Southern Ming Rebel Army

Chapter 356 Datong (Part )

On the morning of the second day after the wedding, according to etiquette, the bride should pay respects to her parents-in-law, but Meng Jun had no father, so he only needed to take his wife to pay respects to Old Lady Zhou.

Old Mrs. Zhou helped Zhang Shu up while she chased Meng Jun out. The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were talking in whispers.

Meng Jun let the two talk while he went to the shogunate to handle government affairs. In ancient times, when a couple was newly married, even the court would be considerate of their officials and give them some holidays. When the shogunate officials saw Meng Jun coming, they all paid their respects and were quite surprised.

Yang En saw that Meng Jun had just gotten married yesterday and entered the government office the next day. He smiled and said to Meng Jun, "Your Majesty, you are newly married, why don't you take a few more days to rest?"

"There is no time to rest until the great cause is accomplished."

After returning to Jinling, Meng Jun heaved a sigh of relief after the imminent war ended, but he still had many plans to plan, one of which was the development of industry and commerce. Having witnessed the rapid industrial and commercial manufacturing in later generations, Meng Jun became increasingly anxious about the forging speed of the shogunate's craftsmen.

The population in the south of the Yangtze River has always been dense. Even Jiangyin, Jiading, Kunshan, Songjiang and Taizhou were massacred by the Qing army and the cities were severely destroyed.

However, the population base of the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River is stronger than that of the north. Moreover, in the north, due to wars, loyal survivors, or unemployed water transport workers, all rushed south from the north to the rule of the Zhou army.

Although the shogunate officials were not as short-sighted as the Hongguang regime and did their best to exclude the northerners, they were still deeply wary of the large number of Qing survivors from the north and often said that there must be Qing spies among them.

In response to this, Meng Jun issued an order to treat the remaining people in the north well, by either settling them to farm in the Huai area or recruiting them as craftsmen or handicraftsmen and properly settling them down.

Meng Jun has no shortage of manpower, and he owns rich and fertile areas such as Jiangnan and Huguang. As long as the autumn crops are harvested, the food shortage situation will be greatly improved.

Meng Jun was obsessed with developing industry and commerce, enriching the country and strengthening the military, vigorously opening up the seas, and even bringing about the trend of great navigation in the Ming Dynasty of this era.

But in the shogunate, there always seemed to be a hint of resistance, which was the natural discrimination against businessmen in this era.

Although capital is dirty and selfish, the power of capital is the most aggressive in human history. It is precisely because of this power that the Age of Discovery prospered and the West dominated the world.

(By the way, some people say that we did not have the Age of Exploration because the Ming and Qing dynasties prohibited people from going out to sea. There are many reasons for this, but one very important point, in my opinion, is the mindset. For example, the kings of Europe had no money, so they borrowed money from merchants during wars. They borrowed too much money and could not pay it back. As a result, the kings were controlled by the merchants and had to formulate policies that were beneficial to the development of merchants.

But in the Central Plains, how could the monarch be controlled by merchants? If the merchant's house was raided, wouldn't everything the merchant had belong to the monarch? This is typical imperial thinking. All under heaven belongs to the emperor, and all the people are his subjects. Everything in the world belongs to the emperor.)

To this end, Meng Jun emphasized the equality of the scholar, farmer, merchant and artisan classes in law and social status, while improving the status of merchants and craftsmen. Although Meng Jun knew that true equality was impossible, he at least had to provide them with fertile ground for development. Merchants needed restrictions, but they also needed to be loosened to release the vitality of their capital.

The Central Empire has been extremely wary of merchants since ancient times. For example, Guan Zhong once said: "In a country with ten thousand chariots, there are merchants worth ten thousand golds; in a country with a thousand chariots, there are merchants worth a thousand golds. Why is that? Most countries lose money. If the people are rich, they cannot be used to control them; if they are poor, they cannot be used to control them. If laws and regulations are not enforced, the people will not be governed, and the rich and the poor will be unequal."

It means that if there are extremely wealthy people in the country, it means that the country's wealth is flowing into the hands of individuals. This is very scary, because if some people become too rich, the monarch cannot use profit to drive them, and if some people are too poor, the barefoot are not afraid of those wearing shoes, and punishment cannot deter them, which will lead to chaos in the world.

Therefore, Guan Zhong put forward the famous theory that all benefits in the world must be granted by the monarch.

This is the theory of profit coming from one source: "When profit comes from one source, the country is invincible. It is the ruler who gives and takes, the ruler who makes the poor and the ruler who makes the rich."

Therefore, all dynasties set up discriminatory regulations against the merchant class. For example, in the Western Han Dynasty, "Merchants were not allowed to wear silk or ride in carriages." They could not wear silk and had to walk everywhere.

In order to humiliate merchants, the Jin Dynasty made them wear one white shoe and the other black shoe. Fu Jian of the Former Qin Dynasty stipulated that "businessmen and servants were not allowed to wear gold, silver, brocade, and those who violated the rules would be executed." In the Tang Dynasty, it was stipulated that "merchants and their children were not allowed to participate in the imperial examinations."

Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that merchants could only wear silk and cloth. Even if they were as rich as a country, they could not wear silk.

Capital has always been a vassal of power and has never been the master of power. No matter how rich a businessman is, he still regards studying as the best way. Even Zheng Zhilong, a pirate who was rich enough to rival a country, still sent Zheng Sen to Qian Qianyi to study the Four Books and Five Classics.

There are pros and cons to suppressing merchants, so Meng Jun discussed with Yang En, Gu Yanwu and others. The two of them deeply agreed with the policy of suppressing merchants, but after many conversations with Meng Jun, Yang En expressed limited support for Meng Jun to loosen the restrictions on merchants.

A few days after the wedding, Meng Jun, who had just finished a round of shogunate political meetings, stretched himself tiredly, only to see Meng Bian rushing towards him from a distance.

"Your Majesty, secret report from Datong!" Meng Bian said to Meng Jun with a serious face.

Seeing Meng Bian's serious expression, Meng Jun took the secret report and quickly read it through.

It turned out that this was a spy sent by Qingluan Guard to Datong, who was accidentally captured by the Qing army. The Qing general Wu Weihua ordered the man to be beheaded, but Jiang Xiang secretly arranged for a death row prisoner to replace him. Jiang Xiang then sent someone to secretly send the spy out of Datong, with a letter attached, which only had numbers, saying "Please send an envoy to the south to negotiate."

Meng Jun had some impression of Jiang Xiang, who seemed to have rebelled against the Qing Dynasty in the end, but he was not sure when exactly he did so. Could it be that Jiang Xiang wanted to start a rebellion after seeing Duoduo's defeat? During this period of time, it seemed that he was a little out of reach!

Meng Jun looked at Meng Bian and asked, "Have the Qingluan Guards investigated the specific situation in Datong?"

Meng Bian had already made preparations, and said to Meng Jun: "Your Majesty, Jiang Xiang was the General of Zhenshuo during the Chongzhen period, and served as the General of Datong. In the 17th year of Chongzhen, after Li Zicheng conquered Taiyuan, he took the initiative to surrender and joined the Shun army. After Li Zicheng fled from Beijing, Jiang Xiang surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, and then followed the Qing court's Ajige to attack Shanxi and Shaanxi, commanding the troops of Xuanhua and Datong. In Datong, Jiang Xiang is very powerful, and just received a secret letter from Beijing yesterday, saying that Jiang Xiang's son Jiang Zhisheng died of illness in Beijing."