Jiajing Chengming

After Li Zhong returned home, he was able to get married with the help of a matchmaker, thanks to the reform of military households.

Not only him, several other military households with the same military rank as him also became grooms after returning home.

Then, these grooms didn't stay at home for long before they set off for Jiangxi.

After all, the monthly salary was two silver dollars, and they all wanted to earn these two silver dollars a month.

At this time, Wang Yangming had already arrived in Nanchang, Jiangxi.

However, in the first month of the seventh year of the Jiajing reign, heavy snow fell in Jiangxi due to the influence of the Little Ice Age.

When Wang Yangming arrived in Nanchang, he saw the vast snow and frowned. He said to Chen Hongmo, the governor of Jiangxi, who had come to meet him, "The biggest difficulty in suppressing the rebellion right now is not the rebels themselves, but the bad weather. The roads are blocked, making it difficult for soldiers transferred from other places to march here, and it also makes the transportation of food and fodder extremely difficult."

"What the minister said is true. It is freezing cold and snowing heavily. It is not appropriate to march rashly. It would be better to wait until the beginning of next spring. However, the soldiers and civilians in the rebellious areas will have to endure one more day of suffering."

Chen Hongmo replied.

Wang Yangming nodded, then walked to the table with his hands behind his back and said, "First, let each county organize the people to clean the roads, and march to the designated city gates while cleaning. At the same time, we should clean up the nearby bandits and suppress the restless bandits and bullies. At least this winter, we cannot let the rebels rely on bandits and internal forces to capture more cities."

Chen Hongmo nodded in agreement.

Jianchang Prefecture.

On the rebel side, the Chief Censor Fang Huai has transformed himself into Zhu Youbing's Minister of War.

Zheng Yuan, the prefect of Jianchang, became the right vice minister of the Ministry of Revenue.

The deputy commander Fang Liang became the commander-in-chief of the rebellion suppression campaign and was awarded the title of Earl of Xincheng for his meritorious service.

Under the coercion of these rebellious and powerful families, Prince Yi Zhu Youbing ascended the throne and became regent.

Fang Huai and others also issued a "clearing the court" anti-rebellion manifesto in the name of Zhu Youbing. In the manifesto, they naturally denounced Yang Yiqing, Zhang Cong, and Wang Qiong as treacherous ministers and villains, saying that they had brought disaster to the world and their harm was no less than that of Liu Jin and Jiang Bin.

They did not directly scold Jiajing.

This was mainly to unite the bureaucrats and literati who were dissatisfied with the reforms but did not want to abandon the emperor and rebel.

In addition to the anti-rebellion manifesto, Fang Huai and other rebel ministers also promulgated new regulations for governing the country in the name of Zhu Youbing, under the banner of restoring the ancestral laws and returning peace to the world.

Among them, the first one was to protect the great ceremony and denounce treacherous ministers such as Yang Yiqing and Zhang Cong for misleading the emperor, disrupting the great ceremony, and being disloyal and unfilial.

Just like when Jiajing first ascended the throne, the upright civil officials needed to make Jiajing recognize Emperor Xiaozong as his father at a grand ceremony, so as to restore the system of Emperor Xiaozong and achieve the goal of allowing the power of scholars to suppress the power of the emperor.

Now these rebels also need to achieve their goal of reviving the power of the scholars and restoring the system of Emperor Xiaozong by correcting the grand ceremony and working on it.

At the same time, they did this in order to gain the support of many ritual-protecting scholars and officials throughout the world.

Even Xia Liangsheng, the former chief academic officer of the Imperial College and a staunch supporter of the protection of rituals, joined the ranks of the rebels and became the Minister of Rites of Prince Yi Zhu Youbing because his family was in the rebel area.

In order to prove the correctness of his support for rituals, Xia Liangsheng also obtained the support of the rebels. He compiled a book called "The Imperial Examination Hall's Discussions on Rites and Memorials" based on all the documents he had collected when he was a Langzhong in the Ministry of Literature. He then asked Zhang Huai, the former councilor of the rituals faction among the rebels, and Ning Yao, the chief clerk of Nancheng, to print it.

According to these rebels, as long as Jiajing was willing to return to the great etiquette, they would stop rebelling and would continue to serve Jiajing as their leader. Therefore, they have not denied Jiajing's status as a monarch until now, but only attributed their rebellion to the treacherous ministers in the court.

As for whether Prince Yi Zhu Youbing could really become emperor, they did not consider it.

Because King Yi was just a puppet of theirs.

The second article was to restore the treatment of military households to that of the Xiaozong period, that is, the regular military households had no salary, only monthly rations, while the remaining military households had no monthly rations and had to hand in the surplus rations.

Anyway, most of their army is composed of brave soldiers who have devoted themselves to being slaves, so there is no need to worry about the army's dissatisfaction.

The third article was naturally to restore the crime of employees who rebelled against their employers during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong, which was regarded as treason and conspiracy.

As they were mostly large landowners and businessmen, they desperately needed this rule to ensure that their permanent and temporary workers obeyed their orders.

The fourth article is to restore the system of reporting and paying taxes, with the aim of alleviating people’s difficulties, but in reality it is intended to make money.

The fifth article is that royal family members are still prohibited from engaging in other occupations.

The sixth article is to abolish the factory guards in order to win the hearts of scholars across the country.

Article 7 prohibits nobles and relatives from opening money shops and competing with the people for profits.

This clause is mainly to prevent Zhang Yanling and others from continuing to lend money at low interest rates and snatch their profits.

Article 8: Hyuga Town was returned to the Japanese daimyo Otomo clan.

This policy was intended to gain support from Japan and other wealthy families along the coast who were dissatisfied with the imperial court's external expansion.

to this end.

They also promulgated the ninth article, which was to follow the ancestral system and abandon the prefectures and counties of Donglai and Penghu County.

This is also to please the wealthy families in coastal Fujian and Zhejiang.

And then there is Article 10.

Article 10 is to hold a special examination in the name of the regent.

This is what I learned from Jiajing.

Of course, they did this in order to win over some middle and lower class scholars to join their rebel team.

As a rebel group of the landlord class, they were different from the early peasant uprisings which only killed officials and gentry. Instead, they showed an attitude of welcoming scholars to join their team from the very beginning.

The rebels' senior officials were busy "restoring order and restoring the ancestral system", while the lower-level officers and soldiers had already begun to burn, kill and loot.

The local militia slaves and ruffians who followed them in the rebellion would naturally not follow them in vain. They would plunder ordinary people and middle and lower-level landlords in the name of counterattack and conquering cities.

Wu Juren, a scholar from Tongan Town, set out for the capital at the end of winter in the sixth year of Jiajing's reign, risking the war in his hometown, in order to take part in the special imperial examination of the seventh year of Jiajing's reign.

If he failed the special examination in the seventh year of Jiajing, he planned to live near the capital until the eighth year of Jiajing and take part in the joint examination.

His main reason was that he wanted to pass the imperial examination too much.

This is also the reason why he went out even though he knew there was a rebellion in his hometown.

He didn't want to miss this opportunity to take part in the imperial examinations twice in two years.

However, when Wu Juren went north, he was more cautious than before. He took a few more strong servants with him. He also formed a team with Lou Fu, a scholar from Xincheng who was also going to take the imperial examination, and went north together to take the imperial examination.

As for the imperial examination held by the rebels, he naturally had no intention of participating in it.

He was no fool and knew the rebels had little chance of winning.

When Wu Juren was heading north, he heard on the road that the rebels were attacking and killing passers-by in order to loot their money and property. At the same time, they were chopping off their heads and passing them off as those of government troops in order to win credit from their superiors.

This made Wu Juren feel quite timid, and he also saw many headless and naked corpses on the road, and there were even children crying among the dead bodies.

He had never expected that his hometown would change from a peaceful and harmonious world to a hellish world so quickly. This made him, who had not seen weapons for more than fifty years, quite terrified.

If it were not for his desire for fame and fortune that prompted him to continue his adventure northward, he would have wanted to temporarily not take part in the imperial examination, go home and hide, or even take his family and escape to Fujian.

When Wu Juren braved the cold wind and snow and continued walking to a place called Shanguan, he met Fang Chun, who had been promoted to a thousand-householder of the rebel army, and a group of soldiers under his command.

"stop!"

Whoosh!
When several whistling arrows in the hands of the rebels flew through the woods and stabbed into the snow, Wu Juren, Lou Fu and others had to ask their servants to stop their carriages.

Then, Fang Chun led the rebels to surround Wu Juren and Lou Fu, and asked them: "Where are you going?"

Wu Juren and Lou Fu both got off the carriage.

Wu Juren even accidentally saw a rebel behind Fang Chun holding a cloth bag full of human heads. The heads in the bag were still oozing blood, dripping onto the snow.

This made Wu Juren's face turn pale and he didn't say a word.

Lou Fu, a fellow candidate, said, "We are going to Nandu to do business."

"Buy or sell?"

"I don't think so. I think you look more like spies of the treacherous officials in the court!"

Fang Chun knew that he had already rebelled, so naturally he did not need to maintain any order. It did not matter if he killed the officers and soldiers of the inspection office, the civilians, or even the merchants and scholars.

Therefore, when Fang Chun heard them say that they were going there to do business, he just wanted to kill Wu Juren, Lou Fu and other people who looked well-dressed and obviously had quite a bit of money, and then rob them of their money.

Lou Fu then quickly brought out his own academic status and said, "We are juren, you can't kill us!"

"If you are a juren, go directly to Jianchang Prefecture to participate in the special examination!"

When Fang Chun heard them say that they were successful candidates in the imperial examinations, he gave up on killing them, but he also had no intention of letting them go.

Lou Fu immediately apologized, "We have given up on taking the imperial examination! Please don't force us, General!"

"What if I force you to do that?"

Fang Chun asked back, then pointed the bloody knife at Lou Fu: "Are you going or not?"

Lou Fu looked at Wu Yubi somewhat at a loss.

But Fang Chun seemed to have no patience and stabbed Lou Fu directly in the chest.

Lou Fu vomited blood from his mouth on the spot, with a look of shock on his face.

Wu Yubi was also frightened and opened his mouth and eyes.

Fang Chun looked at Wu Yubi at this time: "Are you going or not?"

"go with!"

"I go!"

Wu Yubi quickly agreed twice.

He now suddenly realized that in the time of rebellion and disorder, his status as a juren was of no use in front of these soldiers and bandits.

Wu Yubi then followed these rebels to Jianchang City.

Fortunately, it was winter and it soon started snowing heavily, making visibility extremely poor. He took advantage of the time when the rebels took a break and escaped while no one was paying attention. He rolled and ran all the way and hid in a cave. The heavy snow soon covered his footprints and the rebels did not find him.

After spending a cold night in the cave, Wu Yubi fled to Dongxiang County.

Not only Wu Yubi, but many middle and lower-level gentry and ordinary people could not bear the rebels' destruction of local order and chose to flee.

However, the upper-ranking rebels such as Fang Huai and Fang Liang were unaware of this. They only saw the people below constantly reporting on their military exploits of annihilating a large number of government troops and bringing in many scholars to surrender.

Therefore, this made the upper-level rebels such as Fang Huai and Fang Liang feel that the situation was very good, and they prepared to launch an attack on Nanchang after spring came.

But in fact, on the day before the Lantern Festival in the seventh year of Jiajing, a part of the emperor's personal army led by Zhou Shangwen arrived near Dongxiang and joined the local official army of Jiangxi there.

Fang Chun was ordered to attack Dongxiang. When he was burning, killing and looting in nearby villages, Wei Changgui, who was on duty in Dongxiang, went out of the city under the order of the military officer Peng Qi to annihilate the rebels.

Wu Yubi happened to see Wei Changgui's troops passing by the village where he was temporarily resting.

When he saw that this army was only marching along the main road, flying the banner of "Tiger Guards" and not entering nearby houses, he could not help but shed tears: "The emperor's army still has military discipline and can protect the people's peace!"

Under the guidance of the local patrol militia, the troops led by Wei Changgui came to the village where Fang Chun and other rebels were located, and surrounded Fang Chun's rebels in the village.

When Fang Chun realized that real government troops had appeared, he was naturally horrified and had to stop killing innocent villagers and began to gather troops to break out.

then.

These rebels rushed towards the emperor's personal troops, who were wearing a large number of white cloth armor.

At this time, the emperor's personal troops raised their muskets.

The rebels also raised their muskets as they approached each other's firing range.

Then came the sound of frying beans.

Flames also exploded on the snowfield.

Both sides suffered casualties on each other.

However, because the emperor's personal troops had better firearms and were better trained, their casualties were much less than those of the rebels.

However, these rebels suffered more casualties because they neglected training and usually worked as farmers and guards for powerful families.

When the emperor's personal troops in the front row took up their spears and, accompanied by firearmsmen, advanced forward like a row of penguins in the snow, the rebels were so frightened that they collapsed because they failed to defeat the government army.

At one time, many rebels were shot in the back, and some were even pierced through the back by spears.

Fang Chun also tried to run, but because it was difficult to walk in the snow, he was soon surrounded.

A former subordinate of Mao Zhong, a militiaman from the patrol station who was now serving as the guide of Wei Changgui, the emperor's personal army, pointed at Fang Chun and said to Wei Changgui:

"Commander Wei, it was him. He killed our commander. He burned him alive and peeled off his skin! It's a pity that our commander Mao didn't die at the hands of the Tartars, but died tragically at the hands of a traitor like him!"

"Please spare me!"

"I am willing to have my people return with thirty thousand silver dollars to present to you!"

Fang Chun then knelt on the snow and begged. (End of this chapter)