Spoiler History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 706: Hard Times
Looking back on the last time I saw the light curtain, it was thanks to the Queen's guidance that the Emperor Ming took a long time to accept the fact that the Ming Dynasty would also perish.

At that time, there were many speculations about the reasons for the country's demise.

The Hu people in the north? The Japanese pirates? The pirates in the far west?

As his eyes followed the passage of time by reading Song Ci's "Xi Yuan Ji Lu", Zhu Yuanzhang felt that he had a much clearer understanding of the reasons for the Ming Dynasty's demise.

The Western barbarians came across the sea and instigated rebellious nations like Japan, giving them firearms and aiding them with money and food, making them enemies of the Ming Dynasty, which ultimately led to the demise of the Ming Dynasty due to border troubles.

But at this moment, the young man told him in a clear and unmistakable voice:
"The only one in the Ming Dynasty who died of poverty"

The only one?!

Memories of his youth surged up uncontrollably, like fuel that turned into a blazing flame, nearly burning away all his rationality and gentleness.

The Ming emperor, who had just celebrated his 53rd birthday and had not yet stepped into his prime, roared with anger and enraged, instantly drowning the entire hall:
"This is ridiculous!"

"Absurd!"

"Huang...you are such a thief who speaks nonsense!"

Before the entire Huagai Palace could recover from the sudden talk about the Ming Dynasty dying due to poverty, it was faced with the wrath of the king who was still sharp with his butcher knife.

All the ministers hung their heads and lowered their eyebrows. The people from the Imperial Observatory were so scared that they immediately fell to the ground. The kings didn't dare to breathe, and even Zhu Biao pursed his lips.

He dared to quarrel with his father, but that was only when his father could still reason with him. He didn't dare to stroke the tiger's whiskers at this moment.

But fortunately, the only person who can calm Dad's anger happens to be here at this moment.

Zhu Yuanzhang stood up and pointed at the light curtain and cursed. He felt his right hand being pulled, as if he was asked to sit down.

But he was so angry that he didn't care about these things and immediately pushed him away impatiently.

He was pulled again, and then thrown away.

The third time he was pulled, the force was much greater, and he tried to shake it off... but he didn't get rid of it, and was pulled again.

So Emperor Mingtian reluctantly sat back down.

The anger subsided, and the atmosphere in the entire Huagai Palace became much more lively.

"We are..."

Empress Ma shook her head and stopped Zhu Yuanzhang from speaking:
"A hundred years of life is not enough, let alone hundreds of years later?"

There is no need for husband and wife to say so much, so Zhu Yuanzhang, who had been holding his breath and trying to argue, slowly let out a sigh.

Zhu Biao breathed a sigh of relief, leaned towards his father and said:

"Dad, what Liangzhe lacks the most is people who understand money and goods."

Zhu Yuanzhang knew what his son meant before he finished speaking, so he shook his head and said:
“How can we imitate the disaster of the previous dynasty? But we can learn a thing or two to prepare for it.” This answer was enough to surprise Zhu Biao, but Zhu Yuanzhang did not look at him. Instead, he looked at the light curtain and remembered what later generations said about the achievement of bridging the north and the south. The south has been prosperous in commerce since ancient times. If we imitate the Song Dynasty, what should the north do?
There is no answer to this question yet, so Zhu Yuanzhang just said that his son could learn about it, but he himself still had a lot of things to worry about.

"This is the tax collection business." Suddenly remembering what the young man said, the emperor looked at his sons Zhu Di and Zhu Su, who looked like good boys, and finally shook his head and told Zhu Biao:
"Laws should always be adapted to local conditions, but this tax should be handled with extreme caution."

Zhu Biao bowed and obeyed, and then tried to find some soothing words for his father:
"At least judging from what Li Zicheng said, he still remembers the kindness of the Ming Dynasty."

After hearing his son mention this, Zhu Yuanzhang no longer cared much about him. After all, hundreds of years had passed. Could he send soldiers or food to the other side? In the end, he could only sigh at his words:
"Two hundred thousand... for a country, it's like a broken bowl."

The Huagai Palace was silent, with only Empress Ma leaning on her husband's shoulder.

[Let’s get back to Jia Sidao.]

At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Jia Sidao was faced with an economic crisis that could be described as dire.

Years of war completely destroyed Huainan, causing severe damage to the most basic agriculture.

The war resulted in a continuous increase in military expenditure. During the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Song, there were 20 million paper money coins. During the reign of Emperor Ningzong of Song, the amount soared to 140 million. By the time of Emperor Lizong of Song, it had climbed to 290 million.

Chubi can be simply understood as Jiaozi paper money, which was a means of increasing military expenditure used by the Song, Jin and Yuan dynasties.

Behind the severe damage to agriculture and the surge in military spending was the increasingly serious problem of redundant officials in the Southern Song Dynasty. This was even simpler. All we had to do was submit the memorials of the Supervisory Censors during the reign of Emperor Lizong:
"During the Jingdeqing era, the tax revenues of more than 330 counties were used to support the salaries of more than 10,000 officials. Today, the labor of more than 100 counties is used to support more than 24,000 redundant officials."

From Song Renzong to Song Lizong, the number of officials doubled, but the territory remained only one-third, so the problem of redundant officials can be said to be very serious.

When the Northern Song Dynasty fell, the Jin soldiers who came south directly "physically sorted out" the internal troubles of the Song Dynasty. Not only did they solve the three redundancies, they also forcibly distributed the land physically. The Southern Song Dynasty was established based on this.

However, these official fields were soon sold by Wanyan Gou, who ordered "all official fields in various places to be sold", either for military needs or for his own satisfaction. This caused the Southern Song Dynasty to quickly enter a relatively unique era of land ownership by large landlords, and in fact led to an unprecedented situation of land annexation.

The so-called treacherous ministers and landlords in the Northern Song Dynasty, such as Cai Jing and Tong Guan, would have to shed tears when they came to the Southern Song Dynasty. At most, they owned only a thousand hectares of land, while the landlords in the Southern Song Dynasty would be embarrassed to say hello to others if they didn't have 100,000 acres of land.

Zhang Jun owned more than 6,000 acres of land in public, and during the Southern Song Dynasty, the best of them even achieved the "glorious" achievement of covering one million acres.

The more serious the land annexation, the more frequent the peasant uprisings, the more irreconcilable the contradictions between landlords and peasants, which will directly affect the survival of the country.

Of course, people in the Southern Song Dynasty were not without awareness that the land limit order and boundary law, which had been repeatedly proposed by conscientious officials, were intended to curb land annexation. However, facing the clique of large landowners, they were doomed to be ineffective. So in the end, the public land law was promulgated by Jia Sidao, who had already reached the highest position in the country.

But for Jia Sidao, the crisis he saw was even greater.

In order to cope with the food shortage, the Northern Song Dynasty initially adopted the policy of purchasing grain at a profit, which was to purchase grain from the people after negotiating the price.

After the Southern Song Dynasty, the profit-buying method was rapidly developed, and forced purchases at low prices and the use of Jiaozi as collateral became the norm, and these costs would eventually be passed on to the people.

Judging from the people's livelihood based on the ancient rice price index based on modern statistics, although the rice price index of the Southern Song Dynasty showed a slow downward trend overall, its lowest point was still higher than the average of the Ming Dynasty. It was not until the demise of the Ming Dynasty that the rice price rose sharply and reached the average level of the Southern Song Dynasty.

It is true that the Southern Song Dynasty experienced economic prosperity for more than a hundred years, but this was only a prosperity that belonged to the big landlords, literati and royal family members at that time.

But for the poor people of the Southern Song Dynasty, these hundred years were undoubtedly the most difficult time in the past thousand years.

(End of this chapter)