"Chitose Lord, are you okay here?"

The one who asked was Li Jizhou, the eunuch of the Divine Palace. Since Zhu Cihong took control of Nanjing City, he became a filial piety and returned to the chief of the Divine Palace. Li Jizhou was also ordered to recruit 1,400 people from the original Xiaoling Guards, plus 200 net soldiers, to form a new Tomb Guarding Association, with Xu Jingmi, a marshal's mansion who was born as a eunuch in the net army, as the co-commander.

The mausoleum guards are no longer squad troops, but paid recruits, but in principle, they will not go to the front line, so they have to mix up the land for the year. However, the training is not so strict, there is no need for "697", and the military salary is 50 percent higher than that of other new troops. No matter how you look at it, it's a very generous treatment!

The original Xiaoling Wei military households are now exempted from military registration and have become ordinary households. It is impossible to give them the land that belongs to Xiao Lingwei, but they can continue to rent the land that originally belonged to Xiao Lingwei - which will actually greatly improve their lives!

Because the land rent that needs to be paid to rent the land of the military tunwei is very low, taking the high-grade paddy fields under the jurisdiction of Xiaolingwei as an example, the annual rent of one mu of paddy field is only seven buckets of rice.

And the annual output of one acre of high-quality paddy field will not be less than three stones. Three stones pay seven buckets, even if the cost of miscellaneous items is deducted, one mu of land can also net two stones. If a household rents ten acres, it can make a net profit of twenty stones a year. With the price of rice in Nanjing, after deducting the rations needed by the family, how can there be an income of 30 taels of silver.

If you plant another acre or two acres of vegetable fields and raise a little livestock and poultry, life is still very passable!

Of course, the proportion of land rent charged from three to seven buckets per mu is actually a great increase compared to the number of land rents taken by the previous military tun and official fields!

Previously, the total amount of land tax in the Ming Dynasty included the rent of the official field! In the case of including land rent, the largest amount of land in the Ming Dynasty was only 33 million stone during the Hongwu period...... According to the average number of private and official fields at that time, it was about one mu and one bucket.

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the number of registered land was more than 700 million mu, which was a significant increase compared with the Hongwu period, but the land endowment was only more than 20 million, and sometimes the income was insufficient!

At the same time, the common people felt that the burden was extremely heavy, to the point of rebellion...... The reason for this, of course, is that the state has lost its direct control over the land and population, and can only beg for food and doctors!

Not only did the land endowment depend on the gifts of the scholars, but even the rent of the military officials' fields had to be handed over by the gentry, and no matter how little the state collected, it had nothing to do with the peasants who cultivated the land.

After Zhu Cihong raided the homes of the nobles and hereditary military attachés in Nanjing, and seized the guards they had controlled for generations, he divided the land he obtained (including official fields, private fields, hidden fields, and military fields) into military tun fields and included them in the military tun guards, and then the cantonments under the military tun guards and the tenants who rented the land directly signed contracts.

By the end of the 17th year of Chongzhen, 10 million mu of land had been completed under the "direct jurisdiction of Juntun," and more than 5 million mu of land had been allocated to the middle- and lower-level officers and men of the New Army.

For these 10 million mu alone, more than 6 million stone can be rented every year (the quality of the land in this area is relatively good), and after deducting the "management fee", the rice that can be handed over to the military tunwei warehouse of the Generalissimo's Mansion can still exceed 5 million stone......

If 40 million mu of the 50 million mu (including the cleared Juntun and Guantian) that have not been received can be contracted (most of the rest must be distributed), then the income will reach 20 million stones, and even if 20 percent of the "fees" are deducted, 16 million stones can be put into storage.

The number of official fields, military tuns, and hidden fields in the entire southeast (not including Shandong and Henan, which are front-line provinces) can exceed 100 million, and if they can all be held in their hands, there is no need to collect any land endowments, and the rent collected is 40 million stones!

The number of farmland in the whole country of Daming is more than 700 million, but in fact it is more than 1 billion, of which the official fields and tuntians are not less than 300 million or less than 200 million!

Whose fault is it that so many fields can only receive more than 20 million stone in taxes, and because of the increase of several million taels, the people are not able to make a living, and the world is against it?

It's time to pick and make it clear.

"Chitose, do you think this place is too shabby?" Li Jizhou looked at Zhu Cihong and fell into deep thought, and raised his voice again, "Do you want to expand it well?" ”

"Expansion?" Zhu Cihong was stunned for a moment, and looked back at Li Jizhou, "It's just a palace, how magnificent do you want to cultivate?" ”

Li Jizhou frowned, and wanted to continue to persuade, but when he saw two pure troops on horseback coming in a row, he had already shouted from afar: "The emperor has arrived, hurry up and prepare to meet him!" ”

The officials and generals who were waiting quietly in the courtyard of the Siguo Palace immediately became disturbed and lined up in shifts, with the civil officials led by Wei Zaode, the first assistant of the cabinet, and the generals led by Wu Xiang, the commander of the generalissimo's palace, and walked towards the palace gate together.

Zhu Cihong glanced back at Li Jizhou, "How are the preparations over there in the old city of Xiaolingwei?" ”

Li Jizhou said: "It's all arranged, it's enough for the officials who come with it to live." In addition, the interior of Linggu Temple has also been tidied up, and many people can live. ”

"Where's the palace?" Zhu Cihong asked again.

"It's been renovated."

"Good!" Zhu Cihong nodded, "Let's go, let's go and catch the car." ”

At this moment, outside the dismount, all the carriages and horses stopped advancing. Under the gaze of everyone, Emperor Chongzhen turned off the horse's back vigorously. Although he has been "obsessed with women" in the past few months, he has not neglected exercise and rest - he still thinks that one day he will personally lead the army to the northern expedition to Yandu! Of course, you can't lose the ability to shoot arrows on horseback. In addition, I have enough sleep, so I don't have so many worries to worry about. After a few months, this drunken faint gentleman actually looked glorious, looked a few years younger, and was much stronger.

Chongzhen got off the horse, and did not wait for Zhu Cihong to lead people out to greet him, so he walked vigorously, and took the thirty-three kings behind him and a group of concubines and princesses of the inner official palace, strode forward, and went to Siguo Palace. He knew that there was a palace outside Xiamafang for the imperial officials who worshiped and swept the filial piety tomb to rest and change clothes, but he didn't know that this place had been repaired and expanded, and it was also named "Siguo Palace". He walked like a fly, walked in front with a group of eunuchs and palace maids, and after walking for a while, he arrived outside the palace, and the officials who had arrived in advance had come out, kneeling and kowtowing to him one after another.

Emperor Chongzhen stopped at this time, and inadvertently raised his head, just in time to see the plaque of "Siguo Palace" inscribed by Zhu Cihong, and his face suddenly changed drastically!