In most cases, the Yudong Anti-Qing Alliance fought on its own, each trying to expand its territory, but it would also seek cooperation with each other, and sometimes gather for a larger target, such as the Battle of Chongqing called for by Wen An, which belonged to the latter, and the series of battles in Hubei that Deng Ming participated in last time belonged to the former.

The reason for the formation of the alliance is that there is no leader who has an absolute advantage in strength and has the right to kill other generals, so until now, the Yudong Ming army has followed another set of rules of the game. That is, Deng Ming saw that the spoils of war belonged to individuals and did not need to be handed over, and the distribution to the alliance was completely in personal freedom, and if it was a joint operation, then the distribution ratio would be determined in advance. Now this alliance joined Deng Ming's Chengdu group, and before today, Deng Ming was also in contact with other Ming generals under the rules of the game.

However, with the rapid expansion of the Chengdu group, the balance of power of the alliance is being broken, even Li Laiheng did not have an obvious advantage over other generals before, but now Deng Ming's Chengdu group has clearly achieved an overwhelming advantage over the smallest Dang Shousu, Wang Guangxing and others; Hao Shaoqi and He Zhen, who have greatly increased their strength because of the Hubei Campaign, are also difficult to compare with the Chengdu Group; Even Liu Tichun and Li Laiheng, who were closest to Deng Ming and benefited the most, are estimated to be left behind by Deng Ming within a few years and begin to lose their status as equal allies.

For Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun, this tax issue this time is just a help that Deng Ming is willing to give, and the nature is no different from the money and food that Deng Ming gave to the Ming army in the Hanshui Valley; According to the rules between allies, Deng Ming can not give it at all, and he will stop subsidizing the rest of the Dong Army.

Of course, this may cause dissatisfaction among the new students of the Yudong Army, and they may secretly make trouble for Deng Ming, or at least not actively cooperate with Deng Ming's strategy.

What follows is the familiar old path, where friction creates more and more resentment, and as the power of the Chengdu group continues to swell, when the group feels that it is powerful enough to subdue its former allies, it will demand that the other party submit and adjust its domestic and foreign policies according to Chengdu's instructions; If the other party refuses to fully obey Chengdu's command, the powerful Chengdu group will try to force Yudong to obey him.

There are many ways to try this, such as Donglin asking King Fu to abdicate and King Lu ascending the throne, and if King Fu does not agree, he will solve it by force; It is also compared to how to give the task of gnawing bones to untamed subordinates, and hand over the easy and hugely beneficial battles to his descendants, and if the former does not agree, he will solve it 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 soldiers and horses to solve the problem by force.

In fact, this is also a kind of war of unification, and almost all the generals believe that in order to unify China, it is necessary to first carry out a war of reunification internally, which is also the so-called "fighting outside the country must first settle the inside". In Deng Ming's impression, in the minds of most ancients, this idea of great unification is a truth that does not need to be reflected, even after the Xinhai Revolution in his previous life, it was still a subconscious reaction to solve the problem of allies with different opinions by force.

"Presumably Hu Shuai already knows the policy I implemented in Wuchang," Deng Ming pondered for a while, and already had an idea: "If I let them pay taxes like this, then they will get an IOU that I can't afford at all, and if I don't break the contract, then I can only go bankrupt." ”

In order to maintain his credit, Deng Ming has made a lot of sacrifices. For example, the extremely unreasonable IOU voucher and the exchange ratio of silver to huàn, so that the compensation given by Deng Ming was not half of the tax amount, but one and a half times, plus the profits that the goods in demand could bring, the Ming army suffered heavy losses because of the terms of this agreement; Even so, after careful consideration, Deng Ming still did not abolish it immediately, and announced to Lu Chenyin that the Ming army would still abide by this clause to compensate this year, but it would be reduced by 30% next year, and from the next year, the Ming army would compensate them half of the tax amount according to the market price.

On this matter, Deng Ming also explained to Wuchang that Yu Youming and Pu Fu were not qualified to sign such a clause on his behalf at all, but since Deng Ming had not made this clear to Wuchang before, he would bear his part of the 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 brought by my subordinates behind my back, but this new clause was promised by me, so this year, for every extra stone of rice charged by Hu Shuai, I will pay one or two or a half yuan of silver and the equivalent value of the right of first refusal to purchase goods; If Hu Shuai and General Liu don't check the account books, then I really don't have a second way to go except to break the contract; And once the contract is broken, I will not be able to continue to compensate the Dong Army, and the relationship between Hu Shuai, General Liu, and the local gentry will deteriorate again. ”

Originally, Li Laiheng just thought it was funny, although he guessed that this would probably be harmful to Deng Ming, but Li Laiheng never thought that the consequences would be so strict. Before Deng Ming spoke, Li Laiheng even had a solution, that is, he and Liu Tichun also collected taxes according to the reported acres, and then Deng Ming turned his face and refused to admit it, so that Li Laiheng would make a lot of money, and Deng Ming would not suffer.

"This is absolutely impossible," after hearing Li Laiheng say his thoughts, Deng Ming immediately shook his head: "Once I break the contract, then Wuchang Jingentry needless to say, many people will definitely be furious after heavy losses, and they will definitely do everything possible to attack the Yangtze River shipping; It is Hu Shuai and General Liu, a large number of people have surrendered, and even paid more rent, but in the end there is no compensation - the gentry will not give it to them if they can't get it, they will only shirk the responsibility to us, they are native, the people must believe in them much more than we believe, and in the end Hu Shuai collected some more grain, but lost the hearts of the people; It also implicated me in losing the Yangtze River shipping that I had worked so hard to build. ”

Listening to Deng Ming's careful analysis, Li Laiheng also felt that the problem was strict, he originally thought that he was just playing that group of Wuchang gentlemen, and he thought that he and Deng Ming both had an army in hand, even if they let the other party suffer a big loss, they didn't worry about what the other party could do to themselves.

"So what to do?" Li Laiheng thought for a while, and suddenly said: "These gentlemen are actually very stupid, if they underreport some fields, maybe the admiral will admit it." Now they are rushing up, and in the end the Admiral will definitely break the contract, they will get nothing, and they will lose a lot of money and food. ”

"They're not stupid, they're too smart." Deng Ming smiled bitterly and shook his head, these gentlemen are all very shrewd, probably several people have thought of a way to use Deng Ming's negligence to benefit themselves, some people may have also notified their relatives and friends, and finally spread ten, ten or hundred, everyone was unwilling to be reluctant, and they rushed up to falsely report the acres of land and solicit the people to vote. In the end, the result can only be a shot and two scattered, the gentry lost money and grain, Li Laiheng lost the hearts of the people, Deng Ming lost his credit and the Yangtze River trade facilitation, three losses, no one benefited: "How did the country collapse during the Chongzhen period?" It's not that everyone wants to take advantage and lose in the end. ”

The traditional countermeasure is the unification war, which can even be said to be animal instinct, just like a group of wolves or a group of monkeys, the wolf king or monkey king who completes the unification can order everyone to stand and watch, it eats first, and when it eats enough, it will change to others, and no one will rob it, so as to reduce the internal friction of the fight, and not to destroy the whole clan in order to grab two mouthfuls of food.

With the intelligence of wolves and monkeys, as long as they are within their field of vision, they can be wise and powerful; Human intelligence is obviously superior to wolves and monkeys, and they definitely have the ability to be wise and martial in a larger range, for example, Xiong Lan's military tun in Wanxian County is very successful, with thousands of people, but the production efficiency is quite good, and Deng Ming did not find any injustice when he inspected it.

From the perspective of reducing internal friction, reunification is absolutely necessary, if the internal faction system of the Southern Ming Dynasty has been completed, instead of the Manchu Qing Dynasty when the war was launched, perhaps the fate of the Southern Ming Dynasty can be stronger, for example, the Southern Song Dynasty is more favorable than the Southern Ming, Jin Bing captured Zhao Gou's brothers and helped him win the war of unification; And the choice of force to solve the opponent is a natural choice, since the emergence of animals on the earth, our ancestors have always been like this to solve the problem of internal friction, this is part of human nature, as long as human beings still belong to the earth animals one day will definitely have this impulse, as for the territory of more than 10,000 miles, the number of people in the tens of thousands of what to do? Primitive Bio is under no obligation to make forward-looking arrangements for this.

According to the instinctive tradition, Deng Ming should threaten Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun with force to prevent them from collecting more taxes—sacrificing their interests and the interests of the group to ensure that Deng Ming does not suffer; And Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun continued to threaten layer by layer, so that Xu officials would not accept bribes, and harm their own interests so that Deng Ming's interests could be realized - the interests of their immediate bosses Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun were not preserved, but they would face a military attack on Chengdu if they did not surrender unconditionally.

"I set up a special committee, not a yamen, and no command power, to coordinate our relations with each other." From this incident, Deng Ming also realized the importance of the military and political unification of Sichuan, in the past, the scale of the various groups of the Ming army was not large, the conflict of interests between each other was relatively small, and the mode of cooperation was also very simple, that is, to send troops together; And now, with the military victory, the Ming army has begun to swell, and the internal friction has become strict with the conflict of interests, and cooperation will not be limited to joint troops. Deng Ming needed Yuan Zongdi to be stationed in Wanxian to help him meet the Chongqing Navy, Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun to help him defend the Three Gorges, Hao Shaoqi and He Zhen to control the Han River Basin to cover the flanks, and they also needed them to keep pace with Chengdu on matters such as taxation.

Reunification was inevitable, but Deng Ming knew he didn't have to start a war.