The guard is a very good military tuntian system.

It perfectly solves the problem that the imperial court wants professional soldiers, but does not want to pay or even can't afford it.

The drawbacks are equally obvious.

When military households are not rewarded with benefits and respect, deserters appear. The remaining military households were forced to become serfs in order to meet the amount of food paid by the guards.

The speechless point of the Ming Dynasty is also here.

The group that took the lead in encroaching on the interests of military households was the royal family.

The Eight Banners of the Later Jin State were produced precisely in response to this situation, and they have the characteristics of Jianzhou Wei.

Nurhachi, a family member who has followed Li Chengliang for several years, is really a military genius, and he was stunned to comprehend a new set of methods.

The general soldiers did not rely on corruption to support their families, but directly in one step and became slave nobles.

Military households do not need to be serfs, they directly catch slaves.

Slaves farmed to feed military households close to professional soldiers, who were drawn out to plunder more slaves and property.

The Eight Banners, which had time to receive regular military training, had a combat effectiveness that was a cut above the Ming army.

But its drawbacks are just as obvious.

That's when you have nowhere to loot, or when the benefits of looting are far less than the losses from death, then that's trouble.

Therefore, in the Shunzhi period in history, soldiers were paid according to the rated military salary.

This is a forced choice when there is no fundamental increase in productivity.

In the north, there were slaves of the Eight Banners, bankrupt military households, tenants of Huangzhuang, etc., and there were also serfs in the south.

The reasons for the large number of slaves in Jiangnan can be summarized in two points.

First, the Jiangnan region was the center of the Ming Dynasty's fiscal revenue, and the financial operation of the entire Ming Dynasty relied heavily on Jiangnan.

I often see people writing small essays to spread rumors that "the Ming Dynasty harshly exploited Shaanxi and couldn't collect taxes from Jiangnan", which is to treat the audience and the ancients as fools.

Since the economic center moved southward, Jiangnan has been a heavy place for taxation.

The most intuitive example is that the Tang Dynasty relied on the wealth of Jiangnan to fight for eight years and press down the Anshi Rebellion.

It is precisely because of the heavy taxation that some people think that Zhu Yuanzhang did this because he hated the people of Jiangnan for supporting Zhang Shicheng.

The real weakness of the Ming Dynasty's tax collection was the gentry, not yeoman farmers.

The gentry cunningly tied their own interests to the imperial examination system, and enjoyed various privileges very secretly, which further exacerbated the financial deterioration of the Ming Dynasty.

While designing the imperial examination system, Zhu Yuanzhang also implemented the recommendation system. But it was collectively resisted by the gentry who had already gained benefits, and in the orthodox years, they couldn't recommend a virtuous person, so they had to give up.

It is also worth mentioning here that many people blame the Donglin Party for tax evasion and tax avoidance in Jiangnan, which is actually wrong.

Of course, the Donglin Party is not clean, but they collectively turned over in the Hongguang Imperial Court.

The real cancer is the Zhejiang Party that came from the Jiangnan region and later joined the eunuch party.

Since the death of the six gentlemen, most of the Donglin Party has become a mouth cannon with the reputation of the Donglin Party or ambition but inability.

For example, if Qian Qianyi was placed in the Apocalypse year, he would not even be qualified to be a heavy hand under the eunuch party.

Second, it is caused by the special geographical environment of Jiangnan. Whether it is the southward shift of the economic center or the Age of Discovery, Jiangnan is the beneficiary.

Coupled with the prevalence of Yixue, the educational environment was far superior to that of other regions, and the number of gentry was unusually vigorous in the imperial examinations, and the number of gentry increased by leaps and bounds.

A large number of yeoman peasants, who were crushed by heavy taxes, had to sell themselves into slavery by selling themselves into slavery of the gentry in order to survive.

These yeoman farmers, who were sold into slavery, were brutally oppressed, although they were protected by the gentry.

But! They are getting by, at least they may not starve to death.

This created the illusion of "Shaanxi rebellion, Jiangnan is comfortable".

So why is this not the case in Shaanxi?

What kind of environment was Shaanxi at that time, even the gentry and old men

Where there is not enough to eat, how can the slaves eat leftovers?

Based on the above two reasons, it caused a large area of slavery in the south of the Yangtze River.

Under Qian Qianyi's disciples, he raised thousands of slaves.

Zhang Jie is a native of Zhenjiang Mansion, and he also has hundreds of slaves under his door.

Therefore, a few of them must be a dead end here in Yang Chengying.

Thousands of slaves were bought by ransom, and Yang Cheng should not be able to take his pants as a pawn.

In addition, due to the collapse of the ruling order of the Ming Dynasty, a large number of serfs began to rise up.

But as I said earlier, the serfs at the bottom can still live, and who wants to rebel if they can survive.

The vast majority of those who rebelled were actually slaves from the top. They oppressed the bottom internally, and externally coerced the slaves at the bottom to kill the old masters and divide up the land exploited by the old masters.

This group of people is called "haonu".

However, there is no limit to human desires.

These rebellious slaves began to target the surrounding gentry and ransack them in droves.

In order to defend themselves, the gentry were forced to form an armed group and fight against them.

Since Chongzhen's death, the entire Jiangnan has become one.

This is why Ma Shiying and Emperor Hongguang did not dare to stay after they were attacked in Liyang.

Yang Chengying, who was sitting in Nanjing, promulgated a decree to abolish slavery and abolish slaves. At the same time, the Great Decree encouraged the reclamation of cultivated land, and all newly reclaimed land was given a title deed and the right was confirmed.

On the other hand, Wu Sangui and the Mongol cavalry were sent to use the locals as guides and began to eliminate the gentry and serfs one by one.

Try to kill only the leaders and not ordinary rebels, and after disarming, send them back to their places of origin.

Therefore, the army sent to eliminate Ma Shiying, who was entrenched in Hangzhou, was led by Zu Zeyuan.

Zu Zeyuan and his lieutenant general Bo Luo commanded the Liaodong Army to enter Changzhou on February 30 and Wuxi on the third day of March.

Along the way, they encountered no resistance, either fleeing or surrendering.

The gentry and slave mutinous forces probed the movements of the Liaodong Army and avoided them from afar.

Zu Zeyuan knew that someone was cleaning them up, so he ignored them, and on the third day of the new year, he successfully captured Suzhou.

Seeing that the Ming army in Jiangnan was so wasteful, Zu Zeyuan was not so cautious, and marched to capture Jiaxing the next day.

On the fifth day of the first month of March, the Liaodong Army arrived at Tangqi Town.

Since only a few hundred soldiers and corresponding auxiliaries were allocated along the way, Zu Zeyuan still had a few thousand soldiers in his hands at this time, plus a reinforced regiment led by Bolo.

In the face of the crisis, Ma Shiying once again used his means.

He found King Lu privately and said, "Lord Wang, people say that people are jealous of the virtuous and jealous, and those are all rumors of small people. Now that Hangzhou is in danger, the minister thinks that whoever can turn things around must be the Zodiac Zhou, and ask the prince to send him to preside over the defense."

"Why do you think Zodiac Zhou can turn things around?" King Lu was a little puzzled.

"He is the leader of the Southern Shilin, and when he was deliberating, all the officials recommended Zodiac Zhou, which shows that he has a high prestige."

Ma Shiying said, took out the cabinet seal letter, and put it on the table.

"This ......" King Lu wanted to say something, but found that Ma Shiying didn't give him a chance and had already retired.