I saw a group of strong men wearing pointed hats, white leather boots, brown clothes and small ribbons, swarming in. When they saw the maids and servants in the yard, someone immediately went over, with a knife in their hand, and ordered them to kneel down.
, more people came towards the door.
Xu Wenjue naturally recognized these people. Yesterday they were still in the Linhuai Marquis Mansion, so why did they come to the Duke of Wei's Mansion today?
It would have been fine if it was someone else, but now it was Fanzi who barged in so unscrupulously. He suddenly lost his confidence and shouted with anger: "What are you going to do? Do you know that this is the Duke of Wei's mansion?"
What a joke, how could the people from the East and West Factory not know where this is?
When the head waiter saw him appearing at the door of the room, he immediately rushed to his door, put a knife on his neck, and then pressed hard, forcing Xu Wenjue to kneel to the ground. Then, he
Then he sneered and said: "Why are you pretending? You have committed a crime!"
The other fans continued to crowd into the house and soon took control of it. Even Wei Guogong Xu Hongji was pulled off the bed by the fans and fell to his knees. Of course, he could no longer kneel on his own.
There were two men holding him by the shoulders and holding him back.
Then, I saw Wang Dehua, the admiral of Dongchang, walking in slowly with a figure-footed step.
He snatched it from Wang Chengen when he raided the Duke of Wei's mansion. His purpose was very simple, to show his attitude to Emperor Chongzhen. He was the emperor's sword!
"How dare you do this?" Xu Wenjue had already shouted, "My father is seriously ill. If something happens to him, which of you can bear this responsibility?"
Hearing this, Wang Dehua lowered his head and glanced at Xu Hongji, who was indeed only half alive, but he didn't care at all. He just said lightly: "If a country's worm and rebel dies like this, it will be an advantage for you.
What else do you want?”
Hearing this, Xu Wenjue was even more shocked, but this was definitely not the time to soften, so he had no choice but to continue shouting sternly: "Don't slander anyone and dare to slander us, you are not afraid of the whole of Nanjing, no, no, the honor of the entire Ming Dynasty.
Are you going to attack your Dongchang group?"
"Haha, don't you count the things you have done?" After hearing this, Wang Dehua turned around and walked in front of him, looked down at him and said, "It's not just you, Duke of Wei, but all the nobles who have conspired to rebel and colluded with the traitors.
, the treatment is the same today, are you surprised or not?"
As soon as he finished speaking, Xu Wenjue was stunned.
The nobles in Nanjing City are all related to the founding heroes. A large number of them are about to be arrested. How many people are needed?
This is simply unimaginable!
At this moment, I suddenly heard a maid shouting in a frightened voice: "Master, Master, Master..."
Everyone who heard the sound turned around and saw Xu Hongji, who was kneeling there with his shoulders hung by two fans, with his head hanging down.
A fan saw him, stepped forward to check, and then reported to Wang Dehua with a stern expression: "I'm out of gas!"
When Xu Wenjue heard this, he immediately cried: "Okay, you killed my father and the Duke of Wei in the Ming Dynasty. You..."
"Shut up!" Wang Dehua immediately shouted, causing Xu Wenjue to open his mouth immediately, but he did not dare to make a sound.
To be honest, Wang Dehua didn't arrive first, so it felt a bit unlucky for an old guy like Xu Hongji to die at this time.
But then he thought about it, he had no way out in the first place. Now that he had taken action, why should he care about these things?
Thinking of this, Wang Dehua sneered and said: "This old guy Xu Hongji, when he heard that his crime was exposed, he committed suicide in fear of crime. He was really advantaged!"
After he finished speaking, he didn't want to be verbose and immediately ordered: "Take all the prisoners away and search the house!"
After hearing this, his men immediately obeyed the order. Anyway, they were all familiar with the matter of ransacking homes, and there was no need for Wang Dehua to give more orders.
At the same time, people were being arrested everywhere in Nanjing, and they were all arresting high-ranking nobles. The East-West Factory was short of manpower, so the army was assisting.
All the prisoners were taken to the army camp in the city. There was also a change of defense here. They were troops transferred from outside the city by Wang Dehua.
Such a big movement naturally attracted the attention of all Nanjing people.
For a moment, everyone was shocked.
"Did you see that Duke Wei's mansion was raided by Dongchang?"
"Yesterday it was the Linhuai Marquis' Mansion, and today it is the Duke of Wei's Mansion. What big thing happened?"
"It's not just these two families. I heard that most of the other nobles in the city have also been confiscated!"
"The news coming from the Yamen is said to be related to secretly selling the steam engine blueprints to the Western Yi, but isn't this too extensive?"
"No, it's surprising that so many nobles have been confiscated. How many of our Ming Dynasty nobles are left?"
"Could it be that the guy above is out of money again?"
"Isn't this possible? Today's national treasury income is said to be tens of millions a year, which is completely different from before. How can there be a shortage of money?"
"Isn't there already a war in Liaodong? In the past, for the war in Liaodong, Liaoning salaries were collected. Could it be that the emperor did not want to collect salaries from us people, so he asked these nobles to pay?"
"Look what you said, if I ask Xun Gui to pay, do I need to have my house searched for a crime?"
"If you don't want to confiscate your home, how much do you think these nobles will pay? One hundred taels or one thousand taels, it's not even enough to squeeze through your teeth, right?"
"That's true. Who is willing to spend money outside? Even these distinguished nobles have never seen them donate money to the imperial court in the past few years!"
"..."
Emperor Chongzhen probably didn't hear these comments, otherwise he would definitely cry out for injustice. This time, the house was not ransacked for money!
Most of the nobles in Nanjing have been there since the founding of the People's Republic of China. After more than 280 years, their influence has long been intertwined and their disciples have countless old friends.
After being confused at first, I quickly came to my senses.
These people, who are from all walks of life and are related to nobles, are usually in the military. On weekdays, they form a huge interest group with nobles as the core.
It can be said that nobles are their backers and their big trees. Generally speaking, they definitely don't want their backers to fall.
Therefore, these people immediately took action to try to rescue their patron.
If it were in troubled times, these people might use force.
However, it is already the end of the 20th year of Chongzhen. The elites of the imperial court have swept across the world, not only quelled the bandits, but also sent troops to annihilate several small foreign countries. They have also accumulated heavy troops in the north, preparing to destroy the rebels who have been ravaging Liaodong for many years.
Under such a powerful military power, no one dared to risk their lives and resort to rebellion to rescue their backers.
After all, they are not stupid, and their backers want to save them, but if they are asked to risk their lives, their whole family, or even their entire clan, few people will do it.
What most of them do is actually to save people in a way that is under the rules of the court, and even if they fail, it will not affect them too much.
However, this method also has advantages, that is, there are more people who are willing to do this, which is the so-called power of crowds. For a while, public opinion in Nanjing quickly exploded.
The focus of this public opinion is that although secretly selling the steam engine blueprints to Xiyi, it really harmed the interests of the Ming Dynasty and allowed Xiyi to get such a useful thing as the steam engine for nothing. This must be punished.
However, no matter how hard the punishment is, it won't be enough to confiscate the homes of most of the nobles in Nanjing, right? There are even rumors that Dongchang even forced Wei Guogong to death.
Even ordinary people who mainly eat melons, under this kind of public opinion, define things like arresting and confiscating noble family members in Dongxi Factory as unreasonable, arrogant and domineering.
Of course, the participation of civil servants is indispensable. For them, even if the imperial court is becoming more and more powerful, it does not prevent them from getting used to the political correctness of factory guards.
Some Qingliu people in Nanjing even started shouting that they wanted to write a letter to impeach the factory guards for their arrogance.
Among them, there are also civil servants with very good reputations, such as Shi Kefa.
At this time, Shi Kefa was the censor of Zuodu of the Nanjing Metropolitan Procuratorate. He had no real power, but had a good reputation. With his participation, the Nanjing officialdom was really shouting about beating and killing the East and West Factory.
However, here in Nanjing, those who hold great power are the Nanjing garrison eunuchs and Nanjing garrison, all of whom are close associates of Emperor Chongzhen.
No matter how fierce these people shouted, at most they would only be in the public opinion field, but no one dared to attack the military camp, and they could not do anything about the East-West Factory.
As time passed, memorials to impeach the East-West Factory and to express injustice for the nobles of Nanjing began to fly to the capital like snowflakes; but at the same time, as the interrogation progressed in the military camp, some news began to spread.
Those who were well-informed immediately stopped their activities as soon as they heard the news. Even some who were rushing in front suddenly changed their attitude 180 degrees, from directly complaining about the injustice of those nobles to
Changed to: Even if you are a distinguished person, you must abide by the law!
This sudden change caught many people off guard. Those with a keen sense of smell immediately began to inquire about the news, and soon after, most of the news spread.
Until this time, people here in Nanjing finally knew that the East-West Factory's arrest of so many Nanjing nobles was not only about secretly selling the steam engine blueprints to Xiyi, but also about colluding with bandits and murdering the Jinyi Guardsmen.
Waiting for serious crimes.
No one would believe that these Nanjing nobles were really capable of treason, but considering the original background, when Ma Shiying wanted to rectify the place, the biggest harm would be these Nanjing hereditary nobles, who would do such a thing for their benefit.
Come on, it’s not incomprehensible.
What happened back then was actually only a few years ago, and most people have never forgotten what happened back then.