After dividing the spoils on the threshing floor and sending away the superfluous people, it is time for the next public trial that everyone likes to see.

One by one, hundreds of people with their capes were tied and fell to their knees. Then, the members of the rebel task force declared their guilt and the results of their sentences on the spot. Although the time is relatively rushed, if you want to find a crime, you can still find someone to offer a reward to sue you, and you can still make up some of it;

After all, in this troubled world, it can be said that behind every long-term maintenance of dignity and brilliance, there are a lot of bones as a foreshadowing, and the absence of the present does not mean that there is no past, and the absence of the past does not mean that the ancestors do not have, it only depends on whether the individual is willing to face up to the excavation and take it seriously.

Although some people wept bitterly or cried loudly, "Why is the scholarly family here" and "The crown of the world has suffered this misfortune"; or howl and lament that "it is difficult to escape this catastrophe for generations to educate the village", and "the house of fame has fallen into the dust"; or loudly forgive: "I am still useful to the king", "these have nothing to do with me", "I am just deceived to help", can not change the fate of them being hung on the wall and pole one after another, the only difference is that the person with more crimes directly cut off the head of the wall, and the less guilty and less famous is the more decent one who hangs on the pole to save the whole body.

During this period, Zhou Huai'an, who was squatting on the top of the ancestral hall with a Hu bed, was just gnawing on the roasted pork skin as a snack, watching their performances before death, and from time to time in his heart he praised or cast an unqualified black vote or something.

In today's Tang Dynasty, there were two types of management organizations in the lowest rural society:

The first is the top-down state administrative organization, that is, the township neighborhood protection system and the village square system;

That is, the county's mouths take 100 households as a mile, and 5 miles as a township, and the villages, markets, and towns of Lingnan East and West Road are all in the same township; Lixia has five families as one guarantee and four families as one neighbor, which is mainly used to manage those settlements with scattered and few people.

The township officials and Li Zheng appointed by the county were undoubtedly the most basic first-level entity administrative units in the Tang Dynasty. However, all the court documents come from Shangshu Province and reach the state, the state is under the county, and the county is under the township; The declaration of land household tax and forced labor is also from the hands of the chief. "Zhuli Zheng, the county division selects the six grades or less, and Bai Ding Qingping is full of strong cadres" "General Dictionary. Township Party".

In the residential areas and settlement systems where the urban dwellers are the fangs and the rural areas are the villages, there are other village leaders and fangs to manage the corresponding public security responsibilities;

The type of neighborhood protection that connects the two, milk is a kind of mutual supervision and joint household registration group of five families to ensure the payment of taxes and servitude between each other, and once someone dies, the remaining families have to share the relationship and share. At the same time, it also apportioned the obligations of the village and the square in terms of public order.

It can be said that these township-level officials are, on the one hand, the minions of the government controlling the countryside, and on the other hand, the culprits and culprits who have seriously undermined and endangered the stability of the rural small-scale peasant economic system, and are also one of the primary targets of the rebel army today.

The other type is the clan organization with self-organizing function, which is mainly located in remote and Yanbian areas where the influence of the political power is relatively weak, and is also named in the name of village, fort, dock, market, town, city, and yi, to perform the township-level functions of collecting money, grain, taxes, and distributing forced labor; and even a large number of homeless people who secretly stored slaves, purchased weapons and trained the people; In the end, he took the role of the officials to further mutilate and exploit the villagers.

But in the unanimous attitude of maintaining the dignity and inferiority of the rule against the peasant rebel army, they are the best accomplices and helpers of the government; This is also another target that the rebels need to focus on attacking and eliminating.

Of course, with the advent of troubled times and the rise of displaced people, the latter is gradually replacing the former, and slowly occupies more of the proportion in the countryside; In Xunzhou, Chaozhou and other territories, these two kinds of mixed existence mainly exist, among which the township officials who are still directly appointed by the government are mainly concentrated in those near the city.

Therefore, theoretically speaking, as long as these two are resolved, it is equivalent to cutting off the ears, eyes and minions of the imperial court at the grassroots level, cutting off their tentacles in the countryside to suck blood and mobilize resources, as well as the soil of potential supporters and collaborators.

And this Tufeng Village is already the eleventh stronghold that Zhou Huai'an led this rear battalion of men and horses to attack, and before that, there were ten villages, towns and townships that had been defended by Minzhuang and township soldiers, which were successively broken and swept away.

Among them, the owner of the village or the head of the village, or the head of the city, the lizheng, as well as the chief evildoers and accomplices such as the resident officials and grain pipes, the men of the whole family were almost hung up with poles or beheaded, and their net worth was confiscated or scattered on the spot, which was used to recruit soldiers and relieve the poor on the spot, and by the way, to publicize the reputation and simple proposition of the rebels. Those who had participated in the resistance were also taken away punitively and used as temporary labor under supervision for a period of time, as basic atonement and compensation.

As for the women of those big families, they try to avoid harm by leaving a life, but on the premise of not harming, some physical costs are inevitable; And after the rebels left, their own existence, which had lost their support, was a potential attraction and foreshadowing for those poor men.

Although, the surnames of more than a dozen wealthy families led by the Cheng family of Tufeng Village are not as vicious as the owners of Zhaojiazhai, and there is no great notoriety in the local area for the time being, or it is hidden deep in daily life; But as the natural supporter and collaborator of the government at the bottom of the local society, it is one of the objects that must be defeated and destroyed, and it is also a part of the old order that needs to be destroyed;

As he had declared before, there was no compromise on the fundamental opposition between positions and camps, and there was no room for mercy and any possibility of future trouble.

Of course, before that, for these rural strongholds assigned to his duties, Zhou Huai'an certainly did not treat them as potential enemies regardless of specific circumstances and indiscriminately;

He will not take the initiative to attack or indulge his subordinates in nuisance, but while stopping and passing by, he will take away the necessary or short-term labor for a short period of time while stopping and passing by, and leave some goods or salt, iron, and other much-needed items as reward and price.

In some villages with no resistance or only slight resistance, although the big families and the rich have almost escaped, the houses and properties they left behind, as long as they are willing to collect carefully and meticulously, there is still a lot to gain; Even if it is something that the rebels don't look down on at all, it can be distributed to the poor people who don't pick at all, to brush up a wave of people's hearts and favors or something.

And in some villages that were obviously poor and could not squeeze any oil and water, he would symbolically distribute some surplus grain to give a limited amount of relief, or treat everyone to a full meal, and then the situation often opened up; At this time, those poor and young people who can't survive will be indirectly induced to ask whether they can join the rebel army and mix with a full meal for a while.

Even if it is impossible for anyone to join the rebel army for a while, these bags of grain that are distributed with great fanfare can easily confirm their suspicion and guilt of being thieves; It is true that it is human nature to take advantage of the good and the low, but this kind of advantage is not so easy to take advantage of;

After the public trial, the names and amounts were read out one by one, and then the various debt slips and land deeds seized from the wealthy families were burned, which was another clever move to invite buyers to encourage them to join the army.

After all kinds of means were used at the same time, although it was not possible to immediately mobilize the masses, or to become loyal supporters of the rebels overnight; But it is equivalent to creating a relatively friendly or potentially tendentious regional environment in disguise in a short period of time.

Because, once the forces of the official army or the Tutuan can be returned, the first thing to do is to liquidate and punish these people who have benefited from the rebels, or who have been cheaper when the rebels eat big households.

As a result, he also assigned several propositions to several teams, including the task force, so that they could understand, comprehend, and rub in actual operation. Of course, the ultimate goal is still a starting point, how to weaken the enemy and strengthen oneself through daily means.

For example, if the rebel army wants to continue to develop and grow, who can really rely on and rely on in peacetime (the vast number of poor people), who should unite and win over (handicraftsmen and small and medium-sized merchants), and who needs to maintain neutrality and friendliness (poor scholars and small landlords); In the end, who else needs to be directly targeted, attacked and eliminated (the powerful and powerful families and the eunuchs);

The ultimate goal is how to make the enemy a small few, and make as many as possible on your side or neutrally. Well, this last point seems to be a bit too difficult for most of the people under him, and only a very small number of people with vision and consciousness can understand a little.

However, here Zhou Huai'an also discovered and felt a rather interesting thing and regional characteristics; It is because of the coastal area of Lingdong that there are actually many immigrants from Fujian; In these places, between the old and new immigrants and the rural neighbors of the Tu and mountain barbarians, there are some historical grievances due to the rife of disputes between generations; As a result, many problems and unexpected situations were encountered in dealing with these specific villages;

There are advantages and disadvantages to this, the advantage is that the contradictions between them are just convenient for the rebels to concentrate their forces to break each one, while the other villages that have some grievances will even sit back and watch the fire and even applaud it until it happens to them; The disadvantage, this inexplicable contradiction will also extend to the righteous army with Ding Zhuang, who joined the army.

For example, because there is no shortage of successive orders, the latecomers are unwilling to live with the enemy, and they get together to make trouble, fight, and fight, or because of this, they feel unfair and run away again.

It is really worthy of being the favorite martial arts in the Dashi Province in later generations, and the gang origins of overseas Chinese, all kinds of local and guest contradictions have been running through until the establishment of New China; Buzzing and fighting through movement, claiming that the corpse drifted to the open sea; After the reopening, it was even for the huge interests of the smuggling industry, and even the investigation team from the Central X Commission dared to set fire, and it was long excluded from the radiation circle of the special economic zone in disguise.

There is no other way to deal with this trend than to resolutely suppress it without discrimination, and to speak with military law that orders and prohibitions; Then use the training of obedience and synchronicity in collective life to gradually wear it out; As for the local problems, as long as the upper echelons of influential clans are cleaned up and resolved, there will be no ordinary people left who have no one to guide them.

After all, the rebels did not come to solve the problem of neighborhood relations for them, but had their own demands and goals; It is enough to be able to quickly cut through the mess and talk about these problems for the time being, and it is completely enough to invalidate.

(End of chapter)