Whether to ban firearms or not was not about worrying about the emergence of beautiful scenery like "amenican" that I've seen.
What kind of people are those "amenicans" over there? Descendants of Anglo-Saxon bandits, who spend their days researching zero-dollar purchases, these uncultured individuals with no history, when they gather together, it's normal for beautiful scenery to appear, and strange if it doesn't.
The common people of the Central Plains, even if each person had a firearm, they wouldn't engage in creating beautiful scenery.
However, they could turn a feud between two villages into a Sengoku period like the Japanese, and a township-level feud could be equivalent to a small war between two European countries.
War-torn nation? No, the real war-torn nation is the Russian bear that fights bears after drinking too much. The Central Plains are a war-mongering nation.
Look at how those little brats play war games in later generations.
Even children who haven't experienced war, when playing survival games, they emphasize tactics like seizing favorable terrain, suppressing firepower, ambushing, and flanking maneuvers. How much more so for the people of the Ming Dynasty who have just experienced war.
Especially the members of the peasant association's guards, although their training intensity and equipment were far inferior to the regular army of the Ming Dynasty, they were not inferior in command and tactics. When it truly came to fighting, they were adept at all sorts of tactics, and their combat will was also very strong.
In the four years since Zhu Jinsong ascended the throne and declared himself emperor, there were hundreds of feuds of varying scales in the Ming Dynasty. Smaller ones involved dozens of people, usually armed with farming tools and firearms. Larger ones could involve hundreds or even tens of thousands of people, with weapons that included farming tools, grenades, bird guns, and rudimentary cannons.
Taking the Hakka-Tanka conflict in the Siyi region of Guangdong as an example, the peasant association guards of both sides became the main combatants. The participating forces on both sides once reached over five thousand people, and both sides clamored for the government to stay out, guaranteeing they would not trouble the imperial court, only asking for their bodies to be collected after they finished fighting.
In the end, it was the army stationed in the Siyi region that suppressed them.
Therefore, firearms could not be banned.
The problem is that trying to prohibit civilians from possessing firearms seems unrealistic.
The difficulty in producing bird guns, rudimentary cannons, and grenades at this period was not very high.
Let alone anything else, if you ban firearms, can you also ban fireworks? Who doesn't set off firecrackers and fireworks during the New Year—as long as you extract the gunpowder from them, a skilled fireworks craftsman, along with a blacksmith and a carpenter, can cobble together firearms and grenades. Even if they only have the power to explode into two pieces and smear people's faces, that's enough to cause headaches.
What's more critical is that while Shandong is relatively better, in places like Henan, Jiangsu, and other provinces that were gradually brought back under the Ming court, no one knows how many private firearms and gunpowder are still hidden among the populace.
Therefore, after Zhu Jinsong raised the question of whether to allow civilians to continue possessing firearms, the great figures of the Ming court were all troubled.
If they don't ban them, the potential threat is too great. If they ban them, it's not easy to do so.
After a long period of painful deliberation, Zeng Cheng finally proposed his suggestion: "Firearms must be banned, but a complete one-size-fits-all approach is unrealistic. Therefore, it would be better to set a deadline, temporarily for one year. Those who voluntarily surrender their firearms within a year will be rewarded. Those who are found to have not surrendered after a year will have their firearms confiscated or even be punished."
"As for hunters who rely on hunting for a living, they must be registered with the government, with records kept of how many bullets they receive and use each month. Additionally, efforts should be made to guide them to change their profession."
"As for areas with frequent wild animal sightings, the local garrison should be dispatched to eliminate the wild animals and provide the people with an environment where they can live in peace, which will also force those hunters to change their profession."
After thinking for a moment, Zeng Cheng continued, "If only firearms and cannons are banned, it is merely treating the symptoms and not the root cause. It's like European doctors who cut off hands for hand pain and feet for foot pain, only treating the surface and not the interior."
"To thoroughly solve this problem, the key lies in providing the people with a stable livelihood. Otherwise, situations where people fight over water sources will still occur. At most, without firearms and cannons, they will switch to cold weapons like farming tools, swords, and crossbows."
Zhu Jinsong gave an emotionless "hmm" and said, "This matter will be handled as Minister Zeng suggested. Regarding the matter of dealing with wicked gentry, distributing land, and finding livelihoods for the people, the responsibility should fall on the local governments, peasant associations, and the Ministry of Works."
This was an obvious matter.
In places like Shandong and Henan, which Zhu Jinsong had conquered through force, the matters of dealing with wicked gentry and distributing land were essentially handled alongside the fighting. However, in regions like Huguang, Liangguang, and Yunnan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Jiangnan, the matters of dealing with wicked gentry and distributing land had to be handed over to the local governments.
If the distribution of land was handled well, the common people would have hope, and they would gradually stabilize.
In fact, this was similar to dynastic changes—whenever a dynasty changed, a large number of people died, and as more people died, land became vacant. When the common people could receive land, a so-called prosperous era emerged.
Then, land annexation would slowly occur, repeating in a cycle.
Therefore, to thoroughly solve this problem, one cannot simply rely on dealing with wicked gentry and redistributing land, but must promote the process of industrialization and help the people gradually break away from their dependence on land.
The simplest way to achieve this is to rely on the Ministry of Works to undertake large-scale infrastructure construction and promote industrialization.
This would bring immense benefits to the entire Ming Dynasty.
With well-maintained roads, the speed of commodity circulation would increase. As industrialization progressed, the cost and price of commodities would further decrease, meaning the people's living materials would become richer, and the court would receive more tax revenue.
This was also why Zhu Jinsong was not worried about the "sheep eating people" problem.
The "sheep eating people" phenomenon occurred in England because the English nobility initiated enclosure movements for their own benefit. Such a thing might be possible in our Qing Dynasty, but which nobleman in the Ming Dynasty would dare to play this game? Did they think the Great Ming Law was just for show? Or did they think Zhu Jinsong, the emperor, was a good-tempered person?
Any behavior that studies whether sheep eat people without considering the overall background is hooliganism.
As for the issue of oversupply due to industrialization—let alone the vastness of the market in the Ming Dynasty itself, even if the Ming Dynasty couldn't digest it, wasn't there the market of Europe?
Sucking the blood of the entire world to improve the lives of one's own people was a normal operation—America could do it, and Zhu Jinsong could do it, and even more ruthlessly than America.
Internal sage and external king, this is a truth summarized by the ancestors. As for things like not distinguishing between me and you, or high and low, let people like Man Sheng handle them. Zhu Jinsong did not have similar hobbies.
However, the moment he thought about promoting industrialization, the problem returned to the issue of weights and measures.
On the surface, whether it was Shandong, Henan, or the other dozen or so provinces, the standards of weights and measures used were no different from those used in previous dynasties. But the reality was that the standards in Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, and Jiangsu were unified, while other places were gradually promoting them, and there were even instances of privately manufactured bushels, dou, and scales.
The reason was the same as the problem of prohibiting civilian possession of firearms: in many places that surrendered at the first sign of trouble, the government and peasant associations had only just begun their work. To prohibit the private manufacture of dou and scales and promote the standard weights and measures of the Ming Dynasty would naturally not be something that could be accomplished in a day or two.
Then, considering the issues of the Great Ming Law, the girls' schools, the enfeoffment of nobles and the examination and evaluation of officials, whether newspapers should be open, whether civilians should be prohibited from possessing firearms, and issues concerning Joseon and Jiaozhi, and a host of other problems, Zhu Jinsong, the Emperor of the Great Ming, couldn't help but feel a headache.
Most other穿越者s basically transmigrated to become emperors or became emperors after rebelling. Some became extremely high-ranking officials after transmigrating. It seemed that none of them encountered these difficulties. Why did so many messy things happen when it came to him?
...
Compared to Zhu Jinsong's displeasure, the Qing Emperor Qianlong was very pleased.
The facts proved that Qianlong's vision was quite good—first, Yongyan, the designated crown prince, led troops to capture Gorkha and organized the Gorkha Eight Banners. Subsequently, our Qing Dynasty advanced to attack Joseon, directly crushing Joseon's army.
What did this prove?
This proved that our Qing Dynasty's Eight Banners were still quite useful; at least, they were still easy to deal with small fry like Gorkha and Joseon.
With the victories in Gorkha and Joseon, Qianlong even sent the Gorkha Eight Banners to confront the Solon tribe—in Qianlong's opinion, if the Gorkha Eight Banners could defeat the Solon tribe, it would mean that the Gorkha Eight Banners were capable of competing with the rebel Zhu Jinsong.
Of course, the final outcome greatly disappointed Qianlong.
The soldiers of the Gorkha Eight Banners, in order to be incorporated into the Upper Three Banners, performed bravely on the battlefield, but even the most fearless Gorkha soldiers could not defeat the Solon tribe.
The Solon Battalion of the Solon tribe was not simply fearless. These tough men, honed in harsh lands, had long been accustomed to disregarding life and death in order to ensure their families lived better lives.
This included their own lives and the lives of others.
For these men of the Solon Battalion, preserving the Solon tribe, protecting their families, and the officials sent by the Ming Emperor would allow their families to gradually live better lives.
As for Qianlong?
Jiang Xinlong, the head of the peasant association sent to the Solon tribe by Zhu Jinsong and the future prefect of Heilongjiang, was currently discussing the differences between Qianlong's family and the Ming Dynasty with several tribal princes.
"From the time when the old slave founded the Eight Banners system, the Eight Banners Mongols, and then the Mongol Eight Banners during Huang Taiji's reign, our Qing Dynasty has been implementing a policy of population reduction on the grasslands. I believe Your Highnesses can see this clearly."
"And what about the Ming Dynasty before that?"
"Although the Ming Dynasty had Emperor Hongwu's five northern expeditions, and there were many frictions between the two sides, in general, this friction was more like a disagreement between two brothers within a family. The Ming Dynasty never treated the grasslands as an enemy country, and the grasslands have always been a part of the Ming Dynasty."
The grassland princes maintained an attitude of disdain towards Jiang Xinlong's statement.
Disagreements between brothers? If there were disagreements, they would launch five northern expeditions, smash Oirats and Tatars, and incidentally smash the Uriankhai three guards? It should be known that the Uriankhai three guards had contributed considerably during the reign of Zhu Laosi's Jingnan campaign!
Jiang Xinlong pretended not to see the expressions of the grassland princes and continued, "Not to mention anything else, take General Man Gui. Today, there is an ancestral tablet dedicated to General Man Gui in the Shrine of Loyal Martyrs of our Ming Dynasty. After Emperor Chongzhen posthumously granted him the title of Grand Tutor, our Ming Emperor also issued an edict posthumously granting him the title of太子少保 (Crown Prince's Junior Guardian). Currently, among the few Qianhu (Commander) positions in the Imperial Guards, there is a descendant of General Man Gui."
It should be said that not many of these grassland princes were fools—when Qianlong was powerful, and the Solon Battalion had not yet submitted to the Ming Dynasty, they were prepared to obey Qianlong's orders. After the Solon tribe as a whole submitted to the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty under Qianlong deteriorated day by day, and these princes began to communicate with the Solon tribe.
Who couldn't see the population reduction policy played by Qianlong's family?