The current scene, just like Brother Xun'er's sentence, the so-called "human temperament always likes to reconcile and compromise, for example, you say, this house is too dark, you must open a window here, everyone must not allow it." But if you advocate tearing down the roof, they'll reconcile and be willing to open the windows."

Originally, the gentry felt that the national teacher hung the indescribable dirty water of the White Lotus Sect on their heads, and in order to prevent the dirty water from falling, they exchanged 5,000 stone of grain for nothing, which was really a little expensive.

But when Jiang Xinghuo doubled the five thousand stones, and after confirming that the national teacher who had cleansed the Changzhou Mansion with an iron fist really dared to open his bloody mouth and plan to swallow them all, the gentry felt that the five thousand stones were ..... Doesn't seem to be that much?

At present, many gentry are already interested in this deed.

Gentry, look at me, I look at you, they are all looking forward to the piece of paper in Huang Ziwei's hand. "Governor Huang, let's listen to it."

Xu's representative said.

The rest of the gentry also urged, "Yes, yes! Read it out and listen to it, what kind of deed is this?"

After all, for them, signing a deed, as long as it is not a very excessive condition, is better than being really caught by the army in the name of "searching the White Lotus Sect" to catch black materials and steal grain, right?

Of course, this kind of brutal method, if it is an ordinary season, even a national teacher, cannot do it to the gentry, otherwise it will definitely cause an uproar in the world.

But now is not an ordinary season, the White Lotus Sect has set off civil unrest in the south of the Yangtze River, and the national teacher, as the highest-ranking official of the Ming Dynasty responsible for quelling the chaos and disaster relief, has the right and reputation to search for the White Lotus Sect.

And the White Lotus Sect uprising, with the tacit support of the Jiangnan gentry, was not a kind of rebellion against the Yongle Imperial Court's policy of "apportioning labor into acres"?

According to the "theory of relativity", that is, we make the gentry undignified, and the gentry are not muddy, and if you make us undignified, we will naturally make you undignified, so the White Lotus Sect rebellion will naturally take shape.

In other words, this large-scale civil unrest that did not occur in Jiang Xinghuo's previous history was actually a butterfly effect caused by him, a traverser.

Of course, misfortune and blessing are relied upon, and blessing and misfortune are lurking.

This White Lotus rebellion is actually a good thing for Jiang Xinghuo, although it is a follow-up to the policy of "apportionment into the mu" that he proposed in prison, but it is also the best opportunity to give birth to a new relationship.

And the realization of this opportunity lies in these pieces of paper in the hands of Huang Ziwei, the prefect of Songjiang.

I saw Huang Ziwei cough lightly twice, and said slowly, "Everyone, please be quiet, let me tell you the rules of the first page of the deed first."

"First of all, I would like to tell you that the content of this deed is fair and just, and it was first implemented in Songjiang Prefecture, and you are the first batch of participants."

"Second, the deed should be confirmed to be valid and cannot be changed at will."

"Third, if there is any objection, please raise it, whether it depends on the situation, but if not, it will be executed in accordance with the contract."

"Fourth, from the date of the establishment of the deed, all counties and towns will send personnel to various water conservancy projects in the south of the Yangtze River to participate in the construction of various projects, which will be supervised by the national teacher and the Ministry of Industry of the Imperial Court, and all personnel must go through strict screening, and those who do not meet the conditions will be immediately repatriated to their hometowns."

"Fifth, during the establishment of the deed, if the gentry and merchants wanted to purchase all kinds of wartime controlled materials from the imperial court, they must first pass the examination and approval of the national teacher, and then submit it to the county magistrate for the record."

"Sixth, the counties strictly enforce the curfew for half a year."

Huang Ziwei read the first page with great enthusiasm, and then read the second and third pages until he had read the whole deed again, and then stopped.

After hearing this, the gentry looked incredulous.

- Because, according to the second page of this deed, they only need to pay 3,000 to 5,000 stone of grain in exchange for the "law-abiding gentry" plaque of the imperial court.

Is a plaque that costs only a few tens of copper coins worth thousands of stones? Worth it absolutely! It's worth it!

"Law-abiding

gentry", which means that the imperial court has certified that they have nothing to do with the White Lotus Sect.

Although the imperial court has the final right to interpret and can choose to settle accounts after the autumn, in the current era of war and chaos, this is undoubtedly a talisman that is not necessarily completely reliable, but has a strong psychological comfort effect.

The imperial court is equivalent to giving them special rights with the food they donated. As for why?

"Dare to ask the national teacher, since there are 'law-abiding gentry', can there be 'lawless gentry'?" The leading Pan clan patriarch asked cautiously.

"Of course, there is."

Jiang Xinghuo said slowly: "All meritorious gentry who meet the following conditions will be included in the list of "illegal gentry", and those who have meritorious names will be removed from their fame, and their immediate descendants will not be allowed to participate in the imperial examination, and the relevant property will be punished as the crime of corruption and perversion of the law, and their arrears and interest rates generated according to the time of arrears will be recovered."

"First, directly participating in or indirectly financing the rebellion; second, to pay taxes and grain for tenant farmers and homesteaders; Third, take the lead in fighting food."

This is the precursor to the tax reform plan proposed by Jiang Xinghuo before.

Jiang Xinghuo plans to take this opportunity not only to release the peasants from the land, but also to pave the way for local tax reform, so that the combination of "apportionment into the mu", "work for relief", and "local tax reform" will be defeated, and the control and influence of the Jiangnan gentry over the local area will naturally be greatly weakened.

However, the core content of this deed, that is, the core content of "cash-for-work", that is, the relevant personnel, is quite vague and hidden deeply, and it is not easy to detect.

On the third page of the deed, it was clearly written: "If the tenant farmers belonging to the law-abiding gentry participate in the rebellion of the White Lotus Sect, they are regarded as members of the rebel army and must be handed over to the imperial court, and the law-abiding gentry shall not intervene."

This couldn't help but make the gentry ponder carefully.

The members who participated in the White Lotus Sect's civil rebellion were nothing more than a few types of people.

First of all, of course, there are the White Lotus cultists, most of whom are merchants, craftsmen, market scoundrels, and rangers.

Secondly, it is the yeoman farmers who can't survive at all, and directly abandon the land and follow the rebel army to beg for a bite to eat...... This kind of is very rare, because the homesteaders still have their own land, the last property, but they really can't survive now, and they can always sell their land cheaply for money to continue their lives.

Finally, and with the largest proportion of personnel, it is the tenant farmers who cannot survive at all.

Tenant farmers did not have their own land, so after a whole spring of drought and half a summer, many tenant farmers chose to join the White Lotus rebellion directly with their families, or were coerced to join along the way.

In the homes of the gentry, there were generally a large number of tenant farmers to help with the work..... This is nonsense, "ploughing and reading heirlooms" means watching tenant farmers plough the land and study at home, and they can't let the gentry take care of thousands of acres of land themselves, right? The rice fields in the south of the Yangtze River are intensively cultivated, and without the help of agricultural machinery, it is already very tiring to work a dozen acres alone, and a medium-sized gentry usually employs dozens or even hundreds of tenant farmers to help them cultivate.

This also means that in the gentry's family, there are also many tenant farming families who have joined the White Lotus Rebellion. According to historical experience and habitual thinking, the gentry did not care much about the mass exodus of tenant farmers. As long as you have land in your hands, there is still a shortage of people who have no food to eat?

When the civil unrest was over, the gentry could not only re-recruit cheap homeless people as tenant farmers, but also take advantage of the civil unrest to annex the land of a large number of bankrupt yeoman farmers.

Therefore, the civil unrest was a good thing for the gentry who had abundant food reserves.

How much food can the gentry eat with a family with a nursing home, at most a hundred or ten people? Live behind closed doors, mess outside for a year or two, or even change the dynasty, as long as you always have your own land, you can get rich again in a few years.

And the normal dynastic change is rarely done to the land of the gentry.

In the Jiangnan region, from the vigorous development of this place by the Sun Wu regime, to the Nandu of the Jin Dynasty, to the construction of Yannandu by Wanyan, and then to the establishment of the Ming Dynasty by Zhu Yuanzhang, the large-scale deprivation of land in the middle can almost be called a handful.

Therefore, the gentry in Jiangnan naturally felt that the scale of the White Lotus Sect's rebellion this time was not large.

As with the previous mess, it will not involve their fields.

Since it does not involve the fundamental interests of the gentry, what does it matter if the imperial court is allowed to deal with the tenant farmers of their own families who participated in the rebellion of the White Lotus Sect? .

These tenant farmers who participated in the rebellion, it is impossible for the imperial court to support them in vain, there are probably two ways out.

One is to serve as hard labor, that is, the water conservancy projects in various parts of the south of the Yangtze River supervised by the national teacher and the Ministry of Industry mentioned earlier.

This is the most in line with the normal way of thinking, after all, the flooding in Jiangnan has become like this, and the local gentry are unwilling to pay for repairs, and the imperial court should always pay for and contribute people to repair it, otherwise the granary in Jiangnan is still the elbow of the imperial court, and it is not good to have civil unrest every few years, right?

Another kind of ..... That is to borrow the head of the head as a military merit.

Some people secretly thought that they heard that the second prince Zhu Gaoxu was a disciple of the national teacher Jiang Xinghuo, and perhaps, Jiang Xinghuo was seeking benefits for Zhu Gaoxu.

This is the condition put forward by Zhu Gaoxu's barbaric martial artist in order to cut off more heads of rebellious troops and obtain more military merits.

After all, if the gentry admitted this in the deed, once the White Lotus rebellion was pacified, then even if these people were once tenant farmers of the law-abiding gentry, they would still be regarded as out-and-out rebels, rather than innocent civilians being coerced.

In this way, can't you justifiably cut off your head for military merit and not be blamed by the gentry?

And this is a double thing, the generals who came to quell the rebellion did not need to pay any public opinion price to get more military merits, and the gentry, too, only need to pay a small price to get rid of the possible accusation of "instructing their own tenant farmers to participate in the rebellion and secretly supporting the White Lotus Sect".

Thinking of this, the gentry breathed a sigh of relief. Win-win!

Win hemp!