Han officials

Chapter 199: Good Family [22]

Although some gentry in the Central Plains had already developed the habit of eating rice, in most counties in the north, the main grains were still millet, sorghum, and wheat, among which broomcorn millet was the most common.

At least in Youzhou, Liaozhou and Yingzhou regions, these grain crops are basically the main crops.

These days, Wei Zhe has roughly looked through the tax records of the various counties in Youzhou and found that the taxes are getting lower year by year.

This was certainly due to natural disasters and wars, but the inability of local counties to collect taxes was also a major reason.

Wei Zhe and Xi Zhicai were friends from a poor background, so he was too lazy to pretend at this moment.

He slammed his right hand heavily on the battlement, complaining, "Taxes aren't a matter of penny-for-penny calculations; they're the key to a nation's survival. Therefore, when granaries are full, rituals and music flourish; when treasuries are overflowing, armor and weapons are complete. Yet these people are so shortsighted, haggling over every penny. Even stretches of farmland are not enough, yet they spend their days plotting ways to evade taxes. If this continues, how can the empire survive?"

Hearing this, Xi Zhicai couldn't help but sigh with regret.

After all, when Emperor Si was in power, wasn't it because the taxes collected were getting less and less that he sold official positions and titles?

In fact, since the Western Han Dynasty, as the power of local tyrants grew, it became increasingly difficult to collect taxes.

At its core, the problem is that the court's control over the local areas is gradually weakening.

Many times, let alone collecting taxes, even the most basic maintenance of stability requires the assistance of local powerful people.

Especially after Emperor Guangwu established the country, the imperial power did not extend below the county level for most of the time.

Thinking of this, Xi Zhicai also guessed what Wei Zhe wanted to do.

"Are you planning to follow the example of Liaodong and establish large-scale military farms in Youzhou?"

"Not only that." Wei Zhe said in a deep voice, "Every county under my jurisdiction must establish military farms."

Who says that only border counties need military farming? Inner counties also need it.

The army, military farming, and taxes are actually the same thing to Wei Zhe.

Only when military settlements are spread across every county under its jurisdiction can Wei Zhe's control over the local area become stronger.

The stronger his control over local counties, the more taxes he could collect.

With more taxes, he could support more troops.

You should know that a soldier's monthly ration is about 3 shi 3 dou, which means he needs to consume 43.2 shi of grain in a year. In addition, each soldier needs to consume three liters of salt every month, and one shi of salt is equal to 16 shi of grain.

Even if we assume that a family of five can harvest 300 dan of millet per year from 100 mu of land, three households will still have to support one soldier.

Of course, the actual cost of maintaining a soldier is much more than that.

If the standard of three households supporting one soldier is really implemented, the burden on the people will be huge.

In the original history, this was the reason why the people of Shu Han became tired of war.

Generally speaking, a healthier situation is that five households support one soldier, or even ten households support one soldier.

For example, during the reigns of Emperor Wen of Han and Emperor Jing of Han, the ratio of soldiers to civilians remained at a very low level.

It is possible that no dynasty in later generations has surpassed the standards of the Wenjing period.

Therefore, the army, military farming, and taxation are actually closely linked, and one move can affect the whole body.

If Wei Zhe wanted to reorganize the military forces under his jurisdiction, he naturally had to incorporate them into this system.

After hearing what he said, Xi Zhicai finally understood what was bothering him.

After a moment's thought, Xi Zhicai frowned and said, "Most county soldiers are from the local garrison troops, and they are replaced annually. However, the law and order have been neglected, almost to the point of bad governance. With refugees everywhere, the number of households is so small that they are useless. Your Excellency, why not order the county soldiers from all regions to settle in the fields and exempt them from taxes? Perhaps that would alleviate the problem."

At this point, Xi Zhicai's brows relaxed and he smiled, "A military camp has a thousand men, so one camp per county is enough."

With a thousand garrison troops as a foundation, the county magistrate appointed by Wei Zhe also gained authority.

Authority is based on violence; this is the essence of government.

In this way, the large counties have tens of thousands of people, and the small counties have thousands of people. The farming troops serve as the second-line army to suppress the local areas, and Wei Zhe can safely draw elite troops to fight on the front line.

Wei Zhe had already made up his mind after hearing this, but he still asked, "Where will the land come from?" Hearing this, Xi Zhicai immediately laughed and said, "Are you testing me, sir?"

Without waiting for Wei Zhe to speak, he said casually, "It is enough to kill one tyrant in each county!"

Xi Zhicai didn't even say what crime he would use, because when the time came, there would naturally be a crime to use as an excuse to take action.

In this respect, the local tyrants of the Han Dynasty were surprisingly similar.

As for whether one lives or dies in the end, it often depends on the reputation of the powerful person and whether he knows what's best for him.

Local tyrants who are too unruly generally do not survive more than three generations.

Hearing this, Wei Zhe finally burst into laughter.

He immediately appointed Cui Yan, Gong Hong and others as military inspectors to inspect counties and prefectures across the country.

For a time, Youzhou, Yingzhou and Liaozhou became restless.

It’s not that there were no powerful people who tried to resist, but most of them were like a mantis trying to stop a chariot, overestimating their own capabilities.

Many times, Wei Zhe didn't have to intervene, as the provincial governors and prefects of each state had already pacified the situation on their own.

As for the more than 10,000 Liaodong infantry and cavalry and the Jingnan volunteers who had followed Wei Zhe in his campaigns, they were incorporated into Wei Zhe's shogunate.

After all, he was the left general and had his own troops under the shogunate.

So Wei Zhe simply assigned these 20,000 front-line soldiers to the shogunate guards, collectively known as the shogunate guards.

In this way, legally speaking, the strongest army in the three states of You, Liao and Ying was actually his private army.

In order to further win over the army and increase the loyalty of the troops, Wei Zhe specially granted them ten acres of meritorious land in addition to the land allocated to them in the military settlement system.

They only have the right to use the land allocated to them, and it will be taken back after their death, but the land allocated to them by merit can be inherited from generation to generation.

Moreover, the meritorious fields awarded by Wei Zhe were all exempted from land tax, labor service, and household tax.

If the guards of the palace make military achievements in the future, they can also accumulate merits and exchange them for meritorious fields.

To put it simply, it is to implement the model of "land instead of salary" for the government guards.

Of course, the corresponding thing is responsibility.

In addition to armor and horses, the guards were required to provide their own light weapons such as bows and swords.

Over time, as the soldiers continued to fight and make meritorious contributions, they would receive more and more meritorious fields.

In this way, they will have more energy to practice killing skills, purchase equipment, and raise offspring.

Once this custom of focusing on war is formed, Wei Zhe will also have his own six counties with good families.

This group of high-quality landlords with military merits and the military class will become the most solid and die-hard supporters of Wei Zhe's lineage.

Compared to what they paid, what Wei Zhe gave was nothing.

It seemed that Wei Zhe gave away 200,000 acres of land in this wave of rewards, but in reality it was only 2,000 hectares.

During the reign of Emperor Guangwu, Zhang Kan, the prefect of Yuyang, opened up more than 8,000 hectares of rice fields in Hunu County, making Yuyang prosperous.

There was a nursery rhyme at that time that went like this:

The mulberry trees have no branches, the wheat trees are forked. Mr. Zhang is extremely happy in his administration.

Zhang Kan served in Yuyang for eight years, and the Huns never dared to invade the border.

After Cao Wei defeated Yuan Shao, it actually also established military farms in Jizhou, and the scale reached "annual income of 5 million hu."

Even if calculated based on the standard of three hu per mu, the scale of Jizhou's military farms was nearly 20,000 hectares.

In other words, the grain in Jizhou could have fed more people, but for most of the four hundred years of the Han Dynasty, this grain was stored in the granaries of local tyrants, and even if it rotted, the common people would not get a share...

(End of this chapter)