Master Yuan, start!

In republican France, the national leader changes almost every year. This is a fact known to everyone on the European continent.

Britain and Austria-Hungary expressed serious concern about this, but unlike Austria-Hungary, which only paid lip service, the British immediately mobilized the Hong Kong Fleet to patrol near the Taiwan Strait.

Anyone with a discerning eye can see that this is because Britain is dissatisfied with France's interference in the Far East and damaging the interests of the British Empire, and wants to have another "anti-French alliance" in the Far East.

The German media, upon hearing the news, naturally would not give up on this big news, and they began to fantasize.

"Britain is not content with merely restraining the French; it wants to punish the arrogant Gallic rooster!" Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"Will the Annam colony become the new Waterloo of the French?!" Berliner Zeitung

Chapter 272 Jianghuai Rust Belt

Outside Yangzhou City, beside the Grand Canal.

It was the season of clear and crisp autumn weather, and there were fewer mosquitoes at night than in summer. In addition, after the Yingxiao Incident in Yangzhou, the houses in the city were badly damaged.

At Duan Qirui's request, the National Defense Army simply set up camp outside the city and lined up along the river.

Although there are no troops stationed in the city, necessary order must still be maintained. More than a dozen teams of National Defense Forces soldiers temporarily formed patrols to patrol back and forth in the city.

The Hunan Army surrendered in a hurry, and many officials in the city did not have time to escape. When they saw the National Defense Army entering the city, they knelt down and surrendered, expressing their loyalty to the Qing Dynasty and the emperor.

But begging for mercy was useless. Anyone who wanted to pledge allegiance to the Qing court was labeled as "collaborating with bandits" by the National Defense Army.

On the contrary, those who refused to surrender were imprisoned by the National Defense Forces and did not lose their lives.

Yangzhou can be regarded as a severely affected area during the late Qing Dynasty. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom came, the Eight Banners of the Qing army came, the Hunan Army came for training, the Huai Army came for training, and the Nian Army came.

Now, after seeing off the Jiangnan New Army, we have welcomed the National Defense Army.

According to historical practice, every time Yangzhou welcomes a new owner, the people in the city will be exploited.

But this time, something is different.

After the people in Yangzhou City spent a few days in fear at first, they realized that the National Defense Army was only purging officials and did not harm the people at all, so they began to look at them with admiration.

The political instructors of the Red Confucian Society were busy posting slogans all over the city, stating that the royal army had arrived and that unification of the world was what the people wanted, and demanding that the people of Yangzhou not harbor the traitorous Hunan Army.

The word "court" did not appear in the entire notice. It either began with the National Defense Army or conveyed the order in the voice of Lord Yuan.

The area south of the Huai River had become the domain of the Yuan family.

At the same time, in the dark corners of the city's alleys, some illustrated pamphlets promoting the "Three Massacres of Jiading" and the "Ten Days of Yangzhou" appeared at some point.

After the scholars in the city picked up these pamphlets, they were surprised that this period of history existed, but their rejection of the Qing Dynasty became even stronger.

Every time the National Defense Army captured a place, anti-Manchu ideas spread there.

On the surface, the Qing government relied on the National Defense Army to continuously recover lost territories, but in reality, every time a city was captured, the forces loyal to the Qing Dynasty would be wiped out.

Replace the government with people from the National Defense Army and the Red Confucian Society.

As the Prime Minister of the Cabinet, the General of the Southern Expedition, and the Duke of Loyalty and Bravery, Yuan Shikai held the official seal. Officials below the third rank did not need the intervention of the Ministry of Personnel and could be appointed directly on the spot, and a list could be submitted to Beijing afterwards.

The privileges that Zeng Guofan enjoyed are naturally also available to Yuan Shikai today.

In addition, the Military Court was also not idle. After punishing and executing several soldiers who took advantage of the situation to rob and rape women, it quickly won the hearts of the people in Yangzhou City through unremitting propaganda.

Sometimes the people don’t care who the ruler is. Perhaps when faced with a foreign invasion, they will resist more fiercely.

However, when faced with the forces of civil war, they will cooperate as long as the other party can avoid disturbing the people, arrest thieves and criminals, and maintain stability in the area.

As a result, the shops that had been closed by the National Defense Forces began to reopen, and the flow of people on the somewhat desolate streets increased.

"Comrades, come and lend a hand!" Bai Lang SuUO: 2944)3564 held up a huge burnt wood and shouted happily to the people around him.

After hearing the sound, the defense forces who were busy clearing the rubble in the city immediately put down their work and walked together to the giant tree.

Some brave people from Yangzhou also came forward to help.

"One, two!" Everyone bent down and stretched out their hands, shouting the slogan, and suddenly exerted force upwards.

"three!"

The charred giant tree raised a cloud of dust and was finally lifted up. With the help of more than a dozen people, it was thrown into the river and drifted south along the river.

"I never thought that such a huge fire could be generated in the water towns of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, burning down trees this thick."

Bai Lang was from the Central Plains and had experienced the entire rainy season on the Yangzhou front, so his clothes were extremely wet all day long.

Therefore, after seeing the big tree burned by fire, I couldn't help but sigh, thinking to myself, how can such a humid environment also catch fire?

"Ahem...Brother Bai." Someone nearby rubbed his hands and whispered to Bai Lang, "This is the fire caused by your stormtroopers who broke into Yangzhou City and dropped bombs that day. Kerosene doesn't extinguish when it comes into contact with water, so it burned this century-old tree from top to bottom."

"Uh..." Bai Lang scratched his head embarrassedly, then turned his back to this person and said to the people who were helping him:

"Thank you for your help, fellow villagers. Yangzhou City's rapid recovery is inseparable from your help."

"Sir, that's not right." A man in gray waved his hand and grinned, "When the Hunan Army was here, they said that the National Defense Army was mostly northerners, and they treated southerners like us cruelly and brutally, killing and looting at will.

Everyone in Yangzhou was in danger and was so scared that they had to help the Hunan Army defend the city. But when the national defense troops really broke through Yangzhou, the common people realized that what the Hunan Army said was all lies.

The National Defense Army showed no mercy to the soldiers who bullied the civilians, killing them without hesitation and even helping the common people clean up the rubble. Is there any brutal and tyrannical army in the world that could be so cruel and brutal?

"That's right, Brother Liu is right." Another man dressed as a scholar sighed and said, "Oh, I should have stayed in Gaoyou earlier. After the fall of Xuzhou, the people of Gaoyou were in a panic.

The tenants in the village had heard the news from somewhere that the National Defense Army was acting on behalf of the people in Shandong, dividing up the land of the landlords, and even dividing up the land of the Kong family.

They demanded that I lower the rent, otherwise they would tie me up and hand me over to the Wehrmacht.

At that time, the government officials had already fled, and I had no choice. I was so scared that I sold the land to these tenants at a 50% discount and went south to Yangzhou to join my classmates.

Hey, if I knew that the National Defense Army would not harm a single person, why would I flee south? This is the land passed down from my ancestors."

When Bai Lang heard this, he thought for a moment and recalled some old memories.

After he joined the army, he heard that Feng Guozhang, the commander of the Third Regiment, was distributing land in southwestern Shandong, which caused a lot of controversy. But he was the commander of a regiment after all, and he was just a battalion commander, so he had no right to say anything.

So after a brief greeting, Bai Lang bowed and said goodbye, and went to clean up the ruins somewhere else.

He does not mean that.

On the upper floor of a building facing the street, Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Xu Shichang, Yan Fu and others sat opposite each other. After hearing the words coming from downstairs, they all put down their teacups at the same time.

"Comrades, what Comrade Huafu and Feng Guozhang did in southwestern Shandong did have a certain impact after all."

Yuan Xiangcheng was silent for a moment and then spoke slowly.

In comparison, the contradiction between population and land in the areas outside the Great Wall is not as acute, and North Korea has implemented some land reform policies.

The class contradictions in the Jianghuai region are much more acute.

This is one of the important Han farming areas, the Huanghuai Plain. Similarly, this is also the promised land of the Han people.

Yingchuan, Chenliu, Runan, Peixian, Huaiyang, Pengcheng, Xia Pi, these place names with profound heritage shine in the history books of the Han and Three Kingdoms periods.

Along with these place names are famous figures such as Xiao He, Cao Shen, Xun, Guo Jia, Yuan Shao, and Lu Fan.

However, thousands of years later, these places have become the "rust belt" of the Han nationality.

Not only have the names become uncultured place names such as Zhumadian, Pingdingshan, Zhoukou, and Zaozhuang, but even the people of this land have become controversial because of their living habits shaped by the harsh living environment.

The professional rebels here include Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, Cao Cao and Liu Yu;

The large-scale peasant uprisings include the Red Eyebrow Army, the Yellow Turban Army, the Liangshan Heroes, the Huang Chao Uprising, the Red Turban Army, and so on.

In history, even in modern times and the Republic of China, there were "civil uprisings" such as the Nian Army and the Bailang Uprising.

It also gave rise to ambitious people like Yuan Shikai.

If the land issue is not resolved, Jianghuai will become a drain on China's future.

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However, just the small-scale land reform implemented by Feng Guozhang in southwestern Shandong had already scared the landlords on the south bank of the Huai River to flee south. If a vigorous land reform wave was really launched in Jianghuai, would it scare the feudal class into gathering together?

Can the power of the peasants defeat these feudal forces at this time?

Chapter 273: The Red Confucian Society's Land Reform Policy

"Weiting, can we put the Jianghuai land division issue on hold?"

At the impromptu decision-making committee meeting of the Red Confucian Society, Duan Qirui was silent for a moment and said carefully.

Jianghuai is a newly acquired land with all kinds of complicated relationships between people and land.

Since the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Nian Rebellion, the ownership of this land has become a mess.

The Nian rebels did not recognize the Manchu Qing land deeds, and after ransacking and looting, they issued their own land deeds.

The land deeds of the Nian Rebellion and the Taiping Army were not recognized by the Huai Army that came later.

As usual, the new army in Jiangnan did not recognize the land that had been divided among the Huai Army after it came to power.

Now that the National Defense Forces have arrived, should we recognize them or not?

If he admitted it, the situation would be kept stable for a short period of time, but he would undoubtedly be taking on a huge bomb.

Under such a complex relationship between people and land, the vast majority of people depend on landlords for survival and have no ability to resist risks.

As long as there is any abnormal change in the celestial phenomena, whether it is a flood in the Yellow River and Huai River, or a drought between the Yellow River and Huai River, the people on this land may explode.

But if he did not recognize it, the powerful landlords on this land would never allow Yuan Xiangcheng to ignore it.

At this time, it was not the Republic of China in the early 20th century, between the Yellow River and the Huai River, nor was it the Yellow River flood area that had experienced the ravages of the Japanese invaders.

Novel?8liu95?97.3?

Of the three mountains that oppressed the Chinese people in the original time and space, only one has become a major force between the Yangtze River and the Huai River today, and that is feudalism.

However, although there are fewer hills, they are much heavier.

Without the encroachment and exploitation of bureaucratic capitalism and imperialism, the feudal landlord class in the inland areas is far more powerful than in the original time and space.

Therefore, some people within the Red Confucian Society were worried that starting now to incite opposition between peasants and landlords would affect the overall plan of unification.

Yuan Xiangcheng's idea was to divide the land, but most of the others were inclined to postpone it.

"That's right, Wei Ting." Zhang Jian said worriedly after hearing Duan Qirui's words:

"The evil gentry should be killed, but if we seize all the land without distinguishing between good and bad, how will the people of the world view it? How will we fight for justice with the Hunan and Huai armies in the future?"

"Weiting, when you were carrying out land reform in Korea, you confiscated the land of the Korean yangban and distributed it to the peasants, and established a farmers' association. I didn't object." Xu Shichang heard someone express a different opinion and said:

"It was simply because North Korea was not directly under Chinese rule at the time and there was a language barrier, so the cut didn't hurt and didn't cause much trouble.