On the 9th day of September in the first year of Guangde, the Taishang Emperor's Palace moved eastward again from Tongling East to Nanjing City.
On the tenth day of September, Liu Zhaosun, Emperor Guangde Liu Kan, Queen Mother Jin Yuji Yang Qing'er and others officially entered the Forbidden City in Nanjing.
As of late September of the first year of Guangde, if the Indo-China Peninsula is not discussed, the situation in East Asia as a whole is as follows:
After eighteen years of expansion and campaign, Qi forces entered the Pass from eastern Liaoning and southern Liaoning, and established a foothold in Henan, Shanxi and other places. Except for some areas in northwest Qinghai and Tibet that have not yet been set foot in, the entire East Asian continent was basically occupied by the Qi army.
Nanming, which originally unified nine southern provinces, has been completely destroyed in name;
The Daxi Kingdom, which once occupied Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu, and threatened Henan and Hebei, now retreats to the northwest, and most of the territory of the Daxi Kingdom has been annexed by the Qi army;
In the Kingdom of Korea in the northeast, the two northern territories were occupied by the Qi army as early as the first year of Taichu. After three years of systematic troop garrisoning and immigration operations, the Qi State had basically digested the two northern territories and became a veritable Qi territory. He bowed his head to his "uncle" and only hoped to survive for a few more days.
The Tokugawa shogunate, which had "defeated" the Ming army, nominally continued to be a vassal of Qi State (so that it could claim a certain amount of silver reward every year). However, the new shogunate Tokugawa Iemitsu rejected all the previously signed "Treaty of Ushioseki".
Not only that, due to the strong military pressure from Daqi, the Japanese country was actively preparing for war. The shogunate issued an order to each vassal: "You are not allowed to leave Kyushu Island at will, strictly inspect the incoming and outgoing ships, prohibit foreigners from going to Japan, and strengthen coastal defense. Formulated The so-called "Foreign Expedition Plan" is prepared to welcome a new round of "Qi Lu" attacks and launch an attack on the Qi mainland.
However, Daqi's energy was mainly at home. The "Immediate Fusang" revenge plan formulated shortly after Yuan Chonghuan's death was not implemented, and the war against Japan dragged on for ten years.
This gave the shogunate the illusion of China's weakness (after all, Daqi's wars in the past ten years have been plagued by disasters for many years), and the failure of the Ming army's last expedition to mobilize the entire country also greatly increased the confidence of the shogunate. Under the order of Tokugawa Iemitsu, Warriors from various vassals began to systematically rob the coast of Korea and the southeastern coast of Daqi. This was a new round of "Japanese Rebellion" following the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, known in history as the Guangde Japanese Rebellion.
There are records in ancient books that as early as the second year of Taichu, Japanese pirates invaded the coast of eastern Zhejiang and killed people. However, a war between Qi and Ming Dynasty was imminent at that time, and these sporadic Japanese invasions were only treated coldly.
The Tsarist forces in the north (to be precise, the Cossack colonial pioneers), after suffering a series of disastrous defeats on Sakhalin Island, finally stopped advancing eastward and began to retreat westward. After more than ten years of continuous expansion of territory, by the first year of Guangde In September, the vast land east of Xiaohai (now Lake Baikal) and west of Sakhalin was all returned to Qi.
Because this area is so large (approximately one-half of the total area of Siberia, exceeding the 6.5 million square kilometers of the Ming Dynasty during the Yongle period), except for Sakhalin Island and some urban strongholds on the west coast of the Tatar Strait, the rest of the In some places, the Qi army only set up stone monuments to declare their sovereignty, and could not control them at all.
To sum up, as of autumn and September of the first year of Guangde, the Daqi Empire nominally ruled an area of 16 million square kilometers (approximately equal to the area of Russia), and this number is still growing rapidly.
The empire occupies an absolutely dominant position in the East Asian continent and is a veritable eastern power.
Of course, the current actual control area is far less than 17 million, only around 5 million. The specific analysis is as follows:
Mongolia in eastern Liaoning, western Liaoning, and southern Liaoning is firmly controlled, and the people outside the customs are the most loyal to Daqi, providing Daqi with a steady stream of high-quality troops. These places can be said to be Liu Zhaosun's base camp;
Go south, pass through the Liaoxi Corridor, Shanhaiguan, and enter Beizhili. After years of war, Beijing, Tianjin, Wei, and Hebei are in dilapidated condition. Fortunately, the bandit forces have been completely driven out. The whole area is in the stage of recovery and development, and it belongs to the sub-core area of the empire. ;
After Li Xianzhong was overthrown in the early years of Wuding, Shanxi was occupied by Deng Changxiong's Second Corps and became the base camp for the empire's westward advance.
In the past ten years or so, all the ten major corps, except the navy, have had rounds of battle with the bandits (Daxi Kingdom) here. The elites of each corps have beaten Zhang Zicheng to doubt his life.
It was not until last year that the Supreme Emperor mobilized the whole country to march south, and some of the troops in Shanxi were transferred. However, under perennial military pressure, Shanxi has become one of the most stable ruling areas in the empire;
Henan has been occupied for a long time, and the polar circle rule has a solid foundation here. The fertile fields of the Central Plains are abundant in food, and the population is recovering year by year. This is the foothold and core area of the empire's rule within the pass;
Shandong, which is also the core of Guan Nei's rule, has been in chaos due to drought, military disasters, and new policies in the past two years. Various places have been corrupted, and the remnants of White Lotus have been hiding in various places. It is one of the areas that needs to be pacified;
The whole province of Hubei had just been merged into Daqi, and there was still no peace and a considerable number of bandits;
Going further south, all of Hunan was nominally subordinated to Daqi. Of course, it was only in name, because at least tens of thousands of Ming troops fled into Hunan. In addition, there were more than a dozen small chieftains in western Hunan. These were all headaches;
The situation in Jiangxi is slightly better. Except for Linchuan and Ganzhou, which are still resisting, all other prefectures and counties have been pacified;
All the prefectures and counties in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces were pacified and belonged to the effective area of the empire;
Fujian is the base camp of Zheng Sen's pirates, especially in the southern part of Fujian, where the rebel forces are strong and are currently only nominally affiliated with Daqi.
Similar to Fujian, there are Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan. To achieve complete control of these maritime areas, the Qi army needs to work hard with iron and blood.
As for Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places, the Qi army is now beyond its reach, and these provinces also fall within the scope of "nominally subordinated to Qi".
~~~
The issue of pacifying Jiangnan and establishing the capital was once again put on the agenda.
Beijing is already dilapidated, Tianxin City is half-built and abandoned, Shenyang Palace is too small, not to mention Xi'an, and Henan has suffered from successive years of disasters. Looking at all places, only Nanjing is suitable to become the new capital.
However, Jinling's domineering power faded away. Not only the Supreme Emperor, but also most people in the government and the public believed that this place was not suitable as the capital of Qi.
Looking at the past dynasties, only Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, was able to establish a foothold in Nanjing and achieve great success.
Lu Xiangsheng, Qian Qian, Yikang, Guangxu and others believed that the former Ming Dynasty was small and weak, on par with the Song Dynasty, and was not at all comparable to the Qi Dynasty.
After Zhu Yuanzhang captured the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, he intended to move the capital. In the late Hongwu period, Zhu Biao made many inspections in order to find a city in the north as the new capital of the Ming Dynasty. After Zhu Yunwen succeeded to the throne, his uncle Zhu Di was finally asked to do this. .
During the Battle of Jingnan, Zhu Di not only seized the throne from his nephew, but also completely destroyed the northern defense system that his father Zhu Yuanzhang had worked so hard to build. The kings of Qin, Jin, Yan, Dai, King Su and other kings of Sai were either stripped of their military power or moved to the hinterland. So far, in the Ming Dynasty, the northern capital has been under the threat of enemies, either surrounded by Mongolian soldiers or Jurchens. The so-called "the emperor guards the country" is actually a helpless statement...
Nowadays, many big cities in the north have been abandoned. Apart from Nanjing, there is no more suitable place to serve as the capital.
The only expedient solution is to first establish Nanjing as the capital.
In August and September, almost all Nanming officials in Nanjing surrendered. This is recorded in the "History of the Ming Dynasty" as follows:
When the country was destroyed, (Gao) Zhuo surrendered to death.
In June, the southern capital was defeated and all officials surrendered.
Of course, on the occasion of the Ming Dynasty, it is obviously not accurate to say that everyone surrendered to the Qi Dynasty. At least six people chose to die for the Ming Dynasty.
These six people were the same as Wu Keji, a student at the Imperial College in Nanjing. They died to express their regret for the country's subjugation.
Wu Keji hanged himself in Nanjing Guandi Temple and left a poem:
Jian met the fleeing monarch and his ministers,
Protect yourself in times of danger.
Worrying about national calamity,
Shame on the Northern Yi people.
During the summer and autumn of the first year of Guangde, Nanjing officials went to the Wuding Emperor's camp in groups and surrendered to the Qi army.
Liu Chengzhi, a doctor in the household department of Nanming, lamented to his wife:
"How can it be that for three hundred years the country has supported scholars without any loyalty to repay the court's kindness?"
After that, he also hanged himself at home.
Huang Duanbo, an official of the Ministry of Rites, chose a more violent way to fight against Da Qi.
Huang Duanbo was a student of Jiang Yueguang. Not only did he refuse to flee to Guangdong, where the loyal ministers of the Southern Ming Dynasty established Zhu Youlang, the only twenty-year-old King of Gui, as emperor and continued to be the enemy of Daqi, but also, in Guangdong, When the German Emperor summoned him, he actually stabbed him with a dagger...
Later historians praised those loyal ministers of the Southern Ming Dynasty who continued to fight back against the Qi Dynasty after the fall of Nanjing, such as Zhu Jizuo, who led the remaining Ming forces in Xinghua, but continued to resist and was killed; Jiang Ruolai, who led the people in Chongming The island intercepted and killed Qi officials, and tried to turn this island, which later became the most prosperous island in Da Qi, into a sea base for anti-Qi and Fuming elements; another example is Guo Weijing, who was originally Zhu Changhui's minister of household affairs and fled to Nanjing before the fall of Nanjing. Jiangxi, and later died in the Linchuan defense battle...
There are many loyal ministers like this in the Southern Ming Dynasty. Of course, there are even more people who surrender to Qi in exchange for their lives, wealth and future.
Liu Zhaosun made three orders and five orders, ordering the officials of Qi State to treat surrendered Ming ministers equally and not to despise them. He even deliberately added two Southern Ming surrender ministers to the eight-member cabinet as a balance.
Despite this, the old officials of Qi privately showed considerable contempt for those Ming people who were greedy for life and feared death and changed their families.
The dispute between the northern and southern courtiers that the Supreme Emperor least wanted to see was inevitable.
In any case, Liu Zhaosun and his Qi army finally won, and the Supreme Emperor became the master of this land and the ruler of a huge empire of 6000 to 800 million people.
Although there are undercurrents surging in the south of the Yangtze River, and although there are still Ming forces in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and other places that are fighting back, no matter what, the rise of Qi is irresistible.
The Emperor of Guangde, Liu Kan, was arranged by the Supreme Emperor to stay in Nanjing. On the surface, he was to guard the south of the Yangtze River, but in fact, he wanted the sixteen-year-old Liu Kan to observe politics in South Zhili.
"Kan'er, when you were in Shenyang, you recited the classics and became familiar with the "Emperor's Illustrated Book". You can't believe everything in the book. Now, I want you to meet these surrendered ministers in Nanjing and let you see the true face of the scholars. Let you Know what is the human heart and what is the kingly way."
Liu Zhaosun took the trouble to instill his imperial mentality, and he always had complicated emotions towards Liu Kan.
Because she was overconfident and did not listen to Yuan Chonghuan's advice, Queen Zhang Yan was poisoned.
He has never been able to forgive himself. In order to make up for it, he made Liu Kan the prince early, held a Zen ceremony early, and gave up the throne to his son.
But, will Liu Kan really appreciate it?
This child has always been distant.
"Father, how should we deal with the Ming minister who assassinated me yesterday?"
Lewen
