Chapter Nine Hundred and Ninety Eight Everyone, Unexpected!
Hangzhou.
Recently, the province has been extremely unstable. There have been pirate attacks in Ningbo, Taizhou and other places along the coast. The prefect Qian Zhongen was assassinated in Shaoxing. The Manchus and Han people in the provincial capital are also at odds with each other. This is a situation that has never been seen in the hundred years since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Wang Danwang, the governor of Zhejiang, was very upset. General Cheng De of Hangzhou also repeatedly proposed that the flag camp take over the defense of Hangzhou. This made Wang Danwang even more annoyed and worried.
The first concern is that Chengde signed a contract with the reform government in the capital behind his back; the second concern is that Chengde believed the rumors and dispatched garrison flag soldiers to start a war against his governor's office.
Fortunately, the Hangzhou gentry still supported Wang Futai, not because Wang Futai was supported by the gentry because of his integrity as an official, but because Wang Futai had borrowed more than 12.4 million taels from the Hangzhou gentry since he took office.
In other words, the biggest creditor of the wealthy people in Hangzhou today is Mr. Futai.
Therefore, if Lord Futai were to die, all the high-interest loans of the Hangzhou gentry would be wasted.
A huge sum of tens of millions of taels, even if the gentry family in Hangzhou has a great business, it will still be taxing.
If you have money, you will have people. Under the magic of banknotes, Mr. Futai also firmly controlled Zhejiang Lvying.
Only in this way can he compete with Hangzhou General Chengde.
However, the current situation in Zhejiang Province is extremely bad. The coastal cities of Ningbo and Taizhou have fallen into the hands of pirates one after another. Revolutions are constantly happening in other places, and the targets of the revolution are Qing officials like them. This makes Wang Danwang unable to sit still.
After Qian Zhongen, the prefect of Shaoxing, was assassinated, Wang Danwang finally realized that he had to effectively suppress the revolution to ensure that his basic base was not in chaos.
Otherwise, there was no need for Chengde to take action, nor for the Jaap Liu, who led the army to the Guandong Campaign, to take action. He, the governor, would have to finish his work.
To suppress it, we must first understand what revolution is and how this demonic trend started.
Therefore an emergency secret meeting was held in the governor's office.
In addition to Futai, the meeting was attended by major officials from Zhejiang such as Fantai, Niantai, Xuetai, Daotai, and Futai, as well as several senior military leaders from Zhejiang Green Camp.
The first person to speak was Bai Weixin, the inspector in charge of criminal investigation. He told the attendees: "It has been verified by relevant departments that since September there have been many banned books in the city that have been circulated among the Han people. Such books are either called "Revolutionary Army" or "Revolutionary Army".
"Menghuitou", also known as "The Warning Bell", mostly talks about the early days of the Republic of China when the Qing soldiers entered the customs and carried out brutal extermination of the Han people in the customs..."
The Inspector General Si Yamen led by Bai Weixin has obviously done a solid investigation.
According to the investigation results, the word revolution comes from the book "Revolutionary Army" whose author was signed by "Xibei".
"Please see, Futai, that the Han people should have racial hatred, that today's revolution seeks revenge on its leader, or that the revanchism of Yun Zhang and the Nine Dynasties led to ten years of bloody war... Such remarks are simply sensational!"
Bai Jitai clearly pointed out that the purpose of these banned books was to call on the people of Zhejiang Province to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, and advocated the use of fierce violence to implement it. If such calls were deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, it would cause catastrophe not only in Zhejiang, but also in the whole country.
"I also have a few banned books here,"
Upon hearing this, Qingge, who was born in the Zhengbai Banner of Manchuria, also took out a few books for Master Futai to read, "These writings are even more exaggerated. They think about the boundaries between Huayi and Yi, and they must be the Spring and Autumn Period. They call out injustice and show the bloody history, and swear to be racial."
Bloodshed... After the people in the province heard such inciting words, if something happens, our banner people will be the first to bear the brunt..."
In view of the seriousness of the situation, Qingge hoped that Mr. Futai would immediately order the suppression of banned books and arrest the so-called revolutionaries to set a strict example and set the record straight.
"Rhetoric like this can be found everywhere in the city and even across Zhejiang. According to what I know from my private inquiry, many students in Zhejiang province are beguiled by these evil books and want to expel the Tartars, so much so that they no longer even read the books of sages."
The speaker was Sun Yibo, the prefect of Hangzhou, and said that Zhejiang has had the idea of resisting the Qing Dynasty, restoring the Ming Dynasty, and driving back the Manchus and the Han Dynasty since the early days of the Republic of China. These ideas originated from the Qing soldiers' resistance to the bureaucratic landlords in the south of the Yangtze River and their anti-Manchu ideas after they entered the country.
The conscious literati carried out brutal attacks.
The appalling events of the Qianlong Dynasty in Zhejiang, such as Lu Liuliang's coffin-opening and killing of Zeng Jing's corpse, and the killing of Zeng Jing, made Zhejiang scholars have a bad impression of the Qing court, so there has always been a market for anti-Qing ideas.
Of course, Magistrate Sun spoke more implicitly, and some things were difficult to explain too clearly.
But for the Qianlong Dynasty, Magistrate Sun obviously had no respect.
There is no other reason. The fact that Qianlong was actually a great thief of the Han people has been known to the whole country.
"It's so good, what kind of revolution is this? If we talk about what happened in the early days of the Republic of China, there was something wrong with the Qing soldiers, but Manchuria was not ungrateful to us and other Han gentry. Besides, it took a hundred years for things to happen. If we look back at these things a hundred years ago,
What’s the meaning of old things?”
Wang Danwang frowned deeply and asked Bai Weixin if he could find out whether this group of revolutionaries was organized, if so, who was leading it, where did the funds come from, where was the organization located, and who provided the gunpowder weapons.
The assassination of Qian Zhongen, the prefect of Shaoxing, was not done by the revolutionaries who killed him at close range with a sharp knife. Instead, he was killed by revolutionaries who threw a medicine bag wrapped in silk and blew it up while on patrol.
The medicine pack was so powerful that not only Qian Zhongen received the lunch box on the spot, but also the accompanying officials were killed and injured more than ten people.
The assassin took advantage of the chaos and escaped.
Only the remnants of the medicine pack were found at the scene afterwards.
Gunpowder was strictly prohibited among the people, so Wang Futai had reason to suspect that Qing officials were behind this group of revolutionaries.
Bai Weixin said that according to their investigation, various signs point to an organization called the Liberation Society.
"Reconqueror Meeting?"
Wang Futai, Qing Fantai, and Sun Futai have never heard of the name of this organization. They all thought that the so-called revolutionaries who assassinated were mostly monsters like the White Lotus Sect.
"This association takes the slogan of "recovering the Han people, returning our mountains and rivers, pledging one's life to the country, and retiring after one's achievements" as its slogan. It advocates that in addition to written propaganda, assassinations and riots are the main revolutionary means.
Bai Weixin concluded that the assassination of Qian Guoen, the prefect of Shaoxing, was probably carried out by the Guangfu Club.
He also said that the Restoration Conference called the pursuit of Manchuria a tactic. There were various opinions in the conference, including those who talked about revenge, some who talked about fighting for political power, and some who said that Manchuria could not be dominated by China.
"These statements may seem to be exaggerated and cruel and unreasonable, but the advantage is that the propaganda is simple. Even a fool can understand it, speak it, and do it. Such slogans, if applied to society, will definitely lead to the catastrophe of the Huguangxing Han Dynasty.
.”
Next, he talked about the situation of the Liberation Association, saying that most of the people who joined the Liberation Association were students, businessmen, some craftsmen, and soldiers from the Green Camp.
Finally, he asserted: "There is reason to suspect that there are Guangfuhui organizations not only in Shaoxing but also in provincial capitals."
Sun Yibo, the prefect of Hangzhou, was very nervous after hearing this: "Since the investigation by the Chayamen was so clear, why didn't they arrest and kill those members who had recovered?"
"this..."
Bai Weixin hesitated for a moment, then suddenly stood up and said to the officials: "Because I am also a member of the Liberation Association."
As soon as he finished speaking, the official robes worn by Mr. Nedai suddenly tore into pieces and flew around the room.
Like a storm.
Afterwards, the officials attending the meeting gasped in unison: Good guy, there is a ring of bombs strapped to Bai Jitai's body!