Chapter 182: Shandong Tax Bank Robbery (VIII)
Jining City was not the first provincial capital that Lei Hu had entered. As a native of Hebei, Lei Hu had been to Beijing. The grandeur and bustle of Beijing were incomparable to Jining City. However, Lei Hu was much more proud than when he entered Beijing. After all, this was the first city that had to open its gates to Lei Hu under his violence.
Walking on the streets of Jining City, smelling the lingering smell of gunpowder in the air and seeing the streets where every household had closed their doors out of fear, Lei Hu felt great joy at the knowledge that he could decide the fate of others.
The Jining defenders fought hard against the Han army outside the city, and were almost completely wiped out. The Han army then entered Jining with almost no resistance.
Although more than 700 people were not a small number, they were not conspicuous in Jining City. The population of this state city far exceeded 700.
Soon, those important places were controlled, and various news came back one after another. Lei Hu heard news such as the governor committing suicide and officials fleeing while walking. When the gate was blown open by explosives, Lei Hu continued to listen to the news.
The smoke cleared. Lei Hu and others entered the gate. Looking at the shelves that were shaken to the ground by the explosion, Lei Hu's face darkened. He muttered curses in a low voice. I didn't expect that there was not much silver left in the warehouse of Jining City.
However, even a small fly is meat, Lei Hu ordered all the silver in the treasury to be transported away. Since there was no silver in the treasury, the houses of those officials had to be searched. Otherwise, wouldn't this mission be a loss?
Feeling angry, Lei Hu shouted: "Those corrupt officials have plundered the people's blood and sweat. It's time for them to pay back!"
Although he was very powerful when he was agitating, Lei Hu actually didn't have any particular anger towards the officials for plundering the people. It was normal for Qing officials to do this.
Lei Hu quickly asked people to go to the warehouse to take away all the papers, files, and documents, especially the fish scale books. If these things were lost, Jining would not be able to collect taxes properly in the future.
Although he will leave soon, Lei Hu does not think that this departure will be forever. If he can conquer Jining for the first time, he will definitely conquer it for the second time, until the city completely surrenders to Lei Hu and is occupied by him.
Here, the staff noticed that there were quite a few idle people on the street who were watching the excitement. Perhaps it was because the Han army had strict military discipline and did not harm the people after entering Jining City. So some people dared to watch the excitement from afar.
But when the staff officer wanted to ask these idlers if they were willing to be porters, they all ran away. This disappointed everyone. Many of the things to be transported this time were paper , which were quite heavy. Someone had to be responsible for transportation.
Lei Hu continued with his work and thought that the matter was probably over, so he quickly sent someone back to Mengyin County to ask Mengyin County to send porters as soon as possible.
As soon as they left, reports came in that a large amount of silver had been found in the homes of several important officials, the amount being tens of thousands. In particular, the governor's home had even found 70,000 taels of silver.
Lei Hu's mind moved, thinking that this might be the Shandong tax silver that was robbed. It was impossible for an official to take tens of thousands of taels of silver to take office. But Lei Hu felt a little uncertain, because it was said that the governor of Shandong could get a million taels of silver in a year just from various tributes.
Huo Chong had arrested two Shandong governors, and now Li Shude was still in prison under the Han regime. Regarding accepting tributes, what Li Shude said really opened the eyes of some young cadres.
Perhaps this is also the case with this prefect?
After temporarily handing over the work here to others, Lei Hu hurried to the prefect's house to take a look. When he saw the silver, Lei Hu found a clue in the silver. If it was someone else's filial piety, there would be rules.
This is what Li Shude and the captured officers said.
Therefore, what was collected in the end should be mostly loose silver, with the standard official silver weighing dozens of taels per ingot being a minority.
Most of the silver found in the home of the Jining prefect who had committed suicide was official silver. The silver was neatly arranged and many of them had markings on them.
Lei Hu immediately ordered the arrest of the governor and the families of several key officials for interrogation. He originally wanted to use the so-called "Huo Chong sent people to rob the official silver" as an excuse to send troops to Jining City. The reason was simple, they were all framed, so why not come in person?
However, the matter was not complicated. As Huo Chong expected, such a matter involving the Qing government must have involved a lot of collusion among people within the government. Now it seems that this group of people is not just colluding. In such a chaotic Shandong, too many people want to make a fortune from this chaotic situation.
Lei Hu didn't expect that when he was struggling with the manpower for the transportation, Huo Chong had sent someone to inform him that a transportation team of more than 2,000 people had already set out from Mengyin County. Lei Hu had to make preparations quickly and organize the transportation team.
Seeing this, Lei Hu sent another message, "Two thousand people are not enough, send ten thousand people."
On the ninth day of the third month in the fifth year of Yongzheng's reign, Huo Chong called Jiang Song to Linzi, the largest city during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
After the last call, Jiang Song, a native of Shandong, no longer cared about the strange relationship at the moment. Huo Chong, as a major rebel in Shandong, was the priority target to be eliminated by the government.
Jiang Song himself is a government official, and is a person on the government side who has a deep connection with the case of "Huo Chong robbing government pay".
It is very abnormal that two such hostile parties can sit together and talk with great mutual trust, but there is nothing abnormal about it.
After listening to Huo Chong's brief introduction of what happened and the process of the interrogation, Jiang Song's face had become much gloomier.
"Master Huo..."
"Just call me Mr. Huo. I feel like being called Master Huo sounds like I'm about to rob someone." Huo Chong corrected himself slightly.
If possible, Huo Chong hopes to completely change the way others address him. The Qing Dynasty was full of strict registration systems from top to bottom, and this system was full of barbaric tribal atmosphere, which was reflected in the culture as barbaric address.
Fourth Master, Eighth Master, Thirteenth Master, Fourteenth Master. To people in the Qing Dynasty, these titles seemed perfectly normal. But in the context of the entire history of Chinese civilization, they were extremely barbaric titles.
It is totally undignified and ridiculous to refer to members of the royal family like this.
Where is the dignity? Where is the dignity!
Jiang Song was not used to calling Huo Chong "Mr. Huo" for a while. After all, calling someone "Mr." was a respectful, elegant and honorific title in the Qing Dynasty. However, Huo Chong's power and his identity as a traitor made Jiang Song feel that the three words "Mr. Huo" were not easy to say.
But this is the current situation. Huo Chong not only has an advantage over Jiang Song at this time, but also helps Jiang Song. After hesitating for a moment, Jiang Song said: "Mr. Huo, can you let me interrogate the captives?"
"Please help yourself." Huo Chong agreed readily.
Jiang Song was famous for his criminal investigations in Jinan Prefecture, and catching thieves was his forte. However, Huo Chong never did anything illegal, so although Jiang Song knew Huo Chong's name, he had no chance to take action against him.
At this time, Huo Chong had no scruples about who to arrest. Jiang Song could fully interrogate and torture people. Those methods made the young officials of the Han regime who were responsible for monitoring nearby dumbfounded. They never thought that there were so many ways to torture people.
After more than a day of almost round-the-clock interrogation and torture, Jiang Song came to a conclusion and asked Huo Chong if he could send some of the "people who had escaped from Jining" to the territory of Jinan Prefecture.
Huo Chong admired Jiang Song's attitude. If we don't mention the position, there are a few officials in this era who are worth making friends with. For example, Jiang Song is one of them. Many officials have even been forced to show their integrity due to strong pressure.
From the time Huo Chong started his rebellion to now, in all the cities he captured, none of the officials abandoned the city and fled. Even if they did not dare to fight and did not go to the top of the city to defend, the officials did not run away, but chose to commit suicide or wait to be caught.
In this regard, Huo Chong used to laugh at the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, Ye Mingchen of the Qing Dynasty. This guy was unable to fight against the British, but he refused to leave. He was captured by the British and taken back to colonial India, where he was locked in a cage in a zoo and sold tickets for people to watch.
Huo Chong used to think that group of people were ridiculous, but now he became the one who killed the Qing officials. However, he felt that the Qing officials were really interesting in this regard. At least they performed much better than the Kuomintang officials in the Anti-Japanese War.
Afterwards, Huo Chong held a meeting to summarize. The first to perform were the people along the way, especially Li Zhongtai, the person in charge of Mengyin County. Li Zhongtai was able to mobilize the people to provide transportation for the troops, which played a huge role. Especially Li Zhongtai mobilized rather than forced, which was a better performance.
More than 20,000 people provided transportation capacity in sections, and with the manpower mobilized from other places, hundreds of thousands of taels of silver and hundreds of thousands of kilograms of materials were transported well.
Seeing Lei Hu's unhappy expression, Huo Chong turned to Lei Hu and said, "Everyone thinks that I am the hardest-working one. Especially those who fought in the war feel this way. If it were someone else, I would be more reasonable. As for you, Lei Hu, the history books clearly record how many horses died along the way when the Han Dynasty conquered the Xiongnu. Do you think those horses died in the battle or while transporting supplies?"
Lei Hu was still a little unhappy after hearing this, but he agreed with Huo Chong, "Sir, you are right. Logistics has a great impact on war."
"Yes. Wars nowadays are no longer fought with just a stick. Lei Hu, wars nowadays are a test of inner strength. Whoever can mobilize the people and improve internal production will have more inner strength. You have used artillery before, so you should know how useful it is. The reason why I didn't send you more transport capacity at the beginning was to give you a chance to make a comparison."
After hearing this, Lei Hu's face became completely solemn, and he even looked a little unhappy.
