As early as the Hongwu period when Zhu Yuanzhang founded the country, due to the need to clear the land of the whole country, the imperial court officially implemented the existing fish scale book system in the Song Dynasty.

The scale book is the land register.

After houses, forests, ponds, and fields are connected in order, and the corresponding area, soil quality, and barren nature are indicated, the land is fixed and becomes a general register of private fields. Because the shape of the field resembles fish scales, it has this name.

In the 26th year of Hongwu, the total number of acres of land in the world after verification was more than 8.5 million hectares. In this process, the appearance of the fish scale book made the imperial court find out the land rights and clean up the concealment to a considerable extent. At that time, the scale register was a great step forward in the history of land administration.

However, feudal society is like this, the debut is both the peak, and then a crab is not as good as a crab.

With the passage of time, in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, due to the heavy taxes, the people fled one after another, coupled with the fact that the land changed hands over the years, hidden, etc., the fish scale book has in fact been disordered and inaccurate.

So in the fifteenth year of Hongzhi, there were only more than 4.2 million hectares of land registered in the country; In just one hundred and nine years, the land used by the state to pay taxes has been reduced by half, which is really a big joke in the world, and the fields have actually grown legs, and they are probably loaded with thrusters and run to Jupiter.

It is clear from this that the landlord class used the hidden fields to hollow out the country: theoretically, as the population grows, more and more fields should be opened, and in a hundred years it can be reduced by half.

Therefore, by this time, the fish scale book system had completely collapsed, and instead became a tool for the gentry and officials to unite and embezzle state assets.

Later, a few decades later, in the Wanli period, the first assistant Zhang Juzheng saw that he couldn't get mixed up, so in order to reverse the economic crisis of the imperial court, he was determined to reform the enslavement, and finally implemented the "one whip law" in the country.

In order to clean up the tax, it is necessary to first clear the basic unit of taxation: the acre. Therefore, after Zhang Juzheng asked for the approval of Shenzong, the Ming court carried out the second national land census after the Hongwu year.

On the whole, the results of this census are good. While strictly investigating the hidden fields and tax evasion, the imperial court also recovered the tax arrears, completed the land measurement and registration book, and compiled a new fish scale book.

Of course, there is still a funny side: the country's taxable land has been restored to 7 million hectares in this Qingzhang, although it has increased by nearly 3 million hectares compared with the Hongzhi year, but it still cannot keep up with the total amount of land at the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China, let alone the newly cultivated fields of the people over the past few hundred years.

So after a little ** trip, when Zhang Juzheng died and retired, the days continued to be mixed.

In the Chongzhen period that appeared through the public, as expected, the fish scale book was once again reduced to a tool for the officials to fool the imperial court, and the content in it was once again full of all kinds of false information: empty taxpayers who lived over 100 years old abounded, and all kinds of land data from decades ago were copied by the officials year after year on the latest version, completely losing their reference value.

The materials that record the true information of the local acres have become the private heirlooms of Yu Bende's household bookkeepers. In other words, the originals of the fish scale books used to be collected every year and handed over to the prefecture and county for archiving are actually fakes, and only the copies that have been secretly hidden by Yu Bende and others are the basis for real tax collection.

All the land conditions in a county, including all kinds of fraudulent mailings, contributions, hidden fields, etc., and even the true information of taxpayers, are recorded on the copy. This kind of copy controlled by private individuals is the core competitiveness of the household office that specializes in paying taxes on money and grain in the county government.

Therefore, Yu Bende was able to get the workshop business from Xiong Dao, not because of his good looks, nor because he was cunning, but purely because he controlled the land and tax information of Jiading County, and he was a person who could not get around the land acquisition in the opening of the port.

This kind of investment in Yu Bende has finally paid off today. Which piece of land in Zuojia Village is a hidden field and which people owe taxes all year round, Yu Bende is very clear.

So when he pointed to the field under his feet, the Zuo family opened their mouths: You said that this land has been taxed, so please take out the title deed and tax payment certificate? But where did Hideta get these things?

"In the 40th year of Wanli, this place was flooded. After the water passed, he cut down the woods, raised ditches and ridges, and turned this place into a paddy field. ”

Yu Bende not only knew that this land was a hidden field, but even knew who opened it and when. In fact, in the densely populated Jiangnan region, the so-called hidden fields and hidden households cannot be concealed at all, and this is not a big ravine in Guangxi, and the landlord can still hide a thing or two.

These hidden things were originally used by the landlord class to evade taxes by virtue of their privileges, so it is not difficult to find hidden fields, and it is rare to challenge the courage of interest groups.

Simply this time, someone gave the treacherous old official Yu Bende courage - using power and interests.

And the Zuo family, who was pierced through the window paper, will be very difficult to do. No matter how much tacit understanding there was between the two sides before, today's turn of face will suddenly be difficult for the Zuo family to deal with: all legal grounds are not good for them.

Therefore, when Zuo Hongwu got all the stolen goods, he couldn't think of any clever plan in his eagerness, so he could only fool him with a set of untenable arguments: "Master Yu, you are mistaken." This piece of land was handed down by the ancestors in the early years, and there has always been grain, but the land deed was lost the day before yesterday and has not yet been replaced. ”

"Well, it's good to have food." Yu Bende nodded, and then stretched out his hand: "Take a look at the grain skewers."

The grain string is the tax payment certificate, where does this Zuo family have it?

Seeing that Zuo Hongwu didn't answer, Yu Bende laughed sneeringly: "Xu is grain skewers are also lost?"

"Master Yu, don't deceive people too much!" Zuo Hongwu couldn't be fooled, so he also turned his face.

"Joke, Yu is asking for a lesson for the imperial court, why do you want to deceive people?" Old Servant Yu exuded an aura of holiness at the moment, as if he was really serving the people.

"Forget it, let's go." Stretching out his arm to stop Zuo Hongwu, who still wanted to distinguish, Sect Master Zuo Hongtang glanced at Yu Bende with murderous eyes and said, "Give him the land, and give it to him, let's go back and talk."

As the patriarch, Zuo Hongtang's perspective on the problem will naturally be a little more macroscopic. Today's incident is obviously a premeditated trap: the opponent is ready for everything, just waiting for them to jump in.

So he stopped the loss in time and went back to the mobilization meeting - Zuo Hongtang had clearly realized the opponent's determination to kill the Zuo family, and now it was time to throw away the illusions, mobilize the whole clan, give full play to the traditional advantages, and fight the enemy to the death.

And what are the traditional advantages of the country clans? Inferiorly at the legal level, they can only take up the last and most powerful means to fight against the vicious government: gathering people to make trouble by force.

This kind of craftsmanship, which has been passed down for thousands of years, has not been discarded until later generations: gathering crowds to rob passing trucks, gathering crowds to block roads and setting up cards to collect fees, gathering crowds to close roads to visit, and so on.

For the villagers in the 17th century, once they gathered to make trouble, then the prefecture and county yamen were bound to be big. You must know that the entire strength of a county government is only two or three hundred people, and there are still a large number of bastards here, and their combat effectiveness is worrying, and there is no force to go to the countryside to subdue the troublemakers.

As for the dispatch of troops to alarm the governor for this matter, the magistrate's black yarn will definitely not be guaranteed, and "provoking civil unrest" is a big crime in itself.

Therefore, as long as these villagers do not rebel and control the water temperature, even if they kill a few tax collectors and other bad guys, the government will definitely "listen to the wishes of the people" and muddy mud in the end. It was not only later officials who maintained stability, but also in the seventeenth century.

Of course, this kind of double-edged sword will definitely cause long-term hidden revenge from the local government after the fact, but the Zuo family is about to be finished now, who cares about the future?

Therefore, later that day, the landlords of the Zuo family, who had a clear understanding of the situation, quickly unified their thinking and began an intense mobilization work: for example, they told the tenants that the government would take away all the hidden fields, and that the taxes owed by the Zuo family over the years would also be collected this time, and everyone would not be able to escape.

To some extent, these rumors fabricated for the purpose of mobilization are actually quite accurate: land repossession and tax arrears are both backup means in the land requisition office's plan.

But now these methods are no longer available. Things have developed so far, and the plan of the Land Acquisition Office has been smoothly carried out to the last step: to solve the big landlords.

Prior to this, the Land Acquisition Office had already sent away the troublesome rich peasants and yeoman farmers by throwing money at them. These people belong to the backbone of the traditional struggle, they can do whatever it takes to fight for the sake of their family business, they have a strong will to fight, and they are easily instigated by the big landlords to engage in confrontation.

It is much easier to deal with the remaining big landlords and tenant farmers in Zuojia Village.

Needless to say, the large landowners and accomplices were scarce, and the largest number of sharecroppers also had a philosophical question: for whom did they fight? It's not a local tyrant to divide the land, is it that the family is desperately trying to protect the master's property? Therefore, the will of the proletariat is not strong and it is easy to deal with.

So in the next two days, the atmosphere in Zuojia Village became tense in vain. The clan first gathered the elite manpower that could fight, and the thousands of tenant farmers on the periphery also put on a fighting posture, which was worthy of their surnames.

As for the land requisition office, a total of more than 100 people shrank into a few courtyards first. That night, from the darkness where they couldn't see their fingers, ten reinforcements quietly came to the Land Acquisition Office.

Don't underestimate these ten people. This is a new type of anti-explosive personnel specially transferred from the senior staff. They carry high-precision secret weapons and are the latest trained professionals in the army.

When everything was ready to stop, the land requisition office began to preemptively strike: they all went out the next day, turned over a piece of hidden land at the entrance of the village, and arrested a few tenants.

Then the Zuo family, who had already been prepared, suddenly gathered, and a team of thousands of people quickly confronted more than a hundred people. I want to talk about "Luming" with more like-minded people, " ", talk about life, and find a confidant~