The imperial court had no money, and learned the methods of the Yuan Dynasty to concoct a farce of collecting taxes in advance, and most of the middle households had already paid the field tax of the year, but they were reluctant to give up the harvest in their own land and would rather risk being caught by the Qing soldiers than fleeing.

These middle-class households are perhaps the most snobbish, they look up to wealth and do not want to be reduced to lowliness, and they would rather take risks than lose their only possessions and a little bit of dignity and hope.

When war is approaching, rich families will choose to pack up and flee.

After the war, even if the homeland is occupied, the Qing soldiers will not continue to kill indiscriminately as they did during the war, and at that time, they can still come back.

Only the middle households can also use the land as a guarantee for the life of the whole family, and at the moment of life and death, the rich can not care about the harvest of one or two seasons, and the poor can also directly roll up a bunk and leave with a burden, or even directly choose to go up the mountain to be a rogue, which is why the rebel army in the late Ming Dynasty suppressed more and more.

Some peasants abandoned their farming and became displaced because they could not pay taxes, while others were robbed of their property by the rebels and had no food for the winter, so they were forced to rebel.

Although the combat effectiveness of the Ming army is much stronger than that of the rebel army, such as the Qi family army and the Sichuan army, as well as the border army of the nine sides, it is even more powerful, and it has also made countless military exploits when it was exterminated by the rebel army.

However, there are too many displaced people to count, and the rebel army is inexhaustible in wildfires, and the spring breeze blows and grows again.

Historically, Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, the Yellow Turban Army, and Huang Chao, although the peasant uprisings in the Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties caused the final collapse of the dynasty, the uprising itself was finally put down.

However, the peasant uprisings at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the end of the Ming Dynasty formed a trend of burning the prairies, which could not be extinguished and killed, and finally hollowed out the entire Guoxia and let the country change hands.

What should Tianlang do, how to prevent the homeless people from continuing to become rogues, this is one of the questions he has been thinking about since he came to Daming.

He thought about where the crux of the fall of the Ming Dynasty was, and if he wanted to revive the Ming Dynasty, it would be impossible not to find and cure the crux of the problem.

The establishment of a dynasty is not something that you can do by driving a tank or an aircraft carrier from modern times, and if the people are not convinced, the ruler will not end well, even if you are copper and iron, the monstrous anger of the people can also be blocked and killed by God, and Buddha can be blocked and killed by Buddha.

Everything Tianlang did when he came to Liuzhou was based on these considerations, and if he wanted to let the Ming Dynasty have a long period of stability, he had to take strong medicine and use heavy codes.

The Ming Dynasty is not the former Han Dynasty, the same divided kings, when the Han Gaozu opened the foundation of the country, the registered population of the country was only 4 million, of course, there were many escapees at that time, Rao is so, but the combined calculation is less than 20% of the total population of 65 million in the Hongwu period in the early Ming Dynasty.

After two hundred years of development, the peak population of the former Han Dynasty only reached 60 million, but it was only the scale of the early Ming Dynasty.

In the Wanli period at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the population had reached between 130 million and 200 million according to research statistics.

There are more and more mouths to eat, but there are fewer and fewer ways to live, Chongzhen was bewitched by the Donglin Party, and passed on the taxes to be paid by the gentry in Jiangnan to the people.

The former Han Dynasty, that is, the Western Han Dynasty, developed for 200 years, and the land contradictions between the peasants and the rulers were not at all on the same order of magnitude as those in the late Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, Emperor Guangwu can revive the Later Han Dynasty, while it is very difficult for Tianlang to prosper the Ming Dynasty.

Fortunately, most of those moths and rats at the end of the Ming Dynasty were also destroyed with the revenge of the rebel army and the destruction of the dynasty.

And if Lang wants to solve the land problem today, there is resistance, but it is by no means greater than the difficulties faced by Emperor Xiaozong Hongzhi, who was the first in Wenzhi.

I heard that Emperor Xiaozong was assassinated and died because of the cheese of Xungui, and the cause of death of his son Emperor Wuzong is also very strange, but this question can only be a mystery.

However, the problem that Xiaozong has not been able to solve until his death, Tianlang may have a chance.

The disaster of the Ming Dynasty is within the Xiao Wall, not the Northern Captivity.

If the imperial court can not raise taxes, restrict the annexation of land, and then distribute land to households, so that they can farm and maintain their families with peace of mind, instead of allowing the powerful to snatch the pitiful land in the hands of the annexed people, and transfer the tax burden to the poor, the Ming Dynasty will not die.

If there is a glimmer of hope, who will risk losing their heads to rebel again?

Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, Huang Chao, and Li Zicheng are crazy people, and they also follow the trend of the times.

The exiles want to overthrow the Ming Dynasty because they can't survive; The reason why the Ming Dynasty could not stifle the rebel army was because the vested interest groups at the top, especially those local vassal kings and princes and nobles who had been in the limelight for more than 200 years, refused to distribute the gold and silver they had looted for many years and hoarded and looted land to the people, and were greedy to the point of inhumanity.

"Although the Ming Dynasty has reached this step now," Tianlang continued with a miserable smile, analyzing the rise and fall of the dynasty to the people: "But the Ming Dynasty wants to think of the resurrection, not only in the strength of the enemy on the battlefield, but more importantly, to give the people a way to live." ”

Tianlang paced back and forth with a slightly casual pace, and then said:

"As long as my son can have no worries about food and clothing, and be safe, it doesn't matter if I am the emperor or not, and whether the world is a Ming dynasty or not."

Tianlang's words are very beautiful: "But if anyone dares to be like these corrupt officials, wantonly cruel to the people, oppress the people's fat and ointment, I will kill them." ”

Tianlang pointed at these prisoners and commented one by one, pointing to the fattest fat pig among them and said:

"The arrest of Qian Ruming, the prefect of Liuzhou, was caused by a local squire who brutalized the people, and I took people to vent their anger for the old people and children of this family, and this matter must have spread now.

But what you didn't know was that I was just trying to catch a squire, but unexpectedly, I pulled out a big rat by touching the vine.

I was even taken aback when I raided Qian Ruming's house, because in Qian Ruming's house, the total amount of gold and silver from unknown sources found was 850,000 taels, and the number of fields and ponds registered reached 3,500 hectares. ”

"Nanning, Quanzhou, Wuzhou, Zhen'an, Taiping, Xunzhou, ......"

Tianlang enumerated the crimes of these officials one by one, and it is not too much to describe them as difficult to write.

More than 100 convicts, including more than 20 officials who confessed and reported by Tan Youfa and Qian Ruming, began to plot and set up nets on the second day after Tianlang arrived in Liuzhou, and so far, excluding gold and silver, the fields and ponds in the homes of more than 100 convicts alone are nearly 10,000 hectares.

There was a staggering sound from the crowd.

For example, at that time, Yulin Prefecture in Guangxi, under its jurisdiction, had a total number of less than 4,000 hectares of fields and ponds.

Moreover, this number has increased several times compared with the Yuan Dynasty, and it has been recorded in the "Yongle Canon", which has become a model of prosperity that the Ming Dynasty is proud of.

(End of chapter)