When Zhang Mingbin and his men were digging three feet into the ground to search for Tu Guobao, this guy had already taken advantage of the chaos and escaped from Suzhou City. When Jinwu's cavalry stormed into Fuya, Tu Guobao was admiring his collection in the secret room in the backyard.
Although he has only been governor of Jiangning for a few months, Tu Guobao has already taken the opportunity to amass a lot of money.
A rogue from the north of Tu Guobao, who was the most wealthy man. He sold illegal salt in his early years, and later joined Taihu Lake as a water bandit. He was then recruited into the army, and then climbed up the ranks step by step by suppressing the peasant army. Later, he accepted Hong Chengchou's letter of surrender and surrendered to the Qing Dynasty.
Southern Expedition.
But whether he was a salt smuggler or a water thief before, or he became an official soldier of the Ming Dynasty to suppress the peasant army, or after surrendering to the Qing Dynasty, he turned around and fought against the Ming army to suppress the gentry and common people in Jiangnan. This person is always poisoning the people wherever he goes.
Soldiers have always had the worst military discipline and like to plunder the most. Some unwritten rules have even been formed, such as killing good men and taking credit, and taking women and selling them. Everywhere they go, they must extort local wealthy households.
If you give him enough money, he will accuse the other party of collaborating with the enemy, and then kill people and confiscate their homes.
After Tu Guobao became the governor of Jiangning, he became even more aggressive. He not only instigated his nephew Yang Guohai, Zhongjun Zou Xixiang and other confidants to falsely accuse wealthy families of collaborating with the enemy in order to extort money, but also let them secretly smuggle salt, saltpeter, arms, etc. for profit.
In addition, they often increase taxes and apportionments under clever pretexts under the guise of military supplies.
Not only that, in the name of providing relief, he secretly loaned money and even exterminated households, occupying ownerless houses, fields, etc. But in fact, many people just fled because of the war, but Tu Guobao wanted to take away the people as long as no one was at home.
People's houses, land, shops, and even merchants' grain, oil, cloth, and other items were confiscated.
In the name of providing relief, they secretly engaged in loan sharking, and in the name of adopting orphans, they took possession of all the land, houses and other properties of the orphans' families. It can be said to be extremely greedy.
Today, in the name of building more barracks, he paid taxes per cent in Jiangning and collected tens of thousands of taels of silver. Tomorrow, he excessively granted subordinate servants more than the quota and raked in thousands of taels of silver.
Even when it came to transporting grain from the common people's land, he would look for opportunities to be greedy, using the excuse that it was hard for the common people to transport the people, so he changed it to official transport, and then took the opportunity to apportion the freight on a per-acre basis, and made a huge fortune from it.
There were originally many righteous fields in various prefectures in the south of the Yangtze River, and the income was used to support the elderly and the young. However, Tu Guobao ordered grain to be collected from these righteous fields, and the proceeds were used to support the army. In fact, most of them went into his pocket. Only Huating
The county has more than 48,000 acres of charity land. Tu Guobao collects one stone per mu, so it has collected nearly 50,000 stone.
Then it became even more common to accuse wealthy people of being thieves and gentry to be collaborators with the enemy.
He often sent his troops to the countryside to suppress bandits and capture thieves, but they often killed good people and took credit for their merits, and committed plunder.
He had been governor of Jiangning for only a few months, but Tu Guobao had already accumulated a large amount of money. In addition to giving part to his confidants and generals, and using part to support his family and reward soldiers, he kept most of it by himself and hid it all in this secret room.
Boxes of silver ingots melted into ingots.
In order to facilitate transportation and storage, he even converted a lot of money into gold and cast it into gold bricks and gold bars.
When Zhang Mingbin rushed into Fuya, Tu Guobao was depositing more than 10,000 taels of silver he had recently collected into a secret room, looking at the gold and silver with a greedy and proud smile.
Precisely because of this, he was lucky enough to escape when Jinwu's cavalry stormed into the Yamen.
Hearing the commotion outside, he sent his servants to investigate carefully, and learned that the Ming army had disguised itself as a green camp and entered Suzhou City. Tu Guobao was also frightened.
He sat slumped on the silver box, and after palpitating for a while, he decisively changed into common people's clothes, and escaped from the secret passage with his servants. This secret room was where he hid his silver, and it was directly connected to a room outside Fu Yamen.
It is located in a house. This is also the escape route prepared by Tu Guobao in advance. It also facilitates the daily entry and exit of gold and silver to avoid attracting attention.
At this time, he successfully helped him escape from the government office, and then under the cover of night, while the city was still in chaos, he disguised himself as ordinary people and took a few servants with him to quickly escape to another secret stronghold, which was close to the city wall.
, is also the cover of a secret passage, from here you can directly escape from the city through the secret passage.
Tu Guobao is worthy of being an old man. Although he has reached the rank of governor, he still behaves a bit like he did when he was a thief and a bandit. He always leaves a way out.
After escaping from the city, he carefully evaded it and first ran to a house on the outskirts of the city, where he had several servants and a dozen fast horses.
When he found his nephew Yang Guohai in his camp outside the city, Yang Guohai was shocked by his appearance.
"Suzhou City was lost?"
Yang Guohai couldn't believe it, but seeing his uncle looking so embarrassed, he could only believe this fact.
"Could it be that Huang Fei turned back the enemy?"
"It's not the yellow thieves, it's not Wu Zhikui, this is another army. They are under the banner of the Green Camp and they even shaved their heads." Tu Guobao was still frightened, and he was even more angry when he thought of the thrilling journey.
He almost capsized, and when he thought about the gold and silver treasures in his secret room, he became even more furious.
He was not so anxious when Suzhou City was lost. The city was not his anyway, but he had worked hard to accumulate the gold and silver.
"Is it a cavalry, or just the vanguard of the army?" Although Yang Guohai is not good at fighting and can only make money, he is also very alert at this time.
Tu Guobao gritted his teeth, "Seeing as the other party is acting like this, he must have come prepared. It can't be some small group of people taking advantage of the chaos to rob him. I suspect they are people from Kunshan or Songjiang, and they may be people from the fake Lu Supervisory State."
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"Didn't it mean that the rebels in Sujiang, Kunshan and other places were suppressed by Yan Wo Gong Li Yuchun, Zheng Jiwu and others who came from Jiaxing?"
"That is just their one-sided statement. Who knows whether it is true or not, but the cavalry that has entered Suzhou now is well-equipped and moves quickly. They are by no means idle soldiers. They quickly sent people to find Zou Xixiang and others to gather Fu Biao."
"Yes." Yang Guohai also realized that if a large army really arrived in Suzhou and they were still kept in the dark, not only would Suzhou be lost, but they would also be in great danger.
So he immediately sent out messengers to find the other battalion leaders in Fubiao and asked them to come over quickly and gather together.
"Are you here in time to take back Suzhou City?" Yang Guohai asked. Not only was Tu Guobao's money in the city, but most of his money was also still in Suzhou City.
Tu Guobao shook his head with a dark face.
His experience told him that the army was not alone, so if he went back to attack Suzhou now, not only would he not be able to defeat them, but he might also be trapped in the tiger's mouth. The best response right now is to stay away from Suzhou City.
"Send a few more teams to chase Li Shutai. Now the most powerful people around here are his 1,500 full horsemen. If we want to take back Suzhou, we have to rely on him."
"Tell him not to worry about Huang Fei for now. Just tell him that Zhu Wu, the ninth brother of the Puppet Lu Supervisor and the Puppet Jiangnan Admiral, has captured Suzhou. If we don't get Suzhou back, we won't be able to report to the higher authorities."
"Tell them to all gather at Qionglong Mountain in the western suburbs." Tu Guobao chose Qionglong Mountain in the west of the city as the gathering place. It is in the west of Suzhou and is one of the few mountains outside Suzhou. It is close to the city and close to the lake.
Can attack and defend.
"Send more people out to gather information, and I want to know who has tricked me!" Tu Guobao said with hatred.