On December 2, the fourth year of Taiping, the Holy Emperor was buried in Zhongshan, Jinling, and was accompanied by hundreds of thousands of his subjects!

This announced the end of the Xuanping Era and ushered in the Taiping Era!

However, starting from the day when the Holy Emperor Li Xuan passed away, the Taiping years were not peaceful!

As soon as the funeral was over, the kings couldn't wait to leave. Many of them even hurriedly took planes to leave on the same day.

Air travel is not considered safe these days. Traveling by air requires courage and the price of taking risks!

In fact, the emperor Li Hongzhuo had no intention of embarrassing them. The funeral of the late emperor was a major event in the world, and nearly a billion people around the world were paying attention. If anything went wrong with the twenty-five vassal kings on this occasion, it would be worse than a direct rebellion by the vassal king.

serious.

Besides, these vassal kings all came alone, and none of them brought their legitimate heirs here. These vassal kings will probably die in Jinling, and their supporters in their fiefdoms will support the heir to succeed the king.

Sir, this will not improve the fierce conflicts between the mainland and overseas territories, and will even intensify them.

The vassal kings returned safely, which reassured many people, especially the generals in the military. In fact, many generals in the military were worried that the emperor would go on a rampage and kill twenty-five people.

The lords of the feudal lords would have them massacred, and even if nothing happened, they would be put under house arrest or something like that.

As a result, the overseas territories may start a collective rebellion!

What's more important is that many soldiers in the military are generals. They are also from overseas territories, which does not mean that everyone is from the mainland.

There is a conflict between the interests of the hometown and the overall interests of the empire, and many generals in the military are actually very contradictory.

And if everything is safe, that is naturally the best thing!

Wouldn't it be nice for everyone to continue to stay and have fun in the big family of the Empire?

But this kind of thing can be suppressed for a while, but not forever!

In the process of governance, Li Hongchuo made compromises, eased conflicts, and forcibly suppressed others, and maintained this huge global empire with anxiety.

But even he himself knows that it is getting more and more difficult to maintain it now.

Not because of external enemies, but because of internal conflicts!

In the twenty-fourth year of Taiping, twenty years after the death of the Holy Emperor, the empire once again experienced large-scale economic turmoil and a crisis of overcapacity.

Once the economic development slows down or even becomes a crisis, many contradictions that are usually hidden under the water will come to the surface.

In June of the 24th year of Taiping, in order to protest the continued decline in crude oil prices and the continued decline in the income of oil workers, a general strike by oil workers broke out in the Americas.

This strike soon spread. At first, people only protested against the drop in oil prices and the unemployment of oil workers, but the problem soon expanded: ordinary local people also joined the protest, demanding the localization of the oil industry!

During the years of continuous oil development, so much oil has been transported here, but the local area has not received much benefit. The eight major oil companies are exploiting the oil, and they pay taxes directly to Jinling.

Apart from some jobs in the oil industry, locals do not actually receive a dime of oil-related taxes.

Without taxation, there is no money to develop local infrastructure and improve the local environment. This makes the local area rich in treasures such as oil, but the local economy is still very backward.

Several major oil industries in the Americas supply about 20% of the empire's total oil production. However, the average income of people in the local capitals with major oil industries is only one-fourth of that of people in the native Jiangnan region.

Once arrived.

This is not only a problem in these oil-producing areas, but also widely occurs in other non-native areas. In the empire's global economic integration policy, these areas were positioned as agricultural and livestock production bases, and later at most they were added

Energy and mineral product supply place.

The economic model is single and income has not risen for a long time, but inflation is getting more and more serious.

When the empire's home areas have entered the so-called oval social structure, and most families are in the middle income and live a happy life, many regions represented by the Americas are still in a pyramid structure, and ordinary people

Low income.

After the dissatisfaction accumulated over time, and the economic crisis broke out, because the indigenous people in Africa were working hard to farm and mine, and the aliens were still not coming to the earth, the Tang Empire looked around and was surprised to find no external enemies to divert domestic conflicts...

…

When this kind of internal conflict of interests breaks out, its energy is astonishing, not to mention that there are many people behind it who are adding fuel to the flames!

As a result, the scale of strikes in the Americas became larger and larger, spreading rapidly from the oil industry to the mining industry. In the end, even local small and medium-sized farmers began to swear that they would rather pour milk into the Pacific than sell it to the mainland at a low price.

!

They are really dumping it, but it is not because they don’t want to sell to the local market, but because of the economic crisis, consumer deflation, and overcapacity of milk that cannot be sold. The shelf life of this product is short, and long-term storage costs are high, so it is actually more convenient for them to just dump the milk.

save money……

The reason that prompted them to target the local area is that as the cost of farming further increases, and at the same time, under the continuous impact of large-scale mechanized farms, agricultural and livestock products have remained low for a long time, the pressure on small and medium-sized farmers is increasing, and now the luck of growing food

Otherwise, they may lose money, which is intolerable to the majority of small farmers represented in the Americas.

When a strike demonstration of more than 200,000 people broke out in Xinjiangnan City, and the demonstration quickly got out of control and turned into vandalism, looting, and even armed confrontation, everyone knew that something big was going on!

Although the upper echelons of the empire responded immediately, on the one hand they adjusted economic policies to ease the conflict, and on the other hand they maintained high military pressure.

But the efforts of the upper echelons of the empire came to nothing when the gunfire sounded at Xinjiangnan Port!

At that time, the marchers attacked the Army's garrison in Xinjiangnan Prefecture. Gunfire broke out in the middle of the march. There were armed men in the crowd who opened fire on the vigilant defenders, and also used machine guns to fire. Then the defenders fired back fiercely!

On November 16, the 24th year of Taiping, a large-scale armed conflict broke out in Xinjiangnan Prefecture. Immediately afterwards, the local armed patrol announced their intervention in an attempt to prevent conflicts between illegally armed civilians and the army.

But only the next day, a large-scale melee broke out between the militants, patrol forces, and the army, resulting in a large number of military and civilian casualties.

After the incident broke out, the media in various provinces in the Americas and most other regions reported extensively, calling for severe punishment of the relevant generals who commanded the Army's armed suppression. Naturally, the Army ignored them.

The empire implements the separation of military and political affairs. The army/navy is its own system and has nothing to do with the local area. Therefore, the military basically does not listen to anyone except the emperor!

However, the situation did not calm down. Instead, it became more and more serious. Armed conflicts occurred frequently. In many areas of the Americas, garrison forces and militia forces, mainly locals, defected one after another, and began to raise calls for "independence" on a large scale.

Moreover, the idea of ​​independence is recognized by more and more people.

Although at this time, the Imperial Army and Navy still firmly secured transportation hubs and major cities, it has to be said that the Imperial Jinling has lost control of North America!

In the twenty-fifth year of Taiping, as the conflict further intensified, the battles between the local armed forces and the Imperial Army became more and more frequent. Although they were all seemingly small battles, there were not even any battles involving hundreds of people.

battle, but this small-scale attack battle made the Imperial Army very uncomfortable.

Railways were blown up every three days, highway bridges were also blown up, and patrols were frequently attacked with cold guns!

In just one year after the turmoil in North America, the Imperial Army had killed more than 2,000 people and injured 7,000 to 8,000 people in its operations to suppress illegal armed rebels in the Americas. The total number of casualties exceeded 10,000.

The loss of personnel is nothing, what really gives the empire’s top brass a headache is the huge military expenditure!

In order to quell the unrest in North America, the empire has spent more than one billion yuan in total, and there is no end in sight to the huge military spending.

Because this was only a year, and the local rebels did not form a large-scale organized resistance, but only carried out frequent cold-blooded attacks, such a huge military expenditure and personnel losses were spent.

If this subsequent suppression continues, it may cost billions or even tens of billions to stop it, and there will probably be a lot of casualties.

After all, although the current resistance in the Americas is sporadic and unorganized, everyone knows that they are not idle. In many places, they are secretly recruiting people and setting up factories to produce weapons.

This has to make the empire's top officials examine whether it is worth spending such a high price to maintain direct rule in the Americas?

Can't we change the approach, for example, don't they want to be independent? Let them be independent, and then we can carry out a comprehensive technological blockade on them openly. After the technology is blocked, if they still want to develop industry, let's just dream about it.

If that doesn't work, we can still take military strikes.

When they became independent, they completely broke up with each other. At that time, the empire's huge military power no longer had to tie up their hands and feet to suppress the rebellion. If they were unhappy, they could just bombard their cities and blow up their factories.

Such purely military operations are much more cost-effective than public security operations.

Under such circumstances, if the overseas territories can still develop their industries, the empire's senior officials will have to give them a big thumbs up.

When industry failed to develop, they had to continue to serve as the empire's local supplier of agricultural and livestock products and a dumping ground for civilian industry.

At the same time, the empire itself can not only drop the huge burden of suppressing military expenditures, but also bring more economic benefits to the empire.

I have to say that this idea also has a certain appeal.

The unrest in the Americas is too serious. It would be very expensive to suppress it. The most important thing is that this kind of sporadic resistance among the people cannot be completely suppressed. You can't kill everyone...

After all, although those are overseas territories, the people there are also people from the Tang Dynasty.

We are all from the Tang Dynasty, why can't we live a peaceful life while we have to fight to the death?

This is also the view of many people in the Tang Dynasty and even the mainstream class. They have no interest in war or anything like that.

Many people actually don't pay much attention to whether America is independent. Many people even think that since they are fighting for independence every day, they might as well just let them be independent, and then completely block them and let them return to the ancient times overnight. As for their future life and death,

None of our business...

There are even some radical young people clamoring to expel the American traitors from the empire and let them eat shit!

When more and more people think this way, and there is a lot of pressure, the empire's local side gradually begins to waver in its policy of firmly maintaining the global empire.

In the 28th year of Taiping, after more than four years of continuous turmoil in North America, turmoil also occurred in South America and Europe, with strikes and conflicts occurring frequently.

The Imperial Army had to once again expand its troops and increase its local garrison to maintain the situation.

However, at this time, the empire was already quite dissatisfied with the continued military expansion to maintain the global situation. Even the military was very dissatisfied with the current situation.

After all, the troublemakers were also people from the Tang Dynasty, and they were not serious rebels. Many of them were locals. They went about their daily lives normally. If there was any activity, they would contact one or two, use outdated rifles to carry out sneak attacks, and shoot a few cold shots.

After shooting and hiding the gun, you went home and became a good citizen. Do you really dare to kill all the locals?

Instead of fighting, the militants carried out various attacks, which made the military extremely passive in the past four years.

The military has extremely powerful armed forces, but it can't find a place to exert its strength. It also suffers various casualties every year...

The military itself is unhappy, and the civilian system is even more unhappy.
To be continued...