Because the establishment of the Chengdu imperial court triggered a material embargo and economic blockade of Sichuan and Shu from the outside world, large households in Sichuan and Shu suffered heavy losses and dissatisfaction accumulated.
When this kind of loss becomes intolerable for them, they use their mouthpieces in the court to voice their anger and dissatisfaction to the high-ranking rulers.
and threats.
Can your court benefit us?
If you can't and it harms our interests, then don't blame us for being rude.
Zhao Buxi, who was aware of this crisis, knew that he could not confront them, let alone lose their support at this critical moment, so he decided to further offer benefits to the big players.
Not only must their already meager taxes be cut, but they must also be given more benefits.
To put it bluntly, there are only so many economic benefits. Big business owners are already masters of tax avoidance, and they did not pay much tax in the first place. Now they have just made certain tax avoidance methods legal.
The so-called benefit without any cost does not gain much gratitude.
If economic interests are not enough to win people's hearts, then political interests will be the next step.
The Chengdu imperial court decided to hold an imperial examination to recruit officials, distribute political benefits to the locals in Sichuan and Sichuan, and draw them closer to the Chengdu imperial court.
After the rice riots, the wealthy families in Sichuan and Sichuan were not only not taxed, but also had their taxes reduced. They also received further political benefits from the Chengdu court, and were about to enter the power of the Chengdu court.
Therefore, they did not have any objections to the heavy taxation imposed by the Chengdu court on the civilian peasant class.
Anyway, the more the court cracks down, the more land they will have in their hands. Not only will they have more land, but they will also be able to hold more power as higher officials. If they can achieve this, they are satisfied with the Chengdu court.
A few officials who still had some sense of conscience or some sense of worry expressed to the Chengdu court that this policy might cause uneasiness and hardship among the farmers in Sichuan and Sichuan, and even trigger a new round of civil unrest, and the consequences would be very serious.
Once the civil uprising breaks out, the Chengdu court will be troubled internally and externally, and it is very likely that the Ming Dynasty and the Jiangnan Puppet Dynasty will take advantage of it.
But Zhao Buxi could no longer look back.
In October of the sixth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, during the golden autumn season, the Sichuan and Sichuan peasants suffered a heavy blow from the upper-level rulers.
The original tax rate was increased by 60% by the Chengdu court.
The Chengdu court added tax items that did not exist before, such as mule and horse tax, building tax, etc. Twenty-one tax categories that did not exist before were added in one go, which is so crazy.
The price of salt, which was initially relatively polite, rose sharply, from the original two hundred and thirty cents per catty to three hundred and forty cents per catty.
The Sichuan-Sichuan area is an iron money area and uses iron coins instead of copper coins. At this moment, the official exchange rate in Jiangnan is stable at one to two copper coins to iron coins. This means that the price of salt in Sichuan and Shu has risen from 115 copper coins to One hundred and seventy copper coins.
In one breath, the price increased by fifty-five cents per catty.
You must know that there is well salt production in Sichuan and Shu. It was not a place lacking salt in the past. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the price of salt in Sichuan and Shu was very low. In the Southern Song Dynasty, due to heavy war pressure, the price of salt increased significantly. Despite this, Sichuan and Shu The price of salt is still slightly lower than that in the core areas ruled by the Southern Song Dynasty.
But now everything has changed.
The farmers woke up to find that the price of salt had soared for nine days, and they had twenty-one more taxes to pay.
The peasants of Sichuan and Sichuan suddenly felt that a grain of sand of the times had fallen on their heads. The days that were difficult but still manageable suddenly became tense.
The government tax collectors came towards them fiercely, holding sticks, whips and even steel knives in their hands. They fiercely demanded that they hand over the little money, food and cloth they had left at home, as a cow and horse should dedicate to their master. tribute.
Let’s not talk about the tax on growing grains, let alone the Ding tax. Now even things like carrying water and using livestock to build houses have to pay taxes.
Some places are close to mountainous areas. You need to pay a tax to cut firewood and hunt in the mountains. You need to pay a tax to sell game. You need to pay a tax to slaughter livestock. You need to pay an additional tax to use compost.
The originally peaceful days were suddenly broken. The word "tax" weighed a thousand kilograms, breaking the backbones of the farmers and forcing them to the ground and unable to breathe.
In fact, Zhao Buxi did not take into account the lives of the common people in Sichuan and Shu at all.
As a relatively skilled financial worker, he knew very well how much taxation would drive people to death, so he convened a group of financial workers to jointly formulate some taxation items and then carefully formulated tax rates.
The tax items have indeed increased, but the collection is relatively small. Each tax item looks scary, but when added together, a farmer actually needs to pay more than 100 to less than 200 more iron coins. Zhao Buxi feels This will not push farmers to a dead end.
In this way, in his vision, he could exploit the common peasants to the maximum extent without causing them to rise up to resist because they were desperate. This kind of tax rate, which could push them to the edge of desperation but leave a glimmer of hope, was very important to them. It is best for rulers.
However, as an upper-level elite bureaucrat, Zhao Buxi's long-term life experience of being separated from the masses prevented him from truly understanding the underlying operating logic of this society and how the lower-level officials who executed orders implemented their policies.
He had heard of people deceiving superiors and concealing information from subordinates, but he didn't know the specific method of deceiving superiors and concealing information from subordinates.
He only understood how the middle and high-level officials at his level fooled the court, but he did not know how the officials below fooled him.
If the additional tax items stipulated by Zhao Buxi were strictly implemented, a total of one hundred and fifty-six more iron coins would be collected.
But when it comes to actual operations, it would be somewhat conscientious for the petty officials below to directly double the profits in order to obtain more benefits for themselves.
The unscrupulous ones would simply quadruple the amount, and then add various additions to satisfy the appetites of the exploited officials.
The officials need profits, and the lower level officials also need profits. They increase the amount step by step. According to the regulations of the court, one tax item only requires seven or eight iron coins. After the officials increase the amount, it becomes 20 yuan in front of the farmers. Five or six bases are used, and in some places it can go as high as thirty iron coins.
After going back and forth, the achievement of being a white wolf with nothing is achieved.
The officials earned one hundred or two hundred percent with tears and blood, while the common peasants were robbed of almost all their savings in a very short period of time.
Some officials who were greedy and cruel to the extreme even robbed the farmers in the area of their seeds and grains for the coming year. They had no regard for people's life and death and only cared about their own happiness.
Finally, there is an opportunity to directly attack, how can you let this opportunity pass?
As long as I make money and let the flood flood the sky, the court will take the blame anyway, and the unscrupulous people will not know who drove them to desperation.
It turns out that Zhao Buxi wanted to find a gray line between the civilian peasants who starve to death and those who do not. He repeatedly jumped on this line to play with the peasants, making them want to rebel but not wanting to. A glimmer of hope without daring to rebel.
In this way, wealth can be plundered to the maximum extent to meet the needs of the Chengdu court, and it will not lead to tragic consequences.
However, this method is too difficult to operate, and the requirements for the court and officials are too high.
Not to mention the feudal government, the modern government and even the modern government dare not say that they can play it well, so once it is promulgated and implemented, this hand will be lost.
A large number of farmers faced bankruptcy in just one month. The brutal tax collectors strangled them and asked them to pay taxes, but they could no longer come up with any money.
At this critical moment, the local landlords came over with iron money and land deeds with a smile, and provided the farmers with on-site land buying and selling services with smiles, telling them that as long as they nodded and signed a pledge, they would immediately get enough to pay taxes. Iron money.
Of course, the land will belong to the wealthy landlords.
Do you want this special service?
If you want, sign it right away.
If not...
It’s none of my business to be arrested and tortured by the government!
The officials and the landlords and wealthy people cooperated in a tacit understanding. One was a good person and the other was a bad person, and they easily took away the lifeblood of the farmers.
The farmers were paid subsidies that were lower than the market price, and the land was taken away on the spot. The tax collectors took away most of the subsidies before they were warmed up.
Then they hooked up and walked away, singing "How are you two brothers" and dividing the spoils.
The farmers knelt in the dark thatched huts, holding the pitiful iron coins in their hands and wanting to cry without tears.
A world in which only the yeoman was wounded was born.
Without land, houses, and a place to stand, bankrupt farmers were forced to embark on the road to exile.
So when Ma Yongkang came back with the good news that Dali was willing to trade Shu brocade secretly with the Chengdu court, all he saw along the way were scenes of refugees wailing all over the place.
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