The Prosperous Era of Longwan

"The officers and soldiers have up to three months to carry out the campaign, and then they have to return to their respective defense areas to guard against Japanese pirates. I'm afraid there will be some trouble in Fujian."

Wei Guangde shook his head and poured cold water on everyone.

In response to King Yu's inquiry, Wei Guangde gave his own judgment.

What Wei Guangde said is less than three months, which naturally refers to the period between now and March next year.

With the new defeat of the army, they will definitely not be able to organize a new offensive in the short term. Basically, it is impossible to attack again in the past three months, and then it will involve Japanese pirates.

Fujian was also a key area for the Ming Dynasty to prevent Japanese pirates. Large groups of Japanese pirates invaded several times every year, and small groups of Japanese pirates invaded more and more frequently.

This year is coming to an end, and the military pressure in Fujian will be a bit heavy next year. However, in the eyes of King Yu, Yin Shizhen and others, it is nothing more than the need to allocate part of the anti-Japanese troops to monitor Zhang Lian's rebels. Why does Wei Guangde say it is a bit troublesome?

"Fujian will be under a bit of pressure, but it won't be a big trouble."

Yin Shizhen has a relatively cool personality and often says whatever comes to mind, so he spoke directly at this time.

King Yu, Zhang Juzheng and Li Fang who were standing on the side all nodded slightly when they heard this, agreeing with Yin Shizhen's statement.

These days, no one would have thought that the Ming Dynasty would collapse in less than a hundred years. Wei Guangde would have thought so if he had not known that there is no eternal dynasty.

It's just a mere rebel, can it finally become a weapon?

In this era, even if the imperial court has its shortcomings, in the eyes of most people, the imperial court is still the imperial court, and it represents orthodoxy.

In the documented history of China, there has never been a dynasty that lasted for more than three hundred years.

"The officers and soldiers are newly defeated and their morale is unstable. It is impossible for the Fujian government to organize a large army to attack again in the short term. However, the opposite is true for the rebels. At this time, the morale is high. It is difficult to say whether they will spread to the surrounding areas. , capture the city and territory.”

Wei Guangde responded to Yin Shizhen's question, but he said what he was most worried about.

He had been to Zhejiang, which was a prosperous place. The suppression of Japanese Japanese factions had caused public resentment. He also inquired about other places, and the situation was even worse. So at the beginning of the year, he reported to the Emperor Jiajing in the capital. It would last for at most one year. Otherwise, chaos will occur in Jiangnan.

The actions of Zhang Lian and his group seemed to confirm his thoughts. There were really people who were not afraid of beheading who jumped out to cause trouble.

Although the people involved are definitely forced by life, the leaders are certainly not. They are often full of ambitions. Even if they don't think so much when the incident occurs, their ambitions will continue to grow after the incident is accomplished.

Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, only chose to rebel for food at first, but after he gained strength, he chose to attack the emperor's throne. There were only countless bones behind him.

Zhang Lian and his group are bound to fail, but they don't know how the Ming army encircled and suppressed them.

Wei Guangde didn't even have time to consider this matter at the moment, because his intuition told him that this Fujian uprising would have a great impact.

In fact, from the beginning, Wei Guangde felt that he should surround the people first, and then mobilize a large army to eradicate them all at once after getting the information. The army could not afford a single defeat.

Because of the failure, the rebels took advantage of the situation and spread to the surrounding areas. What is the situation in the surrounding areas?

Will the people, who have long been deprived of their livelihood due to extra sects, turn into thieves in large numbers?

A single spark can start a prairie fire. Once this trend spreads from Fujian to surrounding Guangdong and Jiangxi, it is no exaggeration to say that it covers half of the south of the Yangtze River.

"The imperial court can only send more troops to Fujian, and the army must be stationed in Fujian in the first month of the year, so that they have sufficient troops to contain the rebels and defend against Japanese pirates."

Wei Guangde didn't give Yin Shizhen and others the time to speak, so he just kept talking to himself.

"It's not that serious, right? Do they really dare to do it?"

Hearing the seriousness of what Wei Guangde said, Li Fang, the eunuch next to King Yu, couldn't help but speak. However, halfway through the words, he realized that he had made a mistake and quickly covered his mouth with his hands and lowered his head.

As a slave, he cannot speak until his master allows him to speak. Even though he can chat casually with Yin Shizhen and others in private, when discussing serious matters, he is not qualified to speak unless King Yu allows him to speak.

Yin Shizhen, Wei Guangde and others are different from him. They are King Yu's teachers, officials of the imperial court, and future ministers of His Highness King Yu, humerus.

After Li Fang retired, Wei Guangde thought about it and told him about his trip to Jiangnan at the beginning of the year. In name, he was sent by the imperial court to supervise the trial of the evil young man incident in Suzhou and the execution of the Japanese leader Wang Zhi, but Emperor Jiajing also asked him to check it out privately. It’s about Jiangnan people’s sentiments.

"That's what I said, but I didn't expect it to become reality. Someone in Jiangnan really rebelled, and they suddenly raised a rebel army of nearly 100,000 people. It really surprised me."

Wei Guangde said, looking at the people who were still thinking silently, and continued: "The situation in Jiangnan is like this. You can think of what the impact will be if the rebels are really allowed to spread everywhere. A hundred thousand troops will capture several prefectures and counties. Those People who cannot afford to eat are afraid that they will choose to become thieves. At that time, it is unknown that the military strength of the anti-thieves will double and surge."

Wei Guangde also knew that what he said was a bit exaggerated. Before the fall of the Ming Dynasty, bandits did indeed do this.

The main reason why the troops of Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and others suppressed more and more people was not because the people did not have enough to eat and no way to survive.

And the vast majority of the people who still wanted to live in peace and contentment had their last hope of survival extinguished by the bandits after the bandits crossed the border and plundered wantonly. They had no choice but to follow the bandits to earn a living.

"Is this the case in Jiangnan?"

At this time, King Yu finally couldn't help but asked again.

"It's hard."

Wei Guangde shook his head. We owe money and food to increase stipends and taxes, and to ward off areas hit hard by the Japanese invasion, but it is still not enough. To say that the people are living in dire straits is an understatement."

"In his petitions, he probably realized that the people of Jiangnan were unstable, so he acted like this."

Yin Shizhen said with a frown.

"That's natural. As a local official, what you fear most is a civil unrest, because it means your failure to manage the people under your rule. What's more, you have to suppress Japanese and thieves at the same time. By then, Hu Zongxian will probably guess What will happen to you?"

Zhang Juzheng nodded and said that when he returned to his hometown to recuperate, he traveled around Huguang and learned about the hardships of the grassroots people.

The taxes stipulated by the Ming Dynasty court were actually very light, really very light. It can be said that they were the lowest taxes in the history of the dynasties. However, when they were implemented, the miscellaneous taxes imposed by local governments became very heavy.

This is also a question that Zhang Juzheng has been thinking about, how to solve the increase in local miscellaneous taxes and make the taxes paid by the people more open and transparent.

After hearing Wei Guangde say that the people in Jiangnan were burdened with millions of taels of extra money, as well as heavy taxes and servitude themselves, it was not surprising that the Fujian Society would be in chaos.

Even if it doesn't happen in Fujian, it will happen in Guangdong or other places.

"Is there a solution?"

At this time, King Yu spoke and asked directly to Wei Guangde.

He could already tell from their conversation that the life of the people in Jiangnan was very difficult, but sitting here now was not to feel sorry for others, but to find a solution.

Moreover, after what Wei Guangde said, he also understood that now it was not just about solving Zhang Lian's rebellion, but also how to deal with the huge increase in military expenditures due to the suppression of Japanese invaders.

Solving the problem of Japanese pirates seems to solve the problem of increasing military expenditures, but are Japanese pirates so easy to eradicate?

Since the Japanese plague cannot be eliminated in the short term, only by solving the problem of money and fundamentally reducing the burden on the people can we prevent the resurgence of the rebellion. Otherwise, even if the Fujian rebels are exterminated this time, tomorrow there may be Guangdong rebels and Zhejiang rebels. Rebels appear.

"We can only mobilize troops from all over the south of the Yangtze River to trap the Fujian rebels first, and then wait for the rest to deal with the Japanese pirates in March and April."

Wei Guangde had no choice but to reply.

Although at this time, Wei Guangde was a little tempted and wanted to take advantage of the situation to throw out some things he had thought of in the past, but he was not sure if now was an opportunity.

"It's difficult. It requires a lot of money to mobilize troops from various places. The imperial court cannot spend so much money to mobilize the army in the short term. Moreover, there are actually not many troops available for deployment in the army from various places."

Zhang Juzheng shook his head at this time and said, "Perhaps, only Fujian, Guangdong, and even Jiangxi can find a way to send troops and horses nearby to contain them."

Zhang Juzheng told the truth that there were not many troops that the Ming Dynasty could mobilize.

The Ming Dynasty Guards nominally had a million troops, but only close to half of them could actually fight. This has to be said that the guard system established by Zhu Yuanzhang had long existed in name only.

Moreover, in order to suppress the Japanese in the past few years, most of the elite soldiers and generals that Jiangnan could mobilize had been sent to the front line, so there were no troops left to dispatch.

However, at this moment, King Yu said: "What I mean is, is there a way to solve the problem of Japanese pirates or solve the source of military expenditures."

Um?

Wei Guangde was a little surprised. He didn't expect King Yu to think of this.

Previously, Wei Guangde only thought that King Yu's problem was to solve the Fujian rebels, but he did not expect that King Yu wanted them to find a way to completely solve the trouble.

Also, the throne of Emperor Jiajing will be handed over to him sooner or later. If the problem of Japanese invasion cannot be solved, it will also trouble him.

Yin Shizhen and Zhang Juzheng also had the same idea as him. At this time, they both looked at King Yu, then looked away and began to think.

Solving the Japanese pirates or solving the sources of anti-Japanese funds will naturally alleviate the dilemma of people's livelihood in Jiangnan and restore calm to the situation in Jiangnan. But how to solve it?

This is almost unsolvable, and if there was a way, it would have been proposed long ago.

At this time, Wei Guangde thought of the matter that he had considered before, and it seemed that he could throw it out today to test the opinions of other people in the palace.

Thinking of this, Wei Guangde took a peek at Yin Shizhen and Zhang Juzheng and found that they were both thinking hard. He felt more and more that now seemed like an opportunity.

Wei Guangde looked like he was hesitating to speak, and his face showed a lot of confusion, but he didn't speak. However, his performance naturally easily attracted the attention of King Yu.

"Shan Loan, but what can you think of?"

King Yu directly named Wei Guangde and wanted to know what method he had thought of to solve the dilemma.

Upon hearing King Yu's inquiry, Yin Shizhen and Zhang Juzheng both turned their attention to Wei Guangde and wanted to hear what he had to say.

After King Yu's roll call, Wei Guangde immediately stopped his performance and just looked at the crowd with a hesitant expression before saying, "I wonder, Your Highness, do you have two other adults who know why the Japanese invasion is so serious in this dynasty?"

Hearing Wei Guangde's words, everyone in the room widened their eyes in surprise.

In fact, this issue was discussed privately among civil servants, but only a few officials thought it was related to Emperor Jiajing's plan to cancel the market.

Many officials of the Ming Dynasty knew that although Japanese pirates existed all year round, they did not become so rampant when several previous emperors were in power. Therefore, almost everyone believed that this was caused by Emperor Jiajing's misconduct.

Then, no one dared to say anything anymore.

Slandering your father, don’t you want to live?

Of course Wei Guangde did not think that the emperor was immoral. He was one of the very few officials.

The abolition of commercial shipping was an introduction to Japanese pirates. It was precisely because of the actions in the early years of Jiajing that the maritime merchants began to be alert and gradually developed their own armed forces. The purpose was naturally to rely on force to smuggle goods if the imperial court banned it, and then almost out of control.

Seeing that everyone's attention had been attracted, Wei Guangde naturally would not show off and continued: "Have you heard about the battle for tribute in Ningbo?

After this incident, the person who was still in charge of the military affairs department at that time was Xia Yan, the later chief assistant. He reported that the Japanese disaster originated from Shibo, so he eliminated the Fujian and Zhejiang Ship Divisions. As a result, traces of Japanese pirates reappeared in these two places many years later. "

Having said this, Wei Guangde raised his hands to Prince Yu and said: "Your Highness may have heard that most of the Japanese pirates are actually Ming people. In fact, the so-called Japanese pirates are mostly pirates of the Ming Dynasty, but they hired a large number of unemployed Japanese warriors. Every time These Japanese were the ones who took the lead in plundering, so most people thought the Japanese pirates were Japanese."

King Yu nodded. Regarding the composition of the Japanese pirates, the Ming Dynasty officials had actually known it for a long time. Even if they didn't know it before, they already knew it after the two main Japanese pirates, Xu Hai and Wang Zhi, were eliminated.

"In fact, most of them are maritime merchants. As for why they didn't pretend to be Japanese pirates in the past and rob homes, that's because they can still do business through commercial shipping, trade with the vassal envoys who came to our Ming Dynasty, and even sneak into the vassal envoys. The group went directly overseas.

However, after the battle for tribute, their way of survival was cut off, and they began to become Japanese pirates, relying on force to traffic Ming Dynasty goods out to sea, to the point where they are irreversible today. "

Wei Guangde said that he would not continue talking here. He needed to see the attitudes of others.

"Then isn't the Shibo Division restored now? Why are those people still not doing business and still working as Japanese pirates?"

King Yu asked in surprise.

"They can't turn back because Xu Hai and Wang Zhi were both killed by the court. If they lay down their weapons, they are just waiting to be beheaded by the court."

Wei Guangde said in a low tone.