The convoy was carrying goods and goods and soon came to Yulin.

Some old thieves knelt on the ground to bid farewell to Li Zicheng and parted ways to their hometown.

But they both chose a son and followed Li Zicheng to Nanjing. It is not only to go to Nanjing to study at a military academy, but also to have a future in the future, and it is also similar to sending hostages to Nanjing.

Li Zicheng observed the scenery along the way and said: "Compared with before, there are still too few people here." ”

The envoy Zhang Yunyi wanted to roll his eyes when he heard this, the Yulin area is sparsely populated, who is the damn cause? You're embarrassed to say that!

Zhang Yunyi pursed his lips and said: "The imperial court immigrants have reclaimed many populations. Counting the soldiers and their families, there are more than 80,000 people in the Yulin territory. ”

"It's a pity that a lot of land is barren." Li Zicheng said.

Yulin is close to the Mu Us Desert, only in the northern area of Yansui, the Ming Dynasty reclaimed 3.45 million acres of land, of which more than 1 million acres of military land. To be honest, there was a certain amount of damage to the ecological balance.

Nowadays, the population has plummeted, and many of the fertile fields cultivated in the Ming Dynasty have been turned into grassland again.

If all of them are divided into fields, including urban residents, each person can be divided into 60 or 70 acres. The surplus land can only be barren, and some farmers still raise horses and sheep, and the fields are overgrown with weeds anyway.

Li Zicheng asked: "The new dynasty, like the old Ming Dynasty, also organized the soldiers and their families into military households?" ”

Zhang Yunyi explained: "There are no military households in the new dynasty, all of them are civilian households. The reason why the family members also immigrated here was just to solve the homesickness of the soldiers. The army of the new dynasty of Datong first organized and trained peasant soldiers in the countryside. Only the best peasant soldiers can enlist in the army to become the Datong Army. If the Datong Army, which is over 35 years old, has not been promoted to a non-commissioned officer, it will be forcibly discharged from the army and selected peasant soldiers to be recruited. ”

Li Zicheng also sent someone to inquire about this kind of thing, but he never wanted to believe it.

Li Zicheng asked: "Non-commissioned officers over the age of 35 must be discharged from the army, how much do they have to pay each year for severance pay?" ”

"It's not a lot, one after another, and most of them are not discharged at once, only tens of thousands of taels of silver are dismissed every year." Zhang Yunyi said with a smile.

Li Zicheng was speechless, and he didn't want to speak anymore for a moment.

The peasant soldiers should be trained first, and the best peasant soldiers should be selected to enlist in the army, and those over the age of 35 should be forcibly discharged. It is entirely conceivable that the quality of the soldiers of the Datong Army is so high that the traditional army cannot compete with it at all.

Zhang Yunyi continued: "There are too many peasants and soldiers in the country, and Your Majesty has taken pity on the hard work of the peasant households, and it has been reduced several times. Today, there are about 1 million peasants, and at most there are 3 million peasants. ”

Li Zicheng had seen peasant soldiers in Hebei, and his combat effectiveness was not as good as his old battalion, but it was stronger than ordinary Dashun soldiers.

What is the concept of 3 million peasant soldiers?

Just thinking about it makes my scalp tingle.

Even if there are only 1 million peasant soldiers left, if a big war really breaks out, hundreds of thousands of troops can be pulled out at any time. They are all after long-term training, and they can become an army after simple training, who can stop them in the whole world.

Night was about to fall, and everyone rested in a village near the river.

This is the valley area from Yulin to Mizhi, and the village is not very large, only a few dozen households.

The village chief invited them to dinner, but Zhang Yunyi shook his head and refused, only letting the entourage go into the village to buy some meat, eggs, vegetables and vegetables.

Soon, the village chief brought the villagers over with a basket of eggs, a few chickens and ducks, and many vegetables. Zhang Yunyi paid with an official ticket, and the villagers were overjoyed, because the price was relatively high.

"What is this?" Li Zicheng pointed to the official ticket and asked.

Zhang Yunyi explained: "Folk commonly known as tickets, there are two kinds of tickets: official tickets and military tickets. The official ticket is used as a salary, and the leading ticket of the soldier is used as a military salary, and the ticket of Shaanxi can be exchanged for money and grain in the bank when he gets it in Fujian. ”

Li Zicheng was puzzled: "This is printed on paper, and the officials and soldiers are willing to accept it?" ”

Zhang Yunyi laughed: "Even the people are willing to accept it, don't look at the paper print, but when you get it to the bank, it can be worth real money." ”

Li Zicheng asked: "There is no Haoqiang forging tickets?" ”

"Yes," Zhang Yunyi said, "because of the forgery of tickets, hundreds of people were killed. And even if it is forged, it can only coax fools and fools, from paper to ink to official seals and dark lines, each ticket has nine anti-counterfeiting means. ”

Li Zicheng said: "Isn't it the same as Daming Bao banknotes? In the future, the more and more it will be printed, and no one will accept it. ”

Zhang Yunyi explained: "It's different. Daming treasure banknotes, just print and don't receive, and it's useless when it's old. The bills of my Datong court are too worn, and the banks in various places will hand them in, and after destroying them, they will reprint new ones. Destroy as much as you want, and never print more. If the ticket is torn, as long as it can be put together into a whole ticket, you can also go to the bank to exchange it. In addition, if you want to increase the invoice, the amount of additional issuance must also be recorded. For each additional issuance, there is a corresponding reserve of money and grain. From the beginning of His Majesty's army to the present, only more than 36 million stone tickets have been printed. ”

Official and military tickets are now all in grain, and the denomination is not worth much.

If you want to exchange it for silver money in other places, it will be converted according to the local official price of grain. This is to balance the situation in various places, so that officials and soldiers in some places do not suffer.

But there have been loopholes, and some businessmen with bright brains, when doing business in various places, bought tickets at high prices and took them to banks in Jiangnan to exchange silver taels. Because the price of grain in Jiangnan is the highest, and the tickets can be exchanged for more silver taels, the merchants operate the tickets as securities.

The impact is not very great, because there are only so many tickets issued.

The Cabinet, the Ministry of Finance, and the banks are already discussing whether they can print some currency bills with the denominations of "taels," "money," "guan," and "wen" without linking them to grain.

Niu Jinxing held a ticket in his hand and was silent for a long time.

As Li Zicheng's military advisor and prime minister, he is much more knowledgeable than the elder and coarse. He can imagine that once a strong enemy appears in the grassland, the Datong Imperial Court can not only storm hundreds of thousands of soldiers, but also print tickets frantically as military salaries when they come, and then slowly recover them after the battle.

This kind of operation cannot be imitated.

It must rely on the credibility of the imperial court and the banking system, and if Li Zicheng dares to do this, the first to make trouble are officials and soldiers. If there is no way to make a name for it, the officials and soldiers will rush to use it, forcing the people to accept such votes, and in the end it will inevitably cause the people to complain.

"I'll go and see the village." Li Zicheng said.

Niu Jinxing, Zhang Nai and others also followed, and met some people at the entrance of the village.

It was getting dark, and the villagers gathered there to eat and chat after a tiring day.

Li Zicheng walked up to a villager who was holding a large bowl in his hand, and he still had half a bowl of wheat porridge left to eat. Wheat bran was faintly visible in the porridge, as well as some kind of vegetables, and even sporadic oil flowers floating on the surface, and some kind of round ball-shaped food.

"What is this?" Bull Venus asked, pointing to the spherical food.

The villagers laughed and said, "The government said it was potatoes, and we all shouted yam eggs here." This thing doesn't pick the ground, there are many mountains in the village, and you can plant it on any slope. ”

Niu Jinxing asked, "Didn't you eat at three or four o'clock in the afternoon?" Why do you eat when it's almost dark? ”

The villager said triumphantly: "I eat in the middle of the afternoon, and I only eat two meals a day." In our village, we have been eating three meals a day for a long time, and every household is like this! ”

Bull Venus was silent.

This village is really moist, because of the vast land and sparsely populated people, although there is still a quota for dividing the land, but as long as you have a surplus of labor, the government does not care about opening up the land and growing grain. However, the government will not issue a land deed to the land that exceeds the quota, and accordingly will not allow the payment of land tax. When the children reach the age of 12, they can go to the government to register their household registration, and give priority to the land they have cultivated, so that they can really receive the land deed.

The village is also located in the river valley area, where wheat is grown in the good fields next to the river, potatoes are grown in the barren mountains, and every household has a lot of surplus grain.

Not to mention three meals a day, they can afford to eat four meals a day.

Niu Jinxing and Li Zicheng glanced at each other, each sighed, and neither said much.

Niu Jinxing continued to walk forward, and he didn't know whose dog he had provoked, and barked at him. Alarmed by the sound of a dog barking, there was also a "clucking" sound from the chicken coop of nearby people.

Turning to look at the wheat field outside the village, Niu Jinxing was in a trance for a while, and said to himself: "Qianmo traffic, chickens and dogs smell each other, and the people have enough food, isn't this a peach source?" This is a poor frontier land, and there is a paradise in the border land? ”

"Hahahaha!"

The villagers had finished their dinner, but instead of dispersing, they gathered together to continue talking and laughing.

It seems that some villagers have moved from the south, and they are full of interest, and they also sing southern songs, which attract a burst of applause.

I don't know when, Li Zicheng walked behind Niu Jinxing and muttered: "If Da Ming had such a day, why did they rebel in the first place?" ”

Niu Jinxing sighed: "There is a holy son of heaven in the world today, which can be compared to the filthy Ming?" ”

Niu Jinxing has a reputation in Daming, and he can be regarded as a small landowner. He was framed by the rich gentry's relatives, saying that he resisted the payment of taxes and forcibly occupied women, so he was discredited and exiled to Lushi County to confiscate the army, and his own land was also occupied by the rich gentry's relatives.

If he lived in the new dynasty of Datong, he would definitely not rebel, and if he went to the Jinshi exam wholeheartedly, he might have been in charge of the ruling party and full of children and grandchildren.

The next day, continue southbound.

Such villages, along the way to meet several, can be described as everywhere "peach source". Until Mizhi, Li Zicheng finally broke the defense, this is his hometown, and the villagers are also happy and prosperous.

He returned to his birthplace, where there was no one left.

finally found one, but the other party regarded him as a snake and scorpion, and ran straight to find the leader of the peasant soldiers in the village: "Gather troops quickly, the thief is back, don't let him harm the village!" ”

Li Zicheng faced the more than ten peasant soldiers, looked at the old neighbor again, stopped talking, and turned to leave.

He found Zhang Yunyi: "I went to Nanjing, you tell the emperor and let me settle down in the south." ”

This King Chuang has no face to return to his hometown, and in the eyes of his hometown, he is completely a scourge. At least, the people who lived a good life in the Datong New Dynasty thoroughly regarded Li Zicheng as a scourge.

Once upon a time, he was a hero who led his villagers to rebel against tyranny.

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