Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 487 The Guards' North-South Movement (Part 6)
Lin Renshu's artillery battalion also entered the city for a temporary rest that day, but because of the lack of troops for the execution of the squires in Wuqiao County, Chen Zhenhui sent Lin Renshu out to mop up a large number of artillery.

In short, in the past few days, all the squires in Wuqiao County have been eradicated, and a large number of people who were hidden by the gentry were released and became the new self-cultivating farmers of the Ming Dynasty.

It can be said that the Northern Expedition itself was no longer a simple war from the very beginning.

It was a north-south revolution within the Ming Dynasty. The capitalists in the south used war to release the hidden population of the gentry in the north and turn them into labor resources for their factories.

Although doing so would result in the execution of a large number of gentry by means of physical extermination, the actual total population of Ming Dynasty would decrease, but the reduction was not too much. The gentry and landowners in the entire empire who really exploited the peasants accounted for only a small part, but the manor tenants they controlled were Accounted for the majority of the agricultural population of the entire Ming Dynasty.

Now that the Ming Dynasty has rescued these tenant farmers, it means that the population of 6000 million registered in the household department of the Ming Dynasty will become [-] million or even [-] million in an instant, and the price is only a loss of millions of gentry.

It's a bargain.

In the original history, the Manchu Qing Dynasty solved the contradiction between man and land through the massacre of a large number of civilians, creating a prosperous age.

Now Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youjian further resolved the contradiction between man and land by massacring a large number of northern gentry, and promoted the transfer of human resources and land resources of the empire from a small peasant economy to a commodity economy.

It can be said that different routes lead to the same goal, but the former will re-consolidate the economic order of small farmers, while the latter will allow the imperial court to control more population and land, thereby realizing state capitalism.

The gentry used to unite the common people in the form of clans to form a castle to stand on their own, so as to resist the army in troubled times.

Now when officers and soldiers of the Guards appeared in a village, they saw the same scene. The local gentry united with their clan members to resist the Guards.

However, the guards directly beat the gong and announced loudly that only scholars with meritorious reputations would be executed, and the rest of the common people would not be punished and would redistribute their fields. At first, one or two villages did not believe it, but when the guards brought in cannons and captured a place everywhere When the village's execution method was passed on, the entire village of Wuqiao County collapsed.

The common people in the clan were no longer willing to be coerced by the patriarch of the gentry and even took the initiative to release the patriarch to come to the guards to ask for rewards. Some common people even rebelled within the clan first.

"Oh my god! What's wrong with this world? You volunteered your land back then, but now you're about to fly away when disaster strikes. I shouldn't have taken your land in the first place!"

"Master Seven, don't say such harsh words. Over the years, which of your family's food, clothing and living is not the hard-earned money of us peasants, not our money. Can you take sixteen wives? Now the officers and soldiers in the south To deal with you scholars who are not loyal and filial, you yourself were disloyal and now you have been punished, so don't implicate us!"

"God has eyes, Zeng Mazi, you took my family's [-] acres of paddy fields and caused my sister to commit suicide by jumping into the lake. Now these revenges have finally been avenged!"

"The world is going to change! Sure enough, it's better to be the emperor of Ming Dynasty, we finally don't have to be slaves anymore! We can still have our own land, and I heard that we don't have to serve corvee. It's better to be the emperor of the Han family!"

There were various voices in Wuqiao County, some praised the guards for loving the people and discipline, and some scolded the guards for disrespecting scholars and killing innocent people indiscriminately, but at least no one said that the guards had committed adultery.

It is natural to have different views on the Guards, and it is natural for people of different classes to have different views.

Soon, the gentry class in Wuqiao County was basically eliminated, but some were left behind, such as some descendants of gentry who had kept festivals for the Ming Dynasty and were unwilling to serve in the Qing Dynasty.

Because the starting point of the guards eradicating the northern gentry was that these scholars were unfaithful and unfilial. The death penalty for the descendants of the chastity.

Of course, these special groups have already been registered by Jin Yiwei.

Unfortunately, there are none in Wuqiao County, so there is no gentry in Wuqiao County worthy of forgiveness.

On this day, the main force of the Second Corps of the First Guards Army arrived in Wuqiao County, and the governor of the Corps began to take over the administration of Wuqiao County.

The Imperial Guards of the Ming Dynasty practiced a division of labor between the military and the government. In military-level units, the commander-in-chief was in charge of military command, and the governor was in charge of political work. In corps-level units, the deputy commander-in-chief was in charge of military command, and the governor was in charge of political work.

Because the Ming Dynasty is now a war zone system, the governor-general often manages local government affairs while managing the internal political affairs of the army.

But in some places, because there were no guards stationed, the governors and governors were just local administrative officials like the governors and governors before the Ming Dynasty.

Now during the Northern Expedition, the occupation of the new northern region can only be temporarily controlled by military officials.

Therefore, the political cadres within the army are responsible for the appointment of grassroots officials and the restoration of economic order.

The status and power of the person in charge of the military command of the Guards and the person in charge of the political organization work are equal, they have no attributes, and they are a cooperative system, so there is no such thing as the superiority of the civil servants and the inferiority of the military.

Moreover, the governor will often choose generals who are good at governing the people but not good at governing the army, and the distinction between civil and military will disappear from within the Ming Guards.

Within the Ming Guards, there are only two divisions of labor between military command cadres and political work cadres.

For example, the current governor of the Second Corps of the First Army of the Ming Dynasty Guards is Zhang Mengxi, the former commander of the Cavalry Battalion of the Third Guards Army.

In the original history, this person was a member of the Anti-Qing Dynasty and kept the festival. Now in this life, he first joined the army and became a military attache. However, after suffering a small defeat due to improper command, he was arranged to enter the political work system and was selected to study at the Daming National School of Administration. Now he has become the governor of the Second Corps of the First Army of the Ming Dynasty Guards and the governor of Denglai, responsible for the military and civil affairs in the area under the jurisdiction of the Second Corps of the First Guards Army.

Due to the Northern Expedition of the Guards, the position of governor of Denglai was naturally cancelled. Basically, wherever Zhang Mengxi was occupied by the Second Corps, he had to immediately restore the political and economic order of the first place.

But after all, Zhang Mengxi is a senior official at the governor level, and he is directly responsible to Governor Li Mingrui. He does not need to personally control the small Wuqiao County, but appoints a newly elected political cadre Bao Shuo As the magistrate of Wuqiao County, he is responsible for the management of Wuqiao County.

Bao Shuo is a Jinshi of the new division. He is also an officer student who graduated last year from the Shandong Army Military Academy directly in charge of Li Mingrui, the governor of the First Guards Army. He is a student who is good at political work. The Corps was directly under the Political Work Corps and was used as a political candidate cadre, so that once the Northern Expedition recaptured a certain town, people with administrative skills could be arranged to manage the place in time.

(End of this chapter)