xymnovel Chapter 107 What does it mean that the Qing Dynasty was still levying taxes on Liaodong?
Chapter 107 What does it mean that the Qing Dynasty was still levying taxes on Liaodong?
Chapter 107 What does it mean that the Qing Dynasty was still levying taxes on Liaodong?
Let's go back a few days to when Hongwu and his entourage had just arrived in Shanghai.
Tang He led five people off the ship and bought six horses in Shanghai for 120 silver dollars, as well as enough dry rations and water for a week.
After everything was prepared, they sped westward along the official road on the south bank of the Yangtze River.
Once they left Shanghai, the real China came into view.
Many of the farmlands on both sides were abandoned, overgrown with weeds taller than a person. Occasionally, one could see a few emaciated, ragged farmers trudging along the ridges between the fields.
The villages we passed through from time to time were sparsely populated; half of the houses along the streets were empty, their doors and windows removed, leaving only dark, gaping holes in the walls. Most of the thatched roof tiles had also been peeled off, revealing bare beams.
"This is Songjiang Prefecture, which has been economically prosperous since ancient times, but now it has become like this."
Tang He sighed on horseback, but showed no sign of stopping, galloping onward and leaving the villages and farmlands behind.
Heading west, through Qingpu and over Kunshan, they arrived in Suzhou eight hours later.
"It's so desolate."
Looking at the hills ahead, devoid of any greenery and covered entirely in yellow earth, Tang He sighed, "How many mountains have been completely stripped of their trees along this journey? The ecosystem must be in complete collapse by now!"
"That's all thanks to those wild boar hides."
Behind Tang He, a bodyguard named Li Shanchang rode on horseback and shouted: "After Yezhupi seized the country, he issued a decree to close all the mines in the country, prohibiting Han people from mining, including coal mines."
Without coal, what do people use for cooking and heating? They have no choice but to cut down trees. And if they don't replant, generation after generation, it becomes the barren landscape you see before you.
"That's not right, didn't the boss already buy the coal? This doesn't seem like a ban." One of the assassins retorted.
Li Shanchang rolled his eyes: "That's because if the ban continued, even eating would become a problem. In the fifth year of Qianlong's reign, he was forced to lift the ban."
""
Even if the mines were opened up, the Qing government would frequently ban them on the grounds that they would cause trouble by gathering crowds, opening and closing them intermittently. To this day, Qing officials are still debating whether or not to open the mines.
11
Tang He sneered, "After all, for those Tungusic wild boars, defending against the Han is more important than anything else."
One of the assassins looked at the sky and asked, "It's getting dark. Shall we go into the city later? The horses have been running for so long; we need to find a place to feed and water them."
The horse beneath him was panting heavily, its nostrils flaring, and white foam hanging from the corners of its mouth; it was clearly nearing its physical limit.
Li Shanchang shook his head and rejected the suggestion: "Suzhou is a big city. We're carrying guns and knives, we definitely won't be able to get past the soldiers' checks."
"Let's find a small town outside the city, get some fine feed for the horses from an inn, and rest there for the night before leaving tomorrow morning."
The others had no objections. They pulled on the reins, turned off the official road, and the six horses embarked on a rural dirt road.
Soon, the six of them entered a town.
The town was small; the main street stretched for no more than two hundred steps from one end to the other. The doors and windows of the houses were tightly shut, but fortunately the inn was still open.
He tossed a silver dollar to the waiter, telling him to prepare some fine feed for the horses, and then ordered some food. The group ate hastily and went upstairs to rest.
Nothing happened that night.
But when Tang He got up the next morning to leave town, he found that the road out of town was blocked by a roadblock.
Six men wearing uniforms with the character "厘" printed on them stood by the checkpoint, carrying swords and knives, searching the belongings of passersby and collecting money.
If they encountered someone rushing to get a truck loaded with goods, they would excitedly crowd around, wishing they could lift the truck bed open to take a look.
"There are checkpoints here?" Tang He was stunned. "What's with those 'Li' characters on their clothes?"
Upon hearing this, a man carrying goods in front of the horses turned around, sized them up, and then enthusiastically explained, "Don't you gentlemen know? They are imperial constables and patrolmen, specializing in collecting transit tax."
"Likin?"
Tang He clasped his hands in a fist and palm salute to the man, handed him a few copper coins as change from the inn, and asked, "We brothers have just returned from Southeast Asia. May I ask, sir, what is likin?"
The man carrying the goods saw the copper coins, his eyes lit up, and he quickly stuffed them into his pocket, his smile becoming even more enthusiastic: "I see, then let me tell you all about it."
"This likin was a tax levied by the imperial court two years ago to combat the Taiping Rebellion. It was levied on all goods sold for a value of one hundred taels of silver. One tael of silver would be taxed."
He paused, his expression turning bitter: "But you have to pay at every checkpoint. And some checkpoints don't just take one cent; they take two or five cents. It's common to go through three or five checkpoints from the production area to the market. You could say that each checkpoint is like being skinned alive."
Tang He narrowed his eyes, his gaze falling on the karts: "Commercial tax? But I see those kart patrolmen stopping even pedestrians, searching their luggage and demanding money. Pedestrians aren't carrying any goods, why should they pay?"
The man carrying the goods sighed and said in a low voice, "The word 'official' has two mouths, one above and one below. They say you're carrying goods, what can you say to them? If you don't pay, you can't leave. If you run away, you'll be shackled and paraded through the streets, and you'll be fined even more."
"Isn't this just exorbitant taxes and levies?" Tang He sneered.
"That's how the Qing court was."
Li Shanchang picked up the thread and said, "Even the Liaodong tax, which was levied starting in the Wanli era of the Ming Dynasty, was written into the Complete Book of Taxes and Labor and collected as land tax to this day."
"Even after the Ming Dynasty was over, Wild Boarskin was still chasing after unpaid wages from the Jiajing era in order to make money."
The man carrying the goods turned pale with fright upon hearing this.
These boisterous fellows, spouting nonsense about the Qing Dynasty and wild boar hides, were clearly no pushovers. He swallowed hard, picked up his goods, and headed into town.
"Why did that brother run away?" Tang He blinked, puzzled.
"You were scared away by what we said, weren't you? You're a bit of a coward."
Li Shanchang shook his head and glanced in the direction of the checkpoint. "It's almost our turn, what do we do?"
Tang He grinned, his murderous aura radiating: "A bunch of beasts, just slaughter them all!"
Before the checkpoint, a kart was squatting on the ground, laughing and tossing copper coins and silver scraps into a wooden box next to him, making a clinking sound.
He straightened up, dusted off his hands, and laughed at his companion, "Another sum. I told you setting up a checkpoint under the cover of night would be effective, right? Those lowly people think they can bypass the checkpoint and avoid paying? No way!"
Another karting squinted at Tang and the others and said, "Six men and six horses, looks like another batch of fat sheep has arrived."
""
He coughed, stood in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips, and shouted at Tang and his group, "Stop! This is a toll collection by the tax authorities. Come down and pay!"
Tang He rode closer on horseback, his tone relaxed: "The tax levied by the lika is on goods, what does it have to do with us six pedestrians?"
Kading looked greedily at the horses beneath them and said, "Who knows if you're selling horses? One horse is worth fifteen taels, and there are six horses here, so you'll have to pay five taels as payment!"
Tang He remained unperturbed, moving closer and closer, his tone calm: "We have no money."
The kardin paused for a moment, then grinned maliciously: "No money? Then leave a horse as payment!"
"Idiot!"
Tang cursed, no longer able to hold back. He instantly drew his revolver from his waist, pointed the muzzle at the kart's head, and pulled the trigger!
boom!
A gunshot rang out, and a bloody hole exploded in the karting's forehead. Before he could even scream, his body went limp and collapsed.
boom!boom!boom!boom!boom!
A series of gunshots rang out in the small town. In the blink of an eye, the tax collectors and the guards fell into pools of blood, lying haphazardly on the dirt road, their blood seeping into the mud.
"Murder!"
Those waiting in line behind him were terrified at the sight; some even abandoned their goods and scrambled to run in the opposite direction. Hearing the screams, the rest of the town rushed home without hesitation, locking their doors and windows tightly.
"Wow, quite skilled." One of the assassins raised an eyebrow, watching the fleeing civilians.
"They were all forced into this situation by the world."
Li Shanchang sighed, dismounted, stepped over the corpses, walked to the cedar tree that was lying across the road, grabbed it with both hands, and exerted force!
boom!
The log was lifted up and thrown to the side of the road, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Let's go, it's time to get going."
The further west you go, the worse the situation gets.
After passing through Suzhou, Tang and his group encountered a checkpoint almost every ten or twenty miles.
Besides the checkpoints set up by the Qing government to collect transit tax, there were also checkpoints set up by local powerful families and even by bandits.
The various fees, such as tolls, bandit suppression donations, and militia training funds, all boiled down to the same thing: demanding money from you while armed with knives and guns.
Tang and his group were too lazy to hide anymore. When they encountered checkpoints with dozens of people, they would go around them, but for the smaller checkpoints, they simply fought their way through.
If he hadn't been busy scouting the Qing army's deployment in Jiangyin and Zhenjiang, he would have been so disgusted that he even wanted to wipe out a wave of bandits and powerful local lords along the way and eradicate them completely.
In addition to checkpoints, the Qing army's patrols became increasingly thorough.
After entering the Jiangyin area, there was a garrison every few dozen miles near the official road, where Green Standard Army soldiers patrolled the river regularly.
In addition, there were garrison troops in various towns, which can be said to have created an inescapable net.
Fortunately, Tang and his group were all abnormally strong, around 19 or 20 years old. They were active at night and hid during the day. In addition, they stole several horses from bandits, so each of them had two horses and successfully bypassed all the Qing army strongholds.
"There's hardly anyone left to see here."
In a village by the Yangtze River, Tang He frowned.
There are few young and middle-aged women and children to be seen here; most of the people are elderly people who are very old and tend to the farmland that is overgrown with weeds.
Li Shanchang said, "After all, Jiangyin was the first line of defense for the Qing court against the Taiping army's eastward advance. As the saying goes, thieves come like combs and soldiers come like hairpins. Anyone with a brain can figure out what the Qing army will do when they come."
F
"If you levy taxes, grain, and conscript men, this is how it will naturally turn out."
The group hid on a hill behind the village, using a monocular telescope to look at the mountain peaks along the riverbank.
Although it's called a mountain, it's not actually very high, only a few dozen meters. But in this flat area, it's already quite tall compared to other low-lying areas.
"Another fort, how many is this now?" Tang asked.
"Counting only the Jiangyin area, this is already the fifteenth."
Li Shanchang put down his binoculars and began to take notes. "The peaks of Huangshan, Junshan, Xiaoshan, Changshan, wherever there is a high point, have been fortified with gun emplacements and cannons mounted on them."
"It's not a good time."
Tang He frowned and slowly said, "From a high vantage point, even if the Qing army's cannons are just muzzle-loading guns, a barrage of them would still be a threat."
"Once you've made your notes, let's move on and go to Zhenjiang to see what their defenses are like."
The group of six descended the small hill and headed towards Zhenjiang.
A day later, they entered Zhenjiang and made their way to the riverbank near Jingxian Mountain.
The first thing that caught their eye was the dense array of warships on the river. There were massive red-hulled boats, as well as the long dragon boats and fast crab boats they had seen before in Jiujiang.
Tang He roughly counted, and there were no fewer than fifty or sixty ships within his line of sight. Many more ships were moored in the distant river bay, their masts resembling a bare forest.
"Hey, how many ships are there?" one of the guys behind me whispered.
"There are at least thirty red-flagged boats, and the Long Dragon and Fast Crab boats combined are no less than fifty," Tang said solemnly.
The Red Cannon was a large, armed merchant ship, capable of carrying up to thirty cannons. Its hull was sturdy, and its firepower formidable; it was the mainstay warship of the Qing navy. With the long dragons and fast crabs lurking around, if discovered, the Wind Chaser would certainly not be able to get past.
"Keep exploring forward; this is the naval force. We haven't seen the land-based deployments yet."
The group walked another ten miles or so west, getting a general idea of the Qing army's deployment.
Jiangyin already has enough forts, but Zhenjiang has just as many.
The city has five main fortifications, the largest of which is located on Jiaoshan Mountain. It is situated on a high vantage point with a wide field of vision, and no ship passing by on the river can escape its sight.
In addition, the Qing army also built a long earthen wall stretching for dozens of miles outside Zhenjiang City, extending from the mountains all the way to the riverbank.
The earthen wall was about ten feet high, with crenellations and patrol passages on top, and a simple watchtower at intervals. A trench was dug outside the earthen wall, filled with sharpened logs.
After completing their reconnaissance, the group hid in a secluded ditch and spoke in hushed tones.
"With such a tight blockade, how did those white trading companies manage to smuggle weapons into Nanjing?" one of the assassins asked, scratching his head in confusion.
"I guess they left at night."
Li Shanchang drew a simple map on the ground with his finger and said, "It takes about 120 kilometers of waterway from Jiangyin to Nanjing. The white people's merchant ships are all steamships, and even when sailing upstream, their speed is more than six knots. This speed is enough to pass through the most dangerous fortified areas and reach the docks in Nanjing."
Tang He said, "Then the Chengfeng should be able to try this operation, but how to get back then is a problem."
"Go back? Why not just use the same old trick? It'll be faster to run downstream from Nanjing."
Li Shanchang shrugged: "Even if they were stopped, there's nothing on board. What reason could they possibly have to detain it? Do they think the American flag on board is just for show?"
Just as Tang He was about to say something, he suddenly raised his hand, signaling everyone to be quiet.
Footsteps sounded in the distance. It wasn't just one person, but the sound of dozens of feet hitting the ground, growing closer and closer.
The six men fell silent at the same time, their hands resting on the revolvers at their waists.