The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 409 Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong
Jiangning General Aisin Gioro Hao Chun was picked up by Chen Guangzu and thrown directly in front of Mo Zibu.

However, Mo Zibu ignored him this time, but concentrated on piecing together a corpse on the ground.

The body of Cheng De, the deputy governor of Jiangning.

This guy was hacked into pieces, at least into dozens of pieces, so people kept coming to report their achievements with a piece, so Mo Zibu simply helped Cheng De piece the body together.

Qian Jinduan handed over Cheng De's right arm timidly. His identity aroused Mo Zibu's curiosity.

I, Emperor Mo Da, did not expect that Qian Qianyi's descendants were so courageous. He even suspected that they were fake.

But this is Mo Zibu's stereotype. Qian Qianyi is indeed not a loyal, filial, chaste and righteous person, but he is not a shameless traitor either.

What is he more like? He is more like an ordinary person with great talent. Does he have character? A little, but not enough to allow him to fight against the fear of death.

So when the knife was at his neck, Qian Qianyi would definitely surrender.

But when the knife is no longer on his neck, his own conscience and the knowledge and moral ethics he has learned in his life will begin to torture him again.

Qian Qianyi thus showed two very contradictory sides. On the one hand, he submitted to the Qing Dynasty, shaved his head and changed his clothes, and even became an official of the Qing Dynasty.

On the other hand, he actively supported various anti-Qing activities and even participated in them himself, raising funds, propaganda, instigating rebellion, and making contacts.

Seeing that the emperor was dazed when he heard Qian Qianyi's name, Qian Jinduan's face turned red and his expression was very ugly.

He is indeed a descendant of Qian Qianyi. Historically, about five years ago, the clan left by Qian Qianyi could not bear the oppression of other Qian clan members and moved from their hometown in Suzhou to Xinshi Town in Huzhou, Zhejiang.

The person who took the lead in the relocation was Qian Jinduan's cousin Qian Jincheng. In the early years of Jiaqing, Qian Jincheng built the famous Qian Family Ancestral Hall in Xinshi Town, which was probably destroyed during the War of Liberation.

In addition, some people have verified that Qian Jincheng is the great-grandson of Qian Qianyi, but it is obvious that the time does not match.

There is an unconfirmed but very likely speculation in later generations that Academician Qian Sanqiang, a hero of the Republic and a contributor to the two bombs and one satellite program, is very likely a branch of the Qian family and a descendant of Qian Qianyi.

Mo Zibu was stunned for a moment, then he looked up and saw Qian Jinduan's flushed face, and quickly said:

"I heard from Prime Minister Liang (in charge of the Northern Expedition's finances and supplies) that the so-called 'cold water' and 'itchy scalp' were fabricated by shameless scholars under the instructions of Emperor Qianlong. When we take Beijing in the future, I will definitely help your ancestors clarify the matter."

The water was too cold and the scalp was itchy, which should be slander. The fact is that Qian Qianyi and Liu Rushi agreed to jump into the lake to die for their country. After they jumped in, Qian Qianyi was scared. He hugged Liu Rushi and they cried together, then climbed out. He never said anything about the water being too cold.

As for the claim that Liu Rushi failed to subdue Qian Qianyi even though she held his head, that is even more nonsense.

Ms. Liu was indeed a woman who was as capable as any man, but Qian Qianyi was her beloved, and it was unlikely that she would kill him with her own hands.

But this was not compiled under the instructions of Emperor Qianlong. Instead, it was made up by some shameless scholars who added fuel to the fire to curry favor with him after Emperor Qianlong showed his jealousy and contempt for Qian Qianyi and ordered the destruction of all his works.

Hearing Mo Zibu's words, Qian Jinduan burst into tears and fell to the ground, "If this injustice can be cleared, the Qian family will be forever grateful to His Majesty for his great kindness."

This left Mo Zibu speechless. It didn't seem too unfair. It was just a little slander at most.

As for thanking the emperor for his great kindness, it sounds weird.

However, considering that there are not many educated people in the Qian family, it may be because they are not very knowledgeable and cannot speak well.

Mo Zibu didn't mind. He nodded and asked Qian Jin to take it away. Then he admired the Chengde that was basically assembled on the ground and said to Hao Chun:

"Come here and show me, has Chengde been assembled?"

Hao Chun was confused by Mo Zibu's attitude. He crawled over on his knees, kowtowed to the ground, and asked hopefully, "Your Majesty, won't you kill the criminals?"

Mo Zibu smiled softly, looked at Hao Chun and said, "You have a good ancestor. Although Shuerhaqi is my brother, he is still a loyal minister. Hao Chun, the death penalty can be spared. As for the living punishment, it depends on your performance."

Hao Chun had never expected that he wouldn't have to die. Hearing this, he felt as if he had been reborn. He kowtowed frantically on the ground, his forehead banging loudly. "I will do my best, my best!"

After bowing, Song Chun looked at a knife on the ground and said, "Your Majesty, this knife is not Cheng De's. Also, this hand doesn't look like Cheng De's. Cheng De was shot in the left hand by a crossbow from a local soldier in Dajinchuan, leaving a large scar."

Song Chun immediately began to work like a slave, but Mo Zibu thought more about it. However, the reason why he was so lenient with Song Chun was definitely not because of Shuerhazi.

Little Wild Boar Skin was quite loyal back then, but that was a choice based on his own interests. Even if he was a loyal minister, it doesn't mean that all his descendants would be.

Mo Zibu was tolerant of Song Chun out of consideration for the entire banner people.

During the years since I, the Great Emperor Mo, rose to power, I have killed many Bannermen. Well, it wasn't I, the Great Emperor Mo, who killed them. It's more accurate to say that I simply didn't try to control and restrain them. This is simply tit-for-tat.

Starting from the Battle of Beihe, through Guangzhou, Qingyuan, Fuzhou, Hangzhou and the present Jiangning, basically at least 80,000 to 100,000 bannermen paid for the sins of their ancestors.

For a small group of only a few hundred thousand people, the loss is indeed heavy.

But this brutal revenge is almost over.

Everyone has to accept their fate on the battlefield. After putting down the sword, there should still be some bottom line, which will also help Mo Zibu establish a good character.

In the future, as long as the bannermen do not resist stubbornly, most of them will be detained like the entire city of Jiangning in the second half, and their ancestors will be traced back.

If your ancestors were military officers who participated in the massacre during the invasion of the Pass, you would lose your head.

If your ancestors were ordinary soldiers, then you will be convicted according to the law, with a minimum sentence of three years and a maximum of ten years.

My ancestors joined the banner after the Qing Dynasty's rule was consolidated, so I will recruit them into the army first, give them some benefits, and let them serve as pioneers in the future development of the Northeast.

Of course, this is only part of the reason. Another very important reason is that Mo Zibu did not want to force the Bannermen into a corner.

If they were pushed into a corner, Mo Zibu was afraid that these people would do two things.

The first is to dig up the Yellow River embankment.

Huaibei and southeastern Henan are already suffering enough now. If there is another Huayuankou War or another Yellow River flood area, the cost will be too high.

The dead are gone, but the living must continue. It is not advisable to cling to old hatreds and push the living into hell.

Second, Mo Zibu was afraid that the Bannermen would take the city of Beijing with them when they were left with no other options.

Although there are not many Han people in this city now, it concentrates more than 60% of the treasures in China.

These treasures are not gold, silver or jewelry, but various precious books, famous paintings and other artworks with great heritage value left over from dynasties. Including the Forbidden City and the Old Summer Palace, they are the most precious things of the Chinese nation.

If the bannermen get into a corner and set these things on fire when they are on the verge of destruction, the loss will be too great.

In addition to Beijing, the Bannermen also transported many precious books to Shenyang, which also had to be preserved.

For these things, Mo Zibu was willing to make certain compromises. Even if it was from the Aisin Gioro family, he would not necessarily die as long as he was honest.

Therefore, Mo Zibu chose to start with Hao Chun to express to the outside world that he did not support killing all the Bannermen, so as to prevent the remaining Bannermen from taking desperate measures.

Anyway, at this time when land is being taken over everywhere, simply killing people is quite wasteful. In the past, when dynasties changed, rulers did not restrict killing people much, partly because they wanted to use it to benefit the army and ensure loyalty and combat effectiveness.

Second, if you don't kill more people, there won't be enough land to reward your followers.

But now it’s completely different. It’s not that there are too many people, but that there are too few people.

With a total population of only 200 million, they want to occupy the entire East Asia, North Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, and also want to get involved in West Asia and North America. If possible, they also want to occupy a piece of South Asia. No matter how you look at it, it is not enough.

After deciding on a strategy to stop the brutal killings to prevent the Bannermen from becoming desperate, Mo Zibu immediately summoned General Qian Daxin and appointed him to be specifically responsible for investigating the situation of Bannermen all over Jiangning City.

At the same time, Mo Zibu met with the gentry of Jiangnan to stabilize his territory, and at the same time, he passed the news of the great victory back to Guangdong, asking his parents and family to hurry north.

At least for now, the capital is to be Nanjing, and a ceremony must be held more solemnly.

Just when Mo Zibu defeated the Qing army in Nanjing and basically took over Jiangnan, the battles of several other Northern Expedition armies also began.

Hunan, Yongzhou Prefecture, Lingling.

The brutal offensive and defensive battle had just ended, and the once sturdy Lingling City was almost reduced to ruins. The corpses of Qing soldiers were scattered everywhere in the entire city.

Wu Xing quickly passed through the ruins and came to Chen Guangyao, the Lieutenant General and General Pingbei, the Governor-General of Huguang, and reported:
"The Qing troops from Baoqing Prefecture have been almost completely wiped out, but news has come from Hengzhou Prefecture that the Leijia Town has not yet been taken. We must send more troops, and we must send more troops quickly!"

Leijia Town is not far south of Hengshan Mountain in later generations. Laishui River merges into Xiangjiang River here, and its geographical location is very important.

Chen Guangyao originally thought that it would not be difficult to capture the town of Leijia, but the Qing court transferred a large number of Green Camp soldiers and militia from Changsha. The Xingtang Army of more than 5,000 people fought for more than two months but failed to capture it.

At this time in Hunan, with Hengyang as the dividing line, the situation was completely different between the north and south.

In Hengyang, near Guangdong in the south, the anti-Qing atmosphere was very strong because Hengyang produced a great scholar named Wang Fuzhi, who was famous throughout history.

Wang Fuzhi was not only famous for his knowledge, but also very tenacious in the face of oppression from the Qing Dynasty. When he died in 1692, the st year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi, he still had his hair tied up and never shaved his head or changed his clothes in his entire life.

When the locals buried him, they engraved on his epitaph "Wang Fuzhi, a Ming Dynasty loyalist, was buried here" to show that Wang Fuzhi never surrendered to the Qing Dynasty throughout his life.

And under the influence of Wang Fuzhi, a large number of people emerged in Hengzhou Prefecture where Hengyang is located, who never shaved their heads and regarded themselves as the remnants of the Ming Dynasty.

They or their families would go into deep mountains and forests such as Mount Jiuyi and never shave their heads or change their clothes for the rest of their lives.

Among them, Xia Rubi, a representative, moved his family to Mount Jiuyi. After Yongli was killed in Kunming, he starved himself to death. His descendants persisted in Mount Jiuyi, and at least five or six generations of them never served the Qing Dynasty.

Inspired by these people, Hengzhou was filled with anti-Qing atmosphere. Local officials of Hengzhou tried several times to force Wang Fuzhi to shave his head and change his clothes but failed. This was also the place where the Tiandihui was the strongest, apart from Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian.

But further north, the situation is different.

A situation that is difficult for later generations to imagine is that at that time, although there were the most aristocratic families studying Confucianism in Jiangnan, the customs in Jiangnan were not the most conservative.

Even Neo-Confucianism did not have a very stable dominant position in Jiangnan.

At this time, if we were to talk about where in the south the atmosphere was the most conservative and where the Neo-Confucianism was the strongest, it would definitely be Hunan.

This is determined by the ecological niche of each province. During the Qing Dynasty, economic activities in Jiangnan were relatively active, and the scale of mulberry fields even expanded a lot compared to the Ming Dynasty.

With an active economy, it is naturally difficult for the atmosphere to become conservative. Although there will not be the clothing monsters and rebellious scholars in the late Ming Dynasty, the overall atmosphere is not conservative.

In the first half of the Qing Dynasty, Hunan was positioned as a large farming province and played a key role in ensuring the supply of grain to provinces such as Guangdong and Guizhou.

This model is bound to give rise to a bunch of medium-sized landlords.

Because there are only many medium-sized landlords with two or three hundred acres of land, who rely on self-allocation of large livestock such as oxen and maintenance of water conservancy to increase production.

In particular, they needed to cruelly exploit the tenants below, keeping them in a state of hunger throughout the year, so that they could extract large amounts of grain from the fields in an era of low production.

This type of medium-sized landowner with two or three hundred acres of land was a perfect fit for the development of Neo-Confucianism at that time.

At the same time, if these landlords wanted to maintain their status, the best option was to send their children to school. In addition, in order to suppress the resistance of the tenants below, these medium-sized landlords were required to have a certain amount of military power and the ability to control their clans and form gangs.

This further made the landlords rely heavily on the tool of Neo-Confucianism to maintain their ruling position.

It can even be said that the landlords in Hunan at this time were very similar to the Junker landlords in Prussia.

Under the Eastern tradition, these people were able to give birth to the ultimate form of landlord class armed forces represented by the Hunan Army a few decades later.

It can also be said that the Hunan Army was not created suddenly by Zeng Guofan alone. It was the result of the gradual development of Hunan's ecological niche during the Qing Dynasty.

These Hunan Junker landlords at this time were the foundation for Zeng Guofan's future rise.

Therefore, after the Xingtang Army entered Hunan, its initial progress was very rapid because Chen Guangyao had not yet approached the base camps of these Hunan Junker landlords, namely the four prefectures of Changsha, Yueyang, Changde, and Baoqing (Shaoyang).

With the support of the local Tiandihui in Hengyang, Chen Guangyao took advantage of the broad anti-Qing mass base and quickly gained a firm foothold. Even the Hengyang, the capital of Hengzhou Prefecture, was surrendered by the people in the city who tied up the prefect.

After hearing Wu Xing's report, Chen Guangyao appointed a gentry who had defected to Yongzhou to temporarily serve as the prefect of Yongzhou to stabilize the situation.

On the one hand, he led his troops back to Hengzhou to prepare to reinforce the army attacking Leijia Town.

At this time, his advisor, Wang Quan, the fifth-generation grandson of Wang Fuzhi, reminded Chen Guangyao: "The gentry in Chang, Yue, Chang, and Bao Prefectures are not bound to support the Qing government, but they are unaware that the world has changed and are even more afraid of their own interests being damaged.

If the general returns, he may be able to capture the Leijia town, but given the current situation, he will definitely not be able to capture Changsha and other prefectures."

Chen Guangyao understood that the key to taking over Hunan lay in how to deal with the gentry in these four prefectures.

These four prefectures were the core of Hunan, controlling a population of over nine million. If they insisted on supporting the Qing Dynasty, Chen Guangyao would be powerless.

Because he now has only 15,000 people, of which only more than 2,000 are garrison troops, the remaining 8,000 were newly recruited during the Northern Expedition in Guangdong, and the remaining 5,000 are simply the volunteers of Hengyang. This number of people is definitely no match for the gentry of the four prefectures in northern Hunan.

To deal with them, either more than 10,000 elite garrison troops should be dispatched to rely on force, or the emperor should grant full authority and then negotiate terms with local gentry leaders.

Or do both.

However, these were not things Chen Guangyao could resolve right now, so he nodded in agreement and said, "Then let's stabilize Hengyang first and wait until Your Majesty's battle in Jiangnan is over before we make a decision."

Compared with Chen Guangyao, Ye Xianchun and Yin Chengfang's actions in Jiangxi were much smoother.

On the one hand, Jiangxi Governor Hao Shuo was a big idiot who forced many Jiangxi gentry and people to join Dayu's side for no reason.

On the other hand, the large Hakka population in southern Jiangxi provided Ye Xianchun with a steady supply of soldiers.

When the main force of the Xingtang Army captured Mancheng, Ye Xianchun and Yin Chengfang had already taken over more than half of the prefectures and counties in Jiangxi.

Therefore, up to now, in the entire Jiangxi Province, only Nanchang, Jiujiang, Nankang and Raozhou are still in the hands of the Qing Dynasty.

(End of this chapter)