Jingnan Strategy

Chapter 304 Exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes

"Hey, call me daddy..."

"father--"

"Hey, that's right!"

In the palace of the King of Han in the capital, twenty-three-year-old Zhu Gaochi held up three-year-old Zhu Zhanji and played with him with nothing to do.

However, his cheerful look did not last for two seconds before the sound of rapid footsteps came from outside the hall.

When he quickly took his son back into his arms, Mrs. Zhang also walked in anxiously.

"What's wrong? I'm so angry."

Zhu Gaochi held Zhu Zhanji in his arms, seemingly indifferent as if he didn't hear what was going on outside the window.

"The third child and the prince started fighting in Chunhe Hall!"

As soon as Ms. Zhang opened her mouth, Zhu Gaochi was frightened: "Is the third child still alive?"

"A few guards took me to a large training ground, saying that I wanted to take part in self-reflection training there."

Mrs. Zhang sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. Zhu Gaochi also quickly sat aside with his son in his arms.

"The second child took the initiative to hit the third child?"

"No, it was the third child who attacked the prince first." Mrs. Zhang took a sip of tea, moistened her throat and then said:

"I heard that this time it was the third child who told Chief Shi Gu Sheng in Prince Zhao's Mansion that he had the spirit of an emperor. Then the prince found out about it, and then the prince summoned him to Chunhe Hall."

"I asked why the third child asked the third sister to go to the East Palace yesterday to delay the vassalation. It turned out to be this idea."

"That's right!" After listening to Zhang's explanation of the cause and effect, Zhu Gaochi sided with Zhu Gaoxu.

"You don't feel bad? Don't you usually feel bad for the third child the most?" Mrs. Zhang looked at Zhu Gaochi in surprise, but Zhu Gaochi stood up with Zhu Zhanji in his arms and handed him to the female officer next to him.

After shaking off his sore hands, he chatted with Mrs. Zhang: "If the third child really rebels, do you think our family will be fine?"

"When the time comes, the walls of the temple will surely fall and everyone will push me back. A lot of people will say that I have secretly wanted to rebel for a long time."

"When the time comes, don't worry whether I believe it or not, our family will definitely be turned upside down."

"Hmph!" Mrs. Zhang snorted and said to Zhu Gaochi dissatisfied: "If you ask me, the third child is spoiled by you and your majesty. My mother has talked about him so many times. Every time she talks about him, it is you and your majesty. Protect him."

"I think the prince did the right thing. If others were more cruel, the third child's head would have rolled all over the floor."

"Hey, hey..." Zhu Gaochi stopped quickly, touching Zhang's little hand and laughing: "If the third child is really dead, then even if the second child doesn't kill me, sooner or later I will have to scare myself to death. "

"What are you afraid of? He killed the third child but didn't kill you." Before Zhang could understand, Zhu Gaochi taught:

"Look, if the second child really kills the third child, will the people under him think that since the third child has been killed, it doesn't matter if he kills the boss?"

"Tell me, how many people in the world will want my life by then?"

Mrs. Zhang listened carefully and asked a question at the same time: "According to what you said, we will still be targeted when we go to Yunnan?"

"That's not the case. If we really leave, people in the temple will soon forget us." Zhu Gaochi waved his hand, leaned on the chair, and said comfortably:

"The second brother is generous. When we go to Yunnan, we have farmland and a salary. When the time comes, we will find an opportunity to hand over the guards. Maybe the salary can increase again."

"You have to pay for the bodyguards?" Mrs. Zhang was surprised: "I think those uncles and brothers all protect the bodyguards like they are treasures."

"Others can keep it, so what can I do?" Zhu Gaochi stood up and turned around in front of Mrs. Zhang.

"I am not good at riding and my health is not good. Fighting is out of the question."

"The place where we are vassal is Kunming. The imperial court has stationed 30,000 people there. If there are really chieftains who can attack Kunming, then I would rather believe that the barbarians from the north entered the pass and surrounded Beijing."

After that, Zhu Gaochi sat back down, put his hands into his sleeves, and glanced at Mrs. Zhang: "Anyway, the imperial court gives us a salary of fifteen thousand guan per year, which is a lot. Our family just eats bear paws every day." If you can’t finish it, just eat it like this.”

"Where are the guards who guard the courtyard? The maids, female officials, eunuchs, and cooks don't need any money?" Mrs. Zhang began to settle accounts with Zhu Gaochi:

"Let me do the math for you. The two hundred guards in the palace now have an annual salary of at least fifteen hundred guan."

"There are more than one hundred female officials, eunuchs and maids in the palace, and they will get at least two thousand guan."

"Our family has money for soup and rice, as well as more than 300 mouths in the palace, as well as horses, cattle and other miscellaneous things. We have to eat 5,000 guan every year without doing anything."

"This is calculated based on the prices in Jiangnan. If you go to Yunnan, the prices may be higher, and you will have to recruit more guards, female officers, and eunuchs. By then, your fifteen thousand guan..."

As she talked, Mrs. Zhang suddenly couldn't talk any more, because no matter how she calculated, the fifteen thousand strings were too much to spend.

Unless you want to raise troops, these fifteen thousand coins are really not easy to spend, not to mention that the Han Dynasty still has a lot of cloth, spices and 5,000 acres of farmland.

For Zhuangtian, the system after Zhu Gaoxu changed it was that the taxes from Zhuangtian were handed over to the chief envoy, who would then transfer them to the vassal king.

In other words, after taxing the five thousand acres of farmland according to the tax per mu of land in each province, it will be additional income for the Han Palace.

According to the old Hongwu system, the average land tax quota per mu in Yunnan is twelve kilograms of grain. Therefore, the land tax grain received is normally four hundred shi, plus various miscellaneous items, which is about 500 kilograms. After discounting, it is almost 200 kilograms. Through.

It's not too much, but with the addition of cloth, satin, spices, etc., it can basically make up a thousand guan. Therefore, the income of Zonglu of the Han Palace is 16,000 guan.

If Zhu Gaochi is strong enough and can give birth to enough princes, then each prince will have a salary of three thousand guans.

However, in order to prevent the vassal princes from making money through this, Zhu Gaoxu also stipulated that the salaries of princes, county princes and other clans could not be paid as scheduled until they were granted vassal status or crowned.

In this way, it put an end to the idea of ​​​​many lords trying to have children to make money. After all, the death rate in this era is too high, and it is difficult to say how many will survive to adulthood.

"I said the second brother was generous, right?"

Seeing that Mrs. Zhang couldn't explain why, Zhu Gaochi also took the opportunity to show off, and then said:

"The third child has suffered a lot this time, so we shouldn't delay. When news comes from Yunnan, we will go and establish the vassal state as soon as possible."

Zhu Gaochi looked at the palace door with some emotion: "This capital is not easy to treat..."

His words were like a gust of wind, blowing directly outside the city.

Outside the Qilin Gate in the outer city of Nanjing, a carriage and more than twenty plainclothes soldiers on horseback stopped on the rural road next to the official road.

Although it is already the end of October, there are still many people working in the cultivated fields on both sides of the official road.

In rural areas in later generations, except for a few areas, winter is undoubtedly the slack time for farming, especially at the end of October in the lunar calendar, when many farmers will be idle at home.

Compared with later generations, farmers in ancient times could be said to work all year round.

"It looks like I'll still be busy until the middle of winter..."

Zhu Gaoxu's voice sounded in the carriage. He was familiar with the farming in Jiangnan and knew at a glance what the people were busy with and how long they needed to be busy.

Winter is the best time for farmers to renovate their farmland and plow cattle. They often use the rest period of the winter solstice to renovate their farmland, remove weeds and plow the soil in preparation for next year's spring plowing.

At the same time, they will also check the physical condition of cattle, mules, and draft horses and provide them with appropriate maintenance so that they can perform optimally in farm operations in the coming year.

Nowadays, the fields are full of farmers repairing the farmland. Judging from Zhu Gaoxu's experience, these farmers will be busy until at least mid-November or even late November.

Judging from Zhu Gaoxu's physical experience, he felt that the temperature in the early Ming Dynasty was colder than that in later generations. Therefore, by mid-to-late November, the temperature in the Jiangnan area may have already entered sub-zero temperatures.

By then, these people will inevitably have some frostbite on their hands in order to repair their farmland.

When the twelfth lunar month comes, they can't rest yet, so they seize the time to process the harvested grains into finished grains, and at the same time make sauces and other foods.

Some people from poor families also knit straw sandals, dustpans and other products at home to earn extra income.

Looking at their situation, Zhu Gaoxu did not interrupt, but silently wrote down everything, and at the same time took out a booklet to record it.

This booklet states the number of acres of land in each province, as well as the number of people, as well as the amount of taxed grain that needs to be paid, the average kilogram of taxed grain per mu, and other data.

The land tax in the Ming Dynasty was a fixed quota, and then the fixed land tax was evenly distributed according to the status of the upper, middle and lower households of the people.

The advantage of this is that on paper, the burden on the people is not large, but the disadvantage is that once it is implemented, there will be many places for cheating.

Changing the upper-class paddy fields to dry fields and changing the status of upper households to lower households is childish. To go too far, directly change the upper-class paddy fields to mountainous areas, and even collude with local officials to pass on the taxes that should belong to them. To ordinary people with no background.

From Zhu Gaoxu's point of view, he hoped not to make it too complicated, but to cut it off with one knife and directly determine it as one out of ten.

But governing a country cannot rely on personal ideas, and must be changed based on actual conditions.

The policy of one out of ten land taxes and one out of ten commercial taxes has been implemented in Shandong. However, due to the insufficient number of officials, the tax situation in Shandong in the first year of Yongle was not as optimistic as Zhu Gaoxu expected.

Zhu Gaoxu turned to the page representing Shandong, which wrote a lot about Shandong's taxes. Since Zhu Gaoxu abolished Shandong's miscellaneous taxes, the whole page was very clean and concise.

[The Chief Envoy of Shandong Province has a land of more than 57,462,376 acres, a land tax of 4,523,467 and a half dan, and a commercial tax of 36 Forty-seven thousand seven hundred and twenty-five dollars, three cents and four cents. 】

This year Shandong paid more than 452 shi in tax and grain, which was a direct increase of 1.67 million shi compared to the 2.85 million shi in Hongwu years.

It seems that the burden on the people has increased, but in fact it has lightened, because Shandong did not carry out corvee labor, nor did it collect various miscellaneous items such as silk and silk. It only maintained the commercial tax collected at the gates of each county, and the amount was very small. considerable.

But even so, it did not meet Zhu Gaoxu's expectations.

Because according to the yield per mu in Shandong, the land tax can at least exceed 6 million dan, and the business tax should not be so small.

This is nearly 1.5 million dan less than he expected. The reason is that this time it was completely carried out according to the ten taxes and one tax. Only the people of the three state capitals of Qingzhou, Dengzhou and Laizhou, and the three All counties in a state capital.

After leaving these three prefectures with the most officials, it became difficult for the other three prefectures of Jinan, Dongchang, and Yanzhou to implement this policy. "Maintaining a ratio of about one to four hundred officials and citizens means maintaining basic tax collection, but we still have to consider the issue of administration..."

Zhu Gaoxu murmured, and he calculated an account, which was the number of officials he invested in Shandong, and the number of officials he invested in Qing, Deng, and Laizhou.

Under Lao Zhu's system, a county normally had five official officials and 20 to 70 subordinate staff.

The salary standards for subordinate officials were set in the 13th year of Hongwu, and there have been almost no major changes since then.

Among them, the monthly salary of the first and second grade Yamen is two stones and five buckets, which decreases from top to bottom. The monthly salary of the sixth grade Yamen is one stone, which is not too low.

There are more than 55,000 officials on the list, but there are more than 100,000 people who are not on the list, and the salaries of these people are allocated by the local government.

Under this system, there were less than 200 local officials and more than 1,200 subordinate officials in the three prefectures of Qingdengrai.

After he captured the three prefectures of Qingdenglai, he transferred more than 1,400 officials from Bohai to join them. Therefore, the number of local officials was 2,800. The people fluctuated greatly due to the migration, but they remained stable. About 1.8 million.

Counting 1,500 of the 3,000 officials in the Taxation Department, a total of 4,300 officials were used in the tax collection of the three governments this year.

Under such a situation, the three prefectures paid 2.8 million shi for more than 20 million acres of cultivated land, which is close to the tax and grain payment situation of Shandong Province before the restructuring. However, the three prefectures of Jinan, which control the other half of the acres, only paid 100,000 dan. 1.72 million stones.

"You have to replace local subordinates and recruit your own talents."

After roughly calculating the employment costs and tax and grain collection situation, Zhu Gaoxu decided to transfer students who graduated from Bohai to go south to Shandong.

This year Bohai will graduate 20,000 students in the twelfth lunar month, and this is also the peak of the graduation wave of Bohai students.

When these students who have been studying in Hongwu for thirty years graduate, the average number of graduates in Bohai will drop to 10,000 per year, while students in Liaodong have not yet completed five years of study.

But as long as he lasts until the end of the third year of Yongle and when the more than 100,000 Liaodong students who enrolled in the 32nd year of Hongwu graduate, then he will have enough people on hand.

By then, it will be enough to revitalize education in Shandong and replace all subordinate subordinates at the grassroots level in Shandong.

As for the 20,000 people who graduated this year, Zhu Gaoxu is not prepared to join the ranks of those who will go south to serve as officials.

He wants to select some high-quality talents and devote them to the research of mathematics, physics and chemistry. After all, science is the productivity.

For this reason, he asked Yishiha to print his own mathematics, physics and chemistry examination papers early and ship them to Bohai two months in advance.

When the graduation exam is held at the end of the year, as long as someone can stand out, they will be put into research by Zhu Gaoxu. According to the ideas provided by Zhu Gaoxu, they will study in various directions to improve basic mathematics, physics and chemistry, and at the same time invent and improve some existing methods. and no scientific products.

Zhu Gaoxu is not omniscient and omnipotent. He can only give people the directions he knows to study. He does not know whether it will be successful or not.

His real battlefield still has to deal with the shortcomings of the Ming Dynasty, such as the 20,000 students who graduated.

"There are currently 5,000 officials in Liaodong to maintain the situation, but it is obviously not enough. Let's keep 10,000 in the local area first..."

Zhu Gaoxu murmured and recorded the incident in the book.

Afterwards, he did some calculations and found that if he added the Bohai subordinates and tax department officials in Shandong, plus the 10,000 students at his disposal, the number would be 14,400.

Today, the entire population of Shandong is about five million. Therefore, if these people are fully utilized at the grassroots level, it will basically be possible to control Shandong from the bottom up. Shandong can also be used as a pilot operation for new policies and promoted after success.

Thinking of this, Zhu Gaoxu also finished writing the last word, put down the booklet in his hand, and opened the door of the carriage.

"Your Highness..."

Two officials from hundreds of households gathered around, but Zhu Gaoxu waved his hand: "Follow me to the fields, just call me Lord Bo."

"Yes!" The two bowed in return, and then followed Zhu Gaoxu into the field along the path, but they were driven away as soon as they arrived.

"Those three over there don't have eyes. Why are they stepping on my field?!"

In the distance, an old farmer shouted at Zhu Gaoxu and the others, and at the same time raised the old iron hoe in his hand.

"My father, please don't be angry. I am the boss of Jiangning County and I am here to ask about your difficulties."

With more than twenty men on horseback, Zhu Gaoxu could only get an official status for himself.

Even though he was only the head of Jiangning County, he was still the one who made the old farmer who was yelling quickly drop his farm tools, kneel in the field and kowtow vigorously several times.

"The common people didn't know that Lord Bo was coming, but they actually dared to shout at Lord Bo, asking Lord Bo to forgive me!"

The old farmer kowtowed vigorously and covered himself with dirt. At the same time, the surrounding farmers knew about the arrival of Jiangning County Master Bo. They all put down their farm tools and knelt down like lambs waiting to be slaughtered, feeling at a loss.

"Get up, I am also a farmer's child."

Zhu Gaoxu stepped forward to help the old farmer up, and shouted to the people around him before calling them up.

But even after they stood up, they were still submissive and restless.

It was at this time that the old farmer saw how tall Zhu Gaoxu was and couldn't help but shrink his neck.

If it were someone else who would be yelled at by him like this, no matter whether this was his field or not, he would give it a good beating first.

"Old man, I came out of the city just to ask you, without Jun Mong this year, have the subordinate officials and grain chiefs sent by the yamen made things difficult for you when they were collecting grain from you?"

Zhu Gaoxu supported the old man and sat on the field ridge aside. Seeing this, the officials from hundreds of households quickly placed the mats they had brought with them in the field, and Zhu Gaoxu also sat on the mats.

Just for a moment, he felt that something was wrong with this, because he was tall and sitting on the mazha was much taller than the old farmer sitting on the field ridge, so he couldn't help but feel like an official interrogating a prisoner.

He put the maza down and sat on the maza. Although it was comfortable, it felt right.

"No embarrassment, no embarrassment..."

The old farmer repeated these words, but his words and deeds betrayed him. Someone had obviously told them to say so.

"Don't worry, old man, no one will know about my coming out this time. As long as you don't tell me, no one will be able to trouble you."

Zhu Gaoxu comforted the old farmer, but the old farmer knelt down and said, "Master Bo, don't ask the grassroots. When the news is gone, you can go back to the county, but the grassroots still have to make a living."

The old farmer's words made Zhu Gaoxu speechless. He couldn't help but think of many TV shows in his previous life where the protagonists made decisions for the people or supporting characters, opening their mouths to protect them.

But reality is different from TV. No protagonist can always sit in the local area and make decisions for the local people.

They finish one thing and leave, as if that one thing solves everything.

The same goes for his own questioning. If he can't protect these villagers, then asking them will harm them.

"Let's do this, old man, you tell me the original story. If there is something fishy between the local chief and the grain chief, I will send someone to arrest them and select people from among my close people to be the chief and grain chief. Whenever something happens, they will be there." They protect you."

Zhu Gaoxu made a promise, and the old farmer and the surrounding farmers looked at each other in confusion, as if they wanted to express their thoughts.

"I am definitely not someone who is here to make lies, nor am I a liar. If you don't believe me, look over there."

Zhu Gaoxu motioned them to look at the carriages and soldiers on the official road. Sure enough, they became bold after seeing them, and the crowd started shouting.

"Those two bastards Zhao Nan and Li Yong didn't come to collect food for official competition, and they also said that our food is not good!"

"right!!"

"Every year we have to pay twelve kilograms of grain, but this year the bucket is bigger. We have to pay fifteen kilograms of rice!"

"besides……"

With Zhu Gaoxu's guarantee, the crowd could no longer hold back and expressed their pain one after another.

"Old man, are they telling the truth?"

Zhu Gaoxu lowered his head and looked at the old farmer. The old farmer nodded frequently: "It's all true. After receiving the land tax, we still have to do corvee labor for them."

"Not only do they do the corvee for them, they also exempt their relatives from the corvee and let us do it for them. If we don't want to, they will deal with us every summer and autumn when they collect taxes."

"And we have to pay more than a dozen taxes every year. If we grow three hundred kilograms of rice on one acre of land, we have to pay at least 20%."

The old farmer expressed his grievances. For the people in the early Ming Dynasty who loved to read the play, they all regarded Zhu Gaoxu as Master Qingtian in the play.

“Can you give me specific examples of the types of taxes that need to be paid each year?”

Zhu Gaoxu was not surprised to hear this kind of thing. After all, he had always known that the people were burdened with heavy burdens. What he cared about was that this group of subordinate officials used other methods to exploit the people besides "drench the tips and kick the branches", which would make it easier for him to clean up other people in the future. A subordinate who uses this method.

"Summer and autumn grains, warehouses, cattail baskets, bamboo baskets, oral food..."

The old farmer spoke out a bunch of taxes that Zhu Gaoxu had never heard of before without thinking. He could understand the first ones about summer and autumn crops, but he couldn't understand the latter ones.

"The food they eat is what they eat on the way to collect taxes. They have to collect it from us. Each household receives one catty of rice."

"The treasury collects the grain that goes into the village grain depot for storage, and each family receives two kilograms."

"The money for the cattail baskets and bamboo baskets used to hold the grain after harvesting is five kilograms each, and the pockets are also five kilograms each, and..."

The old farmer's thoughts were complicated, but Zhu Gaoxu generally heard them clearly.

After listening to the whole article, he only heard four words... exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes

(End of this chapter)