Chapter 9 On the Social and Historical Background of the Gelaohui's Rise (1)
In the second half of the 19th century, the Gelaohui spread in the Yangtze River Basin and rose rapidly, becoming the most powerful and influential secret society in this area, and finally pointed the finger of struggle at foreign churches. , especially closely related to political changes and economic restructuring in the Yangtze River Basin.The author tries to collect relevant materials on the basis of the research of senior scholars, and briefly discusses this issue.
After the 1860s and 1870s, the invasion of foreign capitalism led to the increasing bankruptcy of China's rural economy, and a large number of bankrupt farmers and some traditional handicraftsmen who had separated from the land that had been attached to them for generations appeared in the society.
From the period after the Opium War to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the economic aggression of foreign capitalists to China mainly took China as its commodity sales market and the base for extracting raw materials for production, especially the export of commodities in the former.Although China's urban and rural handicraft industries based on the natural economy once put up extremely stubborn resistance to foreign commodity exports, they only delayed the invasion process of foreign capitalism in the end, and it was impossible to stop this invasion.The Second Opium War (1856-1860) and the signing of the "Tianjin Treaty" and "Beijing Treaty" allowed foreign capitalism to quickly invade the interior from the southeast coast, especially the fertile Yangtze River Basin. The 1858 "Tianjin Treaty" and the 1960 "Beijing Treaty" stipulated that the four ports of Zhenjiang, Nanjing, Jiujiang, and Hankou on the Yangtze River should be opened; the Sino-British "Yantai Treaty" in 1876 also stipulated that Yichang and Wuhu should be opened.It is stipulated that although Datong and Anqing in Anhui, Hukou in Jiangxi, Wuxue, Luxikou, and Shashi in Huguang are designated as treaty ports, foreign ships are allowed to berth. "Provincial British Business Matters" Because of these ports that have been opened or have not yet been opened but allow foreign ships to berth, foreign capitalist forces have established aggressive bases in the hinterland of the Yangtze River.In addition, the Chinese Customs directly controlled and controlled by the imperialists expanded the scope of the tariff agreement and lowered the tax rate. marketing.During the period from 1870 to 1894, China's total net import value rose from 40 million customs taels to 129 million customs taels. In 25 years, imports increased by 2.22 times.The export of goods has also undergone significant changes in geography—imported foreign goods are no longer just dumped along the southeast coast, but are based in Tianjin in North China, Guangzhou in South China, and Shanghai and Hankou in Central China, fanning out to the inland , and the extension of the Central China Road along the Yangtze River to the hinterland of Sichuan upstream is the most obvious.In particular, Hankou in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, since it was opened as a treaty port in 1860, quickly became a distribution center for foreign goods to be sold to the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the inland.Foreign goods imported from Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Hunan were also transported directly from Hankow to these provinces.In the late 1860s, Hunan Xiangtan was an important transfer station for Hankou to transship foreign goods.Although the vast majority of these transshipped foreign goods are operated by Chinese businessmen, they are still regarded as goods owned by foreigners, and the sub-export tax bill is used.At this time, there were many foreign firms in Hankou that sold Zikou tax bills, and there were six foreign firms that specialized in selling tax bills.In Yichang, upstream of Hankou, between 1878 and 1880, the number of goods shipped to the inland with sub-port tax bills increased by 66 times.Another example is when Wuhu in Anhui Province was officially opened as a port in 1877, the import value (net import) of foreign goods was 890,000 customs taels, which increased to 7 million customs taels in 1899, an increase of 7.79 times.The same is true for imports from Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other provinces.In Zhejiang, foreign capitalists used the two ports of Ningbo and Wenzhou to dump goods to all parts of Zhejiang. In 1877, the net import of foreign goods from these two ports was about 6.2 million customs taels, and in 1894 it reached 7.6 million customs taels.During this period, the imported foreign goods were mainly opium, cotton yarn and foreign cloth.The import of opium led to the outflow of silver, making silver expensive and money cheap; and the dumping of cotton yarn and cotton cloth caused the rapid disintegration of the vast urban and rural household handicrafts.In the Ningbo area, "after the tenth year of Guangxu (1884), outsiders became more familiar with the hobbies of our people, and all kinds of ointments were imported... Farmers and village women, full of foreign goods." Clothes, most of which are given to foreign gauze", Huo Shan's "famous machine cloth, which is no longer passed down"; in 1883, in Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture, Jiangsu Province, "English cotton thread is sold in every village, and British cotton thread can be seen on every store shelf. Cotton thread", other counties in Songjiang Prefecture are also "full of foreign cloth, and the benefits of female reds are reduced".A large amount of foreign yarn and foreign cloth poured into the vast rural areas of the Yangtze River Basin continuously, decomposing and destroying the natural economy combining agriculture and hand textile industry in these areas, and thousands of farmers and handicraftsmen became unemployed or semi-employed Unemployed migrants or homeless people. At the end of the 19th century, someone pointed out: "China has been open to trade for 60 years. Since it has separated itself from the situation, it has given the best interests to people from other countries. The sea overflows and the rivers flow every year, and tens of millions of money are spent every year. If there is no wealthy businessman in the twenty-first province, and the poor inside and outside are unemployed, they are like the sands of the Ganges." According to the "History of the Development of Capitalism in China" edited by Xu Dixin and Wu Chengming (Volume 2, p. 313), 1840-1894 , the number of rural textile households decreased by 6,830,000.
The massive dumping of foreign commodities not only seriously damaged China's traditional cotton textile industry, but also hit other handicraft industries, resulting in a general depression of traditional handicraft industries.The prosperity and decline of the manual steelmaking industry in Wuhu, Anhui Province clearly illustrate this problem.Handicraft steelmaking has always been a traditional industry in Wuhu. As early as the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Wugang was born, and the steel products of Bujia are second to none.In the early Qing Dynasty, Wugang further developed, and the swords, pans, plowshares, axes, scissors and other iron products produced in Wuhu were sold well all over the country.During the Qianjia period, Wuhu "iron workers are different from other counties, and there are dozens of steel smelters in the city." But the good times did not last long. After the 1860s and 1970s, due to the invasion of foreign steel and its steel products by the mechanism of Western capitalism , forcing Wugang's production scale and marketing area to shrink day by day.In the fourth year of Guangxu (1878), the nail bar iron and iron wire imported by Wuhu increased from the previous 413 dan to 6838 dan, and then increased to more than 7000 dan in the following year.Under the impact of Yanggang, the traditional handmade steel workshops in Wuhu were unable to match, and closed down one after another. In 1884, the remaining two or three steel workshops merged into one, with the same brand name as Chunfu; Year (1899) finally closed down.The "Wuhu County Chronicle" compiled in the 8th year of the Republic of China wrote: "(Wu) steel is a well-known old thing in the past. After Xianfeng, there are still fourteen, all of which are very rich. Since the import of foreign steel has gradually disappeared... After the opening of trade, foreign merchants The steel produced by the machine furnace was imported, and this business ceased.” Due to the massive import of foreign iron and steel and the low price overwhelmed by Wugang, Wugang, which had been in great prosperity for a while, has disappeared without a trace.
The fate of other handicraft industries such as traditional oil extraction and sugar refining is roughly the same.
The traditional handicraft industry was replaced by the new machine industry, and the traditional handicraft products were replaced by machine products. From a theoretical point of view, it should have been a progressive historical process, but as far as modern China is concerned, this process is gradually becoming a semi-colonial condition. What happened next, so it is inevitably full of strong destructive and tragic colors.Relying on its strong economic strength and various privileges created by unequal treaties, foreign capitalism devastated China's traditional economy in every possible way, causing depression and recession in China's handicraft industry.Therefore, this process brought disaster to China's traditional handicraft industry. Thousands of handicraft workers were unemployed and bankrupt, and lost their means of production.For example, Zheng Guanying said: "Foreign cloth, foreign yarn, foreign lace, foreign socks, and foreign towels are imported into China, and female celebrities are unemployed; kerosene, foreign candles, and foreign electric lights are imported into China, but tallow trees in the southeastern provinces are all abandoned as useless; , foreign needles, and foreign nails have entered China, and those who are engaged in the industry have nothing to do, such as the big ones. There are also small ones, too numerous to enumerate. Therefore, foreign countries use mechanisms, so they are exquisite and cheap, and success is easy; China uses labor, so the labor is stupid and expensive, and it is difficult to succeed, and the livelihood of the Chinese is taken away."
While the cottage industry and some traditional urban and rural handicraft sectors were increasingly bankrupt, the commercialization of agricultural products in the entire Yangtze River Basin was also increasing.From the point of view of farmers themselves, after being forced to give up the household handicraft textile industry, in exchange for some necessities of life and necessary means of production, they must also sell some agricultural products or plant some cash crops for export and domestic market needs.There are many previous discussions on the commercialization of agricultural products in the Yangtze River Basin, such as the increase of commodity grain, the obvious growth of economic crops such as cotton, the gradual formation of several important economic crop areas, and the abnormal development of the silk industry. I won't go into details.What needs to be emphasized here is that in order to feed on the Western capitalist market, rural production in many areas such as the Yangtze River Basin has gradually become a single production of cash crops. Once the Western capitalist market is oversupplied and prices fall, farmers will suffer greatly. Become nothing and become a reserve army of the unemployed.According to the observations of Westerners at that time: "There are many workers in China, and they are inexhaustible. The mere wages they earn are not what American workers can support themselves. This is the case in Shanghai, and other places are especially cheap, because the wages here are already richer than those in the mainland. There are more and more people who come to seek food from far away places, even if they leave home."
However, Chinese peasants are not affected by the development of their own capitalist economy, but by foreign cheap commodities.Although Chinese national capitalism struggled to start under the stimulation of foreign capitalism in the 1860s and 1870s, its power was weak and its scale was limited, making it difficult to absorb and accommodate the increasing number of unemployed people.According to statistics, by 1894, the number of people employed in modern industrial enterprises was less than 100,000. For the tens of millions of unemployed people, such employment opportunities are really a drop in the bucket and insignificant.A considerable number of unemployed peasants and handicraftsmen had no choice but to wander about because they could not find proper employment and ways of making a living. The weak lived by begging, and the strong became bandits.At that time, someone said: "Since the rise of the army...the people have no constant employment, and their livelihoods are difficult. Forty million people, the strong and the half lazy, and those who are unworthy are living in bandits... The bandits and others are either vagrants or Scattered bravery, mobsters and gangsters, in short, because they have no job."
Therefore, the large number of unemployed people, refugees, and vagrants in modern China caused by the economic aggression of imperialism is the result of the rise of the Gelaohui in the Yangtze River Basin, and it quickly surpassed the original Zhaijiao and other secret associations in this area with rural farmers as the main body. the deepest and most direct social roots.
The decline of the old shipping industry in the Yangtze River Basin is also closely related to the rise of the Gelaohui in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
Due to the superior natural conditions of water transportation in the Yangtze River Basin, the shipping industry has been very developed since ancient times.Take Shanghai, which is located at the estuary of the Yangtze River, as an example: In terms of shipping, during the Jiaqing and Daoguang years of the Qing Dynasty, "at the mouths of Shanghai and Zhapu, there were more than 5,000 sea-going ships that were good at traveling to the Guandong and Shandong, and each ship could carry two to three thousand stones. and so on"; "The number of sand boats gathered in Shanghai is about 3,500 to 600."The so-called sand boats are "ships in the south of the Yangtze River... because of their flat and wide bottom, and the sand surface is suitable for mooring", hence the name. "Kandong soybeans and wheat, more than 100,000 stones are transported to Shanghai every year, and cloth and tea from the south to Shandong, Zhili, and Kanto are also carried by sand ships to the north."
In terms of inland shipping industry, before the Opium War, "there were 5,400 ships sailing from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to Shanghai every year. These ships never go out to sea, and they transport inland goods to supply the northern and southern ocean ships." The reason why Shanghai became an early modern city is due to its favorable geographical location at the intersection of Yangtze River shipping and coastal shipping.
On the two important water transport routes of the Yangtze River and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, in addition to private merchant ships, tens of thousands of tank ships, salt ships and passenger ships shuttle back and forth every year.On the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, there are more than 6,000 water boats going back and forth every year; the Huguang water boats gather in Hankou, enter the Yangtze River through the Han River, go down the river to Yizheng, Jiangsu, and then transfer to the canal. There are millions of stones in meters, and it reaches Tongzhou by rivers and canals."Since Huguang is the place where Huai’an salt is diverted, and it is known as “Chang’an” which accounts for more than half of the total sales of Huai’an salt diversion, “the rise and fall of the Huai Gang depends entirely on the smooth stagnation of Chu’an.” Therefore, a large number of salt ships come from every year Yizheng set sail and traveled westward.
Interestingly, some smuggling "owl boats" sometimes shuttled through them in a grandiose manner.For example, around the 10th year of Daoguang (1830), "Huang Yulin, a giant in the Huaihe River, used Yizheng Laohu Jingshui as a gathering place for planning and transportation, and took Yangluo and Lanxi, Hubei as his private sales places. The big sand boats were thousands of stones The small cat boats carry hundreds of stones, hundreds of them into gangs, and enter the melon mouth from the Changhe River. The Yangtze River is thousands of miles away, and the breath is connected. Even the official salt that is transferred to the river by robbing the boat.
The well-developed old-fashioned shipping industry not only communicated the circulation of goods and economic exchanges across the country, promoted the development of the social economy, but also provided a place for many laborers to live and earn a living as helpers.During the Daoguang period, a total of 60,000 to 70,000 sand ship sailors gathered in Shanghai; more people made a living by means of water transport, and only the water ship crew was one item. 80,000 to 90,000 people", among them "short fibers hired along the way" are especially unforgettable, because "every time the grain ships of the provinces go north, they must be pulled by manpower when they encounter sluices and shallow rapids." "Several times the number of sailors" If you add their families, and some small merchants and hawkers in the small towns along the canal who rely on water transportation to do small businesses, it is estimated that no less than millions of people rely on water transportation to survive.In addition, there are even more innumerable helmsmen, trackers, and helper sailors on inland river vessels engaged in various transportation industries in the rivers, lakes, and ports of the Yangtze River Basin.
Although China's old-fashioned shipping industry has a large scale, after all, wooden oars are no match for turbines, and manpower cannot compete with machines.With the increase of foreign merchant ships and their full involvement in China's coastal shipping and inland waterway shipping, coupled with the rise of China's modern national shipping industry, China's old traditional shipping industry has suffered a fatal blow. In the early 1860s, the sand ship industry centered in Shanghai declined sharply.Before the Opium War, there were about 35,600 shachuan in Shanghai; by the 1950s, it had been reduced to more than 2,000;In the eighth year of Tongzhi (1869), Prince Gong Yi complained: "Shanghai sand boats used to be very prosperous. Once foreign merchants allowed to load peas and rocks, thousands of sand boats went out of business, and the boat owners with millions of households were also poor. , and its helmsmen and sailors have no way to make a living."
Li Hongzhang, the governor of Jiangsu, also said: "The sand boats have been standing for a long time, the hulls of the ships are rotten, and the driving is difficult. The ship owners have no way to make a living. The more than 100,000 sailors on board cannot survive, and they will disperse and become bandits."
The sailing industry on the Yangtze River and canals also suffered the same fate: first look at Anhui.In the 25th year of Guangxu's reign, Governor of Anhui Province, Chen Yizuo: Ships sailed smoothly from the Yangtze River, and most of the river boat business was usually taken by him. However, ministers often took China Merchants Steamships on the river, and most of the sailors were from Guangdong, Ningbo, and Shanghai, not Huguang. , People who sail boats in Jiangwan on weekdays.
Hunan.Bian Baodi, Governor of Hunan Province, said that after ships opened to navigation on the Yangtze River, merchants and merchants used attached ships for convenience, and there was no one to hire river boats and land vehicles.
Hubei.In the twelfth year of Guangxu (1886), Kui Bin, governor of Hubei, said: In terms of Hubei province, Chen Daoguang accompanied him to southern Hunan and passed by.
From Hankou to Xiangfan, and from the Yangtze River to Gua Town, it is more than thousands of miles away, with rows of shops and masts and sails, which can be called a prosperous area.And the minister was ordered to send Hubei to this state, and he was surprised that the people were in a state of depression, which was far from what it used to be... Gentlemen and seniors said that the reason for being trapped was actually the smooth travel of ships, and the people's food and clothing were all plundered; Minus sixty-seven out of ten, the unemployed are invincible.
Jiangxi.In the 14th year of Guangxu (1888), Jiangxi Governor Dexin played: Before the Yangtze River was open to trade, merchants transported goods and traveled to and fro, all of them hired civilian ships with sails and masts like weaving.Self-owned steamships are convenient to carry, and merchants and people will not abandon private boats and use steamships.Before Guangxu two or three years ago, the number of ships passing through the customs (Jiujiang Pass) was only four to five hundred per year, and in recent years the number has increased to seven or eight hundred.
Jiangsu.In the twenty-fourth year of Guangxu (1898), Liu Kun, Governor of Liangjiang, said:
The southeast was called the country of Ze in ancient times, and most of the small people made their living by relying on boats and oars.Since it was captured by ships, the poor and unemployed have become thieves and thieves everywhere.There are many private lords and gangsters, and this is the reason for their jobs.The small boat is convenient, the interior is criss-cross, and there is no question of plundering and plundering. It is difficult for those who do not drive alone to find food, and even those who win with tricks have no means of living.Gather millions of impoverished people and do nothing.
In short, as pointed out in the "China Documents" archived by the U.S. State Department: "Since the opening of the Yangtze River to steam navigation in 1860, tens of thousands of Chinese civilian ships have been forced to retreat to the tributaries of the Yangtze River. These were forced to retreat into the tributaries There was a fierce competition between the boat people and the boat people who were already full of tributaries. In the competition, the boat people died of poverty and starvation. "
It is also worth noting that the reform of the water transport policy in the late Qing Dynasty and the eventual abolition of water transport in the early 20th century dealt a severe blow to the millions of people who survived by water transport.In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), after the Taiping Army occupied Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou and other places, the Qing government’s water transportation channel was controlled by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the water transportation of grain and river was suspended, and grain was transported by sea.Ding Xian commented on this in "River Talks": "When the water transport was in its heyday, the sailors on the grain boats, the trackers on the river, and the poor people in the market towns, there were millions of people who used this as food and clothing. Since the early years of Xianfeng, The rivers migrated and the water stopped, the Cantonese atmosphere (the author's note: referring to the Taiping Army) was rampant, jobless people, let them be dismissed, formed cliques and groups, had no way of making a living, and had no choice but to flow and become thieves."
In the twenty-eighth year of Guangxu (1902), Chen Kuilong, the governor of water transport, said: "Since the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Ding Zhuang has pursued the benefits of river water; the river has moved north, and water transport has been changed. "
In September of the eighth year of Xianfeng (1858), Wang Tao took a boat through Shimen County, Zhejiang. Then gather in groups to gamble, and at night they will be bandits, and if they are caught, there will be many gangsters, and incidents will easily arise."After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was suppressed, the Qing government tried to restore the old water transport system by "immediately restoring the river transport". It was still decided that grain from Jiangsu and Zhejiang should be transported by merchant ships by river, and other provinces, including other areas of Jiangsu except the Susong grain road, would be subject to Zhese.
The decline of the shipping industry in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and a large number of sailors and trackers lost their means of livelihood and became refugees or vagrants. reserve army. At the end of the 1860s, Chen Jin, a landowner and literati, pointed out that the Yangtze River Canal "is full of bandits, called Gelaohui, Anqing Daoyou, multi-legged husbands, boat owners, shoulder vendors, craftsmen, vagrants, and wandering braves." Yu Xian (Nv) Temple, with branches and leaves in Suzhou and Shanghai, spreads in Beijing, Gua, Qinghuai, sprouts in Jinling, Wu, and Liu, and has begun to spread and grow in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
Engels pointed out: "With the end of China's closed-door policy and the advancement of capitalist industrialization, the traditional self-sufficient small-scale peasant economic system will gradually disintegrate. At the same time, all the old social systems that can accommodate a relatively dense population will also Then it will collapse, and millions of people will have nothing to do."
Through the above analysis of the collapse of China’s traditional small-scale peasant economy combining farming and weaving, and the decline of the old-fashioned shipping industry, this assertion is clearly confirmed.
"Millions of social members with nothing to do" have dissociated from the traditional social structure and become a redundant social group independent of the traditional "four peoples"-refugees and vagrant groups.In the semi-colonial and semi-feudal old China, most of them had to join the secret society because they could not get normal jobs.
Before and after the defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Yangtze River Basin was flooded with a large number of stragglers and salt smugglers, which was of special significance to the development and growth of the Gelaohui.
One of the most prominent social problems faced by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty after suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Nian Army Uprising was the problem of stragglers flooding society.The large number of stragglers came mainly from two sources: First, after the defeat, a large number of survivors of the Taiping Army and the uprising armies in various places did not return to their hometowns or farm on the spot due to reasons such as avoiding political persecution by the Qing government. Instead, they wandered around incognito.For example, Anhui: "Northern Anhui is half an old nest of Nianni, and southern Anhui is especially densely populated with Hakka people... Since the purge, although the famous bandit leaders who slipped through the net have been arrested one after another, there are many people who are brave enough to disperse... Such tours Those with hands can't know how to plow and chisel."
In the spring of the tenth year of Tongzhi, in Guangde and Jianping at the junction of Anhui and Zhejiang, "there were bandits causing trouble, and they were not bandits, but Yueni slipped through the net."
The second is Wu Yongding, a large number of Qing military camps that were abolished.This is the main source of stragglers. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Qing government dispatched hundreds of thousands of Hunan troops.After suppressing the uprising of the Nian Army, the Huai army was laid off 98 battalions, with a total of 50,000 people, almost half of the Huai army;The Green Camp has also been abolished on a large scale.From the second year of Tongzhi (1863) to the nineteenth year of Guangxu (1893), there were a total of 173,000 Green Battalion soldiers that could be testified, but the actual situation was far more than this.After the First Sino-Japanese War, about 60,000 green battalions were laid off. By the eve of the 1911 Revolution, the green battalions in all provinces were basically cut off.The newly emerging "military training" was also dismissed. For example, in the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (1908), Liu Kunyi, the governor of Liangjiang, dismissed 1,981 soldiers from Jiangsu training; 1,296 from Anhui; and 822 from Jiangxi.After these Yong Ding were dismissed, they had no means of living and flowed to the secret society one after another.Liu Kunyi pointed out that the Gelaohui in the provinces along the Yangtze River "has dispatched soldiers from half of the military camps."
Based on the materials I have, the author once listed the "Brief Table of the Background of the Members of the Gelaohui during the Guangxu Period" (unpublished). From this table, it can be seen that among the 217 members of the Gelaohui listed with definite backgrounds or occupations, they served as members of the battalions 121, nearly 60% of them were born in martial arts, battalion, brave Ding, martial arts, and martial arts. This fully demonstrates the relationship between the prevalence of Gelaohui and the large number of stragglers and rogues in the society.This table also reflects a phenomenon that there are 180 Gelaohui members with definite native places, of which 92 are from Hunan and Hubei, accounting for slightly more than half; Not in the native place, but in Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and this phenomenon became more obvious after the middle and late Guangxu period.On the one hand, this shows that after the rise of the Hunan Army, there were particularly many people who joined the camp in the Lianghu area, so the number of members of the Gelaohui also increased accordingly;
Faced with "all provinces have Sanyong" and "all provinces are harmed by Sanyong", the Qing rulers were very troubled.At first, the Qing government did not adopt or formulate a unified policy to deal with the serious problem of wandering in Japan.In the first year of Guangxu (1875), Liu Kun, the acting governor of Liangjiang, suggested to the Qing government that the withdrawal of brave soldiers should be "leniently accepted". He also found out that the bandits and other half-line military camps sent away brave soldiers. Among them, there were second and third rank military personnel. Acting as a side benefit, it is easy to greet ugly people, and it has been battled for a long time, and it is especially feared that it will become a serious order. There are many people who are willing to be wanderers, and there are also many people who are forced to be hungry and cold. Can you please go to Hunan, Hubei and other provinces? In order to accept the bid, we will still give a half salary according to the Jiangxi Zouzhun Regulations.The so-called "receipt of bids" is to pick up the number of troops in the Green Battalion by dismissing Yong Ding and You Yong.After years of war, the green camps in the Yangtze River Basin were almost completely destroyed and abandoned. After the war, the Qing government never forgot to restore the green camp system in order to recover the military power that had been left in the hands of the local governors. It also suggested that the Hunan Army should be used to supplement the green camps. , but this move was opposed by Zeng Guofan: "The theory of picking up the number of soldiers has been suggested by many people recently. The ministers don't think so. Gai Yongding's rations are twice that of the horse soldiers and three times that of the guards. There are very few shortages. Keeping the grain for one or two a month is definitely not enough for the needs of food and clothing. Please be willing to make up for the lack of food and clothing thousands of miles away? If you want to make up for the lack of food and clothing with the simple courage of Hunan, you must not Those who are willing and willing to make up are all lazy and homeless."
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