Chapter 208: Anarchy
This time She Chongming was forced to rebel, which mainly brought military pressure to the Ming Dynasty, and it was limited to Sichuan Province; and An Bangyan's uprising plunged the entire southwestern part of the empire into complete chaos. An Bangyan was quick-witted and quite able to convince the crowd among the surrounding tribes, large and small. Everyone had been bullied by the Han officials for a long time, and they all felt suffocated in their hearts. Leader An raised his arms and called, Guizhou Wusa (today's Weining, Guizhou), Hongbian (today's Kaiyang, Guizhou), Sichuan Dongchuan (today's Huize, Yunnan), Yunnan Zhanyi (today's Xuanwei, Yunnan), and even Yuanzhou (today's Yuanzhou) Chieftains from Zhijiang, Hunan and other places responded one after another. For a time, "the southwest rebelled, and the whole world was abuzz."
Lord Zhang Heming had already offended all the local tribes before leaving Guizhou. When he returned to the imperial court and served as the Minister of War, he was not idle for a while. He and the Qingliu cronies boasted all the time about his clever plan to advise the emperor to ask She Chongming to kill An Bangyan and "use barbarians to control barbarians". It just so happened that the Emperor Sheng wanted to clean up the officialdom because of Xi Junyu's corruption case. Several guys who had been hit by the gun had just been beaten. All the officials were panic-stricken, fearing that the Emperor's corruption investigation would be blamed on them, and it would be easy to catch them. In order to fully demonstrate their loyalty to this eye-catching topic, most of the people in the court were clamoring to change their ways. When the governor of Shaanxi's trilateral military affairs was appointed, Mr. Zhang had a hard time thinking about it: Xi Junyu had just been captured, and the officialdom in Qin was in urgent need of rectification. This appointment certainly represented the Holy Emperor's incomparable trust and ardent hope for him. But... a few decades ago, the Governor of Bian was almost the same as the Governor of He. It was indeed a fat job that could control the local civil and military affairs and had a lot of money to spend. Of course Mr. Zhang was obliged to do so. But now it is different from the past. The three bottomless holes of Liaodong, Southwest, and disaster victims have drained the national treasury to the last drop. We can no longer count on the government's funding. Xi Junyu and Zhang Hu have already scraped through the local areas twice. , and it is absolutely impossible to squeeze out a few taels of silver - the risk is high and the oil and water are low. It is your duty to do it well. If something goes wrong, oh, well, there is a high probability that something will go wrong, then you will definitely have to bear the responsibility. responsibility! So Mr. Zhang decisively reported the "recurrence of leg disease" and went home to "recuperate". This reason is simply perfect: How did the leg disease come about? Those who worked hard for the Holy One in the bitter cold land of Guizhou! In fact, many big shots in the court are very clear-minded: Mr. Zhang’s approach is to retreat in order to advance, and wait for the opportunity. It seemed that he was retreating from the rapids, but the boss helped himself and asked for some merit! It is written in the book of a sage, "If you are successful, you can help the world; if you are poor, you can be alone" - what does it mean? If you have the opportunity, you should immediately jump out and serve the court and the people wholeheartedly. If there is no good opportunity, just wait! Only imperial elites like Mr. Zhang can really read the book thoroughly! To be an official as good as Mr. Zhang's is to become a master.
After Zhang Heming left office, his replacement in Guizhou was an unlucky man who was once full of ambitions, Li Jingwu (also known as Li Feng). Mr. Li had previously served as a political historian in Guangdong and had a good reputation among the people. Emperor Sheng also knew about it, so he transferred him to Guizhou. Mr. Li Jingwu was very close to the people and had a reputation of being honest. When he first came to Guizhou, he naively thought that it was just some unruly barbarians in a few villages. He mobilized soldiers to beat them up, and then distributed some seeds to cultivate cattle, and everyone would live and work in peace and contentment. . Mr. Li is very experienced in this regard - during the rule of Guangdong, the Yao and She barbarians in Baiyue who "had their own castes" were all subdued by Mr. Li's two tricks.
However, when Mr. Li arrived in Guizhou, he discovered that things were not at all what he thought: the Yao and She barbarians in Guangdong Province were often dishonest and either fought with each other or robbed the Hakkas. But here, the government really controlled the Miao and Yi barbarians. They pushed too hard and couldn't bear it. Even the tribal leader was squeezed out of tens of thousands of taels of silver for attacking a local official. Needless to say, what happened to the ordinary people? So he wrote a letter to the court to plead for Man's help... Now it was good, and he stabbed into the hornet's nest - the group of trolls in the court immediately found a new target!
As expected, Li Jingwu was drowned in saliva. "He is stupid", "headstrong and stubborn"... Well, this is a minor matter. It is just a matter of personal ability. "Privately accepting huge bribes from Miao people", "I heard that the Miao chieftain sent twenty stunningly beautiful barbarians to the new emperor." "Female" This is a public participation in the show, but in private, "some people haven't gotten out of bed for half a month" and the erotic rumors are spread... Well, these are nothing, after all, they are all It is also a matter of lifestyle, "I heard that all the chiefs kowtow to pay respects to them", "it is obvious that the evil intention is to indulge the Miao chieftains privately!" After all, this is a crime of genocide!
Li Jingwu was dumbfounded: Where the hell is this going? You say I just accept money and beauties as repayment? This has always been the case for officials who hear the news; in the governor's office, in full view of the public, accept the kowtows of tribal leaders in a bold manner? I feel like there are too many people in my family, so I want to kill them all to see if they can be clean - am I fucking crazy? !
So he angrily wrote a letter to defend himself.
So the bird is finished.
I scold you for your own good, do you understand the principle of doing it in spitting words? Do you understand the principle of correcting something if it exists and encouraging it if it doesn’t? How dare you talk back! Let's all come together - if you don't slander me to death, no one will dare to talk back in the future, how can we still mess around?
So Li Jingwu became Li Jingmao - not to mention governing Guizhou, if this trend continues, it's not even sure whether he can save his life, it's still a piece of cake!
Mr. Li was really tired and sighed: Why don’t I just admit defeat? Write a letter to resign and beg for your bones.
When they saw Li Fu's resignation report, everyone was angry: Oh, you don't accept it, right? Who doesn’t know that according to the unwritten rules of our country of etiquette, you can only resign sincerely three times! They are all veteran Chinese medicine practitioners, who are you trying to fool with this set of folk remedies?
Keep scolding him!
The disheartened Mr. Li Jingwu stopped paying attention to these scoldings. Every time his resignation report was rejected, he would write another one and submit it - six times in total!
When they received the third resignation, all the officials stopped talking: Is this old guy serious? What the hell are you doing? I'm just scolding you. If you can't bear the grievance of serving the imperial court, how can you serve the Ming Dynasty? WTF! But if you scold me in private, you can't bring it up in court - if the saint comes up and says, "You can do it, you can do it," it will be over.
The Holy Emperor was also confused: Who doesn't know the virtues of officials? I'm not a fool, so how could I believe their nonsense? Li Aiqing, don't take it seriously. The first few times, he gave gentle words of encouragement and left Li Fu's report unpublished. Lao Li was stubborn and would hand over another copy if the Holy Emperor refused! When he saw the memorial of Li Jingwu's sixth resignation, Emperor Sheng sighed: Alas, there is no other way. Li Aiqing seems to be really cold-hearted and determined. Continuing like this is not an option, come on. Then an imperial edict was issued, asking Li Jingwu to go to the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Nanjing to take care of his old age. After thinking about it for a long time, Wang Ershan, the Minister of Rites, has a reputation as a virtuous person and has a good reputation in the court. I guess he won't be scolded so badly if he goes to Fuqian, so let's ask him to go to Guizhou.
Wang Ershan set out for Guizhou, preparing to take a trip into this muddy water, and then... he risked his life. This is something.
However, Li Jingwu failed to leave this time because someone stopped him.
An Bangyan.
In terms of combat effectiveness, An Bangyan's Shuixi Army is indeed not as good as She Chongming's Yongning Army, but this elder An (An Bangyan calls himself the fourth-generation elder, remember) is fine if he doesn't take action. Once he takes action, he is much more powerful than She Chongming: just one During the month, Anshun, Bijie, Pingba, Longli, Weng'an, Pianqiao, Pu'an, Annan (now Qinglong, Guizhou, not Vietnam)... all the places were trapped, and the Anshe coalition's troops were directed towards Guiyang!
Li Jingwu can't leave now.
In fact, Li Jingwu still didn't want to leave.
An Bangyan knew that Mr. Li was a good official, and the reason why he raised his troops was mainly because he was forced by the general trend. Every tribe was a powder keg, and they had no choice but to rebel. However, An Bangyan still sent someone to find Mr. Li in advance: Mr. Li, you know we really have no choice. Guiyang is now an isolated city. Mr. Li, you have spoken for us. You are a good person. Leave quickly. We will never stop you.
If it had been anyone else, he might have really left: Anyway, the Holy Spirit had already approved the resignation, and as long as he made a little move on the departure date, it would be difficult to detect. At this time, something interesting happened "coincidentally": Guizhou's chief envoy and inspector had returned to the capital to report on their duties just a few days before! Well, it's normal for a feudal official to return to Beijing to report on his duties, but it's not normal for both the feudal lord and the lord to leave at the same time...leaving at the same time at this time...hehe, do you think it's normal or not! But Li Jingwu had a stubborn temper, so he replied an upright letter to An Bangyan, and then stayed in Guiyang and began to command and deploy the defense: on the one hand, he sent an urgent report to the court to recruit soldiers, pay and food, and on the other hand, he borrowed money from Huguang. As a result, there was no news from the imperial court. Not to mention scolding, no one even mentioned Guizhou anymore. Huguang was quite interesting and actually sent 40,000 taels of silver and 20,000 stone grains! Of course, there is some subtext of "must block it for us".
Mr. Li is not just stubborn. He still has two trump cards in his hand against An Bangyan.
One is that there are two large military leaders in Guizhou Province. General Zhang Fang and General Huang Yunqing are stationed in Zunyi and Tongren respectively. Especially in Zunyi, Bozhou Yang had just been transferred to Guizhou after the rebellion, and Zhang Fang led his troops to station there after the rebellion was over. Zhang Junmen's troops are said to be quite capable in fighting. If Sun Jie and Jiubian Elite are not included, Zhang Junmen's troops are the most powerful troops in the Ming Dynasty.
Another trump card is that Guiyang has three thousand Zhenyu (pronounced "Gan") soldiers. Zhenyu is today's Fenghuang in Hunan, which was also an ethnic minority area during the Ming Dynasty. However, due to the unique geographical location of western Hunan, it is a situation where lower-level Han traders, camp residents and Miao people live together. Most of the Zhenyu soldiers were of mixed Han and Miao descent, and were called "Zhenyu Miaozi". They were very brave and good at fighting.
Li Jingwu flew to summon generals Zhang and Huang to rush to Guizhou, and personally led the soldiers and people of Guiyang to prepare for war.
