"Your Majesty, Lord Hong asks for your visit."
Just as the emperor was thinking a lot, a eunuch suddenly came outside the hall and bowed to the emperor.
The emperor was slightly stunned, then seemed to think of something, raised his lips slightly, and nodded: "Let him come here."
Not long after, Hong Chengchou walked into the hall and bowed deeply to the emperor: "I, please see Your Majesty."
"No gift."
The emperor stood up, waved his hand, and immediately eunuchs walked to the side hall and placed their seats.
The emperor went to the side hall, and Hong Chengchou was also closely behind.
"It's been half a year since I left Beijing?"
The emperor sat down and asked casually.
"I went out of Beijing for inspection in early March this year, and it has been exactly half a year."
Hong Chengchou sat down and replied respectfully.
The emperor looked at the respectful Hong Chengchou in front of him and couldn't help but chuckled. Hong Chengchou was really a thief.
Seeing the storm swept at the beginning of the year, after expressing opinions on the resolution on the reform of Lijia, he immediately took advantage of the power of engineering disaster relief to sneak out of the capital and avoided the center of the storm. He did not return to Beijing until the storm has subsided.
This is how Hong Chengchou was. When the storm first started, he blew up and then he slipped away smoothly. He had not offended others yet. I have to say that he really had some skills.
However, whether he will offend him, the emperor, depends on the results of his inspection of various projects and disaster relief in the past six months.
Hong Chengchou obviously understood the emperor's thoughts very well. Before the emperor could speak out, Hong Chengchou respectfully handed over a book of files.
"Your Majesty, this is a record of the details of my inspection of various projects..."
The emperor took it casually, but he had never read it. Seeing this, Hong Chengchou also understood it. After pondering for a moment, he made a sound report: "Report to Your Majesty, the disaster this year is much worse than last year..."
Hong Chengchou's voice sounded, and the emperor began to read the file.
The file records are very detailed, including disaster situations in various places, progress of disaster relief projects, and even overview of prefectures and counties in various places under the disaster situation...
It is obvious that the climate change brought about by the Little Ice Age still deeply affects the Great Heng World.
The natural disasters continue, and even, compared with previous years, have become much more serious.
Listening to Hong Chengchou's report and looking at the shocking numbers on this document, the emperor did not change much in his expression.
All of this was long as he expected.
Once for refugees, they struggled at the bottom for a long time. The emperor naturally knew that natural disasters were terrible, but man-made disasters were often the greatest terror.
Just as the land of Shaanxi has been going on for nearly ten years, it does not mean that the people in Shaanxi cannot survive at all.
Instead, it means that natural disasters have left the fields in Shaanxi deserted and grain production reduced. In the past, ten portions of grain could be produced, but as the natural disasters continued, they could only produce eight portions, or even six or seven portions.
Although it seems to be a difference of 10% or 20% or 20% or 30%, it is obvious that if only one or 20% are not effectively coordinated and regulated by the court, it will inevitably lead to an extremely shortage of food.
Since ancient times, there have been many people who have made money from the national crisis. It seems that a 10% or 20% vacancy is not strongly controlled and helped by the court, which will lead to the market's grain prices soaring several times or even dozens of times, forcing more and more people to survive.
This will lead to a vicious cycle, with food prices getting higher and higher, and the people of this era have undoubtedly extremely low ability to bear risks. Such a storm will force more and more people to survive.
More and more people cannot survive, and without the strong regulatory and relief of the court, it will lead to more and more production waste and civil unrest, and the number of people needs less and less food.
A vicious cycle was born.
The turmoil that continued in Shaanxi in the late Ming Dynasty was born because of this.
When the arrogance of the emperor is established, the first thing that the emperor solves when dealing with the disaster is naturally man-made disasters.
The army went to Shaanxi to suppress civil unrest, quell the chaos, establish a strong and powerful ruling order, clean up illegal laws, and then allocate grain relief, reform and start, and divide land into individuals.
In this way, the problems that the court needs to face when order is restored are much simpler, that is, the vacancy caused by the reduction of grain production caused by natural disasters.
If one percent is missing, the court will make up 10%; if two percent is missing, the court will make up 20%.
The court used this shortage of food to attract the young and strong people, organized major projects to repair water conservancy, build roads, and further increased the carrying capacity of land in various places.
In fact, although the natural disasters seem to be continuing and becoming more and more serious, in most disaster areas, the people under the disaster are getting better and better than before.
The reason is naturally very simple.
In the past, strictly speaking, the foundation of the imperial rule was not the people of the world, but the landlords and gentry in the world!
The vast majority of the land in the world is concentrated on the landlords and gentry.
Most of the people are tenants of landlords and gentry!
No matter how low the tax rate and the good policy of the court were, it had no meaning to these tenants.
These people, as tenants, paid tenant rent to the landlords. The tenant rent was almost the most. The court did not decide, but the landlords had the final say.
Most of the tenant rents, and even 99% of the tenant rents, are far higher than the taxes of the court.
The tenants not only have to face the high rent of the landlords, but also have to bear the exploitation of grassroots government officials.
In this way, when there is a slight natural disaster, it will immediately become a decay.
Otherwise, even if Daheng now has ten taxes and one high land tax, the people will never be able to withstand the disaster for a year or two.
After Daheng was established, he purged the world. The emperor relied on military power and forced the redistribution of resources with almost bloody means.
That is, to crack down on the cleansing of landlords and gentry, and to distribute land to poor people. After the reform system was determined, the gentry and landlords who made a living by annexing the land were suppressed from the policy level.
In this way, everyone in the world can share the land, even if one acre of each person is only one acre. According to the current Daheng tax system, the land tax is 15 and one tax is 1.
That is, one acre of land pays 15th of the grain as a land tax.
One acre of land produces two to three stones, one stone is about one hundred and fifty or sixty kilograms, and one acre is about three to four hundred kilograms.
Even if you take out one fifteen shares of land tax, it will definitely be enough for a young and strong to live a good life.
Not to mention, after the forced and bloody resource redistribution, most of the people also had a few acres of land they had.
Even if there are drought, there are drought-tolerant crops promoted by the imperial court, such as sweet potatoes, drought-tolerant and high-yield crops.
All the harsh taxes in the past were abolished in Daheng today, and the corvee service, which is the leader of man-made disasters, was strictly controlled by the emperor.
Nowadays, if local governments want to collect corvee labor, they must submit them to the provincial level for approval. Local prefectures and counties not only need to submit detailed corvee labor contracting plans, but after approval, they also need to send provincial level chief censors to inspect and inspect the inspection report, that is, corvee labor plan archives.
The emperor has even launched a system of accountability that has never been seen before, that is, the person in charge will be held accountable for life!
The emperor's attitude was obviously very clear. He would rather be lazy and negligent in the middle and lower-level officials than to harm the people for their political achievements and selfish desires.
All of this has created a center where Daheng's power is becoming increasingly huge, that is, most of the powers are taken back to the center, and a complete large-scale government system. Everything is based on the court's policies, and the autonomy of middle and lower-level officials is greatly compressed.
Such a strong and powerful administrative order suppresses man-made disasters, has strong and bloody resource redistribution, and the court's reliance on state-owned commerce to coordinate and control the economic order.
This led to the fact that from the late Ming Dynasty to the fifth year of Zhaowu, although the natural disasters became increasingly terrifying and spread in an increasing manner, the disaster relief money and food allocated by the court every year
Cliff-like descending.
The lives of the people in most disaster areas seem to be getting better and better, and Daheng's ruling order is becoming more and more stable.
Everything seemed to be evolving in the best direction, but the emperor obviously did not have much joy.
He knew that natural disasters would never stop, and the root cause of the problem would be impossible.
No matter how many policies are, they will only reduce the impact of natural disasters and cannot be completely calmed down.
If the natural disaster continues like this, Daheng's pressure will become greater and greater, and when it reaches the limit of carrying.
Then there will only be one consequence, that is... collapse!
The emperor rubbed his forehead and looked at Hong Chengchou: "What's the situation of the projects in various places?"
"Report to Your Majesty, except for a few major projects, most of the other small projects in various places have been completed and the people have also made proper resettlement."
"This time, the main focus of the inspection between the left minister of the Ministry of Revenue is to inspect this matter."
The emperor was silent, but his eyes were fixed on a number at the end of the file.
That is, the number of people who have severe disasters exceeds the limit of land carrying, and cannot be self-sufficient and can only rely on the court to provide relief.
The emperor remembered that from the beginning, the imperial court counted nearly ten million.
And this number has now dropped to less than three million.
Now that disaster relief has been years of disaster relief, the policies and measures that can be used have been implemented long ago. It can be said that this number has dropped to its limit.
If the natural disaster is severe next, this number will inevitably increase slowly.
Nowadays, most of the people represented by this number have been collected into labor-for-relief.
But the project will always end, but the disaster still has no hope of ending.
"Liaodong lacks people, has a large land and a sparse population, and the yield of cold-resistant crops is also good now..."
The emperor spoke quietly, but half of his words came to an abrupt end.
Hong Chengchou's pupils shrank, and it was already difficult for hundreds of thousands of people to carry out projects. It was as difficult as climbing to heaven. Now that it can be maintained, it is almost entirely due to the emperor's authority.
Since ancient times, no major projects have been used to exploit people's power, but these major projects led by the emperor have completely put the care of people's power first.
Civil officials, military generals, Jinyiwei, Dongchang, and inner court business, the emperor used almost all the power he could use.
With the efforts of the whole country, inspection departments at all levels conduct small inspections almost every three days and large inspections every ten days...
Migrating with such treatment...
For project disaster relief, the people only gather in one place, establish a good system, and investigate steadily and carefully, and the difficulties can be solved slowly.
Can it be migrated...millions of people migrate? Or migrate thousands of miles?
Hong Chengchou dared not think about it...
Chapter completed!