Han’s Son is Not a Slave

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It is a rare thing to put money in the tenth year of Yongli for the ninth year of Yongli, but I heard that it was collected several years in advance, but I didn’t hear that it was collected before.

Zhou Shixiang did so, but his purpose was not to scrape the land once in Xiangshan, but to use this reason to dig out all those hidden populations.

When Liao Ruixiang took over the Xinhui County Office, most of the officials in the sixth room of the Yazhong Office did not run away. Instead, they gathered together to keep all the official documents and documents in the county and waited for Houxin County to take over. It is also normal for officials to do this. No matter if a clear official or an honest official comes, they all need the assistance of these officials. Otherwise, the official officials in the county will be smeared and will not know anything. With the help of these local snakes, the newly appointed officials can quickly operate the yamen, and these officials can continue to work and keep their jobs. As the saying goes, the host and guests are happy, why not do it.

Liao Ruixiang was also familiar with the manners of the yamen officials, after his brief career as a magistrate in Xinhui and his experience as a magistrate of a certain magistrate.

The first thing Liao Ruixiang did after he took over the county government office was to ask the officials to take out the Yellow Book of Xiangshan from the warehouse, and then check the records in each district one by one. Finally, the number reported to Zhou Shixiang was that there were 7,600 households in Xiangshan. , with a total population of 49,000 people, including 25,800 people in Dingkou.

This yellow book was made in the seventh year of the Yongli calendar, that is, in the eleventh year of Shunzhi, in Xiangshan County. When the Shaowu regime was established in Guangzhou in the third year of Shunzhi, the total number of people in Xiangshan was more than 126,000. 53,000 people.

Eight years later, the population of Xiangshan dropped by half. This is also due to the fact that Xiangshan is a densely populated place, the land is extremely fertile, and it is more convenient for water towns. In contrast, Luoding, Gaozhou, Lianzhou, Zhaoqing and other places have many counties with only a thousand population. Many villages are deserted.

According to the Daming Law, more than 20,000 dingkou must be paid for imperial grain. The number of acres of land in Xiangshan is nearly 400,000 hectares. That is to say, based on the book number, each adult dingkou in Xiangshan should be able to grow nearly 20 acres. land. But the fact is that most of the 4 million mu of land in Xiangshan is in the hands of landlords, and only half of the fields are in the hands of ordinary people. And the situation reported by the villagers also showed that nearly one-third of the local people were tenants who did not own land and only rented the land of the landlords for a living.

Land is the lifeblood of the people in this era, and it is also the foundation of maintaining any political power. Zhou Shixiang's energy was limited, and it was impossible for him to make a detailed land survey report like the great man of the future, so he could only calculate the total amount of money and grain he could get from Xiangshan every year from these figures. The result is calculated. Based on two collections a year, one for summer and one for autumn, the Taiping Army could only get more than 10,000 shi of grain from the farmers in Xiangshan, which is more than 1 million catties in kilograms.

After listening to it, more than 1 million catties of grain is definitely an astronomical figure, and it can go up to the sky when piled up. It can be spread on the head of each soldier of the Taiping Army, and one person only has more than 100 catties of food. How can more than 100 catties of grain support a soldier for a year? Not including extra supplies in wartime. The soldiers are not enough to eat, let alone the old and weak women and children in the former camps in various townships to provide them with grain and grain seeds for free before the summer grain harvest.

So much land, but only so much food, where did the food go? Only in terms of land. At least 2 million catties of grain are needed every year.

The answer is that the grain is in the hands of the landlords and gentry. They control most of the land in Xiangshan. While exploiting the tenants, they do not have to hand over a grain of grain to the government. Because they are privileged gentlemen!

The problem went around again and again to the landlords and gentry. There were no landlords in Yongle, Changning and other townships, so all the local fields were taken over by the local villagers. Longan is also better, most of the landowners in the village have run away, and only a few are left to wait and see the situation. In other townships, the situation is very bad. There are dozens of people in the township, and there are hundreds of officials in the original family. These families are all called gentry families, and many of their ancestors were high officials.

Liao Ruixiang did not agree with these landlords and gentry, and Song Xianggong also objected. Zhou Shixiang had no intention of ruining his reputation, so he had no intention of killing people and grabbing land. However, he had to solve the problem of lack of food. , decided to take the grain out of the hands of the landlords and gentry in a gentle way.

Requisitioning food is an excuse for action, checking the hidden population is the first means to force the gentry to submit, and supporting policies such as exemption from corvée service are the bait to attract the hidden population to actively register.

The so-called hidden population is actually a common malpractice of all dynasties and dynasties. Any scholar who has the status of a scholar will receive a series of preferential policies after becoming famous, the most important one of which is tax exemption. This preferential treatment policy caused many farmers to put their fields in the name of the gentry to avoid tax due to the desire for small profits. Over time, these farmers became the tenants of the gentry or directly became black households. They disappeared, and with them countless lands.

At the same time, after becoming officials, scholars with fame and place names would likewise buy and merge land in their hometowns. They may have been better off when they were in office, but they would have gotten worse after they became officials. While the land of the gentry continued to increase, the tax revenue of the government became less and less, which explained why there were more than 400,000 hectares of land in Xiangshan, but the Taiping Army could only collect less than 4 million catties of grain according to the book.

The greed of the gentry cannot be underestimated. Song Xianggong said that Xu Jie, the first assistant of the Jiajing Dynasty, annexed more than 200,000 acres of land in his hometown. , There are also servants, and there are countless prefects and magistrates. None of these people did not buy land for their own families. After two hundred years, it was quite rare that half of the land in Xiangshan belonged to ordinary civilians.

Carrots and sticks dug out the black households under the name of the gentry, that is, the roots of these gentry were broken, and no one was farming for them, so what if they had more land. In order to implement this policy, Zhou Shixiang also ordered the garrison of the townships to enter the village for a detailed inspection in the name of checking out the spies.

The Taiping army that suddenly drove into the village frightened the black households who were still watching the wind, and frightened the landlords and gentry. Within seven days, more than 9,000 people were added to Dingkou in Xiangshan County.

It is obviously unrealistic to dig out the black households and prevent them from farming the land for the gentry. It is impossible for the Taiping Army to support them, so the next thing is to negotiate.

Song Xianggong negotiated with the local gentry on behalf of Zhou Shixiang. The final result was that all the black households hidden by the landlords had to be registered and paid according to the ration, but they did not have their own land, so the government allowed them to continue renting. former lands, and from these lands they receive their dues. This land naturally belongs to the families of the landlords and gentry, that is, the landlords and gentry in disguise bear the taxes and grains of their hidden population.

This is a disguised system of paying grain for the gentry, and it is also a policy implemented by the Taiping Army with high pressure. At present, this policy can only be implemented in Xiangshan, because the Taiping Army has absolute control over Xiangshan, and there is no need to think about it in other places.

In addition, each township of Xiangshan has 200 acres of land.

Landlords and gentry above mu voluntarily "donated" military rations to the Taiping Army, and the amount was gradually increased according to the number of acres. In the end, a total of 6,550 shi of rice was "donated".

Due to the strength of the Taiping Army, the landlords and gentry in Xiangshan could only swallow the bitter fruit, but the subsequent changes made them even more angry.

In order to obtain more young and young laborers for production tasks, Zhou Shixiang asked Xinhui County Government to issue a policy to attract refugees, that is, any refugees who move to Xiangshan can get a piece of land from Xiangshan, with an area ranging from three to ten acres. not wait. As long as the refugee cultivated the land for five years, the land belonged to him forever. During this period, he only needs to pay one-third of the field output to the government.

Where did the refugees from Xiangshan come from?

All the gentry stared wide-eyed at the newly posted notices by the township and village offices, and they all clearly understood that the so-called refugees in the government's mouth were those black households who were hidden by them!

Black households are also really tempted.

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After the grain collection came to an end, the Xiangshan county government offices, townships, and village offices focused their energy on restoring production and spring ploughing. In order to effectively use the existing production materials in the territory, the township offices uniformly organize the production of the common people, and the important production tools such as cattle and rakes are especially protected. Some township offices are also experimenting with transforming scattered single-family farming into integrated farming~www.NovelMTL.com~ Commerce is gradually recovering. The Xiangshan County Government encourages small and medium-sized handicraft workshops in the county to increase production, and each township sets up markets. In the past, most of the levies and miscellaneous taxes were exempted, and only a certain amount of tax was charged on the market value of the goods. The blacksmiths that build production tools have received key support from the Xiangshan government, providing free funds to expand production and strive to provide more iron production tools for spring ploughing.

The Taiping army seized a lot of livestock, and the burden of unified feeding was too much. Song Xianggong suggested that it is better to distribute the livestock to the villagers and hand them over to the villagers to raise them, and buy them back from them in the future with the equivalent of gold and silver. On the one hand, it can reduce the burden of the Taiping army, and it can also make the villagers calm down and integrate into the Taiping army. This proposal was approved by Zhou Shixiang, who instructed the townships to raise more pigs in the future.

Due to the well-developed water system in Xiangshan, the township offices have successively organized manpower to raise ducks and geese in accordance with the instructions of the county government, and set up special fishing teams to implement the county's policy instructions to increase fish and meat production as much as possible.

After various civil affairs affairs were slightly on track, Zhou Shixiang called the Taiping Army to try out more than 100 officers on the second day of the second lunar month, the day when the dragon raised his head, to discuss the matter of forming an army. (To be continued.)

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