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Volume 1: Fierce Battle in Changsha Chapter 501: This is the reward

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    The sharp whistle of the train brought Jiang Guolin back to his senses. When he first got on the train, he was startled by such a steel monster that was swallowing carbon and spitting smoke. But after sitting in the carriage for a while, the novelty wore off and he still looked at it.  I picked up several other books given by Tao Enpei.

    They stayed in Shanghai for two days. In addition to seeing the increasingly prosperous industry and commerce in Shanghai, they also saw the powerful force behind the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The batches of soldiers and the people who actively joined the army made them feel sad. Several provinces in Jiangsu and Zhejiang  Tens of millions of people have completely become supporters of the anti-thieves.

    The books in their hands are indeed on sale in major bookstores and small bookstores in Shanghai, and most of the people who come to buy books are scholars. Jiangsu and Zhejiang have always been prosperous, so there are many scholars. Jiang Guolin knows that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is doing this to win the hearts of scholars all over the world.  , although these books cannot make the readers fully support the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Jiang Guolin believes that even if the officers and soldiers come back in the future, the readers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang will not be as respectful as before. If the officers and soldiers revive Zhejiang, they will kill all the readers here.  There seems to be no better way.

    Moreover, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did not destroy Buddhism and Confucianism like it did in Hunan and Hubei. In Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and other places, he also saw temples and Taoist temples that were still prosperous. People began to pursue the rise under the leadership of the Queen of the West.  Neo-Confucianism.  To put it bluntly, this New Confucianism is to restore the old views of Confucianism before the end of the Ming Dynasty, to get rid of the slavish shackles imposed on Confucianism by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and to promote the theory of practical management of the world.

    At the same time, the rise of private capital in industry and commerce in Shanghai and other places allowed Jiang Guolin to see that Confucian families such as Yu Songnian or famous families were investing in industry and commerce. These Confucian students had no concept of scholars, farmers, industry and commerce.  They are not ashamed of doing business. On the contrary, many people actually apply the essence of Confucianism to doing business and regard themselves as Confucian businessmen.

    The only thing that makes Jiang Guolin happy is that many schools have been opened in Shanghai.  The Book of Sages is listed as a Chinese study here, and children studying here are completely free. This makes Jiang Guolin feel that these rebels can no longer be called thieves. What they do is claiming to be a new country. They are in the new country.  Provide for the people, rather than plundering like thieves.

    Through the car window, Jiang Guolin saw the traditional scenery of the land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River between Jiangsu and Shanghai.  Between the criss-crossing river network and the harbor branches are vast expanse of rice fields. Now that the summer rice is about to be harvested, the heavy ears of rice represent another bumper harvest.  Many places in Suhu can already produce two or three crops a year. Such a fertile scene made Jiang Guolin feel that the army might never be able to fight back.

    The train arrived in Suzhou, which was as prosperous as Shanghai. All kinds of goods transferred from the mainland were transported to Shanghai through here.  Exports from Shanghai are sold to the mainland through here.  It served as the original headquarters of the West Palace Taiping Army.  What is more intense here than Shanghai is the political atmosphere.  Jiang Guolin heard that hundreds of gentry in Suzhou had jointly signed a letter to the King of the West, requesting the King to return to Suzhou to rule, abandon Jinling City, and establish Suzhou as the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.  This surprised Jiang Guolin. The gentry here actually supported the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom so much that they had completely given up on the Qing court.

    ?Compared to the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Jiang Guolin did not see mourners everywhere, although there were still poor people under the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.  But the Kingdom of Heaven always provides work for the poor, building roads, mining, and working as workers in factories.  In short, no one can get something for nothing.  The Chinese people are famous for their patience. As long as they can have food to eat and warm clothes, they will not rebel. Jiang Guolin knows this very well, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom seems to be doing better. There is one in every place.  The local minimum wage system stipulates that workers cannot earn less than this amount, and it also stipulates that workers must not work more than five hours a day.

    Jiang Guolin felt that the life of the soldiers and civilians under the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was indeed better than that of the Manchus. Moreover, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did not fully implement the so-called farming with land. Jiang Guolin found that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom drove most of the landless people into factories and mines.  Or building bridges and paving roads.  What you see most everywhere are job recruitment notices and night classes for a certain type of work, where people without skills can learn skills and then start working in factories and mines.

    Jiang Guolin couldn't help but secretly wonder, why couldn't this be done under the Qing Dynasty?  Then he understood that the Manchu Qing Dynasty had always emphasized agriculture and suppressed commerce, but the preferential policies for industry and commerce in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were unimaginable. The rich gentry who had spare money in their families were investing in industry and commerce to make money.  However, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom restricted the sale of land. The wealthy gentry here could not buy large tracts of land after making money like they did under the Manchu Qing Dynasty. There was very little land that could be bought with money on the market, so they used the money they earned  Invest in new factories or mines.

    From Suzhou, Wuxi, Zhenjiang to Tianjing, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin walked around the most fertile areas of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The more they walked, the more Jiang Guolin felt confused. Isn't the people's livelihood in a place like the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, where the government is well-connected and people are friendly, exactly what he originally dreamed of?  What?  Is it true that all the pure energy has been exhausted?Should the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom replace it?

    After arriving in Tianjing, no so-called prisoner presentation ceremony was arranged to humiliate them. Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin secretly breathed a sigh of relief. The most important thing for scholars is face, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom retained their face.  They were arranged to live in a house, which was considered to be under house arrest, but no one summoned them. They could only pass the time by reading books and newspapers sent by the guarding soldiers throughout the day.

    Jiang Guolin's favorite thing to read was "Shenbao". Although this newspaper was not launched as early as "Sufu New News", this newspaper often criticized the political shortcomings of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which opened Jiang Guolin's eyes.  Under the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, this kind of newspaper would have been investigated as a major case. At first, Jiang Guolin was worried about the safety of the person who wrote these articles. However, over the past few days, newspapers continued to publish articles about this person. It was obvious that this person was still alive and kicking.  of.

    What I have read the most recently is the article on the occupation of private land by factories in the current affairs column of Shenbao. The article revealed that many local officials under the Taiping Rebellion colluded with local gentry to privately occupy, buy and sell, and forcibly requisition private land as factory land.  As a result, many Shengdou residents lost their land and source of income.

    At first, Jiang Guolin thought that since the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom encouraged industry and commerce, it would turn a blind eye to such matters, and might even leave them alone. However, after a few days, "Shenbao" published several reports about the situation that had been criticized by the Department of Industry and Agriculture in several places.  The joint investigation and prosecution by the State Council dealt with the occupation of civilian land. Several unscrupulous gentry were severely punished, and several officials were dismissed from their posts.  At the end of the "Declaration", a passage from the Western King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was used: "The state's encouragement of industry and commerce is limited to national policies and laws. No one is allowed to trample on private property protected by national laws. This legal tool will be effective until the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom comes  "

    After Jiang Guolin realized it for a while, he realized that this was the conspiracy of the Western King. He nakedly tied the nearly 100 million citizens of the entire Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom could protect the citizens and their private property, but if the Manchus  The fight is back, and everything we have now may no longer exist.  The King of the West's conspiracy was so aboveboard and without traces. Jiang Guolin was even more certain that it was impossible for the Manchu Qing Dynasty to defeat the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

    Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin became more and more depressed and irritable under the house arrest order for several consecutive days. Killing or beheading was just a matter of words. What kind of thing was this?  On the eighth day, the two were finally taken out and boarded a carriage to go to the Prosecutor's Office of the Ministry of Punishment next to the Confucius Temple in Tianjing for a hearing.

    Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin were very surprised. Who were they asked to hear?  When we arrived outside the prosecutor's office, there was already a sea of ??people here, many of them ordinary people.  Entering the yamen, a huge courtyard is filled with people hearing the trial. There are several desks and desks arranged in it, with tables and chairs on each side. The word "trial" is written on the desk in the center, and on the right side is  The word "prosecution" has the word "defendant" on the left.

    Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin stood under the corridor and recognized at a glance that the two people sitting in the dock were Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui.  Then more than a dozen officials from the Taiping Rebellion arrived and took their seats, while several foreigners in suits sat aside to listen to the trial.  Jiang Guolin secretly thought that he wanted to interrogate Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui, but why did the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ask foreigners to do this?

    Wang Kai, who brought them over, said with some annoyance: "I heard that in the past few days, the ministers from Britain, France, the United States and other countries have sent notes one after another, saying that they requested that their friends Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui be punished lightly. These two dog officials not only killed many innocent people  He even became a lackey of the foreigners."

    Jiang Guolin suddenly realized it, but he didn't find it strange that foreigners from Britain, France, the United States and other countries came out to protect Ye Mingchen. Ye Du had finally cooperated closely with the foreigners in Guangzhou, so it was not surprising that the foreigners helped him when he was in trouble.

    Then the trial began. Taiping officials standing at the prosecutor's seat stood up and read out a complaint of nearly 30,000 words. The complaint mentioned was that Ye Mingchen had indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of innocent people during the Tiandihui uprising in Guangdong.  The prosecutor then summoned dozens of massacre survivors who came from Guangdong and Fujian as witnesses, and presented more than a dozen black-and-white photos taken by British reporters, as well as dozens of testimonies and testimony from Qing generals and soldiers.  Testimony.

    Facing the tearful accusations from the surviving people, Ye Mingchen turned pale and trembled as he sat there. Bai Gui was not much better. Finally, the people listening to the trial shouted angrily: "Kill these two dogs."  Officer!" At this moment, Bai Gui suddenly collapsed in his seat.

    Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin both felt that they couldn't bear to watch anymore. They remembered that they had advised Ye Du not to expand the killings. Many innocent people were brutally killed just because they were neighbors with the rebels. If they sent troops to cause harm to the village, they would lose the support of the people.  of.  But Ye Du was very resolute at the time, saying that he would rather kill a hundred wrongdoers than let one go. So in addition to the families of the rebels, tens of thousands of innocent people died under the purges of the Qing army.  For this reason, Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin also filed a memorial to impeach Ye Mingchen, butThe memorial fell into disarray, and there was no news.

    Faced with the shouts of many people, the foreigners listening to the trial also felt very shameless. Faced with a large amount of detailed evidence and witness testimony, they had nothing to say. They massacred tens of thousands of innocent people in their own country. This is not the case in countries such as Britain, France, and the United States.  It was an unimaginable felony, and it was hard for them to mention anything. This was a fair trial, and there was nothing to blame.

    In the end, Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui were sentenced to death by firing squad on the spot. Jiang Guolin didn't think anything was wrong. He only thought of four words, that is, they deserve this punishment (To be continued)
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