New Book Collection: The Rise of Great Powers 1900

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When Guangdong suffered this catastrophe, Yang Chao immediately ordered that the people of Guangdong be exempted from three years of food payment, and at the same time began to send a large number of officials to take over the government affairs of Guangdong.

For the local officials in Guangdong, almost all of them were abandoned, the first is because under the rule of Yang Chao in recent years, a large number of officials have been cultivated, on the other hand, it is really because of the tragedy of Xinhui, which made him really disappointed in the official ethics of Guangdong.

However, the situation of corruption is extremely serious, and the situation of corruption in Guangdong is evident in the fact that a province with superior geographical conditions and a population of only 10 million people is forced to rebel in large numbers.

Yang Chao not only did not use these officials, but also regarded a large number of them as models and severely punished them.

Among them, Conghua County Order, Conghua County Order, Conghua County Order, Ji Yisheng, and Xinhui County Order, Huang Zhizheng, are symbols.

When Ji Yisheng hit Conghua by Hong Chengchou, not only did he not organize an attack and surrender, but as a civil official, he did not resist, and Yang Chao would not be harsh, but he turned over and actively worked for the Qing court, helped the Qing court build Hongyi cannons, and finally bombarded the city of Guangzhou, after the fall of Guangzhou, it was massacred by the Qing army, and 100,000 people died.

Needless to say, the Xinhui tragedy was enough for Yang Chao to have a reason to not only hold the surrendered Qing army here accountable, but also the big and small officials.

And the transcript of their interrogation will be published in the newspaper, leaving written evidence. For they are not only guilty at this time. It is also sinful to be placed in history.

At the same time, the Xinhui event. Yang Chao also had to reflect on the battle array, indecisive, whether he was protecting the people or persecuting the people, maybe his army has always been kind to the people and can get a good reputation, but does this reputation really have a clear conscience?

So Yang Chao immediately gave it to all the generals. Even the officers and men of the whole army issued a proclamation telling all officers and men that in the future, if they encounter the enemy's coercion of the people, they must not hesitate and attack with the most decisive attitude. Make it clear to the soldiers that in such a situation, any hesitation will cause greater losses.

Yang Chao's strict discipline, never robbing the people, not sparing his life and other behaviors are not only recognized by the people. In fact, the soldiers also agree that they are all from the common people. Before becoming a soldier, who did not have a prejudice against officers and soldiers, words such as soldier ruffian and Qiu Ba were enough to express the feelings of the people towards soldiers.

As for the reason for this feeling, it is because of the low status of soldiers in ancient times, and the people hated the poor and loved the rich, and despised them, and then caused the soldiers to distrust the people, so the military discipline was very bad, and the army culture evolved into a ruffian culture, and under the vicious circle, the common people hated the soldiers more and more, and the soldiers became more and more corrupt in military discipline.

Or is it because the soldiers first corrupted the military discipline, and then the people hated them, causing this vicious circle.

Yang Chao didn't want to trace back to the source, because this is likely to be a confused account, who was at fault first, causing this evil result, Yang Chao just silently insisted on keeping his soldiers in good military discipline, and the effect was not obvious at first, but with the victory again and again, as well as the slow communication with the people, the relationship between Yang Chao's army and the people has improved, especially in Huaiyang, Haizhou and other places, Yang Chao's army entered the city, and it will definitely not cause panic among the people.

On the contrary, there are many ordinary people who welcome soldiers living in their homes and are willing to provide them with some rooms. The soldiers lived in the people's homes, and Yang Chao gave various orders, such as letting the soldiers help the people do things in their spare time, repairing houses, fetching water, etc., and the relationship between the military and the people was improved step by step, and mutual trust was carried out step by step.

So later, the people had such a subconscious in their hearts, the Ming army was the Ming army, the Yang family army was the Yang family army, and Yang Chao's army also obtained such an exclusive title like Yue Fei and Qi Jiguang.

Yang Chao used to think that this kind of title of a certain army was just a simple distinction between generals and the army, and there was no deep meaning, but now he understands that this is what the people slowly called out in order to distinguish between good and bad armies.

And once called out, it has evolved a special sense of belonging, the soldiers of the Yang family army have changed from passively accepting military discipline to actively abiding by military discipline, especially in front of the people, they are more consciously voluntary, usually may be a lazy and lazy person, often hit the board in training, but when they go out, they are definitely straight, deliberately showing their military demeanor.

This situation made Yang Chao very satisfied, he still remembered a few years ago, when he took Wang Pu and Li Wuliu and their group of people to the north for the first time, when they met the people on the road, the common people hated soldiers, and their own soldiers also had an inferiority complex of military households.

The army already has a sense of honor. How did this sense of honor come about, not only because of the victories again and again, but also because of the recognition and even respect of the people.

Yang Chao's army has been able to win big battles again and again, not necessarily without this deep-seated spirit in it, the so-called invincible benevolent, this sentence is reasonable to a certain extent.

On the other hand, the Qing army, through terror and military rule, even if it successfully ruled China for 300 years, the banner of opposing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty from beginning to end never disappeared, which is definitely not just the narrow national view of the Han people, but because of the kind of scars left in the depths of memory.

Throughout history, it is not without successful minority regimes, such as the Liao established by the Khitans, who ruled the Han people by using the Han method and the Khitan way to rule the Khitan people's two sets of institutions, which satisfied the Liao and Han ethnic groups for hundreds of years, and never heard of any anti-Liao and Song voices in the Liao State.

The Guangdong incident not only shocked Yang Chao, but even postponed the military operation.

It was already close to the end of the year, and Yang Chao asked Xie Fei to stay in Zhaoqing for the time being, continue to rest, and take a new offensive after the Chinese New Year.

And let Song Kun stationed in Guangzhou, began to incorporate the armed forces in Guangzhou, surrendered Qing army, green battalion, as long as the sin is not obvious, still accept their surrender, the most important thing, to incorporate the rebel army operating in various places, whether they are peasant rebel army, or the old Ming army, as long as they are willing to surrender, they are welcome, of course, the premise is that they accept the changes of the Yang family army and accept systematic training.

There is another reason, that is, Yang Chao ran out of money and had to suspend military operations.

Yang Chao was actually very profitable, and the financial list released every year often made the civil officials of the small court angry, and made Dolgon in Beijing feel a toothache.

This year, Yang Chao's income has exceeded 30 million taels, and the commercial tax has successfully exceeded 10 million taels of silver, and the increase in grain tax is not large, with Jiangxi and Zhejiang, two major grain-producing provinces, it has only increased to 8 million taels of silver, of course, 10 million quintals of grain have not been included in it, the cost of customs clearance is 7 million taels of silver, there is no big increase, and the tariff income of 5 million taels has not increased significantly, and 30 million taels of silver alone have been collected, and if grain is included, the market price is worth 20 million taels of silver.

The tax of 30 million taels of silver alone is enough to shock the world, and when Emperor Chongzhen tried his best to increase the three salaries, the tax revenue of the entire world was only more than 20 million taels of silver, but the world was forced to be turbulent, and Li Zicheng gathered millions of people at every turn.

However, Yang Chao only used half the world to collect so much silver, but even the most prejudiced gentry class had to admit that under Yang Chao's rule, "the people are wide every day, and the food is cheap" and so on.

If this is just strange to the small court and the Qing court, then Yang Chao also sold 30 million taels of silver bonds, and borrowed 30 million taels of silver from Jiangnan and other places to make them feel incredible.

The ancient Chinese scholar class, often has a habit of overkill, Qin II died, it was determined that everything in Qin was bad, the Han Dynasty began to adopt the feudal system, a large number of princes surnamed Liu divided the world, but within a few years began to fight endlessly, in the end it must be unified. The laws of the Qin State were so strict that they did not know that they had made slight changes, but they had been against the rule of law for two thousand years.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang felt that printing treasure money could control the wealth of the world, as if there was much money for printing, and the emperor could control the wealth of the world, so he simply banned the circulation of gold, silver and copper coins, and his son Zhu Di also insisted on this practice, but found that later, the people's private money could not be forbidden, and no one wanted treasure money.

The reason is that the imperial court issued treasure money indiscriminately, but refused to recycle, refused to use real money and silver to recover the treasure banknote, Zhu Di only set up a banknote in desperation, requiring the use of treasure money to pay taxes, and intended to recover a part of the circulating treasure money in this way, but the treasure money continued to be issued indiscriminately, and the officials of the banknote customs did not even want the treasure banknote, and finally from the Song Dynasty good business, although the Yuan Dynasty was not very stable, but the paper money system that has continued for hundreds of years has been scrapped in the hands of the two emperors of the Ming Dynasty who do not understand the economy.

The civil officials did not think about the truth, but beat them to death with a rake, firmly believing that printing paper money is to harm the people, and treasure money is an evil law, and it has been kept secret since then, but according to their reasoning, this is the ancestral system!

Yang Chao printed paper money and sold bonds, all of which were paper bills, and the literati who couldn't understand it didn't think about it carefully, but insisted that this was using the banknote law to rob the people's wealth.

However, the fierceness they scolded did not prevent the economy under Yang Chao's rule from becoming more active day by day with the emergence of paper money that was easier to circulate, and the tax revenue was also growing rapidly year by year. (To be continued......)