The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 655: The Fall of Huizhou Merchants
In the summer of the third year of Guangde, the emperor's limited patience was finally exhausted by the continuous rebellion on the canal south of Huai'an.

Liu Kan's suppression of the rebellion in Yangzhou had made no substantial progress, and the rebellion, which had originally been a spark, became increasingly fierce, threatening to spread like wildfire.

In early April, hundreds of thousands of Luojiao followers in Huai'an, Yangzhou, Changshu and other places rose up in rebellion, linking up with the disbanded grain transport troops, as well as the teaching assistants, pawnbrokers, and dealers who had lost their livelihoods due to the abolition of the grain transport system...

Millions of rebels plundered everywhere, and the Huaiyang area fell into war again.

More than a dozen prefectures and counties were affected. Even Taicang and Suzhou, which had just been pacified last year, began to make moves as the gentry and wealthy families saw an opportunity.

The southeast is showing signs of instability.

Liu Zhaosun was stationed in Nanjing and ordered the Fifth Corps to make every effort to encircle and suppress the rebellion.

Pu Gang commanded his troops and traveled to more than ten prefectures and counties, putting out fires like a fire captain.

They had to protect the safety of Emperor Guangde Liu Kan, deal with the constant attacks of the grain transport army Luo Jiao, and guard against retaliation from local gentry.

This kind of task that requires all the demands is really beyond Pu Gang's ability.

Soon after arriving in Yangzhou, the old imperial general realized that compared with the precarious defense of Linqing in the first year of Wuding, the rebellion caused by the abolition of the grain transport system in the third year of Guangde was undoubtedly more deadly and dangerous.

The cost of security warfare to field troops is enormous and is beyond the capacity of the Fifth Corps to bear.

In view of the pressure from all sides, Pu Gang had to repeatedly ask for help from Nanjing, hoping that the emperor would send more troops to rescue, and the reinforcements must be more than 100,000.

For the empire, it was obviously too difficult to conquer Huaiyang with an army of 100,000.

Scraping together fifty thousand is the limit.

Fortunately, the enemy we faced this time was a weak rebel.

On the day Lin Yu and his party set off, new soldiers recruited from various places set out from Nanjing one after another and headed towards Yangzhou.

On April 15, the first batch of 10,000 new recruits arrived in Yangzhou and joined forces with the main force of the Fifth Corps. The 20,000-strong army entered the provincial capital and immediately declared martial law in Yangzhou.

On the 17th and 19th, the second batch of reinforcements, consisting of 15,000 people, arrived at the banks of the Qinhuai River.

After completely cutting off communication between Yangzhou and the surrounding prefectures and counties, Pu Gang ordered that from April 21st to 30th, the Qi army would arrest rebels and kill the rebels in Yangzhou city for ten consecutive days.

It is known in history as the "Ten Days of Yangzhou".

During the ten-day-long suppression of the rebellion, more than 36,000 soldiers, divided into hundreds of small teams, were fully armed and searched house to house in the city for rebellion and Luojiao believers of the Guangde Cao Army hiding in the city. Any resistance was killed on the spot by the soldiers.

As of April 30th, after ten days of searching and killing throughout the city, a total of more than 108,000 rebels were captured, and more than 25,000 traitors including Luo Jiao, Cao Jun, Da Xing and others were beheaded.

Due to the heavy killing, the Qinhuai River was stained with blood and the water turned red. The city was littered with corpses.

After this battle, eight out of ten blood-sucking insects entrenched on the canal were killed, and the surviving Luojiao canal troops fled, either going out to sea or fleeing further south.

The canal transportation system that had been implemented for thousands of years was completely abolished.

After dealing with a group of rebels, Liu Zhaosun turned his butcher knife to the salt merchants and gentry behind the rebellion.

How can you show your compassionate heart if you don't use thunder-like means?

The emperor was not at all soft-hearted and ordered Xie Yang to immediately organize people to liquidate the Huizhou merchants.

On the second day of May, officials of the Chamber of Commerce, together with the pacification troops, the imperial guards, the straw raincoat guards and other institutions, formed a professional property-raiding team and began to systematically plunder the property of salt merchants in the city. According to the laws of the Great Qi Dynasty, the salt industry in the country was monopolized by the Great Qi Chamber of Commerce, and private salt production and sales were strictly prohibited.

Previously, when the Qi army was short of manpower, the retired emperor adopted an attitude of indulgence and acquiescence towards the salt merchants in Yangzhou and turned a blind eye to it.

Now that troops are constantly being recruited in various places and the new policies are being implemented quite smoothly, the emperor decided to change his tolerant attitude towards salt merchants.

So, just like what they did to the Shanxi merchants in the first year of Wuding, the Fifth Corps began to occupy the Hui merchants in Yangzhou City and kill them all.

The reason why the retired emperor spent so much energy to control the city of Yangzhou was partly to plunder the Huizhou merchants.

The two major pillar industries supporting Yangzhou, in addition to canal transportation, are salt industry.

The salt permit system was the most popular in the late Ming Dynasty. Merchants paid money to obtain a permit, and used the permit to transport and sell salt. In fact, the permit was a salt transportation and sales license issued by the government to salt merchants. It was divided into long permits and short permits. The long permit was for one year and the short permit was for one season.

Yangzhou doesn't produce salt, but it thrives on it. Located on the Yangtze River, it offers inland access and borders the East China Sea, along with the Huaibei and Huaibei salt-producing regions. With its convenient water resources, Yangzhou has been a salt mining hub for southern China since the Han Dynasty. By the Ming Dynasty, Yangzhou had become a salt transportation hub, with salt produced in Huaibei and Huaibei transported and stored there before being sold north along the Grand Canal or up the Yangtze River to the central provinces of Henan, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Anhui.

There are many wealthy businessmen here, the largest of whom are salt merchants, and most of these merchants are from Huizhou.

There is a sentence in the Wushizhai written by Chen Qubing, a modern scholar: "Yangzhou's prosperity was actually opened up by the Huizhou merchants, and Yangzhou was a colony of the Huizhou merchants.

Confiscating Huizhou merchants was one of the important contents of the "Ten Days of Yangzhou".

~~~~~
After Jiang Liuer settled Lin Yu, he turned and came to the entrance of the ruins. He asked two guards to follow him, and the three of them entered the cave one after another.

The cave is bottomless and very narrow at first before it can be passed through.

Jiang Liuer took the torch and walked through the narrow place. When he looked up again, he saw another world in the cave.

The stream flows along the stone path.

The huge underground river formed by this karst landform leads to far away places.

After walking along several stone paths, the space in front suddenly became wider, and a decent hall appeared in front of the three people.

Luo Wenjian sat on a stone bench in the middle of the hall. Gold, silver, and jewelry were scattered all over the ground, and many of the jewelry had blood stains on them.

"You came?"

The Dharma protectors around the leader had all disappeared, leaving only her sitting on the lotus seat, looking calm and composed.

"I'm here to kill you."

Jiang Liuer looked around to make sure there was no ambush.

"Jiang Liu'er, you are so beautiful. You shouldn't die so early."

"Witch, stop talking nonsense. All your people are dead, and you are the only one left. How do you want to die?"

Jiang Liuer raised his musket and aimed it at the Luo Sect leader.

Luo Wenjian raised his head, a strange look flowing on his charming face, like the light and shadow floating on the rock wall.

Across the gold, silver, and jewels scattered all over the floor, the woman smiled wickedly and said:

"Your companion has killed too many people and is dying. I am a cultivator of the Xuan sect, and the Emperor is also a cultivator of the Xuan sect. He and I are actually from the same sect. There is no need to kill each other. There is still a long way to go, and I will see him again..."

"Are you fucking done yet?"

Jiang Liuer swung his axe and smashed it down.

The axe hit Luo Wenjian, but he was not hurt at all.

Jiang Liu'er was shocked and angry: "Are you a fox? Do you have nine lives?"

"More than nine, ten."

The leader of the Luo sect laughed.

Jiang Liuer pulled the trigger.

The white mist dissipated, and Jiang Liuer walked to the lotus seat, only to find that there was no one around.

The witch disappeared.

Not even a drop of blood was left.

"Bullshit, I saw a ghost today."

Jiang Liuer cursed.

(End of this chapter)