The headstrong Emperor Chongzhen had already approved the abolition of the post station as advised by Liu Mao and Mao Yujian, the supervisory censor.
Is this wrong?
Of course it was wrong, but it was not the fault that Li Zicheng, the Ming Dynasty postmaster, lost his job and rebelled, forcing Chongzhen to hang himself.
The mistake was to pour out the bath water even to the child.
The post station is actually a good industry and can be developed into Daming Post Office and Daming Logistics and Passenger Transport.
As long as strict management is required to prevent officials at all levels from reaching out, how can they be directly laid off?
Huang Yi, who entered Shanxi, now wants to open his own supply depot. It is best to have a place about a hundred miles away that can provide food, accommodation, and change horses for the Xinghe Army officers and soldiers.
The owner of Houjiazhuang was a bandit and had been a bad person for a long time. More than a hundred of his immediate family members were sent to Xinghe City as slaves.
The confiscated gold and silver treasures are easy to handle and can be loaded into trucks and transported back to the base area.
What to do with the confiscated properties and fields?
It is also easier to handle. A dozen grassroots town governors are transferred, and a hundred general auxiliary soldiers are left to assist. They copy the model of the Xinghe City collective farm and manage the hundreds of thousands of acres of land owned by the Hou family and several other families.
Although the Xinghe Army used force to occupy fertile land, they did not use force to resist taxes and had to actively pay taxes.
Because the taxes in the Ming Dynasty were really not high, it was a pity that in the late Ming Dynasty, officials at all levels oppressed the people to an extreme.
The actual tax paid by farmers is probably several times or even more than ten times the statutory tax.
The land under Huang Yi's name only pays regular taxes and is not handed over to the local county. It can be directly converted into military pay and deducted by the Shanxi Governor and the Military Preparation Road.
Is this feasible?
Even if it doesn’t work, it has to work!
The late Ming Dynasty was a bastard era, and there was no reason to argue with the scholar-bureaucrats who were full of righteousness and morality but full of bastards!
If I have soldiers, I can be arrogant!
Farming the land and paying taxes, and serving as soldiers and receiving food and wages were treated fairly and impartially. Huang Yi would dare to send Wang Jinbao to secretly arrest anyone who dared to gibber.
If you go against the Xinghe Army, you must be too full. You will be captured and starved. When you are hungry, you will be sent to a fertilizer factory to be boiled in manure.
Huang Yi occupied more than 100,000 acres of farmland, and immediately the town governor and auxiliary troops organized tenant farmers and refugees to manage small watersheds.
The pattern of burning coal for heating and setting up yurts to dig deep wells can be carried out throughout the winter.
There is so much coal in Shanxi that some manpower and animal power are used to dig and transport coal to ensure that there is enough coal for heating in the cold winter to keep the work from stopping.
There is no need to worry about cement. Couriers have been sent to change horses and gallop all the way to Dongshan Fort. The last batch of people and horses to send the refugees back will bring 200 trucks of cement through the customs and deliver it to Houjiazhuang.
In the winter in the north, most people go to bed and lie down as still as possible in order to save food.
Huang Yi had grain in his hands. In order to ensure that the more than 100,000 acres of fertile land he had obtained would ensure harvests despite droughts and floods, he had to mobilize thousands of people to dig wells and ditches.
The Ming government had no organizational power, so it had nothing to rely on. The governor of Xinghejun Town organized tenants, refugees, and farmers to carry out small watershed management.
We strive to improve this area's ability to resist natural disasters to a level that only occurs once in thirty years.
Just when Xingheying completed the return of grains to the warehouse and was about to continue marching to southwestern Shanxi, something happened in Jinzhong.
In fact, it happened as early as the autumn harvest.
At that time, there was a man named Li in Guo County who had been going to the countryside under the guise of practicing medicine and treating diseases. After the autumn harvest, he cooperated with others to conquer the county seat.
The whereabouts of Chen Mengji, the magistrate of Nao County, are unknown.
The rebel leader surnamed Li proclaimed himself the Grand Governor and was known as King Li. He gathered a crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 people in just two days after taking the county seat. He easily defeated two more county towns.
It was half a month later that the governor of Shanxi and governor Xuanda got the news.
In order to avoid being held accountable by the imperial court, the sudden civil unrest in Jinzhong was characterized as rogue bandits by officials such as Governor Xuanda, governor of Shanxi, chief envoys, and inspection envoys.
Most of the leaders who closed their eyes and spoke against the bandits were from Shaanxi. They were simply trying to pass the buck and pass the blame. Anyway, Shaanxi is already dark, so it doesn't matter how dark it is.
The top priority is to curb the spread of bandits who help King Li Tian.
Who can take on this important role at this time?
Governor Xuanda does not shy away from relatives when promoting talents, and Huang Yi, the leader of the Xinghe Army, will definitely be able to solve the problem of the poor people in Jinzhong.
As for whether to deploy other troops?
Geng Ruqi had confidence in his son-in-law and believed that it was not necessary. His analysis was convincing, because at this time there was civil unrest in Xinghe and Junli...
The slip of the tongue was not that civil unrest occurred, but that the three counties were suffering from rogue bandits from Shaanxi. The Xinghe Army was heading to southwest Shanxi, not far from Guoxian County.
Governor Xuanda personally ordered the generals, and there was no need to give him any more money or food. How could any civilian or military generals object?
The task of annihilating King Li Tian was naturally assigned to the Xinghe Army on the road.
Ten miles northwest of Nao County is Ningwuguan, which is under the jurisdiction of Daizhou, Taiyuan Prefecture. It is surrounded by mountains to the east and west, with Pingchuan between the two mountains. A Hutuo River flows through the plain from north to south.
The bandits have just risen and must be wiped out as soon as possible. Huang Yi immediately made arrangements after receiving the letter from his father-in-law.
After investigation and analysis, it was confirmed that Li Tianwang's troops were only claimed to be one hundred thousand, and the real number should be fifty to sixty thousand, including at most fifteen thousand young and middle-aged men.
These people were not even armed, and most of them were armed with farm tools such as hoes and shovels.
These people are farmers. They don’t understand trumpets and drums at all, and they don’t know how to form a formation. Because they are emboldened by the large number of people, they dare to fight in groups to beat the government servants and rob big households...
Their combat effectiveness is negligible compared to the regular army.
The bandit leader Li Tianwang, who was in his early thirties, was good at pretending to be a ghost, had martial arts skills, and knew some medical skills. His core strength was the selection of hundreds of strong men with riding skills and martial arts skills.
They captured three counties and slaughtered all the wealthy families and landowners. They not only robbed a lot of food and gold and silver, but also accumulated hundreds of armors.
Using the Xinghe Army to fight against the newly emerged rogue bandits is simply killing a chicken with a sledgehammer.
Huang Yi personally led the cavalry and mounted infantry to march for three days to attack Guo County, blocking King Li Tian's main force in the city.
Information asymmetry meant that King Li Tian had no idea that Xuanda had an extremely fast Xinghe Army.
The reason why he dared to gather a crowd to rebel may be that he had read too much "Water Margin" and thought that he could get an imperial edict and get an official position.
However, after igniting the fire, he could no longer control the fire. Originally, he was planning to make friends with officials who would become officials and contact the governor of Shanxi to discuss recruitment.
Who would have thought that the mob would not care at all and would rush in to kill and rob as long as it was a deep house.
The final result was that all the masters who could be found died violently, and King Li's men robbed many gold and silver treasures.
In fact, the gold and silver treasures at this time are of no use to them. Order no longer exists. Where can there be buying and selling?
Everyone is buying for zero yuan, do they need gold and silver?
Unable to contact court officials to discuss recruitment, King Li Tian made two preparations.
When the officers and soldiers come, they will fight if they can. If they cannot defeat them, they will immediately burrow into the mountains.
