Under such circumstances, would Lianghuai dare to really start a confrontation?
However, as the saying goes, everything has its limits.
Although there was no obvious resistance in Lianghuai, some of them went too far, especially in Huaixi, where local officials often harassed and even took the opportunity to exploit local wealthy families... However, this situation quickly caused a backlash after the establishment of public cabinets in Lianghuai. Local wealthy families used the public cabinets as an organizational form, contacted the censors, and even directly appealed to Tokyo, directing their attacks at the local government.
The two sides were at loggerheads for a while and had a lot of messy accounts to settle.
It can only be said that Liu Dazhong's words hit the nail on the head that day. In Lianghuai, a situation has begun to emerge where households are using public offices to compete with the government.
If this continues for a long time, it will probably become a structural problem.
In comparison, Jiangnan West Road is much simpler.
In Pengli Lake (Poyang Lake in later times), some people who were both sorcerers, tyrants, and bandits directly contacted and rebelled, pretending to be Zhong Xiang and Yang Mo, and proclaimed themselves the Great Sage Equaling Heaven. They quickly swept across many states and counties, and also raised the slogan of going down the river, breaking through Fenghuang Mountain, and capturing Emperor Zhao alive. At the same time, the southern part of Qianzhou, which had finally settled down but had a tradition of rebellion, also started to make trouble. After Jingkang, the Qian thieves appeared three times.
A group of Wudao bandits from Pengli and a group of Miao village bandits from Qianzhou, one in the south and one in the north, immediately formed a large scale in Jiangxi.
Of course, the imperial court was well prepared this time. Wang Gui from the Wuwei Army immediately went upstream through Jiangzhou and entered Pengli Lake. At the same time, Guo Zhongxun's imperial camp reserve soldiers did not hesitate and immediately set out from the northern part of Qianzhou to launch a second encirclement and suppression operation against the Qian bandits.
That’s not all. As early as the end of spring, Liu Qi’s army began to disperse northward in the name of allowing soldiers to take leave and return to the Yellow River, but they were waiting for orders in the Chizhou area and did not cross the river. Now they gathered directly to the west.
The result was that the former took seventeen days and the latter took twenty-three days, and both rebellions ended before midsummer.
Then, Liu Qi's troops really went north to the Yellow River, and even Wang Gui's troops returned north after the war to await orders. As for Fenghuang Mountain, it opened the door to Guo Zhongxun's troops who had pacified Qianzhou... Guo Zhongxun's troops of 10,000 people were carefully selected and replaced. Half of the weak soldiers continued to stay in Qianzhou, while the other half took advantage of the situation to turn to Hangzhou and gather in front of the imperial carriage.
Of course, with the completion of the thorough military cleanup, the local division and inspection of Jiangxi naturally began in a thorough and tough manner.
As for Fujian Road, it is different from Jiangxi and Lianghuai.
First of all, Fujian Road watched the reforms in Liangzhe and Southeast together with Lianghuai, and they also had a plan in mind. Moreover, the achievements of Fujian scholars in those days were generally very high. Almost every prefecture had famous scholars who could call on the people in the countryside and even make early plans. At the same time, don't forget that Fujian Road was the most severely exploited by the population tax, and Zhao Guanjia's new policy was the most liberating for them.
However, Fujian's mountainous terrain has made the local clan power here so powerful that it is almost unique in its time.
All these circumstances ultimately led to the new policy reforms in Fujian Road taking an unexpected direction - the problem was not how the local households opposed the country, nor was it about the fierce conflicts among government offices, and there were few real rebellions. The problem was the huge regional conflicts between local governments due to land inspection and local decisions.
Now, what is the purpose of land inspection and land determination? Of course, it is to fairly distribute taxes.
However, when the results of land inspection and land determination produced inevitable differences based on the region and the original total amount, those differences, more or less, combined with the fact that the total amount remained unchanged due to the fact that taxes would never be increased, led to a considerable number of people feeling that they had suffered injustice.
Those who have paid less will naturally feel that they have paid too much in the past few hundred years, and those who have paid more will naturally feel that they have been wronged.
The result was that fierce disputes often arose between provincial capitals, between cities and villages, between cities and villages over the distribution of taxes of a few hundred strings of cash, dozens of strings of cash, or even a few strings of cash or a few cents.
Such disputes could still be mediated and distributed between the state capital and the city, or in other words, they could still be settled with documents and the superiors’ arbitrary decisions. However, as the upper and middle levels gradually evened out the differences, the differences were transferred to the grassroots level, especially at the village level, but they suddenly got out of control due to the emergence of large-scale armed fights.
This is of course an extremely serious problem, and its destructive power is no less than the previous rebellion in Jiangxi next door. However, faced with this situation, no one knew how to deal with it... First of all, everyone is just fighting internally, and they are not really raising the flag to rebel against the Song Dynasty. They haven't even touched the county town. You can't just transfer Guo Zhongxun and Yang Yi's troops over to suppress it, right?
But if we only consider it as a serious case and let the local government go to investigate, I am afraid it will not work... Because, this kind of grassroots fighting is chaotic and covered up, where are the cases and prisoners? And what are the officials in the county government compared to the hundreds or thousands of armed young men in the village? What kind of enforcement power do they have?
As a result, everyone watched helplessly as Fujian Road fell into a weird overall chaos because of this incident.
For a time, even Emperor Zhao, who had been proud of the obedience of Lianghuai and the quick resolution of Jiangxi's disputes, was dumbfounded on Phoenix Mountain. He could only hastily follow Li Gang's suggestion and send an "Investigation Team on Behalf of the Emperor" headed by Xu Jingheng, Liu Dazhong, Fan Zongyin, Mei Li and others to various places in Fujian to smooth things over. At the same time, he hastily asked Fujian officials in various places... those who were nearby to return to Fujian directly to maintain stability, and those who were far away to write letters back to mediate.
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