Liang also told Villa that if he could successfully broker the deal, Liang would be able to give him the same amount of gold as a reward for his hard work.

In this way, Villa stood on the boat and waved frequently to Liang Pengfei, who was standing on the dock to see him off. "Rest assured, respectful, generous Führer, my dear friend, I swear in the name of my mother that I will bring the good news to you with my own hand."

"Have a nice trip, looking forward to seeing you again." Liang Pengfei also waved his arms emotionally and said loudly. When the ship left the port, Liang Pengfei turned around and left slowly.

"My lord, that's almost 10,000 taels of gold, plus those antique treasures, I'm afraid the value is even more than the weight of those gold." Liang Pengfei's side, Sun Shijie said a little distressedly, yes, whoever sees such a large amount of gold and throws it away, I am afraid that the mentally fragile ones will not be able to grab it with their sleeves and knives.

"I care more about the colonies than about the gold." Liang Pengfei said with a smile.

"If we can really buy that vast land from the hands of the Spaniards, it is true that it is nothing to pay some money, but the question is, we can't occupy the South Seas now, and we have to occupy the territory thousands of miles away, is it a little unrealistic." Ni Ming pursed his lips, put on a posture of treating money as dung, and by the way, he also put forward his own disagreement, although he had mentioned it before, Liang Pengfei did not give a clear answer, which made him very depressed.

"Brother Xian may not know, I am afraid that it will be two or three months soon, or half a year at the slow, this continent, I am afraid that there will be a bloody storm, and I don't know how many people will be displaced and uprooted from their homes. And adults are afraid that they just want to take advantage of this opportunity to cross the ocean. ”

Hearing Sun Shijie's words, Ni Ming couldn't help but gasp, and turned his face to look at Sun Shijie. "Could it be ......"

"The White Lotus Sect has raised its flag in the Xiangyang area." Liang Pengfei said lightly to Ni Ming, who had just returned to Hong Kong Island from Taiwan: "Five days ago, because the people of Zhuxi, Hubei Province were dissatisfied with the government's increase in taxes and fought with the errand soldiers, seven people died, and the people of Zhuxi carried the coffin into the county seat, wanting justice.

As a result, the court army did not care about right and wrong, and slaughtered one-third of the tens of thousands of people gathered outside Zhuxi County on the charge of gathering people to rebel...... This expected event has already happened in advance. ”

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"It's not the sins created by those corrupt officials and corrupt officials, but the sins created by the court." Ni Ming slapped his hands fiercely, his eyes ready to breathe fire.

Sun Shijie nodded: "Yes, court, hehe, if it weren't for the British attacking the Yangtze River, this uprising might have come later, and now it seems that it is the right time." ”

At that time, the landlord class, represented by the emperor, seized large tracts of land through various means such as encirclement, forced purchase, and usury, and in many places formed a serious situation in which "the rich are in a position to be in harmony with each other, while the poor have no cone". The "official fields" and "imperial villages" controlled by the feudal state and the imperial family alone have reached more than 80 million mu, accounting for more than one-seventh of the total cultivated land area of the country.

As for the number of landowners annexed by ordinary landlords, it is also staggering. Fifty to 60 percent of the land in the Huguang region had been divided up by the landlords. Guangxi has become "most of the land belongs to the rich households, and most of the people are cultivators". The vast majority of the peasants lost their land and became tenants and servants. The peasants in the Henan area are already "tenants of other people's fields" and "work diligently all year round, and there is not much grain left except for the rent paid to the landlords...... Although there is a bumper harvest, it is only enough to pay off the debt", "and the tenants are afraid that the landlord will seize the land and share another tenant, often chickens and porpoises cloth, all search for accurate discounts, and even sell men and women to pay off the rent, and this is probably the case." The vast numbers of poor peasants in Sichuan, Shaanxi, and the vicinity of Yanjing must also hand over half or even more than 60 or 70 percent of their harvest to the landlords.

In many places south of the Yangtze River, poor peasants even "did everything they could to provide rent for the rich people." Not enough". Poor peasants toiled hard for a year, and in the end they did not earn more than a few buckets, and some of them even said that they had finished renting and begging and borrowing money. Under this brutal exploitation, many poor peasants lost the ability to reproduce; Everywhere there is "the rich say that they benefit their wealth, and the poor say that they see their poverty".

The process of land annexation is not only a process in which peasants go bankrupt and become tenants or hired laborers, but also a process in which the vast number of poor people go bankrupt and go into exile.

In stark contrast to this is the extravagance, corruption, and extreme lust of the ruling clique. Qianlong, the supreme ruler, is a typical example of extravagance. He built a large number of palaces, temples and temples in many parts of the country, and spent a lot of people's fat and ointment.

The well-known Yuanmingyuan and many magnificent gardens in other scenic spots in Yanjing, such as the Chengde Summer Resort and the Outer Eight Temples, were mostly completed during the Qianlong period. He also "toured the south" six times, and every time he went to a place, the gentry and merchants offered to fight for ingenuity, and the labor and people consumed money were almost nothing.

In addition, whenever Emperor Qianlong and his mother, the Empress Dowager Xiaosheng, passed away, they had to order ministers and wealthy merchants to build archways with colored silk and bouquets along the way from the Xihua Gate of the Yanjing Palace to the Yuanmingyuan Palace Gate for dozens of miles, and often built a stage and a scripture hall at intervals, and forced the shops along the street to decorate their facades, for which they had to squander more than one million taels of silver each time.

In order to celebrate the birthday of the emperor and the empress dowager, civil and military officials from the central to the local government vied with each other to "offer" gifts in order to gain the favor of Emperor Qianlong. The Golden Buddha alone has been enshrined in tens of thousands of people from all over the country. In the forty-second year of Qianlong, Qianlong cast a "Tibetan Hair Tower" for his mother, and used more than 3,000 taels of gold.

Civil officials are corrupt, military attaches are paid, and there is an endless stream of them. There are many corruption cases of local officials and political envoys, such as Cathay Pacific, Wang Kangwang, Fu Song, Wu Lana, Pu Lin and others, and each time the confiscation of assets amounted to hundreds of thousands of taels. The politics of Huguang, Sichuan and other provinces are even more famous throughout the country.

Since last winter, when the British invaded the Yangtze River, Fukangan raised troops to meet the British, and recruited countless fishing boat men, but when the British were fighting, they took fishing boats as the forerunner, and thousands of fishing boats were damaged, resulting in the loss of the livelihood of more than 100,000 fishermen on both sides of the strait who made a living on the Yangtze River.

In addition, this war lasted for half a year, in order to ensure the supply of grain and grass for the army, our governor of Fuda asked for an order, the officials of the provinces near the two rivers and two lakes were working hard for General Fuda to transport grain and materials, and now on this ground, they will pay various taxes.

And the governor of Huguang Bi Yuan is one of the best, just took over as the governor of Huguang, and with the governor of Hubei Funing, the political envoy Chen Wangzhi and other senior officials for the annihilation, wantonly scraped the people's fat and ointment, so the folk song legend "Bi no matter, blessing and death, Chen poured the bag"; "Bi is like a bat, his body does not waver, but he sucks the insects and ants that pass by. Blessing is like a wolf and tiger, although people are inevitable, Chen is like a rat beetle, drilling holes and corrosion, people don't know it".

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As for the local officials at all levels under their command, they have intensified their efforts from the top to the bottom. Hubei Wuchang Mansion Tongzhi Chang Dankui "has always been able to abuse the people's happy events." In the 60th year of Qianlong, the committee investigated the border of Yidu County, and it was useless to scare the rich family. The destitute were given money and released according to their names, and they were given few evidence, and they were punished so badly that they were beaten with nails or hammers. If the situation is suspicious, the provincial capital will be solved, and each boat will carry one or two hundred people, and they will die of hunger and cold, and the corpses will float in the river. There are no coffins for those who are in prison."

Dai Ruhuang, the governor of Dazhou, Sichuan, is similar to Chang Dankui, and in the name of the cult, he wantonly blackmailed the Yin Shi family, stolen money for personal gain, and the people's grievances were boiling, and everyone knew about it, and even privately set up as many as 5,000 servants, and all those who practiced the religion were blackmailed by him.

And the Zhuxi incident happened to be the first spark to ignite this completely dry firewood.

"First there was the disaster of Yingyi, and then the rebellion of the White Lotus, and there was no peace in the world. It's a pity that the people who suffer are those poor people. Ni Ming never thought that such a big event had already happened in just a few days after he left.

"It's messy, it's messy, anyway, now, this excitement can't be made, I don't like it in the Manchu Dynasty, and the White Lotus Sect is not a good thing. The only pity is those ordinary people. Liang Pengfei sighed and strode away without looking back.

"Brother Xian, how was this trip to Taiwan?" Seeing the back of Liang Pengfei leaving, Sun Shijie, who knew that Liang Pengfei was in a bad mood, asked Ni Ming.

"Wu Liang did a good job there, and in addition, under the cover of his identity, a large number of transport ships could directly detour the island of Taiwan north to Yonaguni Island, and after obtaining supplies and repairs there, they would go to the South Sea."

"In addition, there has been news from General Fan's side that he has established a foothold in Hokkaido, and has Okushiri Island as their fleet base, and the refugees from Jiaodong have begun to migrate to Okushiri Island. Relying on our precious Chinese silk and tea, as well as those Fushou ointments, we have formed an alliance with Matsumae Keisi, the lord of the Matsumae Domain, through which our business has infiltrated the Honshu Island of the Wa Kingdom, and at present, the business of Fushou Ointment is quite good, and the Matsumae feudal lord is already happy. ”

Speaking of this, Ni Ming turned his head and looked at Sun Shijie. "By the way, Wu Liang has already found out that there are more than 1,500 soldiers in the Satsuma Domain of the Wa Kingdom in the Ryukyu Kingdom, and he wants to ask your Excellency, when will you do it to those Wa people?"

(To be continued)