Since the development of Lingnan in the Qin and Han dynasties, Guangzhou has always been the military and political center of the south, and it is also the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road, and it became the largest port in the East during the Tang Dynasty. After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Guangzhou was the main port of the Ming Dynasty for overseas trade, and the degree of commercial prosperity was once close to that of Su Song, so that the eunuch of Guangzhou City became a popular choice for the inner court to go abroad in the Wanli period, and the fathers-in-law of all sizes fought for this job.

However, since the early years of Chongzhen, the north has been plagued by natural disasters for many years, famine in various places, and the rise of wars in Liaodong, the north has fallen into dire straits. In order to survive, the desperate people moved to the south with their families in addition to participating in the rebellion, after all, compared with the north where there was a famine and wars everywhere, the south with a suitable climate and peace could give them more hope of survival.

A large number of people migrated to the south to avoid disasters, so that the population of the south continued to rise in the last years of Chongzhen, and after the Qing army entered the customs, this migration process was instantly accelerated. In the beginning, most of the people in the north chose to flee in the Jiangnan and Zhejiang areas, but with the collapse of the Hongguang regime, Fujian and Guangdong further south became the targets of these people. And the people who fled were no longer those people who couldn't survive in the north, but more people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang who could still get by, and these people migrated to the south not to survive, but not to be slaves of other races.

After Hongguang, the Southern Ming regimes brought many officials, gentry and their families to the south at the same time, and a large number of scholars who refused to cut off their hair and surrender to the Qing Dynasty suddenly made Guangdong humanities gather, especially in the five years of Shunzhi, Nanchang Jin Shengheng, Guangdong Li Chengdong successively after the end of Guangdong, Guangdong has become the first choice of the world's heart to the Ming people, countless literati will participate in the grand event of restoring the Ming Dynasty, the world heard the side eye.

At the beginning of the Yongli regime, the number of local people in Guangzhou had reached more than 400,000, and by the fourth year of Yongli (the seventh year of Shunzhi), the population in Guangzhou was close to one million. With so many population clusters, Guangzhou has become the largest city in the world, and Beijing, which has been reduced to the capital of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, is inferior to it, and its prosperity is even inferior to that of Susong Erfu, which is located in the south of the Yangtze River! However, all this disappeared immediately with the arrival of Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao. Countless souls were left crying in the dark night of Guangzhou.

Five years have passed, no one knows how many people died in the city of Guangzhou at the hands of the Qing army, the Yongli court determined that the Qing army slaughtered 700,000 people in Guangzhou, this figure comes from the data of the monks collecting the corpses after the massacre; However, some people think that this number is even more, and it should be a million people, because the city of Guangzhou was overcrowded at that time, and the local population plus the population from other places would never be less than one million. Except for the monk who collected the corpse, there was no one again!

The Qing court never acknowledged the massacre that took place in Guangzhou five years ago, saying only that "the two feudal domains of Ping and Jing went down to Guangzhou, angry that the people defended it, and annihilated Ding Zhuang as much as possible." But it never mentioned how many people were killed in this "annihilation of Ding Zhuang," and there was never a specific figure in the official documents between Beijing and Guangzhou. The year before last, when Shang Kexi was at a banquet in the palace for Qincha from Beijing, he understated that when Guangzhou broke the city, the feudal clan killed no more than 10,000 people.

How many people died in this troubled era of Ming and Qing dynasties has become unimportant. The important thing is that today's Guangzhou City is a provincial city, but it is much more appropriate to say that it is a county seat. The existing inhabitants of the entire city of Guangzhou were moved from neighboring prefectures and counties after the Qing army occupied Guangzhou, and the total number was only more than 50,000, plus the clothed servants and garrisons brought by the two feudal clans of Ping and Jing from Liaodong. The population of a huge provincial city is now less than 100,000, not even a tenth of what it was before the massacre.

The lively port of Guangzhou in the past is even quieter than the dead port, and it is no longer the grand scene of full docked ships and endless boats on the river. Outside the city. The same is true in the city. The war burned down most of the city of Guangzhou, cut hundreds of thousands of corpses with butcher knives, and killed the hearts of the living.

Last year, when Li Dingguo's army attacked Guangzhou for the second time. In order to prevent Li Dingguo's army from breaking through Xinhui and heading straight for Guangzhou, Shang Kexi personally ordered the demolition of all the buildings near the four cities, which made the city of Guangzhou even more desolate. At the beginning of the year, after Li Dingguo's army broke the siege and retreated, the newly appointed governor of Guangdong, Li Shutai, introduced some measures to try to make Guangzhou prosperous again, after all, the Qing army was also a human being, and if they wanted to take root in Guangzhou for a long time, they also needed local supplies. A provincial city that could not bring any money and grain taxes to the Qing army at all and a provincial city that continuously provided the Qing army with money, grain, and taxes had a very different meaning for the Qing army. It is a pity that the governor has only been doing it for a few months, but when the city of Guangzhou has improved slightly, he had to interrupt this work, because the Jiancheng Xinhui, which Li Dingguo's tens of thousands of troops have not been able to conquer, actually called a thief army that appeared out of nowhere to occupy it, and also blocked the attack of the 20,000 army of the king of Pingnan, forcing the king of Pingnan to have to order the prince to lead an army to besiege the city.

The siege consumed not only the money and food of the thieves in the city, but also the money and food of the Qing army. In order to supply the grain and grass of the besieging army, the governor's yamen was already tightening its belly, and the Guangzhou Prefecture, which was directly responsible for the transportation of money and grain, was even more miserable. In the massacre that year, the two princes of Ping and Jing were killed, and they were also killed, but they suffered from the Guangzhou Mansion. If there are no people under your rule, there will be no one to plant in this land, so where do you tell them to get money and food?

Zhu Guorong, the prefect of Guangzhou, turned over the land and finally barely scraped together enough money and food for the army to go out, but he didn't think that the prince of Pingnan did not take Xinhui back, but the army stayed outside Xinhui and the thieves in the city were consumed, which made Zhu Guorong so anxious that he hung his heart.

Sure enough, within a few days of the siege, the governor Yamen called him to ask the Guangzhou Mansion to continue to supply the besieging army with food and grass no matter what, otherwise he, the prefect, would pack up the package and go back to his hometown in Shanxi.

How did you get it to go back to your hometown in Shanxi?!

Zhu Guorong's previous dynasty was just a small lord from a good background, if it weren't for the regent who led the army into the customs, he Zhu Guorong would probably still be a little lord until he died, how could he have this official position today?

I think that after the news of Li Dingguo's two famous kings reached Beijing that day, the colleagues outside the ministry, who were originally waiting for the candidates in a hurry, were so frightened that they were all frightened. At this moment, he Zhu Guorong was bold and big-hearted, knowing that wealth and wealth were in danger, so he gritted his teeth and walked to the officials who could no longer see a crow in front of the door, and volunteered to go to the south as an official. This move reached the ears of the Son of Heaven in the palace on the same day, and the Son of Heaven directly ordered Zhu Guorong to take over as the prefect of Guangzhou. From the lord to the prefect, he was promoted seven levels in a row, if it weren't for him Zhu Guorong who knew that wealth and wealth were in danger, such a good thing could fall on his head?

In the past two years, the prefect has also been smooth sailing, although the provincial capital of Guangzhou is not as good as before, but how is it also a provincial capital, whether it is official products or income, Zhu Guorong is very satisfied, pondering whether to send people to Beijing to carry out activities in the next two years, his own name has already fallen into the ears of the Son of Heaven, maybe you can go up to the floor after a little activity here, and be a political envoy or an envoy or something, if you are lucky, maybe you can get a governor to be a governor.

His own family has really served enough, Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao, the two vassal kings, can really be transferred, and Zhu Guorong can wake up with a smile in his dreams. But to be honest, although he is not very willing to serve these two vassal kings, but with these two vassal kings, Zhu Guorong never worries about his own life, and the two princes are difficult to serve, but they can fight! In these years, being an official, promotion and wealth are secondary, and the most important thing is the safety of life. Therefore, in view of this, although the difference between the two princes is difficult to handle, Zhu Guorong also gritted his teeth and took it, but this time, he really has no way at all.

Zhu Guorong will definitely not do it when he goes back to his hometown in Shanxi, but the errand of the governor's yamen cannot be delayed, if he really wants to go all out to do the errand well, the governor who was born in the imperial family can really stack him. There was no way, Zhu Guorong had to beg his grandfather to sue his grandmother, and he desperately pressed the counties below, and he didn't care whether the people lived or died, so he reluctantly helped the army with food and grass. Fortunately, the governor's yamen also knew about the difficulties of the Guangzhou government, and after a month, he transferred a batch of grain from the Chaoshan area, which finally solved Zhu Guorong's urgent need and allowed him to be stable for two months.

I don't know if God is looking at him Lord Zhu or what, it's only been two months of stability, and the headache is coming again, this time it's not the governor's yamen who wants his life, but the Pingnan Palace.

As soon as noon, Zhu Guorong received an order from Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan, and the order was very simple, within seven days, Guangzhou Mansion would gather 5,000 stone of grain.

When this official document from the Pingnan Wangfu was still on the way, in the Pingnan Wangfu, which was rebuilt from the Yamen of the former Liangguang Governor of the Ming Dynasty, Shang Kexi handed a letter to the Dutong Ban Zhifu, who had just returned from Xinhui.

The study area is very large, but the furnishings are very simple, only a few desks, a few chairs, said to be a study but can not see the existence of bookshelves, even on the desk can not see a book, only put pen and ink inkstone, but from the appearance of the inkstone typhoon, I am afraid that the king of Pingnan has not picked up a pen to write after living in.

The original owner of this study was Du Yonghe, the governor of Liangguang in the Southern Ming Dynasty, who was born as a martial artist but preferred to be vassally elegant, and after Li Chengdong's death, he opened the seal without the consent of the Yongli Imperial Court and became the new owner of the Governor's Palace. In order to show his elegance to the world, or he really felt that there was too little ink in his stomach, on the second day of living in the governor's palace, Du Yonghe ordered someone to collect thousands of books and put them in this study. After the Qing army broke the city, Du Yonghe fled from the city with his cronies, but these books were left here. As a result, after the new owner Shang Kexi moved in, he asked someone to move all the books away, and if he couldn't move away, he would be burned.

The attitudes of the two masters before and after are completely different, and the appearance of this study has also changed greatly.

After reading the letter sent from Changsha word by word, Ban Zhifu gently put the letter on the table, looked at Shang Kexi with an inquiring gaze, and said softly: "Does the old inspector mean to let the prince go west?" (To be continued......)