Chapter 104: Li Xin in the Southwest (2)
Zhu Youxiao didn't expect Li Xin to be so able to toss, and then handed over the right to negotiate with Wu Sizang to Li Xin. Therefore, Li Xin negotiated on behalf of the Ming Dynasty court and the high-level of Wusizang, and the two sides agreed to hold talks in Ankang, Sichuan.
The conditions put forward by Uszang were that the current area could be used as the end point to demarcate the dividing line between the two sides, Li Xin was not allowed to continue to develop to the southwest, and Uszang would no longer harass the Qinghai region of the Ming Dynasty, and the two sides would no longer have hostility. Li Xin directly rejected this plan, telling them that Wusizang is part of the Ming Dynasty and must accept the imperial court's policy of changing the land and returning to the stream, whether it is a living Buddha or a living Buddha, only the right to preach, and there is no qualification to rule the place, and the nobles must accept the appointment of the imperial court to manage the place, otherwise it is illegal, and the serfdom system and the Tusi system must be abolished.
The gap between the conditions between the two sides was too great, and the negotiations soon collapsed, and the result of the collapse was war, and Uszang began to mobilize troops to prepare for war, Li Xin was still full of confidence and did not care at all. The first is to directly organize the Tibetan serfs in the Sichuan-Tibet region to divide the land, and then tell them that there is the imperial court to support you, and you also need to protect the land yourself, and if you want to live a good life, you must overthrow the ruling system of the Wusi-Tibetan aristocracy, otherwise you can only return to work for the Tusi and serf owners, and your children and wives, including yourself, are serfs and slaves. The serfs who have enjoyed their freedom are willing to be beaten, scolded and enslaved by others all day long. The second was to organize the armed militia of the Tibetans, issue them some weapons, and cooperate with their own 2,000 musketeers, and began the war to liberate the serfs.
The area of Wusizang is not small, but the population is limited! How big an army can they organize, not to mention that Hong Chengchou's bloody massacre in Qinghai has long made the Wusi Tibetans frightened, which is also the reason why the Wusi Tibetan nobles are willing to withdraw. Li Xin organized less than 10,000 armed militias in Kangding, and together with 2,000 musketeers, he began the war with Uszang.
The war was very simple, the serfs had long been dissatisfied with the cruel policies of the nobles, and every time they went to the manor of the toasts and nobles, the armed militia would directly kill them, divide the land and grain, and then take a part of the provisions and a small number of young people, and continue to advance to the next goal. When he encountered the Uszang armed forces who came to suppress it, Li Xin first asked the armed militia to shout, first talking about the sins of the Uszang nobles, and then talking about the benefits of the imperial court, dividing the land, distributing grain, not paying grain, and not paying taxes, and the future life is self-sufficient, and all the money earned is his own. As soon as this kind of brainwashing ideological work is done, who will work hard for others! The smaller army will be directly dispersed, and there is no need to fight at all, why not? They all went home and divided their land and food.
The only battle that was considered a big one took place in Qamdo, where nearly 20,000 Usizang troops and Li Xin's armed militia confronted each other, these people were brainwashed by the nobles, and they came from a distant place, and the effect of shouting was mediocre, but they hesitated for a moment, and then rushed up. Li Xin smiled, waved his hand, thirty small mortars began to fire, I had never seen these things, and there was no offensive method, just a group of Uszang troops who were all together, and immediately suffered a large number of casualties, and more importantly, they couldn't accept it psychologically, and then the armed militia with a certain amount of organization and training went into battle, and in an instant the Uszang army collapsed, and it was never organized again.
Li Xin's armed militia grew larger and larger, and many of the liberated serfs automatically led yaks and Tibetan horses to assist in the march after the fields were divided. Because these armed militiamen are all Usi Tibetans, they have nothing to adapt to the climate, so Li Xin's Usi-Tibetan journey is not under any pressure, let alone logistics.
When Li Xin arrived at the capital of Wusizang, the city gate was wide open, no one resisted, the nobles fled to southern Tibet, and the two living Buddhas were also coerced away by them, and the city was full of ordinary people. Li Xin asked the little living Buddha from Qamdo to preside over the religious affairs here for the time being, and asked the Tibetans who followed the earliest to choose a leader from the armed militia and start to work in place of the government.
After marching into southern Tibet, they encountered a little trouble, they met the Gurkhas, they were sincere Buddhist believers, in order to protect the living Buddha in their hearts, bravely resisted Li Xin's troops, in desperation, Li Xin had to lure them into the mountain stream at any cost, and solved them with mortars, but also lost more than 3,000 armed militia. In order to avoid more deaths, Li Xin gave them another chance to negotiate, and the sharp small cannon shocked the living Buddha, and in order to save his life, he had to accept Li Xin's conditions.
With the recovery of southern Tibet, Li Xin thoroughly reformed the religion of Wusi Tibet and rectified the local administrative institutions. First of all, Buddhism can be spread freely, but the people of the temple are not allowed to ask believers to donate money, they are not allowed to interfere in local affairs, they can own no more than twice the amount of land on average, and the money and goods donated by believers must be clearly registered, and waste and corruption are not allowed.
In view of the harsh climate in the Wusi-Tibet area, Li Xin, in accordance with Zhu Youxiao's will, will not levy any taxes and fees in the Wusi-Tibet area for five years, and the salaries of local officials will also be paid by the imperial court, and local government agencies can own different amounts of land, which can be used to meet the daily expenses of the management agencies for the time being, and mines and land belong to the state and are not allowed to be bought and sold privately.
Of course, Zhu Youxiao will not do loss-making business, with the recovery of the Wusi-Tibetan region, the Ming Royal Trading Company has also opened into this area, with the wisdom of the perverted merchant Niu Jinxing, various specialties in the Wusi-Tibetan region have been continuously shipped out, and the goods from other regions are also constantly entering this area, with these goods bought and sold back and forth, you can completely earn back the salaries of officials.
After Li Xin recovered Wusizang, Zhu Youxiao directly appointed him as the governor of Wusizang and asked him to train a Tibetan soldier in Lhasa, with a number of more than 10,000, because in the next step, Zhu Youxiao needs some soldiers and horses who can adapt to the plateau climate if he wants most of the government's Tianzhu area. Fighting on both sides of the Himalayas is not something that the average person can adapt to, only the locals are the most adaptable. Further west, the green mountains are steep mountains, in short, this is also a good situation.
In order to allow Li Xin to better control the Wusi Tibetan region, especially the southern Tibetan region, Zhu Youxiao also sent Li Xin a lot of new-style officials recruited from Sichuan, including some military generals. In a word. Zhu Youxiao has a lot of trust in Li Xin, because in history, Li Xin's loyalty to Li Zicheng was unswerving, and he was a consistent and noble person.
Li Xin is also very grateful for Zhu Youxiao's trust, and is conscientious for the governance of the place, after completely recovering southern Tibet, he took his wife Red Lady to almost all the main residential areas of Tibet, to them to publicize the policies of the imperial court, and established a five-year primary school throughout the Wusi Tibetan area, and made great efforts to completely integrate into the Ming Dynasty for the entire Wusi Tibet, until a year later, Li Xin's body was not very suitable for the plateau climate, Zhu Youxiao transferred him to Yunnan as the governor, and helped Zhu Youxiao lay a new world in Yunnan, This is a matter of no further aside.
Zhu Youxiao not only used troops in the northwest to recover the vast territory of the Western Regions this year, but Li Xin also used Huairou's soft power to obtain the Wusi-Tibet region, but these are all backed by white silver, if there is no money, all this cannot be done, so Zhu Youxiao also tried his best. Fortunately, Yang Lian did not live up to his expectations, and managed the central bank of the Ming Dynasty in an orderly and well-organized manner, so that the head of the household department admired this change so much, the only dissatisfaction was that it was too restricted, as long as it was a large expenditure, it had to persuade more than 20 difficult cabinet members. Zuo Guangdou, the iron-faced customs director, has also done a very good job, with the cooperation of Qi Jin, the tariff collection is beautiful! It's very simple, all the merchant ships that go out have the seal of the Ming Dynasty, you have to come back, right? When you come back, you have to enter the customs to declare taxes, there is no Ming customs seal, the Ming Navy does not protect, if the goods smuggled to the Ming Dynasty are discovered, they will be confiscated without hesitation. Therefore, the silver of the white flowers flowed to Zuo Guangdou's feet, in fact, it flowed to the account of the household department, that is, to the hands of the central bank of the Ming Dynasty, so that the treasury was full, and Zhu Youxiao did not have to pay the military expenses of the Ming Dynasty by himself. There is also a money-making master Niu Jinxing, in addition to doing a prosperous business in the Wa Kingdom, he is also like a fish in water in the South Seas.