Great time travel

Chapter 169: There Are Emperors in Shanghai!

"... Cavalry, assault!"

Accompanied by the banners waved by the flag officer of the Qing army, a small group of sturdy cavalry of the Eight Banners launched a final assault on the frightened rebels. It smashed, the casualties were terrible, and it completely collapsed in an instant.

——The heart-piercing screams, the head flying from the knife, the pungent blood, and... the mace getting closer and closer to his forehead!
"……what--"

In the twilight morning light, accompanied by a sharp scream, Chen Zilong sat up suddenly from the bed, only then did he remember that he was far away from the battlefield and fighting, and now he was in his own courtyard in the county seat of Shanghai, but every time he remembered in his dream The scene at that time still has lingering fears.

After being in a daze for a long time, Chen Zilong stretched out his hand to touch it. His forehead and temple hair were all wet, and his shirt was really sweaty.

More than a month ago, the "Zhenwu Army" formed by him and his friends was beaten to pieces by a small group of Qing soldiers and fled.When the whole army collapsed, Chen Zilong once thought that it was time for him to die for his country, but he was rescued by a few loyal servants in the end.

But even so, Chen Zilong, who fled to Shanghai, was still seriously ill. From then on, he dared not talk about military affairs lightly, let alone talk about military affairs on paper.

"... Young Master! What's wrong with you?"

Liu Rushi, a famous prostitute in Suzhou who escaped from the sword of the Qing soldiers with Chen Zilong, also just woke up, and was drinking a basin of well water, squatting in the yard outside to wash up, when she heard Chen Zilong's exclamation, she didn't care about disheveled hair , and hurried over to ask.

Chen Zilong looked up from the bed, and saw Liu Rushi with loose temples and disheveled clothes, and the fragrance of a woman wafted into his nostrils.If it was in normal times, he would have already been in a state of mind and couldn't help himself.It's just that at this moment, he doesn't have the slightest thought of seeking fragrance.

"...It's nothing, I just had a nightmare!" Facing Liu Rushi's delicate face, Chen Zilong just waved his hands casually, jumped out of the bed, took off his pajamas and put on a coat - anyway, as a prostitute and a benefactor, The two of them have long shared the same bed, so there is nothing to avoid.Then, Chen Zilong put another sesame seed cake in his bosom for breakfast, and hurried out the door with the two servants. Before leaving, he did not forget to tell Liu Rushi:
"...If so, today I have to discuss important matters with Xu Gebu and Mr. Sun in the Catholic Church, so I won't be back for lunch!"

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

The history of Shanghai County is quite long. Its earliest construction history can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, but until the late Ming Dynasty, it was only a small city according to the standards of Jiangnan.Even the capital city of Songjiang Mansion is not in Shanghai, but in Huating in the south.

However, since the "Longqing opened the sea" in the late Ming Dynasty, Shanghai has gradually become a foreign trade port, exporting a large amount of cotton cloth, a specialty of Songjiang Prefecture, to overseas and domestically, and the market has become prosperous.The county's population has increased to 3 households, and there are more than [-] households in the city. It can be regarded as a top-ranking county in the world of Ming Dynasty.However, compared with the major seaport cities in Fujian and Guangdong, which were already very prosperous at that time, the size of Shanghai Port was still much worse.It is completely incomparable with Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Yangzhou, which have a population of nearly one million.

However, it is such an ordinary county, but now more than [-] war refugees have poured in, which has exceeded the capacity of Shanghai in an instant.When Chen Zilong walked through the streets with his servants, he saw that every eave was crowded with many hungry people from other places with ragged clothes and disheveled faces.And because the "Australian" fleet blocked the sea route, Songjiang cotton cloth could not be sold, and the local weavers, printing and dyeing craftsmen in Shanghai were also unemployed in large numbers, and foreigners couldn't find jobs.So many people without food and clothing are crowded in the small Shanghai county, making the market more and more chaotic - just like an old saying: When you have nowhere to go, please don't forget that there is a last way out, then It is a crime.

As a result, all kinds of robbery, murder, theft, and riots spread in Shanghai County at an explosive growth rate, and soon exceeded the management capacity of the county government. Even the Shanghai County Magistrate did not know about it last month. Who was beaten to death, making the city enter anarchy from then on.

Right now, it is entirely relying on the most prominent families in Shanghai to jointly dispatch armed servants from various families to patrol and suppress, hang a string of heads on the street and at the gate of the city to "deter traitors", and take out stored food and porridge for relief. It was only then that the basic order in Shanghai County was barely maintained.

The Catholic Church that Chen Zilong visited this time is located in Fahua Town outside Shanghai County, which will be Xujiahui in the future.Because Xu Guangqi's descendants once lived here, it got such a name.But right now, Xu Guangqi is still alive.

This veteran Westernization School in the late Ming Dynasty who introduced Western geometry and sweet potato planting techniques, a rare figure among Chinese scholar-officials who "sees the world with his eyes open", and the highest-ranking Christian in the Ming Dynasty is now in his 70s Well, he can be regarded as the number one person on the ground in Shanghai today.Moreover, the meeting held in the Shanghai Catholic Church was also inspired by Xu Guang.

In fact, Xu Guangqi's experience in this time and space in the past two years has been full of twists and turns.

——In the fifth year of Chongzhen, Xu Guangqi originally served as a cabinet scholar in Beijing. Because Marshal Chen Xin’s Dengzhou Town rebelled, he expelled Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai, and defeated the Shandong army. It was fire on all sides and smoke in all directions, and there were repeated defeats everywhere. He had no strength to attack Dengzhou on a large scale, so Emperor Chongzhen, who had not yet changed his soul at that time, sent a scholar Xu Guangqi out of Beijing to appease the Dengzhou rebels in Shandong.

Unexpectedly, before the appeasement negotiation failed, Guan Ning's army had already defected and surrendered to the pass, leading the Eight Banners Tartars to invade Beijing, and the Ming court collapsed.Xu Guangqi, who was negotiating in Dengzhou, couldn't help but lose all hope for a while, so he simply got a sea boat through the relationship of Dengzhou Town, and went back to his hometown in Shanghai.After arriving at his hometown in Shanghai, Xu Guangqi was surprised to find that his good student, fellow countryman and church friend Sun Yuanhua was already waiting for him in Shanghai. When I returned to Beijing, I took a boat and fled south to my hometown in Shanghai.

After returning to his hometown in Shanghai, Xu Guangqi had already devoted himself to living in seclusion for the elderly. Apart from reading the Bible, he basically didn't care about world affairs.Although the Donglin Party court in Nanjing, after supporting Yonghe Emperor Zhu Yihai, once sent people to Shanghai to enlist him to become an official again, Xu Guangqi refused on the grounds of old age and frailty.And his student Sun Yuanhua, who also believed in religion, basically did the same thing after he fled to Shanghai.

However, in the current chaotic world, Jiangnan is also not a land of peace and happiness. With the successive invasions of "Australian thieves", Emperor Chongzhen and the Eight Banners of the Qing Dynasty, the land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River was full of wars, and the Nanjing Communist Party fell apart.The Qing army's staking and enslavement policies, especially the unprecedented massacre of Suzhou, caused a bloody storm in all the southern provinces, crying ghosts and wolves.

In the face of the crisis of destruction, Xu Guangqi had no choice but to stand up with his old body. Taking advantage of his lofty prestige and family power, he and his student Sun Yuanhua joined forces with local gentry and celebrities to form a maintenance association in Shanghai, and he himself served as the maintenance chairman. Temporarily play the functions of the interim government.And out of the selfishness of a Catholic, Xu Guangqi and Sun Yuanhua arranged for the location of the maintenance meeting to be in a Catholic church in Shanghai.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

From the outside, the Catholic Church in Shanghai in the late Ming Dynasty did not look like a church at all, because it was originally rebuilt from a landlord's manor. If the cross erected on the roof inside could be seen from outside the courtyard wall, it is estimated that there would be no one there. You will notice that it was originally a "Temple of the Cross".

Because he had come and gone many times and was already a familiar face, when Chen Zilong came to the church, the doorkeeper of the church opened the door to welcome him in without asking any questions.The buildings inside the courtyard wall are almost the same as the Ming Dynasty mansions of this era, except that a Western-style chapel was built on the original garden land, and some religious-themed murals and reliefs were decorated inside and outside.However, Chen Zilong had no intention of admiring it at all, and just walked in.

As soon as he reached the gate of the chapel, Chen Zilong heard the voice of his friend Xia Yunyi:
"...Hey! Our Zhang Pu and Zhang Tianru, this time we really gathered the iron from the south of the Yangtze River and made an unprecedented mistake! What kind of borrowing from the teacher to help the battle! It's like inviting a group of demons to come down to earth! The student took the risk to go to Suzhou the day before yesterday. Oh, that scene is really... indescribable! Hundreds of thousands of people in the city have been turned into corpses, and there are no living people on the streets, only crows and wild dogs! Even the Shura Hell in the Buddhist scriptures is probably nothing more than this!"

Chen Zilong hurried over to take a look, and found Xia Yunyi standing under the cross, spitting and telling what he had secretly taken people to Suzhou to spy on the enemy a few days ago.Xu Guangqi, Sun Yuanhua and several other Shanghai gentry sat on benches and listened, their faces sinking like water.

"...Hey, I didn't expect that the Tartars would be so cruel. This time I in Jiangnan really suffered a catastrophe!"

After listening to Xia Yunyi's description of the scene of Suzhou after the city was massacred, everyone present felt sorry for him, and Xu Guangqi also sighed repeatedly, "... Are there still soldiers and horses of the Tartars in the territory of Suzhou Prefecture? From your point of view, Do the Tartars have plans to invade Songjiang?"

"...According to what the students found out, because of the sudden death of the Tartar chief Huang Taiji, all the captive soldiers have already withdrawn from Suzhou Mansion."

Xia Yunyi replied, "...However, if the northern captives come again next time, Songjiang will definitely bear the brunt of it!"

Facing this bleak prospect that had been expected, everyone in the church fell silent.After a while, it was Xu Guangqi who spoke again, "...Chuyang (Sun Yuanhua's name), how are your two thousand volunteer soldiers doing now? Can you go to battle and kill the enemy?"