Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 400
Winter went to spring, and it was the 54th year of Qianlong in a blink of an eye.

In the season of spring, the land outside the customs is still frozen for thousands of miles, while the banks of the Han River deep inland are already in spring and flowers are blooming.

At dusk, when the smoke from the cooking stoves was as soft as a curtain, several awning boats sailed upstream from the Han River and stopped at the wharf outside the North Gate of Xiangyang Fucheng.On the leading black-covered boat, Xu Da walked out of the cabin with a stoop, straightened up and stretched himself.

Looking back, the river is full of sails and masts, and merchants gather.The flow of people on the river bank is like weaving, shuttling non-stop.The yelling of the hawkers, the sound of copying pots and shovels at the food stalls in restaurants, chopping and chopping on the boards, and the smell of onion, ginger and garlic mixed with meat, Xu Dayong's stomach couldn't help but growl.

At this time, the people on the five boats also headed out of the cabin one after another, and after a while, 30 to [-] people appeared.These people looked at the lively scene on the shore and pointed, excited.Since they passed Biyang, they had been sitting on the boat for several days, and they were already very bored.

"Brother Xu, how far is it from here to Chongqing Mansion?"

Hearing the question from the young man around him, Xu Dayong said with a smile: "It's still far away! It will take a month to take a boat from Xiangyang to Jingzhou and follow the Yangtze River to the west."

The young man said in surprise, "My dear boy! It's so far away!"

After all, he unconsciously raised his hand to take off the melon cap on his head.Xu Da used his sharp eyes and quick hands to stop him immediately, and said in a low voice: "Be careful with braids, this is not northern Jiangsu, we have to be careful in everything."

The young man smiled awkwardly, then cupped his fists and thanked him.

It was already dark at this time, so it was difficult for people on the shore to see the faces of these people on the five boats.If it was daytime, many people would have noticed that these people were obviously different from the sailors on other ships.They are far from the swarthy faces of sailor coolies in this era, nor do they open their arms to reveal the bony chest and abdomen.

Most of these people have rosy complexions and are strong and strong, but because they have been on the boat for several days, some people's complexions look sallow, and it seems that they are suffering from seasickness.

Xu Dayong said to a man next to him at this moment: "Brother Zhang, there are many people on the shore with mixed eyes. Li Shun will stay with you on the boat. I have to go to the inspection department to check the ticket first."

The man surnamed Zhang nodded and said, "Go and come back quickly."

Half an hour later, Xu Dayong, who had gone to the Inspection Department, followed the river bank to a small restaurant called "Kang Mao Ji" near the Xiaobei Gate.The place here is not big, but the business is very prosperous. The surrounding shops are full of green lights and red candles, and the sounds of clinking dishes, loud jokes and gossips are intertwined.

"I heard that your physalis noodles are the best?"

The guy hurried over to say hello: "So that the guests know, my physalis noodles are the best in Xiangyang. The lamb soup stewed in the morning and the pancakes made of freshly picked wild Chinese toon are also very famous."

"You fucking know how to brag!" Xu Da cursed with a smile, and then said: "Forty copies of each kind, and send them to the boat with the 'Huang Shengtai' flag on the riverside."

"Forty?" The guy was startled when he heard that.

"What's the matter? You don't even do door-to-door sales?"

The guy had already woken up, and thought that he could close the door early and go up the board after finishing the order, so he nodded hurriedly: "Do it! Do it!"

Xu Dayong nodded and took out the money bag from his pocket, took a small piece of broken silver and handed it to the clerk, saying, "Is it enough?"

The buddy took it and looked at the wind lamp next to him, he was overjoyed immediately, and said repeatedly: "There are many, many."

Xu Dayong looked around and said: "Cut a sheep and send it over. These days, I go on a boat every day, and I either eat fish or shrimp, and my mouth is tight."

Seeing Xu Dayong sitting aside and waiting, the waiter quickly served tea, then jumped three feet high, ran to the back kitchen and shouted: "Father! It's a big deal!"

After the Qingming Festival last year, Xu Dayong took Zhao Xin's order and took people to Nanba Laolin, preparing to recruit refugees and send them to Beihai Town.However, when he got there, he realized that what he had thought before was too simple.

In another time and space, the border area of ​​the three provinces that gave birth to the "Chuanchu White Lotus Rebellion" is actually composed of two primitive mountain forests, collectively called "Nanba Old Forest".

One is the "Nanshan old forest" in the north, from Lueyang, Shaanxi, through Fengxian County to the east, through Baoji, Yunxian, Zhouzhi, Yangxian, Ningshan, Xiaoyi, Zhen'an, Shanyang, Xunyang, to Yunxi in Hubei .

The other is the "Bashan old forest" in the south, from Ningqiang and Baocheng in Shaanxi to the east, through Nanjiang, Tongjiang, Bazhou, Taiping, Daning, Kaixian, Fengjie, Wushan in Sichuan, and then from Ziyang, Ankang, From Pingli to Zhushan, Zhuxi, Fangxian, Xingshan and Baokang in Hubei.

Since the early Ming Dynasty, the Nanba Laolin area has been designated as a forbidden area by the imperial court, and outsiders are strictly prohibited from entering, so as to avoid danger beyond the reach of the whip.Later, due to continuous natural disasters and man-made disasters, since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the old forest area has gradually become a natural refuge for refugees.

No matter if you are a refugee or a bandit or a thief, as long as you drill into the mountains and face the virgin forest that covers the sky, no matter if it is Yunyang Prefecture or the officials and yamen servants of the six counties, they can only look at the mountains and sigh.Once something happened to the villages in the mountains, it took a few days for the surrounding county government to get the news, and then it took several days to deal with it, and the government orders were extremely difficult to communicate.

These two areas have high mountains and deep valleys, dense forests, and vast mountain areas. However, the land is barren and the products are scarce, and the mountains are inaccessible.Except for tributaries such as the Han River, Yi River, Jishui River and Bai River where boats can be used, land transportation is extremely inconvenient.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the "Kuidong Thirteen Clans" were entrenched in the Laolin area of ​​Nanba. It was precisely because of the inconvenient transportation and the difficulty of moving the army that they insisted on resisting until the third year of Kangxi, when they were mobilized by the Qing court to Qin, Henan, Huguang, etc. The soldiers and horses of the three provinces wiped it out completely.

Since the Great and Small Jinchuan Battles, the Qing government has aggressively collected taxes and conscripts in Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hubei and other places, leaving treasuries empty and states and counties exhausted.The reason for the fertile west of Sichuan is that the annexation of land has become more and more serious. The poor have no land to stand on, go bankrupt and leave their hometowns one after another. However, although the land in the east of Sichuan is poor, because of the large land and low endowment, refugees from surrounding provinces continue to gather here. Sichuan and Henan provinces have the most refugees.

Speaking of which, if Zhao Xin hadn't brought together Sun Guiyuan, the leader of the Shouyuan Sect, and Zhan Zhenglin, the great apprentice, on the farm of Sheyang Lake, those people, including Wang Cong'er, mother and daughter, would have gone to Xiangyang to preach, and the harm would have been even worse.

However, when Xu Dayong arrived in Yunxi and Zhushan successively, he realized that the matter was far more complicated than what he had heard.What he has to face are not only the branches of the White Lotus Sect, such as Hunyuan, Mahayana, Bagua, Ligua, etc., but also an important secret society of the people-"Guluzi".

The well-known Gelaohui in later generations—that is, the Paoge organization, originated from "Gulu".

To make a digression, looking at these secret societies in the early and mid-Qing Dynasty, except for the Luojiao, which relied on water transportation to make a living, other secret sects such as Tiandihui, Guluhui, and Bailianjiao had nothing good to offer!They all use murder, robbery, rape, robbery, and cheating as their main ways of making a living, and the methods are extremely despicable.

And this is why Zhao Xin resolutely refuses to cooperate with these civil society parties.

When Xu Dayong went south for the first time, he not only went to Nanba Laolin, they also went to Chongqing Mansion.

The reason why they went to Chongqing was because they learned from chatting with the locals in Yunyang that Guluzi was not only active in the old forest of Nanba, but many of the sailors on the Chuanjiang sailing boats and the trackers on the shore also joined the Gulu Club. Especially in Chongqing Prefecture, there are the most stranded trackers, almost thousands of them.

It is said that when a large ship on the Chuan River carries passengers and goods upstream from Hanyang and Jingyi, the more rapid the current, the more trackers are needed. Each large ship carries hundreds of stones, and seven to eighty trackers are needed.When the cargo ship arrived in Chongqing to unload, those merchants hired small boats to go to northern Sichuan and southwestern Sichuan respectively, and another group of trackers pulled fiber from Jialing River, Qujiang River, Tongjiang River, Lushui River, and Fushui River.As for the merchant ships going downstream, the number of sailors required is half that of the upstream, and each ship has no more than three to forty people, so a large number of trackers are stranded in Chongqing.

Xu Dayong didn't pay much attention to the sluts at the time, and now even the imperial court's army and Rakshasa have been beaten to the ground by the Beihai Navy, how many rascals are there to be afraid of? !

In his mind, the tracker is good, he can endure hardships and stand hard work.Thousands of trackers and their families may not be tens of thousands. If they can be transported to Beihai Town, it will definitely be a great achievement.

Unexpectedly, when Xu Dayong arrived in Chongqing, he was taken aback by the scene on the river bank. The trackers from Jingyi and Kuidong lived on the bank of the river outside the city of Chongqing, densely packed with straw huts.Not just thousands, but nearly ten thousand people!

Xu Dayong's men made special observations and calculations on the wharf along the river.For a period of ten days, there are more than a dozen boats going upstream every day, and almost a dozen boats going down the river. Then, 800 people are needed for the trackers when they come, and only 400 people are needed for the return journey, so they stay on the river bank. Some trackers who can't find a living can gather thousands of people in ten days, and tens of thousands in a month.

So many trackers can't find a job, and they will definitely cause trouble after a long time. Scams, robbery and kidnapping outside the city of Chongqing prefecture happen from time to time.Although most of these people's wives and children live in places such as Kuimen, Fengjie, and Wushan downstream, they can't earn money and have no one to hire them. How can they return home?
When Xu Dayong found a few leader trackers and offered to take their wives, children, and children to farm in northern Jiangsu, they were all moved.

Unexpectedly, just as he started negotiating conditions with some leaders of the trackers, the leaders of the local hulu club over there came to him.Nothing else, money extortion.If you don't give me the money, you can start calling, and you can't run until you pay.

In the beginning, Xu Dayong agreed to give the money with an attitude of calming down the matter, and each person counted as [-] yuan.Who would have thought that the leader of the Gulu Society would propose that each person be counted as one hundred renminbi after seeing Xu Dayong's attire.

This made Xu Dayong very angry, this is purely a robbery! 5000 people is 50 yuan, which is almost 400 taels of silver. Although Beihai Town is not short of money, it can't be taken advantage of.

However, when he rejected the conditions of the leader of the Hulu leader, he found that no tracker dared to agree to follow him.Only at this time did he learn that there are so-called "fine-backed slippers" in Chongqing Prefecture who have no clothes or shoes, which refers to trackers.Many people are so poor that they have sold out all their clothes, leaving nothing but trousers.And the weak ones are beggars, and the strong ones are "squatters", proper rogue proletarians!
Afterwards, the members of the Hulu Club began to find faults and provoke them, and finally said that they would not even let the boat go without paying, and sent several boats to surround Xu Da with their boats.

Ever since he followed Zhao Xin and was sent to northern Jiangsu, how could Xu Dayong have suffered from this.But in the face of a group of rascals who are openly blackmailing people, Xu Dayong knows the truth that a good man does not suffer immediate losses.There are only six men on my side, but there are thousands of people on the other side.Even if one person is fully fired with two guns, thousands of people can pile themselves to death by piles of human lives.In desperation, Xu Dayong had to spend money to settle the matter, and spent money to order a table at the restaurant and send it over, as an apology to the other party.

Now he finally learned how powerful Gu Lu is.

In fact, in the early and middle periods of Qianlong, the local government of the Qing government launched many investigations on Huluzi. The advice was hard-hearted and the punishment was harsh, but some people still took risks and became "bandits".

Especially when the Qing court was carrying out the Jinchuan and Jinchuan campaigns, because they had no time to take care of it, the Guluhui used to be extremely arrogant, openly robbing, killing, and raping women in the downtown area.After that, Fukang'an took office as governor of Sichuan, and his main task was to investigate and deal with the gangsters; in the five years before and after, thousands of people were Ling Chi, beheaded and even exiled.It looks like it has disappeared, but in fact, it will go from the public to the underground.

It is said that in an era of frequent natural disasters, corrupt officials, intensified land annexation, and even the bankruptcy of countless farmers, if they can find a place to settle down or have full employment, who wants to wander in the society and risk beheading and allotment from time to time? What? Who is not willing to do their best to start a business and fulfill their dream of being well-fed?
For example, many of these refugees living in Nanba Laolin are mostly wood and paper factory workers in Shaanxi, and smugglers for salt well craftsmen in Bashu, and they can basically support themselves.If it weren't for the poor harvest and high food prices in the mountains, which caused the workshops to stop working, then the workers would not scatter and cause trouble.

Therefore, the advice of the Qing government and even the landlords and gentry, in the eyes of many refugees, is to stand and talk without pain in the back.

Look at what the official notice said, "Even if you die of poverty and hunger at the end of your life, you will be a clean and good citizen, and you will be able to protect the leader."

The problem is that life is almost gone, the whole family is starving to death, who cares about the head?Hunger and cold stealing heart nothing more than this.

From an economic point of view, if a society cannot accommodate an excessive population so that it can obtain the necessary means of production, it will inevitably cause a large number of social members to be placed on the margins of society, followed by "thieves breeding" and "traitors". The number of bandits increased".

After suffering such a big loss, Xu Dayong certainly wouldn't let it go.However, no matter how fierce the big ships of the Beihai Navy are, they can only wander around the coastal areas. It is impossible to even think about the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and they don't have the energy.So later he had no choice but to leave Chongqing Mansion in despair. In the end, he was still a member of the Tuo Cao Gang, and he got in touch with the Xiangyang Cao Gang and established a channel to recruit Shaanxi refugees from Yunxi to Beihai Town.

　Gulu appeared around the early years of Qianlong or earlier, and at first it was mainly active in the Bayu area, and most of its members were poor teenagers.Later, due to the large influx of refugees from Huguang, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Guangdong and other provinces into Bashu, a black and evil armed group emerged among the refugees, which merged with the "hooligans and evil young" in the Bashu area to form the Hulu Society.These people formed gangs, hid knives and axes, robbed during the day, and robbed at night.Before Qianlong 41 years, due to the Jinchuan rebellion, the Qing government was busy suppressing the rebellion, and had no time to take care of the Guluhui, so they took advantage of it to rise again.These people are often in groups of three or four, with weapons in their arms, roaming around towns and villages, raping and plundering, doing everything, and being unscrupulous to the extreme.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)