"The rise and fall are all the suffering of the people. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ”

On the official road from Huanxian to Qingyang, a group of more than 100 cavalry was running south in an orderly formation.

The leader was Li Jing, the governor of the begging army who was going south to Xi'an through Qingyang to go to the situation of the abbot's army, and looked at the bones on both sides of the official road at this moment.

Looking at the pale and numb peasants, the nursery walked south, and suddenly felt bad in my heart.

After all, except for Linzhao and Yansui in Ningxia and Hanzhong Mansion in Shaanxi, all the rest of the boundaries are occupied by him.

But the life of the peasants plummeted from the brink of death to the point of dying.

There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is the lack of food.

Yes, because Hong Chengchou, the governor of the three sides of Shaanxi, led the elite of Shaanxi's main force to the north to resist the invasion of the Mongol tribes, the mobilization of these three armies required grain and grass was an astronomical amount.

Originally, the boundary of Shaanxi has suffered from natural and man-made disasters in recent years, even if there was a short period of calm in the middle, but soon due to the additional taxes of the imperial court, the local peasants continued to rebel, and some prefectures and counties even made trouble, a large number of farmland was abandoned, and the peasants abandoned their land and left their homes one after another, living in exile.

Natural disasters are not terrible, the so-called Xiaoice River period at the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was not three feet of freezing, but a sudden cooling, resulting in agricultural production has been greatly restricted, but as long as the imperial court is willing to reduce taxes in this area, good life and rest for a few years, farmers can make do with it.

As the saying goes, in a good harvest year, the peasants can barely make ends meet, excluding taxes and rent.

In the years of natural disasters, even if they did not pay taxes and rent, the peasants could only barely make ends meet, and even if the disasters were more serious, the peasants could only borrow money to get by.

But the strange Ming Dynasty, when formulating policies, was ordered at the first glance, without any regard for the actual situation in the locality.

Taking Qingyang Anhua as an example, an ordinary family of five, even if they want not to starve to death according to the minimum living standard every year, they have to drink three catties of miscellaneous grains and drink gruel to maintain their physical strength that day.

With 1,100 catties of miscellaneous grains a year, it should be about four stones, more than five stones.

However, according to an ordinary peasant household, renting ten acres of land from the landlord, in the harvest season, each mu of land can produce one and a half stones of fine grain, and if it is planted with miscellaneous grains, it can produce more than two stones.

With seven and three, seven is the agricultural tax, dingkou, miscellaneous labor, miscellaneous tax and rent handed over to the land rent, and there are barely six stones left, so that it can barely survive.

However, the number of Qisan is also unstable, depending on the meaning of the landlord who rents the land, put it in Shanxi, Qisan can still be regarded as an approximate proportion, because there are Jin merchants in Shanxi, and businessmen have to take into account the life and death of farmers in order to maintain their reputation and other aspects.

However, Shaanxi is different, and the landlords in many places have their only income from land, so they have to work hard to make a big fuss about the land, which has led to the sharing of many localities and peasants to reach the point of 82 Kai, and some even reach the point of 91.

This forced farmers to rent more land to support their basic needs.

But this is the most ideal state, that is, a peaceful year, no soldiers, no disasters, no natural disasters.

However, since the end of the Apocalypse, the Ming Dynasty has entered a period of many disasters and difficulties, in this period, the temper of the heavens is changing day by day, the climate is getting colder and colder, and Shaanxi's agricultural production has almost been devastated.

The terrible natural disasters swept the entire jurisdiction of the political envoy Si Yamen, and every month there were prefectures and counties reporting disasters and praying for relief from the imperial court, but what about the imperial court?

When the agricultural production of a region has been destroyed in large quantities, the famine will inevitably come, and the hungry peasants who are waiting to be fed at home look forward to the hope that the boasted unique Son of Heaven will open their eyes to see how his people are shivering in the cold wind and how they are struggling on the edge of life and death.

Pity! No! Not even the slightest relief!

Because, the Holy Emperor Chongzhen and the Ming court, the people in their cognition do not include the peasants at all!

I have heard that the emperor and the ministers rule the world together, but I have not heard that the emperor and the peasants jointly govern the world.

As a matter of course, the peasants were abandoned, and instead of allowing local prefectures and counties to reduce taxes and relieve the victims, the imperial court increased the three salaries because of the war in the north, which became the last straw that crushed the hungry.

It was impossible to survive in the disaster year, and the unharvested grain, the family members who were waiting to be fed, the debts and assessed taxes that were not light for a lifetime, directly caused smoke to spread all over Shaanxi.

In the spring of the fourth year of Ming Chongzhen, he sent more than 220,000 yuan to Shanxi, but the pillars of the country that Chongzhen trusted did not disappoint the Son of Heaven.

The local officials in Shaanxi, of course, can't let the officials in Shanxi compare, although the task of adding to the political envoy Si Yamen in Shaanxi is only 200,000, but the thousands of miles of officials are only for money, and they are worthy of the blessing of the ancestors and ancestors? Is it worth ten years of hard work? Worthy of the tireless promotion of your boss?

However, what embarrassed the officials of the Shaanxi Political Envoy Department was that even if they tried their best, they did not compare with the Shanxi Political Envoy Division, because there were more military households in Shaanxi than in Shanxi, and there were more barren land in Shaanxi than in Shanxi, and the trade routes were not as smooth as Shanxi.

Therefore, in that year, the Shaanxi officialdom only exceeded the amount apportioned by the imperial court by 200 percent, and there was really no money to scrape, and these poor and crazy local officials, fortunately, were more restrained, and only aimed at the local peasants and local military households, and they did not stretch out their hands to the border army, otherwise they might not have caused some kind of chaos.

Just when they were secretly hurting themselves, thinking that they would have a bad face when they dealt with Shanxi officials in the future, the money brought by Wu Mu to appease the homeless people was finally spent.

Can you not spend it all? There are only 100,000 silver sent by Emperor Chongzhen, and 50,000 silver and 20,000 stone of grain collected by the vassal kings and civil and military ministers of Beizhili, Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, but what about the victims in Shaanxi? Conservative estimates are above two million.

The money to appease the homeless has been spent, and the taxes have been almost collected, so there is nothing else, let's open the whole! The evil fruit planted by the imperial court, swallow it back yourself, anyway, the territory of Shaanxi, according to the imperial court, is a whole gathering place for the people, and you can kill it without frowning.

Emperor Chongzhen, the Son of Heaven, even invented the text earlier, why don't the displaced people in Shaanxi wait for death at home?

A farmer, staring sideways beside the official road, beside a little boy who seemed to be asleep, saw the horse riding at this moment, I don't know where the strength came from, and pounced up, "Official, official, give me a stutter, my baby hasn't eaten for three days, open your grace~~~"

Li Jing looked at the bark and leaves that had been gnawed off on both sides, and when he couldn't even see a small grass around, his heart was suddenly touched, "Divide half of your military rations to help these people." ”

The soldiers immediately complied, as if they had stabbed a hornet's nest, and the peasants around them instantly gathered around, crying and pushing, but the outstretched black hands did not change.

"Get out of the way, get out of the way! Bang~"A personal guard general, anxiously commanding his personal guards, blocking the refugees who poured in like a tide, but there were too many people, and the personal guard team of hundreds of people couldn't resist it at all, if he hadn't taken the opportunity to take a bird gun and fired a shot into the sky, I'm afraid that these victims would even want to take away the horses.

"Arrange well, don't rob, make sure everyone has it, and if you dare to storm the military formation, you will be killed!" The general of the guards said murderously, and then ordered a dozen guards to go up, forcibly lined them up in formation, and then broke the big cakes that had been gathered together, and one person came up to lead a little.

"Delicious, delicious!" The victim who led the cake bit off a large piece in an instant, and ate it hard, but tears could not stop flowing on his face, he was so hungry that he forgot what food was like.

Li Jing looked at the crowd, sighed deeply, then took a cake, walked to the farmer who was the first to reach out to him, and pulled him up from the ground, "Give it to your child." ”

"Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a living bodhisattva you are! I will definitely make you a cow and a horse in the future to repay your kindness! The old man, trembling, took the cake, and two lines of turbid tears flowed uncontrollably, bringing out two clear tears on his weather-beaten face.

"Baby, baby, the cake is here, eat it, this is your favorite cake!" The old man soon returned to his baby's side, struggled to pick up the baby's body, and delivered the dough to his baby's mouth, but ......

"Baby, wake up! Eat the cake~ Your favorite cake! You wake up, don't scare Dad~"

Li Jing was already stunned to look at this scene, and when he heard this heart-wrenching roar, he suddenly felt a little unbearable, and went up and patted the old man's shoulder gently, "Uncle, your baby is dead." ”

Looking at the child's swollen face, and then touching his cold hands, now that it is gradually winter, Li Jing went out to fight, and deliberately put on the leather robe sewn for him by his little sister, but this child, who has been hungry for so long, wears a single coat, and even his stomach is exposed, where can he be spared.

"Baby, eat bread, come! Take another bite. But the old man was unmoved, as if he recognized that his baby loved to eat cakes, and he didn't even hear the voice of Li Jing greeting him, but carefully handed the cake to the boy's mouth that had long dried up, and struggled to stuff it inside, stuffed, stuffed...... (To be continued.) )