Li Xuan, who immediately dispatched troops to the disaster area, also knew that although maintaining high military pressure was necessary to deal with civil unrest, it was not a means to prevent civil unrest.
The best way to prevent civil unrest is to let them live and work in peace and contentment, and the last thing is to keep the people hungry!
Since ancient times, the Chinese nation has been characterized by both docility and violence!
As long as they have a mouthful of food to eat, the people will not rebel. Their endurance is amazing and they are extremely docile.
But when they have no food and are about to starve to death, they will raise a flag to rebel!
Shouting slogans such as Wang Xiangjun Hou Ning has the guts to rebel!
Li Xuan himself was a rebel, so he was naturally more aware of this kind of thing, so as soon as he heard that the typhoon was coming and suffered heavy losses, he immediately prepared with both hands, maintaining high military pressure to prevent any accidents. In addition, Li Xuan
He also immediately asked the cabinet to organize disaster relief.
Several local reserve granaries were opened to store grain, and grain was also urgently transferred from other places to resettle the victims as quickly as possible, so as not to leave the people without enough food and clothing and to exchange food for food.
In that case, even a high-pressure military defense cannot stop waves of civil unrest!
As for Li Xuan himself, he paid attention to the disaster every day. As soon as a report from the disaster area was sent, he would review it personally as soon as possible.
But despite all precautions, something went wrong!
On June 12, Gaozhou Prefecture issued an urgent report from Wubaili. Thousands of ignorant people were seduced by a few local gentry into attacking the local town government office. After breaking through the town government office, they robbed the grain that the government government used to provide relief to the people.
At the same time, Ningchuan Town in Gaozhou was in chaos.
Ningchuan Town, which was reformed from Ningchuan Suoli during the Ming Dynasty, is a coastal town. Because it is a coastal town, it is also the most severely affected when typhoons hit.
Strong winds blew down many houses, and heavy rainfall directly flooded a large amount of farmland. At the beginning, local town officials and village chiefs of subordinate villages were still trying to maintain the situation and began to rescue themselves.
But soon a message came out, saying that the relief grains removed by the imperial court had been embezzled by corrupt officials. This message spread from ten to ten, and soon people went to the town government office to ask for an explanation, and then the crowd of people watching became more and more popular.
It came more and more, and then I didn’t know why I became restless.
These people began to attack the town government office. The mayor of Ningcun Town was killed on the spot by the angry people in the chaos. Officials from several other town government offices and more than a dozen patrol policemen were also killed or injured.
The people were at a loss after looting the grain and other property originally used for disaster relief. Then a few squires who were quite prestigious in the local area took the initiative to stand up and said that if the government would not give them a way to survive, they might as well just rebel.
After stabilizing a group of rioters, several leaders in the town government secretly met a man wearing ordinary people's clothes, and his words were quite respectful!
After half a day, these gentry came out and continued northward with the rebels. They were going to capture the county seat and rob the food there!
And at this moment, the Second Battalion of the Second Mixed Regiment of the Datang Army had also completed its emergency assembly, and all personnel were dispatched to Ningchuan Town to suppress the rebellion.
In the afternoon, these two groups of people met on the way!
The result was naturally without any surprises. Without waiting for the second battalion to launch a charge, after just a few rounds of volleys, the two thousand or so refugees were dispersed!
In the evening of the next day, Li Xuan received a battle report from the Army's Second Mixed Regiment, saying that the regiment's second battalion had successfully defeated the Ningchuan Zhenliu bandits. At the same time, the regiment had urgently dispatched the first battalion to the local area to strengthen the response.
local control.
Li Xuan frowned when he saw the report from Gaozhou Mansion!
Then he personally issued an order, strictly ordering the Second Mixed Regiment to control the situation in Gaozhou Prefecture, and at the same time ordered the Sixth Infantry Division to dispatch a regiment to the western region to cooperate with the Second Mixed Regiment to suppress the local area!
At the same time, an order was sent to the Supervisory Office and the Patrol Department to strictly investigate the underlying reasons behind the civil unrest. Why did the civil unrest break out so quickly when the imperial court had already begun disaster relief and there was no large-scale famine!
Not only did the Inspectorate and the Patrol Department receive the order, but spies from the Investigation and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy also began to go deep into the local area to investigate the whole story.
Although the second mixed group was very powerful and it only took one day to defeat the gathered refugees, this made Li Xuan see a problem.
Li Xuan didn't believe that the victims would rebel for no reason!
There must be a reason behind this.
The reason soon came out, and there was not just one reason, but several!
The Survey and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy took the lead in reporting the survey results: civil unrest occurred mainly due to two reasons:
First of all, the first one is that there were rumors in the local area that the government was seizing disaster relief food, because it was not just a rumor, but had a certain element of truth. Although the Gaozhou Prefecture magistrate began to provide disaster relief as soon as possible, he opened warehouses to release food.
Only a small part of the grain was distributed to various places for disaster relief, but most of it was purchased by those grain merchants even at a price lower than the market price, and then resold by these grain merchants at a high price!
After careful investigation, it was discovered that the Gaozhou Prefect actually owned shares in many local grain merchants, and one of the grain shops was simply owned by a family member of the Gaozhou Prefect.
Another reason is that several local gentry were dissatisfied with the Tang Dynasty through their daily remarks, and according to the accounts of several captured gentry, someone asked them to incite the people to rebel.
After an investigation, it was discovered that the person who incited these gentry was actually an official from the former Ming Dynasty. After an urgent interrogation, this person said that he had received a messenger from the pseudo-Ming Dynasty and asked him to incite the local gentry to incite the people to rebel.
After finding out the truth of the matter, Li Xuan immediately turned into a frightened face and personally ordered: The magistrate of Gaozhou Prefecture would confiscate their homes and exterminate their clans, and other officials involved in the grain business affairs would be killed and sentenced as they should be.
As for the dozen or so grain merchants who took the opportunity to rush to buy grain and make shady money, there was nothing to say. They all ransacked their homes and exterminated their families.
The few gentry who encouraged the victims, as well as the former Ming officials who became officials, all confiscated their homes and exterminated their clans.
For a time, people were killed in Gaozhou. More than a dozen of the first offenders were sentenced to death, more than two hundred accomplices were sentenced to death, and more than a thousand others were sentenced to various years of imprisonment. All of these people will be sent to prison.
Each mining area.
The Gaozhou case made Li Xuan very angry, otherwise he would not have dealt with it so harshly.
In the past, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou were not without rebellions. Some rebellions would break out every year, but most of these were armed resistance to taxes, or simply landlords and gentry who wanted to be puppet people and tried to fight against the Tang Dynasty.
But this time, officials were involved.
If the Gaozhou magistrate had not been greedy and perverted the law, those gentry would not have had enough excuses to incite the victims!
Natural disasters are terrible, but man-made disasters are even more terrible!
So this time, Li Xuan wanted to use heavy rituals in troubled times to tell the officials of the Tang Dynasty and the gentry living under the rule of the Tang Dynasty: all of you should be treated honestly by me, and whoever dares to take the lead will be punished by the nine tribes!
This case is used as a warning to those who come after us!
In order to avoid further unrest in Gaozhou, Li Xuan even dispatched the minister on duty in the Imperial Study Room, Qian Mengjiu, to personally lead a team to the residential area to handle follow-up disaster relief matters.
At the same time, many senior officials of the Supervisory Council were directly dismissed. The reason is very simple: the supervision of officials is ineffective!
The Investigation and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy had merits and demerits in this matter. The merits were due to the quick investigation and the truth of the matter was found, but the fault was because the investigation and statistics section of the Hanlin Academy was responsible for preventing spies, especially puppet spies.
Own job.
But this time, it turned out that fake Ming envoys sneaked in, and they still carried official documents and directed fake Ming officials to incite civil unrest.
Therefore, Li Xuan also gave rewards and punishments to the Investigation and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy. The person in charge of the investigation was promoted, but the official in charge of counterintelligence was removed.
Then Li Xuan increased the funding for the Investigation and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy, asking them to send more manpower to various places to catch false spies, and at the same time strengthen the monitoring and processing capabilities of major and important cases.
How did Li Zicheng and other militiamen rise in the late Ming Dynasty? Many people will talk about the Little Ice Age, but in fact natural disasters are only one of the factors, not even the main factor. The most important factor is man-made disasters!
In the late Ming Dynasty, there was every acre of land in the world, and the rich and powerful had eight percent of it.
Moreover, the powerful clan members and gentry did not pay taxes, so the burden of the entire dynasty fell on the poor!
Among the clan gentry in the late Ming Dynasty, if you kill one by one, you will never kill the wrong one. If you kill them all, the Ming Dynasty will be saved!
It's a pity that the Zhu family clan is the largest landowner in the Ming Dynasty. It's impossible for them to commit suicide. If you kill them all, the world will no longer be called the Ming Dynasty.
As the saying goes, we should learn from history, but Li Xuan was very vigilant about this. He did not allow land annexation, and tax exemption for gentry was even more unacceptable!
Therefore, all the core internal affairs of the Tang Dynasty established by Li Xuan were built around "taxation". The gentry all paid the grain and worked as errands, and collected commercial taxes. This is the core of the current tax system of the Tang Dynasty.
It was also the core of the Tang Dynasty.
At the same time, many messy exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes were abolished. There was only one tax levied on farmers, which was the agricultural tax levied according to the number of acres of land. Other than that, there was no tax.
At the same time, in order to curb land annexation, he developed industry and commerce and opened up maritime trade. This was to guide the landowners to invest their money in industry and commerce instead of buying land whenever they had money.
At the same time, officials are not allowed to corrupt their governance!
In the future of the Tang Dynasty, ninety-nine out of a hundred officials may be corrupt, but Li Xuan does not allow that to happen now!
After the Gaozhou case, Li Xuan felt that it was time to promote other more profound reform measures!
Although the current Tang Dynasty is different from the traditional feudal dynasty in all aspects, Li Xuan feels that it is still not enough!