"Is now really the time?"
On Wuhua Mountain in Kunming, Yunnan, Wu Sangui, the Western King of the Qing Dynasty, who finally reunited with his son after many years, was sitting in a high pavilion on the top of the mountain, facing the northeast, looking at the rolling mountains in the distance, thinking for a long time, Then he asked Wu Yingxiong and Liu Xuanchu, who had just returned to Yunnan, and the two great advisers Fang Guangchen and Wang Shirong who had been accompanying him to make suggestions.
He is now claiming to be recuperating from illness... He had kept secrets before and not expressed his condolences, but now Wu Yingxiong is jumping up and down when he comes back. This shows that he, an "old and cunning" traitor, is too unprofessional.
In addition, Wu Sangui continued to pretend to be ill, which was that he did not have to meet Zhu Heji's envoy Chen Gongyin immediately, so that he could have time to discuss the rebellion with his confidants.
No matter how you look at it, this "Wu Zhaoxiong" does not belong to Cao Cao, but to Yuan Shao and Yuan Benchu. He forgets his life for small gains and cherishes his life for big things!
When the Manchu Qing Dynasty gave him a small profit, he killed Yongli who fled to Burma!
Now it was time to rebel, but he was hesitant and timid again.
From this point of view, he is not as good as Geng Jingzhong!
"Father," said Wu Yingxiong, who had a loyal look on his face, "if the party of the Third Prince Zhu and the Third Grandson Zhu in Guangdong can be maintained for a long time, you can live in peace and contentment in Yunnan. But now Guangzhou is in a hurry... ...If we don’t help the Zhu family and his son, when the court takes care of the Zhu family, we will be the next to be slaughtered!"
"Do you really think so?" Wu Sangui turned around and looked at his honest son, "Do you think Kangxi's Eight Banners Heavenly Soldiers are made of paper?"
"It's not so papery," Wu Yingxiong shook his head and said, "But south of the Yangtze River, without the favorable location for the cavalry to move freely, they may not be able to use it very well."
Wu Sangui remained silent.
Wu Yingxiong smiled and said: "Father, my son has been in Beijing for a long time. He meets those Eight Banners Heavenly Soldiers every day, and he knows their details best. I won't talk about others, just that their Baya La Camp in Manchuria is inferior to the one on Wuhua Mountain. The soldiers are so powerful. If there is a fight between the two sides, your Wuhuashan soldiers will definitely beat them to pieces. As for Kangxi's more than 500 imperial guards, it is even more outrageous. They are all eating, drinking and having fun. The real thing is that they are just a bunch of dandies. When their sons go in and out of the Gate of Supreme Harmony, there is a high probability that they will not be seen. If they really want to have a thunderbolt or something, they will just go in and blow up the emperor."
"Really?" Wu Sangui didn't believe it.
How could it be so baggy?
When Dorgon was still there, the guards of the Forbidden City were all Manchurian white-armored soldiers! The guardian and the guards were even worse. They looked like they were ready to eat human flesh!
"Father, can my son still lie to you?" Wu Yingxiong asked, "Besides, my son has always been loyal to the Qing Dynasty in the past... Even if it is the withdrawal of the feudal vassal, my son will not object, as long as the court can properly arrange for us Just brothers under the vassal will do."
Wu Sangui nodded. His eldest son indeed had no ambitions. He just wanted to live an ordinary life with the fat princess.
Liu Xuanchu on the side interjected: "Master, you forgot to mention something...I heard that in the past twenty years, the Eight Banners disciples in Beijing have had a hard time giving birth to sons!"
Wu Sangui looked at his son, "Is this the case?"
Wu Yingxiong nodded, "Yes, yes, there is such a thing... Maybe it's because I'm not used to the climate, or maybe it's because I have been punished by God for killing too many people in the past few years. The population of the Eight Banners disciples has not been prosperous in these years. , I have never seen many people with descendants. Therefore, the number of people in Eight Banners Manchuria is very small, and the number of registered soldiers may be less than 50,000. With such a small number of people, they will collapse in a fierce battle!"
When the children of the Eight Banners were suffering and freezing outside the customs, it was not difficult at all to give birth to children. Except for Dorgon, who had some functional problems, everyone raised them one by one. Otherwise, we would not be able to resist the invasion of China and the consumption of infectious diseases in the south!
But after they settled in Beijing, the children of the Eight Banners gradually stopped having babies... As a ruling nation, the population not only did not grow, but also declined, which is also a miracle!
Of course, this is not due to acclimatization, nor is it a punishment from God, but the result of the urbanization of the Eight Banners, the intermarriage between Manchus and Han, and the draft system of the Eight Banners.
Urbanization is inherently "contraceptive", but Manchus and Han people do not intermarry, and strict segregation is implemented, which makes the poorer lower-class Eight Banners children lose the opportunity to marry "country girls".
The Eight Banners draft system monopolized the resources of the already limited number of Eight Banners girls for selection by the upper class first. The upper echelons of the Eight Banners do not practice monogamy, so there will inevitably be an imbalance between men and women in the middle and lower classes.
In addition, the Eight Banners draft system also greatly delayed the age of marriage and childbirth for Eight Banners women.
According to regulations, Eight Banners women must participate in the draft between the ages of thirteen and seventeen and cannot marry privately.
Except for some of the selected ones who could get married and have children immediately, most of them actually served as palace maids and could not leave the palace to get married until they reached the age of twenty-five. It’s not like you pack your bags and leave the palace immediately to find a man to have children as soon as you turn twenty-five, but you “start to let it go”, and you just let it go and then go to the third place...
Those who are not selected are not allowed to marry before they are twenty years old and must continue to apply, otherwise their families will be severely punished.
There are also some who are in the middle between being selected and not being selected - after passing the primary election, they are not selected in the re-election, the registration period has exceeded the time limit, and they may even be unable to marry for life.
Finally, the women of the Eight Banners also have hard-core crops to harvest. Those who have served as palace maids will definitely have a large savings, which makes them financially independent and can support themselves without relying on men.
Under such circumstances, the worth of Eight Banners women is bound to rise steadily, which further makes it difficult for the lower-class Eight Banners children to find a wife.
So these Eight Banners disciples have Beijing household registration, inner-city quadrangles, hard-core crops, and their chances of promotion and wealth are many times greater than those of ordinary Han people... that is, marrying a wife and having children. It’s more difficult!
Liu Xuanchu smiled and said: "Your Majesty, not only are there no Eight Banners Heavenly Soldiers, there are not even many Eight Banners Soldiers who are not Heavenly Soldiers.
Our people don’t have to be afraid of them south of the Yangtze River where there are dense water networks! Now many green battalion soldiers from Hunan, Jiangxi, Hubei and other places have been transferred to the front line in Guangdong. Most of the green soldiers in Guizhou and Sichuan are your old troops. As long as you send troops, they will definitely respond. Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Huguang are your world.
In addition, Wang Fuchen, the admiral of Pingliang in Shaanxi, is also one of yours... If the prince, after taking Sichuan, orders the second prince to personally bring 10,000 to 20,000 elite troops out of Sichuan and into Shaanxi, Shaanxi can also be taken immediately, a powerful force in the northwest , they all belong to the prince. At that time, why should the world worry that the surname cannot be Wu? "
This Wu Sangui is still capable! Although he apparently only had more than 30,000 banner troops in the Green Camp, a large number of Green Camp generals such as Sichuan Admiral Zheng Jiaolin, Sichuan Commander-in-Chief Wu Zhimao, Pingliang Admiral Wang Fuchen, etc. were all Wu Sangui's old confidants.
So when Wu Sangui rebelled, a bunch of people followed and rebelled! Emperor Kangxi would lose several provinces at once.
"Your Majesty," Wang Shirong, another confidant of Wu Sangui, also said at this time, "I am good friends with Wang Fuchen, and I can persuade Wang Fuchen to switch sides for you. If Wang Fuchen helps, it will be easy to capture Shaanxi!"
"Your Majesty, raise an army!" It was Fang Guangchen who spoke now. He is the son of Fang Yizao, the former Ming Dynasty minister who once patrolled Liaodong. Like Liu Xuanchu and Wang Shirong, he advocated anti-Qing Dynasty. He was originally worried that Wu Yingxiong, who had never been ambitious, would oppose raising troops, but Wu Yingxiong's words just now showed that he was anti-Qing Dynasty. He smiled and said to Wu Sangui: "Kangxi is trying his best to deal with Prince Zhu San of Guangdong. If we raise troops to attack Huguang, the Qing army in Guangdong and Guangxi led by Tu Hai and Sun Yanling will inevitably be destroyed... ..By then, no one south of the Yangtze River can stop your lord, your army. This is a rare opportunity!"
The people below all agreed, but Wu Sangui's brows were still furrowed. After a while, he let out a long breath, "I have been lurking in the enemy camp for twenty-seven years, and now my merits are finally complete!"
