Almost after learning of the fall of Taiyuan, Zhu Guoqiang, who had always been concerned about the north, no longer paid attention to it.

Of course, this kind of inattention is not really unconcerned, and he is no longer curious about the future, he once imagined that the change of history may make Chongzhen make other choices, such as transferring Liao troops into the customs, and then defeating Li Zicheng and keeping the Ming Dynasty.

When the time comes, what to do?

Of course, it's the "restoration of ancestors".

Of course, he continued to pull out the flag of Emperor Gao and handed over the country to Chongzhen, Zhu Guoqiang was not only not at ease, but in his opinion, it was a crime at all!

It is a crime against the country, against the nation!

It has nothing to do with Chongzhen personally, but is based on the future of the country and the nation.

The next step by step chess played by Chongzhen really blinded Zhu Guoqiang's eyes, he imagined countless possibilities, but he never thought that Chongzhen would actually send himself to the crooked neck tree step by step.

More than 100,000 elite Liao soldiers, just because of Chen Yan's opposition, they were actually out of tune.

This head...... It's really for the crooked neck tree!

In addition to sighing, Zhu Guoqiang no longer cares about the capital, anyway, they are a dead end, with Li Zicheng torturing in the capital, he can just unite everyone.

After all, great men have said that the way to victory is to make few enemies and many friends.

Of course, with Li Zicheng there as a foil, no matter how powerful his means are, it will be ...... Not too much!

When there was still a day before the sacrifice, the group rode their horses on the snow-covered dirt road by the river, they looked around as they went, and occasionally Zhu Guoqiang would let out a sigh.

The land outside Nanjing is not bad!

Although it is not as good as the Taihu Lake area, most of them are high-quality fertile land.

To whom do these fertile fields belong?

Of course, some of them are Minda, and some of them are Xuntian, but what is the vast majority? It is a military field with a total of 32 guards and two guards in Nanjing, which belong to the five prefectures of Nanjing!

As the base camp of Zhu Yuanzhang in those years, from Fengyang Mansion to Nanjing, most of the land in the eastern part of the country here belonged to military households, and at least millions of acres of high-grade fertile land belonged to the military fields of the 32nd Wei and the 2nd Military Households.

Of course, now a lot of land in Fengyang Mansion has been abandoned - from Abatai's entry into the Kou, to the killing and captivity of Zhang Xianzhong and other rogues, there are more than a million people killed in the area of Fengyang Mansion! According to the records in the Yellow Book of Nanjing's Household Department, there are more than 10 million acres of cultivated land in Fengyang Prefecture, and now at least half of the land has been abandoned.

After the war and chaos, thousands of village markets have become deserted "deserted villages and ghost towns", and even some places are thousands of miles away, now the Ming Dynasty, especially the wasteland in the north is too much, so that the land in the south of the Yangtze River is not worth much - those gentry landlords used to take the opportunity to buy land at a low price, but now they are too lazy to buy, after all, only if the tenants are willing, they can take their families to Jiangbei to find a deserted house, plant an ownerless land, and plant a few years of land is theirs.

The landlords and gentry could buy land, but what about after buying land? Without tenant farmers, the land would have to be left uncultivated. So now it is difficult to sell the land in Jiangnan.

There are even many tenants who have moved their families to Jiangbei, opened up wasteland, and settled in the deserted villages and ghost towns in Jiangbei.

As we rode along the official road, the ditches on the side of the road were covered with heavy snow, and the ditches that had been repaired over the years were not abandoned.

Yan Ermei followed the prince and said:

"General, almost all of the best fertile fields in this area can be irrigated by river water!"

Zhu Guoqiang nodded, the standard of fertile land in this era is whether it can be irrigated, as long as it can be irrigated, it is high-quality fertile land.

Zhu Guoqiang's eyes swept away, and he suddenly raised his horsewhip and said.

"These fields are all the military fields of the Nanjing Guard!"

Mei Chun replied:

"It's indeed the military fields of the guards."

Zhu Guoqiang raised his eyebrows and asked rhetorically:

"And now? To whom do these military fields belong? ”

After Zhu Yuanzhang founded the People's Republic of China, in order to stabilize the world and resume production, he implemented a system of guards that combined soldiers with agriculture and garrisons, and set up more than 300 guards in the world.

To put it bluntly, it is to let the officers and soldiers be stationed all over the country, divide the fields and land for them, let them settle the fields on the spot, a military household has an average of 50 acres of land, and the officers have more, and they support themselves, and the military households are hereditary, and they will guard the land of the Ming Dynasty from generation to generation. And this is also the reason why Yunnan is truly integrated into China for the first time - more than 100,000 military households, completely changing the local population composition.

Although military households need to hand over sub-grains, they do not need to bear the burden of "conscription", so although sub-grains are slightly heavier than ordinary households, because there is no suffering from conscription, life is quite comfortable.

At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the military tun could earn tens of millions of stone grain a year, so much so that Zhu Yuanzhang said quite proudly: "I raise millions of soldiers, and it doesn't cost the people a grain of rice." ”

By the time of Yongle, the income of the Ming Dynasty's Juntun "sub-grain grain" reached 23 million stones, which was nearly double the annual grain income of the Song and Yuan dynasties. During the Yongle period, the number of acres of military tun fields exceeded 89 million mu. Such a strong output value made Yongle Emperor Zhu Di sigh: "The people will not be lost, and the soldiers will not be hungry." ”

This system was originally very good, but after a long time, all the drawbacks came out.

First, the military households were divided, and after the 50 acres of military land were distributed to several sons, each family had only a dozen acres left, and the original small landlords became subsistence farmers, but after one or two generations, they became poor middle peasants who could not resist any risks.

In a disaster year, in order to pay the grain, they could only sell the land and pawn it, and gradually, the military land of the military households was sold out, of course, there were also military officers who encroached on it, and finally the military households gradually became the tenants of the officers.

The military households, who have become tenants, have no way to make ends meet all year round. Because of the difficulties in life, many people became deserters and fled to other places with their families to fend for themselves.

In the Ming generation, there were countless military households who fled, and the system of the guard house has long been in vain, and the land of most of the military households has become the private land of the officers of the guard, and these officers have become local heroes, such as Hou Fangyu's family, who is also from the military of the guard, which is also a powerful man who owns tens of thousands of acres of land.

Well, Zhang Juzheng is also ......

Do the math, there are many civilian officials from the military in the Ming Dynasty, and you can look for them at the root, and many of their ancestors have embezzled the land of ordinary military households.

For this, Zhu Guoqiang naturally knows it, in fact, how many people don't know about it?

After riding their horses around for a while, they saw an old man in the field, carrying a bamboo basket on the side of the official road to pick up the dung pulled down by the animals.

So Zhu Guoqiang stepped forward and said:

"Excuse me, what kind of place is this?"

As soon as the old man saw the dress of Zhu Guoqiang and his party, he knew that it was either rich or expensive, and hurriedly replied:

"Back to Childe, this is the left guard, I don't know where Childe is going?"

Zhu Guoqiang said with a smile:

"If you don't go there, you just come out of Nanjing for a walk, uncle, how is this year's harvest?"

The old man saw that the boy spoke very kindly, so he replied truthfully.

"The harvest is okay, there is no drought against the river, this harvest is okay, but it is still not enough to eat."

"Oh? Why is that? ”

The old man said:

"What about a good harvest? Gongzi doesn't know, this is the left guard, these fields are different from the people's fields, in addition to paying rent, but also to pay two buckets of "grain grain", rent plus "grain grain", sixty percent of the harvest belongs to Master Sun, if it weren't for the fact that the military household did not have conscription, this day would have been impossible to live, right now, just make up for the work! ”

The old man's answer made Zhu Guoqiang frown and asked:

"Old man, are you a military household? Is this your own field? ”

The old man looked at the field beside him, and after a while, he said:

"When my ancestor raised troops with Emperor Gao, he divided fifty acres of land, and in my life, there are more than three acres left, as for the land that our ancestors have cultivated for generations...... I don't know, I didn't have it that year, and I don't know if it was for sale, or if it was ...... occupied."

The old man told the story of his family, from Emperor Gao to the ancestors to divide the field, to the ancestors after the ancestors split the family, the family is not as good as a day, and then to how the field was occupied by the local guard 100 households......

The crowd listened with great emotion, and from the survival of a small household, they saw the epitome of a dynastic policy.

At the end, the old man sighed:

"You say, what kind of field is this field? If it is a military field, then the "grain grain" will be handed over to the imperial court, which is used to raise soldiers, but where are the soldiers? Where are the soldiers of this guard? When Abatai came to kill, he didn't see hundreds of households coming together, but this "grain grain" was paid every year, every year, and there was no time when he didn't pay it, and this grain was handed over to hundreds of households! The imperial court, if all the "grains" in the world are handed over to the imperial court, can the emperor still have no money to fight the rogues and fight the eastern prisoners? ”

After Zhu Guoqiang listened, his heart seemed to be pressed by a big stone, and he couldn't breathe heavily, he didn't say anything, turned his horse's head and rode the horse fiercely with his head down.

After galloping for a few miles, he slowly slowed down, and the group behind him also slowly followed, seeing that the crown prince was in a low mood, no one spoke.

Zhu Guoqiang looked at the endless plain and asked softly:

"So much land, such a good land, was originally used to raise soldiers, but in the end, who was raised? Have you raised the soldiers of the imperial court? Those people have taken all the benefits, but what about the court? But what about these ordinary military households? If they are allowed to take advantage of it like this. Is there still a reason for that? ”

Several people sighed, and Yan Ermei said in silence:

"Yes, if you really continue like this, then there is really no reason."

Zhu Guoqiang looked at the sky from afar and said coldly:

"The sins of heaven are forgivable, but the sins of man cannot live! In the past, others could tolerate them, but I can't tolerate them if I leave them alone. ”