"Effective immediately...... Once a boy or a boy is born in each province, it must be registered, and the violator will be fined 300 yuan......"

"Liaodong, Jiugang and other places began to resume taxation, and those who have babies can receive six stones of barren grain from the government, and replace them with male and female babies, or move orders."

"The people in Hetao, Jiugang and other places, regardless of men, women and children, have ten acres of land."

"Dare to abandon a baby girl in the wilderness, drown a baby girl, the whole family will be in the army, and if the neighbors don't report it, they will be exiled directly?!"

On the tenth day of the first lunar month, in just ten days, the notice of the imperial court was posted in more than 1,600 counties and nearly 10,000 market towns in the two capitals and 16 provinces.

Onlookers watched the notice, and the people of Shangkoufang Town, Guangxin Prefecture, Jiangxi Province whispered:

"Isn't it? Is there really someone who abandons a baby girl? ”

"It must be the village man in the countryside, right? There were no cases in the city of drowning of baby girls, and most of them were placed at the entrance of the almshouse. ”

"The imperial court's punishment of the crime of abandonment and drowning of female babies has been strict since the beginning of the founding of the country, and when has it been properly enforced? Look at ......."

"I can't say that, after all, at the moment, it is the King of Qi and His Majesty who share the authority, and I don't see how much the businessmen and officials in Guangxin County have been punished?"

"No matter how big King Qi is, can he still manage the countryside?"

"There are all baby girls who can lead the fields, and I don't think there will be many people drowning and abandonment, right?"

"Don't think so, at the beginning, the King of Qi distributed the army to the tuntian, regardless of male and female babies, as long as it was a person, and also rented farming cattle to the people, in the end, someone did not secretly abandon the baby girl?"

"People in the countryside can't afford the dowry of the baby girl when she grows up, and abandoning the baby girl is a common thing in the past, but the King of Qi is so aggressive this time, I'm afraid it won't end easily......"

After all, Shangkoufang Town is a market town, and there are not a few literate people, and there are even more talents.

Therefore, they can still analyze some problems for the policies of the imperial court, and they are not so stubborn about the problems of men and women.

To put it bluntly, those who can live in the market town basically rely on their crafts to eat, and the Yumajian Nanchang Weaving Bureau has a large demand for silk, and the women in the town are also an important labor force.

Men plough and weave, men and women weave, this is basically the atmosphere of the land south of the Yangtze River during the Jiajing period.

Men are not as careful as women in picking mulberry and raising silkworms, and the price of silk and cloth is not cheap, and women in Jiangnan naturally have a higher status than other places.

It's just that in the south of the Yangtze River, women can still pick mulberries and raise silkworms, and when they are released in the arid north, the value of women's labor is greatly reduced......

"! Another money-losing product! ”

In an unknown village in Henan, when an old mother learned that her daughter-in-law had given birth to a daughter, she immediately looked viciously at a seven or eight-year-old baby girl lying behind the door.

The marriage customs of the Ming Dynasty were just the opposite of those of later generations, and the common people needed to prepare a dowry for the man's family to marry their daughters.

The daughter who worked hard to raise her has to spend a lot of money to give to other people's families, and it is obviously not cost-effective to give birth to a daughter, and the daughter is a "money-losing goods" from this.

Ancient women liked to wear jewelry, bracelets, rings, necklaces, and headdresses, which were made of gold, silver, jade, and pearls, and were expensive.

When marrying a daughter, a complete set of jewelry needs to cost a lot of money, and some families are faced with marrying a daughter to the point of bankruptcy because they have many daughters.

The amount of dowry prepared by the mother's family for the daughter is also related to whether the daughter can find a good husband's family, as well as the treatment and status after marrying into the husband's family.

Even if an ordinary family like an old mother wants to find a family with superior conditions for her daughter, she must prepare a dowry for her daughter.

Marrying daughters with high dowries and comparing with each other has become a custom in the Ming Dynasty and a big burden for the common people.

If the dowry is small, it will be looked down upon by outsiders, and the daughter will be wronged in the future when she marries into her in-law's family.

Driven by this custom, many people in order to save this dowry money, or because they are afraid that they will not be able to marry their daughters because they cannot afford the dowry, after giving birth to their daughters, they let the midwives throw them directly into the basin and drown.

Therefore, from the Hongzhi period, in order to curb the occurrence of drowning of female infants, the imperial court would use propaganda methods such as writing articles and drawing pictures to persuade the people not to drown female infants.

At the same time, a law was enacted to prohibit the drowning of girls, and anyone who was found to have given birth to a girl who had drowned was to be sent to the border to be subjected to hard labor.

With the law in place, the number of drowning of female babies has decreased, but the number of abandoned female babies has increased, and some families have given birth to female babies and then secretly abandoned them in the wilderness and grass, or frozen to death or starved to death, or devoured by wild animals.

Although some of the baby girls were found by the villagers, no one was willing to adopt them, and finally had to be sent to a nursing home or county government.

"Grandma Li, how are you going to clean up your house? Sent to a solatorium? ”

When the curtain was lifted, a stable woman walked out holding a baby girl who had not yet been cleaned, while the Li family's mother-in-law, who was in her forties, frowned when she heard this:

"I still have to run to the nursery hall, and the town's grandmother Zhang said that my Erlang only has the lives of two children in his life."

"Drown her!"

Mrs. Li said this to Mrs. Wen, and Mrs. Wen was about to go into the house when she heard the words, and drowned the baby with the basin of water for delivery.

But before she had walked a few steps, a Han man dressed in coarse linen clothes hurriedly pushed open the fence from outside the courtyard with a flat pole and trotted in:

"Mother! What about the child and Liu Niang? ”

"gave birth to a baby girl, Mrs. Liu is fine, and she can work after a month of rest."

When Wen Po saw the male master of the Li family coming back, she also hugged the baby girl and spoke, and the man of the Li family quickly breathed a sigh of relief when he heard this:

"Mother and daughter are safe......"

"What's it? Mrs. Zhang said that you only have the lives of two children in your life, and our family can't take out the dowry of this girl's growth, so it's drowning. ”

The Li family's mother-in-law had a very ugly expression, and the male owner of the Li family said:

"When I went to my hometown to pick up firewood, I saw a notice from the government, saying that if someone drowned a baby girl in private, she would be exiled to the border army as an auxiliary."

"Besides, the imperial court said that a baby girl can receive six stones of grain for wasteland when she is born, take three acres of wasteland for wasteland, and relocate the old port of Nanyang to give each person ten acres of land."

"Mother, we have land, we can feed this doll."

"Are you painted?" Mrs. Li said angrily: "Have you forgotten what Mrs. Zhang said? What if you can get a dowry? Don't you want a boy to come to our old Li family to inherit the ancestry? ”

"After all, ......" The man of the Li family wanted to speak and stopped, wanting to say that it was said by the goddess after all, but he was a little hesitant in his heart.

At this time, a teenage young man trotted all the way to the gate of the Li family's courtyard and shouted at Wen Po:

"Mother-in-law, the government has issued a notice to help drown the baby girl and those who don't report it will join the army, and the village is asking you to go to the village."

"Huh?!" Hearing that the drowning person was going to fill the army, this stable woman was startled, and immediately stuffed the baby girl in her hand into the hands of Li's mother-in-law:

"Grandma Li, don't figure it out, if you drown this baby, I will have to report you."

Wen Po's voice changed abruptly, obviously afraid that her business would affect her family.

After all, it has only been a few years since he got the land from the government, and if he really wants to be exiled, no one can stand it.

"You!" The Li family's mother-in-law's face turned blue, and when the man of the Li family saw this, he hurriedly took the baby girl and said:

"Mother, you have also seen it, the government is too strict, our neighbors, if we really drown this girl, I don't know how many people will report us."

The men of the Li family looked around, and the Li family's mother-in-law followed his gaze and saw many neighbors watching them.

Obviously, the lethality of the four words exile is too great, but if one person is not strong-willed to poke out the news, seven or eight families will suffer.

At this moment, their eyes seemed to be monitoring the prisoner, and when the Li family saw this, it seemed that she was blocking her neck in one breath, and she couldn't go up or down.

In the end, she could only scold and say:

"What does the court know, when the child grows up, it will give a dowry!"

"Okay mother, let's go in first......" The man of the Li family pushed the Li family's mother-in-law into the house, and then began to clean up for Mrs. Liu who was lying on the bed.

This kind of scene is not only happening in this village, but in places large and small.

It's just that the laws of the Ming Dynasty are really strict, and such people are always a minority, and most of them have fields, and they can still raise children hard.

"Recently, more than 543,000 acres of wasteland have been issued, and His Highness's joint sitting system still has some results......

In the palace of the king of Qi on February 17, when the head of the household department came and went, Zhu Youzhen slowly put down the military newspaper in his hand:

"More than 500,000 wasteland posts, that is to say, at least more than 1 million stone baby food has been issued?"

"Almost, the specific amount changes every day, looking at this scale, I'm afraid that baby food will become a ......burden on the imperial court," Bi Ziyan said worriedly.

After all, the land endowment of the Ming Dynasty was about 70 million stones, and the scale of baby food seemed to require tens of millions of stone of grain expenditure every year.

Converted into silver, it basically accounts for one-fifteenth of the Ming Dynasty's finances.

Although it is not uncommon in history, this is the first time that so much food has been distributed.

However, Zhu Youzhen was not panicked at all, on the contrary, he was more happy.

540,000 acres of wasteland, 3 acres for a baby, is more than 180,000 babies born every month.

Over the course of a year, that's almost two million babies, and that's still the ones who have survived.

More importantly, it is only the beginning of the implementation of the policy, and many places do not know that there is baby food and land reclamation stickers, if they know, I am afraid that there will be more children born every year in the Ming Dynasty.

It is normal for the government to be under financial pressure, and it is enough to transfer the contradictions to the outside.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youjian didn't raise his head and said:

"Hong Chengchou sent me a military report, and the soldiers and horses of the two armies in the southwest can send up to 60 battalions, a total of 180,000 soldiers and horses, while ensuring the southwest."

"Hong Chengchou deliberately returned to the military report, saying that there was no need to transfer the tax and silver from Huguang and Sichuan, and he would find a way to solve the problem of rewarding silver and grain."

Hong Chengchou is a good person, and he knows very well how to win Zhu Youzhen's favor, so he deliberately rejected the tax silver from Sichuan and Huguang.

You must know that without the Tianfu silver of these two provinces, only the Tianfu silver of Yungui and Liangguang is at most less than two million taels of salt tea and Rending tax, and the Tianfu is less than four million stone at most.

The 180,000 troops, even if they take the sea and reduce the consumption of the march to one-third, will need 300,000 people to ensure their logistics.

In other words, the less than 2 million taels of silver and the less than 4 million stone of land need to support 500,000 people to conquer Annam, which sounds very incredible.

However, Zhu Youzhen knew very well that Hong Chengchou knew how to collect military salaries and food, so he didn't have to worry about this at all.

He told Bi Ziyan that he hoped that the officials in Huguang and Sichuan would be confused to avoid the land and taxes.

"Since the beginning of this year, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Beizhili, Sichuan, and Luoyang, Henan have had little rain and more sand, and Xu Guangqi said that the water volume of the Yellow River has dropped ......."

Zhu Youzhen held the three words Xu Guangqi written in his hand, his eyes were cloudy, and he continued:

"Households need to be prepared in case of drought in these places......"

Zhu Youjian had a profound opening, but Bi Ziyan could not have known that starting this year would be a year when the Xiaoice River drought would break out in full swing, and once he was just doing the same as usual.

Zhu Youzhen also knows very well that if the imperial court has money and food, then it will naturally provide disaster relief, so if you want to resist natural disasters, you still have to look at money and food.

He leaned back in his chair, took out a copy of the book, and said:

"There are more than 70,000 students in this year's school, and students who need to be enrolled in the Liquor Division are selected, and a new Disaster Relief Division has been set up in the Household Department, which will be ......."

Zhu Youzhen paused, thought about whether there was a suitable candidate, and finally said:

"Zuo Guangdou of the Imperial History of the Metropolitan Procuratorate will concurrently serve as the Emperor, and in addition, you go back and inform Gu Bingqian that the Ministry of Officials must prepare for the dismissal of a group of officials."

"What do you think of that?" Zhu Youzhen bluntly asked Bi Ziyan, and Bi Ziyan thought about it before saying:

"It is appropriate to dismiss officials, and our dynasty has been accumulating shortcomings for a long time, and redundancy is serious."

"Although His Royal Highness has been abolished, the number of civil servants is still more than 27,000, and the number of officials is more than 1.6 million."

"According to the official system discussed by His Royal Highness and Zaixia, if the Ming Dynasty wants to issue a salary to all the officials in the world, and the money can only occupy one-fifth of the annual income of the national treasury......"

"After the current situation of officials and officials triples, the Ming Dynasty can use one-fifth of the annual income at most to support more than 20,000 officials, more than 600,000 officials, and the expenditure of Yulu is about 9 million taels."

Zhu Youzhen has not improved the salary of Ming officials, and has not issued money to officials other than Yanshan students, in the final analysis, the reason is that there are too many people, and the court does not have so much silver.

In the first year of the Apocalypse, the number of civil officials in the Ming Dynasty was 30,000, and the number of officials was more than 2 million.

Since Zhu Youzhen began to use Gu Bingqian to solve the problem of redundancy in the fourth year of the Apocalypse, in more than three years, more than 500,000 officials and more than 100,000 families of officials have been solved by cracking down on corruption and layoffs.

Of course, the one who solved the most in one breath was the three women, and this case was not over.

In the hands of Zhu Youzhen and Zhu Youxiao, there are still many officials' untold materials that have not been shaken out.

This is naturally because the imperial court needs people, and Yanshan students can't provide so many people.

Now it is actually equivalent to a protracted war, and every time it drags on, Zhu Youzhen and Zhu Youxiao have the upper hand.

But if it drags on for too long, it will not be good for them, first of all, the corruption of Yanshan students......

Thinking of this, Zhu Youzhen's eyes flickered, and in a brocade dress on the table, there was a conspicuous booklet.

On that booklet, there are a total of 274 names, and all of these people were born in Yanshan.

Some people graduated in the fifth year of the Apocalypse, and some people graduated in the sixth year of the Apocalypse.

The time they spend being corrupt varies from a month after graduation to a year of corruption.

Their handle, Zhu Youzhen, grasped it, and dealt with it seriously, and by the way, publicized the identity and information of the corrupt people in several universities in Yanshan, so that the students could read it every day before class.

The political arena is a big dye vat, how to dye and what it looks like, Zhu Youzhen can't control it, but he can control the people who enter the dye vat and his patience.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youzhen didn't say anything, and Bi Ziyan also retreated after seeing this.

It's just that while he is retreating, a great drought is spreading from the northwest and north China of the Ming Dynasty.

More than ten days have passed, and there has not been a single rain in the capital, even though the snow in the mountains has melted, the rivers in the northern Xinjiang are still constantly lowering the water level.

This is especially true of the Yellow River......

"Three inches down" ......"

At the Fengling ferry port in the north of Tongguan, Shaanxi, when a figure of a sentence let out a sighing sound, some officials around him also took a bamboo tube and measured it.

Their fingers dug deep into the bamboo tube, and then, within an inch, they touched the mud and sand.

A forty-year-old official said to the sixty-year-old man: "Mr. Xuanhu, there is another half an inch of sediment in the Yellow River. ”

Xuanhu, this is Xu Guangqi's self-name, but at this time, when he heard this, he looked at the Yellow River rolling away in front of him, and sighed:

"It's not that the sediment has increased by half an inch, but that the water level has dropped by another ......."

Since the beginning of spring, Xu Guangqi, one of the officials of the Yellow River dredging project, has been leading people to measure the water level of the Yellow River and record the dikes that need to be built to prevent the Yellow River from bursting.

In just three months, the water level of the Yellow River is declining, and it stands to reason that spring should be the time when the water level of the Yellow River is getting higher and higher.

"Water levels in all state capitals are dropping, but there are some signs of drought."

An official spoke, and Xu Guangqi looked up at the cloudless sky, and said uneasily:

"Since the beginning of spring, there has not been a single rain in the north of the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi, and there has only been one rain in Shanxi, and it is hot in Henan, and I heard that it has not rained much in Beizhili......"

"We have to send someone to inform Banzai of these things, and I just sent the Tang Cavalry who checked the intelligence of the Yellow River section this time to send the news to the capital."

"Yes!" When the officials next to him heard this, they left one after another to prepare for the Yellow River project.

Soon, more than a dozen Tang riders carrying the information of the Yellow River section went north, and after three days of horsebacking, they arrived in the capital.

Early in the morning of the second day, Tang Qi delivered the news to the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Industry also sent the news backup to the Qi Palace's Mansion and the cabinet.

However, on this day, Zhu Youzhen was not in the Qi Palace, but rarely went out of the capital with Zhu Youxuan and went to Nanyuan to hunt.

Therefore, when Song Shu was delivered to him and Zhu Youxiao, the two were dressed in military uniforms, holding bows and arrows on horseback.

When the song and information were delivered, the two also turned over and dismounted and opened the song.

In the "Yellow River Section Map", Xu Guangqi and Wang Shunding marked 132 Yellow River embankments that need to be repaired, of which 71 have already started construction.

In addition, there were ninety-three sections of the river that needed to be dredged, and they also directly mobilized conscription to dredge the river.

At the beginning, Zhu Youxiao allocated more than 2 million taels of silver, and it was roughly 7788, and Xu Guangqi's book was naturally for money and food.

"Xu Guangqi and Wang Shunding said that they still need more than 376,000 taels of silver to rectify the Yellow River......" In the hunting ground of Nanyuan, Zhu Youxiao handed the song to Zhu Youzhen.

However, when he saw the song, Zhu Youzhen was concerned about the signs of drought in the provinces:

"These more than 300,000 taels can be distributed, after all, every time the Yellow River bursts, the imperial court needs to allocate millions of taels of grain for disaster relief."

"But this drought, as my brother and I said, I am afraid that there will be a drought in several provinces this year......"

Zhu Youzhen closed the song and looked at Zhu Youxiao, who was wearing a round-necked robe, a simple cuirass, a belt and arm guards.

Zhu Youxiao handed the bow and arrow to the Han general next to him, and waved his hand to talk to Zhu Youzhen while walking.

Zhu Youzhen followed him, and the two walked on the green grass of Nanyuan, which was in stark contrast to the somewhat arid southern river of Beizhili hundreds of miles away.

"If there is really a major drought, according to my brother's speculation, will the treasury be able to provide disaster relief safely?"

Zhu Youxiao frowned and asked, and Zhu Youzhen also frowned, he did not answer immediately, but was calculating the population.

Daming's hydrology, he had already asked Jinyiwei to write it down.

Even if there is a big drought, it is generally impossible for all the major rivers to dry up, so he has a number in mind.

"There are more than 30 million people in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Beizhili, Henan, Sichuan and other places on paper, but there are about 50 million people in reality......"

"According to the standard of survival, everyone needs at least two buckets of grain a month, and at least two stones and six buckets a year."

"Among them, the number of people living in areas without major waterways is about 35 million......

Zhu Youzhen did not mention the treasury in every sentence, but he mentioned the treasury in every sentence.

The 35 million people who do not live in areas with major waterways have no main waterways to irrigate their fields in the event of a drought, so they are the least resistant to severe drought.

More than 35 million people, according to the standard of survival as Zhu Youzhen said, need to eat nearly 90 million stone of grain a year.

90,000,000 stone ...... It is more than 8 million per month, can the treasury of the Ming Dynasty come up with so much grain?

This is a problem......

"How serious is it going to be?" Zhu Youxiao did not believe that there would be such a severe drought, because there had never been a major drought of this magnitude in history.

Not only him, even if Zhu Youzhen said this to anyone, anyone would think that he was alarmist.

But for Zhu Youzhen, he knew very well what he was talking about.

The 18-year-long drought at the end of the Ming Dynasty was the most serious and widespread-affecting natural disaster in the world for thousands of years.

Similarly, although the scope of the "Dingwu Famine" in the late Qing Dynasty was also very extensive, the affected areas were only the five northern provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Beizhili, and Shandong, and affected northern Jiangsu, northern Anhui, eastern Gansu, and northern Sichuan.

But even so, according to the statistics of Qing officials, 10 million people still starved to death, and 20 million fled the famine.

The population of the late Qing Dynasty was three times that of the late Ming Dynasty, which means that if the Ming Dynasty did not provide timely disaster relief, it is very likely that at least three million people would starve to death......

In order to put an end to such a situation, Zhu Youzhen began to prepare in the first year of Taichang, and the only thing that could help the Ming Dynasty survive this great drought was the deployment capacity of the Imperial Horse Supervisor and the blood transfusion of grain in Jiugang, Ryukyu and other places.

"The ministers have set up a new disaster relief department in the household department, and the people's homes are also different from those in the Wanli period, and there is plenty of food."

"If a major drought breaks out, you can rely on the regular closing and the grain of the provinces to stabilize the grain prices of the four provinces in the early stage, and my brother does not have to worry about this......"

Zhu Youzhen still didn't want to pass the panic on Zhu Youxiao, he chose to take the pressure himself, and Zhu Youxiao also turned his head to look at him after hearing Zhu Youzhen's policy.

It's just that Zhu Youzhen's expression is very unexpected, which makes Zhu Youxiao unable to see how dangerous this matter is in the eyes of his younger brother.

Frowning tightly, Zhu Youxiao said helplessly:

"The matter of drought and government affairs, for the time being, let my younger brother supervise the country, if my younger brother wants to go on an expedition, I will deal with it at that time, and I should give me time to rest."

"Brother at least has to share the government affairs of Jiangnan, right?" Zhu Youzhen was afraid that he would be too active, so Zhu Youxiao realized that this drought was not simple, so he smiled and spoke.

"This is a natural ......" Seeing that Zhu Youzhen was still thinking, Zhu Youxiao also bowed slightly, showed a smile and turned away.

But when he turned away, he put away his smile and frowned.

Apparently, he sensed that something was wrong with his brother.

His brother's behavior seems to say that this drought may not be so simple......