Northern Dynasties

Chapter 1311: A Huge Increase in the Population

As time entered the second half of the year, the various policies and affairs previously implemented by the court began to produce results and received feedback.

The first and most important thing is the expansion of the military organization.

Before conquering Northern Qi, the Guanzhong regime had an army of about 300,000, including the government soldiers and local garrison troops from Guanlong, Shuzhong and Shannan. If it is an extreme mobilization, it can mobilize nearly 100,000 men on this basis. However, if it really reaches this level of conscription, then all domestic production activities will basically come to a halt, and people's livelihood will be in chaos.

Of course, the imperial court did not need to conduct such a large-scale conscription, because after the Battle of Tongdi, the Western Wei Dynasty had completely established military suppression against the Northern Qi Dynasty. Even in the subsequent war of annihilation, there was no need to conscript the entire nation. Just the mobilization of conventional forces successfully completed the task.

However, maintaining such a conventional armed force was a heavy burden for the Western Wei Dynasty at that time.

It should be noted that at that time, the Western Wei Dynasty had only more than two million registered households, but the number of conventional soldiers reached more than 300,000. This was a huge proportion of the society's young productive forces. Even if it could not be said to be warlike, a defeat in a slightly larger foreign war would lead to the depletion of national strength and long-term stagnation.

After the Northern Qi was conquered, the territory expanded by more than double, and the military organization, which was originally under heavy pressure, seemed to be somewhat insufficient. In particular, there were a large number of rural armed forces in the original military system, which had a strong regional nature and needed to take into account the local sentiments and wishes of the people. It could not be arbitrarily migrated and dispatched, so the expansion of new military organizations was imminent.

The Fubing organization created by Yuwen Tai had a very strong property of replication and expansion. Wherever the Fubing troops reached, they could basically incorporate and expand the local armed forces, making these local forces part of the Fubing system.

Such rapid expansion certainly had great drawbacks, but there was one advantage that could not be ignored, that is, low cost and quick results, which was a magic weapon for the Western Wei Dynasty to defeat the strong with the weak. Especially during the same period, the Northern Qi Dynasty was still implementing relatively rigid policies. The Jinyang nobles refused to open up and share military resources. The two sides had a gap of an era in the efficiency of united front work, which meant that the demise of the Northern Qi Dynasty was not an accident, but an inevitable trend.

After the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, the old areas ruled by the former hegemons could no longer maintain new military pressure, so they could only move to the newly occupied areas. At the beginning of the year, while Li Tai ordered the pursuit of the remnants of the Northern Qi, he also sent 20,000 soldiers from the Guanzhong Prefecture to Hebei to establish a military prefecture.

A considerable number of soldiers from the army that had previously gone to war with Northern Qi chose to stay in Hebei.

Because these people saw with their own eyes that the people's livelihood foundation and development space in Hebei far exceeded those in Guanzhong, and as conquerors, they also had a certain psychological advantage when facing the local people. In addition, the imperial court offered very generous conditions for the soldiers who stayed there, which naturally attracted many people to stay.

As a result, the number of soldiers who chose to stay in Hebei reached more than 50,000. These were not ordinary rural armed forces, but real elite soldiers. When the Six Garrisons rebelled in Hebei, excluding the old, weak, sick and disabled and vagrant soldiers, there were probably only so many real elite soldiers. With these soldiers staying, the Tang Dynasty established the most reliable rule over Hebei.

When the war against the remaining bandits of Northern Qi came to a temporary end, military offices were quickly established in various parts of Hebei. In addition to the settlement of the Guanzhong garrison troops, the reorganization of the local armed forces in Hebei was also carried out at the same time. Those Hebei tyrants and their subordinates who successively surrendered to the king's army were also gradually incorporated into the garrison system, and military offices of various sizes were also established, and corresponding fields were granted to them according to their respective merits.

After just over half a year of reorganization and expansion, the number of registered soldiers in Hebei has now reached over 100,000, while Henan and Shandong, which started a little later, have also formed over 60,000 soldiers. In the absence of large-scale, high-intensity warfare, it is more than enough to maintain stability and establish effective rule.

In the future, the Fubing organizations in various parts of Kanto will also have to enter the process of refined expansion. They will not only pursue an increase in quantity, but also take into account the improvement of quality. On this basis, they will eliminate the dross and retain the essence, and implement a policy of eliteizing the regular main force, focusing ordinary Fubing on production, and gradually turning them into civilians.

Of course, this process will inevitably last for a long time, and it will need to wait until the internal and external wars come to an end and the war mission is no longer so heavy before it can be gradually completed.

Compared with the development and decline of the Sui and Tang Dynasty military system, the Tang Dynasty has adopted a plan to use space to buy time and to allow the military system to complete its historical mission more smoothly and calmly. Because in the middle of the dynasty, with the changes in the internal and external environment, the military system may not be able to meet the military needs of the time, so it is natural to leave room for innovation.

No matter what happens in the future, the military strength of the current Tang Dynasty court is always steadily improving under the development of the system of military service.

In addition to further military expansion, the envoys from various routes in Guandong also reported back the results. Although Yang Jian was addicted to the gentle countryside and unwilling to leave home for business trips, the Dasuo Maoyue system he created was still used in this Guandong census and achieved very remarkable results.

During the Guandong household survey, the envoys from various regions inspected nearly 50 states and more than 150 counties in the former Northern Qi territory, and the number of households finally reached more than 3.5 million! When this data was reported to the court, the emperor and his ministers were all amazed. The strength of a country has many aspects, and population is undoubtedly the most important indicator.

  Judging from the data of household registration in Guandong this time, even on the eve of the Western Wei's attack on Northern Qi, there was still a gap of more than one million households between the two sides in terms of population alone!

Among the more than one million households, even if every ten households drafted one man, they could produce more than 100,000 strong soldiers! As for the additional productivity and arable land represented by these people, as well as the difference in taxes they could pay, it would have a great impact on the confrontation between the two countries!

However, during the previous confrontation between the two countries, the impact of the population gap of more than one million households was not reflected at all, as if these people were directly wiped out in the territory of Northern Qi. Even the national strength that the Northern Qi court could effectively exert was far less than that of the Western Wei at that time.

However, according to the reports submitted by the various household registration envoys, these populations were almost wiped out. The household registration envoys reviewed the household registration rosters provided by the local prefecture and county governments, but these rosters themselves contained many errors and omissions. The unclear numbers of households and population in the rosters alone were inaccurate.

The powerful and wealthy vied for protection, but there was only one household for hundreds of families. Those who were registered were either young or old, and only a few could fulfill the rent and tax duties. The taxes and labor service that a place should have borne were directly hidden from the household registration of those with connections, and could only be shared by the honest common people. When they could not bear the heavy taxes and their families were broken up, they would be annexed by the powerful and wealthy, forming a vicious cycle.

Some counties are located in fertile areas, but less than half of the registered households can pay taxes, so the political situation is even worse than that in remote and poor areas.

If these powerful families still have to set up an account and bear their share of taxes, then the temples scattered across Hebei are even more excessive. They shelter a large population and occupy large tracts of fertile land, but they do not bear any obligations at all.

This time, the population of the various provinces in the Kanto region was compiled, and the population collected from the temples alone reached hundreds of thousands of households. This shows that under the flattery of the Northern Qi rulers, the influence of the monks in Hebei and other places was even greater than in the Southern Dynasty.

"Looking at all these things, how could Qi's decline and fall be due to the attack of a powerful enemy? Its ruler treated his people like enemies and used them like animals. If his country did not fail, how could justice exist?"

As the victor, Li Tai could naturally evaluate the rulers of Northern Qi at will. But even if we put aside the denigration of the losers, the various problems of Northern Qi's mismanagement revealed by clearing away the fog are indeed shocking.

Although registering the people was only the beginning, with such a foundation, there would be a general strategy for the subsequent restoration of various administrative management and production order. By registering the people, distributing land equally and encouraging farming, and allowing the people to recuperate, vitality would naturally recover quickly.

Compared with the smooth progress of military and political affairs in Hebei and Henan, things in the Taiyuan Basin centered on Jinyang encountered many obstacles.

Jinyang was the ruling center of Northern Qi, and especially the stronghold of Jinyang nobles. Many situations were different from other places. Everything was so solidified that even the King of Qi could not do anything about it, and it was even more difficult for outsiders to intervene and solve them one by one.

Before, he had only ordered to temporarily stabilize the stability in this area. After order was re-established in other parts of Hebei, he would solve the problem here directly and fundamentally. The remaining Northern Qi Jinyang nobles, Jinyang soldiers and their families would be directly relocated so that they would not be stranded there any longer.

This task seemed rather arduous, but in fact it was not that difficult. The Jinyang soldiers were formed based on the military and civilians of the six towns. Even under the rule of the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi, the population had increased significantly, but it was only 300,000 to 500,000 people. After various losses such as captives, diversions, and killings, there were probably less than 200,000 people left around Jinyang, and most of them were old, weak, sick, and disabled.

Excluding those who could not endure the long-distance migration and those who were willing to accept the government's resettlement, the number of people who needed to migrate long distances was at most only about 100,000.

Today, Xiangzhou, as the central production base of Shannan sugarcane raw materials, and Ningzhou's recently discovered mineral resources, both require a large amount of manpower to expand production. It is appropriate for these people to be transferred to those places, which is much better than staying in Taiyuan and becoming a security risk.

After the digestion and absorption of Northern Qi and the reorganization of personnel order within the Tang Dynasty came to an end, the attention of the court and the public naturally turned to the south. At the same time, the Southern Chen also sent envoys to the court in a tacit understanding to strengthen interaction.