The main force of the Tang Dynasty Wang's division almost poured out, which naturally attracted the attention of many people in the city, concerned about the success or failure of the army's trip, and the interesting thing is that the results that everyone in the city expected for the victory or defeat of this battle were different.

Most of the upper classes such as those who are interested in the Ming Dynasty, especially those gentry and landlords, are eager for the defeat of the puppet Tang thief army and the official army to return to Shaoyang.

That way, they won't have to pay taxes in the future!

Ma Dan, this pseudo-Tang Dynasty did not give these gentry the decency at all, and dared to tax them in the boldness, and play 1 What kind of gentry pay taxes as one, this kind of thing competing for profit with the people is simply a big rebellion, and you have never heard of it in the Ming Dynasty!

Of course, even in the upper class, not everyone expects the Tang Dynasty to lose miserably, and many people still expect the Tang Dynasty to win, and this part is mainly for those who have children in the Tang Dynasty as officials and benefited from a series of reforms in the Tang Dynasty.

For example, the Shaoyang Zhao family, although they are grain merchants, they are also scholars who boast of being scholars, and they are naturally members of the upper class.

Now the Zhao family has become the military food supplier of the Tang Dynasty, and because the Tang Dynasty supported the development of industry and commerce, and also vigorously introduced Huguang grain into the Liangguang region, which greatly reduced the various tax checkpoints of the trade route and greatly reduced the cost of the business, which also made the Zhao family very profitable.

And families like the Zhao family actually have a lot of them in every place under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, and the longer the Tang Dynasty rules, the more such families there are, because living under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, if these gentry and landlord class still want to maintain their glory and wealth, then they inevitably need to accept the rule of the Tang Dynasty, so as to have a close connection with the Tang Dynasty.

And these merchants and even gentry families who have a close relationship with the Tang Dynasty, whether they were willing to do it before or not, but now that they are on the carriage of the Tang Dynasty, there is absolutely no reason to be able to come down easily, and they naturally expect that the Tang Dynasty will be able to fight and win successes, otherwise, if the Ming army counterattacks, their lives will not be guaranteed!

And this point is not too obvious in Shaoyang, but if it is in the Guizhou area of Guangzhou, especially in Guangdong today, it is even more obvious.

Under the guidance of the Tang Dynasty, many landlords and gentry have withdrawn funds from traditional industries such as land, and then invested in industry and commerce, especially the industries that have just emerged recently.

Why do these landlords and gentry invest their money in industry and commerce, naturally it is not because they think Li Xuan is very good and are willing to listen to Li Xuan's words and invest money in industry and commerce, but because of various policies.

On the one hand, the Tang Dynasty implemented a strict land policy, and the gentry paid taxes as a whole, unified agricultural taxes, rent-to-purchase orders, and reclamation orders, which were specifically aimed at agriculture, which allowed the Tang Dynasty to alleviate land annexation and gain the support of a large number of farmers.

The rent is lower than in the past, and now we have to pay taxes, and the output in this field is not as much as in previous years, but the landlord class also has to eat, and it is also necessary to support a family.

If you are poor, you will think about change, and this sentence can also be used on these landlords and gentry.

What should I do if there is less output in the land?

Armed resistance to taxes and rebellion against the pseudo-Tang Dynasty, this is the most direct way, many people have done it, but in the end they all ended up being exterminated, and the rest of the people learned smartly.

This can't be resisted, and the output in the land is less, so invest in other industries!

In this regard, the Tang Dynasty welcomed and even maintained a supportive attitude, a lot of various preferential policies, and powerful people began to build large-scale factories or open large-scale commercial houses, and even threw themselves into a profitable sea trade.

Even if you are not strong, you can open a small workshop or small shop, so as to make a lot of profits.

However, when more and more people participate in it, and they all taste the sweetness from it, they naturally do not want the current pattern to change.

If you don't want to change, then it is natural to hope that the Tang Dynasty can win, and even many people are thinking that when the Tang Dynasty King goes to the south of the Yangtze River, their own caravan will follow behind the army and seize the market!

By that time, the money was not coming!

So up to now, the gentry, landlords, and businessmen who had maintained an opposition attitude towards the Tang Dynasty in the past have actually been divided, although many of them are still shouting as pseudo-Tang Dynasty and thief army, but many people are also calling Datang and Wang Shi.

And this can be seen from the fact that more and more people participate in the Tang Imperial Examination every year!

The ancient scholars were never a separate group, but representatives of a wide range of interests!

If these upper-class groups under the rule of the Tang Dynasty are only differentiated, then the ordinary people under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, especially the largest peasant group, regardless of whether they are yeoman farmers or tenants, then the support for the Tang Dynasty is beyond the expectations of many people.

The series of agricultural policies of the Tang Dynasty were naturally hit by the large and medium landowners, but the small landlords and ordinary farmers were the beneficiaries.

The benefits of the four policies of the gentry, the unified agricultural tax, the reclamation order, and the rent-for-purchase order to the middle and lower strata of society were real.

On the surface, the gentry paid taxes as a whole, which seemed to have nothing to do with the peasants, but in fact it still reduced their burden, because if the gentry did not pay taxes, then the financial burden would all be on these peasants, and then the taxes they would pay would be far more than the current figures.

What does the unified agricultural tax mean because of the implementation of apportionment to the mu and the absence of the poll tax, how much land is paid and how much tax is paid? This means that the tenants, that is, the landless peasants, under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, do not have to pay taxes!

The tenants did not even have land, so naturally they were not subject to agricultural tax!

This alone is enough for Datang to reap the support of countless landless farmers!

And even for those self-cultivated farmers and small landlords, because of the unified collection of agricultural taxes, there is no messy and miscellaneous taxes in the past, and it is also a great reduction in their burden.

In the past, they had to pay not much regular taxes, but there were many kinds of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and the burden was quite heavy, but now, although the agricultural tax is also quite large, compared with the past, it is still a great lightening of the burden.

It's okay to make this reclamation order, and the reclamation of wasteland is tax-free, which has been done by many dynasties, and it is nothing.

But renting instead of purchasing is different, as long as you rent and farm official land for ten years, the land will become your own, and this kind of good thing is simply unheard of.

The above-mentioned policies also made the support of many peasants under the rule of the Tang Dynasty almost from the heart.

Why?

Because those village officials always told them from time to time that if the puppet Ming came back, there would be no official land for everyone, all kinds of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes would come again, and the tenants would have to pay taxes again.

In this case, the peasants used the simplest and most direct way to express their interests: join the army!

Now in the rural areas under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, the enthusiasm of poor children to join the army is very high!

Of course, there are also many factors such as joining the army and dividing the fields, joining the army and eating and being full!

Although Shaoyang said that the time under the rule of the Tang Dynasty was not too long, and it was in the period of military management for a long time in the early stage, and did not implement many internal policies under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, but even so, many ordinary people in Shaoyang City are still very concerned about the victory or defeat of the Tang Dynasty.

They are looking forward to Wang Shi being able to defeat the puppet Ming army, and not let the puppet Ming army kill back and take their land!

Whether it is the gentry, landlords, businessmen, or those peasants who poured into industry and commerce, they are actually considered vested interest groups of the Tang Dynasty, and they naturally do not want the Tang Dynasty to fail!

For the public opinion trends in Shaoyang City behind him, Hao Bonian naturally has no heart to deal with it, and now the affairs in Shaoyang City are handled by the governor of Huguang appointed by the Tang Dynasty and a group of local officials, and his task Hao Bonian is to take the first army to Changsha.

Hao Bonian received another letter from Li Chunjing of the Second Army this morning!

Li Chunjing asked the First Army to arrive in Changsha before the twelfth day of the first month of the fourth year of Xuanping, and at the same time prevent the enemy of Hengyang from going north to Changsha!

And now it is the eve of the Spring Festival, the twenty-eighth year of the New Year, if you calculate the time, it is only about half a month from the agreed time, from Shaoyang City to Changsha, all the way more than 200 kilometers, which means that the army has to march more than 20 kilometers every day.

And this marching speed is quite challenging for an army of tens of thousands of people, especially when the road conditions on the road are not very good!

Although sometimes when the Tang Army was marching, there were also extreme examples of running more than 30 kilometers a day, but this kind of forced march was basically just a day's forced march, if it was to march continuously, the First Infantry Division under the First Army had previously attacked back and forth between Guiyang Prefecture and Hengyang in the autumn and winter campaign last year, creating an extreme example of running 150 kilometers in five consecutive days, and it also took half a day to defeat more than 3,000 Ming troops.

This marching record is the highest record since the founding of the Tang Army, and it has not been broken so far.

Although some of the roads from Shaoyang to Changsha are official roads and the road conditions are relatively good, there are also some roads in average condition, and some roads are extremely poor.

Therefore, it is very difficult for the First Army to guarantee that it will walk 20 kilometers every day.