The new era of chaos begins in the Song Dynasty

Chapter 345

Chapter 74 Gold Yuan Exchange for Land
Since ancient times, land has always been the most important obsession for Chinese people.

From the emperor to the common people, this is the best.

The Chinese dynasty rotates every two hundred years. To put it bluntly, there is a problem with the ownership of the land.

The deeds of the emperor opened up territories, and the deeds of the common people (individuals) accumulated land and wealth.

The former has created the great unification of China, with a vast land and abundant resources. However, if it is too much, it will waste people and money, and it seems to be a great achievement; the latter has injected the blood gene of hard work into the Chinese nation, making the vitality of this nation and even civilization tenacious, but hard work If it is too much, it will lead to greed and it will easily destroy the world.

The Song Dynasty was one of the many dynasties in the classical Chinese era that could not refrain from annexing land. This resulted in the wealthy families of the Song Dynasty being able to annex land almost unscrupulously.

However, the homesteaders in the Song Dynasty lost their land due to various natural and man-made disasters, and had to become tenants or refugees, and even roamed the mountains and forests.

This situation has been plaguing this dynasty almost from the beginning of the Song Dynasty.

It was precisely because there were so many people who gathered to rebel that the Song Dynasty court was unable to kill them, and it did not dare to completely correct the root cause of the disease. Therefore, Zhaoan came out of the blue and became the Song Dynasty court's most important method to quell civil unrest. A powerful weapon for victory.

When the Song Dynasty was founded, the serious Song army actually only had the Forbidden Army, including local garrisons and other units that were separated from the Forbidden Army.

Those rebel teams that were ordered to peace were called Xiang troops, and they were stationed in various places, and became the executioners to suppress more rebels.

As time went by, the land annexation problem within the Song Dynasty became more and more serious, and more landless people became refugees and bandits, and eventually became Xiang troops supported by the imperial court.

As a result, the size of the Xiang army became larger and larger.

Even though most of the Xiang army came from wild backgrounds, their first generation were basically veterans who had survived the battlefield. After all, the homeless bandits who could not be beaten would not survive the moment of being ordered to peace.

Moreover, a batch of fresh blood is added to the Xiang Army almost every few years, which results in the Xiang Army being unable to lose its tail.

It was naturally impossible for the officials of the Song Dynasty to turn a blind eye to this potential danger, so they constantly selected those who dared to fight from the Xiang army (mostly the second or even third generation of the Xiang army) to join the Forbidden Army, leaving only the old and the weak. On the one hand, they gradually divided and dismantled the Xiang army.

However, the speed at which officials can dismantle Xiang troops can almost never keep up with the speed at which Xiang troops can be replenished.

And this is the origin of the redundant soldiers among the "three redundants" of the Song Dynasty.

In fact, the three-redundancy problem in the Song Dynasty was ultimately a matter of land.

If in other dynasties, the land was not enough, then just go out and develop.

However, the Song Dynasty was ranked last in the entire history of China in terms of opening up new territories. The biggest problem here was actually due to land-policy.

Where is the source of motivation for opening up new territories?

It lies in the desire and demand for land among the backbone of the entire society.

Such as Qin's farming war, Han's meritorious service, Tang's ten thousand households, and Ming's guardhouse (before the civil fortress). In fact, in the early days of the establishment of the dynasty, their rulers very smartly restricted the backbone of their society from internal control. The annexation of land forced them to expand outside the dynasty.

Let me talk about a knowledge point that no one is aware of. The reason why the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, which had the largest territory in Chinese history, conquered such a huge territory was not only because of the talents and strategies of its previous generations of rulers, but also because they had no choice.

In fact, the early situation of the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties was very similar to that of the Jurchens of Liaodong in the late Ming Dynasty (before Chongzhen ascended the throne). They were both facing a terrifying empire, and they were completely unbeatable. Although they could achieve some partial victory with their tactical advantages, But overall it is still in a suppressed state.

At this time, they had to acquire more land from other directions.

In this regard, the Manchu Qing Dynasty was far worse than the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, and it could even be said that they were not even worthy of carrying shoes.

The backbone class in the early Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties were herdsmen who owned pastures and herds. Their driving force for expansion was naturally to obtain more pastures.

It's just that they are adjacent to the south of Dajin, a powerful and barbaric empire established by Wanyan Aguda.

Precisely because they could not defeat the Jin Dynasty at the beginning, the Mongols set their sights on conquest in the West in the early days of the Yuan Dynasty. They conquered Xiliao, Huacimou, Persia, and the Caucasus. They conquered almost the entire West Asia and Eastern Europe. The vanguard even reached the Danube River area. .

It was precisely by relying on these conquered lands that the comprehensive strength of the Meng Yuan Dynasty was rapidly improved. Then they went back to the beginning and destroyed Xixia, Jin Kingdom, and Dali one after another, and finally defeated the Southern Song Dynasty with great difficulty.

Later the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty formulated the four-level classification of the people, Mongols, Semu people, Han people (Northern Han people), and Nan people (Southern Han people and ethnic minorities). In fact, this was the order in which they were conquered and ruled by the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty.

As the saying goes, whoever gets on the boat first has a better chance of occupying the window seat.

Back to the Northern Song Dynasty, because the Song Dynasty did not restrain land annexation, those powerful local tyrants could unscrupulously attack the common people (owner farmers) within the Song Dynasty and plunder their assets and land.

In terms of intensity, this process of annexing the land of ordinary people was much easier than going to the border of the Song Dynasty and wielding knives with savages.

It was the indifference of these powerful people who had the right to speak locally to the expansion of territory that fundamentally led to the lack of external expansion power of the Song Dynasty state machine. Even if one or some of them tried their best to promote foreign wars, But in the end it was settled due to one or another problem.

In the Song Dynasty, from Qingli's New Deal to Wang Anshi's Reform, the scholar-bureaucrats clearly realized that the country's problems could not be solved from the outside, but they had to choose to correct them internally.

Perhaps most people in the Song Dynasty do not have a clear understanding of this doorway, but as long as they are normal people, they can vaguely realize what is most important to them.

That's right! It's the land.

What triggered the Liangshan Uprising in Songjiang in the future was actually Song Huizong's use of Xicheng to engage in "rice field affairs" and forcibly plundered the land of people in Shandong, Henan and other places, and then caused the chaos.

As for the La Uprising in the south of the Yangtze River, Song Dynasty officials used the "Hua Shi Gang" as a guide to plunder fields in the south of the Yangtze River and exploded.

It should be noted here that these people whose land was plundered were not ordinary civilians, but local powerful people.

For example, Song Jiang, Chao Gai, Lu Junyi, Shi Jin, Li Ying, Mu Hong, and even Chai Jin were all deprived of their family property and then gathered in Xiaoliang Mountain.

Jiangnan La and others are no different.

As for the real lower-class civilians, they are the farmers in a certain village or village. In fact, they are essentially tenants who rent land from the powerful. They are nothing more than cannon fodder in the turmoil.

Don’t you know that those farmers don’t want to own their own land?
Of course they think about it, even in their dreams.

However, in the Song Dynasty, even if ordinary people owned land, it was difficult to keep it in the end. Sooner or later, it would be plundered by powerful people or the government.

In this way, for some low-level commoners, it would be better to be a banker directly and peacefully.

It was precisely this superficial fallacy that led to the peasant uprisings throughout the Song Dynasty being almost unaware of the most fundamental problems. The most the insurrectionists could say was "equalize the rich and the poor" or "do justice for heaven", but no one dared to say the word "equalize the land".

Therefore, the uprisings in the Song Dynasty basically did not become a big deal.

The main components of the rebels and civilians under Ergou are actually those proletarians who have no land or have lost their land. Otherwise, how could they be willing to follow the army to Shenyang Realm?
To put it bluntly, it's just a matter of food.

Although most of these people basically have no permanent property and seem to have a happy-go-lucky temperament, they actually long for land the most, but the suffering in the past has forced them to bury this desire deep in their hearts and not dare to express it.

Ergou's strategy for conquering Shenyang Realm was actually based on the idea of ​​these proletarians. They were destined to become Ergou's base.

These people are easier to deal with than the tenants in Xiangzhou. After all, Xiangzhou is still essentially a state capital of the Song Dynasty. No matter how they cause trouble, Ergou must always be wary of some influence and not touch the fundamental interests of the world's powerful.

But in Shenyang Realm, Ergou can completely let go of his hands and give everyone a relatively fair chance.

In fact, if you don't have any brains, Ergou can divide the land and allocate the territory for everyone from the beginning.

There are consequences to doing this, and there are many problems.

After all, people are different.

They all divide their fields equally.

Some people are hard-working, do more work, and make more merits. This is a injustice to them.

Some people are lazy and cunning, and sharing the same land with them is equivalent to a waste of resources.

Ergou simply took a turn in the middle and instituted a method of allocating land according to merit and hard work.

Ergou first organized everyone who entered the Shenyang world. The civilians were divided into basic units - production teams.

The captain of the production team was elected by the civilians, and representatives from the rebel camp were sent for supervision.

These civilian workers are assigned tasks based on their production teams, either transporting supplies, building roads and city walls, or clearing wasteland for farming. Then the rebel camp will issue corresponding work points every day based on the completion of the tasks of the production team.

Within the production team, under the supervision of the rebel representatives, these work points will be distributed to each production team member in a relatively fair manner.

Basically, as long as anyone works hard, he will be paid a relatively fair amount of work points every day.

When an ordinary civilian husband's personal work points accumulate to a certain amount, he can use these work points to exchange for golden dragon yuan in the corresponding department of the rebel camp, and then he can use the golden dragon yuan to exchange for his own land.

By the way, the exchange value of work points and golden dragon yuan is determined by Ergou. If anyone dares to cause trouble, Ergou will definitely kill him without hesitation.

Regarding the policy of exchanging Jinlongyuan for land, Ergou actually made some small but absolutely important restrictions.

First of all, Ergou limited the maximum share of land that a normal adult (regardless of gender) could exchange gold dragon yuan for, and each person should not exceed one hundred yuan.

In other words, a person can only exchange land worth ninety-nine gold dragon yuan at most, which is two hundred and ninety-seven acres.

This article is mainly to restrict the people in the hunting team. Even if the animals in the hunting team earn hundreds of gold and dragon yuan a day, they can never expect to hoard a large amount of land in exchange for it, and then transform into big landowners.

Second, producers in the production team only have the authority to exchange for land by exchanging their accumulated personal work points for gold dragon yuan.

The sergeants in the army are not subject to this restriction. They can freely exchange golden dragon yuan for land within their personal quota, regardless of whether the golden dragon yuan in the hands of these soldiers comes from their salary, borrowed from elsewhere, or comes from the generals. All rewards can be exchanged for land.

These two regulations formulated by Ergou are to protect the interests of army soldiers as much as possible on the basis of ensuring relative fairness to everyone, while also limiting the emergence of large army leaders.

A general who has no land or food and only a lot of money will never become a true separatist warlord.

Of course, for those military generals, even if the surplus golden dragon yuan cannot be exchanged for land, it is still a very valuable wealth.

In fact, Ergou has formulated many follow-up policies, but they need to wait until the land is exchanged and distributed before they can be implemented.

For example, farmers who farm the land do not need to pay any taxes, but they must sell 50% of all grain harvests to the rebel camp or the future power government at a fair price every year.

Another example is the issue of land use rights.

For example, if Lin Youqing exchanges 100 acres of land in the future, as a general, he will not be able to farm the land himself, so he will have to rent the land to Wang Er and Zhang San for planting.

Then, no matter how much rent Lin Youqing collected from the two tenants, 60% of the rent he collected must be turned over to the Rebel Camp (the future government) as a punishment for occupying the land but not cultivating it himself.

The Rebel Camp (the future government) will return most of the rent taxes paid by Lin Youqing to Wang Er and Zhang San as a reward for their hard work.

There are many similar policies in Ergou's mind. Most of the policy concepts are basically to combat the powerful and safeguard the interests of the common people.

Obviously, these policies are very unfriendly to those upper-level leaders and powerful people. If Ergou wants to implement them in the future, there will definitely be many opponents, and there will even be many people who take desperate measures.

But Ergou didn't care. Now that the big thing was undecided, he had to hide his thoughts.

When the overall situation in the future is determined, Ergou will win the hearts and minds of the entire lower class people. The so-called "upper class people" who suck people's blood cannot make any trouble at all. If anyone dares to openly resist, he will kill a few more stubborn idiots. yes.

Just like the words of Prince Chengqian of the former Tang Dynasty: "If anyone dares to rebel, I will kill them. I will kill five hundred people. Isn't that right?"

Ergou took great pains to distribute the land. In fact, it was to stimulate people's morale and cheer up the decline of the Song Dynasty.

There is a huge difference between direct equalization and Ergou's roundabout distribution of land.

Let’s use a relatively simple example as a metaphor.

No brainer, just like if you see someone else dropping a hundred dollars on the street, you will naturally be happy to pick it up, but if a strong man taller and more powerful than you comes, he insists on claiming the hundred dollars. He dropped the money, so no matter how reluctant you are, you have no choice but to hand it over.

Ergou's allocation of land is like going to a construction site to move bricks for a day, and you are half exhausted but only earn a hundred yuan. At this time, a strong man also comes out and insists that the one hundred yuan in your pocket belongs to him. Money, as long as you have a knife in your hand at this time, it depends on how many times you stab the other person.

In the same way, the people would definitely risk their lives to protect the land Ergou distributed like this.

　Corrected.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)