Three hours later.

"Ha ha……"

Marshal Yang smiled proudly like the villain on the stage.

Then he patted Zhang Xianwen on the shoulder.

"I will come often!"

He said.

The latter stood there in humiliation.

The sailors next to them happily carried boxes of silver, and then hung them directly onto the Zhenhai number with their arms.

Well, Zhang Bingbeidao just pieced together 200,000 taels of silver to give to this bastard. As the protection fee for the Republic Navy to protect the merchant ships sailing from Shanghai Port in the future, although the silver is actually not much, which is the transaction volume of a large seaship, it still makes him cry without tears. This is not a problem of 200,000 taels of silver, which means that there will be no peace in Shanghai in the future. These bastards will come at any time unless they build a fortress in Wusongkou like Jiangyin in the future.

But the fortress is not enough.

After all, merchant ships here still have to go out to sea. These bastards occupy Chongming and can block the estuary at any time. At that time, Shanghai Port would become a dead port.

Unless the Wusong Navy is allowed to return and expel it by force.

But the Wusong Navy's strength is obviously not as strong as others.

More importantly...

There is also the Yangtze River Navy of the Red Turban Army upstream!

Once the Wusong Navy comes back, the Yangtze River Navy of the Red Turban Army will go east, which will be no more than 200,000 taels. The militias from Jiangbei will flock to Jiangnan in one fell swoop. Unless the Wusong Navy is expanded and the Wusong Navy is expanded to exceed the original Zhejiang Navy, they can deal with two enemies at the same time, but it requires huge amounts of funds. It is already the limit that Songjiang and Suzhou can maintain the current military power.

They now have the Jiangyin Fortress Area, the Wuxi Fortress Area, the Pingwang Fortress Area with Pingwang Fort as the core, and then the Suzhou City Defense System. These are a fleet with two horizontal ships and twenty bucket ships, and there are 50,000 permanent army, that is, the ever-winning army...

Su Song has two mansions!

Even these two mansions are the richest.

They own the largest textile industry in the world.

But those are just two houses.

The two prefectures have a total of 70,000 permanent troops to raise water and land!

Add it again?

It’s better to surrender directly than to increase it!

Raising so many troops is to protect the wealth of the gentry. At present, this number is affordable, but no matter how much it is, it will be beyond the ability to bear it. At that time, it was not to protect the wealth of the gentry, but to keep bleeding yourself and fill all the wealth into the expansion of the army.

Of course, he didn't know that this was Yang Feng's purpose.

Yang Feng didn't want to destroy Su Song.

The land is too dense and the industrial scale is too large. Any war will inevitably cause heavy losses. Even a slight turmoil will cause a large population loss. The fragile food supply will make the most people the first thing they do every day is to go to the rice market to buy rice. Any batch of rice ships arrive late may cause hunger.

The price of fighting is too high.

It was not the losses of the Red Turban Army, but the losses caused by the civilians were too great.

So he wanted to force the gentry to surrender.

They are all smart people, and when the cost of maintaining defense is far beyond their ability to bear, they will naturally choose cheaper ones.

They would lose 10,000 taels of land when they could use 5,000 taels to support the army and save their own land, they would do this. But when it was necessary to pay 20,000 taels to support the army to save their own land, they would rather choose to divide the land. After all, the gentry here did not rely solely on land, and it can even be said that the income of land has become their secondary. At the end of the Republic of China, because the rent collection cost was too high, those gentry who had already gone to Shanghai to make a fortune even gave up collecting rent. After all, in order to collect the rent for those thousands of stones of grain, they had to hire private armed forces. In the end, the rent received was not enough to pay the thugs to buy arms.

However, their industry and commerce in Shanghai can easily earn money from thousands of stones of millet.

Can't do business at a loss.

In fact, gentry has become tired of resistance over the years. What is now supporting them is mainly the Red Turban Army controlled area with a series of laws to protect workers...

Child labor cannot be used.

Can't beat workers.

You cannot work overtime for more than twelve hours.

...

What they cannot bear most now is not the division of land, but these laws.

but……

Everything is still the cost.

When the cost of protecting them exceeds their ability to bear, they will inevitably choose to surrender. Yang Feng is now constantly threatening them and increasing their defense costs. Wusong had no fortress at first, so he forced them to build fortresses. Wusong Navy was not strong enough, so he forced them to increase the number of warships, and even went to the Jinshan Guard to scare them and force them to continue to build fortresses.

Then as they practiced, they found that they were paying more and more money.

More and more.

...

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

All the money you earn if you continue like this is filled with a bottomless pit.

It's better to kneel down quickly.

After all, Yang Feng is not not giving them a way out.

At that time, Yang Feng happily accepted everything they had built before, the Yangtze River's shore defense fortress group, the naval fleet, the well-trained new army, and countless guns and gunpowders that had been built...

It's so happy to have sex!

As for the cleaning up these gentry...

That's not easy, just do something to clean up in the future.

Yang Dashui is best at this.

"Let's go to Nanjing!"

Yang Feng looked at the river water that had begun to recede and said as he walked towards Zhenhai.

Behind him were Zhang Xianwen and the local gentry who were crying without tears, but there were those who were crying, that is, those foreign merchants. Zhang Xianwen would not be so stupid that he asked the local gentry to pay 200,000 taels of this silver. Among them, 150,000 were paid by the foreign merchants. They had just died or injured by the artillery bombardment, and then they were forced to pay by Zhang Xianwen. Now they were crying and sad.

Yang Feng suddenly turned around...

"Hang this guy!"

He casually pointed and shouted into the foreign merchants.

The soldiers, who were like wolves and tigers, immediately came over with muskets with bayonets and grabbed him in the horrified eyes of the merchants.

"Master, Master, what crime did I commit?"

He struggled and screamed.

"Your crime?"

Yang Feng thought about it.

"Ah, did he cry just now?"

Yang Feng asked Tang An beside him.

"He cried back to the special commissioner, and cried loudly, obviously dissatisfied with our previous demolition of illegal buildings!"

The latter said immediately.

"That's right. Hang him to death. If you dare to be dissatisfied, you dare to take action. If you dare to cry, you dare to assassinate me. It's a crime to be punished. Thinking of you coming far away, leave a whole body!"

Yang Feng shouted.

After saying that, he went straight to the Zhenhai.
Chapter completed!