Three Kingdoms: The Kingdom Cannot Be Partial

Chapter 168 Do not refrain from doing good because it is small

After leaving Liangyi Lane, Liu Shan walked slowly.

Chen Zhi, Guan Xing, Jiang Wei, and other generals followed closely behind, and the group soon returned to the ditch filled with seven or eight corpses.

From the moment he left until his return, only an hour had passed, but Liu Shan's mood was much heavier than it had been an hour earlier.

The reality of being dumped here after death is vastly different from that of someone who, having left behind only their clothes as their sole asset, comes here naked in the dead of night and drowns themselves.

Looking at the horrific scene in the ditch, Chen Zhi sighed and then said to the emperor:

"Your Majesty, there are only twenty-three households in total in Liangyi Village, and their situations are not much different from those of the old woman's family just now."

"That old woman had two sons who died in battle more than ten years ago."

"The only male member of the family was an old man who was conscripted by Cao Wei two months ago, and there has been no news of him since."

"The old woman now lives alone with her fourteen or fifteen-year-old daughter."

“I saw that woman once when I came here the other day. She was covered in filth and seemed to be acting crazy.”

"But I have a nagging feeling... that she's probably not truly insane, because there are similar madwomen in every village nearby..."

Liu Shan nodded upon hearing this, recalling the dirty face that had peeked out from behind the door earlier. Pretending to be insane and disguising themselves was probably their way of protecting themselves.

Chen Zhi then handed over a silk scroll: "Your Majesty, this is a memorial I have drafted over the past two days. I originally planned to send it to Your Majesty in Chang'an as soon as I finished writing it today, but I did not expect Your Majesty to come in person."

Liu Shan took it and looked at it.

It turned out to be Chen Zhi's observations over the past few days, as well as his suggestion that the court send back the laborers conscripted by Cao Wei from Linjin to their hometowns.

Unlike those flowery and pretentious memorials, Chen Zhi's writing was plain and simple. In his memorial, he used Liangyi Village and Sanhe Village as examples to describe what he saw and heard. He did not embellish the truth, because it was basically consistent with the reality that Liu Shan saw.

Considering that Chen Zhi had only been in office for a few days, Liu Shan couldn't help but encourage and praise him:
"Feng Zong did a good job, and wrote well too."

"From now on, things will be done this way, and memorials will be written this way."

After Liu Shan finished speaking, he told Chen Zhi about how Zhao Guang and Mi Wei had just been fined half a year's salary.

Chen Zhi was a man who was very good at understanding his superiors' intentions.

Having spent more than three months with the emperor in the military, he had long since discerned that the current emperor was pragmatic and not concerned with empty talk.

It can be guessed that the reason why the emperor entrusted the important town of Linjin to him was probably because in the past few months, he had carefully followed the emperor's instructions, tried to change himself from being abstract to being pragmatic, and at the same time tried to make the emperor notice his changes.

The memorial submitted to the emperor at this time is clear evidence of this.

It is certainly important to do things practically, but it is equally important to let the emperor know that you are doing real work.

Regardless, what Chen Zhi saw and heard after taking office in Linjin really touched him. In addition to wanting to make progress, he also genuinely wanted to do something for the people of Linjin.

The county soldiers who accompanied him on his trip to the countryside to observe the people's conditions brought more than a dozen hoes with them, and they were already digging and filling in the soil.

“Even if we fill in the entire ditch, as long as it doesn’t solve the people’s actual problems, they will still go looking for new ditches,” Liu Chan said, gazing at the ditch that was gradually being buried by yellow earth.

Chen Zhi nodded repeatedly:

"Your Majesty, there are only about twenty households and a little over one hundred people registered in Liangyi Village."

"The entire Linjin County has only about 800 registered households and more than 3,000 people."

"After Linjin was recovered, the powerful clans in the county donated more than 8,000 shi of grain."

"I intend to open the Linjin treasury and take out some grain to relieve the people and alleviate their urgent needs."

Liu Shan nodded slightly. He had no objection to opening the granaries for relief. The people were already struggling to survive, and the food they needed to eat was indeed more important to them than any long-term plan.

"Is there only a little over eight hundred registered households in the entire Linjin?" This exaggerated number was quite unexpected for Liu Shan, as it contradicted what he had seen.

Chen Zhi looked around at the surrounding fields and sighed:
"Your Majesty should have seen it as well; the number of people working in the surrounding fields is probably more than two or three hundred."

"But most of these people are not registered households, but rather tenant farmers living in the manors and fortified villages of powerful clans."

“In Sichuan, about 30% to 40% of households are hidden, but in Guanzhong, the figure is probably more than 70% to 80%.”

"Moreover... under the rule of Cao Wei, there was no data on the household registration and land holdings of these powerful clans; they simply made a rough agreement on how much tax each clan should pay each year."

"The county magistrate of Linjin under the pseudo-Wei regime ordered local powerful clans to be responsible for collecting taxes from the registered people, and the same applied to the corvée labor."

"After reviewing the bamboo and wooden slips, I found that Linjin initially had more than 2,000 households, but now more than 1,000 households have been classified as runaway households, leaving only more than 800 households registered."

"Since the grain and fodder collected by Cao Wei were fixed quotas, these 800-plus registered households were burdened with the taxes and corvée labor of more than 2,000 households."

Liu Shan remained silent upon hearing this.

The situation in Guanzhong was already similar to the suzerain-protector system during the Sixteen Kingdoms period.

Those aristocratic families and powerful clans who were unwilling to migrate south became lords or commanders of their own fortified villages to protect themselves. They governed their clans and followers, controlled the armed forces of the fortified villages, and negotiated with the local government.

The households that lived in the fortified villages and fortified walls often numbered in the hundreds or thousands.

The so-called "Clan Head and Protector System" means that the imperial court recognized powerful clans as clan heads and granted them the administrative function of protecting the people under their jurisdiction, making them a part of the country's grassroots governance.

The reason why Cao Wei was so incompetent in governing Guanzhong was that Cao Wei was powerless to change the status quo in Guanzhong and had to compromise with the powerful clans in Guanzhong, acknowledging the legitimacy of their existing interests and allowing them to supervise the people.

It had positive aspects, at least it put aside the conflict between the powerful clans in Guanzhong and the Cao Wei regime, maintained local security, and nominally made Guanzhong part of Cao Wei's territory.

With the interests of the powerful clans in Guanzhong protected, they maintained a superficial alliance with Cao Wei, outwardly complying but inwardly resisting.

Otherwise, they wouldn't have stood idly by and remained neutral when Cao Wei and the Han Dynasty were at war.

This is somewhat related to the fact that Guanzhong was the birthplace of the Han Dynasty, and the people there longed for the Han.

They remained neutral because they didn't know whether "Shu Han" could succeed. After the Han Dynasty defeated Cao Wei, many powerful clans in Guanzhong began to actively seek cooperation with the Han Dynasty, handing over the household registrations they had not submitted to Cao Wei.

For example, Wei and Du of Jingzhao, who were pursuing progress, handed over more than two thousand households of hidden households to the Han Dynasty, which was more than twice the number of households in Linjin at present, which made Liu Shan amazed.

However, the further east one went, the closer one got to the border of Cao Wei, the fewer large clans actively cooperated with the Han Dynasty.

They were still worried that Cao Wei might attack again at any time, so they could only act as opportunists, maintaining an ambiguous relationship with both Han and Wei.

After the Han dynasty took control, although they voluntarily contributed grain, they still controlled the household registration, which is a manifestation of this ambiguous relationship.

Chen Zhi looked at the silent emperor, hesitated for a moment, then finally mustered his courage and said:
"Your Majesty, even though the people suffer terribly, they still try their best to live. When they can no longer survive, they would rather drown themselves than sell their land and become tenant farmers or slaves... This is probably because the people are attached to their homeland and are unwilling to abandon their ancestral homes and lands."

"Your Majesty just said that you want to set up civilian settlements. Your intentions are good, but I'm afraid that these people may not understand Your Majesty's good intentions."

"After all... to establish civilian settlements, these people need to be relocated to one place, their land redistributed, their fields need to be reclaimed, and their houses need to be rebuilt."

"How could the people be willing to abandon their original fields and houses and spend extra effort to cultivate wasteland and build houses?"

After Chen Zhi finished speaking, Liu Shan turned his head and looked at him.

After a short while, he looked around at the vast fields and scattered houses.

Chen Zhi's words make a lot of sense.

Self-sufficient small farming families cannot withstand upheaval. The so-called attachment to one's homeland is, in fact, the very realistic considerations Chen Zhi mentioned, because change means risk, and small farming families cannot bear even the slightest risk.

This is also why high-yield planting methods such as the "alternating field method" cannot be popularized, because people do not believe that your so-called alternating field method is better than my ancestral method.

Now that Liu Shan wants to establish farms, the common people find it hard to believe that being a garrison farmer would be better than being a self-cultivating farmer. They might even think that you want to imprison them and turn them into farm slaves.

"But the problem now is... there are too few registered residents in one place, and the area of ​​one county is too vast."

"If we don't gather them together, how many officials would it take to govern a mere eight hundred households in a large county like Linjin, which is eighty li from east to west and sixty li from north to south?"

"Do we want to continue to let powerful clans govern themselves, just like Cao Wei did? Once this becomes the norm, the resistance to change it in the future will be much greater than it is now."

Chen Zhi felt somewhat powerless upon hearing this.

He led dozens of county soldiers back and forth for three days, nearly breaking his legs, and only managed to cover the six li closest to Pubanjin. To inspect all thirty-odd li of Linjin would be impossible in less than a month.

All that sweat and effort... was for a mere eight hundred households.

Liu Shan then said:

"My intention to establish farms is not merely due to a shortage of officials."

"Fengzong, you have seen the situation in Liangyili. Twenty-three households cannot even afford two intact iron hoes."

"How inefficient must they be at farming with tools made of stone and hoes made of wood?"

"If the soil along this river were not relatively soft, it would be impossible to cultivate even ten acres of land with such primitive farming tools."
"The nation is based on agriculture. This time, our Han Dynasty has captured a lot of ironware. It is no problem for me to issue an edict to give each of the 800 registered households in Linjin an iron hoe."

"But what if the hoe breaks? Where can they get it repaired?"
"Knowing that the cropping method is highly effective, how can we teach it to them?"
"If there is a natural disaster and the harvest is poor, there will not even be enough food to eat, let alone enough seeds to keep. Then who will they borrow food from?"

"The officials in Chang'an are all discussing the need to distribute land equally among the people of Guanzhong."

"But you should also know that after the land was equalized, all households that had already received land had to pay a certain percentage of taxes to the court based on the amount of land they were allocated."

"The people had no farming tools, no food, no seeds, no efficient farming methods, and not even able-bodied men."

"Under these circumstances, the court allocating land to them and making them pay taxes and perform corvée labor would probably be another form of persecution for them."

Even if they are exempted from corvée labor and taxes for a period of time, they will still be powerless to do anything about the land they are allocated.

"If we cannot fundamentally improve their farming efficiency, similar tragic situations will continue to occur."

Liu Shan was not interested in the people's livelihood, which meant he was unaware of the situation of the people in Shu. However, during this tour of Guanzhong, he went straight to the grassroots level and found that the scarcity of means of production among the people in Guanzhong was beyond his expectations.

What they lacked was not the so-called curved plow or dragon-bone waterwheel, but an iron hoe and a few bushels of seeds, nothing more.

Hearing the emperor's words, Chen Zhi's thoughts immediately drifted to Wuzhangyuan.

Since the emperor personally led the expedition, he has not only attached great importance to military affairs, but also to agriculture. The fact that he ordered craftsmen to improve the curved plow and the dragon-bone waterwheel, as well as the hundreds of thousands of acres of land reclaimed at the foot of Wuzhangyuan, are clear evidence of this.

The prisoners responsible for cultivating the land seemed to live better than the registered residents of Linjin in some respects, and their farming efficiency was undoubtedly much higher than that of the common people who used stone and wooden farm tools.

Why?

Because the Han Dynasty guaranteed the supply of grain seeds and farming tools, and ensured the daily rations of the prisoners, hundreds of farming tools could be damaged every day, but the blacksmiths on Wuzhangyuan could repair them immediately.

Don't the people of Linjin know that buying an iron hoe would allow them to cultivate several more acres of land, producing a much higher value than a single iron hoe?
According to his investigation, this was not the case.

The iron farm tools they could buy were of extremely poor quality; some were so bad that they broke before they could even plow an acre of land.

The people had no choice; they had no money and nowhere to repair them. Stone and wooden farm tools became more useful. At least they could polish these simple and rough tools themselves and repair them when they broke. Apart from time, there was almost no cost.

And their time is the least valuable thing.

Just as Chen Zhi's thoughts were wandering, the Emperor's voice pulled him back to reality, drawing his gaze back to the Emperor, who looked serious and earnest.

"The number of registered households in Linjin is no more than eight hundred."

"If these 800-plus households could be gathered together according to their distance and set up in three or four farms, the imperial court could provide them with food rations, seeds, iron hoes, and dragon-bone waterwheels and other agricultural tools."

“Each farm shall be assigned an agricultural official and more than ten agricultural clerks. An iron workshop shall be built to centralize the production and repair of agricultural tools. Special personnel shall be assigned to teach them the methods of crop rotation, crop rotation and composting.”

"The court will suffer losses within a year."

"By the second year, the people were able to support themselves."

"By the third year, the people were probably already self-sufficient and had some stored grain, which was enough to withstand certain risks."

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. I believe these methods are probably better than exempting them from taxes and corvée labor for several years.”

"And what the Han Dynasty is making now will be rewarded several times, even ten times, in the future."

"Does the so-called recuperation and restoration necessarily have to be the Huang-Lao philosophy of non-action, and not the active intervention of the imperial court?"

Zao Zhi proposed the system of military farming to Cao Cao, but Cao Cao did not dare to use it at first.

Cao Wei already had a system of military agricultural settlements, and when Deng Ai proposed military agricultural settlements in Huainan again, it was recorded in history books.

This law clashes with people's current views, leading to a widespread belief that the government should not interfere too much in the lives of ordinary people.

The abundant granaries during the reigns of Emperors Wen and Jing, and the halving of the population during the reign of Emperor Wu, are seen by many as the best examples of opposites.

Chen Zhi pondered in silence for a moment, then nodded repeatedly:
"What Your Majesty says is absolutely right."

"As parents love their children, they plan far ahead for them. Your Majesty's plans for the people are truly far-sighted, and you are indeed worthy of being called a benefactor of the people..."

"Alright, enough with the flattery. I don't like it, and I'm not in the mood for it today. Let's get down to business," Liu Shan interrupted Chen Zhi's attempt to curry favor.

Chen Zhi looked somewhat embarrassed, but immediately apologized repeatedly.

Having heard this much, he now largely agreed with the emperor's ideas.

However, he still had some concerns about some of the inherent problems of land reclamation.

After a moment's thought, he straightened his back and said seriously:
"Since Your Majesty is so pragmatic and avoids the superficial, then I will also avoid the superficial and embrace the practical."

"Whether it is called tuntian or farm, it is in fact a gathering of people to cultivate the land."

"This method has existed since ancient times. Back then, when Zao Zhi proposed the method of military farming to Cao Cao, it accumulated millions of bushels of grain for Cao Cao in just one year, which can be said to have astonished the world."

"But in the end, this system of military colonies invariably turned into a vicious and intractable problem of exploiting and oppressing the people."

"The military settlers were bound to the fields, and the agricultural officials treated the military and civilian settlements and the settlers as their private property, exploiting and abusing them. If they did not work, they would be whipped. The people suffered hardship and many fled."

"Now that His Majesty is focusing on this matter in Guanzhong, such a thing will certainly not happen, but what about in the future? When His Majesty goes to Guandong, I'm afraid this farm system will slowly evolve into a tool for oppressing the people. Although His Majesty's original intention is good, in the future... if things go wrong, it may bring His Majesty a bad reputation."

Liu Shan immediately shook his head:

"This is just a temporary measure. When we can't even be self-sufficient in farm tools, seeds, and food, we can only do the most with the lowest cost by having people stick together for warmth."

"As for the corruption, embezzlement, and abuse of the people that you mentioned, those are things that will happen at least a few years, or even more than a decade, later."

"The most urgent task is to solve the problem of whether we can survive, and then to solve the problem of whether we are corrupt and abusing the people."

"I will keep my eyes on this place and control my greed. When the people of the farm are self-sufficient, I will have all the officials in charge of the farm withdraw."

The military-agricultural colonies of Cao Wei eventually became a chronic problem that obscured the government's power, due to both Cao Wei's indulgence and its greed.

Because the people who settled in the garrison were really too easy to exploit.

In the later stages, most of the registered households in the country were hidden by powerful families, and nearly 30% of the registered households were given to princes, nobles and generals. With frequent wars, Cao Wei was even more reluctant to cancel the military-agricultural colony policy.

Liu Shan looked at Chen Zhi:

"Actually, I originally planned to go back and discuss this with the Prime Minister, and then send someone to tell you the results."

"But after thinking it over, I decided to let you know my thoughts directly."

"If we take Linjin as a pilot area and it doesn't work out well, then we'll cancel it. We can afford to make a mess of it with several thousand people."

"If we do it well, we can promote it throughout the Guanzhong Plain."

The emperor had already made his intentions clear, and Chen Zhi immediately bowed his head.

"Although it is only a mere eight hundred households, His Majesty is so concerned about it."

"Doesn't this just prove the late emperor's saying, 'Do not refrain from doing good because it is small'?"

"Your Majesty, I will certainly do this well. If I fail, I will return to Shu to farm and have no face to see Your Majesty again!"

(End of this chapter)