When Zhou Huai'an re-embarked on the road to Guangfu, his mood was still quite complicated; Because this coming and going, in a blink of an eye, it is already the early spring of the second year;

And compared with the two or three kittens at the beginning, the team of followers around him has also grown dozens of times. Everyone wore helmets and armor, carried crossbows and knives, and on the chariots or horses they were carrying corresponding shields, spears, axes, hammers, clubs, and other miscellaneous equipment, and there were at least dozens of large and small flags clustered around the guns around his carriage.

It's just that he prefers the cool and dry Lingnan winter compared to the warm breeze that makes people a little lazy and sleepy. The faint fragrance of the seedlings sunburned by the sun and the earthy smell of the paddy fields are mixed in the warm air. The biggest change and touch along the way is a kind of atmosphere and environment called orderly.

After the early purge and rectification, as well as the punishment of many people who gathered and scattered into bandits, they scattered in the wild; The rural areas, which had lost most of the original upper-class existence, had to be led by the newly elected leaders, through negotiations and interactions with the garrison rebels in nearby cities, to initially establish a set of basic order and grades for the collection of money and grain, the distribution of military service, and regular transactions and reports.

In particular, in addition to the self-sufficient part such as food rations, most of the things related to people's livelihood, as well as economic lifelines such as foreign goods that can only be replenished through market transactions, were controlled and controlled by the rebels through the transportation points, and they were controlled in disguise. The so-called tandem and group confrontation has become a joke in a sense, if you have the ability, you will not eat salt for a month, and you will become soft and swollen all over your body.

Although it is still quite extensive and simple, it can also be said that there are still many problems and loopholes; But even flawed order can always achieve better results than constant chaos and disorder.

Therefore, when the spring ploughing and sowing of the new year begins, the paddy fields on the roadside and the terraced fields on the hillside become dense and frequent. Although the proportion of old and weak women and children is still large, it is at least much better than when I first came, walking for dozens of miles without many people, and all kinds of sparse and deserted appearance;

And most of them don't avoid people very much, and in the face of the teams that drive on the road, they can only look up a few more times before returning to their busy work. Only some beings who are really close to the main road will stop their work and respectfully retreat to the side until they see the team leave.

With Zhou Huai'an's eyesight, he couldn't even see how much panic and cramped expressions they were. According to the new order under the rule of the rebel army today, without the doubling layers of exploitation imposed by the traditional officials and big tycoons, as long as most of the output is paid at one time, the remaining part is still enough for the majority of the people to live in peace with a lower burden;

After all, you must know that all the original tax and conscription systems in the Tang Dynasty were based on the "rent and yong adjustment" based on the "uniform land system"; Rent, that is, two stones per dining; Tune, the hometown of sericulture, the class household loses two zhang of silk per ding, and three catties of hemp; Yong, each household per year 20 days of labor, in the leap year plus 2 days, if not served, need to fold silk cloth to replace the service. It doesn't seem like much, but this is just the standard when the early Tang Dynasty was founded.

With the increasing number of people who have gone bankrupt and fled with the increasing number of people who have developed and acquired land in the country, the system of land equalization based on small farmers has long since collapsed. At the same time, there are more and more "non-tax households" who evade paying taxes of all kinds; And with the expansion of the bureaucracy and the size of the army, it is more and more onerous for the state to spend on all sides; And these needs are concentrated on the books of local governments, and the tax accounts are becoming smaller and smaller. As a result, in addition to various positive taxes, various complicated tax items also came into being.

(The standard for exempting the household registration is: officials above the ninth grade, men under the age of 20, the old, the invalid, wives and concubines, slaves and maids, and monks and Taoists also enjoy the exemption treatment.) Therefore, it is natural to create a fairly large special group that does not pay taxes and is not counted in the official household registration. ）

After the Anshi Rebellion, the state lost the ability to effectively control the household registration and the land and mu accounts, and the land annexation became even more violent, and the urgent need for military spending made the military and political chiefs in various localities arbitrarily apportioned under various names without the approval of the central government. The people were miserable, and even in the relatively rich Jiangnan region, there were armed uprisings by Yuan Chao, Fang Qing, Chen Zhuang and others, and the people who were struggling to be endowed participated one after another.

Thereupon. As the country's finances became increasingly constrained, Yang Yan, the prime minister in the first year of Jianzhong, proposed the promulgation of the "Two Taxation Law" for reform. The new tax law was enacted based on the original local tax and household tax, and unified all taxes. Because it is levied in summer and autumn, it is called the "two tax laws". The main content is to "live within the limits of income", that is, the total amount of taxes set by the central government according to fiscal expenditures is levied by all localities from local households according to the amount allocated by the central government; Abolish the "rent adjustment" and all miscellaneous donations and miscellaneous taxes, and Dante's money (poll tax) will not be abolished; The two taxes are paid according to the households, and the nanocorn is paid according to the acres of land;

Although later generations have agreed and praised the advanced significance and concepts of "formulating budgets", "ninth-class distribution" and "paying taxes according to households" of the two tax laws; However, in the real history, because it seriously violated the interests of the wealthy strata, it was only implemented for more than 30 years, and it was forced to repeatedly order the change of the "money-based" currency calculation and levy to the conversion in kind, so as to avoid the depreciation and shrinkage of price fluctuations.

Moreover, with the passage of time, the insatiable feudal officials set up extortion in addition to the quota of the two taxes, such as "intershelf tax", "except for strange money", "seedling fee" and so on. In order to get promoted, there are also many officials who levy and extort money in addition to regular taxes for performance.

In fact, the "two taxation laws" that claim to exempt "rent and miscellaneous taxes" and all miscellaneous taxes no longer exist. However, the fixed tax payable under the two tax laws is increasing day by day. Heavy taxes and miscellaneous taxes have plunged the toiling people into a miserable situation where life is worse than death;

In addition, due to the secession of the towns of the Tang Dynasty in the middle and late periods, the imperial court could only divide the wealth collected from the world into three parts, one was for the upper court (the imperial court), the second was for the army (town), and the third was for Liuzhou; However, in order to obtain sufficient expenditure, all three parties have increased and expanded taxes layer by layer without exception; And the local tycoons and officials, who are handling at the grassroots level, also have to make profits and enrich themselves.

In fact, it is not enough to take away everything that the peasants have worked hard for, and they have to be forced to sell their sons and daughters to make up for it; Therefore, it is really necessary to carry it out thoroughly until there is no need for a famine year in the locality, and it is a vicious circle of all kinds of desperate and desperate people fleeing each other. Moreover, when the poorest civilians at the bottom with the heaviest burden have almost fled, it will be the turn of the Yin Shi households above the sixth class to be unlucky; Wait until the sixth class? The Yin Shi households have also gone bankrupt one after another, and those small and medium-sized landlords who lack sufficient backers and backgrounds have to break their homes to provide for them with all their might;

When these families with poor scholars also began to join the tide of peasant uprisings swarming all over the world, resulting in a transformation from quantitative to qualitative, this means that the death knell of a dynasty is truly ringing

So in the end, the biggest beneficiaries of all this are those wealthy and powerful families who have colluded with the local government; In any case, when the imperial court could no longer collect much in any case, they relied on the annexation of land and property and the exiled population who had sold themselves as slaves and maids, and in the wave after wave of peasant revolts, they were able to swallow each other up and grow stronger, and became more and more influential and private armed in the local area. It is also a potential reserve force for the final results of the peasant uprising in the process of seizing and stealing the dynasty in the future.

Therefore, the small share of the output that the rebels were able to leave to the local peasants at present was enough to surprise and grateful; Although this gratitude is only short-lived, it will gradually fade with the uncertainty of the counteroffensive of the official army. At this time, Zhou Huai'an left another magic weapon for the rebels, compared to the taxes that could only be harvested and fulfilled in the summer, this is a plan that can quickly see results and reverse in a short period of time;

It is through the personnel, chariots and horses selected by the baggage brigade, dozens of itinerant merchant squads formed gradually penetrate into more than 100 towns and villages distributed along the road, selling rice, cloth, oil, salt, wine, sauce, farm tools, ironware and other basic materials needed for people's livelihood, and also purchasing relatively cheap local products such as rattan, hemp, pottery, porcelain, poultry and livestock, etc., acting as a primitive commercial circulation system that regularly exchanges between urban and rural areas and adjusts the supply and demand in the market.

In addition, the Guanshi controlled by the rebels before was tantamount to tying these new local autonomous groups to some indispensable temporary interest system in disguise. Perhaps, over time, this temporary interaction will become the habitual result of persistence.

Although these temporarily laissez-faire semi-autonomous villages may re-divide over time and create new exploitative and rentier classes and individuals, the benefits and benefits of the present are actually more or less useful. And that's just the external arrangement.

Before leaving, he had reorganized the direct forces under his command, and the investigation team, census team, and task force had been expanded; Then, in addition to the five patrol teams that maintained order and the basic law in the city, a correction team of more than 100 people was also established; It is responsible for supervising the discipline and morals in the army, and at the same time has the responsibility of investigating and preventing spies.

And this last point of responsibility is the real intention and drama of his establishment of the relevant team this time. The main reason is to have a justifiable reason to gradually eliminate the old forces in the army and the influence from the Cantonese side, and even take some decisive and extraordinary measures when necessary.

Therefore, this team is actually composed of local loyalists from Lingnan - Xu Si and Xu Yi will concurrently serve as generals, and the deputy is the former official army Zhong Yi; The specific personnel are also people who have a deep hatred for the bitter and bitter people who have been selected to collect the place, and they have little to do with and are involved in the old camp of the angry wind as a priority. And the leader who went to Canton with him also had four candidates:

One is Sun Liumao, the officer of the horse team, and the other is Wu Xingchen, the deputy captain of the rebuilt former battalion, the former was the captain of Wang Pan's personal guard, and the latter was a new recruit promoted by Wang Pan; He is also an important witness to escaping death in the Chaoyang Incident.

There is also a Qingzhou native Lin Ming, who serves as the deputy lieutenant of the direct (team promotion to small) regiment, who is really responsible for his own safety and security work; The last one is the new brigade commanders Ge Guomei and Ge Congzhou, whom Zhou Huai'an has always been optimistic about, which can be regarded as giving him a chance to show his face and open his eyes among the upper echelons of the rebel army.

And the silk silk from this reward, he unsurprisingly distributed part of it to the human rights around him for additional clothing, and part of it was used as a subsidy for the army to accommodate those orphaned teenagers.

Anyway, in addition to the daily necessities of food, he has no more needs for accumulating personal goods for the time being, and it is good that he really needs to use his power to allocate them directly; Therefore, on all the bright sides, the income he was able to withdraw and the gains he received were quickly turned into various experimental materials and finished products, or subsidies and assistance to the people around him, and basically did not stay by his side for long.

And some of the new things or experimental products he has developed from this will be immediately shared with everyone around him (as the nature of the guinea pig for experiments), which can be regarded as a manifestation of potential welfare and closeness without expense. However, the effect is still quite good, because everyone knows that he can always drum up something different, and the opportunity to try it out first is regarded as a unique reward and compliment.

This is much more meaningful and motivating than the direct reward and gift of money.

However, along the way, Zhou Huai'an was accompanied by Captain Chai Ping, who served as a messenger and visiting officer. It seems that because of the change in identity and status, and because of the degree of familiarity, compared with the cold appearance of cherishing words like gold at the beginning, there have become more words; He inquired about many things related to the Furious Wind Camp in almost every detail, and in addition to some details in the Chaoyang Change, he was even very interested in the many changes and measures that took place in the Furious Wind Camp.

Zhou Huai'an didn't have much to hide about this, but just selected and filtered some things; On the one hand, it can be regarded as repaying his original affection,

On the other hand, it is a comprehensive consideration, some contents such as health and epidemic prevention, housekeeping, logistics distribution, and some experience and means, if the other party can seriously learn the slightest bit of the past, it is also beneficial to improve the overall strength of the rebel army.

More important than the value of this knowledge itself is the ability to cultivate communities that disseminate and disseminate this knowledge.

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone, I'm back

(End of chapter)