Ten days later, a series of processes for the cabinet to vote and the Governor's Office to approve the red finally came to an end. The cabinet then appointed the state capitals, and the officials of the prefectures and counties began to announce to the public that the privileges of the literati would be abolished, and that the state capitals and prefectures and counties that would cancel the privileges of the literati would be reduced by half.

As soon as these two announcements were announced, one stone stirred up a thousand waves.

Satisfied with this policy were the majority of yeoman farmers, tenants who farmed for the gentry, and those who did not, or to a lesser extent, were exempted from the land by means of literati privileges.

It doesn't matter, naturally there are the people in the city who have no land and do not enjoy the privileges of literati, and there are also squires, wealthy merchants, and officials who own land, but when they increase and subtract, they almost offset each other.

Those who are not satisfied are a group of people like Qian Qianyi, who used to avoid taxes by transferring a large amount of land by opening up government relations. Or the oppression of tenants is too strict, and the land rent is received by seventy or eighty percent of the black-hearted landlords. There is also a large group of people who rely on the attached land, reduce the field endowment to earn intermediate fees, and can spend all day without working all day long. The second is the scholar who still wants to rely on the imperial examination high school and the carp jumps over the dragon gate.

These three waves of people are naturally satisfied, and most of them don't matter. But the group of people who are not satisfied have a greater right to speak, and there are masters who are idle all day long and have time to toss. Within a few days of receiving the government's announcement, the gang quickly formed an alliance of opponents.

Funded by black-hearted wealthy businessmen and landlords, led by frustrated literati, they instigated a large group of low-level literati, and also hired one or two thousand street ruffians, gathered thousands of people, and began to make trouble in Zhenjiang, Songjiang, Changzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou and other state capitals, state and county official mansions, and even at the gate of the imperial palace in Nanjing City.

In just half a month, Zhu Cihuan, who was in charge of Nanjing City, sent documents from various state capitals and prefectures and counties requesting the Governor's Office to go to the Governor's Mansion like snowflakes.

As soon as Fang Yuan saw the documents of the state capitals, almost all the other prefectures in Nanzhili gathered to make trouble. The only thing that is calm and usual is Suzhou Mansion, and there is no one who gathers to make trouble. Only about 30 literati staged a sit-in at the entrance of the Governor's Palace, rationally expressing their dissatisfaction with the other side's original policy.

The leader was Fang Yuan's old acquaintance, Gu Yanwu.

Fang Yuan knew at first sight that if he was only against the policy of abolishing the privileges of literati, he should have learned from Gu Yanwu to come to the gate of the governor's palace to sit and demonstrate, instead of going to the gates of the state capitals to gather crowds to make trouble. Anyone who went to the gates of the state capitals to gather crowds to make trouble was definitely not trying to petition, but to create a riot in the state capitals to force Fang Yuan to give in.

Dealing with these ruffians and ruffians, Fang Yuan didn't bother to talk nonsense with them, and immediately declared that all those who gathered to make trouble were rebellions, and ordered two thousand Jinyi guards to go to the state capitals to quell the rebellion. Jinyiwei was slightly understaffed, and Jingjie sent 10,000 Xuanjia troops to cooperate with Jinyiwei to suppress the rebellion.

Before these squires and wealthy merchants started the riots, they had enlisted others to join them in attacking the situation, trying to force Fang Yuan to retreat in the face of the difficulties and cancel this major reform of the privileges of the literati. But they obviously miscalculated, and after the previous incident, they thought that they could start a commotion of at least 100,000 people.

As a result, they were shocked, and most of the squires and wealthy merchants who had promised to fight together weighed the pros and cons, and then mobilized various connections to go to the government to find out the news. The news obtained was that there were traces of a large-scale build-up of the Xuanjia Army, which showed that Fang Yuan was determined to implement this policy, and could even send the Xuanjia Army to forcibly suppress it.

The news that can talk to the three cabinet members is that if they honestly follow Fang Yuan's reforms, everyone's previous vested interests can be retained, and Fang Yuan promises to ensure that their private property is not violated.

After careful calculations, these well-known squires and wealthy businessmen obtained the most accurate information from the governor's palace and cabinet, and after careful calculations, they came to the conclusion that although the reform had lost huge benefits, the benefits brought by the future tax reduction were not small, and it seemed that it was not worth gambling with the lives of the whole family after comprehensively weighing the risks and benefits.

So everyone began to use the excuse that they were seriously ill or that there was a major change in their family, and temporarily canceled their tickets, or simply closed their doors and drew a clear line. Hang the dozens of squires and wealthy businessmen who are scurrying up there.

The scale of the whole riot was far less than the scale of 100,000 people, only less than 5,000 people.

In less than half a month, the Jinyi Wei and Xuanjia troops completely quelled the riots in the Nanzhili Prefectures, and arrested a total of 3,560 people.

These people involved in the riots, as long as the Jinyi guards interrogate them strictly, they can find out the culprit behind them. However, because there are too many of these literati and they are articulate, if Jin Yiwei wants to interrogate them one by one, it will be laborious and laborious, and it will also waste manpower and material resources. And Jin Yiwei may not be able to speak of these literati with some ink in their stomachs.

Fang Yuan adopted a simple and crude method, directly found Xu Cheng of the hundred households of the Jinyi Guard, gave him a chance to make meritorious contributions, and ordered him to take a hundred Jinyi Guards to check the two lists one by one.

One is the list of 5,000 people kept by Jinyiwei in advance, and the other is the rioters arrested by Jinyiwei.

If there is a name on both lists, there is no doubt that he deserves it. He can be convicted immediately and, because he is a repeat offender, can be punished severely. If it is too troublesome to review according to the law, thousands of people will not know that they will be tried until the Year of the Monkey, and they will be exiled directly to Qiongzhou Mansion.

If there are no literati in the list of 5,000 people, they will be punished as first offenders for the time being, and they will be escorted back to the yamen of the state capitals, and after being tried according to the law, they will be reported to the governor's palace.

As for the ruffians who were recruited as targets, they could be seen at a glance from the appearance of being different from the image of a scholar. To find out whether these ruffians were hopeless, Fang Yuan did not send Jinyi Wei to the countryside to verify and interrogate them one by one, but used a simple solution.

The only people who know best whether this person is incorrigible are the people closest to him.

Fang Yuan ordered to announce to the public that these arrested ruffians, if their families intended to pay the ransom, they could be let go if they paid five taels of silver and thirty rods. This kind of person, at least the family is willing to spend money to rehabilitate him, so it is not incorrigible. Severely punishing this person is to cause the family to lose their livelihood, and hatred for the government is not conducive to maintaining social stability.

If no family members are willing to pay the ransom, it can be seen that what they do on weekdays is to abandon their relatives, and you can do whatever you want to deal with this kind of scum, and there will be no consequences anyway. Fang Yuan distributed this kind of ruffian to the Taihu Military Base and the Zhoushan Naval Base in batches to serve as coolies, which could be regarded as eliminating harm for the people.

After punishing the literati and ruffians, the rest were the squires and wealthy merchants who were behind the scenes. As soon as those ruffians and literati entered the edict, they recruited all these people. There are 36 people, all of whom are related to the prefectures of Nanzhili.

As soon as Jin Yiwei's list came out, with Fang Yuan's previous style, it was estimated that it would be the end of directly cutting people and confiscating family wealth. The families and clansmen of these squires and wealthy merchants have launched relations, and the officials and wealthy businessmen of various governments have stepped on the threshold when they go to the cabinet to intercede. The three members of the cabinet are in a dilemma, on one side are acquaintances who often deal with each other on weekdays, and on the other hand, Fang Yuan, who has tough methods, and they are quite embarrassed to be caught in the middle.

The three of them discussed for a while, but Xi Benzhen, a representative of the wealthy businessman, came to Fang Yuan to intercede.

Fang Yuan knew that this major reform had indeed touched the fundamental interests of some gentry and wealthy businessmen in Jiangnan, and it was expected that they would rise up to make trouble. And the scale of this gathering of people to make trouble was far from the big scene that Fang Yuan imagined, he ordered Jing Jie to secretly assemble and prepare to suppress the 30,000 Xuanjia troops in Nanzhili on a large scale, and only sent 10,000 people to easily quell the riot.

Theoretically, these squires and wealthy merchants whose interests have been damaged are not extremely evil. Besides, there were too many people who were executed and exiled during this turmoil, and the entire Nanzhili was already panicked. If these squires and wealthy businessmen were to be purged again, the image that Fang Yuan had maintained in Nanzhili for so many years would further collapse.

Fang Yuan didn't want to punish these people severely, since Xi Benzhen came to intercede, he also sold him a face, and ordered these squires and wealthy businessmen to pay a ransom of a total of 50,000 acres of fertile land, and they could be released. Since they have taken possession of the land and do not want to pay the tax, they should hand over some of it to those who are willing to pay the land to cultivate.

As for who was the mastermind and who was the accomplice, and who should pay more for the good land and who should pay less, that was a matter for them to discuss in private.