For the people of the Song Dynasty, the words of the government were infinitely close to lies.
Hearing it is equivalent to believing lies.
If you don't listen, you will be eaten by the ghost.
They seem to have two choices, but in fact they only have one choice.
They have no choice but to pay taxes.
But this year’s taxes have been paid, and next year’s taxes have to be paid. If you make an advance in advance, you won’t have to pay taxes the year after.
It would be fine if they kept their word, but they never keep their word, they never keep their promises, they are just lying. .
This year means next year, next year means the year after tomorrow, and the year after tomorrow means the year after tomorrow. Every year we make advances and every year we betray our trust.
The old farmer's place was not taxed until thirteen years later.
This is quite good. He also heard that some places were received after 24 years, and there was also an extreme place that was received after 27 years.
Basically all the people in those places who could escape have escaped, and the rest have basically become tenants of powerful landlords with connections in their families, or they are disabled and have no money and cannot escape, so they can only bite the bullet and continue. endure the oppression of the government.
The financial and population data of these places collapsed into a mess. Officials could not even make money and eat grain, so they could only falsify paper tax data to frustrate the Lin'an court.
Anyway, the Lin'an court will not really send people to the countryside to investigate whether the tax data is true. The court officials are also familiar with these matters and know how bad the local situation is now. If they pursue the case forcefully, no one will be able to reap the benefits. .
The only person who might be held accountable is the emperor, but where can the emperor get the real data?
As long as the officials colluded and insisted on hiding it from the emperor, the emperor would really not know how much money his country had and how much money he should get.
He can only live in the information cocoon that the officials have woven for him, enjoying the pleasure that only one person can feel, and the sense of accomplishment that comes from the surrender of the country and the people.
Even if occasionally a conscientious official wanted to expose the illusion of prosperity without being politically correct, the emperor might not believe it.
So what if I have doubts?
Should he be allowed to count money in the treasury alone? Let him check the accounts alone? He wants to figure out the vast digital account books alone?
Because of the deep understanding of these principles, not only the Lin'an court, but also the local corruption situation was also very serious, even worse than Lin'an.
Anyway, officials are all exiles. They serve for three years and then leave after they finish their work. No one wants to stay in such a poor place, let alone achieve any political achievements, so the place falls into an endless cycle. dilapidated.
The old farmer and his fellow villagers were tortured by the government in various ways. The family was completely destitute and so poor. When the robbers and bandits came, they would look up to the sky and sigh, cover their faces with tears, and bluntly said that the dog officials would not give them a way to survive.
But now the peasant army has come, allocating fields and houses to them, and providing farm tools, cattle and other livestock so that they can produce with peace of mind.
Not only that, the taxes are so low, there are only agricultural taxes and temporary war taxes. What else can they be dissatisfied with?
Zhao Yucheng felt very uncomfortable when he heard this.
There were some taxes in the Southern Song Dynasty that he had never heard of even in the Jin Kingdom. Doesn't this mean that the Jin Kingdom was more gentle than the Southern Song Dynasty in terms of taxation?
There really is no harm without comparison.
"You still have to pay taxes when you kill chickens and fish? This is really unheard of."
The old farmer smiled bitterly when he heard this.
"What the hell is this? I heard that in that county where taxes were collected twenty-seven years ago, you even have to pay taxes when you poop or urinate!"
"Is there such a thing?!"
Zhao Yucheng was shocked: "You still have to pay taxes when you poop or pee?"
"I was really scared. I had never heard of such a thing, but it happened to be true."
The old farmer smiled bitterly and said: "So a few years ago, when the Peasant Army and the Renaissance didn't come, the people here lived a life like ghosts, and it was not uncommon to starve to death. I am satisfied to be here today, really. Once you are content, you dare not feel dissatisfied."
"Don't say you don't dare. Without you paying taxes, the Peasant Army and the Renaissance would not be able to survive."
Zhao Yucheng held the old farmer's hand: "These are what you deserve. When the war is over and we destroy the Song Dynasty, the war tax will be waived and no longer collected. You can live your life how you want, and you will have to pay for it in the future." Eat and drink when necessary, and you won’t suffer anymore.”
The old farmer's wrinkled face smiled like a chrysanthemum in full bloom.
"I don't believe a word those tax collectors say, but I believe everything you say!"
Zhao Yucheng then wrote to Su Yonglin about what he saw and heard along the way, and told Su Yonglin that he had decided to levy a temporary war tax to contribute to the development and growth of the Jiangnan West Road Peasant Army.
The purpose of adding a tax was to prevent the Southern Song Dynasty from coming back to collect more taxes. He decided to fight to the end on Jiangnan West Road until the Ming Dynasty army fully moved south.
Even if millions of troops come to press him, he will never admit defeat. At worst, he will go back to the Luoxiao Mountains to fight guerrillas. All in all, he will fight this group of heartless superiors here to the end!
They are not the least bit excessive. If they continue to rule, sooner or later the popularity of this place will be destroyed and it will become a wasteland without human habitation.
How can we allow them to continue to act recklessly?
At the same time, in order to mock the Southern Song Dynasty, he personally wrote a couplet and asked people to post it at the door of the Peasant Army Headquarters Office in Nanchang to celebrate the arrival of the New Year in the fifth year of Hongwu.
The first couplet is "Since ancient times, there has never been a tax on excrement."
The second line is "Now there is nothing left but nothing to donate".
The horizontal batch is - Ten Thousand Taxes in the Southern Song Dynasty.
Anyone who passes by the Peasant Army Headquarters can see this couplet and marvel at it, feeling very moved.
The land reform achieved a comprehensive victory in the Jiuzhou area of Jiangnan West Road. An unprecedentedly stable revolutionary regime was established here and took deep roots.
The local people have unprecedented support for this new regime, and they are willing to do their best to cooperate with whatever this regime needs.
When the Peasant Army reorganized and recruited new soldiers, local people enthusiastically joined the army. When the Peasant Army recruited people to repair city walls and military defenses, the local people were also willing to send excess labor to help them build.
In this way, after the land reform, farmers' enthusiasm for production has also greatly increased. After the harvest of summer and autumn grains in the past four years of Hongwu, the peasant army has collected enough through agricultural taxes and temporary war taxes to support the 80,000 peasant army to fight for two years. food.
Under such circumstances, the material embargo in the Southern Song Dynasty was meaningless, and the large-scale production movement of the peasant military regime could support itself.
There was no problem with food. The peasant army was much fuller than the Song army.
This second reason is not a problem of the peasant army, but a problem of the Southern Song Dynasty itself.
As we all know, the more material is embargoed, the easier it is to push up the price of goods. The more it pushes up the price of goods, the higher the profit. The higher the profit, the more people are willing to take risks to smuggle goods.
Especially when people know that the officials responsible for supervising them are drooling over it themselves, they will not care about such a ban, but will only focus on transporting supplies to make money.
Taking into account the Southern Song government's defensible embargo order and the Southern Song bureaucrats' extremely flexible execution methods, it is estimated that a complete embargo can only be realized in Zhao Hao's dream.
Therefore, ever since the order to impose a material embargo was spread to various places around the Jiangnan West Liberated Area, flexible businessmen and bureaucrats in various places have never stopped taking action.
They gathered people, hired them at high prices, provided them with good treatment, and then took them to push carts and drive donkeys on the road to make money. The difficulties and obstacles along the way were not to mention, as long as they could reach the goods trading center of the Peasant Army. , there is nothing that cannot be done.
If the people are like this, how can the government sit back and watch the people make money without doing anything?
Officials make even more money.
After the third encirclement and suppression war, all the main armies of the Southern Song Dynasty withdrew from the Jiangnan West Road Peasant Army-controlled area and were stationed in Hanyang, Ezhou, Qizhou, and Xiangyang.
Among them, due to the long-term military exercises of the Henan Corps of the Ming Army in the border areas, the Song Dynasty was forced to settle the army led by the most elite Yao Zhong in the Xiangyang area.
Other Central Forbidden Forces that were later transferred were mainly responsible for guarding the peasant army on Jiangnan West Road and did not initiate military operations.
This provides military security guarantee for the business environment in this region.
