According to the records of the mu book, I have a total of 180,000 mu of cultivated land in Chifengweizhong, of which 30,000 mu produce more than one stone of wheat per mu, 70,000 mu of Zhongtian, and the rest are all four or five buckets per mu. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info" Xu Xiuqing saw that Li Xiao suddenly asked this question, and hurriedly answered.

"Oh, why is there only so much arable land?" Li Xiao was taken aback when he heard Xu Xiuqing's report.

Li Xiao had read the history of the Ming Dynasty, and he remembered that in a county in the south of the Yangtze River, millions of acres of cultivated land were common. But I didn't expect that the area of this Chifengwei is half the size of Huang County, and there are only 180,000 mu of cultivated land, which is really pitiful.

"Adults don't know, I Denglai boundary, located near the sea, there are many saline-alkali land, but it cannot be compared with Jiangnan Huguang and other places, such as Zhaoyuan County, Huang County and other places The cultivated land area is basically about 500,000 mu. The scope of my Chifengwei is only a little more than half of the original land area of Huang County, so there are 180,000 mu of cultivated land, but it is still considerable. Xu Xiuqing explained to Li Xiao.

Li Xiao fell into a deep groan.

"My lord, the number of acres of land and the amount of grain per mu that the students said are all obtained from the inspection of the land and acres of land, and they are not false, if you don't believe it, you can send someone to check it again." Xu Xiuqing thought that Li Xiao didn't believe it, so he hurriedly said again.

"Xiuqing, you think too much, of course the official believes you. It's just that the official is thinking that if the land area is so limited, it will be difficult to support the soldiers and the people. Li Xiao patted Xu Xiuqing's shoulder and comforted him.

Li Xiao knew that Xu Xiuqing was telling the truth, and the history of the Ming Dynasty recorded that in the Wanli period, in the northern border towns, the cultivated land that could produce seven or eight buckets of wheat was Shangtian, because the soil quality of Shandong was better than that of Xuanfu Datong, so in Shandong, it was customary to produce more than one stone per mu as Shangtian.

"And who owns all this cultivated land now, but has it all been cultivated?" Li Xiao thought about it and asked again.

"Your Excellency, in the past two years or so, Denglai has been plagued by wars, people have died or fled, and a lot of land has been abandoned. My Chifengwei land is divided into three places from Laizhou, Huangxian and Zhaoyuan. In these three places, Laizhou and Huangxian are all devastated by the war, and the local land is basically all abandoned, with only scattered land, and there are still remnants of the people cultivating. However, the boundary of the original Zhaoyuan County in the area of the Beiluan River was relatively light by the military disaster, and in addition to a few yeoman farmers, there were many landlords who occupied a lot of good land. ”

"Can you know what the landlords occupy about their land?" Li Xiao asked again.

According to the students' understanding, in the area of the Beiluan River, because of the fertile land, 30,000 acres of Shangtian are basically here, and they have been basically divided by the landlords and rich gentry. In the local area, there are two large landowners, both of whom have more than 5,000 mu of land, and six middle landowners, who have between 2,000 and 3,000 mu of land. There are also 15 small landlords, with less than 1,000 acres of land, and the rest are homesteaders, ranging from dozens of acres to hundreds of acres per family. ”

Li Xiao sighed secretly in his heart, it turned out that in Chifengwei, there were nearly 50,000 mu of land occupied by the landlords alone, and all of them were Shangtian and Zhongtian, which means that the most plastered land in Chifengwei was in the hands of the landlords.

In the Ming Dynasty, the landlord gentry had many privileges, the biggest of which was that they could rely on a series of preferential policies of the imperial court to pay less or even no taxes.

Even in the same way of exchanging money, there is also the so-called red and white seal system, the red seal used by the landlord and rich gentry can be much less fire and miscellaneous expenses than the white seal used by ordinary households.

In other words, these landlords and gentry, who occupied the fertile land, made little contribution to the state. It is not these wealthy landlords who support the state's financial and tax revenues, but the ordinary people who are struggling on the line of survival.

This state, if it is a peaceful era, can barely be maintained. But in the last days of the dynasty like now, when natural disasters and the people were struggling to make a living, the country also intensified the urging of the people to increase the three salaries, which finally led to the outbreak of a large-scale peasant uprising, providing an almost endless source of soldiers for those vicious bandits, and finally completely burying the Ming Dynasty.

This situation continued until the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, when the Yongzheng forced the officials and gentry to pay grain in one piece, and the landlords and rich gentry began to really bear the state taxes.

Li Xiao frowned deeply and fell into deep thought.

What to do?

If we want to change this situation, do we want to learn from future generations to fight landlords and divide the fields?

Li Xiao didn't want to do that.

In these years, such a landlord and gentry class, in the Ming Empire at the township level, a large number, a stable position, these people, in addition to intersecting with the upper class, but also mastered the grassroots language power, can be described as the mainstay of the Ming Empire.

If we blindly borrow the brutal methods of later generations and forcibly deprive them of their land and rights, we will undoubtedly push this class to the opposite side of ourselves. Li Xiao believes that if he does this, he will be the first to finish.

After all, with his own strength, he could not confront the landlords and gentry of the entire empire. Unless your own power is too strong to defend, doing so is tantamount to hitting a stone with an egg.

This deep-seated problem involving the foundation of the empire, Li Xiao didn't have a good way for a while.

"Xiuqing, how to deal with the landlord's land, put it aside for the time being. Your key task now is to build Chifeng City first. In addition, now that the weather has turned cooler, we should first organize manpower to re-plough the abandoned fields as soon as possible, and strive to plant winter wheat as soon as possible. ”

"If the adults tell you so, the students will obey it." Xu Xiuqing nodded and said.

The two talked for a while, and finally agreed to take the thousands of prisoners of labor reform in Iron Dragon City to Chifeng City and start building the city wall. The more than 12,000 displaced people brought back by Li Xiao immediately began to reclaim the land and plough the fields, and in addition to recultivating the original cultivated fields, they also saw if they could open up as many new fields as possible to grow more winter wheat.

At this point, many readers must have asked why they didn't plant sweet potatoes and corn, which are the most commonly used means of getting food quickly in the novel.

Li Xiao remembered that one of the crossing books even said that even if it was just ordinary land, the yield of one mu of corn per mu was five and a half stones, and one mu of sweet potatoes was even more crazy to eighteen stones!

Li Xiao really wanted to say to these traversers in his heart, you are really cute and naïve, but I, who am also a traverser, want to tell you that the ideal is very plump, and the reality is too skinny.

Li Xiao remembers that in the early years of the Republic of China, the highest yield per mu of corn in Northeast China was only 70 kilograms, and the yield of sweet potatoes per mu was more than 300 kilograms. Moreover, in the northern region, the frost-free period is short, the low temperature time is long, and spring corn and spring potatoes are generally planted, and if the seedlings emerge, they are frosted, and the grains are not harvested. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, only a small amount of cultivation was found in the southern border provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Hainan, and Guangxi. It is recorded in the history of the Ming Dynasty that Hong Chengchou, Zhang Yixian and others, in order to quickly solve the famine problem in Shaanxi, forcibly promoted sweet potatoes in Shaanxi and other places, but the harvest was very small and almost caused a popular uprising. It was not until a hundred years later in the Qianlong period that sweet potatoes were cultivated into seeds that were truly suitable for planting in the north, and thus were popularized on a large scale.

Unless Li Xiao has the opportunity to obtain land in South China in the future, it is purely too taken for granted to promote sweet potatoes on a large scale in the north.

Li Xiao secretly thought in his heart, conservatively calculated, if 150,000 mu of barren land can be opened now, and the average amount of wheat per mu is levied at a bucket of wheat, the harvest of winter wheat this time will only be 15,000 stones.

15,000 stone wheat, that is, 2.82 million catties, excluding the impurities of wheat husk bran, as well as the loss of grinding flour, etc., can be eaten in the mouth, which is 2.25 million catties.

Now the two general soldiers of Chifeng City and Tielong City, plus the captives, craftsmen, civil servants of the government office, and the newly arrived 12,000 displaced people in Xuanfu Town, a total of nearly 20,000 people need Li Xiao to provide food, according to the amount of two meat grains and three taels of pork per person per day, 15,000 stone of grain, which can barely eat for two months.

Considering that Li Xiao will expand the number of displaced people and expand the army in the future, this bit of food is not worth mentioning.

It seems that if you want to achieve food self-sufficiency, it is still quite difficult for Li Xiao. At least for now, spending money to buy food is a choice that Li Xiao has no choice.

From the next day, a large number of displaced people, under the leadership of the personnel of the Department of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, went to Chifengwei to open up barren fields.

Li Xiao arranged for these people to open up wasteland, but he didn't plan to divide the land for them.

Now that the fields in Chifengwei are precious, the reclaimed fields are planned to be supplied to soldiers with military merits first. After the resettlement of meritorious soldiers and military dependents is completed, if there is any surplus land, it will be distributed to these displaced people from Xuanfu Town.

The families of the soldiers who stayed in Jintangcheng on Xuanfu North Road were uniformly summoned by Li Xiao, and the family was given a settling-in allowance of 20 taels, escorted by 30 newly made four-wheeled carriages, and at the same time sent cavalry escorts to settle in Jintangcheng on Xuanfu North Road.

The rest of the family members in the fort, under the leadership of Xu Xiuqing, began to clean up the surrounding environment and prepare for the construction of the city wall of Chifeng City.

A week later, Chang Dali and other craftsmen arrived at Chifeng Fort, and the construction of Chifeng City officially began.

"Commander Li, now there are captive laborers, as well as the families of laborers, the labor is quite sufficient, and there is a supply of bluestone, lime and bricks from Squatting Dog Mountain, this Chifeng City will be built quickly and well." Chang Dali said diligently to Li Xiaoxi.

"How long is it expected to be completed? How much does it cost? Li Xiao asked.

"My lord, little old man dares to guarantee that now there is a sufficient supply of manpower and material resources, and within two months, it will be enough to build this city." Chang Dali said with a smile: "Because the materials have been self-produced, the overall cost is much less than that of Iron Dragon City, and 50,000 taels is enough for an appointment." ”

"Very good, Master Chang, the specific construction work will be solved by you and Xu Xiuqing through negotiation. Anyway, the official asked for a point, to build this fort as soon as possible before the ground freezes hard. Seeing that Chang Dali was so sure, Li Xiao's face was also full of joy.

However, thinking of the amount of silver that was still left, the joy in Li Xiao's heart was diluted a lot.

At that time, considering that the situation in Jintangcheng on the North Road of Xuanfu was even more difficult, Li Xiaojun received the gold and silver rewards and captured booty in Jinjiazhuang Fort, except for only 20,000 taels of silver for the purchase of grain on the road, the rest of the silver taels and materials were basically left in the local area. In this case, Li Xiao would only have 200,000 taels of silver available in Chifeng Castle.

Excluding the cost of building Chifeng City, the total amount of silver that Li Xiaojun could dispose of was only 150,000 taels of silver.

At present, the total salary of Li Xiaojun's local personnel in Shandong and the living expenses used to buy grain are about 32,000 taels in total.

In other words, without recruiting any more personnel, Li Xiaojun can only support a little more than 4 months now.

So, what about four months later?

And how do you sustain it?

The food problem and the silver problem are like two heavy boulders, which are dead on Li Xiao's heart.

Li Xiao was calm and calm on the surface in front of everyone, but he was thinking about these questions all the time in his heart.

Three days after the construction of Chifeng City began, a sergeant came to report that Chen Zilong, a staff member of Li Maofang, the governor of Shandong, asked to see him.

Li Xiao's eyes lit up, and he laughed: "Oh, it's Mr. Wozi who is here, hurry up and follow me to greet you!" (To be continued.) )