In most cases, the Anti-Qing Alliance of the East fought on their own and tried to expand their territory, but they also sought cooperation, and sometimes gathered for a larger purpose. For example, the Battle of Chongqing called by Wen'anzhi belonged to the latter, while the series of battles in Hubei that Deng Ming participated in the last time belonged to the former.

The reason for the formation of the alliance relationship is that no leader with absolute strength and has the right to seize life and death for other generals. Therefore, until now, the Ming army of the Dongdong has followed another set of rules of the game. That is, when Deng Ming sees that the spoils belong to individuals and do not need to be handed over, the distribution to the alliance is completely free. If it is a joint battle, the distribution ratio will be determined in advance. Now this alliance has joined Deng Ming's Chengdu Group. Before today, Deng Ming also contacted other Ming generals under this rules of the game.

However, with the rapid expansion of the Chengdu Group, the balance of power of the alliance is being broken. In the past, even Li Laiheng had no obvious advantage over other generals, but now Deng Ming's Chengdu Group has clearly gained an overwhelming advantage over Dang Shousu, Wang Guangxing and others who are the least powerful; Hao Yaoqi and He Zhen, which have greatly increased their strength due to the Hubei Battle, are difficult to compare with Chengdu Group; even Liu Tichun and Li Laiheng, who have been closest to Deng Ming and have the most profits, will probably be left far behind by Deng Ming within a few years and begin to lose their equal allies.

For Li Laiheng, Liu Tichun and others, this was just a help Deng Ming was willing to give. Its nature was no different from the money and grain that Deng Ming distributed to the Ming army in the Han River Basin. According to the rules between allies, Deng Ming could not give it at all. Even if he stopped subsidies to the Xong Army, there was nothing to say.

Of course, this may cause dissatisfaction with the new students of the XU Dong Army. They may secretly make trouble for Deng Ming, at least not actively and proactively cooperating with Deng Ming's strategy.

Next is a familiar old path. Friction creates more and more resentment. As the strength of the Chengdu Group continues to expand, when the group feels that its power is enough to subdue its former allies, it will ask the other party to surrender and adjust its internal and external policies according to Chengdu's instructions; if the other party refuses to completely obey Chengdu's command, the powerful Chengdu Group will try to force Xongdong to obey itself by force.

There are many ways to try this kind of attempt, such as Donglin asked King Fu to give up the throne and King Lu ascend the throne. If King Fu's faction does not agree, it will be solved by force; if Tengjiao handed over the task of chewing bones to his untamed subordinates, and handed over the easy and hugely affordable battle to his own direct descendants. If the former does not agree, it will be solved by force; for example, Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo, and Liu Wenxiu, if the brothers do not agree with their political views and strategic thinking, then mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops to solve the problem by force.

In fact, this is also a war of unification. Almost all generals believe that in order to unify China, a war of unification must be carried out first within the country, which is the so-called "to defend against foreign countries" first. In Deng Ming's impression, in the minds of most ancient people, this idea of ​​unification is a truth that does not need to be reflected on. Even after the Revolution of 1911 in his previous life, allies with different opinions on their opinions were still subconsciously and general reactions.

"I guess Hushuai already knows the policies I implemented in Wuchang," Deng Ming thought for a while and had an idea: "If they let them pay taxes like this, they will get an IOU that I can't afford. If I don't break the contract, I will have to lose all my money."

In order to maintain his credit, Deng Ming has made many sacrifices. For example, the extremely unreasonable IOU voucher and silver exchange ratio made Deng Ming compensate him not half of the tax amount, but one and a half times. In addition, the profits that can be brought by tight goods, Ming Jun suffered heavy losses due to the terms of this agreement. Even so, Deng Ming did not abolish it immediately after careful weighing the trade-offs, and announced to Lu Chenyin that the Ming Jun would still comply with this clause this year to compensate him, but it would be reduced by 30% next year. From the year after, Ming Jun would compensate them half of the tax amount at the market price.

Deng Ming also explained to Wuchang about this matter: Yu Youming and Park Fan are not qualified to sign such clauses on his behalf, but since Deng Ming had not clarified this to Wuchang before, he would assume part of his responsibility and replace the illegal clause with this compensation clause.

After carefully introducing his policy to Li Laiheng, Deng Ming said seriously: "The previous clause was my subordinates who carried me on their backs, but I agreed to this new clause. So for every extra stone of rice this year, I would pay one or five cents of silver and equivalent goods with priority refusal; if Hu Shuai and General Liu do not check the account book, then I really have no second way to go besides breaking the contract; and once the contract is broken, I will not be able to continue to compensate the relationship between the Gaodong Army, Hu Shuai, and General Liu and the local gentry. "

Originally, Li Laiheng just thought it was interesting. Although he guessed that this would probably be harmful to Deng Ming, Li Laiheng never thought that the consequences were so serious. Before Deng Ming spoke, Li Laiheng even had a solution, that is, he and Liu Tichun also collected taxes according to the reported land acres, and then Deng Ming turned against him, so that Li Laiheng made a big profit, and Deng Ming would not suffer any loss.

"It's absolutely impossible to do this," Deng Ming shook his head immediately after hearing Li Laiheng's thoughts, "If I break the contract, the Wuchang gentry will definitely be furious, and will definitely do everything possible to attack Yangtze River Shipping. Even Hushang and General Liu, a large number of people invested in the recharge, and even paid more rent, but in the end there was no compensation - the gentry won't get it, and they would only shift the responsibility to us. The people in their hometowns must believe that they have much more than we believe. In the end, Hushang collected some more food, but lost the people's hearts; he also implicated me in the Yangtze River Shipping that I had built up with hard work."

After listening to Deng Ming's careful analysis, Li Laiheng also felt that the problem was serious. He originally thought that he was just playing tricks on the Wuchang gentry, and even believed that he and Deng Ming had an army in hand, so that he would not worry about what the other party could do to him.

"What should I do?" Li Laiheng thought for a while, and suddenly said, "These gentry are actually very stupid. If they pay less land, the admiral might have accepted it. Now they rushed forward, and the admiral must have broken the contract in the end. They got nothing and paid a lot of money and food."

"They are not stupid, but they are too smart." Deng Ming shook his head with a wry smile. These gentry were all very smart. Perhaps several people thought of using Deng Ming's negligence to make profits for themselves. Some people might have also notified their relatives and friends. The last one passed ten, ten spread out, and a hundred spreads spread out. Everyone was unwilling to let the people go, and they rushed to falsely report the land and recruited the people to invest. The final result was that they could only be dispersed in one beat. The gentry lost money and grain, Li Laiheng lost people's hearts, Deng Ming lost credit and the convenience of trade in the Yangtze River, and lost three losses, and no one was lucky: "How did the country collapse during the Chongzhen period? Isn't it just that everyone wanted to take advantage and lost all in the end."

The traditional countermeasure is the war of unification, which can even be said to be an animal instinct. It is like a group of wolves or monkeys. The wolf king or monkey king who has completed the unification can order everyone to stand and watch. It eats first, and after eating enough, no one will rob it, so as to reduce the internal friction of fighting and not destroy the entire clan in order to grab two bites of food.

With the intelligence of wolves and monkeys, they can be wise and powerful as long as they are within their field of vision; human intelligence is obviously arrogant to wolves and monkeys, and they definitely have the ability to be wise and powerful to a greater extent. For example, Xiong Lan's military camp in Wanxian was very successful, with a population of up to several thousand, but the productivity was quite good. Deng Ming did not find any injustice when he inspected.

From the perspective of reducing internal friction, unification is absolutely necessary. If the war between the faction system within the Southern Ming Dynasty had been completed and not only started a contest when the Qing Dynasty went south, perhaps the fate of the Southern Ming Dynasty would be stronger. For example, the Southern Song Dynasty was more beneficial than the Southern Ming Dynasty. The Jin soldiers captured Zhao Gou's brothers and helped him win the unified war. And choosing to solve the opponent by force was a natural choice. Since the emergence of animals on Earth, our ancestors have always solved the internal friction problem in this way. This is part of human nature. As long as humans still belong to the Earth animals for a day, they will definitely have this impulse. As for the territory exceeding tens of thousands of miles, what should we do after the tribe is worth tens of thousands of people? Primitive creatures have no obligation to make forward-looking arrangements for this.

According to the tradition established by instinct, Deng Ming should use force to threaten Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun, so that he would not charge more taxes - sacrifice their interests and group interests to ensure that Deng Ming does not suffer losses; while Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun threaten one after another, so that clerks should not accept bribes and damage their own interests so that Deng Ming's interests can be realized - the interests of their immediate superiors Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun were not preserved, but they would not surrender unconditionally and face the military strike in Chengdu.

"I suggest setting up a special committee, not a yamen, and there is no right to order, to be responsible for coordinating our relationship with each other." From this incident, Deng Ming also realized the importance of military and political unification in Sichuan. In the past, the Ming army groups were not large in scale, and the conflict of interest between them was relatively small, and the cooperation model was very simple, just sending troops together. But now with the victory of the military, the Ming army groups began to expand, and internal friction became more serious with the conflict of interest. As for cooperation, it would not be limited to joint dispatch. Deng Ming needed Yuan Zongdi to station in Wanxian to help him see the Chongqing Navy, Li Laiheng, Liu Tichun helped him defend the Three Gorges, Hao Yaoqi, He Zhen controlled the Han River Basin to cover the flanks, and they also needed to be in line with Chengdu in matters such as taxation.
Chapter completed!