The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 611 Liu Kan Observes Government
On the ninth day of the ninth month of the first year of Guangde, the emperor's palace was moved east again from Tongling to Nanjing City.

On the tenth day of September, Liu Zhaosun, accompanied by Emperor Guangde Liu Kan, Empress Dowager Jin Yuji Yang Qing'er and others, officially entered the Forbidden City in Nanjing.

As of late September of the first year of Guangde, not discussing the Indochina Peninsula, the situation in East Asia as a whole was as follows:

After eighteen years of arduous battles, the Qi forces entered the interior of China from Liaodong and southern Liaoning, and gained a firm foothold in Henan, Shanxi and other places. Except for some areas in the northwest of Qinghai and Tibet, the entire East Asian continent was basically occupied by the Qi army.

The Southern Ming Dynasty, which had previously occupied nine southern provinces, had nominally collapsed;
The Great Western Kingdom, which once occupied Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Gansu and threatened Henan and Hebei, now retreated to the northwest, with most of its territory annexed by the Qi army.
In the northeastern Kingdom of Korea, the two northern provinces were occupied by the Qi army in the first year of Taichu. After three years of systematic troop stationing and immigration management, Qi had completely absorbed the two northern provinces of Korea. Li Jong surrendered to his "uncle" and only hoped to survive for a few more days.

The Tokugawa shogunate, which "defeated" the Ming army in Kyushu, denied all the terms of the Treaty of Niuguan.

Not only that, the entire country of Japan was actively preparing for war, and the shogunate issued an order:
"No one is allowed to leave Kyushu Island at will, ships entering and leaving the country will be strictly inspected, foreigners are prohibited from traveling to Japan, and coastal defenses will be strengthened.

Tokugawa Iemitsu formulated the so-called "foreign conquest plan", preparing to launch an attack on the Qi mainland while welcoming a new round of attacks from the "Qi lu".

Over the years, Liu Zhaosun's energy was mainly focused on the interior. The "Immediately Attack Fuso" combat plan, which he had formulated shortly after Yuan Chonghuan's death, was not implemented for a long time.

The war that would determine the fate of both Qi and Japan was delayed for at least ten years.

This created an illusion, the illusion that Qi was weak (after all, Qi had been engaged in endless wars and disasters for the past decade).

Moreover, the failure of Qi's national expedition to Japan ten years ago also greatly boosted the confidence of the shogunate.

Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered the samurai of each feudal domain to carry out planned looting activities on the coast of Korea and the southeastern coast of Da Qi.

This was a new round of "Japanese invasion" following the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, known in history as the Guangde Japanese invasion.

As early as the second year of Taichu, Japanese pirates invaded the coastal areas of eastern Zhejiang and killed civilians. However, at that time, the war between Qi and Ming was imminent, so these sporadic invasions of Japanese pirates were ignored.

As for the Tsarist Russian forces in the north (to be precise, the Cossack colonial vanguard), after suffering a series of disastrous defeats on Sakhalin Island, even the most crazy Cossacks would flee westward without looking back when they encountered the Qi expedition team (equivalent to the Qi army militia organization).

After more than ten years of territorial expansion, the empire's power continued to expand northward with Liaodong as its starting point.

The vast land north of Mongolia, south of the Arctic Ocean, east of the Lesser Sea (now Lake Baikal), and west of Kuyi Island has all been ceded to the State of Qi.

Because the area is so large (about half of the total area of Siberia, and larger than the 650 million square kilometers of the Ming Dynasty territory during the Yongle period), it is sparsely populated. Except for some towns and strongholds on Sakhalin Island and the west coast of the Tatar Strait where military and civilians live, most of the rest of the wasteland can only be declared by a stone tablet. With the current strength of the empire, it is impossible to control it.

The Great Qi occupied an absolute dominant position in the East Asian continent and became a veritable superpower in the Eastern Hemisphere (this is why it was later called the Eastern Qi).

By October of the first year of Guangde, the empire's nominal ruling area exceeded 16 million square kilometers (larger than the area of present-day Russia), and this number was still growing rapidly.

Of course, the actual area controlled by the empire is much smaller than this, less than 5 million square kilometers, as follows:

The people in Liaodong, Liaoxi, Liaonan and Mongolia are the most loyal to the Great Qi, providing a constant supply of high-quality troops for the Great Qi. This can be said to be the base camp of Liu Zhaosun.

Going south, passing Shanhaiguan, we entered Northern Zhili. Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei had been devastated by years of war, but fortunately, the bandit forces had been completely driven out. Hebei and Tianjin were in a stage of recovery, and this was the secondary core ruling area of the empire.

After Li Xianzhong's defeat in the early years of the Wuding reign, Shanxi was occupied by Deng Changxiong's Second Corps, becoming the headquarters for the empire's westward advance. For over a decade, all ten corps, except the navy, had engaged in battles here against the bandits (Daxi Kingdom), their elite troops causing Zhang Zicheng to question his own fate. It wasn't until last year, when the retired emperor mobilized the entire nation for a southern expedition, that some of the troops stationed in Shanxi were withdrawn. Under years of intense military pressure, Shanxi had become one of the most securely governed areas within the Great Wall.

Henan had been occupied for a long time, and the polar rule had a solid foundation here. The fertile land of the Central Plains was abundant with food, and the population was recovering year by year. This was the foothold and core area of the empire's rule within the Great Wall.

Shandong, also the core of the rule within the Great Wall, has been plagued by drought, war, and chaotic politics in the past two years. The remnants of the White Lotus are hiding in various places, making it one of the areas that need to be pacified.

The entire province of Hubei had just been incorporated into the Great Qi, and was still not at peace, with a considerable number of bandits.
Going further south, the entire Hunan province nominally submitted to the Great Qi, but of course it was only nominal, because at least tens of thousands of Ming troops had fled into Hunan. In addition, there were more than a dozen small chieftains in western Hunan, which were all headaches.
The situation in Jiangxi was slightly better. Except for Linchuan and Ganzhou, which were still resisting stubbornly, the rest of the prefectures and counties were all pacified.

The prefectures and counties of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces were all pacified and became areas under the effective rule of the empire;
Fujian is the base camp of Zheng Sen's pirates, especially the southern part of Fujian, where the rebellious forces are strong. Currently, they are only nominally affiliated with the Great Qi.

Similar to Fujian are Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan. To achieve complete control over these sea territories, the Qi army needs to fight with iron and blood.

As for Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places, the Qi army is now out of reach, and these provinces are also within the scope of "nominal submission to Qi".

~~~
After Jiangnan was pacified, the issue of choosing the capital was once again put on the agenda.

Beijing is already in ruins, Tianxin City is half-built and abandoned, the Shenyang Palace is too small, not to mention Xi'an, and Henan has suffered disasters year after year. Looking across the country, only Nanjing is the most suitable place to be the capital.

However, Nanjing's dominance faded. Not only the emperor, but everyone in the court and the country believed that Nanjing could not be the capital of the Great Qi.

Throughout the dynasties, only Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was able to establish himself in Nanjing and achieve great success.

Lu Xiangsheng, Qian Qianyi, Kang Guangxu and others believed that the former Ming Dynasty was small and weak, comparable to the Song Dynasty, and could not be compared with the Great Qi at all.

When Zhu Yuanzhang conquered Yuan Dadu, he intended to move the capital. In the late Hongwu period, Zhu Biao inspected everywhere in order to move the capital to the north.

In the end, Zhu Di accomplished this.

In the Jingnan Campaign, Zhu Di not only seized the throne from his nephew, but also destroyed the northern defense system that his father had worked so hard to build.

The kings of the frontier states, including the Prince of Qin, the Prince of Jin, the Prince of Yan, the Prince of Dai, and the Prince of Su, who had previously expanded the Ming's territory, were either stripped of their military power or relocated inland after the Jingnan Campaign. Throughout the Ming dynasty, Beijing remained under constant enemy threat, besieged by Mongol troops, the Jurchens, and ultimately, the bandit Li Zicheng.

The so-called "Son of Heaven guarding the national gate" is actually just a helpless choice...
Now all the big cities in the north have been abandoned, and there is no more suitable place to be the capital except Nanjing.

The only temporary solution is to establish the capital here first.

In Nanjing City, almost all Southern Ming officials surrendered to Da Qi.

"History of Ming Dynasty" records:
When the country was destroyed, Gao Zhuo hanged himself to death.

In August, the Southern Capital was captured and all officials were willing to surrender.

At this time when Qi replaced Ming, it would be inaccurate to say that everyone surrendered to Qi. At least six people chose to die for Ming.

These six people, like Wu Keji, a student of the Imperial College in Nanjing, died to express their sorrow for the loss of their country.

Wu Keji hanged himself in the Guandi Temple in Nanjing, leaving behind a poem:

Jian Yu fled from the king and his ministers,
Protect yourself even in times of danger.

Worrying about the national disaster,
Ashamed to submit to the northern barbarians.

In other words, in the eyes of a considerable number of Ming officials, Liu Zhaosun and his Great Qi were no different from the Tartars.

When the Nanjing officials flocked to Emperor Wuding's camp to surrender to the Qi army, Liu Chengzhi, a doctor in the Ministry of Revenue of the Southern Ming Dynasty, lamented to his wife:

"The state has nurtured scholars for three hundred years. How could there not be a single loyal and righteous person who would repay the emperor's kindness?"

After saying this, he hanged himself at home.

Huang Duanbo, an official from the Ministry of Rites, chose a more radical approach to fight against the Great Qi.

Huang Duanbo was a student of Jiang Yueguang. Not only did he refuse to flee to Guangdong, but in Guangdong, the loyal ministers of the Southern Ming Dynasty supported the twenty-year-old King of Gui, Zhu Youlang, to continue to be the enemy of the Great Qi.

When Emperor Guangde summoned Huang Duanbo, he actually tried to assassinate the Emperor of Qi with a dagger...

Later historians praised those loyal officials of the Southern Ming who continued to fight back against the Great Qi after the fall of Nanjing. For example, Zhu Jizuo led the remaining Ming forces in Xinghua and continued to resist stubbornly, but was killed; Jiang Ruolai led the people to kill officials from the State of Qi on Chongming Island, and tried to turn this island, which later became the most prosperous island of the Great Qi, into a sea base for anti-Qi and pro-Ming elements; and Guo Weijing, who was originally the Minister of Revenue under Zhu Changling, fled to Jiangxi before the fall of Nanjing and later died in the Battle of Linchuan...
There are many loyal ministers like this.

Of course, there were even more people who surrendered to the new dynasty in exchange for a prosperous future.

Liu Zhaosun repeatedly ordered Qi officials to treat surrendered Ming officials equally and not to exclude them. He even added two surrendered Southern Ming officials to the eight-member cabinet as a balance of power.

However, the old ministers of Qi privately expressed considerable contempt for those Ming people who were greedy for life and afraid of death and changed their allegiance.

The dispute between the northern and southern court officials, which the retired emperor least wanted to see, was inevitable.

In any case, Liu Zhaosun and his Great Qi finally won.

Liu Zhaosun became the supreme ruler of this vast empire with 60 to 80 million people.

Although there were undercurrents in the south of the Yangtze River, and although there were still remnants of Ming forces fighting back in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and other places, the rise of Qi was unstoppable no matter what.

Liu Kan was left in Nanjing City, ostensibly to guard the south of the Yangtze River, but in fact the retired emperor wanted the sixteen-year-old Emperor Guangde to observe government affairs in Nanzhili.

"Kan'er, when you were in Shenyang, you read the classics and studied the 'Illustrated Guide to Emperors,' but you can't trust everything you read in books. Now, you're meeting these surrendered ministers, some treacherous, some loyal, a mixed bag. You're seeing the true face of a scholar, what the human heart is, and what the kingly way is."

Liu Zhaosun never tired of teaching Liu Kan his imperial mindset.

The emperor had complicated feelings towards the little emperor.

That year, because of his own fault, Zhu Youjian was able to counterattack and Queen Zhang Yan was poisoned to death.

Liu Zhaosun could never forgive himself. If he had not been reborn after fighting in blood, he might have gone crazy long ago.

Later, in order to make up for the dead woman, he appointed Liu Kan as the crown prince early, held the abdication ceremony early, and passed the throne to the teenage child early.

For sixteen years, he used his stubborn love to mend the rift between father and son.

But will Liu Kan appreciate it?
The young emperor was always distant towards his father and the so-called relatives around him. Only when his uncle Jin Dajiu was killed did Liu Kan shed tears.

"Father, how should we deal with the Ming official who assassinated me yesterday?"

Emperor Guangde looked up at the retired emperor, his eyes frighteningly calm.

(End of this chapter)