Zhong Yu's army came out in full force, and the Ming Emperor was anxiously searching for money and food, hoping to form a new army and suppress the rebellion again.
Unfortunately, although he took out part of his own treasury and strictly ordered officials and landlords to donate money and food, the income was not much after all.
And because the emperor lost most of the people's support, there were too few people willing to join the army. Although the army was sufficient, the quality of the soldiers was far less than that of the previous batches.
In the end, after all this trouble, the Ming Emperor only recruited a handful of 200,000 new troops, which were barely enough to guard the surroundings of the imperial capital. If they were used to combat rebellion, it was a complete joke.
After the recruitment of the new army was completed, only a few soldiers and horses were obtained. The emperor's plan undoubtedly became a joke.
In desperation, the current old emperor of the Ming Dynasty could only order 200,000 new troops to defend the imperial capital, and send some troops to suppress the central provinces surrounding the imperial capital. As for the safety and ownership of other southern provinces, the old emperor could only express his helplessness.
In the old emperor's mind, after the six southern provinces were taken back, they didn't contribute much money to him at all. Instead, he, the court, was asked to contribute a lot of money for disaster relief.
Over the past few years, the imperial court has invested an inordinate amount of food and salary in the south, but what it received in the end was less than what was needed.
In the minds of the high-ranking princes in the court today, the six southern provinces have changed from a land of prosperity to a barren land, and have become a worthless existence. Keeping them is equivalent to keeping a burden.
Now that I can take advantage of this opportunity to get rid of this burden, it might not be a bad choice.
Today's Ming Dynasty officials are no longer as enterprising as they were in the early days of the founding of the country. Their minds have been corrupted by the luxurious life. In their eyes, the territory where they can make money is important. If you can't make money from a site, no matter how much you get, it's still waste.
Therefore, under the imperial court's policy of passive resistance, the 400,000 garrison troops in the six southern provinces, under the long-term lack of military pay, were unable to stop the high morale of the emperor's crusade.
Under the personal leadership of Zhong Yu, the army of millions was like a tiger emerging from the cage, declaring its majestic power to everyone with incomparable wantonness.
The army quickly invaded the six southern provinces, once again announcing the arrival of its previous master to the people here.
This time, the people in the six southern provinces actually welcomed the arrival of the Imperial Army.
Because they discovered that although the forces of the Yu Kingdom were expelled last time, the Ming Dynasty government that followed did not bring them any good life. Instead, they intensified their efforts to plunder the people's wealth and anointing. Compared with the previous political clarity of the Jade Kingdom, it was simply The gap between heaven and earth.
There are also local garrison troops who go around disturbing the people, looting property is considered light, harming local women, and killing innocent people wantonly is common. People everywhere had nowhere to redress their grievances, and they had long been looking forward to the return of the Imperial Army.
Zhong Yu was not too happy about these welcomes, because he understood that the reason why these people welcomed him was just to miss his previous benefits. As long as there is one person who can give these people better treatment, then they will immediately abandon themselves, just like they abandoned the Ming Dynasty now.
Besides, the previous betrayal of millions of troops in the six southern provinces taught Zhong Yu a good lesson, and he completely realized the fact that these people could not be trusted.
Recovering the six southern provinces this time did not take too long due to previous experience. All regime changes were completed in about three months.
After taking over the six southern provinces, Zhong Yu did not further conquer other territories. Instead, he deployed more troops in each of the six provinces to clean up the local bandits and at the same time wipe out the remaining forces of the Ming Dynasty.
None of this is important. What is important is that Zhong Yu plans to start liquidating those who dared to betray him.
Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary unrest, it is necessary to increase the local garrison.
This cleanup lasted for two months. The main targets were the local landowners and nobles, as well as some remaining Ming Dynasty troops. Many of them had betrayed Zhong Yu before.
When the cleaning was completed, Zhong Yu began to target the Ming Dynasty again.
Excluding the garrisons used to guard the 12 provinces, Zhong Yu mobilized an army of about 800,000 to attack the west, which had not been touched by Zhong Yu before the Ming Dynasty.
There are five provinces in the west of the Ming Dynasty, which are mainly used to defend Ba, Shu and Qi in the west.
Since these three countries have formed a strategic alliance, although each country is not very powerful and is a little weaker than the Ming Dynasty, together they have become a behemoth that no one wants to provoke.
Daming is one of them that he doesn't want to mess with.
However, others don't want to provoke others, but these three countries want to provoke others, especially Qi, which has the most borders with the Ming Dynasty. Almost every year, they send some small troops to harass the Ming Dynasty. Within ten years, there will be a massacre of more than 100,000 people. Great war.
Frequent wars not only resulted in a small population in the five provinces and poor living and economic conditions, but also trained a border army that was good at fighting.
The number of this frontier army was small, only 300,000, because the Ming Dynasty did not have so much money and food to support it. It is also a defensive measure carried out to limit the expansion of the border army.
Especially in recent years, due to the continuous emergence of internal and external troubles in the Ming Dynasty, the frontier armies in the five western provinces were often in short supply of food and pay. They were often paid for one month and then stopped for five or six months, resulting in many frontier armies not even being able to eat. Full, not to mention morale.
People in the western region were usually angry at the discrimination against people in other regions of the Ming Dynasty, and they hated the titles such as barbarians, thieves and bandits imposed on themselves by those people.
Now that their food and salary have been cut off, the dissatisfaction in the hearts of these frontier soldiers has finally reached its extreme.
So when Zhong Yu's army came to the west, a total of 300,000 border troops killed the imperial supervisors sent to monitor them and surrendered to Yu's country.
Zhong Yu was overjoyed after receiving the news and quickly ordered the mobilization of food and salary to distribute to the 300,000 border troops who had been short of military funds for a long time, intending to use money and food to buy these troops.
The Qi State in the east is also a great border trouble for Zhong Yu, who has taken over the west. These 300,000 border troops who have had dealings with Qi State for a long time are a very good guard.
With these troops, Zhong Yu left another 200,000 to strengthen the defense of the western region and serve as surveillance, which was enough to ensure that the five western provinces were firmly in Zhong Yu's hands.
After taking the western part, Zhong Yu finally completed his strategic plan for the Ming Dynasty.
After the continuous weakening of Zhong Yu, the strength of the Ming Dynasty was reduced to only four provinces in the center and two provinces in the north. Its strength was far from enough to be called an empire.
Next, Zhong Yu set his sights on other countries, intending to plunder enough land from other empires to become emperor, thereby breaking through the boundaries of the eighth level.
(End of chapter)