Volume 5 Chapter 37 Summer Rain (Part 1)
In the spring of the ninth year of Jianyan, on the Lantern Festival, Emperor Zhao further stated on Phoenix Mountain that he was still tolerating each other for the sake of the country, and then insisted on the strategy of Northern Expedition... Of course, there were rumors among the people in the southeast that Emperor Zhao dragged his sword and wrote poems to intimidate the local residents... But no matter what, shortly after the Lantern Festival, Emperor Zhao's top priority during this southern tour, that is, tax reform centered on never increasing taxes and allocating land to each household, officially overcame the most difficult mountain and achieved a phased victory.
The most literary, but also the core of the so-called southeast region, Liangzhe Road and Jiangnan East Road formally completed the land division and inspection work for the situation households, and the relevant reforms were first completed there.
Also during the spring plowing period, Emperor Zhao, who was still stationed in Phoenix Mountain, once again issued an official decree, pointing out two major events... The first was a clear decree to the ministers in Tokyo, the officials of the Secret Council, and the generals and commanders of the imperial camps in various places, which finally determined the final plan for military expansion.
The order is clear and unambiguous. The military expansion will begin from today, and by the autumn of this year, the front, rear, left, right, center, cavalry, and navy of the imperial camp must reach the full strength of 300,000 people!
Although the imperial edict did not reveal the final number of personnel, it could not be concealed from those who were interested - judging from the logistics and the scale of conscription in various places, the vast majority of the new personnel were still allocated to Han Shizhong's Imperial Camp Left Army, Wu Jie's Imperial Camp Rear Army, the Shanzhou-Hedong Front Army which was actually under the charge of Li Yanxian and nominally belonged to the Imperial Camp Central Army, and Qu Duan's Imperial Camp Cavalry.
It is obvious that this official has finally made up his mind to break the situation by conquering the mountains and rivers inside and outside Hedong.
Everyone had anticipated this, after all, it was an objective need of military strategy. However, the deadline showed that Emperor Zhao's determination to launch the Northern Expedition remained unchanged, and the original timetable had not changed.
In other words, with the visible "success" of Emperor Zhao's southern tour, the pace of the Northern Expedition is getting closer and closer.
In fact, Emperor Zhao’s second order was to formally and extensively promote tax reform in the southeast.
The second edict was sent to the surrounding prefectures and counties in the southeast together with a document from Lu Yihao, the Southeast Envoy and Governor of Liangzhe Road. It required Jiangnan West Road, Lianghuai Road, and Fujian Road to carry out similar reforms after the spring plowing.
In the edict, Emperor Zhao pointed out almost frankly that the original intention of this reform was because the Jingkang Incident had led to an empty treasury, and there was no money to support the army and the Northern Expedition, so taxes were increased in the southeast and Jingxiang; and the increase in taxes in the southeast and Jingxiang certainly made an indelible contribution to national stability and the upcoming Northern Expedition, but it also increased the burden on the poor at the bottom; and since ancient times, people have rebelled when they are destitute, as there was Fang La in the past and Zhong Xiang in the future, and they must be treated seriously.
Therefore, at this time when the Northern Expedition is about to be completed, it is imperative to complete the fiscal reform in the southeast region, which is the most heavily taxed, so that the lower-class people can have a chance to breathe, and then we can make further plans.
Now, reforms have been implemented in Liangzhe Route and Jiangnan East Route, and the results are considerable. This shows that this is indeed feasible, so the remaining four routes will be implemented to reassure the people and stabilize the country.
As for those who dare to neglect their official duties for selfish motives, take advantage of the general trend to deal with local issues, or even make excuses and obstruct others, or resist openly or secretly, they will be severely punished and killed without mercy.
After the decree was issued, the official Tokyo gazette and the Phoenix Mountain temporary bi-weekly were published throughout the country at the same time, causing unrest throughout the country and everyone was terrified.
Soon after the spring plowing season was over and the imperial edict had been issued, Tokyo again sent envoys to Phoenix Mountain to ask the emperor to return home and to report on all the affairs of the court that had occurred since the emperor's southern tour last year, as well as the results of the judgments made by the ministers in the Secret Cabinet, for the emperor to review and examine.
However, Emperor Zhao once again publicly issued an edict, commending several ministers and all the important officials of the secret cabinet for their hard work and proper conduct in staying in Tokyo; at the same time, he publicly replied that he would continue to stay in Phoenix Mountain, waiting for the implementation of new policies in surrounding areas to prevent unrest in the southeast.
It seems that I am enjoying myself here and don't miss my homeland.
The people in Tokyo were helpless and could only maintain smooth communication between the two places while exerting pressure on and assisting the local governments. They repeatedly demanded that the local governments cooperate with Emperor Zhao's fiscal reforms, sent out censors to inspect the local areas, and sent people to the relatively nearby Lianghuai to assist in the establishment of public cabinets.
In this way, Emperor Zhao still stayed in the southeast to take charge. Then, from late spring to gradually entering summer, as various surrounding areas began to implement new policies, situations indeed emerged one after another.
For example, its economic size is no less than that of Liangzhe and Lianghuai Road in Jiangdong. From the perspective of the south, it is considered the north, and from the perspective of the Central Plains, it is considered the southeast. During this process, no serious resistance as imagined occurred.
This was not only because the Wuwei Army where Wang Gui was stationed was located between the Yangtze River and the Huai River, but also because Jingkou and Guazhou were separated by a river, and everything happening in the south of the Yangtze River was witnessed by people from all walks of life in the two Huai River regions, so people were mentally prepared.
In addition, Lianghuai is relatively close to Tokyo, and has always obeyed the central government politically. It also belongs to the core ruling area of the court. Even the envoys of Lianghuai Road and the people-friendly officials of large prefectures such as Yangzhou, Shouzhou, Bozhou, and Luzhou are mostly court prime ministers or confidants directly appointed by Emperor Zhao, so the execution is extremely effective.
But the most important point is that Huaishang felt the impact of the Jingkang War firsthand, Huaibei was in a state of displacement, and Huainan also worked together to support the battle in Huaishang... Moreover, Huaixi and Huaidong were both where the imperial camps of the court were stationed in the past. The official positions of Han Shizhong and Zhang Jun when Emperor Zhao was stationed in Nanyang were the Huaixi Governor and Huaidong Governor respectively... From the very beginning, the people of Huaibei understood from the bottom of their hearts the authority of the court and the power of the imperial camp army.
What's more, before the new policy, there were signs that the imperial camp was expanding its army in preparation for the Northern Expedition?
Under such circumstances, would Lianghuai dare to really start a confrontation?
However, as the saying goes, everything has its limits.
Although there was no obvious resistance in Lianghuai, some of them went too far, especially in Huaixi, where local officials often harassed and even took the opportunity to exploit local wealthy families... However, this situation quickly caused a backlash after the establishment of public cabinets in Lianghuai. Local wealthy families used the public cabinets as an organizational form, contacted the censors, and even directly appealed to Tokyo, directing their attacks at the local government.
The two sides were at loggerheads for a while and had a lot of messy accounts to settle.
It can only be said that Liu Dazhong's words hit the nail on the head that day. In Lianghuai, a situation has begun to emerge where households are using public offices to compete with the government.
If this continues for a long time, it will probably become a structural problem.
In comparison, Jiangnan West Road is much simpler.
In Pengli Lake (Poyang Lake in later times), some people who were both sorcerers, tyrants, and bandits directly contacted and rebelled, pretending to be Zhong Xiang and Yang Mo, and proclaimed themselves the Great Sage Equaling Heaven. They quickly swept across many states and counties, and also raised the slogan of going down the river, breaking through Fenghuang Mountain, and capturing Emperor Zhao alive. At the same time, the southern part of Qianzhou, which had finally settled down but had a tradition of rebellion, also started to make trouble. After Jingkang, the Qian thieves appeared three times.
A group of Wudao bandits from Pengli and a group of Miao village bandits from Qianzhou, one in the south and one in the north, immediately formed a large scale in Jiangxi.
Of course, the imperial court was well prepared this time. Wang Gui from the Wuwei Army immediately went upstream through Jiangzhou and entered Pengli Lake. At the same time, Guo Zhongxun's imperial camp reserve soldiers did not hesitate and immediately set out from the northern part of Qianzhou to launch a second encirclement and suppression operation against the Qian bandits.
That’s not all. As early as the end of spring, Liu Qi’s army began to disperse northward in the name of allowing soldiers to take leave and return to the Yellow River, but they were waiting for orders in the Chizhou area and did not cross the river. Now they gathered directly to the west.
The result was that the former took seventeen days and the latter took twenty-three days, and both rebellions ended before midsummer.
Then, Liu Qi's troops really went north to the Yellow River, and even Wang Gui's troops returned north directly after the war to await orders. As for Fenghuang Mountain, it opened the door to Guo Zhongxun's troops who had pacified Qianzhou... Guo Zhongxun's 10,000 troops were carefully selected and replaced. Half of the weak soldiers continued to stay in Qianzhou, while the other half took advantage of the situation to turn to Hangzhou and gather in front of the imperial carriage.
Of course, with the completion of the thorough military cleanup, the local division and inspection of Jiangxi naturally began in a thorough and tough manner.
As for Fujian Road, it is different from Jiangxi and Lianghuai.
First of all, Fujian Road watched the reforms in Liangzhe and Southeast together with Lianghuai, and they also had a plan in mind. Moreover, the achievements of Fujian scholars in those days were generally very high. Almost every prefecture had famous scholars who could call on the people in the countryside and even make early plans. At the same time, don't forget that Fujian Road was the most severely exploited by the population tax, and Zhao Guanjia's new policy was the most liberating for them.
However, Fujian's mountainous terrain has made the local clan power here so powerful that it is almost unique in its time.
All these circumstances ultimately led to the new policy reforms in Fujian Road taking an unexpected direction - the problem was not how the local households opposed the country, nor was it about the fierce conflicts among government offices, and there were few real rebellions. The problem was the huge regional conflicts between local governments due to land inspection and local decisions.
Now, what is the purpose of land inspection and land determination? Of course, it is to fairly distribute taxes.
However, when the results of land inspection and land determination produced inevitable differences based on the region and the original total amount, those differences, more or less, combined with the fact that the total amount remained unchanged due to the fact that taxes would never be increased, led to a considerable number of people feeling that they had suffered injustice.
Those who have paid less will naturally feel that they have paid too much in the past few hundred years, and those who have paid more will naturally feel that they have been wronged.
The result was that fierce disputes often arose between provincial capitals, between cities and villages, between cities and villages over the distribution of taxes of a few hundred strings of cash, dozens of strings of cash, or even a few strings of cash or a few cents.
Such disputes could still be mediated and distributed between the state capital and the city, or in other words, they could still be settled with documents and the superiors’ arbitrary decisions. However, as the upper and middle levels gradually evened out the differences, the differences were transferred to the grassroots level, especially at the village level, but they suddenly got out of control due to the emergence of large-scale armed fights.
This is of course an extremely serious problem, and its destructive power is no less than the previous rebellion in Jiangxi next door. However, faced with this situation, no one knew how to deal with it... First of all, everyone is just fighting internally, and they are not really raising the flag to rebel against the Song Dynasty. They haven't even touched the county town. You can't just transfer Guo Zhongxun and Yang Yi's troops over to suppress it, right?
But if we only consider it as a serious case and let the local government go to investigate, I am afraid it will not work... Because, this kind of grassroots fighting is chaotic and covered up, where are the cases and prisoners? And what are the officials in the county government compared to the hundreds or thousands of armed young men in the village? What kind of enforcement power do they have?
As a result, everyone watched helplessly as Fujian Road fell into a weird overall chaos because of this incident.
For a time, even Emperor Zhao, who had been proud of the obedience of Lianghuai and the quick resolution of Jiangxi's disputes, was dumbfounded on Phoenix Mountain. He could only hastily follow Li Gang's suggestion and send an "Investigation Team on Behalf of the Emperor" headed by Xu Jingheng, Liu Dazhong, Fan Zongyin, Mei Li and others to various places in Fujian to smooth things over. At the same time, he hastily asked Fujian officials in various places... those who were nearby to return to Fujian directly to maintain stability, and those who were far away to write letters back to mediate.
But to be honest, at this time, the official had already sensed that something was wrong, because he could see that the problem in Fujian Road was not only the most unexpected, but also the most serious and difficult. First, its scale was far beyond imagination, and almost the entire grassroots of Fujian was in chaos; second, the place where the incident occurred, or the class where it occurred, was simply an area that the central power of the feudal era could not effectively reach... In other words, he, the official Zhao, was simply powerless.
In fact, this is true.
As a series of reports came back from all sides, it all showed that this confusing grassroots unrest in Fujian not only seriously delayed production, but also caused violent social unrest and created a series of local conflicts.
What’s even more terrible is that when Zhao Jiu received the news that the local situation was gradually stabilizing, summer was already over...and this meant that the summer tax collection work in Fujian Road had been greatly damaged.
Even the autumn tax cannot be guaranteed!
And don't forget, why did Zhao Jiu want to tour the south and carry out this reform? Wasn't it to unite the people before the Northern Expedition, so that the people in the south could be a little more stable before the Northern Expedition, so that they could stand together and go north?
Then why was there a Northern Expedition?
Isn’t it said that according to this fiscal budget, it will probably be in place this year?
But now you can’t collect all the summer taxes along the entire route, and you can’t even collect all the autumn taxes, not to mention that Jiangxi has also been affected to a certain extent. What can you use to carry out the Northern Expedition?
And is Jiangnan stable or not?
This turmoil has fundamentally shaken Emperor Zhao's overall strategy.
Poor Emperor Zhao, since his debut, he has boasted of suppressing warlords, sweeping out rebellions, recovering the Central Plains, overthrowing the two saints, shooting Wanyan Loushi with arrows, forcing Ling Yelu Dashi, taking over Xixia, opening up the public pavilion, connecting with the Western Regions, establishing the original school, taking gold out of the mouth of the Japanese emperor, making silver from the Confucian officials of Goryeo, asking Dali for copper mines, getting rice from Nanyue, fighting side by side with Yue Fei and Han Shizhong, chatting and laughing with Li Gang and Lu Haowen... Turning around, he can also count crows on Phoenix Mountain, sail across the West Lake in an Oolong boat, drag swords and compose poems to dominate the southeast, punch local residents and look down on Taoists at martial arts conferences, but he never expected that he would be caught off guard and fall headfirst into a local fight in Fujian.
It's simply ridiculous.
But this is not the end. As summer was about to end and the unrest in Fujian was gradually calming down and Emperor Zhao was hesitating whether to return north to Tokyo, another piece of bad news... or a visible phenomenon appeared.
Zhao Guanjia could see clearly from Phoenix Mountain that in late summer, large areas of the southeast began to rain, and it kept raining.
In fact, in early April, there was already too much rain in the southeast. At that time, local officials told Lu Yihao that there was a fear that the silk production this year would be slightly affected.
But it is just a slight one and cannot be called a disaster. At the moment, it is actually similar to... It is too sensational to call it a disaster, but this round of continuous rain has indeed affected the autumn harvest in Liangzhe Road.
This made Zhao Jiu a little flustered, Lu Yihao a little flustered, and the local officials were also a little flustered... because everyone was not a fool. They all knew that there were 300,000 troops in the imperial camp after autumn, and they all knew that something had gone wrong with the summer tax in Fujian Road. What if the autumn harvest in the southeast suffered a disaster?
In the panic, some people lost their temper and took the initiative to report to Emperor Zhao, suggesting that he offer sacrifices to heaven and earth and pray for sunny days.
Zhao Jiu tore up the memorial on the spot.
Less than a day after the seal was torn and the rain was still falling in West Lake, an envoy from Tokyo arrived to pay his respects as usual... Throughout the ninth year of Jianyan, there were envoys arriving every month to pay their respects, and they were usually high-ranking officials of the Secret Council at the level of Vice Minister... This time was no exception, and the one who came was Liu Hongdao, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of War and the head of the Capital Water Conservancy Bureau.
But to be honest, Liu Hongdao was in charge of the Yellow River issue. Unless there was something urgent within his responsibility, there was no need for him to come as a greeting envoy... As expected, after this person went up to Phoenix Mountain and met Emperor Zhao in person, before explaining various Tokyo affairs and local military affairs, he first mentioned a troublesome matter.
"The Yellow River waterway?" Zhao Jiu frowned.
"Yes." Liu Hongdao responded solemnly. "Specifically, it is the waterway in Shanzhou. There is a pillar in the river... I am not referring to General Li, but a real pillar..."
"I know...there have been no problems in the past, right?" Zhao Jiu stood with his hands behind his back, looking at the rain falling outside the old palace. He was a little impatient and interrupted the other party directly.
"I didn't point out the problem. It's just that now we are preparing for the Northern Expedition, and a large amount of military supplies have begun to be transported to Guanxi. The river channels there are inevitably a bit stretched." Liu Hongdao still looked serious.
"That's true." Zhao Jiu nodded repeatedly. "It can't be helped..."
"There is a way." Liu Hongdao hurriedly continued to explain. "Before I came here, Minister Hu of the Ministry of Works discussed with me... We can actually rebuild the Tang Dynasty plank road in the river... The Shanzhou area happens to be in our hands on both sides of the river, so it is completely feasible."
"But how long will it take to build the plank road?" Zhao Jiu frowned even more.
"If we use gunpowder, it can be done quickly." Liu Hongdao responded earnestly. "I have tried it in Tokyo before. Drilling holes and using gunpowder can definitely blast rocks to open a road... But using a large amount of gunpowder requires the decision of the government, so I came here specifically... Government, if we can quickly build a plank road, not only can military supplies arrive in Guanxi in time, but also when the war starts, it can speed up the transportation of materials from the southeast to the battlefield in Hedong. It is related to the smooth logistics. I think it is still worth it."
Zhao Jiu instinctively opened his mouth to speak, but for some reason, he hesitated for a moment and did not give a reply. Instead, he stood inside the door as if he was lost in thought, staring at the outside of the old palace in silence.
However, looking outside the hall at this time, the lush Phoenix Mountain, the distantly visible Leifeng Pagoda, and the misty West Lake were all shrouded in mist and rain, and were covered by the summer rain.
Zhao Jiu knew in his heart that it was time to make a decision again...but this time the decision was really extraordinary and of great importance, so much so that even though he thought he had made all kinds of preparations, he still hesitated and shrank back when it came time.
