Chapter 122 I Can't Treat My Soldiers Badly

Ou Zanghua returned to his tent and saw Zuo Lengchan standing there. He quickened his pace and walked over to him, asking, "Uncle Zuo, have the disciples of Songshan been appeased?"

"Replying to Lord Ou, everything has been appeased and everyone is in a good mood." Zuo Lengchan smiled and said gently.

"That's good." Ou Zanghua hesitated for a moment, and then said, "The weather is hot now, and the bodies of the soldiers should be buried as soon as possible. Master Zuo should urge all the uncles to record the names of the disciples who died in the battle, and make sure there are no omissions."

"Don't worry, Lord Ou, Junior Brother Tang Ying'e will take care of these things." Zuo Lengchan nodded and said seriously.

"Very good," Ou Zanghua breathed a sigh of relief, and then continued, "Uncle Le wants to take Uncle Sima back home, but the journey is long. I suggest that we cremate him and bring the ashes back home to rest in peace."

In fact, cremation was not so rare in ancient times. There was a custom recorded in "Mozi·Ji Zang" that there was a country called Yiqiu to the west of Qin. After the death of their parents, the citizens of their country would put the corpses on firewood and burn them. They believed that after death, the body would ascend to heaven through the smoke that drifted into the air after being ignited, and future generations would also be known as "filial sons".

The Song Dynasty is considered to be the peak of Confucianism and the prevalence of Neo-Confucianism. Fan Zhongyan's "Concern and Joy for the World", Zhang Zai's "The Four Sentences of Hengqu", Wang Anshi's "Winning the Emperor and Doing Good", etc., all prove this point.

However, people in the Song Dynasty were quite fond of cremation. The "New History of the Five Dynasties: Biography of Empress Li of Emperor Gaozu of Jin" recorded that Empress Li was cremated.

The Southern Song Dynasty writer Hong Mai also recorded in "Rong Zhai Sui Bi" that since the Buddhist idea of ​​cremation, corpses have been cremated everywhere.

Although Emperor Taizu of Song, Zhao Kuangyin, issued an edict in the third year after he was crowned emperor, prohibiting cremation of the common people, on the grounds that it was not in line with Confucian ethics, "In modern times, cremation has been common, which is very contrary to etiquette. It should be banned from now on."

However, it is of no use, and people still burn it.

Well, I found the reason why I was born rebellious.
There are actually two reasons for this.

One reason is the prevalence of Buddhism. According to the "Essentials of Buddhism", after the Buddha passed away, his disciples Ananda and others cremated his body and obtained five-colored relics, so a pagoda was built to store them. During the Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms period, the eminent monk Kumarajiva of the Later Qin Dynasty and the eminent monk Sengjia of the Tang Dynasty all adopted cremation according to their wills.

Song Dynasty writer Wu Zimu recalled in his Dreams of the Southern Song Dynasty that there were 671 temples in and around Hangzhou alone. In addition, "there were countless temples, monasteries, nunneries, lay communities, and temples for worshipping Buddha."

It can be seen from this that during the Song Dynasty, although Confucianism was flourishing, folk Buddhism still occupied a very important position.

The second is the chaos that followed the end of the Tang Dynasty. During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, rituals and music collapsed, bones were exposed in the wild, and no roosters crowed for thousands of miles. The people were truly living in misery.

In this situation, the living are busy taking care of themselves, so how can they care about the dead?

It would be better to burn the body and be done with it, but the common people still couldn't get over it. At this time, a monk held up a Buddhist scripture and told them that cremation could help the ancestors to ascend to the Western Paradise sooner.
Therefore, after listening to Ou Zanghua's proposal, Zuo Lengchan did not think that his nephew had any bad intentions. He nodded and said, "Okay, I will tell Junior Brother Le."

"In addition," Ou Zanghua said solemnly, "All the soldiers who are not injured should be assigned to guard the granary. Let the people from Taishan Sect make a count and hand it over to me as soon as possible."

"Yes." Zuo Lengchan agreed immediately and turned around to make arrangements.

After entering the tent, Ou Zanghua asked his subordinates to bring him food. He had just taken a few bites when a messenger from the Left Censor-in-Chief Chen Jin hurried in.

Ou Zanghua had no choice but to stand up and see what the troll boss had to say.

After opening the transfer order, Chen Jin first praised the bravery of Ou Zanghua and his subordinates, then said that he would add 20 guns and 100 magic arrows. Finally, he ordered Ou Zanghua's troops in Yaoyuan County, Raozhou Prefecture, to wipe out the local bandits Wang Chenger, Wang Haoba, Yin Yongshi, Hong Ruiqi and others.

Ou Zanghua thought for a while and wrote back to Chen Jin. First of all, he thanked his superior for his cultivation and promised to complete the eradication mission. Then he urged him to arrange the pension and not to procrastinate.

After writing it, he sealed it and gave it to the messenger to take it back.

After dinner, Ou Zanghua was called to the central military camp by Li Chengxun.

Before entering, I heard a captain say with dissatisfaction: "Sir Li, if the brothers hadn't rushed into the city in time, their hundreds of people would have been chopped into meat paste by the rebels! Now they are occupying the granary and threatening anyone who approaches with muskets. Who do they think they are!" It turned out to be all because of these trivial things!
Before the person arrived, a voice came first: "They are my subordinates, warriors who died for the court on the battlefield. Who do you think you are? How dare you make a noise here!"

Ou Zanghua walked directly into the central army camp, bowed to Li Chengxun, then glanced around and said, "I am here, anyone who disagrees, please stand up, I will have a good talk with you today!"

"Your humble servant greets Lord Ou." When the four captains saw me coming, they all bowed and greeted me reluctantly.

"Humph!"

Ou Zanghua snorted coldly and cupped his hands in return. He looked at the four captains and said in a cold voice, "The granary is under my order. It must be guarded. No one else can go there! If you have any opinions, just tell me. What's the point of making things difficult for my subordinates?"

A captain bowed and said, "Sir Ou, we are all comrades in arms. We should share the joys and sorrows together."

"We share happiness and adversity. Where were you when the five hundred warriors of ours were fighting in the city?"

Ou Zanghua looked at the captain and asked indifferently, "When you were moving the gold, silver and jewelry in the government office, did you think of leaving some for us?"

"Now you are asking me to share the happiness? First, put out your spoils of war for me to choose from."

The captain lowered his head and said nothing. The joy they had felt in moving the gold, silver and jewelry in the government office that morning was still not over!
When they wanted to take over the granary, they found out that the place had always been under the control of Ou Zanghua's tribe. No matter how they tried to persuade him, Bu Chen would not let them and would shoot them with iron guns if they dared to get close.

If we weren't all colleagues, we would have started fighting a long time ago.

Others may not understand, so how could these Jiangxi natives not understand?

Jiangxi was one of the top granaries in the Ming Dynasty. Nanzhili, Zhejiang and Jiangxi together paid 3 million dan of grain to the imperial court every year.

Ruizhou Prefecture is an important grain-producing area in Jiangxi. In order to last longer, Luo Guangquan and Chen Fu began to force farmers to collect grain in early June, and added grain collected from wealthy households in the city.

Even Ou Zanghua himself didn't know how much grain was piled up in the granary, otherwise he wouldn't have waited for Zuo Lengchan to adjust his mentality before immediately arranging for him to do the work.

But looking at the shameless looks of these soldiers, I'm sure that even if the government office was emptied out, they wouldn't be able to buy enough of them!
This wave of profits is indeed great, but we can’t be too high-profile.

Food is also a kind of spoils of war. According to the Ming army’s practice, one third of it had to be handed over, and the rest all belonged to the original troops.

As long as Ou Zanghua makes a little more effort, it will be
At this moment, Ou Zanghua inexplicably understood the group of parasites in the late Ming Dynasty. It turned out that human nature could not stand the test.

Seeing this, Li Chengxun smiled bitterly and said, "Master Ou, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it."

"Master Li, I'm already very easy to talk to!"

Ou Zanghua smiled and said gently: "I haven't arranged any soldiers for the government office!"

Li Chengxun nodded. This was indeed true, but you only brought about 500 people into the venue, and more than half of them were killed or injured. How could you possibly defend two pieces of fat meat at the same time?

But this junior fellow is really smart. He puts the most attractive things in front of the public and quietly takes the most important things for himself. Then doesn’t he have room for maneuver?
Gold, silver and jewelry are valuable, but in wartime, food is the foundation.

Li Chengxun thought for a while and asked gently, "What does Lord Yiou mean?"

"Sir Li, it is not easy for my soldiers to go through life and death, I cannot treat them unfairly." Ou Zanghua sighed and said very seriously.

(End of this chapter)