In the early Qing Dynasty, the life of the banner people was quite affluent, as Sejong said:

"In ancient times, raising soldiers was not as important as the Holy Ancestor to raise Manchurian soldiers, not only did they receive twice as much money and food as the Green Banner soldiers, but they could also support their families with rice in a year. "Sometimes the emperor also gives a large number of rewards, Yongzheng four years,

"The ministers of the Eight Banners and others have discussed and replied, and they are now rewarded with two taels of money per month for the guards and other leaders, which is converted into one tael of silver at the price of rice, a total of three taels. The deputy guards and other leaders have one tael of money and grain per month, and the price of rice is one tael of silver, a total of two taels. Check Xiao rode to participate in the collar, etc., and now he has obtained one tael of money and grain, and twenty-four taels of rice in three seasons a year. The deputy staff leader and other relatives had no relatives in the money, grain, rice and stone, and now the emperor has given the emperor a reward to increase the silver of the leader, and the money and grain are one or two and a half yuan per month, and the twenty-four hu rice obtained in three seasons of the year is cut, and the rice price is discounted by one tael of silver per month. A total of two taels and five cents of silver were given every month. The deputy staff and others are ordered to get one or two or five cents of money and grain every month, and they are not allowed to give the price of rice and silver. ”

Zhang Jiashi himself was not originally a person with a talent for learning, but because he could not know the current situation after crossing over, he knew a lot of things in the process of studying the Qingyu Spirit Book many times.

For example, why the land system of ancient Chinese feudal dynasties gradually evolved into a more and more serious problem of land annexation.

The key to this is that once a court loses the power to control the private land, it will inevitably lead to these lands being seized by people with more wealth or a certain amount of power.

In this respect, the Qin Empire may have been due to the fact that it was a new empire that had declined very quickly, and that there had not been much sign of land annexation.

However, after the Han Empire, especially after the Zhaoxuan Zhongxing, the land problem of the Han Empire became more and more serious, and finally succeeded in allowing Wang Mang, the "Duke of Zhou", to seize the Han dynasty in a sense.

......

Land annexation refers to the increasing concentration of land in the hands of a small number of big landlords and big bureaucrats, while the peasants are increasingly losing their land, or even having no land at all. Land annexation was an incurable disease of centralization in feudal society. In order to own more land, the big landlords resorted to all kinds of despicable means, especially in disaster years, when the landlords took advantage of the land to make the peasants who owned the land sell their land and real estate and become tenant farmers.

One view is that land annexation is often prominent in the later part of a dynasty, and that it is the result of the development of the feudal economy, and is a manifestation of the private ownership of land by the landlords and the increasing power of the landlord class.

The self-sufficient natural economy in feudal society was the root cause of land annexation. The weakness of the feudal central power was the direct cause of the intensification of land annexation at the end of the dynasty in China's feudal society.

When land annexation is serious, two contradictions come to the fore. The first is the contradiction between the peasants and the landlords, and the second is the contradiction between the feudal state and the landlords. The development of these contradictions will have two results: first, the feudal government will adopt measures to restrain annexation, so that the phenomenon of annexation will be alleviated to a certain extent, and second, it will directly lead to the outbreak of the peasant war.

In successive dynasties, there were also many laws and regulations regulating land annexation, with the aim of restricting land annexation, ensuring the interests of yeoman farmers and restricting the interests of large landlords, so as to maintain feudal rule and ensure stable financial revenue of the state.

In this regard, the more famous are: the Northern Wei Dynasty to the early Tang Dynasty implemented the uniform field system, the Song Dynasty Wang Anshi reform, the Ming Dynasty Zhang Juzheng drafted a whip law, the Qing Dynasty Kangxi period of the stall Ding Mu system, etc.

Among them, Zhang Jiashi recognized the Juntian system. But this is not to say that Wang Anshi's change of law and a whip method are not meritorious.

But what Zhang Jiashi didn't know was that in later generations, there was a view on the issue of land annexation, that is, the issue of land annexation was in fact overestimated:

The tone of this view points out that the evidence of land annexation in ancient times is either the description written by some literati, or some general description put forward by some scholars as arguments to promote their own claims, or the description of the amount of land annexed by some officials as evidence for the purpose of impeaching certain officials.

For example, Dong Zhongshu of the Han Dynasty said in "Limiting the Field": Qin "used the method of Shang Yang to change the imperial system, except for the well field, the people have to sell and buy, the rich have no land to stand on, and the poor have no place to stand." “

Over the next 2,000 years, this phrase has been widely used, but few have seriously analyzed the distribution of wealth and income in rural China. Liu Kezhuang of the Song Dynasty said in the note: "As for devouring the anointment of thousands of families, even the thousands of roads, and the annual income of one million Hu, it has not been since it was opened." “

Lu You disclosed in "The Story of Entering Shu" that the wind of annexation that blew in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, not to mention the land occupied by the powerful minister Qin Hui, alone reached 960 hectares of land in Yongfengwei alone.

Gu Yanwu in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties said: "Among the people of Wu, those who have land tithe, and those who are tenants tithe. “

In the twenty-eighth year of Kangxi, Xu Sanli, the deputy capital of the imperial capital, impeached Xu Qianxue, the secretary of the Criminal Department, for "buying 10,000 hectares of land in Wuxi County", which means that Mu Tianyan and Xu Qianxue successively owned at least 10,000 hectares of land.

Most of these arguments about land annexation are not credible. Written by literati, there are many exaggerations. For example, the poet wrote: "Three thousand feet of gray hair". A person's hair is very long at three feet, how can it be three thousand feet?

However, for the sake of rendering, it is not necessary to exaggerate the reality without looking at the facts. In order to promote their own doctrines, such as Dong Zhongshu and others, it is inevitable to exaggerate.

Dong Zhongshu's remark that "the rich have no land and no place for the poor" is a general remark of the literati, which is not a scientific expression at all, and he should point out how much land is occupied by the rich and how much land is occupied by the poor, and inform the specific data of land annexation.

As for planting false accusations out of nothing in order to attack opponents, this is one of the methods that traditional bureaucrats are best at. For example, Xu Sanli of the Qing Dynasty said that Mu Tianyan and Xu Qianxue owned at least 10,000 hectares of land, which is simply untrue.

Wu Tingxuan's statistics pointed out that there were only four households with more than 1,000 hectares of land in the Qing Dynasty, namely He Shen, Bai Ling, Chen Chaoyu, and Chen Yuanlong. Among them, the sand field owned by Chen Chaoyu may not be worth thousands of hectares when converted into fertile land; The remaining three households are all bureaucrats, and their land area is provided by Danzhang, or estimated, of which there are many imaginary numbers, not necessarily so many fields. Those who can have thousands of hectares of land are also rare in the entire Qing Dynasty.

But for this statement, Zhang Jiashi can only say hehe.

Perhaps during the Qing Dynasty, the land holdings of the leaders of the land annexation were quite large, but there was a big problem with this, that is, the land used by the Qing Dynasty to support the banner people was actually not a small number.

Before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, due to the fact that "the land was not vast and the people's strength was difficult," the Manchu Eight Banners had to bear an extremely heavy burden of many errands in addition to "drawing one out of three pieces" and serving as soldiers to fight. The burden of the flag people is so heavy, the hardships of life can be imagined.

However, after entering the customs, the Qing court gave a variety of preferential treatment to the banner people in life: "Those who make the eight banners of the national pilgrimage are the most important."

In the first year of Shunzhi, the Qing court ordered: "All the eight banners of strong men, errands, grain, grass, and cloth will never be lost." "They are exempt from all obligations except military service. At the same time, rations are given to support family members: full food for those over seven years old, and half for those under six years old, half of the food. For they eat without labor, and sit back and enjoy what they have done, like "birds waiting to be fed."

In the second year of Shunzhi, the Qing court formulated regulations for the relief of the Eight Banners, giving preferential treatment to the banner people from all aspects. Because the soldiers of the Eight Banners left their homeland in the northeast and strengthened their military functions, in order to make the soldiers of the Eight Banners charge into battle without "worries about the future", the Qing rulers implemented the policy of "enclosing land" by Ji Ding and granting fields, "enclosing the fields of Shuntian, Yongping, Baoding, and Hejian", and from the first year of Shunzhi to the fifth year of Kangxi, dozens of prefectures and counties around Beijing of 500 li carried out three large-scale land enclosures, occupying a total of 166838 hectares of land.

Only the first month of the fourth year of Shunzhi enclosed the fertile soil of the 41 counties of Jifu as many as 993,707 hectares, and this kind of enclosure activity continued until the 24th year of Kangxi.

In addition to the Huangzhuang and Wangzhuang occupied by the nobles of the Eight Banners, "in October of the first year of Shunzhi, the household department issued an edict: all the people of the prefectures and counties near Beijing, the ownerless barren fields and the Ming Dynasty's royal relatives, horses, princesses, uncles, eunuchs, etc., all those who died in the rebellion, there are many ownerless fields, and the Erbu will conduct an inventory...... In March of the third year, it was agreed that the money and grain would be exempted forever.

According to the number of fields in Qianlong's 60 years, the fields of the three banners of the Inner Mansion were 1,278,800 mu. One hundred and thirty-three thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven acres of land in the sect. ”

The armies of the Eight Banners also received a large amount of land, "The Eight Banners of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Han gave 1,4066,862 acres of land, and those who sold it to the people in enclosure at the beginning." In the seventh year of Yongzheng, the official was redeemed, and the official ransomed the field. In the fourth year of Qianlong, it was agreed that Zhuang Dinggu would be submitted and bought, and the price of silver would be withheld and paid in five years. Zhuangding buyers are limited to five salaries, totaling 30 acres. The price of the five salaries is forty-eight taels of silver in the upper land, thirty-eight taels in the second class, twenty-eight taels in the third class, eighteen taels in the fourth class, and twelve taels in the wasteland. ”

According to the regulations, at that time, "each strong man was given five salaries, and six acres were paid". But in reality, the vast majority of flagmen have achieved more or much more than that. For "every enclosure of the people...... In the villages, the two riders were awarded ropes at the rate (household) before and after, and the total amount of the four weeks was recorded, and a total of several hundred and ten salaries were obtained for each lap...... The salaryman, the square of a rope is wide, and its method is faster than the bow. The circle is certain, then the Lushe field is all there. ”

Unlike the situation outside the Guan, the Qing rulers adopted another method, that is, to pay the officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners, and the salaries of the banner people were "paid on a monthly basis. "By the ninth year of Kangxi, the monthly salary of the Eight Banners Forward, the Guard, the Leader and the Armor was basically fixed at the standard of four taels and three taels,"

The horsemen of the Qing Dynasty paid two taels of silver per month. Mi three cang. The infantry paid one or two or five cents of silver per month. Mi three cang. Horses spring and winter months to branch grass dry silver one or two dollars. In summer and autumn, six coins of silver were paid. "The vest is given three taels of silver per month, and the guards are given four taels of silver per month. They are given 48 digits of rice every year. The number of nuclear is a few families, which can be sufficient. ”

Not only that, in order to motivate the fighting spirit of the officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners and relieve them of worries, the Qing court stipulated that after the death of the officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners, their widows also had corresponding silver or salaries. "The widows of the officials, such as the leader, the defense, and the Xiao Cavalry School, can receive half of their husband's salary every year, which is 52.5, 40, and 30 taels respectively; The widows of the leader, the striker, the waistcoat, and the infantry are also entitled to receive half of the husband's salary every year, which is 24, 24, 18, and 9 taels respectively. For the old women and orphan girls who are unattended, they are each given 12 taels of silver per year, and they are paid with the month to "support them for life".

The Qing court could say to the banner people, "Kindness is frequent, and all are thoughtful." Feed the soldiers with the righteousness of the world, and if you want to increase the money and food in addition. "Another form of salary for the Eight Banners is grain and rice. According to the regulations, there are two ways to distribute the rice of the garrison vest, one is to directly distribute the rice to the soldiers, called "true colors"; One is to discount the rice to silver, which is called "folding color".

"The forwards, guards, leaders, and horsemen are given forty-six hus per year, and the infantry is twenty-two hundreds." These fixed salaries are called "sitting grains". If you are temporarily on a business trip, you can also receive a "travel ration" that is about equal to the amount of "sitting ration".

In the thirteenth year of Shunzhi, Fu Lin sent an edict to the household department: "It has always been customized, and those who wear armor will be given monthly rations." If he goes out on an expedition and is sent out in an event, he shall be given half of his monthly ration because of the provision of food. I remember that all the families such as the people in armor depend on the monthly food support, and the expedition and dispatch are all official affairs, so I want them to work hard for the country, but it is to make them have internal worries, which is deeply pitiful. In the future, although the armor-clad people go out to fight and are sent, they are still allowed to give all their monthly rations at home. ”

At that time, the soldiers of the Eight Banners lived a relatively good life, and people at that time called it "hardcore crops". Of the soldiers of the Eight Banners, more than three-quarters of the bannermen were forwards, guards, and vests, and infantry accounted for only a quarter of the total. Compared with the prices at that time, the silver and rice salaries of the flag soldiers were very high. The Ministry of Industry built a house for the flag soldiers at the Dongzhi Gate, "each room is one zhang wide, one zhang and five feet deep, the eaves pillar is seven feet eight inches high, and five purlins are paved with reed foil, and each room needs to be made of 2202 cents of silver." Based on this calculation, a guard's salary for five months can build a room outside the Dongzhi Gate, and a year's salary can build more than two rooms.

In addition to silver and rice, there is also a horse gan. The Qing court stipulated that each garrison soldier should raise three horses, one for riding and two for military uniforms and tableware and other items when recruited. However, in fact, the number of horses to be raised varies from one garrison to another, ranging from three horses to two horses. Those who raise horses not only have silver, "the Qing Dynasty horsemen paid two taels of silver per month, and three warehouses of rice." "The government will also give the forage," and the grass will be received in two bunches of grass and three liters of grass every day. The small material is divided into a bunch of grass every day, two liters of material, and each bunch is converted into seven cents of silver. This kind of forage also has a difference between "natural color" and "folded color". Taking the garrison of Suiyuan City as an example, the vest is "

Two horses for each person, six stones and three buckets for seven months of beans for each year, four hundred and twenty bunches of grass, a total of 14 taels of silver and 3 cents and 2 cents and 5 cents, and two horses of silver for a total of 28 taels and 6 cents and 5 cents of silver." Generally speaking, "the horse in spring and winter months and the grass is one or two or two dollars, and the summer and autumn months are six dollars in the grass and silver." "The salaries of the garrison flag soldiers, including silver, rice, horses, etc., are divided according to the different ranks and types of troops.

In general, after the Shunzhi Dynasty enactment, the Kangxi Dynasty improved several times, and then it basically remained unchanged.

As far as the main income of the garrison Eight Banners is concerned, that is, the monthly salary and the annual rice, the Qing generation has a clear customization: the garrison leader and the forward are paid 36 taels of silver per year, each vest is 24 taels, the gunner is 24 taels, and the craftsman and infantry armor are 12 taels each. This is the general standard. It can be said that the striker and the leader urged, "counting their income, it is more than the income of the seventh or eighth grade officials."

After the officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners retired, there was also a pension. "Forwards, guards, leaders of another household, people in armor, etc., those who are sick and disabled, and those who are over 60 years old and have retired, and who have fought in front of the army and have made military merits. The minister in charge and others have made detailed inspections that no matter whether they have real estate or not, they can live on it, and whether their children and grandchildren have money and food, they will be given one tael of silver and one piece of rice every month to support them for the rest of the year. ”

The Qing court adopted the method of "all contracting" for the soldiers of the Eight Banners, building houses for them at their official expense at the garrison, and bearing all the maintenance costs thereafter.

In case of red and white affairs, the official will give a certain amount of silver and pension silver, "all soldiers who ask for rewards for red and white affairs, the flag battalion will be reported on one side, and the other side will be notified to the rest shop, and the deputy general of the Chinese army who is in charge of the rest of the left division will personally send it for inspection and give it to the undertaker." The water division camp is not enough to reward the money, and the camp leader asks for a hundred taels of silver each time in the city store, in order to prepare the reward. ”

"Emperor Sejong Xian, in order to reward the soldiers for the red and white incident, issued 100,000 taels of gold for each banner and handed it over to the ministers of the banner king to operate at their discretion. ”

"Eight Banners Guards, School Xiao, Riding School, Forward, Guard, Leader, etc., the happy event is planned to give ten taels of silver, and the funeral is twenty taels. Happy events such as vests are planned to be six taels, and funerals are twelve taels. The infantry and the deacons who eat one tael of food and so on, the happy event is planned to be four taels and eight taels of funeral. ”

At the time of the relocation, the government provided for all the expenses along the way. "The personnel of each department are replaced in a year, so that they can gallop within a year, how to make it not to be in a tight place, and submit it to the ministry to investigate and deliberate. After the Ministry of War discussed and reviewed, according to the grade of the member, rations and other rations were paid on a daily basis. ”

In the early Qing Dynasty, the life of the banner people was quite affluent, as Sejong said: "In ancient times, raising soldiers was not as important as the Holy Ancestor raising Manchurian soldiers, not only did they receive twice as much money and grain as the Green Banner soldiers, but also the rice they received in a year could support several families." "Sometimes the emperor also gives a large number of rewards, Yongzheng four years," the ministers of the Eight Banners and others agreed, and now reward the guards and other leaders with two taels of money per month, which is converted into one tael of silver at the price of rice, a total of three taels. The deputy guards and other leaders have one tael of money and grain per month, and the price of rice is one tael of silver, a total of two taels. Check Xiao rode to participate in the collar, etc., and now he has obtained one tael of money and grain, and twenty-four taels of rice in three seasons a year. The deputy staff leader and other relatives had no relatives in the money, grain, rice and stone, and now the emperor has given the emperor a reward to increase the silver of the leader, and the money and grain are one or two and a half yuan per month, and the twenty-four hu rice obtained in three seasons of the year is cut, and the rice price is discounted by one tael of silver per month. A total of two taels and five cents of silver were given every month. The deputy staff and others are ordered to get one or two or five cents of money and grain every month, and they are not allowed to give the price of rice and silver. ”

The economic treatment of the banner soldiers of the Qing Dynasty is as summarized by Wei Yuan: "The use of soldiers in our dynasty is different from that of the previous generation in two ways: the number of soldiers is small, and the number of salaries is also large." The purpose was to let the soldiers "support their wealth" through high salaries, so that they could devote themselves to practicing martial arts and become a brigade. ”

The rulers of the Qing Dynasty originally thought that by establishing such a set of preferential systems with official salaries, military salaries, and land revenues as the three pillars and complementing each other, they could solve the problem of the livelihood of banner people at all levels once and for all.