In fact, before Zhou Xian announced that the general could choose whether to leave with Zhu Cilang, he had anticipated the situation in front of him.

As for the vassal kings, King Lu, King De, and King Heng all chose to leave, and other princes and princes of all sizes chose this way.

Those who escaped from the capital were led by Li Jiantai, and the generals were led by Bai Hu. Most of the escaped officials, imperial guards, and soldiers also chose to go south.

Some students and alternate officials from the Imperial College and Hanlin Academy also chose to go to Nanjing. For example, Fang Yizhi, who was grateful to Emperor Chongzhen for his kindness, said goodbye to Zhou Xian and went to Nanjing. However, Hou Fangyu and Zhang Jiayu chose to stay in Shandong and serve Zhou Xian.

In Shandong, Shandong Governor Gao Mingheng was completely desperate after the fall of the capital. He asked to leave his post and return home on the grounds of his old age and illness, and no longer serve anyone.

The governor of Denglai Zeng Hualong was originally close to Zhou Xian, and gave Zhou Xian great support during his tenure as governor of Denglai, but this time he chose Zhu Ciyang. After leaving a letter to Zhou Xian, he set out from Laiyang and went straight south. With him, there were more than a dozen state and county officials in the Denglai area.

Wang Zhang, the prefect of Jinan, wanted to commit suicide after the fall of the capital, but was stopped by his subordinates. Hearing that the prince was not dead, he immediately went to see Zhu Cilang, and of course he chose to go south. The situation of the prefect of Qingzhou Wu Gan came was roughly the same as that, and he went directly to work south.

Xia Yunyi was hesitant, and Zhou Xian went to persuade him in person, but in the end he stayed. Yan Yingyuan did not make any statement and continued to stay in Daming Mansion.

The situation in the army was still good, but two high-level generals chose to leave.

One of them was Yang Yufan, who was once the general and forced to surrender to Li Dingguo. Later, he secretly contacted Zhou Xian, which caused quite a lot of trouble to the Longwu Army led by Liu Wenxiu. He wanted to persuade Yang Yan to leave with him, but Yang Yan did not agree. In the end, he returned to Linyi, used his Yang family's reputation in the local area to recruit nearly a thousand people, and took them to Nanjing.

Another one is Tan Zhencai. He had betrayed Zhou Xian, but although it was re-activated due to changes in the situation, he had never given him reuse. Seeing this opportunity to make a fortune, he made another choice to leave Zhou Xian. He led more than 3,000 troops he brought from Mo County to leave his resident Linyi south.

After hearing this, Tan Shimai rode a horse to chase him, but Tan Zhencai refused to come back. Tan Shimai came back with hundreds of soldiers who were unwilling to go south and apologized to Zhou Xian. Zhou Xian did not blame him, but just felt that Tan Zhencai's father was not worth it.

Others, some lower-level generals who were unsuccessful or felt that they had suffered injustice, took away some of their soldiers. Their departure was not large, but there were more than 3,000 people together.

Bai Hu escaped from Baoding and brought out nearly 4,000 soldiers. As for the escaped imperial guards and later arrived, Zhu Cihuang had an army of more than 10,000 people. And most importantly, he brought many civil officials, which were enough to rely on them to form a small court.

After Emperor Yongle Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, he had always retained a complete official system in Nanjing. For example, the Six Ministers had one in Beijing and one in Nanjing. However, they had real power in Beijing, and only had virtual positions in Nanjing. But the situation was different at this moment. Except for a very small number of people in Beijing, most of them were trapped in the capital, and those virtual positions in Nanjing became real positions.

If Zhu Cilang went alone, he would inevitably fall into the control of the southern officials. But at this moment, he would at least have a certain degree of autonomy with those who escaped from the capital, and the large number of people who went from Shandong, which was also Zhu Cilang's opportunity. He now has more than 10,000 troops. If he could coordinate the interests of both officials well, he could protect half of the current Ming Dynasty. This was also the purpose that Zhou Xian asked them to choose at first.

But the situation on Zhou Xian's side was not that good, and the military strength did not change much, mainly due to the turmoil in the hearts of the people. In addition, the Shandong Governor was resigned and the Denglai Governor left. The two governors were all vacant. The prefect of the six Shandong prefectures went directly to two, including county officials and prefecture officials.

So many officials left, which directly caused the ruling system of Shandong to fall into chaos.

Of course, some people here are interested in the Ming Dynasty, thinking that Zhu Cilang was orthodox in the Ming Dynasty and left out of loyalty to the Ming Dynasty. But more people are because Shandong faced the trespassing army and may fall into a new round of war at any time. When they go to Nanjing, they feel at least psychologically safer.

Wan Ji, Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi and others looked for Zhou Xian several times on this matter and asked him to order the officials to be prohibited from leaving, but Zhou Xian ignored it completely. He just ordered them to recommend Juncai to replace the official positions vacant because of their departure. In this case, a group of new officials quickly added up.

Wan Ji was promoted to the governor of Shandong by Zhou Xian, and Wen Zhitong was appointed as the governor of Denglai. Chen Zilong was transferred from Zhoushan to serve as the prefect of Jinan, and Zhang Qi was promoted to the prefect of Laizhou. Xiao Leng and Han Chang were both sent to the temporary acting county magistrate around Jinan, and Hou Fangyu was temporarily kept by him.

Regarding Zhang Jiayu, Zhou Xian originally wanted to appoint him as the governor of Tai'an, but he suggested to Zhou Xian to lead the army. Zhou Xian thought about it and agreed, and asked him to go to Huai'an to serve as Liu Konghe's deputy.

Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Yu Chenglong and Chen Mingxia jointly formulated a set of rules for promoting officials. Zhou Xian, Wan Ji, Xia Yunyi, Gu Xianzheng and others participated in the discussion. Although the plan has not been finalized, everyone's intention is to determine whether the officials are promoted completely based on their achievements.

This achievement can be the balance of the fiscal, the amount of security, the number of criminal cases reduced, or the number of new colleges opened. The excellent are promoted, the poor are dismissed, and the middle ones are retained for future effectiveness. Through this method, the assessment is conducted every three years to eliminate mediocre officials as much as possible.

Huang Zongxi proposed a plan for finance, which was to set up a separate Ministry of Finance from the Governor's Office, and directly take over the finance from the province to the government and from the prefecture to the county. The income tax was divided into seven or three according to the total number, with the upper class accounting for seven and the lower class accounting for three, and each lower class accounting for three, and each lower class could freely control those three. In order to increase local autonomy, it also strengthens the Governor's Office's grasp of the overall finance.

Considering that the salaries of officials determined by Zhu Yuanzhang were too low, many honest officials could not survive on their salary. Huang Zongxi proposed to directly double the salaries of all officials, but canceled local silver supplies to eliminate corruption.
Chapter completed!