The stability of the situation in Suzhou, as the traditional economic center of Jiangnan, has also begun to stabilize the social situation in the entire Jiangnan region, of course, these social stability still have to pay the price, and this price is the economic loss suffered by the gentry and landlords in Jiangnan.

Whether it was exchanging the money in their homes for paper money, or obeying the imperial decree to reduce the land rent, or investing in workshops that were not allowed to dismiss workers and subject to the monthly minimum wage law, the Jiangnan gentry and landlords paid a great price. Although these gentry and landlords found a way to make up for their losses after the imperial court opened up overseas colonization, for them, these decrees were still "chaotic" politics that did not conform to the way of the sages.

However, although the gentry and landlords in Jiangnan were full of resentment, not many dared to rise up and resist by force. First, because the northern soldiers went south to eat, the forces in the hands of these gentry and landlords could not deal with these unsympathetic foreign troops at all. Even the local government was less inclined to use these foreign troops, preferring to use local force to suppress local rebellions.

At least the locally-born army still has a bit of a sense of fellow countrymen, and even if they suppress local rebellions, they will try to narrow down their targets. And those foreign armies had nothing to talk about, and even raided nearby villages in the name of pursuing fugitive rebels in order to expand the results of the war, which was a little frightening to the local gentry and people.

These gentry assured the magistrates that they were willing to obey the decrees of the imperial court, and were willing to pay a certain amount of money and food to the government for disaster relief and military support, and their only requirement was that they hoped to follow the example of the disaster areas in the northern provinces and train militia regiments to defend the localities. For those landlords who dared to rebel against the decrees of the imperial court, they were willing to solve the problem by themselves, so as to prevent foreign troops from entering the local area to quell the "chaos".

Under the external military threat and the anger of the affected people at the bottom, the gentry and landlords in Jiangnan reluctantly chose to bow their heads and give in. In exchange for a relatively stable social order, a part of the economic benefits were transferred.

The second is that from the beginning of the political liquidation of the Donglin Party by the Wei Zhongxian group during the Apocalypse, to the three cases of Yangzhou Salt Case, Nanjing Scientific Research Case, and Taihu Bandit Robbery Case after Chongzhen ascended the throne, and continued to suppress the gentry forces in Jiangnan, and in the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, there were almost no gentry leaders in Jiangnan who dared to stand up against the imperial court.

Like Gu Xiancheng, Gao Panlong, Zuo Guangdou and other well-known scholar leaders at the end of Wanli, there are almost no scholars comparable to these people in the Chongzhen Dynasty. For example, if the literati leader who can be regarded as appealing in the eyes of the corporal today, there is only one Xia Yunyi left, but this one stands on the emperor's side, and he has no intimacy with the gentry.

As for Qian Qianyi, the once highly prestigious leader of the Jiangnan literary circle, he is now widely regarded by the Jiangnan gentry as a hypocrite who deceives the world and steals his reputation, because the policies promoted by this person are always difficult with the righteous man and gentleman, but everywhere he makes those "traitorous" businessmen and villains benefit, and such a person can naturally no longer be the leader of the gentry.

Among the young scholars, Lou Dong Erzhang, who was originally a smash hit, although Zhang Caiwen is famous, but he lacks the talent of a leader, and after serving as a local official, he seems to be a little inactive, and he no longer has the reputation he had in the Fushe before. As for Zhang Pu, although his literary and organizational skills are different from ordinary people, and he can also make scholars from all over the world feel close, but because of the great loss of reputation in the Nanjing imperial examination case, and now he is forced to go into exile, he naturally cannot become the leader of the leading gentry.

Counting further, such as Wu Changshi, Chen Zilong, Yang Tingshu, etc., can only be regarded as the leaders of the scholars in a place, and it is still very early to carry the banner of the leader of the gentry in Jiangnan. Without a leader who could convince the gentry everywhere, it would be difficult for them to confront a court that had been coordinated by the emperor.

This incident can also verify the fact that Jiangnan's culture began to decline from the side. Lacking hard bones like Gu Xiancheng, Gao Panlong, and Zuo Guangdou, the Jiangnan gentry are actually just a piece of dough that is arbitrarily "kneaded". Even if the political ideas advocated by these people were not correct, they did hold up a piece of the world for the Jiangnan scholars, thus shaking and striking at the control of the eunuch party at the local level.

Just when the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River tended to fall apart and become chaotic, the gentry on the Huguang side began to rely on the Hunan University and Wuhan University, which were built successively, to form the ideological and cultural core of the Huguang region.

Needless to say, Hunan University itself was changed from Yuelu Academy, and has always been a holy place for scholars in Hunan to study. Although Wuhan University does not have such a profound foundation as Yuelu Academy, Wuhan has become the most important trade port in the middle of the Yangtze River since Huguang Province was divided into Hunan and Hubei, and the imperial court injected a large amount of money to renovate the Yangtze River waterway and the three towns of Wuhan. With the donations of the local gentry, especially the help of the Chu Palace, although Wuhan University is new, the construction of the school building is quite good, although the campus at the foot of Hongshan Mountain is out of Wuchang City, but because the place is quiet and there is a battalion of soldiers stationed nearby, it is still very vibrant.

Originally, the gentry of the two lakes could only rely on the gentry of Jiangnan and waved their flags and shouted, but since the establishment of these two universities, they have gradually begun to have some independent ideas. After the population of the Jiangnan region exceeded the carrying capacity of the land, the Lianghu area, which is large and suitable for rice cultivation, has become an important supply area for the grain shortage in the south of the Yangtze River.

In the Chongzhen period, the phrase "Suhu is ripe, the world is full" has become "the lake is ripe, the world is full" in the Huguang area. However, although Huguang has become the most important grain producing area in the south of the Ming Dynasty, the Huguang area has little influence in the political arena of the Ming Dynasty. It was difficult to find a Zhang Jiangling, but in the end it was liquidated by the Jiangnan gentry.

The political and economic attachment to the Jiangnan gentry has made it difficult for the Huguang area to have a "colorful" famous family, and this shortcoming has become an advantage now. Because there were few large landlords and gentry in the Huguang area, the imperial court's policy of suppressing the big landlords and gentry was not opposed much in this area.

What's more, the land in Huguang was mainly concentrated in the hands of the clan before, and after the local clan was repaired by the emperor himself, the gentry and people in Huguang area supported the emperor much more than in other places.

The most important thing is that the development level of the Huguang area at this time did not exceed 50%, and the total population of the area did not exceed 6 million, and if you count the hidden population, it will not exceed 7 or 8 million. Whether it is the Jianghan Plain north of the Yangtze River or the Dongting Lake Plain south of the Yangtze River, most of the area is still a lake and swamp at this time, and people can only form villages by draining their banks in it.

This special way of reclamation is the farmland, for which the most feared thing is not drought but flooding. The floods that can threaten the survival of the people of Huguang basically come from the Yangtze River and the Han River, and if you want to control such a big river, it is obviously not enough to rely on the local gentry. Since the early years of Chongzhen, the imperial court has continued to build water conservancy in this area, and finally achieved initial results in the thirteenth year of Chongzhen.

In such a year of great drought in the north and south, the Huguang area unexpectedly obtained a bumper harvest. The reason for this is that in the Huguang area, where there is no shortage of water sources, the increase in sunshine hours is a good thing. And now there is no incident of the rebel army entering the Huguang area on this fork in the road of history, so that the local people can plant fields with peace of mind, which is a fortunate thing for the Ming Dynasty.

And in such a harvest season, the Huguang gentry finally had some moves. As Zhang Chongxiao, who was responsible for reorganizing the local gentry council into a local council, he initiated the first meeting of the Lianghu Council with the support of his uncle Zhang Yunxiu, the governor of Huguang, the Shangshu dynasty of the Nanjing Ministry of Rites, and Wu Daoxing, the president of Hunan University.

Although Hubei and Hunan should have separate parliaments, the gentry of Huguang, who had not long been divided into two provinces, still regarded Hubei and Hunan as one place. Because the gentry in the Huguang region were not very powerful, if they were divided into two provinces for a meeting, their voices would obviously be more difficult to be heard by the gentry in other regions, so in the end everyone decided to join in one meeting.

The meeting did not last long, but the representatives of the gentry of the two lakes unanimously passed three highly influential proposals. The first is that the gentry of Hubei and Hunan decided to obey the decrees issued by the imperial court, including the coinage bill, and work together with the imperial court to face this year's great famine;

The second article decided that the gentry of Hubei and Hunan decided to raise 300,000 stone of grain to be transported to the north for disaster relief, and were willing to accept a group of Henan victims to go south to survive the famine in order to share the burden for the imperial court;

The third article promised that the gentry in the Lianghu area would never store grain and would sell the surplus grain to the Household Grain Bureau within the price set by the imperial court.

When the gentry of the southern provinces, especially the gentry from all over the south of the Yangtze River, spoke out to criticize the various disaster relief decrees issued by the imperial court, the three bills publicly released by the Lianghu Council suddenly became a clear stream, which not only won the praise of the central court center, but also made the Huguang gentry win the favor of the gentry and the people of the northern provinces.

And the words of Wu Daoxing, president of Hunan University, after the parliament finalized the bill, were extremely infectious, so they also followed the bill to the capital.

After Chongzhen read the bill of the Lianghu Council and Wu Daoxing's words, he couldn't help but write an article and publish it in the Daming Times.

“… May I, the scholars of the two lakes, do not live in the pile of old papers, but should follow the example of the sages and take the world as my own responsibility. I think Mr. Wu said this very well, and this is exactly what he said: the rise and fall of the world is the responsibility of the husband.

The ancients said: Qianfu Nuonuo is not as good as a scholar, with a teacher like Mr. Wu, Hunan University can be expected to prosper..."

This article, published in the Daming Times, soon aroused the response of many scholars from the north and the south, and the wind of public opinion finally changed completely, and the protests of the gentry in Jiangnan were not only regarded as selfish, but even split within the southern gentry, and many people began to draw closer to the gentry of the two lakes.