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The money and food for the 9th year of Yongli in the tenth year of Yongli were rare to be put into any dynasty, but I heard that some were entrusted several years later, but I never heard that there were entrusted before.

Zhou Shixiang did this, but his purpose was not to really scrape the ground in Xiangshan, but to use this reason to dig out all the hidden population.

When Liao Ruixiang took over the Xinhui County Yamen, most of the officials in the six yamen did not run away. Instead, they gathered together to keep all the documents and documents of the county, and wait for the new county officials to take over. This is also normal for officials to act. Whether the official comes from the Ming or the honest officials, they need the assistance of these officials. Otherwise, the officials in the county will be discredited and know nothing. With these local tyrants, the newly appointed officials can quickly run the yamen, and these officials can continue to stay in office to keep their jobs. As the saying goes, the host and the host are happy, why not do it?

He had a brief career as a county magistrate in Xinhui in the previous period and had an experience as a county magistrate. Liao Ruixiang was also familiar with the official positions of the yamen. After reporting to Zhou Shiguan, he kept them all.

The first thing that happened after taking over the county government office was Liao Ruixiang asked the officials to take out the Xiangshan Huangcai from the warehouse, and then checked the book Dingkou one by one according to the various yards. Finally, the number reported to Zhou Shixiang was that there were 7,600 households in Xiangshan, with a total population of 49,000, of which 25,800 were Dingkou.

This yellow book was compiled in Xiangshan County in the seventh year of Yongli, that is, the eleventh year of Shunzhi. When the Shaowu regime was established in Guangzhou in the third year of Shunzhi, the total number of people in Xiangshan was more than 126,000, and 53,000 people in Dingkou.

Eight years later, Xiangshan's population has dropped sharply by half. This is due to the fact that Xiangshan is a densely populated land, with extremely fertile land and convenient water towns. In contrast, Luoding, Gaozhou, Lianzhou, Zhaoqing and other places have many counties with only a thousand people left. Many villages are deserted.

According to the Ming Dynasty law, more than 20,000 Dingkou had to pay imperial grain. The number of land acres in Xiangshan land book counted nearly 400,000 hectares. In other words, based on the book count, each adult Dingkou in Xiangshan should be able to grow nearly 20 acres of land. But the fact is that most of the more than 4 million acres of land in Xiangshan is concentrated in the hands of landlords, and only half of the land is in the hands of ordinary people. The reported situation shows that nearly one-third of the local people do not have their own land and make a living by renting landlords.

Land is the lifeblood of the people of this era and the foundation for maintaining any regime. Zhou Shixiang was limited in his energy and could not make a detailed land survey report by himself like a great man in his later generations. Therefore, he could only calculate the total amount of money and grain he could get from Xiangshan every year from these numbers on the books. The result was that based on the calculation that he collected twice a year, once a summer grain and once a autumn grain, the Taiping Army could only obtain more than 10,000 stones of grain from Xiangshan farmers. Converted into kilograms, it was more than 1 million kilograms.

At first glance, more than 1 million kilograms of grain are definitely an astronomical figure, and they can be piled up to heaven. But when it is spread to each soldier of the Taiping Army, each person has only more than 100 kilograms of grain. How can more than 100 kilograms of grain be raised for a year? It does not include additional supplies during wartime. The soldiers are not enough to eat. Don't even mention the old, weak, women and children in the former back camps placed in each township must supply them free of charge before harvesting summer grain.

With so much land, there is only so much food. Where does the food go? Just based on land, you need at least more than 2 million kilograms of grain every year.

The answer is that the food is in the hands of those landlords and gentry. They have mastered most of the land in Xiangshan. While exploiting the tenants, they don’t have to hand over a grain of food to the government. Because they are privileged gentry!

The problems went around and fell on the heads of landlords and gentry. Landlords no longer existed in Yongle, Changning and other townships, so all the local fields were divided by local township offices. Longan was also better. Most of the landlords in the village ran away, and only a few were left watching the situation. The situation in other townships was very bad. There were dozens of juren in the village, and there were as many as hundreds of families who had served as officials in their families. These families were called gentry families, and many of them had served as high officials in their ancestors.

Liao Ruixiang did not agree to attack these landlords and gentry, and Duke Xiang of Song also opposed it. Zhou Shixiang had no intention of destroying his reputation, so he had no intention of killing people and seizing land. However, he had to solve the problem of food shortage, so the three of them decided to pick out the food from the landlords and gentry in a moderate form.

Grain collection is an excuse for action, and checking hidden populations is the first way to force gentry to submit, while supporting policies such as exemption of corvee labor are baits to attract hidden populations to actively register.

The so-called hidden population is actually a common deficit in all dynasties. Any scholar with a juren who is a juren will receive a series of policy preferential treatment after winning the fame. The most important one is tax exemption. This preferential treatment policy has caused many farmers to invest their own fields in the name of gentry to avoid taxes because of small profits. Over time, these farmers have become tenants of gentry or directly become black households. They who should have been registered as Dingkou and registered as the official food list disappeared, and countless lands disappeared along with them.

At the same time, scholars with fame and place names became officials, they would also buy land in their hometowns in large quantities. They might be better off when they were in office, but they became more severe after retirement. While the land of gentry continued to increase, the taxes of the government became less and less, which explained why Xiangshan had more than 400,000 hectares of land, but the Taiping Army could only collect less than 4 million kilograms of grain on the order.

We cannot underestimate the greed of the gentry. Duke Xiang of Song said that Xu Jie, the chief assistant of the Jiajing Dynasty, had annexed more than 200,000 acres of land in his hometown. Although the gentry in Xiangshan had never had a great figure like Xu Jie, there were countless ministers, ministers, prefects, and county magistrates. None of these people did not buy land for their own homes. In two hundred years, it was quite rare that half of the land in Xiangshan would be ordinary civilians.

The carrots and sticks dug out the black households under the name of the gentry, which cut off the roots of these gentry. No one farmed for them. What if they had more land? In order to implement this policy, Zhou Shixiang ordered the troops in each township to enter the village in the name of investigating the spies of the Qing army. All registered people were issued new certificates, and those without certificates were arrested and detained in the township office.

The Taiping Army who suddenly drove to the village frightened the black households who were still watching the scenery, and also scared the landlords and gentry. Within seven days, more than 9,000 people were added to Dingkou in Xiangshan County.

It is obviously unrealistic to dig out the black households and prevent them from farming for the gentry. The Taiping Army cannot support them, so the next thing is the negotiation.

Duke Xiang of Song negotiated with local gentry on behalf of Zhou Shixiang. The final result was that all the black households hidden by the landlords had to register and pay money and grain according to Dingkou, but they did not have their own land, so the government allowed them to continue to rent the former land and collect the money and grain from these landlords. This land naturally belonged to those landlords and gentry families, that is, the landlords and gentry were responsible for the tax and grain of the population they hid.

This is a disguised gentry-wide food-paying system, and it is also a policy implemented by the Taiping Army with high pressure. This policy can only be implemented in Xiangshan at present, because the Taiping Army has absolute control over Xiangshan, so it is not necessary to think about it if it is used in other places.

In addition, landlords and gentry with land yields of more than 200 mu in each township in Xiangshan voluntarily "donated" military rations to the Taiping Army, and the number increased step by step according to the number of land and a total of 6,550 stones of rice were finally "donated".

Due to the strength of the Taiping Army, the landlords and gentry in Xiangshan could only swallow the bitter fruit, but the subsequent changes made them even more angry.

In order to obtain more young and strong laborers to engage in production tasks, Zhou Shixiang asked the Xinhui County Government to introduce a policy to attract refugees, that is, any refugees who move to Xiangshan can obtain a piece of land from Xiangshan, ranging from three to ten acres. As long as the refugees cultivated on these lands for five years, the land will always belong to him. During this period, he only had to pay one-third of the field output to the government.

Where did refugees come from Xiangshan?

All the gentry stared at the newly posted notices in the township office and village office. They all knew clearly that the so-called refugees in the government refer to those black households who were hidden by them!

The black householders were indeed moved.

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After the grain collection came to an end, Xiangshan County Government, townships and village offices focused on restoring production and spring farming. In order to effectively utilize existing production materials in the country, township offices organized the people to produce, plowing oxen, rake and other important production tools to protect them. Some township offices have also tried to convert scattered single-family planting into integrated and unified farming.

Commerce is also gradually recovering. Xiangshan County Government encourages small and medium-sized handicraft workshops in the county to increase production, and each township sets up a market. In the past, most of the taxes for donations and miscellaneous taxes were exempted, and only a certain amount of tax was collected from the market value of the goods. The blacksmith shop, which built production tools, received key support from the Xiangshan government, and provided free funds to allow them to expand production, and strive to provide more iron production tools for spring plowing.

The Taiping Army seized a lot of livestock, and the burden of uniform breeding was too much. Duke Xiang of Song suggested that it would be better to distribute the livestock to the villages and give them to the villagers for breeding, and then buy them back at equivalent gold and silver in the future. In order to reduce the burden on the Taiping Army, the villagers can also calm down and integrate into the Taiping Army. This proposal was recognized by Zhou Shi and instructed each township to raise more pigs in the future. The more pigs the villagers raise, the Taiping Army will not only buy at the market price, but also give additional rewards.

Because the water system in Xiangshan is developed, the township offices have organized people to raise ducks and geese in accordance with the instructions of the county government, and set up special fishing teams to implement the county's policy instructions to improve fish and meat production as much as possible.

After all civil affairs were on track, Zhou Shixiang convened the Taiping Army to test the military officers of more than 100 households to discuss the military formation on February 2nd, on the day the dragon raised his head. (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!