Chapter 143: The Confused Shandong Gentry (Part 2)
In the third year of Yongzheng's reign, there was a saying in Linzi County that "half of Linzi belongs to the Ai family." The Ai family really prospered in Linzi for more than thirty years.
In the 30th year of Emperor Kangxi's reign, Ai Youchang and Ai Youkuan, two brothers of the Ai family, both passed the imperial examination and became Jinshi. This was not only a good story, but also greatly boosted the status of the Ai family. The land of the Ai family expanded like mercury.
In the 45th year of Emperor Kangxi's reign, Ai Yourang of the Ai family passed the imperial examination and became a Jinshi, adding a new force to the Ai family's rumbling carriage.
Although the three brothers did not produce any famous officials, they gave the Ai family a great say in Linzi County. For example, if anyone wanted to sell land, they had to ask the Ai family's opinion out of respect.
At the beginning of the fourth year of Yongzheng's reign, the servant of the Ai family sneaked out of the back door, ran to the street and took down a notice while no one was paying attention, and then hurried back to the Ai family mansion.
None of the three brothers of the Ai family returned to their hometown to live, and only the Ai family scholar was in charge of the family business. After taking the notice, Ai scholar put on the glasses he had bought from the optician shop under the Zhongfu platform and quickly read the notice.
Huo Chong did not want to tell any lies. In his life experience, he found that telling the truth is often more confusing than telling lies. Especially in the Qing Dynasty, Huo Chong really never deceived anyone. It was those people who always understood Huo Chong with their own point of view. Yongzheng is a typical example. Even if he was a well-educated and ideal person, the evaluation he made was just "You can tell the truth and lie at the same time."
So Mr. Ai's hands began to tremble when he saw it. In the notice, Huo Chong told the people of Linzi County how he knew Yongzheng and saved Yongzheng's men. Yongzheng thought Huo Chong was a big thief at the time, and because he was personally unhappy, he wanted to kill Huo Chong.
After that, Yongzheng tried several times to kill Huo Chong, but failed because of the wrong timing and the involvement of the Fourteenth Prince and Kangxi.
Afterwards, Yongzheng poisoned his father Kangxi to death , tampered with the imperial edict and became emperor. He then sent his full brother, the Fourteenth Brother, to guard Kangxi's body, which was a disguised form of house arrest.
Yongzheng was such a person that he did not let go of Huo Chong, whom he had only met twice, when he was engaging in struggles among the upper classes. He sent an imperial envoy to arrest Huo Chong, on the grounds that Huo Chong was spreading rumors and misleading the people. Huo Chong had never been a worshipper of gods for so many years, so how could he have spread rumors?
It can be seen that evil will appear when a country is about to fall. The corruption of the Qing officials was in the front, and Yongzheng, who was vindictive and killed innocent people, was in the back. These were all signs of the demise of the Qing Dynasty.
The barbarians have no national destiny for a hundred years. The Han people have been oppressed for a hundred years, and it is time to rise up. Shandong has always been loyal and righteous, and countless heroes emerged when fighting against the invasion of the Qing Dynasty. They were generous and heroic, and were admired by future generations. Therefore, Shandong suffered heavy slaughter from the Qing Dynasty. Although the number of single slaughters was not as large as that of the Ten Days in Yangzhou, the overall number was far greater.
At this time, Huo Chong rose up and served as the governor of the Han Dynasty to reopen the sky of China. I hope that the Han brothers and sisters will help Huo Chong together, and those Chinese brothers who are willing to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the Qing Dynasty will unite to overthrow the Qing Dynasty.
…
This was the first time Ai Juren had seen a rebellion manifesto. He was naturally panicked, but more than that, he was angry. Huo Chong was a traitor, while the Ai family was an official of the imperial court and a genuine Jinshi. The two sides were originally hostile.
But what annoyed Ai Juren even more was the latter part. Huo Chong publicly announced the new land policy to the public, and the most important part was Huo Chong's "hostile attitude" towards the land of officials in the Qing court.
If a family member served as an official in the Qing court, each person in the family could keep ten mu of land until they returned to the Han regime. Huo Chong also specifically instructed that both men and women, including children, should be included in the land. However, slaves and godsons were not included.
Any land exceeding this amount will be temporarily expropriated by the Han regime and will not be returned until the officials return and formally submit to the Han regime.
Mr. Ai read the notice in vernacular Chinese over and over again. Because it adopted the grammar of modern Chinese, it was easy to read and clear without any ambiguity. Mr. Ai was completely desperate.
In fact, Mr. Ai himself had considered raising an army to rebel against the traitor Huo Chong, but Huo Chong had defeated the government troops in Linzi County. Mr. Ai had never seen thousands of corpses in his generation. He did not see the battlefield, but only saw the burial of corpses. He only saw the piles of corpses, stripped of armor and clothes, with bare upper bodies and thighs. Mr. Ai was almost scared to faint.
Resistance was impossible, all that could be done was to close the door tightly and wait for the royal army to counterattack and then serve as an insider for the royal army.
Now, the Ai family may not even have such an opportunity. It is obvious that the land policy listed in the notice of the traitor Huo Chong is aimed at large families like the Ai family.
The Ai family had three successful Jinshi scholars, and the land they had was tens of thousands of acres. The large tracts of land that were not connected to the main land also added up to tens of thousands of acres. The Ai family had only a hundred people. Even if each person got ten acres of land, the remaining tens of thousands of acres would have to be "temporarily requisitioned" by Huo Chong.
Now there is no need to worry about the Ai family's scholars defecting to Huo Chong. In other words, as long as Huo Chong is around, the Ai family can only survive on these thousand acres of land.
Although each person had ten mu of land, they would not starve to death. However, the Ai family had hundreds of servants and slaves, all of whom depended on the Ai family for money and food. It was a joke to support six or seven hundred people with more than a thousand mu of land. The only way to maintain it was to rely on the family's savings. However, no matter how much property there was, it could not withstand such consumption.
In the end, Mr. Ai decided that he had to find a way to kill Huo Chong.
Just as he was thinking, the servant came running in hurriedly, "Master, Huo Chong's people are knocking on the door outside."
Mr. Ai sighed. What you fear is what will come true. But Huo Chong was so arrogant at this time that if he didn't open the door, the other party would just break in. That would be terrible.
Inviting Huo Chong's men to come in, Ai Juren managed to calm himself down and looked at the guys coming in.
The man was about 20 years old, wearing a double-breasted shirt. It didn't have buttons, but the kind made by Huo Chong. The neat lapels and raised collar made him look clean and tidy.
The man was wearing a strange hat, which looked like a pot-cake on his head, and there was a big protrusion in front of his forehead, like a half tongue protruding forward. It was very eye-catching, but also very incongruous.
The young man's clothes were not bulky, nor were they as thin as those worn by the poor. They should be the rabbit fur lining that Ai Juren had bought. He had a leather belt at least three fingers wide tied around his waist, and the leather was of excellent quality. He was wearing the leather boots that were unique to Huo Chong's men. He walked with great vigor, and stood very steady in front of Ai Juren.
"Brother, what can I do for you?" Mr. Ai tried his best to keep his voice calm.
The young man handed over something. When Ai Juren took it and looked at it, it turned out to be a letter from Huo Chong. No, it was more of an official document than a letter. The official document told Ai Juren that before the 20th day of the first lunar month, the land transfer work should be completed according to the records in the county's fish scale book.
This is really an insult! Mr. Ai just wanted his men to rush forward and kill this traitor and the other traitors who were traveling with him.
But thinking of the piles of corpses of government soldiers, Mr. Ai held back. He perfunctorily sent the young rebel away. Mr. Ai ordered to secretly gather the servants of the Ai family and start an uprising to recapture the county.
Shandong has a strong reading culture and has never lacked Jinshi. Even in Zibo, it is not only the Ai family that has Jinshi. This place has produced nine Jinshi in the past few decades. The people of another family, Lu Jinshi, are not as cultured as the Ai family. Of course, this may also be because Lu Jinshi took a short time to become a Jinshi, and only passed in the second year of Yongzheng. Therefore, the family business is not big, and there are not so many people and land to care about.
When Mr. Lu, who stayed at home, saw that Huo Chong's men had taken the land contents from the fish scale book copied from the county, he knew that he could not hide it. He first perfunctorily dealt with it, and then sent his servants and some clansmen to ambush and attack Huo Chong's men through a small path.
When the group of people rushed out with swords, guns, sticks and clubs, Huo Chong's subordinates, who were only wearing their swords, pulled out short black weapons from the holsters on their belts. A moment later, these weapons began to make sharp explosions.
The hand cannon sold to Spanish captain Oda Hideyoshi was made of bronze, single shot, and had a copper shell. But this did not prevent Huo Chong from using iron parts and paper shell bullets when manufacturing a large number of revolvers for his own family.
When Mr. Lu was dragged out of his home, he, who had never seen the pile of corpses by the Xiaoqing River, realized that the reason why Huo Chong's men dared to walk around so arrogantly was not because they were arrogant.
At the headquarters of Zichuan County, scouts sent the latest news to the headquarters. Even in such a tense period, Huo Chong only let the graduates of the advanced class take charge of the affairs of various places. If there was a real shortage of manpower, he would draw some graduates from the intermediate class to help.
The personnel selected by the Zhongfu platform are all subject to centralized learning. Ordinary personnel receive primary training, the primary class is promoted to the intermediate class, and the intermediate class begins to learn the content of the advanced class.
Huo Chong was not shy about this. He told the young people who chose to follow him clearly that "the Qing Dynasty had a history of a hundred years. We are full of vitality and have a bright future. However, we still have a gap with the Qing Dynasty in terms of accumulation. This gap must be made up through learning and practice."
At such times, work was almost calculated by the minute. The Intelligence Department waited until the news of the ten Jinshi families in Zibo County was delivered, and then handed the report to Huo Chong during the class break.
Huo Chong read it but did not give any instructions. When the break was over, he used this latest report as a case study.
Hearing that Zibo County had controlled ten Jinshi families, there was a sigh from the audience. Jinshi, in this era, represents honor, status, and power. They are the ones that the students in front of them must look up to. They were controlled by the Han army, which really gave the students a strong shock.
After Huo Chong introduced the situation and expressed his own opinion on how to deal with it, a student immediately asked, "Sir, why did you only execute the Ai family and let the other nine families go? Those nine families attacked our people."
"This is why I take this matter as a case. I want to tell you one way of thinking about how we deal with things. Make more friends and fewer enemies." Huo Chong narrated loudly.
