On the Yangtze River, the sails are continuous, and the tall ships that can sail on the sea are connected by the oars on the river, forming a long line, breaking the waves, and going all the way east.

On the bank of the river, there is a golden harvest scene, but there are few villages. In addition, the density of ridges is much thinner than a few years ago, and it seems that there are large fields everywhere, and small plots of farmland are becoming extremely rare. Occasionally, I see a village, that is, dozens of families gathered together, most of them are blue bricks and gray tiles, and the most common dilapidated thatched huts in the countryside of Jiangnan in the past have been reduced by most of them. Contrasting with the endless gold around it, it is really a scene of national wealth and people's wealth.

Lu Wenhuan, who had just been crowned King Lu, crossed his arms and stood on the deck of a four-thousand-stone fortune ship, looking at the scenery on the bank of the river, and said with emotion: "A certain family has not been to the south of the Yangtze River for ten years, but in the blink of an eye, it is peaceful and prosperous. ”

"There may not be a peaceful and prosperous world, and it is true that a few families are happy and a few are sad." Lu Shihu, dressed in military uniform, stood beside his uncle, his brows furrowed. Maybe it's because of the sun, a black face has become darker, and it's about to become a Kunlun slave.

He and Chen Dexing are also old acquaintances, but they later parted ways and are no longer the core figures of the Chen Group. Huang Zhishen, Ren Yijiang, and Kong Yu, who trained together in Yangzhou in the past, are now all princes and generals. And although Lu Shihu was also made a marquis, he didn't have any good errands. First of all, he was the prefect of Jiangdong Province, because of the constraints of aristocratic democracy, this prefect did not have much taste. also took care of a bunch of disputes caused by the resignation all day long, and drove the landlords of the Shijue and the military landlords out of conscience. In the end, he really didn't want to do it, so he put on his uniform again and got together with his uncle Lu Wenhuan. This Jiangnan is now calm though. But in Lu Shihu's view, it is by no means a peaceful and prosperous era.

Chen Dexing can suppress the Datong Party. However, it cannot change the general trend of land concentration in the rural areas of the south of the Yangtze River -- the land concentration that appears today is not quite the same as the land concentration in the Song Dynasty. This time it's not a concentration of ownership. Rather, it is a concentration of usufruct rights. Due to the disappearance of the imperial examination scholar class and the large-scale redistribution of land, as well as the emergence of the democracy of the gentry and gentry. As a result, the situation in the rural areas of Jiangnan has changed greatly in just a few years.

The first was the complete breaking of the personal control of the scholar class over the Jiangnan peasants - in many cases, the tenant farmers did not oppose this control, because it was the only way they could survive in a difficult world.

The second was the redistribution of land, the democracy of the gentry and gentry, and the emergence of the modern bank of Tiandaozhuang, which together created a kulak class - although the scholars became the masters of the countryside through the imperial examinations and the righteous gates, they usually did not manage the land, but simply divided the land into small plots and rented them out, regardless of whether the tenant was able to do so or not. In short, they will do this by collecting tenant rents, exempt money, apportionment money, and usury. In the end, most of the fruits of the tenants' labor were seized. In the countryside under the monopoly of the imperial examinations, it was impossible to get rich by managing the land, and all kinds of unfair taxes, assessments, and labor would bankrupt all the rich peasants and turn them into tenants. Therefore, in Jiangnan at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the kulak class almost did not exist.

But under the new system of the Chen Ming dynasty, the kulaks were resurrected. The democracy of the gentry and gentry effectively restrained the bureaucracy at the grassroots level and made agricultural taxes more affordable. Today's Ming Dynasty does not have the existence of "breaking the county order and destroying the prefect" - any Ming citizen who spends hundreds of dollars to buy a gentry card will immediately have a vote to protect himself! Moreover, the landlords of the Ming Dynasty are either scholars or military households, and they are all linked to knives and guns. In the Ming Dynasty, where military uniforms were shining, the sergeants, military households, and their families who ran land in the township were not at the mercy of local petty officials.

At the same time, a number of large-scale money banks and silver trumpets led by Tiandaozhuang appeared. and the continuous inflow of gold and silver in the New World, as well as the successful issuance of Tiandao banknotes. Let the Ming private capital be abundant, and the interest rate on borrowing has dropped to single digits. This also makes it possible to take out loans to farm the land. The rapid development of the iron smelting industry in the Ming Dynasty and the return of the northern pastoral areas provided the agriculture of Jiangnan with cheap new agricultural tools and livestock.

This cascade of factors eventually came together. It made it possible for some of the families of the scholars and military households to develop into farmers. They first drove tenants and hired farmers. Wage labor, livestock, and new farming tools were used for farming. After earning their first pot of gold, they began to expand their operations, leasing the farmland of the nobles and military households who had no intention of operating the land in the countryside, and established large-scale farms with greater efficiency.

And this process is naturally combined with waves of large-scale expulsion campaigns! As a result, in just a few years, the number of tenants in the rural areas of Jiangnan has been greatly reduced. A large number of tenantless peasant households appeared, who either left their homes to make a living in the north, Sichuan, and Jinghu, where there were few people and land, or went into the slums of the big cities, sold their labor, and earned a pittance - wasn't this the game of early capitalism? If the peasants and uncles are all farming at home, who are the capitalists going to exploit?

So capitalism, the evil thing, in most cases, appears in both agriculture and industry and commerce - capitalism can be said to be a more efficient mode of organization of production (certainly not as good as socialism). When it appeared in rural production, greatly increasing the efficiency of agricultural production, so that fewer peasants could feed a larger population, it was possible to drive a large number of landless peasants into the cities to become proletarians. Fewer peasants produced far more food than they could sell to the cities for industrial goods.

Of course, in this process, not every landless peasant is willing to become a proletariat. Among them, there are also many people who dare to take risks and go abroad to be a powerful colonizer.

In the past year or so, Lü Shihu and the Lü family's son-in-law, Fan Wenhu, have been busy recruiting these poor people who want to be colonizers, and then training and equipping them into a real army - although the Lü family has its own army, not all the Lü soldiers are willing to abandon their homes in Hubei and participate in expeditions with uncertain futures.

And Lu Wenhuan, Lu Shihu and Fan Wenhu, to some extent, like these hired soldiers, were also forced to colonize by Chen Dexing.

Although Chen Dexing has been clamoring for a long time to go west. However, the main force of his Ming army never had the intention of leaving the Central Plains. Instead, they drove into the territory of the vassal vassals! Lu Wenhuan's hometown Jiangling City is no exception, a whole division with dozens of cannons was stationed a few months ago! Every day, they conduct military exercises outside the city, firing guns and artillery to scare people.

forced Lu Wenhuan to have no choice but to go on the road.

"It's just that this time, I don't know if there will be a day to return to Middle-earth!" Looking at the scene of a bumper harvest on both sides of the Yangtze River, Lu Wenhuan let out a long sigh.

……

Almost at the same time, the same sigh was uttered from someone on the snowy plateau.

"It seems that the old man's old bones are going to be lost in Tianzhu Kingdom!"

Shi Tianze, the king of Su, was commanding his army of 20,000 at this time, marching between two continuous snow-capped mountains. Jiangnan is still in the golden autumn, but the snowy plateau is already cold and windy. In a few more days, heavy snow will close the mountain road, and it will not be suitable for the army to pass. Therefore, after Pas-pa agreed to go south to Tianzhu, Chen Dexing sent his holy decree, the order of the army staff, and the order of the Grand Lama of Phags-pa to the Usi-Tibetan army on a fast horse to the plateau.

Shi Tianze had to rush to Saska before the snow closed the mountain. When the spring is warm and the snow melts, it will be time to cross the Himalayas to conquer Neporo. Then you have to use Nepolo as a base to attack the hinterland of Tianzhu in the south!

"Father-in-law, Tianzhu is a good place, and its wealth is no less than that of Jiangnan." Advancing alongside Shi Tianze is Guo Kan. He had come to see off his stepfather, and was going to escort him all the way to Jade Dragon Haya. He used to go on expeditions with Hülegü, and although he had never been to Tianzhu, he had never heard of the wealth there.

"The old man has also heard of the wealth of Tianzhu, but Tianzhu also has a Ming monarch and a hero, didn't Hülegü succeed in trying to get Tianzhu?"

"That's because Hülegü didn't go all out to capture Tianzhu." Guo Kan smiled, "That guy was busy fighting with the Mamluks and his cousin Brother Bei'er, and he didn't send a few people into Tianzhu at all, and he just grabbed a handful and left." The father-in-law went out with Lu Wenhuan, Li Tingzhi, and His Royal Highness the King this time. The four families work together, and if there is no 200,000 army, there will be no shortage of 150,000 soldiers. And steel armor, muskets, cannons, so you can't beat it? ”

As he spoke, Guo Kan glanced at the marching army. The equipment was still very good, one-third of the officers and men had steel armor, 1,000 arquebuses, twelve 3-inch guns, six 1-and-a-half guns and three 10-inch mortars, and 3,500 cavalry. Half of the officers and soldiers were veterans who had followed the Shi family for many years, and the rest were newly recruited mercenaries, but they had also undergone rigorous training.

If the British, Song, and Lü armies also had the same strength, even if they couldn't destroy the Delhi Sultanate, it would be no difficult to grab a few pieces of territory in Tianzhu.

But Shi Tianze was not so optimistic, his brows were deeply furrowed, and he stroked his beard and said: "The old man has been using soldiers for half his life, but he has never seen such a battle of Tianzhu as before, and he has been preparing for so long with great fanfare, and he is still issuing bonds in Jiangdu Securities City, which has long been known to the whole country." I'm afraid that the Delhi Sultan of Tianzhu has already heard about it, and he has probably been preparing for a long time at this time, just waiting for our army to come to the door. Maybe he will make peace with Kublai Khan and deal with us together. ”

Guo Kan nodded, "It's still my father-in-law who is thoughtful, but the Sultan of Delhi also entered Tianzhu from the outside, they don't trust the indigenous people of Tianzhu, and they rely on mercenaries from the Western Regions, and the number is limited, and they can't defeat our Eight-Nation Alliance." (To be continued......)