The report of Qingzhang Tianmu in Wuxi County, like the rest of the four mansions in Susongchang Town, was sent to the Qi Wangfu at the fastest speed. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoThe people sent by these four prefectures are all cadres who have been trained over the years, and they are not such figures who are easy to be co-opted by the gentry.

Now the results are delivered, all over the country are aimed at the gentry who took the lead, the methods may be different, but basically the expected effect has been achieved, the work of clearing the acres of land has begun to be carried out smoothly in the four prefectures of Susongchang Town, the resistance of the civil gentry still exists, but the gentry who took the lead, in the countryside, I am afraid that they will not be able to gather many people, and the leader is defeated, and the rest is a plate of loose sand, and they can be crushed by the strength of the work team and the government and county yamen and the garrison.

In Chen Wen's plan, this increase in efforts to clear the acres of land is just a façade. Chen Wen's purpose was to use this incident to break the trust between the Donglin gentry who resisted the decree and the rural people, and only in this way could the next stage of the crackdown be better carried out.

"Wuxi Gu family, the founder of the Donglin Party, the family ...... of Mr. Gu Xiancheng of Donglin"

Seeing this, Chen Wen shook his head, the Gu family started from Gu Xiancheng and Gu Yuncheng's generation of a double jinshi, and then Gu Xiancheng and Gao Panlong rebuilt Donglin Academy, and lectured here, with more and more gentry gathered here, and with more and more scholars studying here to get famous, the Donglin Party was formed.

The Gu family rose in the Ming Dynasty, and when the Ming Dynasty died, Gu Gao, who was only listed as the head of the "Staying in the Capital to Prevent Chaos and Public Disclosure", had raised an army against the Qing Dynasty, but it failed to succeed, and in the end it was just a "wish to punish Ruyu, Jun rose and then died" was killed by the anti-Qing rebels in Changzhou together with Wang Ruyu and Gu Junqi who were ready to sacrifice the city to the Qing army.

Since then, the Gu family has been a remnant with peace of mind. In the third year of Kangxi, Gu Zhenguan was already a scholar of the Qing Court Secretariat and a famous minister in the early Qing Dynasty. Later, Gu Xiancheng's seventh nephew, Gu Gao, was the champion of the first year of Jiaqing, and achieved the high position of a cabinet bachelor and a waiter in the Ministry of Rites.

Most of the remnants of the late Ming Dynasty were neither anti-Qing nor Shiqing, but basically did not encourage future generations to go to the Qing court. In the final analysis, the Qing court played a bigger role in the defense of the Xia with the righteousness of the monarch and the minister, but more importantly, the preferential exemption policy of the scholars played a greater role in it.

The existence of the preferential exemption policy has made huge economic gains for the scholars, and more importantly, the gentry have used the preferential exemption policy and their own influence in the people to turn the preferential exemption into unlimited tax exemption. With this, it is the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, the Hua Dynasty, and the Yi Dynasty, and it naturally becomes unimportant to negotiate the interests of the family. Of course, it is precisely because of this that Yongzheng will be blackened by the scholar class over and over again.

"If these organizations and more families of the gentry are united to resist the decree, the other gentry will lose their fighting spirit and the resistance will be greatly reduced. The so-called capture of the thief and capture the king first is what it means. ”

Looking at the report, Chen Wen couldn't help but feel a little complacent, Zhou Yueying watched Chen Xinruo write on the side, and then looked at the report, but he was not so optimistic about it.

"Husband, now they don't dare to act too radically, first, the decree has just been issued, and the situation has not yet intensified to the point of breaking the net, and second, the husband admits the preferential exemption policy, but in Zhejiang, he exempted the gentry who resisted too fiercely, and they did not dare to do things too much. Even in the past few years, they have relied more on bribing and instigating the people to use both soft and the local government, and now the soft ones are useless, and the hard ones are useless, but they will never give up if they move their wealth. ”

In three years, Chen Wen did not vigorously promote the work of clearing the acres of fields, but the soft knife was sharpened and sharpened, and now it has begun to penetrate into the place where the gentry is the strongest and the resistance is the greatest, Zhou Yueying's maiden family is a scholar family, although the gentry in Jinhua are not very strong, but they still have some understanding of the power of the gentry in Jiangnan, and it is inevitable to worry.

"From the sixteenth year of Chongzhen to the present, fifteen years, except for the Longwu Dynasty, which conducted a imperial examination, the Ming Dynasty has never conducted a scientific examination."

Zhou Yueying knew very well that Chen Wen would never recognize the Manchu imperial examinations, and was still using morality to attack the gentry who participated in the Manchu imperial examinations. The defense of Yixia carried out by the Ming army in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Zhejiang, relying on the vigorous propaganda of the Di newspaper, even the gentry who were hit could not say a serious reason to refute it.

Without the imperial examinations of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, there was a discontinuity in the entry of scholars through the imperial examinations, and the civilian training classes used in the occupied areas of the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Ming armies were used for training, and targeted cards were set up in the enrollment and distribution, so that it was far from as simple as before to borrow the officials to have a decisive impact on the governance of the Ming military groups in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Zhejiang.

"The channels for entering the government are restricted, the power of the scholars is constantly weakening, and their influence on the government and local government affairs is constantly decreasing, and it is now the period when the power of the gentry has been weakest in recent decades, and even in the last hundred years. With this background, we will have the possibility of suppressing them. However, as a large number of gentry entered the civil service training classes, the degree of this decline gradually decreased. ”

"To govern the country and govern the country, at least people who are literate and literate must be used, otherwise they will not be able to understand the decrees, let alone govern. The literacy rate of the army is constantly improving, but the military system needs more literate soldiers to be able to organize and fight more powerfully. However, if the husband cannot achieve universal education now, it will inevitably be the gentry into the ruling group. ”

"Now, it's the last time, and it's the best time. Before the Northern Expedition, try to subdue the Jiangnan gentry, at least the husband still has restrictive tricks to use. Of course, I would never want to use that kind of means, because if I could subdue the gentry, I would only get a slave class, and that would not be the new era I wanted. ”

Chen Wen's momentum was like a rainbow, and he was full of spirit, and the sunlight hit Chen Wen's body from the glass window made of small pieces of glass, and for a while he was like a god.

Seeing her husband like this, Zhou Yueying's eyes inevitably revealed a little intoxication. She waited in the boudoir for many years, rejected the courtship of many talented people, and finally married a martial artist, according to the traditional view of the scholar family, if it wasn't for Chen Wen's noble title at that time, he would only be laughed at.

But it is such a martial artist, who is now the leader of the strongest force in the world, and has the qualifications to win the supreme position. What's more, her husband does not intend to stop here, but to start a new era, a completely different era from the past, which is even more exciting for her.

"Mother, how is Xinruo's character written?"

The intoxicating atmosphere was interrupted by her daughter's child's voice, Zhou Yueying's face couldn't help but turn red, she peeked at it, and quickly corrected her color and approached her daughter.

After a while, Chen Wen had already returned to the desk to continue to review the report, and when it was time for her daughter to take a nap, she was led away by the nurse and the maid, and she sat on the brocade stool prepared for her all the year round next to Chen Wen's Taishi chair, and looked at the report that Chen Wen had reviewed carefully.

"Fujun is sure that if you don't use it, well, can that restrictive-level trick really subdue the gentry in Jiangnan?"

The gentry in Jiangnan are the representatives of the gentry class in the Ming Dynasty, Zhou Yueying heard about their deeds from her father and brother when she was in the boudoir, how difficult these gentry are, she only knows a lot more than Chen Wen, and her worries are naturally more serious.

In this regard, Chen Wen didn't care, took the Wuxi County report with his backhand, and said to Zhou Yueying: "Lady, take a look at this report first, especially if you look carefully at the confrontation process, you will find some very interesting things." ”

"Oh?"

Zhou Yueying's result report was read word by word, and she couldn't help frowning when she saw some of the paragraphs. After a while, after reading the report thoroughly, Zhou Yueying sneered, and her green tender fingers pointed at the report.

"The husband is so deceitful, those scholars are not stupid, aren't they afraid of the notoriety of a conspirator in the history books in the future?"

"Conspiracy?"

Zhou Yueying smiled, obviously not taking this seriously, and Chen Wen was the same. Taking the report from Zhou Yueying's hand, Chen Wen snorted and told his thoughts.

"No matter where the gentry want to resist the government's decrees, they always have to use the people as a threat. Among them, rumor-mongering has never been indispensable, and I just asked the Supervision Department to cooperate, cooperate with the performance of the trouble-making gentry, and cooperate with the work of the officials in Qingzhang Tianmu. ”

His daughter was not in the study, Chen Wen gently hugged him, and Zhou Yueying sat on his lap. The old husband and wife have been old for many years, and Zhou Yueying has long lost that twist, peeled an orange, fed it to Chen Wen's mouth, and quietly waited for Chen Wen's detailed explanation.

"The gathering of the gentry, especially in the countryside, was often able to gather forces that the local government could not fight against. However, the officials of the government are also from the gentry, and the local officials are all inextricably linked with them, and the Jiangnan gentry have been successful in resisting the decrees in those years, but this does not mean that their methods must be flawless, and it can even be said that the flaws in their usual methods are so big that they can't bear to look at them directly, but no one has used this to deal with them. ”

"Gathering crowds to make trouble, organizational strength is very important, from the leader, to the backbone, to the ordinary participants below, layer by layer of organization, in order to form a firm enough force to achieve the goal."

"These gentry used to bully those magistrates and officials, as long as the gentry stood in front, the house slaves and tenants followed, they could create a momentum to intimidate the officials, but the common people, who accounted for the largest proportion in the back, had no one to organize at all, not to mention that the gentry were not monolithic, and not everyone was willing to do anything to me for some hidden land. Otherwise, I wouldn't have broken up a team of thousands of people with just a few intelligence officers from the Supervision Division. ”

"And what if the gentry continue to make trouble?"

"Then let them come, even if they don't want to make trouble, I have to force them to continue to make trouble, otherwise why bother to prepare for so long. Now, the first stage is complete, and now, I am waiting for them, once and for all, to teach them the rules well. ”

………………

With the different methods of the prefectures and counties against the gentry who provoked trouble, the work of clearing the fields and acres easily opened up the situation from the gentry who led the gentry. In the four prefectures of Susongchang Town, the team sent by the Qi Wangfu re-cleared the fields in the countryside according to the fish scale book and the information collected by the Supervision Department, and the conclusive figures were constantly sent to the Qi Wangfu and the provincial political envoy Si Yamen.

However, as the work of Qingzhang progressed, the Qi Wangfu suddenly issued a new decree. This new decree is not aimed at the work of Qingzhang Tianmu, but it is aimed at the city's shipping department.

To be precise, it was the smuggling of the four southeastern coastal provinces that attracted the attention of the Qi Wangfu, and the reason for the attention was that the Military Intelligence Department received a report from the "righteous people of the north" that there was a smuggling fleet on the southeast coast selling weapons, armor, and a large amount of materials, including grain, to the Qing court. At the same time, a large number of gold, silver and jewelry looted from the Northern Expedition by the Qing court also appeared on the market in the south of the Yangtze River, especially those antique calligraphy and paintings, and even the Qing court had human or physical evidence of which family was looted from.

"The taxes and production of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are beyond the reach of the north. However, the ruined northern land of the Imperial Court could support it for as long as three years, and it had the spare strength to train a new army, and its huge consumption could not be compensated by a Korean or some Jin merchants. ”

"According to the report of the righteous people in the north, there are many unscrupulous maritime merchants in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong, who smuggle grain, raw materials and even weapons and armor to the court in disregard of the defense of Yixia. Now that the Northern Expedition is imminent, a weapon that is not sold to the Imperial Court is likely to cause one more casualty to the royal division. Such acts are no different from captives! ”

Therefore, from now on, any smuggling act will be punished as a captivity, and the principal offender will be beheaded all over the house, the family property will be confiscated, and the accomplice will be beheaded for public display, and the whistleblower will receive half of the family property. From now on, civilian ships in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong provinces are strictly forbidden to sail to the north, if there is a violation, no matter what the ship carries, they will be sunk on the spot, and will not be tolerated! ”

The new decree of the Qi Palace's mansion was full of killing words, and the smell of blood spread through the ink. Smuggling was not uncommon in the Ming Dynasty, and it could even be said to be a mainstream phenomenon, especially in Jiangnan, where there was a precedent for the Donglin Party to ban the sea and exempt industrial and commercial taxes, and only a few paid taxes, and more bribes local officials, and then blatant smuggling.

It was not until Chen Wen recovered the two prefectures of Taiwan and Wenzhou and rebuilt the city that this phenomenon was alleviated, but the phenomenon of smuggling could not be completely eradicated. However, when smuggling and captivity are linked, and the whistleblower can get up to half of the family property, the deterrent power will increase dramatically.

There is a heated discussion in the market about this most severe anti-smuggling decree in history, and the Qi Wangfu wants to weaken the Qing court by cracking down on smuggling, but more importantly, the Jiangnan gentry are heavily involved in the sea trade, among which the smuggling is too numerous to mention.

In Jingli, Wuxi, in the old house of the Gu family, the leaders of the various houses in the clan gathered here to discuss the matter of Qingzhang Tianmu, but when Gu Zhenguan recited the decree he saw from the county seat, the topic quickly shifted to this matter.

"It's said that it's to crack down on smuggling, but it's not to use a knife against our Jiangnan gentry. The wind and waves at sea are often ships destroyed and people die, and the profits of maritime trade are large, but they are all fighting for their lives, so why should the imperial court collect taxes. If you don't pay taxes, you won't be allowed to go to the sea, and you will sink it, what kind of words is this. ”

Maritime trade smuggling, the Gu family, like other Jiangnan gentry, inevitably has to get involved. Everyone knows the huge profits of sea trade, but Chen Wen equated smuggling with captivity, so no one can say no, at least in front of outsiders, he will never dare to talk nonsense.

The clansmen present did not know, nor did they not harbor some resentment about it, but this matter is more justifiable than the Qingzhang Tianmu, the defense of Yixia is here, and the blood feud with the Manchus is here, this is the correct reason.

"We can't get this anymore, King Qi is a character who kills people without blinking, if he really hooks up with the captivity, our Gu family's reputation will be completely ruined."

Previously, the people were disintegrated by the intelligence officers of the Supervision Department, and there were rumors everywhere that the Gu family was captured, and the prestige of the gentry in the people was greatly reduced. These days, the Gu family has been trying to eliminate the bad influence, and even the government can't take care of the Qingzhang fields - no way, even if they want to make trouble, most of the people in the countryside are spreading the joke that the Gu family is suspected of being captive, and they can't be trusted anymore, relying on domestic slaves and tenants alone is not enough to stuff the garrison's teeth.

"Didn't King Qi's decree say that it was for the Northern Expedition, so when the Northern Expedition is over, the decree will definitely be loosened. Endure the calm for a while, make less money and earn a little less, don't break the foundation of the family because of this kind of thing is the key. ”

"What my uncle said is that it should be so."

The matter of smuggling was decided, and the matter of clearing the fields and acres once again became the subject of discussion. Chen Wen did not recognize the imperial examination of the Manchu Dynasty, and the Gu family did not participate in the imperial examination of the Longwu Dynasty, as long as fifteen years, and there has been no imperial examination for nearly sixteen years. What's more, now that the team is still digging deep into those hidden fields, it will be even more important.

As a result, this year's autumn tax, as well as the taxes that need to be paid from now on, will skyrocket. If you want to recover, first of all, you must reopen the imperial examination, and you will have to cross a single-plank bridge among the talented scholars accumulated over the years, and I am afraid that you will not be able to restore the old view for decades.

"Do you know, now those work teams are not only clearing the acres of land, but also implementing taxes to each household, and in the future, they can't even do the apportionment, how much tax do our families have to pay, and this doesn't talk about the ancestral system of preferential treatment of scholars?"

The taxes that need to be paid have surged, and the apportionment can't be done, and the Gu family's clansmen have shown a look of pain, but at this moment, Gu Shu, who had been unfavorable before, stood up and told another bad news.

"I have inquired in the past two days, when the King of Qi was in Zhejiang, after clearing the acres of fields, he would force the gentry to pay fines, and if they didn't pay, they would be discredited."

Speaking of this, Gu Shu already looked like he was gritting his teeth, and his next words resonated with everyone present.

"Chen Wen's son is named Wen, but he is clearly a demon king like Huang Chao and Li Zicheng, and he is more damaging to scholars than Huang Chao and Li Zicheng, because he knows that he is deeply rooted and knows how to use land to buy those thieves and soldiers. Now that he has not yet become the emperor, he dares to attack us, if he gains power, he will not be able to kill all the scholars? ”

"That's right, we must not give up with this guy, we must let him know that we are powerful, otherwise we will have no peace at all!"