Chapter 82, Shandong's sudden change Southern Shandong, beside the Grand Canal, Jining City Although the northern provinces have been in bad shape this year and last year, with all kinds of bad news coming from all sides, including natural disasters, wars, bandits, hungry people, and invaders from the East, there is still a lot of bad news flowing along the Grand Canal.
Thanks to the golden waterway of wealth, the people of Jining can barely live a comfortable life.
While other places were struggling to make a living due to excessive taxes, exploitation by the gentry, and various natural disasters, Jining had been prosperous and prosperous because of water transportation, and there were many officers and soldiers stationed in the city, which could mobilize enough people to train, even if there were occasional large groups of refugees.
After passing by, they only dared to avoid Jining and go elsewhere.
However, at this time, Jining City has finally fallen into the haze of war.
Even the towering city wall, the wide moat, the various garrison equipment on the city head, and the relatively capable civilian soldiers could not make the Jining gentry in Jining City feel enough peace of mind.
Because this time, there were too many refugees and thieves who were incited by the Wenxiang Sect to besiege Jining.
Looking out from the top of the city, I could see people everywhere and it was so dark that I couldn't even see the edges.
Due to prolonged drought and no rain in various parts of the Central Plains, farmland is cracked and roads are raising dust.
With so many people acting together, the dust kicked up was like a sandstorm.
The vast majority of them were naturally unkempt, ragged clothes, famine-stricken refugees carrying sticks and stones, and dull eyes, but there were also many strong men with strong bodies, weapons in hand, and well-organized movements.
There were even a few riders on brightly dressed and angry horses, shuttled in and out among this unprecedentedly large army of refugees.
In addition, many craftsmen and strong men used the wood obtained by demolishing houses and removing beams and pillars along the way to bundle and manufacture various siege equipment on the spot.
However, unlike ordinary refugee rebels, among the refugee bandits besieging Jining at this time, there were many artists in red and colorful colors, carrying various gongs and drums, as well as flags, streamers, ribbons, and incense candles for the table. , and even prepared a special cart to pull the statue, organized worship and sermons all day long, and also distributed some bran cakes mixed with salt to the believers.
Although they are coarse grains, they are already a delicacy in the eyes of the hungry exiles.
This was another large-scale uprising of the Wenxiang Sect after ten years since Xu Hongru's uprising and defeat in the second year of Tianqi.
The Wenxiang Sect is a branch of the White Lotus Sect that emerged in the late Ming Dynasty.
People in China call it the So-and-Such Sect, which gives the impression that they are not affiliated with each other.
In fact, the relationship between the Wenxiang Sect and the White Lotus Sect is probably the same as that of the Protestant Sect and the White Lotus Sect.
Catholicism has a similar relationship, worshiping almost the same gods.
It was first founded by Wang Sen during the Wanli period.
After Wang Sen's death, his son Wang Haoxian and Wang Sen's apprentice Xu Hongru continued to preach.
After twenty years of underground development, the Wenxiang Sect has spread throughout Shandong, Shaanxi, Henan, Hebei, and Sichuan, and its number of followers once reached two million.
Seeing that the sect had such a huge power, the leader Xu Hongru launched a rebellion in the second year of Tianqi.
The rebels were once huge, gathering tens of thousands of people from all directions, attacking important towns, cutting off water transportation, and being invincible, which shocked the world.
But then they suffered successive defeats in the subsequent battles, which fully exposed the true nature of this group of people as a mob.
There were often scenes of tens of thousands of believers being overwhelmed by hundreds of officers and soldiers.
In the end, Xu Hongru was defeated and died, and Wang Haoxian fled south to Yangzhou and was killed.
As a result, the Wenxiang Sect suffered heavy losses, and internal divisions broke out, and they were forced to cease operations.
After the defeat of Xu Hongru's rebellion in the second year of Tianqi, the Wenxiang Sect has always been a serious threat that the Ming court focused on combating.
However, the Wenxiang Sect rooted in the local area is very tenacious.
Despite the severe suppression by the court, the Wenxiang Sect has never stopped its activities. , but acted much more low-key.
During the Chongzhen period, the war and chaos in the world became more and more fierce, and the imperial court was no longer able to suppress the Wenxiang Sect, so the Wenxiang Sect, a professional rebel, revived again.
Especially in the third year of Chongzhen, the fourth year of Chongzhen, and the fifth year of Chongzhen, from Shandong to Henan to Shanxi and Shaanxi, the entire Central Plains suffered from severe drought for three consecutive years.
This is what is said: "There is no harvest, and it is difficult to grow wheat.
There is no grass in the wild.
Nine out of ten rooms are empty.
Therefore, if a bucket of rice is worth five cents, one day's work will not allow one to earn more than one meter.
There are those who collect grass roots and leaves to satisfy hunger, there are those who abandon their wives and mothers who abandon their children, there are those who sell their children for less than a few meals, there are those who hang themselves in empty forests to fill ditches, there are those who starve to death on the side of the road, there are those who are wearing quail clothes.
There are those who beg for food, those who hold pillows on their backs and die, those who run away with a bamboo basket on their backs, and those who cannibalize their flesh and blood."
In the summer of the fifth year of Chongzhen, the Yellow River embankment burst in Mengjin, turning countless villages and towns into marshes, further aggravating the suffering of the people in the Central Plains.
Even though the natural disaster was so severe and no crops were harvested, the excessive taxes and miscellaneous taxes imposed by the court officials and the usurious land rents of the landlords and gentry could not be reduced at all, and they continued to weigh heavily on the shoulders of the common people. , and even the trend is getting worse in the fertile soil of the Central Plains.
Thousands of villages and households have no smoke, peasant women have hanged themselves on the dead trees with their bark peeled off, and dead bodies can be seen everywhere on the roadside where even the weeds are dead.
Such a tragic and desperate situation, where life was worse than death, made the people yearn for any illusory salvation in despair, so the number of followers of the Wenxiang Sect once again increased like a snowball, almost comparable to when Xu Hongru started his army ten years ago.
Recently, a secret force generously donated a large sum of money to the Wenxiang Sect to support the Wenxiang Sect.
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Therefore, the new leader of the Wenxiang Sect, Wang Ke, decisively ordered the sect to launch another rebellion in Shandong.
At this moment, hundreds of altar owners, incense burners, and sutra preachers were walking back and forth among the ignorant and hungry people, preaching and encouraging them: "The end of the world is coming.
In the past three years, the land in Henan has been bare for thousands of miles, and there has been no harvest.
The east side of Shandong is close to the sea, and under the care of the Dragon King, it has finally been a little better.
The drought in the prefectures in the west is similar to Henan next door is just as heavy, but God has a severe drought.
It's not the most terrifying thing.
What's scary is that instead of providing relief, the imperial court is only paying endless taxes and exorbitant taxes.
In the past few years, it has added Liao's salary, and recently it has even added another one to suppress the salary, and the officials are pressing them hard.
Killing people at every turn is really making people’s lives miserable.”
"In this kind of apocalypse, people all over the world are suffering so much that they can no longer survive.
We in Shandong are also in the same misery.
The crops have failed for several years, and the court's exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes are still not reduced at all.
The rich and landlords don't pay taxes, but they take advantage of us.
The poor are squeezed to death” "The combined taxes and land rents that each household has to pay are several times more than all the crops produced in the fields.
Farming is tantamount to committing suicide.
If you want to sell the land but can't sell it for a price, the small people have saved a lot of money for generations. acres of land, the black-hearted gentry suppressed it until one hundred acres of land was sold for five taels of silver.
No one wants the better farmland and the inferior land, and they don't dare to plant it, because after planting crops, you have to pay ten bushels of millet tax for harvesting one bushel of millet.
This is a huge amount of taxes, levies, and taxes. , all appear on our fields, forcing everyone to abandon their fields.”
"Those officials who collect taxes and grains come to the village.
Not to mention the official official taxes, their benefits alone cost dozens of dollars at a time.
The poor people have no money in their pockets, and the fields cannot be sold at high prices.
No one pays attention to them.
You can only sell your children first and then mortgage the land.
Those big land buyers are so evil that they can only get a hundred cents per acre of land in disaster years.
This small amount of money is not enough for an official job.
If they come here dozens of times a year to buy wine and food, everyone will be forced to die because they have not paid the official grain and taxes in full, and they have sold everything that can be sold in their children's fields, but they still can't do anything good. , in order to avoid going to jail and wearing shackles, we poor people can only borrow usurious loans, but this usurious loan is not easy to borrow casually, which is equivalent to being in jail at home and not having a job."
"As far as I can see, every county has ten rooms and nine empty rooms.
There is no smoke or fire in the morning or evening.
Even if you tighten your belt and pay all the Liao's salary and grain taxes, how can you eat all day long?
Leaves, grass roots, and some rice bran are already a blessing.
I have nothing to wear and nothing to eat.
You have to eat, all your money and food have been wiped out by the officials, and that’s not all, the local officials will take the opportunity to appropriate your fields, take away your children and wives, and kick you out of the shack.
What will they do to you?
There were not many left who either starved to death on the roadside or were beaten to death with sticks from servants of wealthy families.”
"We are all poor people who have been forced by the government to survive.
We just want to gather together and seek a way to survive.
As long as we burn incense and have faith, worship Maitreya Buddha, the Inanimate Mother, listen to the teachings, and break this worldly way, everyone will be saved.
If we die, We can also enter the paradise hometown and no longer have to be tortured by such suffering.
It’s not that we want to be thieves.
It’s the catastrophe of the end of the world that forces us to pick up swords and guns and fight for our own wealth and life.”
Although the eloquence of these "preachers" of the Wenxiang Sect can only be said to be average, those hungry people with good looks and thin bodies were all listening with rapt attention.
Some had angry faces and gnashed teeth, while others were emotional and couldn't help but burst into tears.
His eyes filled with tears and he kept wiping the corners of his eyes.
There is no way, this is what Shandong is like now.
Continuous floods, droughts and natural disasters, as well as the government's taxation and corvee, have already made Shandong full of desperate people.
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Even small landowners can no longer survive.
In order to eat a few mouthfuls of coarse grains to satisfy their hunger, they have to sell They lost their children; for the land rent and taxes that could never be paid, they lost everything, even their The corpses of their relatives buried in the ground were dug up and eaten by the more hungry refugees.
Originally, they were just wandering around like zombies.
They lived as long as they could and died wherever they could.
But just now That speech was like a long needle thrust into the heart, reminding these numb people of their past grief.
Yes, think about the endless taxes and miscellaneous taxes, think about the fields that have had no harvest for several years, think about the family members who are constantly dying of starvation and illness.
Many people suddenly find that from the time they were born to the present, it seems that they have never lived a good life.
What a peaceful and comfortable life, I have been suffering every day, every month, every year, thinking about how to survive, but I still I can't survive because God won't let it rain, and on the other hand, there are Liao and Dao wages sent by the imperial court to cramp and peel off my skin.
The scourge of these excessive expropriations is even greater than the drought and locust plague.
Not only do people starve to death, but they also sell their children and girls.
The land, carrying the debt of usury for several lifetimes, and such a dark world, what is it if it is not the end of the world, and is it not a catastrophe?
Therefore, listening to the preacher preaching about the Age of Ending Dharma and the impending catastrophe, not to mention the people who were already believers in the religion were fascinated by it, and the newcomers on the way were also very convinced, these days are coming to an end.
We are about to reach a desperate situation.
What kind of disaster is coming?
Isn’t this drought, locust plagues, government taxes, and the rent pressing of the Jin gentry all...
A great calamity?
This is the end of the world.
In such a situation, in such an age, who can still survive?
Who cares about peace?
Who cares about the king's law?
It's not bad to rebel.
There is no need to hand over anything when chaos arises.
Anyway, there is no such thing in this world.
What makes them nostalgic is to fight fiercely before these dozens of kilograms of meat rot, and drag more people to bury them with them.
While everyone was in high spirits, those gods and goddesses began to send talisman water and sprinkle incense ash everywhere, saying that it could make people immune to all diseases, and they were still shouting: "The great calamity is coming, and the fairy kingdom on earth will come to the world.
Whoever works hard and sacrifices his life will be able to enter the paradise hometown and be protected by gods and Buddhas."
"The city of Jining ahead contains a fraction of the world's food.
If we break up the city, we can have enough to eat every year."
"When Jining City was opened, everyone had enough to eat, meat was eaten every day, and beautiful women slept there."
If this was said in peacetime, I'm afraid not too many people would join in, but at this time, everyone has become a desperate person who seems to be drowning and is about to die.
Even if there is a straw, they will throw it away.
Seize it, not to mention that the Wenxiang Sect has indeed allocated food to help everyone.
As long as you join the sect and burn incense, you will have something to eat every day.
Don't think about eating enough and just barely not starving to death, but this is a way to survive.
In contrast, neither the government nor the gentry had a single grain to spare.
At this time, if the hungry people did not believe in Wenxiang Cult, who would they believe?
Well, they may die.
They don't care anymore.
The endless suffering has already made them dry their tears.
So what if I die?
The miserable days are finally over, and I can finally escape from the sea of suffering.
When a person is not even afraid of death, there is nothing to care about.
So, under the encouragement and urging of the Wenxiang congregation, thousands of refugees shouted crazily: "Maitreya comes to the world, the Kingdom of the Western Heaven" "Empty Hometown, Inanimate Mother" "There is not enough food to eat in Jining City" People who are usually as docile as sheep will become ferocious and terrifying when they are in dire straits.
One or two poor people will naturally not be able to do anything big, but if thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even more people gather together , that is the vast and mighty power that causes the sky to collapse and the earth to fall apart.
Seeing these victims of the disaster, who were all in rags and rags, and all of them excited, the die-hard followers and leaders of the Wenxiang Sect hurriedly struck while the iron was hot, picked out the young and strong among them, and each of them said: I bought half a coarse grain pancake and a bamboo spear, and prepared to let them lead the ant attack on the city.
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Others, the old and the weak, were given sacks filled with soil, ready to fill the moat against the defenders' arrows and rolling stones.
As the direct force of Wenxiang Sect, thousands of "religious warriors" with bright armors supervise the battle formation behind the cannon fodder.
What frightened the defenders at the top of the city even more was that there were actually several heavy artillery pieces that were slowly pushed over by the Wenxiang Cult thieves.
Where did the demon thieves get such military and national weapons?
Under the thatched roof of a tea shed more than two miles away from Jining City, the leader Wang Ke and the dignitaries of the Wenxiang Sect sat in a circle facing each other, watching from a distance hundreds of thousands of refugees, under the command of the followers, the crowds of refugees were gathering in a dark crowd.
The ground is squirming, preparing to chew down the city of Jining with life and flesh.
Faced with such a grand scene, Wang Ke was very proud for a moment: "Everyone, the situation is very good now.
People everywhere are suffering a lot, and they are all waiting for our religion to come forward and take them out of the sea of suffering.
However, the government is already overwhelmed and it is difficult to take care of the beginning and the end. , this sect’s launch will be overwhelming and unstoppable.”
Although the leader looked full of confidence, several elders in the church seemed a little less confident.
They exchanged a few glances with each other, and finally one of the senior elders stood up and spoke, "Report to the leader , Forgive me to speak frankly, although our army is responding to all calls and has a great momentum, after all, it has not really fought any tough battles, and those guys who sent us money, food and weapons before may not have good intentions."
"Haha, I know all this.
They don't expect us to succeed at all.
They just want me to cause chaos on the ground in Shandong and add some trouble to their enemies in the court.
But so what?"
Wang Ke snorted coldly and explained calmly, "In recent years, the Ming Dynasty has imposed excessive taxes, the Liao Dynasty has suppressed taxes, suffered severe droughts for many years, and now the Yellow River has burst.
It is really that the dragon's veins have been cut off and its energy has been exhausted.
Countless People are suffering and seeking liberation, so they burn incense and devoutly believe in this religion.
As long as they start doing it, tens of thousands of poor people will immediately respond.
It will not only sweep the world, but at least sweep the Central Plains.
Those high-ranking officials in the imperial court treat us as pawns, so why don't we treat them like monkeys?
No matter what plans they have in mind, the weapons and food they send are all real.
Jining City has a lot of food and is weakly defended.
The news is also true.
As long as we break the canal hub of Jining City, we will have countless gold and silver treasures and at least millions of stones of food in our hands.
With so much food, we can light a fire on the ground of the Central Plains, mobilize those ordinary people and households who cannot survive, and lay down a large territory instead of shrinking like Xu Hongru ten years ago.
While I'm waiting to die in one place, those smart high-ranking officials, even if they have all kinds of plans and conspiracies, can do nothing to me."
After explaining this, seeing that several sect elders who had experienced the disastrous defeat of Xu Hongru's rebellion still looked unsure, Wang Ke could only sigh and shook his head, and issued an order: "Let the artillery fire a few rounds first.
Then everyone beat the drums and attacked the city."
In July of the fifth year of Chongzhen, the Wenxiang Sect once again caused chaos in Shandong, gathering hundreds of thousands of hungry people to cut off the canal and besiege Jining, which shocked the world.
After six days of fierce fighting, Jining fell.
The thieves plundered the city and captured grain, grass, baggage, and countless gold and silver.
Immediately, the leader Wang Ke personally led his troops south along the canal, claiming to be 500,000 strong, and headed straight for Xuzhou.
He also sent a partial army into Henan, coercing the hungry people of Henan into rebellion along the way.
The terrain in eastern Henan is flat and lacks the geographical conditions for building a stronghold.
The victims gathered on the plains and were easily killed by the Ming army.
However, when the Ming army was unable to attack, the subsequent backlash from the victims was very powerful.
When the officers and soldiers of Henan were transferred to Beijing by King Qin's order, the "bandit situation" in the province deteriorated rapidly.
At this time, Henan was already full of refugees, and there were people everywhere who were desperate and crazy.
When the Wenxiang Sect's bandits entered the province, Due to the internal incitement, gangs of thieves broke out all over the counties in an instant, and emergencies occurred in Kaifeng and Guide.
The situation in the province was almost irreversibly corrupted.
At the same time, several groups of bandits from the northwest also crossed the river and fled eastward, passing through Shanxi and entering Henan.
For a while, the number of bandits attached to them was like a cloud, and the chaos in the Central Plains became more intense oshow7: