Follow Zhu Yuanzhang to conquer the country

Chapter 119 Zhang Cheng spreads new ideas to Zhu Yuanzhang, but is impeached
"Bastard!"

"Do they take me as a handsome man seriously?"

Guo Zixing became furious because of this. He slammed the table on the spot, yelled, and then couldn't help but touch his chest.

It was obvious that what Guo Tianxu and Zhang Tianyou did made his heart, which was already irritable and weak-tempered, begin to be unable to bear it.

At this time, Li Menggen couldn't help but frowned and said: "Commander, it seems that there are experts around the second young master to give guidance now. Otherwise, the second young master would not have thought of going to Quanjiao to meet his uncle first and then unite with him. against you.”

Guo Zixing, whose face became increasingly dull and colorless, asked excitedly: "Then what should we do now?"

"Don't worry too much, Commander."

"They can do the art of combining vertical and horizontal directions, and so can the commander-in-chief."

"Now that Mr. Zhu is in Hezhou, the commander-in-chief can let Shao Rong, Li Shanchang, Feng Guoyong and other people who are also developing near Hezhou come under his control."

"Whether they are willing to listen to General Manager Zhu or not, General Manager Zhu can use the commander's order to merge his troops and thereby check and balance the alliance between the second young master and his uncle."

Because he is short of food now, and his experience in confiscating homes in Chuzhou has taught him that these rural officials are not short of food.

After Zhang Tianyou left, Zhu Yuanzhang took away the grain stored in the official warehouse of Hezhou by Zhang Tianyou, so he sent all the officials in the city to his General Military Mansion, saying that he had arranged for scholars trained by Chuzhou Prefecture School to come over and ask for help. The land in the hands of these rural eunuchs was distributed, and these eunuchs were exempted from the obligation to allocate the fields in exchange for five shi of grain per mu.

The rest cannot be directly convicted and the property confiscated.

You know, Zhu Yuanzhang in history was particularly forbearing.

Therefore, he now needs to find a name to get food from these village officials.

But the reality that Yuan Ting was still very powerful forced him to compromise.

However, Zhu Yuanzhang had to admit that the fact that he had to compromise with the local eunuchs was still related to the discord within his Guo family's rebel army.

But for Zhu Yuanzhang, by doing so he was already compromising with these country officials.

This was a compromise that Zhu Yuanzhang had to make to the landlords and gentry.

And Zhu Yuanzhang himself is not the kind of person who sticks to his words. He will also act based on the actual situation and tolerate it temporarily.

In particular, his father, Commander-in-Chief Guo Zixing, was too narrow-minded and short-sighted, which is why the entire Guo family's rebel army had various internal problems in the early stages of the uprising.

Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang could only use the name of reform to force the eunuchs to provide food in order to obtain immunity privileges during the reform.

For example, he really tolerated Hu Weiyong until everything was ready before taking action against him, so that Hu Weiyong once thought that Zhu Yuanzhang was really easy to deceive.

And Yuan Bing will fight back at any time, so he must raise enough food as soon as possible to prepare for the battle against Yuan Bing.

Guo Zixing now has no other choice but to adopt Li Mengeng's suggestion and give Zhu Yuanzhang greater power to check and balance these people.

Otherwise, he would have to keep the army in a state of food shortage, so that spring plowing would not be carried out.

Because it was Zhang Tianyou who conquered Hezhou, not Zhu Yuanzhang, so the food of the criminal eunuchs was confiscated by Zhang Tianyou first.

Because according to what Zhu Yuanzhang thought after reading the book Zhang Cheng read to him, he wished he could directly divide these people's fields and have a complete agrarian revolution.

Fortunately, these village eunuchs were afraid of being directly allocated their fields by the rebels. They knew that land was more important than food, so they honestly took out the food and exchanged it for exemption from the land allocation.

At this time, Li Menggeng proposed a new method that he thought of.

It's just that this name is hard to find.

Now, even his handsome father's biological son has joined forces with his brother-in-law and refuses to obey his orders.

This made Zhu Yuanzhang begin to confirm that his father, Commander-in-Chief Guo Zixing, was indeed a man with great ambitions but no great talents, and Mr. Zhang was undoubtedly right to choose to go out.

of course.

Zhu Yuanzhang also admitted that Guo Zixing's current situation was not only related to him personally, but also to the villains around him who came from the landlord and bureaucratic class.

The way these people prevent the rebels from growing is very subtle, and it only appears that they are doing good for the rebels and unifying the power of the rebels, so they provoke internal fighting and checks and balances, but the result is that the rebels will suffer from internal strife. Unable to grow rapidly, it may even be weakened and then successfully annihilated by Hu Yuan.

Now, after Zhu Yuanzhang read the book Zhang Cheng gave him and carefully analyzed the actual situation, he became more and more convinced that these landlords and bureaucrats were indeed backward and reactionary. In many cases, what they did was indeed about benevolence, justice and morality. On the other hand, father and son are turning against each other and brothers are killing each other.

to this end. Zhu Yuanzhang was also more cautious about the rural eunuchs in Chuzhou, although he had to temporarily compromise with them.

Although Zhu Yuanzhang is now worried about the internal discord within the Guo family, he is fortunate to have left Chuzhou and developed independently in Hezhou.

Therefore, he next focused on development.

After forcing the village officials to provide grain, he began to recruit young men and train new soldiers. On the other hand, he began to recruit refugees, reclaimed wasteland, gave them grain-growing tools, and allowed them to resume production.

“The countryside surrounds the town.”

Zhu Yuanzhang looked at the content of the letter Zhang Cheng once sent him, read a sentence, then nodded with insight and said:
"Mr. Zhang is Mr. Zhang after all!"

Next, Zhu Yuanzhang, like Zhang Cheng, focused his main development efforts on the countryside. For this reason, he also hoped that Zhang Cheng could send him a group of talents who were familiar with rural political power construction and good at mobilizing people to Hezhou.

Zhang Cheng happened to conduct a large-scale training in the twelfth month of last year, so he sent a group of talents from Datong Society to Zhu Yuanzhang.

And next.

One of Zhang Cheng and Zhu Yuanzhang developed in Waliang Lei in the north of Chuzhou, and the other in the Hezhou area in the south of Chuzhou.

Moreover, they all used Datong Society members as key officials to promote the Datong concept in the countryside, develop production, establish organizations, and train troops.

Yuan Ting's side.

Although the rebel army Zhang Cheng captured Wanhu Buri and captured Jiqing, which caused shock in the government and the public, for the Yuan court, which had more intense internal struggles, this did not seem to be a reason for the civil and military officials of the court to put aside their grudges and unite with the outside world. On the contrary, It is a perfect opportunity to attack political opponents and further intensify party strife.

Hama, the envoy of the Xuanzhengyuan who had always been dissatisfied with Prime Minister Tuotuo and also wanted to be prime minister, was very happy for this.

Because he was already prepared to let Yuan Saiyin, the supervisory censor, impeach the Tuotuo brothers without spending any time. Now that Gaoyou has not mentioned anything during the Tuotuo Southern Expedition and has lost Jiqing, it will be more convenient for him to get rid of Tuotuo. .

But for the overall situation of the court, it is not important to Hama.

You know, historically, Hama asked Yuan Saiyin, the imperial censor, to impeach Tuotuo without Hua at the critical moment when Tuotuo was about to defeat Gaoyou and kill Zhang Shicheng. It seemed that he was afraid that Tuotuo would completely defeat Gaoyou and achieve great success. In turn, the political status is further consolidated.

However, historical records show that it was because Hama disrupted the situation at this critical moment that the Yuan Dynasty dismissed Tuotuo. As a result, a large number of Tuotuo's elite armored troops, who were the elite soldiers of the Yuan Dynasty, suffered a huge drop in morale, and many of them even directly joined the rebels. , allowing Zhang Shicheng and other rebels not only to turn the corner, but also to become much stronger.

It can be seen that when the Mongolians took over the Central Plains, the Mongolian nobles like Hama, like the powerful bureaucrats of other Chinese dynasties, began to Confucianize, they would also be very obsessed with internal power struggles, and they would not hesitate to ruin the country's future and national interests. Even in the eyes of the party, there is only the struggle for control and nothing else.

Because in the eyes of people like Hama, they would rather see Dayuan die than see Tuotuo in the prime minister's position and have the ability to attack him.

This idea of ​​​​taking down political opponents regardless of national losses was not uncommon in previous dynasties when party strife was fierce. It was even normal. Sometimes enemy troops were at the gates of the capital, and the two hostile parties were still fighting for power.

Therefore, people like Hama are not special. They are just a typical representative of the many landlords and bureaucrats who do whatever it takes to fight for internal power.

Perhaps Hama's inseparability is not just because of the power struggle, but also the struggle of interests.

Because Tuotuo was considered a capable minister in the Yuan Dynasty, in order to solve the food shortage problem caused by the blockage of sea transportation, he asked people to recruit people to work in the fields near the capital, and achieved an annual income of 200,000 dan, which solved the food shortage. The problem.

But this has also harmed the interests of many powerful people in the capital, because the farmland here is not just as simple as farming, but these official fields have long been occupied by powerful bureaucrats, and now Tuotuo has taken them back to farmland as official grain income. , which naturally harms the interests of these powerful bureaucrats.

This will naturally cause great dissatisfaction among the powerful officials in the capital.

You should know that in history, Jiajing also did this when he came to the throne, to clean up official fields in the capital and recruit refugees to rent and farm them.

As a result, Jiajing was almost burned to death later on.

It can be seen that the emperor's doing these things is intolerable to the powerful bureaucrats, not to mention that the prime minister Tuotuo does these things.

Of course, in order to save the Yuan Dynasty, Tuotuo made reforms that harmed the interests of the powerful bureaucrats, not only cleaning up the official land in the capital, but also other things.

History records that he "contributed to the country without attacking, was in the position of being a minister without being arrogant, despised goods and wealth, was distant in appearance, and loved virtuous and courteous people, all of which were born out of nature. As for serving the emperor, he never lost his integrity as a minister, even in ancient times How can a minister with integrity go overboard?"

But precisely because he harmed the interests of the powerful bureaucrats in order to save the Yuan Dynasty, it was also the reason why Hama and others wanted to destroy him even if they harmed the national interests.

"Tuo Tuo left his master in the third month and had little merit. He used the country's wealth for his own use, and half of the officials in the imperial court thought they were following suit. In addition, his younger brother also used Tie Mu'er's mediocre talents and inferior weapons, which tarnished the Qing Dynasty and failed to maintain the rules and regulations. The habit of greed and lasciviousness has increased. As a result, Chuzhou was lost first, and then Jiqing was lost. The situation in the north and south of the Yangtze River was even worse. He should be punished for his crimes and replaced with good ministers..."

On this day, Yuan Saiyin's memorial to impeach Tutuo was read out by the eunuchs in front of Emperor Yuan Shun.

(End of this chapter)