid- and lower-level officials, and for those who are high-level, special treatment is often given on an individual basis.

For example, Qian Qingsong, the former secretary of the household department of Nanjing in the Ming Dynasty, and Zhou Shu, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, who led the military and civilians of Jinling City to surrender, although these two people were brought to Nanjing after the failure of the power struggle in the Ming Dynasty, they were still important members of the court, and their influence was very great.

In addition, there is a very special person, that is, the puppet Ming Wei Guogong

Therefore, the way to deal with them is not to deal with them in the usual way, but to deal with special matters, and in principle, it is necessary to let them be as open as possible.

Gain a huge amount of political influence from this!

However, when you reach this level of official, you can make them surrender, but if you want them to surrender publicly, it is still relatively difficult.

After Qian Mengjiu arrived in Jinling City, he also took time to see the three people, and he also persuaded them slightly, but the effect was not good.

Although they were forced to surrender due to the undefended Jinling City, they wanted them to openly surrender to the Tang Dynasty, although there was such a possibility, but it was not just a matter of saying two words that people would agree.

As one of the three highest-ranking surrender officials, the treatment of Zhou Shu, the secretary of the Nanjing Ministry of Rites in the former Ming Dynasty, is naturally not comparable to other degraded officials, when the Second Army entered the city, Li Chunjing also saw this person, but Li Chunjing was not very interested in these former Ming officials, and after a few casual chats, he sent him away.

For more than a month, he was placed in an exquisite mansion, and next door to him were stationed several other high-ranking officials, and considering that these people were basically the characters of clothes to stretch out their hands and food to open their mouths, if they were locked in a room alone, it was estimated that they would be able to starve to death, so they were also allowed to bring a small number of slaves.

On this day, Zhou Shu climbed to the second floor of the attic on the rockery in the courtyard, leaned against the window and looked at the book, but this book is not the traditional Four Books and Five Classics, but a new book that has been passed over from the pseudo-Tang Dynasty in recent years, the title of the book is called the Tales of the Western Kingdoms, which is about a scholar who set off from Guangzhou on a sea ship and traveled tens of thousands of miles to the Western Taixi countries.

Today, he happened to read an article about Spain, and he was very curious about the fact that Spain was able to colonize a large number of lands tens of thousands of miles away, such as the Americas, with just a few million people, and established a huge empire on which the sun never sets, and he was even more shocked when he saw that Spain's armada had hundreds of large ships and thousands of cannons.

However, when he saw that Spain had found countless gold and silver in the distant American colonies, and shipped them back one by one, he couldn't help but sigh: "No wonder a small country can be so desperate to redeem its troops, it turns out that it is supported by gold and silver from the Americas and other places!" ”

After reading it, he put down the book, he has read several books like this recently, well, all of them are published by the Tang Royal Publishing House, and the more he reads these books, the more suspicious he becomes.

It's not that I doubt the truth of what is said in the book, but that I doubt what I have learned in the past few decades!

According to these books, although Kyushu is large, it is only a small piece of the earth, and there is a lot of land outside of China, and quite a lot of places are either extremely fertile, or there are many gold, silver, copper, and iron.

How could those natives and Tessy barbarians steal such a heaven-sent land!

Whenever this happens, he deeply agrees with the words of his ancestors: The whole world is not the king's land!

These incomparably fertile and resource-rich lands are all from the Son of Heaven and from China!

Just as he was reading the book, he suddenly frowned slightly, and then stood up and walked to the window, the scenery outside the window has not changed much from a month ago, it is still those old trees, but there is a noise outside, and there seem to be many people outside.

"Hongfu!" Zhou Shu put down the book, and then shouted softly.

Suddenly, an old slave walked in outside: "Master! ”

"Why is it so noisy outside, go and see, if it's an idle person, let them go!" After Zhou Shu said a word, he picked up the book again and read it, but the noise outside was still there, but he couldn't calm down anymore to read.