Great Han Empire

Chapter 693
December of the fourth year of Chuping in the Han Dynasty (AD 193).

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At the end of December, Jizhou, Zhao Guo, and Zhongqiu City.

The north wind howled and the snow fell.

The Chinese New Year is coming soon, and people who have worked hard for a year can finally take advantage of the market opening day to happily go shopping in the city and buy some New Year's goods.Although the wind and snow are heavy today, there are still people coming and going on the road, and the festive atmosphere of the New Year is rippling in the silver world with cheerful laughter.

Dahei, carrying a basket on his back, walked slowly in the snow with a few neighbors from the same village, talking and laughing.

An army of iron cavalry appeared on the road.The knights were fully armed, riding their horses lightly, and walked slowly in the center of the gallop.

This road leads directly to Youzhou, and the army of Northern Xinjiang often comes and goes on this road. The common people are not surprised, they give way to the side of the road, and gather together in small groups, looking excitedly at the cavalry soldiers and Yingfeng The colorful flags danced vigorously and commented with gusto.

Standing in the snow on the side of the road, Dahei quietly watched the iron cavalry getting closer and the colorful battle flags, his heart suddenly trembled, and his thoughts instantly flew to Kansai and to the barracks.How is the dumb?Are the brothers still alive?It has been more than a year since I left the Northern Xinjiang Army, where are they now?Are you still on the Kansai battlefield?
Dahei sighed and looked up at the sky.Dumb, I've had a good time.After I returned to Jizhou, I was reunited with my long-lost wife and children. Then our family went to Tuntian District, rented and planted a piece of land, and lived a stable life.Although the family is very poor, compared with the nightmare days in the past, this is a fairy life.All of this was given to me by the General. If I can still see the General in this life, I must thank the General. I must thank him for his gift.

"Dahei, Dahei..." A skinny old man standing next to him pushed Dahei violently, "Look, the black panther...the black panther banner..."

Dahei was startled, and hurriedly turned his head to look in the direction of the old man's finger.In the snowstorm, a huge black panther battle flag fluttered in the air, majestic and majestic.Familiar, too familiar, Dahei's heart felt hot, and his whole body trembled involuntarily, as if he had returned to the bloody battlefield and the years of bloody fighting.

Dahei felt the blood rushing straight to his forehead, he wanted to scream, wanted to shout, wanted to roar.

The iron knights kept their eyes on each other, with solemn expressions, and rode past Dahei one by one.Suddenly, a familiar figure suddenly appeared in front of Dahei.He was still tall and burly, still wearing old leather armor, and still had long unruly hair hanging down.

Dahei's heartbeat accelerated suddenly, and the sudden excitement almost made him suffocate.

"General...General..." Dahei blushed and shouted hoarsely with all his strength.

Hei Baoyi turned his head to look at Dahei.

"General..." Dahei shouted loudly, rushing forward desperately.

Ji Feng yelled angrily, and the sword roared out.Yi Cong's soldiers raised their crossbows at the same time.

"Stop... Go one step further, shoot and kill..."

Dahei was still roaring and running crazily, but his voice became more and more whimpering and hoarse...

The people on the side of the road were stunned, each of them was dumbfounded, and their expressions changed in horror.

Li Hong's face was stern, and his eyes were fixed on Dahei. Suddenly, his face showed shock, and he shouted, "Dahei..."

"General, I'm Dahei, I'm Dahei..." Dahei staggered to the horses of the Yi Cong soldiers, waved his hands, and cried out excitedly, "General, I'm Dahei... ..."

Li Hongfei got off his horse, ran a few steps, and grabbed his hand, "Dahei...I didn't expect to meet you here...Why are you crying? Okay, okay, you are on the battlefield You don’t even blink your eyes when you kill people, how come the land you’ve been planting for a year has turned into this?”

Dahei was excited and embarrassed at the same time, he hastily reached out his hand to wipe away his tears, suddenly he thought of something, he tried his best to break free from Li Hong's hand, knelt down on the ground, and kowtowed repeatedly.

Li Hong laughed, bent down and said to him: "If you kowtow again and don't speak, I will leave."

Dahei felt anxious and hurriedly stood up, "General..."

"Look at what you have done..." Li Hong pointed to a large area of ​​people kneeling on the snow, and said to Dahei with a smile, "Come on, let's go to the front and talk."

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Li Hong asked Dahei to ride on the horse and walk by his side.

"Is everything okay at home?" Li Hong asked with a smile.

"It's all good, all is good. The general has shown great kindness to our family, and I..."

"Don't say such things in the future." Li Hong waved his hand to stop him, "You have been fighting with me since Jizhou, and it has been seven years. How many military exploits have you made in these seven years? How many enemies, do you remember?"

Dahei shook his head.

"I owe you too much, and I owe too much to the soldiers of the Northern Xinjiang Army. If I can keep you all alive, reunite you with your family and live a good life, I will be satisfied. You can go home and find your wife." Son, it's not my gift, but what you deserve. You fought bloody battles for the big man, and the big man should of course repay you."

Dahei felt sour in his heart, tears almost rolled out.

"Dahei, how many acres of land do you rent and plant now?"

"Eighty acres."

"Apart from paying rent and taxes, do you have any savings?"

"This year's weather is good, the harvest is good, and the general ordered to reduce part of the tax, so at the end of the year, the family still has some savings." Dahei replied respectfully.

"Is the situation of other people in Tuntian District similar to yours?"

Dahei nodded, and bowed deeply on the horse, "This is all thanks to the great general."

Li Hong was very happy, and asked carefully about farming, taxation and corvee, and Dahei explained it in detail.From Dahei's joyful expression, Li Hong could see that the situation in Jizhou was better than he expected, which made him feel very relieved.

"Dahei, tell me, what is your greatest wish now?"

"I hope the general will stay in Jizhou for the rest of his life." Dahei said without hesitation, "Although I know this is impossible, I am really afraid that everything will change after the general leaves."

Li Hong shook his head, "Dahei, this doesn't count, you can talk about it later."

Dahei Mian looked embarrassed, he hesitated to speak.

"Dahei, tell me, maybe I can help you." Li Hong said with a smile, "It is very difficult for us to meet once. If you have any wish, you can tell me now, as long as I can achieve it, I will definitely help you." help you."

Hearing this, Dahei hurriedly jumped off the horse, knelt down and thanked him.Li Hong got off his horse and helped him up, "Speak, I'll listen."

"General, can I farm for the rest of my life?"

Li Hong smiled wryly, "Targeting is an emergency measure. Once the world is stable, farming will be cancelled."

"What should I do after Tuntian is cancelled?" Dahei's expression changed, and he said in surprise, "I don't have any land. What will my family eat?"

"General, I think it is very good to farm land. Although farm land is rented and planted by the government government, more taxes have to be paid to the government government, and the corvee burden is also more, but compared with the land we rented and planted from rich people in the past, it is more expensive. It is much more cost-effective. In addition, when there is no harvest in a famine year, the imperial court not only exempts from taxes, but also provides relief, and the family can always support themselves. In the past, when there was a famine year, we had to wait to die."

"However, some people have opinions on farming, and some even refuse to farm." Li Hong frowned and said, "When I visited the farming districts in Anping, Hejian and other places this summer, many people thought that the tax, land tax and corvee in farming were too much. I don’t want to farm for a long time. I estimate that the farming in Jizhou will end in a few years.”

Dahei lowered his head and whispered, "General, is there still farming in that county? I'm going to farm in the border county. I can't let my family starve to death."

Li Hong remained silent.Li Hong has been thinking about this question. He and Tian Chou and other Hebei officials have also been discussing this matter during their inspections of Liaodong and the desert, but there is no answer so far.

"Dahei, if the imperial court sells you the [-] mu of land you rent and plant after the farming is over, do you want it?"

"I want it, but I can't afford it." Dahei said with a bitter face.

"If the imperial court is willing to sell you the land at a low price or simply give it to you for free, will you sell it if you encounter disasters in the future?"

Dahei thought for a while and nodded, "General, the land is bought by rich people. How can we afford it? We are poor, have little land, and have a limited annual harvest. After paying taxes, there is not much left. If we touch If someone in the family gets sick or has a funeral, the only option is to sell the land. What’s even more frightening is that in a famine year, when the crops on the land fail, the only way to keep the family alive is to sell the land.”

"Then what do you think we should do?" Li Hong asked, "Apart from farming, what else can you do to keep yourself and even your children and grandchildren alive?"

"General, can you let my family rent land from the imperial court for generations?" Dahei asked cautiously.

"Renting land from the imperial court for generations?" Li Hong looked at Dahei in surprise, "Renting land for generations?"

Li Hongruo realized something, but he couldn't grasp the essence at the moment. He vaguely felt that the solution to the land problem was right in front of him.

"Dahei, I promise you, I will help you fulfill this wish."

"Thank you, General." Dahei was surprised and fell to his knees again.

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The first month of the first year of Xingping in the Han Dynasty (AD 194).

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In the first month, the emperor changed his year name to Xingping, and amnesty the world.

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After the general Li Hong returned to Handan, he immediately had an audience with the eldest princess.

The eldest princess returned to Handan angrily because Li Hong insisted on appeasing Gongsun Zan. She thought that Li Hong would come back immediately after the war in Youzhou was over, but Li Hong stayed in Youzhou for half a year without seeing a shadow .

"The general still knows to come back?" The eldest princess looked at Li Hong with mixed joy and bitterness, and felt even more wronged in every way.In the past six months, Jizhou has been constantly troubled. She was caught between various forces and tried to find a balance, and her life was very sad.

Li Hong knew that the eldest princess was unhappy, so he casually said a few words, and then took out an exquisite horned horn and handed it over, "I'm going on a long journey, and the places I go are desolate, and I don't have any good gifts for your highness." .”

The eldest princess was very pleasantly surprised, she held it in her hand and played with it carefully, then said suddenly: "When the general first came to Luoyang, he gave me this gift as well."

Li Hong suddenly thought of the late emperor.When I first came to Luoyang that year, the late emperor specially prepared a generous gift for himself to give to the queen mother. The gifts for the princess and little Donghou were also prepared in advance by the late emperor, which were two ox horns.The eldest princess suddenly mentioned this matter, which made Li Hong feel very uncomfortable.Before his death, the first emperor entrusted the Dahan Sheji to himself, but he failed the trust and great trust of the first emperor.When will Dahan Sheji be rejuvenated?
Li Hong was heartbroken and speechless for a long time.

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On the sixth day of the first lunar month, the general summoned the officials of the three prefectures for a discussion. There was only one topic of discussion, the land and the refugees.

Li Hong solemnly told more than 50 officials in the three prefectures during the discussion that the land reform policy must be put forward before the spring plowing in April.During these three months, Hebei only discussed this matter, and did not ask about other matters.

Since the land system is directly related to the foundation of the country, involving taxation and corvee, and then involving many major national policies, the scope of discussion has become wider and wider, and more and more people have discussed it. By the end of the first month, the Hebei government Nearly a hundred officials, scholars, and celebrities rushed to Handan Xingyuan one after another, and debated all night long on how to reform the land system.

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On the land of China, the earliest land system was the well field system.

The well field system began in the Xia and Shang dynasties and matured in the Zhou dynasties.The earliest and most complete record about it is "Mencius·Teng Wengong": "Death migration does not leave the hometown, the village and the field are in the same well, go in and out of friends, watch and help each other, and support each other in disease, then the people are harmonious. Fangli and well There are [-] mu of wells, of which it is public land. Eight families all privately own [-] mu of land, and share the public land; after the official business is over, they dare to manage private affairs, so don’t be savages.” From Mencius’ description, we can know that the well field is in the shape of a square, with a total of [-] mu. , eight families share one well to cultivate it, each occupying [-] mu of private land, and the middle [-] mu of land is public land.After this subdivision, the land is shaped like the word "well", so it is called well field.The eight families had to cultivate the public land first in order to pay the land rent of labor labor which Mencius called "assistance", and then each family could cultivate their own [-] mu of private land.

The most prominent feature of the well field system is the division of public and private land and labor rent.The well field system also adopts the method of regularly adjusting the rotation of the land to eliminate the unfairness that may be caused by the difference in land fertility.

In the mid-Spring and Autumn period, the appearance of iron farm tools and ox plowing led to the development of a large number of private fields other than public fields, and the area of ​​cultivated land expanded day by day.The aristocratic lords' fanatical pursuit of private land made the public land gradually deserted, and the country's annual revenue was unsustainable. Countries had to change the taxation system of land rent for labor and labor, and implemented "initial tax per mu", "decline according to the land", "eleven and Tax" and other tax systems, the well field system was gradually abandoned.

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Qin strengthened the country with the "famous land system".

With Shang Yang's series of reforms "opening fields and breaking borders", the ancient well field system was completely abolished, and the hereditary land ownership privileges of the lords and nobles also disappeared, and the "famous field system" was replaced.

The most prominent feature of the famous land system is that while granting land according to household registration (this is the origin of the so-called famous land system), it also entrusts different titles and different amounts of land according to military merit.

The land granted by the state becomes private possession, and the state will no longer take it back.Land can be bought and sold.

Granting land according to household registration realizes the state's strict control over farmers by borrowing land; all people with household registration can get a certain amount of land, and it can also enable the people to recuperate, so that the country is stable and the tax revenue is sufficient and stable.

The system of rewarding land according to military merit broke the hereditary privileges of nobles and produced a large number of landowners with military merit.

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This dynasty inherited Qin's system, and Qin's "famous land system" was followed.

Therefore, Emperor Xiaowen and Emperor Xiaojing strengthened the country and created the prosperity and prosperity that later generations would envy.

The famous land system created private ownership of land.With the development of society, a large number of land transactions appeared, and the wave of land mergers began to impact the famous land system.

By the time of Emperor Xiaowu, land annexation became more and more serious, almost to the point that "the rich are connected to the fields, and the poor have no place to stand".

In this frenzy of land annexation, in addition to the land of ordinary self-cultivating farmers being annexed by tyrants, another type of land that was annexed in large numbers was military land.Most of the descendants of military meritorious landlords were arrogant and unrestrained, unable to inherit the legacy of their ancestors. They either died because they violated the national law and subjugated the country, or they did nothing for mediocrity. They sold off all the land acquired by their ancestors due to military exploits.The famous land system gradually survived in name only, and later the country stopped awarding land and houses for military merits, and began to reward gold and silver in kind, and the famous land system finally died out.

Land annexation eventually defeated the famous land system.

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After Wang Mang usurped the throne, he implemented a series of new policies.In terms of the land system, he implemented the "Wang Tian System".

Wang Mang and his followers believed that land private ownership and free trading were the root causes of land annexation, and they had a very timely and correct understanding of this.The Wang Land System implemented by Wang Mang was aimed at suppressing land annexation.

The main content of the Wangtian system is to return the land to the imperial court, prohibit private land sales, limit the land occupied by households with no more than eight males to one "well" ([-] mu), and distribute the excess to the neighboring clans. , Landless peasant households can be granted land by the imperial court according to the standard of [-] mu of land for one husband and one wife.

But why did such a restructuring plan that could fundamentally solve the problem of land annexation fail in the end?The reason for the failure of the Wangtian system was precisely because of the prohibition of land sales.

The Wangtian system was abolished after only three years of implementation.

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Today, the three prefectures in Hebei implement the system of farming.

The Tuntian system was first started by Emperor Xiaowu, and it was divided into military and civilian villages.Juntun refers to organizing the army to reclaim wasteland to provide food for the army, and Mintun refers to recruiting refugees to cultivate and farmland to provide food for the army or the court.

The farmland was owned by the state, and soldiers and farmers had to pay a certain amount of rent to the court and the army when farming, and the leftover grain belonged to themselves, and the soldiers in the farmland were not allowed to leave at will, otherwise they would blame their wives.

The farming system provided the army and the imperial court with a large amount of military food and supplies, and also enabled some landless farmers to rely on farming to make a living, which helped to appease the people and stabilize people's hearts.

However, with the success of the farming system and the stability of the farming area throughout the year, many disadvantages have become more and more serious. For example, Bingzhou, which has been farming for eight years, and the western counties of Jizhou, which has been farming for three years, have experienced various problems. Therefore, The reform of the land system is imperative.

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In mid-March, after more than two months of debates, the officials of various prefectures in Hebei Province finally proposed the "Dictionary Land System" after summing up the experience and lessons of the success and failure of various land systems in history.

The dictation land system refers to the dictation of land according to the household registration.This field refers to a large amount of unowned land and wasteland owned by the imperial court. The imperial court distributes the use rights of these fields to all people according to the population, which is the lifelong lease that Dahei most hopes to obtain.

This system resolutely recognizes private ownership of land, and all the land and houses of the rich and powerful families are still their own, protecting their land rights.At the same time, they also participated in granting land.

The dictation land system includes both state land ownership and private land ownership, which can not only benefit the people of all classes, but also protect the interests of the powerful and powerful.On the basis of affirming land ownership and possession rights, this system allowed poor peasants to quickly get rid of the control of the powerful and powerful families and become the registered households of the country, thus ensuring tax revenue to the greatest extent.

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Note: During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Northern Wei Dynasty issued an order to equalize land, which evolved from the "dictation of land system" implemented in Daibei in the early period. The predecessor of the "Equal Field System".

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In April of the early Xingping year of the Han Dynasty (194 A.D.).

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Xu Rong, the general who conquered the west, rushed to report to Handan on a fast ride of eight hundred miles, and Chang'an mutinied three times.

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On Xinchou Day (22nd) last December, the second earthquake occurred in Chang'an, and the situation in Guanzhong deteriorated extremely. But at this critical moment, the Yellow River was frozen, and the relief supplies in northern Xinjiang could not be transported to Guanzhong, and the situation in Guanzhong immediately deteriorated further. .

General Zhengxi Xu Rong and General Wuwei Yushi tried their best, but in the face of the ensuing heavy snowfall, they could only look up to the sky and sigh, in vain.

The weather is getting worse day by day, and decades of rare heavy snow and severe cold have invaded the entire northern and western Xinjiang.

After surviving the most difficult first month and February, March finally came. Han Sui and Ma Teng of Xiliang immediately wrote to the emperor and the court as quickly as possible, impatiently asking for relief, but the disaster in Guanzhong was equally serious. And the court had to delay again and again.

The emperor and the court could afford it, but Xijiang couldn't. Han Sui and Ma Teng had no choice but to send troops to attack Chang'an, grabbing a little bit.

Ma Teng's army was in Fufeng County, only a few hundred miles away from Chang'an, and arrived in an instant.

Taiwei Zhu Jun and Chariot General Li Jue defended the city, and urgently called Hedong, asking Xu Rong to send troops to rescue, but Xu Rong was entangled in the Kansai battlefield by Yuan Shao's army at this time, and was unable to move westward in a hurry.

At this time, the general was discussing with the officials of the three prefectures about the "dictation of the land system". When he suddenly received the news of the mutiny in Chang'an, Li Hong couldn't help being furious, and said, "This Yuan Shao, how dare he reach out to Guanzhong, he is too thoughtful. big."

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(End of this chapter)