A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Emperor Yuan Cong

Chapter 492
Cao Qing looked at the noble young man in front of him, and was momentarily stunned.

Emperor Xin Wu Shaobao's name, he naturally heard it like a thunderbolt. In fact, Wu Huaiyu is now famous all over the world. After all, 20-year-old prime ministers are rare even at the beginning of the dynasty.

"Old Cao, what are you still doing?" Xu Da hurriedly reminded him.

"Grassman Cao Qing pays homage to Mr. Wu." Lao Cao came to his senses and hurriedly bowed and crossed his hands to see him.

"I'm not a husband-in-law now," Huaiyu took two steps forward, reaching out to support him, "This time I went to Youzhou and passed Xingyang, and my adoptive father gave me a task to find the place where Zhang Shuai was buried. I heard that you are Veterans who survived the Battle of Dahai Temple."

Of course Cao Qing and Xu Da knew about Qin Qiong. Although they were not under Qin Qiong's command back then, they were both in Zhang Xutuo's army. Cao Qing was even a school lieutenant and knew Qin Qiong Luo Shixin very well.

"I brought some food and wine, let's have a drink together."

In Lao Cao's humble house, there was no decent furniture, no floor, and no comfortable couch. The floor was potholed mud, the walls were made of wicker and then pasted with yellow mud, and the roof was thatched.

Dilapidated, it can be said that the house is empty.

Small, dark, cramped.

The wine brought by Huaiyu is good wine, the bayberry wine produced by Wujia Bingyutang, the appetizers include stewed sheep's head, stewed lamb haggis, yak meat with spiced sauce, cold donkey meat, roast goose and duck, fried peanuts, fried broad beans, etc. , it is very suitable for drinking.

The old Cao’s house didn’t have a decent table, so they finally went to the roof and spread a blanket on the floor, and everyone sat on the floor.

Lao Xu, who was watching the watch, was also lame and half-blind in one eye. Thanks to the help of Lao Cao and other old brothers these years, it is still Lao Cao who helped him find a job as a watch watch.

Looking at the delicious food in front of me, my mouth is already watering.

Huaiyu first poured a glass of wine for everyone and toasted them.

"I heard that my adoptive father has actually been looking for Zhang Shuai's old department all these years, and found some, and helped to resettle them. Why didn't you get in touch?"

Lao Cao took a sip of his wine. The shochu wine soaked in red bayberry has a sweet taste, and some old rock sugar is put in it. This wine is not cheap, and the rock sugar alone is very expensive.

"I really don't have the face to see General Qin."

Cao Qing said frankly that although he was seriously injured and comatose on the battlefield, he was not a deserter, but he always felt guilty in his heart.

Zhang Xutuo originally broke out from the siege back then, he was a general, Wagang couldn't trap him, but many tribesmen couldn't break through, Zhang Xutuo fought back four times, rescued batch after batch of subordinates, In the end, he fought hard and died.

Even in the end, he could still leave if he wanted to, but Zhang Xutuo uttered the last words of the emperor He Yimian, gave up breaking through, and chose a tragic death in battle.

After Cao Qing recovered from his injury, he wanted to return to the army, but after seeing some old brothers on the battlefield and hearing about Zhang Xutuo's final death in battle and his body being divided by five horses, he chose to stay.

Later he did hear that Qin Qiong was looking for the old brothers back then, but they had no contact.

"Zhang Shuai's body was collected and buried by you? Can you take me there to pay respects? My adoptive father found Zhang Shuai's two grandsons and took them with him as adoptive sons. They will be taught and raised as if they were his own. This time, he also came with me ,"

Zhang Xutuo was only 51 years old when he died in battle. His three sons all died in the battle with him in Dahai Temple, leaving only two grandsons, Zhiyun Zhixuan.

The children who were only a few years old at that time are all seventeen or eighteen-year-old boys now.

They want to find the remains of their grandfather and bury them in the village.

Zhang Xutuo is the thirteenth grandson of Han Sikong and Taiwei Zhang Wen. Later, he immigrated to Jiangnan. It is Nanyang Zhang.

The first of the ten surnames in Nanyang County is the Zhang family.

Zhang Xutuo's grandfather was a native of Zhongshushe in the Western Wei Dynasty. He was an official in the Northern Zhou Dynasty and went to the governor of Shanzhou. He was named the founder of Nanyang County.He had a good family background. He married two wives, both of whom died before him. His first wife was Xue Shi, the daughter of Sizhou Governor, and Su Xianku Di Shi, the daughter of a Sinicized barbarian general.

Brother Zhang Zhiyun wanted to find his grandfather and buried him in Zhang's ancestral grave in Taolin, Hongnongjia Township.

The father of the two brothers, Zhang Yuanbei, was Cao Qing's boss at the time. He was a brave general of the three armies, but he was a little proud.

At the beginning, he saw Zhang Yuanbei die in front of him with his own eyes. First, more than a dozen arrows fell to the ground from his horse.

He was also seriously injured and passed out.

"Xuanzhi and Xuanyun, are the two young men okay?"

Back then when he was under Zhang Yuanbei's command, he even celebrated the birth of Er Xiaolang.

"They are now looking elsewhere."

"Zhang Shuai was killed when he was killed. His body was divided by Wagang's five horses and then violently. It was Lao Xu and some other disabled surviving veterans who risked their lives to steal it. Then they were buried quietly without daring to erect a monument.

The corpses of General Zhang Yuanbei's three brothers were also stolen and quietly buried aside. We old soldiers guarded and worshiped every year. "

"It was buried next to the Dahai Temple. The Dahai Temple has been rebuilt and expanded in the past two years, and it has been enclosed in the temple."

When it comes to those events back then, a table of delicious food seems to be unable to whet the appetite, so Lao Cao and Lao Xu just bowed their heads and drank.

"You have worked hard all these years." Huaiyu sighed.

"We people should have died 12 years ago, but God confiscated them, so we have survived until now."

"After the imperial court regained the Central Plains, didn't they distribute the land evenly, didn't we get it?"

Cao Qing took a sip of green plum wine and sighed, "Even though land sharing is a national policy, what does it have to do with us disabled people? Zhang Jieyu even filed an imperial lawsuit with today's emperor because of a piece of land."

After the pacification of Luoyang, Li Shimin rewarded the generals and gave a large piece of land to the emperor Li Shentong. Later, Zhang Jieyu came to Luoyang to reward the generals on behalf of the emperor Li Yuan, and brought the property from the Luoyang Palace back to Chang'an.Zhang Jieyu took a fancy to the land given to Li Shentong, and asked Li Shimin for it, but Li Shimin refused, so she turned to Li Yuan to ask for a reward.

It also didn't say that the land had already been rewarded by the King of Qin. Of course, Li Yuan had nothing to do with his favorite concubine, so he rewarded the land to Zhang Jieyu's father.

Facing the emperor's edict, Li Shimin still didn't give it, because it had already been rewarded, so how could he hand it over again, so what is his prestige.

In the end, because of this, Li Shimin was reprimanded by Li Yuan in the end, bluntly saying that my imperial edict is not as good as your Qin Wangjiao?
In the end, the land was forcibly given to Zhang Jieyu's father.

Such things were common at first.

Li Tang on the victorious side, up to the emperor Qin Wang, down to the clan's relatives and ministers and generals, were all dividing up the fruits of victory. Even Zhang Shigui of the Qin Palace, who was only a fifth-rank general at the time, was able to seize thousands of acres of land.

The imperial court rewarded meritorious officials and soldiers, appeased the local gentry, and then divided the public land, job land, official Yongye land, sergeant's honored officer land, and the military land of the government soldiers. The local gentry and powerful landlords, even temples, etc. originally still occupied most of the land.

In this way, there are not many lands that can be divided. Although many lands are left unused after the war, they are actually owned by owners.

Lao Cao, Lao Xu, and the others are not locals, and the distribution of land and land grants starts with local household registration.

Huaiyu asked, "Didn't the imperial court also have a policy after the war that homeless refugees and others could be resettled and naturalized on the spot, and granted land?"

"It's not that easy."

"Henan is the heart of the Central Plains. A large amount of land is concentrated in the hands of noble officials and gentry tyrants. Even if the dynasty changes, there is not much change. The war changed the dynasty and changed the number of noble officials, but the local gentry tyrants have not changed.
Many people died in the war, and some surviving people did get some opportunities, and some fields were awarded. Although most of them were not enough, at least they were allocated.

But people like Xu Lao Cao and the others are neither locals nor disabled. In the end, although they are naturalized and settled in the local area, they are only allocated [-] to [-] acres of land in the end. It's still all divided land, and there is no permanent job for an acre.

However, when they become naturalized and registered household registration, they also become registered households. Even if they are disabled, they are only exempted from full-time service, not exempt from rent and transfer, and they are also exempt from prostitution. Even if they are disabled, they are also exempt from prostitution, such as guarding the city gate, guarding the warehouse, etc. , One Ding a year, two stones, two Zhangs of silk, three taels of cotton, and not half a cent.

I have very little disabled land, and it was turbulent in those few years, with wars and natural disasters. The land that Lao Cao and the others allocated, but I have no seeds, no cattle, and no farm tools. High.

Anyway, after three years of tossing around, Lao Cao, Lao Xu and the others almost all became bachelors again, and the imperial court refused to sell the fields, but in fact they all paid off their debts in the end.

In the end, Lao Cao, Lao Xu and many other people became abandoned and fled, and went to the canal to beg for a living. Lao Cao became a shipbuilder with some old skills, and Lao Xu became a watchman. They all do hard work to make ends meet.

However, the high-ranking officials of the imperial court, such as the governor Yang Gongren and Dou Gui, still want to attack them.

Lao Cao drank a few glasses of green plum wine and got a little drunk, so he also bluntly spoke out about the many drawbacks of the imperial court's land equalization system.

"Equal field and average field sounds good, but in fact, how many ordinary people can get an average of one hundred acres of land? Ordinary people, if they can get twenty or thirty acres of land, it's not bad, and the further they go, they can get There are fewer Tian Yue. You see, it has only been 11 years since the founding of the country, but even Xun Tian, ​​who has made meritorious service in the army, cannot be fully honored by the court.
The job fields of officials also began to be uneven, so they could only send millet directly to the warehouse.

However, the rent adjustment of the imperial court is levied on the basis of Ding, and the tax rate is actually set on the basis of one Ding and one hundred mu. If the grant of land is insufficient, the tax rate will be increased. If it reaches [-] or [-] mu, it will be doubled again.

Do you think these people can survive?
Even if the government soldiers click to select, now the Xuntian will not be honored slowly, let alone the selection of the Xunfan. There is no land, no reward, and no chance to become an official. You said that everyone will be so active in preparing their own food and clothing Does the equipment fight for the country? "

"If the imperial court does not change the land equalization system, it will take less than 30 years. It is estimated that not only will there be no land to equalize, but the government soldiers will also find it difficult to maintain. I am afraid that it will be the end of the world."

Wu Huaiyu couldn't help admiring Lao Cao's drunken words, which actually made sense. He was a gangster at the bottom, but after all, he had also been a captain, so he still had some knowledge.

The land equalization system is the foundation of the Tang government's military system and fiscal and taxation system. If the land equalization system collapses, the Tang Dynasty will also be unstable.

"Uncle Cao, I offer you a toast!"

Wu Huaiyu believes that many people have seen these problems, but this is the root of the Tang Dynasty, and no one dares to do it easily, because it can still run well after all, who knows if it will collapse immediately after it is moved.

"Uncle Cao, I'm going to gather all the old soldiers left over from that year. Everyone's life is not going well. I'm willing to help you arrange it."

(End of this chapter)