There is no such thing as the Kangxi and Qianlong eras

Chapter 52 He Shen: Suppress it first, let His Majesty have a good New Year
The news that Qianlong saw was still delayed. It was not that Heshen was deliberately deceiving others to seize power, but simply that the situation in Hubei was deteriorating too quickly.

Huiling and Chengde said in their impeachment memorial that Nie Yu was a member of the White Lotus Sect, but he was not a member of the White Lotus Sect after all, so his methods were not that violent. At most, he conquered one prefecture and three counties, and then divided the land of the landlords for the people to cultivate.

In fact, Nie Yu did not go on a killing spree. He did not even touch the landlords' floating wealth. At most, when the land was divided, some overly tyrants and evil gentry were beaten and killed by angry tenants.

Rebellion is like doing business, you have to follow the rules and do it in an orderly manner. If you kill and rob everyone along the way, you are just a bandit, not even a rebel.

This was the case with Li Zicheng. In the early days, he was a bandit and was beaten by the government soldiers and fled in fear. Later, under the advice of his advisers, he eliminated violence and cared for the people, pretended to be benevolent and righteous, and banned the soldiers from committing adultery and killing. Only then did he escape from Shangluo Mountain and become the Emperor Yongchang of Dashun.

It can be said that King Chuang’s biggest mistake was that he was defeated by the Qing Dynasty, by Dorgon and Wu Sangui.

Nie Yu was not a member of the White Lotus Sect, nor was he a bandit, so he only looked like he was making a big fuss, but the damage was very small. On the contrary, those real White Lotus rebels turned into bandits within a few months.

In Yunyang, Xiangyang, Shinan, Yichang, and Jingmen, four prefectures and one state, except for the large cities of the state capitals and a few counties and towns that were preserved, the rest of the places quickly fell into ruin.

The White Lotus rebels would often kill their way to a place. They would either attack the county town and then plunder the countryside, taking away all the food and civilians, leaving the place in ruins. Or they would not attack the county town, but would still plunder, leaving everything in their path in ruins.

Even though the Eighth Army of the White Lotus Sect in Xiangyang, with Wang Cong'er as the "General Commander", had only slightly better military discipline. There were tens of thousands of troops, and they had never undergone any training. No matter how strictly they were disciplined, there would always be those who disobeyed orders and burned, killed, and looted.

The area west of Hubei has become a rotten mess!
The local officials had no idea what to do. They did not have the power to recruit soldiers, and recruiting soldiers privately was tantamount to rebellion. What could they do?

Write a memorial!

He wrote a memorial requesting reinforcements from the imperial court, and at the same time impeached the governor for improper troop deployment and corruption.

Why not impeach the governor? Because the governor is from the Eight Banners!

The classes of the Qing Dynasty: The Eight Banners of the Manchus were greater than the Eight Banners of Mongolia, the Eight Banners of Mongolia were greater than the Eight Banners of the Han Army, the Eight Banners of the Han Army were greater than the bondservants, and the bondservants were greater than the Han officials.

After a detailed count, the official ranks of Governor Hui Ling and Governor-General Bi Yuan were basically the same (because it was customary for Governors to have additional titles), but their class status differed by three levels. These local officials could still tell which one was more important.

Now that the New Year is approaching, the Qing government officials west of Hubei will most likely not have a good time this year, and Emperor Qianlong, who has just returned to the Forbidden City for a short stay, will also not be able to have a few days of peace.

Because in a few days, these impeachment letters from local officials in Hubei will be sent to Beijing.

No, it is possible that they cannot be delivered for the time being. The Grand Council, the Six Ministries, and the Southern Study are all under the control of Heshen. It is the duty of a servant to suppress these impeachment memorials and let the Emperor have a few days of peace!
As for the chaos in Hubei?

They are just a bunch of fools who were bewitched by the White Lotus Sect. No matter how big a fuss they make, it is still a small matter. Can they be as powerful as the Jinchuan Khanate and the Dzungar Khanate in the past?

……

The boundary of Jingzhou Prefecture.

Nie Yu has now taken control of most of the area west of Jingzhou, with only Jianli, Gong'an and Shishou counties still nominally under the rule of the Qing court.

The reason why they were still there in name was because Huiling had never considered these three counties at all. In his opinion, even Jingzhou had been thrown to the rebels, and it was likely that these three counties would be lost sooner or later.

It truly couldn't be saved. The letters of request for assistance sent to Wuchang by these three counties fell on deaf ears, not even making a splash. "A few more tenants in a few villages have rebelled against their landlords and are requesting we send someone to divide their land and settle them?" Nie Yu said, feeling a slight headache as he looked at the documents that had been sorted out and delivered by the Secretariat.

As mentioned before, the current Jingzhou Prefecture is a separation of military and political affairs. The Secretariat and the army are directly under the command of General Nie Yu, while the rest of the internal affairs and land distribution affairs are managed by the old man Nie Jieren and his group of bureaucrats.

Therefore, the documents that have been sorted out and submitted by the Secretariat clearly do not indicate that tenants in the Han army's jurisdiction are killing landlords in rebellion.

Moreover, it is unlikely that there are still tenants in the territory under the jurisdiction of the Han army. All tenants have been allocated land, including the refugees.

At most, the number of grassroots officials was insufficient, which led to unrest during the land distribution. Either the villagers were dissatisfied with the results of the land distribution and beat the officials who presided over the land survey and division, or several families had disputes over the division of land boundaries and then fought with each other.

This kind of thing cannot be avoided. Even hundreds of years later, when industrialization has already taken place, quarrels and disputes over land issues often occur in rural areas.

Because there is only so much land and only so much good land. No matter how it is divided, there will always be people who are not satisfied and who want to occupy the best and most fertile land.

This problem cannot be solved simply by compensating with more fields. It can only be solved through pure hard work, while also overhauling water conservancy projects and expanding the scale of irrigation of fertile fields.

The General's Mansion is already working on this matter. There are still capable people among those surrendered officials. Not all of them are good-for-nothings. Good-for-nothings cannot reach the level of a governor.

Feng Xiuyong also held the document in his hand and said with a smile, "General, this is great news! The people in the territory not under our Han army's jurisdiction have taken the initiative to kill the landlords and divide the land. This shows that our Han army has spread far and wide, and it has already made the people come to us on their own initiative."

Nie Yu joked, "I'm afraid it won't be fame that spreads far and wide, but infamy that spreads far and wide! If this continues, the reputation of this general and the Han army will be completely ruined among those landlords and officials."

Feng Xiuyong said solemnly, "In troubled times, severe punishments must be applied. For the sake of the great general's plan for the world, what does a little infamy mean? Even the founding emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties were harsh on landlords and gentry. The general is following the example of the two dynasties' ancestors."

Nie Yu also suppressed his smile. "We don't care about reputation or infamy. Since a village has come to us for help, we will send a team of soldiers to help them divide the land and settle down. We don't care about what they did before, but once they come under the jurisdiction of our Han army, they must abide by our rules. No indiscriminate killing, no fighting over land distribution, and no concealing land. Those who violate the rules will be punished according to our established rules."

"The general is right," Feng Xiuyong replied.

Anyone with a discerning eye could see that these villages' surrender was a deliberate attempt to shift the blame, trying to push the responsibility of killing the rebel landlords onto the Han army.

Nie Yu can take the blame, but he can't take the blame for nothing. If you ask me to divide the land for you, you have to abide by my rules. You have to divide it the way I say. You can be dissatisfied, and we can discuss any problems, but you cannot use a knife to solve them privately.

Not to mention that when they saw someone had a few acres of good land, they would randomly gather a group of people, ransack the person's property, beat him or her, and then let the Han army go and divide the land.

Nie Yu had set up rules in Yidu before, because the tenants and common people in Yidu were making too much trouble. Not only did you kill the local tyrants and evil gentry, but you also killed the whole family, including the elderly, the weak, women, children, and slaves, and even spared no dogs.

After killing the local tyrants and evil gentry, they became jealous of the small landlords and even the land in the hands of the self-cultivating farmers, causing chaos in the local villages.

Nie Yu simply sent troops to the countryside and issued an order in the name of the General's Mansion that anyone who dared to kill people indiscriminately without going through the General's Mansion would not be given any land.

This is how the chaos was stopped.

(End of this chapter)