86_86695 "After the class contradiction develops to a certain stage, all feudal dynasties will inevitably collapse like a broken house. ”

"By the time the Ming Dynasty developed to the time of the Apocalypse, all aspects of economic, political, military, etc., and the entire Chinese society were inevitably heading for a complete collapse."

However, if we want to find a landmark event from a series of historical events in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, which opened the prelude to the fall of the Ming Dynasty. I would not choose the entry of the Manchus or the outbreak of the peasant uprising, as others do. ”

"I think that the historical event that really sounded the death knell of the Ming Dynasty was the Wuchang Uprising that occurred at the end of 1625 AD."

――2005・Huang Yuren・The Last Fifteen Years of the Ming Dynasty

He Zuxian is Chinese New Year's Eve two years old today and is a small flag officer of Wuchang Left Guard. According to the normal situation, he is a grassroots officer in the military attache system of the Ming Dynasty, and a serious eight-rank military attaché. Under his hands, there should be ten regular soldiers.

But the reality is that He Zuxian is just an ordinary farmer. is better than those ordinary military households, because of the identity of a small flag officer, He Zuxian originally did not have to be a pure serf. He could have made a living by cultivating thirty acres of land in his name.

Farming is not a strange or difficult thing for any Chinese in the agricultural era. From the emperor to the common people, as long as the physical condition is on the basic line, they can undertake this work.

Originally, He Zuxian could have been like his ancestors thousands of years ago, relying on hard work and hard work to fill the stomachs of himself and his family. He and his wife then had children like him, who would continue to live the same life he and his ancestors had lived for thousands of years.

But unfortunately, He Zuxian and his ancestors who unfortunately lived at the end of the dynasty were also affected by the inevitable misfortune of the common people in the process of the end of the feudal dynasty. Various levies and additions are constantly increasing. Even more unfortunate, He Zuxian also encountered a rare natural climate in thousands of years, the Xiaoice River climate.

He Zuxian lost his father when he was young, and his old mother is still alive. Whether from a moral point of view or from a human point of view, he must do his best to provide for his old mother. After all, even if the living environment is difficult, He Zuxian is also a Chinese. It is impossible for him to let his old mother go into the mountains to die like a widow to relieve the pressure of his own survival.

As a reasonable person, He Zuxian actually doesn't really want a lot of children. However, in the absence of effective birth control in the natural sciences, especially in medical science, and especially in medical science, Ho Cho-hsien has no control over how many children he can have. Even in many cases such as spontaneous abortion, unnatural death, abandonment, etc., Ho Zuxian is still the father of four children.

A family of seven, cultivating 30 acres of land, under normal circumstances, can support the family? Let's do the math.

Under normal circumstances, the yield of 30 acres of paddy field per mu of field is cultivated by the most primitive means without chemical fertilizers, pesticides and high-yield seeds. The yield per mu of land, in a normal year, can reach about 200 catties to 300 catties. We calculate more, even if the yield per mu of land reaches 300 catties. Then He Zuxian can harvest about 9,000 catties of grain in a year.

We calculate that without any other caloric supplements, each person needs to consume one pound of food per day. He Zuxian's family of seven people consumes seven catties of food every day. Then, they will consume 2,555 catties of grain every year.

After deducting the fifty percent of the grain that He Zuxian had to hand over to the guard, He Zuxian's family could have 4,500 catties of grain left. After deducting the grain consumed by He Zuxian's family, He Zuxian's family can have about 1,945 catties of food left.

From these perspectives, He Zuxian, a family of seven with 30 acres of paddy fields, has a good life, and he can still save nearly 2,000 catties of grain every year. Such a life should be okay.

That is to say, although the days of He Zuxian, the eight-rank military attache of the Ming Dynasty, are not as beautiful and comfortable as the grassroots officers in our modern society, they are basically able to get by, and they are generally in a good situation.

What we must realize is that He Zuxian's original days were not as good as the above, as we deduced at the theoretical level. However, before the middle of Wanli, the life of the He family was indeed similar to that kind of life. He Zuxian's father even sponsored one of He Zuxian's uncles to study at that time, and he was admitted to Xiucai.

However, just like in the original time and space, the Ming Dynasty would not fall for more than twenty years, and the life of the He family was not unpassable all at once. It's just that with the development of time, with the death of He Zuxian's father, after He Zuxian became the pillar of the He family, the life of the He family suddenly seemed to be unbearable. Especially with the deterioration of the overall situation of the Ming Dynasty, the life of the He family is moving towards an even more difficult situation.

The first is that the amount of grain handed in is becoming more and more. The Ming Dynasty's guard system stipulated that the farmland cultivated by military households did not need to pay the imperial grain tax. This is indeed the case. He Zuxian does not need to pay any imperial grain tax. But the problem is that, just like from the end of the Wanli period, the imperial court continued to increase the amount of taxes, further exploiting the already small number of yeoman farmers and more and more tenant farmers. The military attachés of the Ming Dynasty were also accompanying the city, constantly increasing the burden of military rations for the guards.

Yes, as a military household, you do not need to bear the imperial grain national tax. However, as a military household, it is necessary to hand over the corresponding money and food to the superiors at all levels. Of course, the money and grain to be paid are not called the imperial grain national tax, and they have been changed to many different names. However, they are not much different in nature.

Moreover, God seems to be deliberately working against He Zuxian. Since he became the pillar of the family, almost every year, various natural disasters have befallen the He family. Floods, droughts, low temperatures, hail, frost, snow disasters, locust plagues, as long as it is a disaster that can be named, He Zuxian seems to have to experience one every year. Sometimes even two, three.

The thirty acres of paddy fields under the name of He Zuxian's family, just like this, three acres this year, five acres next year, and eight acres the year after, gradually changed the main family. They moved from He Zuxian's name to the name of the thousand households in his place little by little.

Although the ownership of the land has changed. However, little has changed in the people who cultivated the land. He Zuxian and his eldest son and second son are still cultivating the 30 acres of paddy fields. He Zuxian's family is still bearing the burden of becoming more and more expropriated and disasters becoming more and more frequent. Although He Zuxian himself couldn't figure out what was going on and why it had become like this. However, he still tried his best, hoping to use his own efforts to bring his family back to the situation he was in decades ago, when his father was in charge.

The winter in Wuchang Mansion was not very good. Even in normal years, you'll need a cotton garment to survive the winter. Not to mention the last years of the Ming Dynasty in the Xiaoice climate.

However, the reality is very cruel to He Zuxian and the thousands of military families in Wuchang Zuowei who are in the same situation as He Zuxian. Not to mention cotton clothes, even single clothes made of the cheapest Zhijiang cloth, they don't have a complete one at home.

He Zuxian, his old mother, wife and four children, holding straw together, curled up in his family's grass house that was in disrepair and leaking on all sides. On the one hand, because of hunger, and on the other hand, because there was no effective means to protect against the cold, all seven people in the He family's house did not say a word. A peculiar silence enveloped the house.

In fact, if someone passes by the civilian residential area in Wuchang City at this time, they will find that this silence hides a certain sense of despair. Because the commoners, the poor are the same in all Chinese cities, and in Wuchang, the capital of the Huguang region, they also make up the vast majority. So, you will find that the whole of China is shrouded in this silent despair in the early winter.

He Zuxian really doesn't like this silence in the house now.

He Zuxian's father is one of the few people in the entire Wuchang Left Guard, who is not a senior military attaché, but one of the people who has martial arts. Because the He family's family background was not bad before. Therefore, He Zuxian himself also learned martial arts from his father. Nearly a decade ago, He Zuxian once led the army to suppress a tax resistance "anti-people" in a village near Wuchang Mansion. A serf with a wooden hoe and a shovel was certainly no match for a serf with a rusty iron weapon.

When the "anti-people" were suppressed, He Zuxian led a small group of soldiers to carry out the order issued by the superior to cut off their heads and record military merits, those "anti-people" who squatted on the ground with numb and indifferent faces, waiting for the soldiers to come and cut off their heads, were cut off by serfs with the same as them, but in an organized manner with serious weapons, their heads were cut off in a similar silence.

Since then, He Zuxian has never been keen on his original idea of making contributions. He will no longer actively participate in such actions to realize his life ambition of "killing the enemy and serving the country", which he inherited from his father.

At the same time, He Zuxian became very sensitive and disgusted with any silence.

Looking at his mother, wife and children, who were shaking on the bed with straw like himself, He Zuxian wanted to say something to break the silence. But he opened and opened his mouth, not knowing what to say.

Originally, it was his responsibility as the head of the family to set up a household and feed his old mother, wife and children. However, since He Zuxian really became the head of the He family, the land and savings disappeared little by little in his hands. Today, under the auspices of him, the head of the family, the He family has become a situation where there is no last meal, not even a last meal, and the whole family has been hungry for two days in a row.

He Zuxian wanted to open his mouth to say something. But a great sense of shame, shame, rose from his chest and choked his throat. He couldn't say a word.

Just when He Zuxian's family was attracted by his expression as if he was about to say something, and He Zuxian himself fell into an embarrassing situation where all the family members looked at him but couldn't say a word, the bell rang in the school yard of the health center.

Because this bell, which means that all the soldiers immediately rushed to the campus to report, has not been rung for too long. So much so that many people can't remember what this bell represents. However, this bell gave He Zuxian, who was in embarrassment, an excuse to leave.

In this way, He Zuxian was wearing a military uniform that was barely a suit, and the tattered **** beggar was not much stronger, and he rushed towards the big school field tremblingly.

On the way to Daxiaochang, He Zuxian met many soldiers from Ben Bai and Ben Qianhu. They are all in the same situation as He Zuxian. Their bodies trembled in the cold wind, and they were confused by the sudden ringing of the bell.

After arriving at the Dajiaochang, He Zuxian found that several young people who were more familiar with him in the Qianhu and had some martial arts like him were tied to the platform of the Daxiaochang. A few of the personal soldiers of Master Gu, the general soldier of Huguang, who had only seen each other twice with ordinary military households, were escorting them.

It took a long time for He Zuxian to know what was going on. It turned out that because they hadn't paid a single copper for half a year, those soldiers actually ran to rob a grain cart loaded with grain that Master Gu, the chief soldier of Huguang, wanted to sell outside. These seven people don't know what kind of courage they have. There were only seven people, and they actually dared to rob the grain convoy guarded by more than thirty heavily armed Gu Da Ye's family members.

In this way, except for one of the seven people who escaped, the remaining six were arrested. In order to give a wake-up call to all the poor men and poor soldiers, teach everyone the rules. The chief soldier decided to execute these six bold rebels in front of all the guards in Wuchang.

Whether it's inside the guard or outside the guard. In recent years, I don't know how many civilians and military households have been executed for robbing grain trucks and grain stores. For He Zuxian, he was completely numb to this kind of thing.

However, I don't know how. Today, He Zuxian, when he saw that several military households of Ben Qianhu who were very familiar with him were about to have their heads cut off. His feelings, which had been completely numbed by hunger and cold, suddenly became intense.

A special kind of love that He Zuxian couldn't name, tightly grasped He Zuxian's heart. This kind of affection made He Zuxian want to shout out loudly and violently. This affection, like a flame, burned the hunger and cold that tightly wrapped around his heart, making his blood boil.

He Zuxian, who was standing very close to the wooden platform, felt as if his mouth was out of his control, and shouted loudly when several family masters were about to execute those military households: "What's the big deal about killing people!" But when will the food be paid? ”

As soon as the words left his mouth, He Zuxian regretted it. It occurred to him at once that this kind of offense should not be what he said.

However, before he could continue to think about it. He heard several people around him shout to the stage as if they had made an appointment: "Yes, what is the salary?" ”

This question, like a stone being thrown into a calm pond, caused ripples. It started from the surroundings of He Zuxian, and then spread throughout the entire university field in a blink of an eye.

More than 2,000 military men began to ask the stunned officials and family members on stage the same question: "When will the food be paid?!" ”。