In a sense, the emperors and ministers of the Southern Song Dynasty really did not understand what was happening in the Ming Dynasty as well as a young man in the countryside of the Ming Dynasty.
While the monarchs and ministers of the Southern Song Dynasty were indulging in the fantasy of "the people of the Central Plains eating pots of pulp to welcome the king's master", violent movements were taking place in the Ming Dynasty in the north.
In Yanzhou, Shandong Province, where the movement was most violent, in a farm in the northeast of Ningyang County, five or six young men armed with short guns were pushing a middle-aged man with fat head and big ears in silk, trying to bring him to In the big square at the east end of the village.
This middle-aged man with a fat head and big ears is named Xu He. He is the largest landowner in the village. He owns 70% of the arable land in the village and almost monopolizes the entire village's food production.
The remaining 30% of the cultivated land belongs to three small landowners, all of whom are related to the Xu family and belong to satellite families of the Xu family.
Together, the four families control the survival rights of more than a thousand people in the entire village.
In this village, they have power comparable to that of an emperor.
But after all, they are just village tyrants and do not have a higher status. Further up, more and more powerful landlords look down on them at all, exclude them from the circle of carving up profits, and do not let them play.
Being low also has the advantages of being low, so they actually escaped Su Yonglin's first and second wave of purges.
Even Su Yonglin's purge of corrupt officials and other public figures had not been their turn, so they were still safe.
But they are still bullies, cruelly controlling everything in the village, signing a 30-70 split contract with the tenants who rent their land, and greedily exploiting everything in the village.
Earlier, they were still open to 40 and 60, but as the war between the Ming Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty progressed, a large number of refugees appeared in Shandong. These refugees were desperate and needed food. In desperation, they took refuge with the landlords who owned a large amount of land.
A considerable number of them took refuge with the Xu family and the other three families.
If there are more refugees, there will be more mouths to eat, and the labor force will overflow relative to the land.
However, these refugees do not have the consciousness and courage to fight against the landlords, and they do not have the culture and leadership organization. They can only start to embark on the road of involution, trying to sell more of their own interests to obtain land for cultivation.
The four families sensed a good opportunity to grab profits, so they began to seek to re-sign the contract, changing the original 46-percent agreement with their tenants to a 30-70 share agreement.
Of course the first tenants were unwilling.
The split of 40 to 60 already makes life very tight, and we can barely make ends meet if we are hungry or full. If this is changed to a split of 30 to 70, how can we still live like this?
So they protested and elected influential people among the tenant farmers to lead them in protest.
As a result, the four families used a 70-30 contract to buy off their leaders and some louder tenants.
It also comes with a lot of food and farm tools.
So most of the "leaders" accepted it, stopped talking, said nothing, and lived their own good lives.
There is only one person who is unwilling to accept it. He must seek justice for the tenants, persist in fighting, and must maintain a 40-60 situation.
As a result, his body was found by the river the next day. His body was covered in bruises, his face was covered in blood, none of his ten fingers were intact, and all his teeth were missing.
Later, it was announced that he had "stuck and drowned".
His family was extremely sad and angry, and wanted to seek justice from the master's family. They also said that they would go to the county to find the county magistrate for justice. As a result, the woman and child were beaten severely, and they died within a few days of returning home.
The resistance of the tenants was broken.
The subsequent sporadic resistance was of no use, and was easily solved by thugs, either beaten to death, or lame, and thrown out of the village.
Their land was taken over by outsiders, who signed a 30-70 contract.
Later, the disintegrated tenants lost their backbone and bowed their heads. The entire village changed their contracts to a 30-70 cents contract, and some people who did not dare to resist but could not accept it secretly left the village and became new refugees.
Of course, the owner Xu He is not worried about this.
"Let them go! There are no three-legged toads to be found, and two-legged poor devils are running all over the ground! As long as the land is mine, am I afraid that no one will farm it for me?"
Of course Xu He was right.
Three-legged toads are indeed hard to find, but hungry two-legged toads are everywhere.
Not to mention 30-70, for hungry poor people, he is willing to sign a slave contract with 280-80, as long as he has a mouth to eat.
As a result, this village completely became a village of 30-70, and the lives of the tenant farmers became miserable.
For them, the first glimmer of hope came from the promulgation of the "Ming Law", which stipulated that landlords could not ask for more than 40% of the rent from tenants, otherwise they would be punished.
When the news came, Xu He was indeed frightened for a while, and then he sent people door to door to threaten the tenants. If anyone came to ask, he would tell them that they would get 60% and the owner would get 40%. If they dared to tell the truth, they would be careful about their lives.
The strong dragon will not suppress the local snake, don't think that the emperor can save you.
After all, my surname is Xu, who has the final say here!
The tenants did not dare to say anything.
After waiting for a while, Xu He heard nothing, and knew that this was another operation with heavy thunder and small rain, so he relaxed and continued to live his life [When I opened my eyes, hundreds of people were eating, drinking and having sex, waiting for me to serve them] "difficult" days.
In his opinion, the emperor's image and face-saving projects and laws that would be beneficial to others at no cost were just deceiving people and putting money on his face, and would not be implemented.
If it were to be implemented, how much would it cost? How many people need to be mobilized? How many people are you going to offend?
The emperor would do such a thing?
So just continue to live your own life, why worry so much?
There is so much surplus value waiting for him to exploit, so many poor people waiting for him to serve, isn't he worried enough?
But he never expected that a major change unprecedented in ancient and modern times was just around the corner.
Starting from April of the third year of Hongwu, more and more rumors spread that the emperor was going on a killing spree in Shandong. The emperor killed many officials and implicated many big landlords and powerful families.
Xu He didn't care at the beginning but became more and more nervous later on. He heard more and more that someone had died, someone's house had been ransacked, and someone from the three clans had been executed.
He began to feel that something was wrong, and that the situation was a bit scary. Nothing like this had happened before except for wars.
What on earth does the emperor want to do?
Is it just a simple fight against corruption?
If so, why did so many people be killed?
He thought over and over that something was wrong, but he didn't know what to do. He kept sending people to inquire about the news, but the bad news he heard always frightened him.
For example, he heard that the Kong family was exalted, which frightened him.
The Kong family has been promoted for thousands of years, what else can't this emperor do?
But before the frightened Xu He could do anything, justice from heaven came in front of him.
Members of the Villagers' Self-Defense Force, who followed the presidents of their respective township farmers' associations from Dayou Township and Liangzao Township under the jurisdiction of Fengfu County, Tai'an Prefecture, arrived in Ningyang County to carry out movements and swept through the farms around Ningyang County.
Farms around Ningyang County were knocked down and destroyed one by one by members of the Village Self-Defense Force, and the landowners who held actual power were severely interrogated and dealt with.
After Xu He learned about the incident in the village next door, he was so frightened that he immediately decided to take his whole family and Xinruan out to avoid the limelight. As a result, before he could leave the village, he was forced back to the village by members of the villagers' self-defense force who quickly attacked. .
The members shouted slogans of "Down with the landlords" and "Capture Xu He alive" and swept the entire village. Xu He's team of thugs, who used to look very powerful and terrifying, were quickly defeated.
