Although Shi Kunyu's descendants insisted that he was definitely in a sober state when he signed his name on the "Manifesto".

However, the official records in official history books and Ge Cheng's memoir "Long Live the Workers" both say that Shi Kunyu fainted on the spot after reading the easy-to-understand "Eulogy to the Tyrant on Behalf of Shi Kunyu".

Then 'Ge Xian' held his wrist and signed his name on it.

Because this precious anti-imperialist revolutionary manifesto was later kept in the National Archives, the public was able to see its true appearance after the confidentiality period. The crooked signature on the document seemed to confirm the latter statement.

But no matter what, on the seventh day of the winter month in the eighteenth year of Wanli, Suzhou was the first to announce an uprising!

Soon, workers' riots broke out in the nearby Songjiang Prefecture, Changzhou Prefecture, and Zhenjiang Prefecture, and the prefectural and county lords also cooperated by declaring an uprising!

Then there are Huizhou, Taiping, Anqing, Chizhou, Ningguo...

In Zhejiang, Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Ningbo, Shaoxing, Taizhou, Wenzhou, Jinhua and other prefectures also announced uprisings one after another.

Seeing that the general trend was irresistible, Zhejiang Governor Tang Hezheng had no choice but to announce a peaceful uprising throughout Zhejiang Province...

The only place in the entire Jiangsu and Zhejiang province that was not at peace was indeed Yingtian Prefecture.

After all, Nanjing City was the secondary capital of the Ming Dynasty. It had six government offices, a large army garrisoned, garrison eunuchs, and even the Nanjing East Factory. It was indeed a tough nut to crack.

Therefore, when organizing the workers' riot, Zhao Hao instructed Mi Wa that Jinling could be put on hold for now. It would not be too late to launch the riot after the entire Jiangnan region had spread the message and the group's army was approaching.

However, plans cannot keep up with changes. When the eunuch Zhang Gui, who was guarding Nanjing, saw that various prefectures in Jiangnan were raising their flags in rebellion, he actually ordered the city gates to be closed and Nanjing to be under martial law!

At the same time, the Nanjing East Factory was sent to seal up the Nanjing branch of Jiangnan Daily and its distribution points throughout the city, hoping to prevent the spread of the article "On Behalf of Shi Kunyu to the Tyrant" and the news of the uprisings in various prefectures from spreading among the people.

He also sent people to capture several senior executives of the Jiangnan Group and key members of the Weavers' Guild and locked them up in the garrison office, in an attempt to stop the weavers' rebellion in this way.

However, Eunuch Zhang's actions backfired - when the weavers learned that their leader had been captured, they gathered from all directions to the North and South Streets of Xihuangchenggen, wanting to rush into Xi'an Gate to rescue him!

Because the Nanjing Imperial Palace was a Chinese character “回” (horizontally) structure with an outer imperial city and an inner palace city, the Garrison Office and Nanjing East Factory, as well as the various prisons and warehouses in the inner palace, and the Yulin Left and Right Guards were all stationed in the imperial city, guarding the Forbidden City, which had been without an owner for 160 years.

Therefore, once the Yulin Army guarding the imperial city closed the city gates, the weavers could only sigh in despair at the high walls of the imperial city.

That's why Eunuch Zhang, with all his confidence, actually wanted to control the situation in Jinling City. It was really unwise!

But now we can only hope that the weavers will give up in the face of the majestic imperial city.

~~

However, Eunuch Zhang did not understand the psychology of the people of Nanjing at all.

How could they allow themselves to fall behind Suzhou?

Although we can’t take the credit for being the first to rise up, we can still fire the first shot of the uprising! Fire the first shot of the uprising!

"Go to the Imperial City!"

"Go to Xi'an Gate!"

On the morning of the 14th day of the winter month in the 18th year of the Wanli reign, after a night of running around to tell others, the angry citizens of Nanjing, from the Qinhuai River, from the Bell and Drum Tower, from Caijia Lane, from Xiaocang Mountain, from Xuanwu Lake, from Jinchuan River... from all directions, poured into the South Imperial City like a tide.

Of course, the people of Nanjing have always insisted that it was the imperial city.

Moreover, unlike Suzhou City, Nanjing Outer City is too large. Almost all the people of Nanjing live inside the city walls, so the order of closing the city gates by Eunuch Zhang was just a waste of time...

By the morning of that day, hundreds of thousands of Nanjing men surrounded the imperial city.

Some of them held muskets, some held short knives, and some held spears, angrily demanding that the prisoners be released. Of course, they also greeted the eunuchs on duty:

"Zhanggui, Hoshinima! Redema, Ibi!"

The curses of hundreds of thousands of people swept across the entire imperial city like a raging wave of the sea, making the already frightened eunuch Zhang completely pale.

Fortunately, the imperial city wall was built by Emperor Taizu, so you can imagine its quality. It is 11 meters high, 8 meters wide at the base, 7 meters wide at the top, and 20 miles in circumference! It is a large military fortress!

Although it has been weathered for a century and a half and has fallen into disrepair, it is still impregnable. With the supplies stored in the inner palace warehouses, the people in the imperial city can hold out for a year!

So although Eunuch Zhang was a little scared, he didn't pee completely.

"Let them scold us, they always scold us anyway." He smiled bitterly and said to his men:

"We know what you are thinking. But have you all read the newspaper? All the eunuchs in the Suzhou and Hangzhou textile factories were beaten to death. Even Eunuch Sun was loyal to the emperor."

He sighed deeply and said, "The slogan of the rebellion is 'Get rid of tyrants, kill eunuchs'. Feel your crotch, who still has balls?"

All the eunuchs lowered their heads, and the two Yulin Guards commanders also lowered their heads quickly, fearing that they would be aware of our differences...

"So we men have no other way out. We can only hold on. There is a way." Zhang Gui said with a fierce look on his face: "Open the Gengzi warehouse and pull all the cannons onto the city wall! Let those civil officials and military generals in the south see that although they have eggs, they are not as good as us who have nothing!"

The south he mentioned refers to both the government offices in Jiangsu and Zhejiang that had revolted, as well as the civil and military officials in the five prefectures and six ministries in Nanjing, south of the imperial city, outside Chengtian Gate.

The imperial city was in an uproar, but the civil and military offices in the south were so quiet that it seemed as if everyone was dead...

"Bah, disgusting!" The eunuchs spat towards the south to express their disdain, but they also wished they could lay an egg to report their safety.

~~

The shouting and cursing outside the imperial city lasted until noon, and the angry Nanjing citizens could no longer hold back.

They began to aim and shoot at the defenders on the city walls - later the official authorities determined that the Nanjing Uprising fired the first shot of the great anti-imperialist revolution.

Because the official history books have a definitive conclusion on who fired the first shot, many descendants of Nanjing citizens insist that their ancestor was the one who fired the second shot of the Nanjing Uprising.

Regardless of who fired first, the citizens opened fire on the imperial city.

The Yulin Guards on the city wall also opened fire back at the urging of the eunuchs supervising the battle.

There were too many rebellious civilians on the streets near the imperial city, and the defenders were shooting from a high position, hitting more than a dozen people on the spot, and screams were heard one after another.

The citizens rushed to send those who were shot for treatment, and then fled in panic to the other side of the street to hide out of the defenders' shooting range.

Those citizens holding muskets bravely fought back at the city walls using the cover of walls, roofs and windows.

The two sides fired back and forth, with crackling sounds of gunfire.

As for the damage caused, it is very touching. Only the unlucky ones will get shot...

Firstly, the marksmanship of both sides was not very good, and the trajectory of the smoothbore lead bullets was random. When shooting at each other from such a long distance, the only way to hit the target was by accident.

But when the eunuchs commanded the soldiers to transport cannons to the top of the city, along with hundreds of barrels of gunpowder and countless shells, the battle became brutal!

Although the defenders' artillery were all Portuguese cannons and small copper cannons, their power was still astonishing as they fired from high above.

Amid the rumbling of artillery fire, solid shells whizzed down onto the roofs, passed through doors and windows, and hit many insurgents...

The citizens had to retreat again, leaving the messy streets of the imperial city and running to the streets on the other side of the moat to avoid the artillery fire.

But at this time they posed no threat to the defenders on the imperial city walls.

The eunuchs on the city wall had already cheered, obviously thinking they had won.

"Cannons, we need cannons!" the dusty and disgraced rebel citizens cried out in impotent fury.

But where are the cannons?

Many citizens could not help but feel discouraged. It turned out that the imperial city was not something that ordinary people like them could shake...

Just when morale was low, someone suddenly shouted, "We have cannons. Go to Dongshuiguan and help transport them!"

The depressed citizens immediately perked up and ran towards Dongshuiguan with an attitude of believing it was true.

Then they saw that a row of sand boats parked at the Shuiguan Wharf were indeed carrying a row of shiny black, majestic cannons!

Also arriving at the same time was the Nanjing Workers’ Guard, wearing steel helmets and carrying Wanli rifles!

~~

The western moat of the Nanjing Imperial Palace is also called Yangwu City Moat.

When the imperial city was built during the Hongwu period, the Qinhuai River was divided into two branches outside the Tongji Gate, one branch entered the city from the Dongshui Pass, and the other branch entered the Yangwu City Moat to serve as a moat.

The Qinhuai River flows along the outer city through Xishuizhu and into the Yangtze River, so this section of the moat is connected to the Yangtze River shipping.

Of course, the prerequisite is that you can pass the West Water Gate and the East Water Gate.

The reason why the militia and workers' guards in Nanjing City had not shown up at the foot of the imperial city was that they were sent by the uprising headquarters to attack these two places.

Thanks to the radio station, Macron, the temporary military commander of the Jiangnan Uprising, who was still leading the rebel army to Nanjing, learned about the Nanjing citizens' plan to attack the imperial palace at the first time.

After consulting Zhao Hao and receiving the reply of "conforming to public opinion", he immediately ordered the arsenal under the Wuhu Iron and Steel Group to load the siege artillery that had been prepared long ago onto ships overnight.

Go downstream for two hundred miles and rush to Jinling overnight!

~~

Seeing that their armed forces had finally arrived to reinforce them, the citizens of Nanjing cheered like thunder and felt full of strength again!

In less than an hour, they helped the workers' guard team transport twenty siege guns and hundreds of boxes of ammunition to the gun positions.

After some intense installation and debugging, the gunners began firing at the top of the city wall.

These new siege cannons were unmatched in range and accuracy.

"Fire!" When the order to fire sounded, the citizens of Nanjing roared together:

"Fire! Hosnima!"

Then, with a deafening roar, twenty artillery shells whizzed out of the guns at the command of the people!

Most of the spherical shells landed accurately on the gun positions on the city walls, smashing the defenders' small artillery and the men to pieces.

The gunners fired continuously, with rounds of artillery fire causing brick chips to fly everywhere on the walls of the imperial city and smoke to fill the air.

When the smoke cleared, there was no one alive on the city wall...

It’s not that they were all hit, but they were all scared away.

The gunners turned their guns around and blasted the Xi'an Gate to pieces.

The rebellious citizens raised their swords and guns high, cheered and rushed into the Ming Imperial City that had stood for two hundred years!