Chapter 438 Hongmen Banquet
Nie Pan suddenly thought of a good way to get funds and revenge. He couldn't help standing at the head of Nanchang City and laughing. The laughter was very strange.
Listening to Nie Pan's creepy laughter, Song Xiyan was a little confused and asked, "My marshal, do you have a sudden brain failure or a seizure?" What good idea did you come up with? Would you like to talk about it? It's not so creepy to laugh, is it?"
"The sky can't be revealed!" Nie Pan shook his sleeves proudly and was ready to go back to the house, and then quickly took action to put his plan into practice.
"Hey... Stop, why are you like this? Even if you think of a good idea, it's what I thought of for you. You are called crossing the river and tearing down the bridge, which is the work of the villain..." Song Xiyan followed Nie Pan unrelentlessly. The mystery was not solved, and she felt very uncomfortable.
At this moment, there was a rapid sound of horses' hoofs not far from the city tower. Nie Pan hurriedly stopped and looked up and looked far away. About 23 horses rolled up a cloud of smoke and dust came from far away, as if the target was Nanchang City.
These galloping horses were stopped by the patrol army when they were about three miles away from the city gate. After negotiation, after a while, someone came to the city to report: "Report to the marshal, a Song Dynasty officer who claimed to be Liu Zhen came to us with some soldiers. I don't know what to do, please Is the marshal in charge?"
"Liu Zhen?" Song Xiyan was shocked when she heard the name.
Speaking of which, this person is a very famous figure at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. Nie Pan, who graduated from high school and is uneducated, may be unfamiliar with such a name, but Song Xiyan, who studied liberal arts for four years in college, is familiar with this name.
Liu Zhen is a talent who can fight and make suggestions, but he is not very loyal. When Liu Zheng was young, he served as the governor of Luzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty. He was responsible for guarding the north gate of Sichuan and resisting the Mongol invasion of Sichuan. During his term, he fought several beautiful battles, which made the Mongols' attack on Sichuan futile.
Later, Jia Sidao became the prime minister. In order to monopolize the government, Jia Sidao played tricks to attack Zhongliang and eliminate dissidents. Zhao Kui, Yu Jie, Meng Ji and other famous anti-Mongolian generals were persecuted one after another. They were unjustly imprisoned and persecuted to death. Liu Zheng was also one of them.
However, Liu Zheng is different from others. He is not the kind of good stubble. In anger, Liu Zheng surrendered to the Mongols and offered Luzhou, the gateway of Sichuan. After the Mongols got Luzhou, they opened the door to Sichuan, so they entered Sichuan and occupied the whole Sichuan in a few months. During this period, there was a massacre here. The blood in Sichuan was full of ten rooms and nine empty. It is said that there were millions of people in the Southern Song Dynasty who were slaughtered.
After Liu Jian surrendered to Yuan, he actively helped the Mongols make suggestions and invade the Southern Song Dynasty, and put forward several important suggestions. The first is to help the Mongols establish a strategy to focus on Xiangyang, and the second is to help the Mongols establish a strong navy and help the Mongols gain an advantage on the surface of the Yangtze River. It laid the foundation for the destruction of the Yuan army in the Southern Song Dynasty along the Yangtze River in the future. After Liu's death, he was called a "national thief" by many later literati, including Lu You.
At this time, when I heard that such a person came to join him, Song Xiyan really didn't have a good impression on him. She immediately said to Nie Pan, "This is a person who betrays the country and seeks glory. We can't accept such a person. We will immediately let people arrest him and kill him."
"Uh...why? You seem to have a lot of hatred for this person? I don't know where he offended you?" Nie Pan asked puzzledly.
Song Xiyan now simply told Nie Pan what Liu Zhen did later, and suggested that he should be arrested and killed in order to eliminate future troubles.
Nie Pan thought for a moment, and finally shook his head and rejected Song Xiyan's proposal: "You're not right. Anyway, this person is also a talented person. He was also persecuted by Jia Sidao and had no choice but to surrender to the Mongols. Although this is his fault, he is also for self-rewarding. As the saying goes, 'the ants still cherish their lives, let alone people', and the bastards of the Southern Song Dynasty are also true.
After Liu Zheng surrendered to the Mongols, he was the courtiers of the Yuan Dynasty. As the saying goes, each of them was his own masters. It was also appropriate for him to give advice to the Mongols. What's more, you also said that Liu Zheng also dissuaded Kublai Khan from killing less, which was also a Han man's duty.
And everyone has problems. Just like Chen Ping, one of the three founding heroes of the Han Dynasty, is also greedy. Liu Bang said it well that he used his strengths instead of grabbing his braids. Our rebel army is now at the right time to use people. Since he came to turn to us first, he did not take the initiative to vote. Relying on the Mongolians, it can be seen that Liu Zhen is not very willing to help the Mongols in his heart. How can we refuse him?
Under Nie Pan's insistence, Song Xiyan was no longer stubborn and promised to accept Liu's surrender. Nie Pan immediately went out of the city to greet Liu Zhen in person. Liu Zhen was tall and spoke loudly. He didn't look like a treacherous person. Nie Pan felt that he had misread such a person. The suspect did not need to use others. At that moment, he took Liu Zhen back to his mansion and ordered his servants to set up a banquet to entertain Liu Cheng.
When Zhao Kui heard that Liu Zheng came to join him, he hurriedly came to the banquet happily. During the banquet, the two of them talked about their dissatisfaction with the Southern Song Dynasty. When the banquet was about to end, Nie Pan proposed to let Liu Zheng go to Jiujiang to guard and establish a sailor in Jiujiang, and this was also his specialty. Liu Zheng happily obeyed.
Zhao Kui said with a worried face, "Marshal Nie, the military rate of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in our hand. Due to the recruitment of more than 100,000 soldiers and horses, there are only 13,000 taels of silver left, that is, we can only buy dozens of boats, which is far from enough to establish a sailor. What should we do?"
"Don't worry, Prime Minister Zhao. You first allocate 10,000 taels of silver to Lord Liu. Let me find a way to raise it. I will definitely get a batch of silver back in half a month." Nie Pan comforted Zhao Kui.
"Oh... I'm afraid that the distant water can't quench the thirst. This military pay is the soul of the soldiers. Although most of our insurgents are ordinary people, there are family members waiting to eat for a long time. If we don't have money to send to them, I'm afraid that people's hearts will disperse." Zhao Kui stroked his beard and said worriedly.
"I have a way. It's better to invite some landlords and gentry in Hunan to Nanchang as guests, set up a Hongmen banquet, and borrow money from them. If anyone dares not to obey, I think the rest will be honest with a sum of money. In this way, it is estimated that a lot of money can be raised. You can solve the urgent need for the time being. Liu Jian hugged his wrist and proposed to Nie Pan and Zhao Kui.
Zhao Kui and Nie Pan are very much in favor of Liu Zheng's method, but Nie Pan thought of the method of issuing treasury bills by the country before he traveled through time, and decided to improve Liu Zheng's idea, change the method of forcing fees, and issue a "bond" in the name of the government. The chaebols and evil gentry in Hunan and Jiangxi raise money, and each household borrows 1,000 to 5,000 taels or more according to their economic strength. When they win the war in the future, the government will repay them twice or three times when they have silver.
After planning, Zhao Kui sent his confidant to invite hundreds of rich chaebols and gentry from Hunan and Jiangxi to Nanchang City, set up a Hongmen banquet, borrowed money from them, and promised that the silver would not be borrowed for nothing. He would issue a "bond" to each of them as a voucher, and pay twice or even more in the future. Also.
People had to bow their heads under the eaves, and these chaebols and gentry had no choice but to take out the silver. At the beginning, it was ranging from 1,000 taels to three or five thousand taels. No one was willing to donate more.
Liu Zheng took a small trick and invited Huang, the number one businessman in Nanchang, to the back for tea. After a burst of intimidation and psychological work, the businessman surnamed Huang turned around and generously donated 20,000 taels of silver to help the insurgent army. Nie Pan and Zhao Kui immediately sent him a plaque to praise him, and gave Huang an empty title, let He is hereditary.
When others saw such a good thing, anyway, donating a thousand taels is a free donation. Donating an extra three or five thousand taels can also exchange some benefits. They immediately generously donated their bags. After a banquet, nearly 500,000 taels of funds were raised, which made Nie Pan and Zhao Kui happy and temporarily solved the urgent need.
After raising the money, Nie Pan allocated 200,000 taels of silver to Liu Zhen and appointed him as the governor of Jiujiang. He was fully responsible for handling the sailors in Jiujiang. Liu Zhen led 20,000 new recruits and happily went to Jiujiang to take over.
With funds, the life of the rebel army was better. Zhao Kui sent people everywhere to buy steel, recruit blacksmiths, cast weapons and armor in Nanchang City, and sent some people to quietly enter Mongolia to buy horses at a high price, ready to form a cavalry. After spending half a month, the funds are tight again.
Therefore, Nie Pan decided to entrust all the occupied territory to Zhao Kui for management. He wanted to go back to Zhongnan Mountain. First, he went to the tomb of the living dead to take out the funds left by Wang Chongyang, and then went to the territory of Xixia to secretly find the underground mausoleum left by Li Yuanhao and dig out the treasure inside as funds.