The night in the mountains is dark, and there is not a trace of moonlight or starlight to be seen, but fortunately there are endless pine branches to illuminate here. In the caravan camp, campfires and torches can be seen everywhere. The pine resin overflowed in the heat, and the crackling sound of the flames, accompanied by the croaking of frogs and cicadas, played a nocturne of the mountains.

Near the simple tent made of pine wood, there are several slightly more regular wooden houses, which are the camps specially built by the Songlin Mountain Base for Zhu Pingjin's inspection. The guard company placed two cordons around the camp and surrounded the camp in the middle. The officials who did not get the will to see the prince were politely blocked out of the cordon by Cheng Xiangfeng, the chief copywriter of the prince, on the grounds that the prince and Miss Luo were already very tired after a long journey and needed to rest early. You don't have to rush to report tonight, because tomorrow morning, the prince will convene everyone to discuss the matter.

Zhu Pingjin is indeed tired. In the morning, he delivered a long speech to all the military and civilians for an hour, and in the afternoon he seized the time to review the battalion-level offensive and defensive exercises conducted by the 4th Company, the 1st Special Service Company, and the 2nd Special Service Company of the 2nd Battalion.

The 2nd Battalion did its best, but was still sentenced to fail.

An important reason for failing the grade is that there are not enough earthwork tools in the construction system, such as pickaxes, shovels, axes, etc. The second battalion found almost all the hoes and shovels in Songlin Mountain, but it was not able to do it for two. Many soldiers, prompted by time, used large knives and daggers to dig into the ground in a panic.

The traditional square shape of the fort was also severely criticized by Zhu Pingjin.

Because the straight side walls of the quadrangular fortress are very easy to be attacked by the enemy. A simple stone thrower on the extension of the side wall can get the stone from one end of the side wall to the other. If the trebuchet were to be replaced with an enemy fort, the defending side would be in a much worse position.

Straight side walls also make it difficult to use your own side firepower, and for enemies who climb the wall, the defender can only shoot arrows or fire guns directly at the enemy archers who are taking cover under the wall, which will increase casualties.

Problems are found and rectified immediately.

In addition to increasing and improving the infantry's earthwork tools, Zhu Pingjin also ordered that the future permanent fortresses should be changed into fortresses. The distance between each bastion cannot exceed the effective range of the firebolt. If there is not enough time to build a temporary field fortress, the breastwork should be built as bent as possible, at least every thirty paces there will be a twist and turn.

All officers and senior non-commissioned officers of the Caravan took part in the exercise. Zhu Pingjin took this opportunity to show the officers the effect of firing firearms and tiger squat cannons. The response to the fire gun was mediocre, but everyone liked the tiger squat gun.

With a loud bang from the muzzle of the cannon, three catties of iron in the thick smoke of the fire instantly erupted at a large cone angle, and several grass targets thirty paces away were scattered everywhere. It's just that the tiger squat cannon is difficult to erect, and it must be fixed on the ground with iron nails, and the angle and direction cannot be adjusted after fixing, which is a big problem in the ever-changing battlefield. If it is not fixed, it is also possible to fire on the ground with only the two iron feet supported by the front of the gun body. It's just that the person who played it lit the fuse and was about to run away quickly. Because the cannon would jump a dozen or twenty paces on the ground after firing, and there would be no pattern in the direction of the beating. Jump backwards or to the side, it's all up to God's will. If you hit a boulder while jumping, it is possible to jump forward.

Luo Yuhong seized the opportunity to educate her younger brother Luo Jingyun and went to bed early to catch up on sleep. Zhu Pingjin can't rest yet. He took off his costume, changed into a comfortable gray and green cloth robe, endured his physical fatigue, and insisted on seeing a few people. Some people's work needs to be adjusted, and Zhu Pingjin needs to blow the wind in advance before making a public announcement and ask for his own opinion, so as to show that his grace is supreme. Some people

However, none of this is a problem. It's the big policies that go wrong. Zhu Pingjin needs to take the opportunity of the gathering of all the ministers to personally understand the situation from the people working on the front line and find a way to break the situation in time.

The big policy that went wrong was Zhu Pingjin's land donation policy.

Zhu Pingjin has fully implemented land donation in various parts of the province, and after a short period of smooth sailing, he has recently encountered great difficulties. In some places, it is even difficult to move an inch.

According to Zhu Pingjin's logic, without land, there would be no Wangzhuang; Without Wang Zhuang, it is difficult to establish a team to protect the village. And the construction of the Zhuang team is becoming the cornerstone of his military strength. Therefore, the problems in land donation have seriously affected Zhu Pingjin's macro strategy.

At the beginning of the year, after Zhu Pingjin quelled the turmoil in Yazhou, he asked Hong Qihui for advice on the upcoming land investment, and the two had a long talk on the city tower.

Hong Qihui analyzed at that time that the gentry landlords were privileged scholars, while the common landlords and yeoman peasants were commoners, and that the scholars were engaged in a crony economy and infringed on the interests of the common landlords and yeoman peasants, so there were fierce contradictions with the common people. Therefore, Hong Qihui suggested that Zhu Pingjin should focus on the common landlords and yeoman farmers. Through the alliance of the vassal kings, the government and the common people, they jointly squeezed the gentry and landlords. On the one hand, one percent of the royal palace's contribution and fifty percent of the rent were used to lower the gentry's collection standards. If the gentry charged too much, then the donors and tenants might switch to the royal palace; On the other hand, by collecting contributions from the royal government and reducing the number of common landlords and yeoman farmers, the government will be forced to target the gentry in order to meet the tax targets. In this way, the contradictions between the government and the gentry will inevitably intensify, and the alliance of interests between them will naturally disintegrate.

It should be said that Hong Qihui's analysis was in place at that time, and the suggestions were accurate. More crucially, his proposal is in line with Zhu's political plans. Therefore, Zhu Pingjin immediately adopted Hong Qihui's suggestion and entrusted Hong Qihui with important tasks.

As the ruling class, Zhu Pingjin, proceeding from his own long-term interests, naturally advocated class conciliation, tried to ease the contradictions between all strata of Shu society, and provided a solid rear on the battlefield for the inevitable large-scale and long-term war.

The rear can't be messed up because of this, this is Zhu Pingjian's bottom line. Therefore, in practice, Zhu Pingjin tried to attract the common landlords and yeoman farmers to take the initiative to donate the land to the palace through extensive publicity, with the help of the governor's yamen, and by showing the real benefits to the common landlords and yeoman farmers, and then the palace collected 10% of the donation fee. This practice is actually Zhu Pingjian's previous life, where large units charged small units and self-employed affiliation fees.

But the ideal is very plump, and the reality is very skinny.

The actual effect of this maneuver was much lower than expected. Fundamentally speaking, both class revolution and class reconciliation are a kind of redistribution of interests, and they are both the transfer or abandonment of interests by the strata of vested interests. It's easy to get money and it's hard to give money, human nature, everyone is realistic in front of interests. Zhu Pingjin took it for granted that as soon as the royal government's donation agencies in various places opened, the local small and medium-sized landlords would pinch the title deeds and swarm them to make contributions, while the gentry could only stand aside and stare dryly. Zhu Pingjin forgot that he collected contributions and lowered the rent, which was actually a declaration of war against the existing order of the gentry. The vital interests of the gentry are threatened, and they will not resign themselves to fate just because Zhu Pingjin is the prince of Shu. They are human beings, and they will rebel too. It's just that their resistance is still limited to the scope of law and order, and has not yet reached the intensity of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong!

……

The thieves and bandits Tu Renshou and Peng Shan left a blank sheet of paper for Zhu Pingjian, who arrived in time. He can swing at will on it and take advantage of it.

There was a sudden rebellion in Yazhou, and the power of the gentry was greatly weakened. Hong Qihui, Fu Yuanxiu and other students took the lead in dedicating the palace, and the Zhizhou Kingdom became openly cooperative, so they gained a lot in Yazhou.

Hanzhou was the hardest hit area when Chongzhen broke into Chengdu for ten years, the gentry were weak, and it was a suburb of Chengdu Prefecture. Tao Xiansheng also made some progress by taking advantage of the military prestige and preferential treatment of the caravan.

However, when Zhu Pingjin extended this set of rent reduction policies to Qiongzhou, Meizhou, Mianzhou, Jianzhou, Zizhou, Jiading Prefecture and other places, it began to be fiercely resisted by the local gentry.

There are many different tactics for boycotting.

The Zuo Shilang of the Ministry of Rites of Jingyan County and the Chen Yan family of Dongge University are representatives of soft grinding.

Renshou County is vigorously dividing the fields and land, but Jingyan County, which is a stone's throw away to the south, is silent. Chen Yanjia pretended not to see Renshou County's actions. On the one hand, he did a lot of business with the Renshou Weaving Bureau to sell cotton, and on the other hand, he was loose on the outside and tight on the inside, crushing the people of the county to death, like a pool of stagnant water. When the thieves crossed the border, there were also refugees from Jingken who fled to Inshou. These people, like other refugees, also divided their land in Inshou. Li Chongwen once took advantage of the opportunity of Jingyan refugees to return to their hometowns to visit relatives and used their mouths to promote Renshou County's land policy, but he ended up begging for his own hardship: the landless tenants in Jingyan County fled to Renshou one after another, but the expected small and medium-sized landlords made few contributions. And the land of Renshou has been allocated, and there is no excess land allocation at all.

Li Chongwen reported that in Renshou County alone, there are more than 5,000 runaway peasants from neighboring prefectures and counties, who have been arranged by him to build roads, work or go up to the mountains to cut down trees, reclaim wasteland, and plant corn, red roots, and sorghum because they have no land to cultivate. Even if these 5,000 people have four or five stone of grain a year, they will eat the rent collected by nearly 30,000 mu of land in Renshou Wangzhuang in a year, and Renshou Wangzhuang only has a total of 150,000 mu of cultivated land, accounting for as much as 20%!

What's even worse is that due to the large number of people and the lack of land, when the surrounding tenants fled to the paradise in their hearts, Wangzhuang, the landlords could always find people who were willing to come to farm. Li Chongwen also had to admit in the report that although a large number of tenants fled, the rent level of the Jingyan Chen family did not drop in the slightest!

Yang Tianguan of Qiongzhou is a representative of hard grinding.

He gathered the gentry in Qiongzhou to unify their understanding, and the gentry poured ecstasy soup into the local small landlords and homesteaders. Zhang Shilin and Fu Yuanlan in Qiongzhou shouted and broke their throats, but the landlords of Qiongzhou did not move, and their collective eyes were facing the sky. At the same time, Yang Tianguan also took the initiative to attack, writing letters everywhere to shout injustice, accusing Zhu Pingjin of his black state. Liao Daheng has already received two letters, and it is estimated that Liu Zhibo will receive them soon. It is very likely that the former colleagues of Jingshi Yang Tianguan will also receive it.

Yang Tianguan even attacked the Chinese army directly. He recently wrote a letter to Mr. Zhu. The letter was neither humble nor arrogant, saying that he was grateful for the hard work of the prince to cherish the people, and had fulfilled his original promise and reduced his land rent to the same as Wangzhuang. But the real situation that Zhu Pingjin learned from Zhang Shilin and Fu Yuanlan in Qiongzhou was completely different from the oath in Yang Tianguan's letter. Yang Tianguan and the Qiongzhou gentry did reduce the rent to fifty percent. But under the pretext of people's unrest relief, they made a name for changing the soup but not the medicine: charity. On the surface, the rent is less, but with the addition of donations, the actual burden of the tenants is not less!

In addition to soft grinding and hard grinding, there are also hard resistance.

Since the death of someone at the entrance of the governor's yamen, the gentry of Meizhou have turned against the palace. They not only sent a messenger to contact Wang Yingxiong, a former scholar of Chongqing Prefecture, and through him sent a letter to the imperial court, accusing Zhu Pingjin of encircling and occupying people's land. And there is intelligence that they are following Zhu Pingjin's example and organizing landlord armies in their own manor, also called the Zhuang Guardian Team!

The simplest and most brutal way is to use strong military force to forcibly crush it. However, Zhu Pingjin thought about it calmly, but found that this was a risky move, and finally he vetoed it himself.

There were many reasons for the veto, but the most important of them was that many of the senior officers of the caravan were themselves gentry.

Shu Guoping was born in a big family in Luzhou, and he himself is a talent in Luzhou. Shu Guoping once made it clear in the recital that he should rely on the gentry class to resist the sacrifice. He Youyi is a prisoner, a hereditary officer of Boryeong Mansion, and he is also receiving contributions in the name of the palace. Hong Qihui, the Fu brothers and others are all Yazhou students and big landowners. Not to mention Gao Antai. The Gao and Yang families are the soil emperors of Tianquan, and the time can even be traced back to the Tang Dynasty.

Even Li Chongwen, who was once poor, is also a serious talent in Zitong County!

Zhu Pingjin is not a peasant leader, and he can rob it with impunity. The indiscriminate suppression of the gentry by military means may first of all face their own division, or even betrayal!