Almost immediately after learning about the fall of Taiyuan, Zhu Guoqiang, who had always been concerned about the north, stopped paying attention.

Of course, this kind of lack of concern does not mean that he really doesn't care, and he is no longer curious about the future. He once imagined that changes in history might make Chongzhen make other choices, such as transferring Liao soldiers to enter the pass and then defeat Li Zicheng.

Protected the Ming Dynasty.

What to do when the time comes?

Of course it is the "revival system".

Of course, Zhu Guoqiang continued to pull out the flag of Emperor Gao and handed over the country to Chongzhen. Zhu Guoqiang was not only worried, but in his opinion, it was a crime!

It is a crime against the country and the nation!

It has nothing to do with Chongzhen personally, but is based on the future of the country and the nation.

The next moves that Chongzhen played really blinded Zhu Guoqiang's eyes. He had imagined countless possibilities, but he never thought that Chongzhen would actually send him to the crooked-neck tree step by step.

Hundreds of thousands of elite Liao soldiers were disbanded just because of Chen Yan's opposition.

This head...is really prepared for the Crooked Neck Tree!

After sighing, Zhu Guoqiang no longer cared about the capital. They were destined to die anyway. With Li Zicheng robbing the capital, he could unite everyone.

After all, great men have said that the only way to win is to have a few enemies and a lot of friends.

Of course, with Li Zicheng there as a foil, no matter how powerful his methods are, it's still... not too much!

One day before the sacrifice, a group of people rode horses on the snow-covered dirt road by the river. As they walked, they looked around, and occasionally Zhu Guoqiang would sigh.

The land outside Nanjing is not bad!

Although it is not as good as the area around Taihu Lake, most of it is high-quality fertile farmland.

To whom do these fertile fields belong?

Of course some are civilian fields and some are military fields, but what are the vast majority of them? They are the military fields of the Nanjing Guards, a total of 32 guards belonging to the five prefectures of Nanjing, and the second guard!

As Zhu Yuanzhang's base camp, from Fengyang Prefecture to Nanjing, more than half of the land in Guandong here belongs to military households. There are at least millions of acres of high-quality farmland, all of which belong to the military households of the 32nd Guards and the Second Suo.

.

Of course, much of the land in Fengyang Prefecture has been abandoned now - from the invasion of Abatai to the killings and kidnappings by Zhang Xianzhong and other bandits, more than one million people were killed in Fengyang Prefecture! According to the yellow book of the Nanjing Ministry of Household Affairs,

Fengyang Prefecture has more than 10 million acres of cultivated land, but now at least half of the land is abandoned.

After the war, thousands of villages and markets became desolate "villages and ghost towns", and some places were even deserted for thousands of miles. Now in the Ming Dynasty, especially in the north, there are so many wastelands that even the land in the south of the Yangtze River has been destroyed.

It is no longer valuable - those gentry landowners used to take the opportunity to buy land at low prices, but now they are too lazy to buy it. After all, as long as the tenants are willing, they can take their families to find an abandoned house in Jiangbei and plant a piece of land without an owner.

If they cultivate the land for a few years, it will become theirs.

Landlords and gentry can buy land, but what happens after they buy it? Without tenant farmers to cultivate it, the land can only be left uncultivated. Therefore, it is now difficult to sell land in Jiangnan.

Many tenant farmers have even moved their families to Jiangbei, reclaiming wasteland and settling in deserted villages and ghost towns in Jiangbei.

While riding along the official road, the ditches on the roadside were covered with thick snow. These ditches, which have been continuously repaired over the years, were not abandoned.

Yan Ermei rode his horse and followed the prince, saying as he walked:

"General, almost all of this area has prime farmland that can be irrigated by river water!"

Zhu Guoqiang nodded. The standard of fertile land in this era is whether it can be irrigated. As long as it can be irrigated, it is a top-quality fertile land.

Zhu Guoqiang glanced at him and suddenly raised his whip and said.

"These fields are all military fields of the Nanjing Guards Station!"

Meichun replied:

"It is indeed the military field of each guard."

Zhu Guoqiang raised his eyebrows and asked:

"So what now? Who do these military fields belong to?"

After Zhu Yuanzhang founded the country, in order to stabilize the world and restore production, he implemented a garrison military system that combined troops with farmers and garrison camps. He established more than 300 garrison stations throughout the world.

To put it bluntly, it means to station officers and soldiers in various parts of the country, allocate fields to them, and let them farm on the spot. A military household has an average of fifty acres of land, and there are more officers. They can support themselves. Military households are hereditary and protect the land of the Ming Dynasty from generation to generation.

This is also the reason why Yunnan has truly integrated into China for the first time - hundreds of thousands of military households have completely changed the local population composition.

Although military households were required to pay grain grains, they did not need to bear the burden of "corvee". Therefore, although grain grains were slightly heavier than those of ordinary civilian households, they could live quite comfortably because they did not have to suffer from corvee labor.

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the military garrison could earn tens of millions of shi of grain a year, so much so that Zhu Yuanzhang proudly said: "I raise millions of soldiers without costing the people a grain of rice."

By the time of Yongle, the Ming Dynasty's military settlements' "grain" income had reached 23 million shi, which was equivalent to nearly double the annual grain income in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. During the Yongle period, the number of acres of military settlements exceeded 89 million acres.

Such a strong production value made Yongle Emperor Zhu Di sigh: "The common people are saved from being betrayed, and the soldiers are not hungry or embarrassed."

This system was originally very good, but as time went by, all its drawbacks emerged.

First, the military households were divided. After fifty acres of military land were distributed to several sons, each family was left with only a dozen acres. The original small landowners became reluctant farmers, but after one or two generations, they became unable to survive.

Poor and lower-middle peasants who are resistant to any risks.

In times of disaster, in order to pay for grains of grain, they even had to sell their fields in pawn. Gradually, all the military fields of military households were sold out. Of course, there were also military officers who occupied them. In the end, military households gradually became the property of the officers.

tenant.

The military households who were reduced to tenant farmers struggled to make ends meet at the end of the year. Because of the difficulty of life, many people became deserters and fled to other places with their families to make a living on their own.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were countless military households who fled, and the guard system had long been in vain. The land of most military households became the private land of guard officers, and these officers became local powerful people. For example, Hou Fangyu's family was also a guard official.

With a military background, he is also a powerful man who owns tens of thousands of acres of land.

Well, so is Zhang Juzheng...

Doing the math, there were quite a few civil servants with military backgrounds in the Ming Dynasty. If you go back to the roots, you will find that many of their ancestors had embezzled the land of ordinary military households.

Zhu Guoqiang naturally knew this well. In fact, how many people in the Ming Dynasty didn't know it?

After everyone rode horses around for a while, they saw an old man in the field, carrying a bamboo basket and picking up the excrement pulled by the animals by the official road.

So Zhu Guoqiang got off his horse and stepped forward to talk:

"Excuse me, father-in-law, where is this place?"

As soon as the old man saw the clothes of Zhu Guoqiang and his party, he knew that either wealth or wealth meant wealth, and he hurriedly replied:

"Back to the young master, this is the left guard left behind. I wonder where the young master is going?"

Zhu Guoqiang said with a smile:

"If you're not going there, I'm just going to take a walk from Nanjing. Dad, how is the harvest this year?"

Seeing that the young man spoke very kindly, the old man answered truthfully.

"The harvest is not bad, and there is no drought even if we rely on the river. This harvest is average, but it is still not enough to eat."

"Oh? Why is this?"

The old man said:

"So what if the harvest is good? It's not that you don't know that this is the left-behind left guard. These fields are different from civilian fields. In addition to paying rent, you also have to pay two buckets of "zi grains". The rent plus "zi grains"

"Sixty percent of the harvest belongs to Mr. Sun. If it weren't for the lack of corvee labor in the military household, this life would have been impossible. For now, I just have to make do with it!"

The old man's answer made Zhu Guoqiang frown and ask:

"Old man, do you think you are a military household? Is this your own farm?"

The old man looked towards the fields aside and said after a long while:

"When our ancestors fought against Emperor Gao, they allotted fifty acres of land. In my lifetime, there are only three acres left. As for the land our ancestors have farmed for generations... I didn't know it would be gone that year.

I don’t know if it was sold or occupied..."

Maybe because people are getting older, they talk more. The old man told the story of his family, from when Emperor Gao gave the ancestors allotments of fields, to when the ancestors separated, the family's life was getting worse day by day, and then again.

How later the fields were occupied by hundreds of households from the local health center...

Everyone was very moved after hearing this. From the life of a small household, they saw the epitome of a dynasty's policies.

At the end, the old man sighed:

"Tell me, what kind of field is this field? If it is a military field, then the "grain grains" are handed over. It is given to the court and used to raise soldiers, but where are the soldiers? This guard station

Where are the soldiers? When Abatai came to kill, there were no soldiers from hundreds of households. However, this "grain of grains" was paid every year, year after year. There was no time when it was not handed over, and all the grains were handed over.

Hundreds of households have gone there! The imperial court, if all the grains of food in the world are handed over to the imperial court, will the emperor still have no money to fight against the bandits and the Eastern captives?"

After Zhu Guoqiang finished listening, his heart seemed to be pressed by a big stone, and he was so heavy that he couldn't breathe. He didn't say anything, turned the horse's head and rode hard with his head lowered.

After galloping for several miles, he slowly slowed down and the group of people behind slowly followed him. Seeing that the crown prince was in a low mood, no one spoke.

Zhu Guoqiang looked at the endless plains and asked softly:

"Such a lot of land, such good land, was originally used to raise soldiers, but who did it support in the end? Did it raise soldiers for the court? Those people took all the benefits, but what about the court? But these ordinary people

What about the military households? If they are allowed to take advantage like this, is there any justice in it?"

Everyone sighed, and Yan Ermei said quietly:

"Yes, if it really continues like this, it would really be unreasonable."

Zhu Guoqiang looked at the sky from a distance and said in a cold voice:
Chapter completed!