No one knows what happened to the Qing Dynasty this year. Last night, these Eight Banners gangsters came together to put pressure on the emperor. As a result, at the same time in the early morning, bizarre attacks occurred at various construction sites of the Beijing Railway!
You must know that the section of the railway from Beijing to Tianjin adopts the segmented construction method, that is, the areas with flat land where it is best to build roads must start building railways at the same time.
There are only railway bridges built over rivers and some unavoidable mounds for earthworks and other things, which need time to be done slowly!
Many times the railroads that were flat have been repaired, but they have been waiting for the completion of rail bridges and other projects.
Once a node is completed, the railways are connected. This kind of project is the most efficient!
But this multi-point construction method also has a flaw, that is, in this era without mechanization, such a project must coordinate a lot of materials and provide enough labor!
This is the engineering efficiency achieved by pure manpower. Otherwise, how could it bring together more than 100,000 civilians?
Too many people and too many supplies will cause chaos, and many corrupt officials will get their hands on them. Earthwork, workers' food expenses, wood, stone...all kinds of places where money is spent are black holes.
Not only was money lost, but what was even more terrible was that the imperial court had been afraid of one thing since ancient times, which was that trouble would occur if too many people gathered.
China is an agricultural country with a long history. The economic structure that emphasizes farming from ancient times to the present is to spread the population evenly across the land like pepper noodles.
This means that the population will not be overly concentrated in a certain area. Even if the city is large enough, the surrounding agricultural base can bear it, and there will not be an excessively large population.
The population density is not large, which is very beneficial for government governance!
But once the population begins to concentrate, such as floods, droughts, famines, war refugees, and the emergence of mega-projects like this, once the number of people increases, there will be no end!
Black forces such as the Qing Gang, Cao Gang, Beggar Gang, etc. will infiltrate, as will the Nianzi, White Lotus Sect and other cult organizations. They use small favors to seduce ordinary people, and they gather into gangs to protect each other and plunder others.
All kinds of dark forces in the world began to overflow. These were what the ancient court was most worried about.
And what happened to the Beijing-Tianjin Railway today was the proliferation of twisters that worried the court the most!
Nianzi is Nianjun! Nuanzi means twisting and twisting. It is a local colloquialism. It means that loose people need to rely on Nianzi to gather and organize themselves together so that they can survive.
The Nianzi organizations in these places usually rely on the strength of their numbers to arbitrarily negotiate land rents with landlords, and compete for their own rights and interests with the gangsters and other minions!
Many landlords and county government officials are also afraid that these people will cause trouble, so they will make concessions as long as they don't go too far!
This is the basis for Nianzi's existence among the people. This cannot be suppressed by the imperial army!
Imagine that you lease land from a landlord and have to pay 60% of the land rent a year, and the landlord takes all 60% of your income!
But the neighbors over there joined the Nianzi, and the Nianzi leader negotiated with the landlords, and they were able to reverse the situation. The landlords got four and the tenants got six. Do you think this is good?
Even if you turn over another share of the money and food to Naozi later, will you still get 50%? It's still 10% more than your 40%. People are all about benefits. If you get benefits, they will trust you!
Including dealing with the government, organizers in these places can also bargain with the government through various means, so that the people will naturally support them!
The roots of local organizations such as Nianzi and White Lotus Sect's long-term prosperity lie here. No matter how hard Tongzhi suppressed them, they only suppressed those Nian troops who were blatantly rebellious.
In fact, it is impossible to capture the little nunzi in the countryside who have not rebelled.
To be on the safe side, the imperial court had always been afraid that the civilian workers at the construction site would be deceived by these people, so the investigation was very strict. However, I really didn’t expect that even though they were on such precautions, they still failed to take precautions.
At the darkest moment before dawn on February 2, many places at the Beijing-Tianjin Railway construction site were attacked by masked men in black. These men were extremely ruthless, and their only targets were the Manchu stewards and general managers!
"The Manchus are unjust, the bannermen are abusing the people, the Tatars are back, drive out the Tartars!" More and more men in black shouted such slogans and rushed into the construction site and into the buildings where the stewards lived. Kill people when you see them, rob when you see money!
In the open-air South Goods Yard in Yangcun, more than 10,000 sleepers had just been treated with insect-proofing. They were dark and soaked with grease. As a result, these people burned them all!
The gangsters who robbed large amounts of cash rushed into the slum areas where migrant workers lived and threw out large amounts of silver dollars, causing chaos one after another!
"Folks! The dog Tartars oppressed us Han people... In the Capital Iron Factory, they killed more than a dozen workers in front of the emperor..."
"Stop fighting with the dog Tartars and start a rebellion!"
"These bastards have no conscience! They dominate the business of rice, noodles, vegetables, meat and even coal. They will sell it to you at a price that is dozens of times higher!"
"They are using you as fat sheep to slaughter! Go against it, don't do it to them..."
"Brothers and sisters! Tell yourselves, how many of you were recruited by prostitutes? How many of you were recruited voluntarily?"
"Did the photographer sell you here? How did the sisters in the flower shack leave their hometowns?"
"It's all those dog Tartars who did it! Kill them all...rebellion!"
People are afraid of making trouble, and many workers themselves are bullied and angry. How can they stop someone from instigating them? Moreover, it is late at night when everyone is asleep, and there are still people throwing money in the air!
Many workers went crazy and shouted, "Rebellion...rebellion..."
"One, two, three...pry...one, two, three...pry..."
Groups of workers came to the newly laid railway with crowbars. Under the command of the men in black, they pried open all the rails that had just been laid yesterday.
The heavy rails rolled gurglingly into the river, resulting in a roar of long live!
The men in black laughed and threw a handful of silver coins, "Okay, okay... we are all good brothers... keep on prying! There is also a silver reward!"
In the end, this group of people even started to cause trouble at the construction site of the railway bridge. The men in black stormed the construction site of the railway bridge and killed all the county government officials and the soldiers guarding it.
What a precious commodity cement is these days! If the imperial court wanted to buy it, Emperor Tongzhi would have to humble himself and beg the master, asking the Chinese to allocate more from the limited output, and the price would have to be increased!
Such precious cement was wrapped in tarpaulin, then put into sacks, and carefully piled in a moisture-proof warehouse, taking as much as needed.
As a result, the gangsters in black rushed in with a group of agitated peasants, carried the cement and threw it into the canal!
"Fuck your industrial railways... We Han people's stuff, no matter how good it is, will not be used... it will destroy the cement and the steel bars!"
The dry cement was punctured with knives and thrown into the canal, and the brand-new steel bars without any rust were pushed into the river.
There were still several corpses of Eight Banners and Qing troops floating on the chaotic water!
