In May of the old calendar of the second year of Chongzhen, the rainy season has just arrived. The canal was opened to navigation for a while, but the silver and money that could be transported to the capital were delayed when the water level was restored. In particular, the gold and silver that were originally used to hand over to the royal treasury were completely missing, and of course the dispatches and inquiries were also lost.

Many officials in the capital tried to flee, and those who were reluctantly gathered also began to try to whitewash the peace with various reasons, as if they intended to paralyze the new emperor, who seemed to have been herding sheep for a long time and knew nothing about government affairs. Only Sun Chengzong and the others still did not give up hope at this time, and advised Xiao Xuan very frankly: "The world has now reached the point where everything is about to be opposed!" The ministers have looked through the history books, and there has never been such a bold move as His Majesty today to openly declare that he is against the entire powerful and powerful, and to abolish the words of the saints. Even Yang Guang was never like this back then! Now if you want to win back the hearts of the people in the world, you can only ... ”

When Xiao Xuan saw Sun Chengzong and some other "upright ministers" in the six ministries who did not give up their expectations for the new emperor, Xiao Xuan was slightly disappointed and also had some self-blame and bitter smiles. What do you want to do? Obviously, he doesn't have the confidence of the protagonist of modern literature, and he doesn't plan to transform any of the elites of the old era. Obviously, it is possible to truly follow one's own intentions and wishes to bring the whole of the East on the road to modernization in his lifetime. Some of his future plans and propositions will never be recognized by the vast majority of mainstream intellectuals and elites in this era.

With the mentality of entertainment, Xiao Xuan at this time finally became open-mouthed, and said frankly to these important ministers of the court: "It seems that I was wrong." I used to think that you were not like most of the decaying people in the court. But now it seems that you are even more stubborn and unreformable than those people. Go to the Secret Hell! I won't kill you, I'm trying to keep you alive! Hehe... ”

In this way, when officials from all over the country demonstrated with the bureaucratic system striking and the suspension of the grain supply canal, Xiao Xuan, who had been preparing for a long time, finally unfolded his fangs, and the comprehensive raid and torture of many big families in the entire capital, including nobles and civil and military officials, was ruthlessly launched at this time.

Unlike many protagonist troops who did not commit any crimes in the Mid-Autumn Festival at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Xiao Xuan was very worried that letting the elite main force do this work might make the army disheartened. Therefore, only a small number of pickets and officers were selected as supervisors, and tens of thousands of young men and women from the families of those young officers and soldiers were temporarily formed into an army to do this work.

In this way, the discipline of the entire army may not even be comparable to that of Li Zicheng's department, which had just entered the capital. All kinds of crimes and even violations of law and discipline will inevitably occur. Xiao Xuan did not have much experience to correct these problems in "overcorrection must be overdone", and only severely punished those who fornicated or indulged in large households in the capital or embezzled and buried finances privately. Of course, in order to maintain the minimum "vitality", we can only turn a blind eye to some other behaviors.

The storm, which was completely inconsistent with the moral aesthetics of the later ecumenical party, lasted only about ten days, and the hard currency equivalent to more than 17 million taels of silver was plundered, but after that, the wealth obtained plummeted. Including some silk brocade and even other valuables and copper coins, Xiao Xuan estimated that this plunder, which was no less than that in the capital in 1644, would only have an income of about 20 million taels at most.

Although this figure is far inferior to the wealth obtained by the legendary Li Zicheng in Beijing, it is not unexpected by Xiao Xuan. First of all, because the scope of his attack is far less than that of Li Zicheng. Some eunuchs in the capital, Xiao Xuan did not go to prison out of humane compensation and the theory of "gentleman-based class". Some very close imperial relatives, such as Zhang Guoji, Zhou Kui and others, did not move. In addition, the first year of Chongzhen is not as good as the last year of Chongzhen, and perhaps the accumulation of the big families in the capital is different. It is not surprising that he only looted 20 million taels of wealth, but in Xiao Xuan's opinion, there is no big problem in dealing with the needs of defending the city for at least a year or more than two or three years.

The rest is to clean up the population of the old capital, after the completion of the initial torture, the four gates of the capital in principle only need to go out and not allowed to enter, for a while by the previous bloody rain frightened stupid many local big families and even a lot of ordinary people from the nine gates of the flock out, have fled to the suburbs.

However, there are also people who have not escaped, and all those who look adult and have no physical problems are basically left in the capital, and these people, together with some beggars in the city who have not yet withdrawn, and the city fox and society rats who plan to "seek wealth and danger", a small number of cronies and even eunuchs who stayed in the capital, as well as residents who have migrated to the old Beijing city from Shandong and other places, have been assembled and counted, and by the end of May, the population of the entire capital is only about 600,000. Although it still seems like a lot, compared to the previous rough estimate of about 1.5 million people living within the city walls, only about 40% of the original population remains. Of course, the fleeing population did not take away the food in the capital, which also made the relative scale of the entire capital more abundant, and it seemed that there was no problem in supporting it for a year or two.

In order to maintain the quality of the stored grain for a longer period of time during the insurance period, and even to deal with the possible siege and even military disasters that may come later, in May of the second year of Chongzhen, Xiao Xuan and even more than 100,000 young men and soldiers, mainly from Shandong, were busy and busy.

The news of the Great Rebellion in Beijing also quickly spread to all parts of the country, including the south, and King Gui, who had been preparing for a long time, also rushed to Nanjing from Hengyang at this time, and proclaimed himself emperor with the support of many local civil and military officials, and soon won the unanimous support of the provincial vassal kings and even most of the civil and military officials.

Obviously: Xiao Xuan's series of rare behaviors in the history books have reached the point of "betraying relatives". Even many important ministers of the border army outside the border began to declare their support for the elimination of tyrants and the preservation of the way of saints.

What surprised Xiao Xuan somewhat was that the powerful armed forces in Shaanxi, Henan and other places, and even the troops mobilized from the southern provinces, along the water transportation lines of the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and even the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal in midsummer, almost in a very short period of time, gathered a large army of 300,000 and approached at a very fast speed. There is no doubt that the preparations for rebellion in various places have not only been planned for a long time, but have also shown an unexpected efficiency.

What Xiao Xuan didn't know was that it was not only his own deviant behavior that Chongzhen had again and again in the past two years, but also his ability to build an army that could compete with the main force of Jianzhou in just one year, coupled with all kinds of "chaotic politics" that were even better than Wang Mang, had begun to make the vast majority of the officials and gentry in the whole world feel a trace of imminent fear.

(End of chapter)