Great Warriors of Sui and Tang Dynasties

Chapter 1057

The land is not only the lifeblood of the people, but also the lifeblood of the dynasty.

People without land, in the classical agricultural society, will be very difficult.As far as the dynasty is concerned, if it can't control the land, it will inevitably have the fate of two or three hundred years of rotation.

I think Wang Mang, who was known as a time traveler in history, also faced such a severe problem.

At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, the Central Plains Dynasty, which had a history of more than 200 years, was facing an extremely severe situation. The land annexation was serious. Most of the land fell into the hands of noble and powerful officials. Be someone else's slave.

Wang Mang, who was once regarded as a saint by the Western Han Dynasty, became the new emperor under the crowd of the people of the whole country.Wang Mang is very talented, but facing the dilapidated property left by the Western Han Dynasty, he has nothing to do.

The biggest difference between him and other founding emperors is that he accepted the abdication, and when he accepted the abdication, the whole country, especially the aristocratic scholars and officials, almost completely agreed.This means that Wang Mang actually inherited all the upper classes of the Western Han Dynasty. The world really just changed a different emperor, and nothing changed.

Wang Mang wanted to reform, but he had nowhere to start. Wherever he started, he would touch the interests of those old interest groups.In the end, he had no choice but to reform the system.

But Wang Mang was originally a new representative introduced by those interest groups, but he turned against these interest groups, wanted to nationalize the land, and banned slavery. Who would be willing to do this?
In the end, Wang Mang had no choice but to think of another way, which was to fight abroad and actively explore, trying to rob the Qiang people and the Huns without touching the meat on the plate of the existing interest groups.

So there was Xihai County. On the surface, Xihai County was because Wang Mang said that there were East China Sea, South China Sea and Beihai County in the world, but Xihai County was missing, so the Qiang people in Qinghai were asked to donate land and a new Xihai County was established.

But the essence is that the land conflict in the Central Plains cannot be resolved, so I tried to find a way to open up to the outside world.

Wang Mang has only been in power for more than ten years, and he has constantly used troops abroad. It is not because he is warlike, but because he hopes to compete for land with the outside world, so as to settle the landless peasants in the Central Plains and ease some social conflicts.

However, Wang Mang made various reforms and tossed around, but in the end nothing was achieved. In the end, he not only angered the old interest groups, but also annoyed the people, so everyone threw him down together.

Compared with Wang Mang, Luo Cheng's situation is better.

He took down the world with one blow and one shot. He fought all the way from the sidelines to the final basically pacification of the world.

Therefore, no matter whether Luo Cheng was fighting the old nobles in Guanlong or suppressing the gentry in Guandong, he was fearless and no one could resist. It was because the emperor's power came from his military group, and that group of people had nothing to do with it. The old aristocracy and the old gentry basically have nothing to do with it.

But there is still a very real problem in front of the emperor.

The number of arable land per capita is too low.

Now the Great Qin basically unified the world, and even the three feudal lords in the south of the Yangtze River called themselves vassals.

According to the latest census data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the Great Qin Dynasty, Daqin has more than 900 million hectares of land, more than 9 million mu of land, and a population of more than 800 million households, with a population of just over 5000 million.

After the implementation of the two-tax system in the Great Qin Dynasty, there were basically no taxable households. Officials and aristocrats also had to pay two taxes per mu. Only the government soldiers were exempt from the two taxes.

Through war, Daqin destroyed several countries and seized a large number of registered population and land. Through the strategy of freeing Han Chinese slaves and immigrating to the border, a large number of slaves who were not registered in the Sui Dynasty were converted into the registered population of the court.

At the same time, the reform of the control of Buddhism and Taoism has also transformed a large number of monks and Taoists as well as pure slaves of Buddhist temples and Taoist temples.

An increase in the country's population is a good thing, which means that the country's strength has increased, but from another perspective, it is different.

The country has a total of just over 9 million mu of land, but its population has reached over 5000 million.If calculated on average, each can occupy [-] mu of land, which seems to be a lot.

But in fact, the government, officials, nobles, and landlords occupied a lot of land, and the land granted by the soldiers was much higher than that of ordinary people.

Therefore, the vast majority of the common people cannot actually reach the average of [-] mu.

Not to mention, there are good and bad lands. A few acres of land in the frontier may not be as fertile and productive as a single mu in the Central Plains. Even in the Central Plains, there are irrigated land, sloping land, dry land, and mountainous land.

This is not counting the one mu of land in the Qin Dynasty, which is much smaller than the one mu of land in later generations, only about [-] square meters.

From this alone, it can be seen that the land equalization system since the Western Wei Dynasty actually has many loopholes.The land equalization system grants one hectare a hundred mu of land, and even cows and slaves can grant land, but that is only when wars are frequent, and there is a large amount of unowned land and newly seized land that can be used for granting land.

But now, the land has owners.

A simple calculation shows that there are hundreds of millions of acres of land, but there are more than 5000 million people.

Even if it is only counted by household, the average household is only a hundred acres of land, but the princes can own tens of thousands of acres of land, and noble officials, who account for a very small population, occupy a large part of the land.

People in the Central Plains can be allocated [-] to [-] mu of land per household, which is very good, and it must include mulberry fields and forest land.

Why did Luo Cheng set up a forbidden army instead of all the government soldiers?
It is because the government soldiers have a great demand for land. After each battle, the imperial court has to give out a lot of land to reward their military exploits. Fields come.

Why did the government soldiers of the Tang Dynasty collapse in Kaiyuan in history?

It was also because of the continuous wars in the frontier during the Xuanzong Dynasty, but the court had no land to reward the soldiers, so no one was willing to be a soldier, and the soldiers could not win the battle. Naturally, the military system collapsed, so the recruitment system was changed, and In order to meet the needs of the frontier war, Jiedu envoys were set up to recruit Long March athletes and let them bring their families to live in the fields.

Although this new system changed the situation that there were no soldiers available after the collapse of the Fubing system, it was followed by Jiedu envoys with heavy troops outside, which began to threaten the Central Plains court, guarding the outside and ignoring the inside, which eventually led to the Anshi Rebellion.

From the historical perspective that Luo Cheng understands, there are only two ways to resolve this fundamental contradiction.One is to continue to limit the land, and at the same time increase the intensity of foreign conquests, seize more land and then colonize it.

The second is to vigorously develop industry and commerce and handicraft manufacturing, develop foreign trade, and allow more landless peasants to move to cities and become handicraft manufacturing workers, no longer attached to the land, but to become industrial workers.This actually appeared in the late Ming Dynasty.

No, in terms of stability, the first one is undoubtedly higher, but also more difficult.

(End of this chapter)