On December 4th, a group of hundreds of civil and military ministers led by Qian Mengjiu, a great scholar of the Tang Dynasty, the minister on duty in the imperial study room, and the minister of the Ministry of War, traveled through several provinces and finally successfully arrived at Jinling City.
At this time, Jinling City is already under the strictest military control!
In fact, not only Jinling City, but the entire Jiangnan region and many cities including Zhejiang are currently under military control. Even cities that are not under military control have implemented extremely strict martial law measures.
And all this is to avoid unrest in Jiangnan.
Although in the past, the Tang Dynasty King would impose military control on a certain place for a period of time after capturing a place, but the duration generally did not last too long. At most, it was only the first few days, and the management rights would soon be taken away.
Completely handed over to the officials of the civil affairs department, the military will only assist in suppressing the situation in the city, but generally does not intervene in management.
But in the Jiangnan region, this is an exception. Nowadays, many cities, including Chizhou Prefecture, which was the first to be captured, are under military control.
This is because the Tang Army's strategic advancement in Jiangnan was too fast. Although it started to march in October, it basically took control of the situation by November. By November, it had basically entered
The closing stage.
The military's advance was too fast, which resulted in the cabinet having no time to take over a large number of jurisdictions.
Based on the experience of previous years, the cabinet believes that even if the Jiangnan strategy follows the trend, the large-scale war should continue until January or February next year. The cabinet will gradually transfer officials from other places and follow the rear of the army to various places in Jiangnan.
However, the military's advance was too fast, and almost the entire Jiangnan was captured in just over a month. This time was not even enough for officials selected by the Ministry of Civil Affairs to move from their original areas to Jiangnan.
In desperation, on the one hand, the cabinet began to mobilize a large number of officials from various places and quickly stationed them in various places in the south of the Yangtze River. On the other hand, it directly recruited officials from the Imperial College and many colleges and universities.
To fill a large number of vacancies after redeployment.
However, even so, the shortage of officials in the Tang Dynasty was still very large. This was mainly due to the fact that although Jiangnan was not a big place, it was a typical wealthy place with a large population, and the jurisdictions of prefectures and counties were not included.
If it is too big, more officials will be needed.
Because there is a serious shortage of officials, it is not easy to fill the large number of vacancies after a large number of officials are transferred from other existing provinces.
Of course, the shortage of officials is only temporary. Give the cabinet a few months of buffer time and it can be solved immediately. It is not easy to find people to serve as officials these days. What the cabinet lacks is just the selection of talents and the dispatch of officials to their posts.
It’s just time.
Before the officials took office, in order to avoid unrest in various parts of Jiangnan, the military inevitably took on responsibilities that did not originally belong to them and continued to maintain high-pressure military control in various parts of Jiangnan.
The coordination between the cabinet and the military is that the cabinet does not expect the military to do anything. It only requires the military to maintain the stability of Jiangnan. It is best to keep it as it is, and then wait for the officials sent by the cabinet to take over one by one.
Therefore, the military control of the Second Army and the Third Army in South Zhili and Zhejiang is also different from other places. The most stringent martial law policy was first implemented. Unless special permission is given, no one is allowed to enter or leave the city.
This is to avoid large-scale population movements, which may cause unrest!
Secondly, another very important measure is that the military, at the request of the cabinet, strongly controls the price of food in various places. Food prices must fluctuate within the range specified by the cabinet. It will not work if it is too low, and it will not work if it is too high.
Any grain dealer must be open to selling grain to the outside world. As for whether they hide it or not sell it? It doesn't matter. Most of their grain warehouses are under military control. If you don't want to, you must be willing.
From November to October, Jiangnan experienced a strange calm after the war, and this calm also allowed Jiangnan, which had just experienced the war, to quickly return to calm, without the large-scale turmoil that the Tang Dynasty was most worried about.
However, this calm was broken after Qian Mengjiu arrived in Jinling with more than a hundred civil and military ministers.
After Qian Mengjiu arrived in Jinling, he directly announced the imperial decree he had brought, changing the name of Yingtian Mansion to Chengtian Mansion, setting up the capital, and announced that the Holy Emperor would move to the capital next year.
Although this news had been announced in the previous Tang Dynasty newspaper, Qian Mengjiu directly announced it publicly in front of many people after arriving at Jinling City, which finally made many local people believe that the fake Tang Dynasty was not
, the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty is really coming to Jinling.
At the same time, Qian Mengjiu also followed the order and began to deal with the numerous demotions from the Ming Dynasty in Jinling City and Jiangnan prefectures. This time, the Tang Dynasty accepted a lot of demotions from the Ming Dynasty.
There are more than a hundred officials wearing red robes above the fourth rank, and there are even more officials below the fourth rank.
And these demoted officials will not be dealt with uniformly. The first is those officials who surrendered. They are all people who are willing to continue serving the Tang Dynasty. Although most of these people are middle and low-level officials, there are a lot of them. In most cases,
Under the current situation, these officials are temporarily retained in office, and they are mainly responsible for maintaining the current stability of the Jiangnan region.
After the officials sent by the cabinet arrive, these surrendered officials will be dealt with separately, and most of them will be assigned to other posts. However, the official title can basically be kept, and the glory and wealth can also be kept.
There were also some who had no choice but to surrender when the city was broken. These were the real surrendering officials, and they would also be identified. Officials who were willing to surrender to the Tang Dynasty were temporarily demoted, while those who were unwilling to surrender were temporarily imprisoned.
There are also some who did not intend to surrender, but were captured while escaping or hiding. There are also some who were stubborn and unwilling to surrender and were captured in failure. There is nothing to say about these people. If the circumstances are serious, they are usually killed on the spot.
The remaining ones whose cases are not very serious are currently being detained, and their property has begun to be confiscated!
However, the above situations are all targeted at middle and low-level officials, while those at senior levels are often dealt with on an individual basis.
For example, Qian Qingsong, the Minister of Household Affairs in Nanjing, and Zhou Shu, the Minister of Rites, who led the soldiers and civilians to surrender from Jinling City in the former Ming Dynasty, although these two people were brought to Nanjing after failing in the power struggle of the Ming Dynasty, they are still serious.
As an important official in the government, the influence is very great.
In addition, there is a very special person, that is Duke Wei of Ming Dynasty
Therefore, the way to deal with them cannot be handled in the usual way, but must be dealt with on a special basis. In principle, it is to make them surrender as openly as possible.
Gain huge political influence from this!
However, when officials reach this level, you can make them surrender, but it is still relatively difficult to make them surrender openly.
After Qian Mengjiu arrived at Jinling City, he took time to visit these three people and tried to persuade them, but the effect was not good.
Although they were originally forced to surrender due to the undefendable defense of Jinling City, they wanted to openly declare their surrender to the Tang Dynasty. Although there was such a possibility, people would not agree to it just by saying a few words.
As one of the three highest-ranking surrendered officials, the treatment of Zhou Shu, the Minister of Rites of Nanjing in the former Ming Dynasty, was naturally not comparable to that of other demoted officials. When the Second Army entered the city, Li Chunjing also met this person, but Li Chunjing
Chunjing was not very interested in these former Ming officials, so he dismissed them after a few casual conversations.
For more than a month that followed, he was placed in an exquisite mansion, and next door to him were stationed several other high-ranking demoted officials. Considering that these people basically had nothing to do with their clothes,
Characters who are hungry for food will probably starve to death if they are locked in a room alone, so they are allowed to bring a small number of slaves.
On this day, Zhou Shu climbed to the second floor of the attic on the rockery in the house, leaned against the window and read a book. This book was not the traditional Four Books and Five Classics, but a new book that had been passed down from the Pseudo-Tang Dynasty in recent years.
It is called "The Records of the Western Kingdoms" and tells the story of a scholar who took a sea ship from Guangzhou and traveled tens of thousands of miles to travel to the Western Kingdoms. Although most of the content in it is hearsay, it is a true introduction.
Less of the geography and customs of Southeast Asia and European countries.
Today, he happened to read an article about Spain. Regarding what was said above, Spain was able to colonize a large number of lands tens of thousands of miles away, including the Americas, with just a few million people, and established such a huge empire that the sun never sets.
He was curious, and when he saw that the Spanish Armada had hundreds of large ships and thousands of cannons, he was even more astonished.
However, when he saw that Spain had discovered countless gold and silver in the distant American colonies and transported them back ship by ship, he couldn't help but sigh: "No wonder a small country can be so desperate for military support."
, it turns out that it is supported by gold and silver from America and other places!”
After reading, he put down the book. He had read several books like this recently. Well, they were all published by Datang Royal Publishing House. The more he read these books, the more suspicious he became.
It’s not that I doubt whether what is said in the book is true or false, but that I doubt what I have learned in the past few decades!
This world is far bigger than I thought before. According to these books, although Kyushu is big, it is only a small piece of the earth. There is a large amount of land outside China, and it is quite large.
Many places are either extremely fertile or filled with gold, silver, copper and iron.
How could those natives and Western barbarians steal such a God-given land?
Whenever this happens, he deeply agrees with the words of his ancestors: Is the whole world the land of kings?
These extremely fertile and resource-rich lands belong to the emperor and China!
Just when he was engrossed in reading, he suddenly frowned slightly, then stood up and walked to the window. The scenery outside the window had not changed much from a month ago. There were still the same old trees, but there were bursts of noise coming from outside.
There was a lot of noise, and there seemed to be a lot of people outside.
"Hongfu!" Zhou Shu put down the book and shouted softly.
Suddenly, an elderly servant walked in from outside: "Master!"
"Why is it so noisy outside? Go and take a look. If there are people waiting around, let them leave!" After Zhou Shu said this, he picked up the book again and started reading. However, the noise outside was still there, but it made him feel uncomfortable.