"Master Chitose, do you think this is okay?"
The person who asked the question was Li Jizhou, the eunuch in charge of the palace eunuch. Since Zhu Cixi took control of Nanjing City, he became the supervisor of Xiaoling and the Shrine. Li Jizhou was also ordered to recruit 1,400 people from the original Xiaoling Guard households, plus 200 Jingjun, to form a new tomb-shouting association. Xu Jingmi, a Qianhu household in the Marshal's Mansion, who was a eunuch of Jingjun, served as the association leader. .
The soldiers guarding the mausoleum were no longer squad troops, but paid recruits. However, in principle they would not go to the front line, so they had to work hard to acquire land. However, the training is not that strict, there is no need to be "697", and the military salary is 50% higher than other new armies. No matter how you look at it, it’s a very generous treatment!
The original Xiaoling Guard military households are now exempted from military status and have become ordinary civilian households. It is impossible to allocate Xiaolingwei's land to them, but they can continue to rent the land that originally belonged to Xiaolingwei - this can actually greatly improve their lives!
Because the land rented by the Zhongjun garrison requires very low rents. Taking the high-quality paddy fields under the jurisdiction of Xiaolingwei as an example, the annual rent for one acre of paddy fields is only seven bushels of rice.
And the annual rice output of an acre of high-quality paddy fields will never be less than three shi. If you pay three stones and seven dou, even after deducting miscellaneous costs, you can still make a net profit of two stones per acre of land. If a household rents ten acres, they can make a net profit of twenty dan per year. With the price of rice in Nanjing, after deducting the rations required by the family, there is no way you can earn more than 30 taels of silver.
If we plant another one or two acres of vegetable fields and raise some livestock and poultry, our life will still be very pleasant!
Of course, the proportion of land rent collected from three to seven dou per acre is actually greatly increased compared to the previous amount of land rent collected from military villages and official fields!
Previously, the total land tax in the Ming Dynasty included official land rent! Including land rent, during the Hongwu period when the Ming Dynasty received the most land tax, it was only 33 million shi...According to the average number of private and official land at that time, it was about one mu per dou.
By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the registered land amounted to more than 700 million acres, a significant increase from the Hongwu period, but the land tax was only a little over 20 million, and sometimes it was not enough!
At the same time, the common people felt that the burden was extremely heavy, to the point of rebellion... The reason was, of course, that the country had lost direct control over the land and population, and could only beg for food with the scholar-bureaucrats!
Not only did the land tax depend on the gifts of the scholar-bureaucrats, but the rent of the official land in the military garrison also had to be paid by the gentry. No matter how little the country harvested, it had nothing to do with the farmers who cultivated the land.
After Zhu Cihong confiscated the homes of Nanjing nobles and hereditary military attachés, and seized the guard posts they had controlled for generations, he classified all the land (including official fields, private fields, hidden fields, and military fields) as military farmland. It was classified as a military garrison, and then the settlements under the military garrison signed contracts directly with the tenants who rented the land.
In Yingtian, Taiping Prefecture, Zhenjiang Prefecture, Chuzhou and Yangzhou Prefecture, where the land of military garrisons, Xungui and salt merchants are concentrated, by the end of the 17th Chongzhen Emperor's reign, 10 million acres of land had been "directly governed by military garrisons", and there were also More than 5 million acres of land were allocated to middle- and lower-level officers and soldiers of the New Army to overcome difficulties.
Just for these 10 million acres, we can receive more than 6 million shi in rent every year (the quality of the land in this area is relatively good). After deducting the "management fee", it can be handed over to the Generalissimo's military garrison warehouse. Rice can still exceed 5 million koku...
If 40 million acres of the 50 million acres that have not been received (including the cleared military villages and official fields) can be signed (most of the rest will be distributed), then the income will reach 20 million shi, even if the deduction is Even if you drop 20% of the "fee", you can still have 16 million stones in the warehouse.
The number of official fields, military villages, and hidden fields in the entire southeast (excluding Shandong and Henan, which are frontline provinces) can exceed 100 million. If you can hold them in your hands, you won’t need to collect any land tax. The rent is 40 million yuan!
The number of farmland in the entire Ming Dynasty is more than 700 million on paper, but in fact it is more than one billion. Among them, the official farmland and farmland are neither 300 million nor less than 200 million!
With so much land, we can only receive more than 20 million shi in taxes, and because of the extra tax of several million taels, the people are in dire straits and the whole country is in rebellion. Whose fault is this?
It's time to clarify this matter and make it clear.
"Master Qiansui, do you think this place is too crude?" Li Jizhou looked at Zhu Cixiang who was deep in thought, and raised his voice again, "Do you want to expand it?"
"You want to expand it?" Zhu Cixiang was stunned and looked back at Li Jizhou, "It's just a Siguo Palace. How magnificent do you want it to be?"
Li Jizhou frowned and wanted to continue persuading him, but he saw two Jingjun soldiers approaching on horseback, shouting from a distance: "Your Majesty is here, hurry up and prepare to greet him!"
The officials and generals who were waiting quietly in the courtyard of Siguo Palace immediately got into a fuss and lined up in different classes. The civilian officials were led by Wei Zaode, the chief assistant of the cabinet, and the generals were led by Wu Xiang, the commander of the military, government and security forces of the Generalissimo's Mansion. Walk towards the palace gate.
Zhu Cixiang looked back at Li Jizhou and asked, "How are the preparations at Xiaolingwei Old City?"
Li Jizhou said: "Everything has been arranged, and it is enough for the officials who come with them to live. In addition, the Linggu Temple has also been tidied up, and it can also accommodate many people."
"Where is Xiangdian?" Zhu Cixiang asked again.
"It's been renovated."
"Okay!" Zhu Cixi nodded, "Let's go and meet him."
At this moment, outside the dismounting square, all the carriages and horses stopped moving forward. Under the gaze of everyone, Emperor Chongzhen rolled off his horse vigorously. Although he has been "addicted to women" in the past few months, he has not neglected exercise and rest - he also thinks about one day personally leading an army to the northern expedition to Yandu! Of course, you can’t lose your ability to ride a horse and shoot arrows. Plus, I got enough sleep, and I didn’t have so many worries anymore. After a few months, this drunken and drunken king actually looked radiant, looking several years younger and a lot stronger.
Chongzhen got off his horse, and without waiting for Zhu Cixiang to lead the people to greet him, he walked vigorously, led the thirty-three kings and a group of palace ladies and concubines behind him, strode forward, and headed towards Siguo Palace. He knew that there was a palace outside Xiamafang where the imperial officials who visited Xiaoling Mausoleum rested and changed clothes, but he did not know that it had been repaired and expanded, and was named "Siguo Palace". He walked as fast as flying, leading a group of eunuchs and maids in front. After walking for a while, he arrived outside Siguo Palace. Officials who had arrived in advance had already come out, and they knelt down and kowtowed to him.
Only then did Emperor Chongzhen stand still. When he looked up inadvertently, he happened to see the plaque "Thinking of the Palace" written by Zhu Cixiang himself. His expression suddenly changed!
