The Maojin knife from the late Jin Dynasty

Chapter 260 Gou Chun is working

Liu Tai and Zu Ti entered a period of relative peace, and Liu Tai began to devote all his energy to spring plowing.

When Liu Tai was in Qingzhou, he gradually replaced the cultivation of corn with winter wheat, so that the people could free up their summer time as much as possible and let the people do corvee work for themselves during the slack time.

But this kind of thing cannot be implemented all at once in areas such as Yecheng.

The most important thing in the first year is stability. Now I can only talk about conquering the areas controlled by Shi Le, but I have not really brought the local people back.

If you want them to live in peace and stability and become the cornerstone of your own political power, you must let them receive the first wave of food.

In this era, whoever can keep the people well fed will have an extremely stable political power.

During this process, the agricultural students trained by Wang Pei, under the guidance of Liu Tai, began to become doctors of agriculture and went to the private sector to teach people how to use various new agricultural tools, and to help grassroots areas build water conservancy facilities and guide water flow.

Of course, Liu Tai only wanted these agricultural doctors to guide the people to farm.

After all, it is not easy for the people here to change their thousands of years of farming habits in just one year.

However, advanced things are advanced things after all. As long as the common people feel the advancement brought by these agricultural knowledge and actually benefit from it, the common people will still be highly motivated to actively learn these technologies.

With the implementation of the "Qiantian Tax" and "Corvee Tax", Gou Chun began to display his investigative abilities like a mad dog, which shocked the Jizhou family.

Yecheng's large and small aristocratic families wanted to hide their land acres, so Gou Chun took the land acres counted from Chu Hui and went to each aristocratic family to check, acre by acre.

As long as there is an extra acre of land, the land will either be confiscated or an extra "Thousand Fields Tax" will be paid to Liu Tai.

Of course, if this family dares to resist the tax, Gou Chun will not be allowed to use these soldiers to attack as long as they are not bad officials who directly kill for investigation, even though Gou Chun has a thousand elite troops authorized by Liu Tai, which are mainly used for protection rather than conquest. .

At this time, Gou Chun needed to report the matter to Liu Tai. Based on what Gou Chun found, Liu Tai asked Yangman to communicate with the family and obediently pay the tax, so as to avoid difficulties for both parties.

If all taxes and fines are paid, then the matter is over.

If not, just ask Gou Chun to lead troops to encircle and suppress them in the name of tax resistance.

Among them, the acres of land were returned to the state, and the extravagant wealth was sent to Gouchun's tax department as bonus subsidies.

As for the aristocratic families who resisted the tax, all the girls were given to Xu's private training room for training, and the boys were sent to the collective farms to do corvee labor.

In the Han Dynasty, don't say that you are a superior person, that you don't know the common people at the bottom, and don't know how to pay taxes.

For Liu Tai, every part of his political system must strive for the revival of the Han Dynasty.

The common people don't have money, at least people have contributed. You aristocratic families have money and food, so it doesn't matter if you pay some taxes. If you can't stay in the Han Dynasty, you can leave at any time, and you will never stop it. It's just that the land is with you. The servants were left to themselves.

As Gou Chun carefully verified the acres of land, he then began to verify the number of corvees.

It's quite simple. Officials post announcements and have officials go to busy places to read out the rules and regulations from time to time.

If a family hired more than five slaves, they had to report it to the government so that the government could collect the corvee tax.

If the number of hired slaves exceeds five but is not reported to the court, they will all be punished as conspiracy and treason.

Servants can report to the government on their own initiative. After verification, they will directly obtain one-third of the family's assets. As for the other two-thirds, the land belongs to the state, and the rest needs to be handed over to other officials up and down.

All in all, some aristocratic families are really not used to Liu Tai's targeting of the aristocratic families.

Crying and shouting, even the aliens did not persecute them like this. Now that the Han Dynasty has recovered, how can Liu Tai persecute them like this!

Liu Tai was indifferent to this, because Liu Tai knew very well that the more things like fields were in his hands, the more stable his political power would be.

Compared with fields, other gold, silver, jewelry, antiques, calligraphy and paintings may not be as valuable as food.

Under Liu Tai's political system, those aristocratic families living in Qingzhou or the Yang family like Yangman with excellent family tradition, or those who migrated to Qingzhou from outside like Chu Hui Gaozhan, all started from scratch cautiously and actively integrated The rules set by Liu Tai.

At least when Liu Tai was alive, these people did not dare to do anything transgressive.

To be honest, there is no difference between the two aristocratic families, because the aristocratic families are political creatures that rely on the rules of the empire to survive.

If you play with the rules of the aristocratic family, your ten lives will be played to death by the aristocratic family sooner or later.

But the most troublesome thing for the aristocratic family is to face two kinds of guys. One is the barbarians who do not follow the rules at all. They only recognize the sword in their hands. Until they are ready to rule a party, they need the aristocratic family as their cooperation partner to rule the local people.

The other kind is Liu Tai, who has formulated another rule, and under the inertia of the old rules, the family often conflicts with the new rules formulated by Liu Tai.

If Liu Tai gives in, then the family will let the old rules reappear. If Liu Tai doesn't give in, then the family will decisively choose to take a step back and survive first, and then wait until they are familiar with the new rules before taking advantage of the loopholes.

And Liu Tai also understands that when facing aristocratic families, he can take a step back on personal issues, but when it comes to rules such as administrative regulations, he cannot take a step back.

Because these guys are a bit like termites. As long as you step back and let the bite come out, the entire system will be destroyed at a geometric speed. Basically, it will enter a countdown to destruction.

However, it is easy to wipe out these aristocratic families. The real difficulty is how to arrange the slaves and corvees who were scattered after the destruction of these aristocratic families. If they are ignored, it will inevitably affect the spring plowing.

Therefore, Liu Tai's collective farm appeared again. All the slaves of the aristocratic families, misdemeanor rangers, and some captured soldiers were arranged into the collective farm and carried out militarized management there.

Farming should be done, work should be done, and after they have been imprisoned for a few years and allowed to learn some crafts, they can be released from the collective farm and go out to make a living.

To be honest, this is also because Cao Ni's Yongji Canal has not really been rolled out. Otherwise, this project alone could absorb millions of people, and Liu Tai would not have anything to do for the people in a short time.

Liu Tai's entire Hebei area, including Bingzhou, has a total population of about 1000 million.

Among them, his own Qingzhou and Wang Jun's Youzhou, the proportion of Han people is basically above nine levels and there are 600 million people.

In comparison, the western part of Jizhou, Bingzhou, and parts of Sizhou and Yanzhou north of the Yellow River that I have just acquired now have a combined population of about 400 million, and the number of foreign races and the total number of Han people is about one to three. . If I take over the area ruled by Shi Le a few years later, I wonder if the proportion of this foreign race will increase again, and the proportion of Han people will further decline.

I have to say that Shi Le's policies towards the people and his policies were quite good.

But the problem is that he is from the Jie clan, and he needs to take the interests of the Jie clan into consideration when doing things, not to mention that when his orders are issued, only the Jie clan or aristocratic families will execute them. Who cares about the people at the bottom of the class? Benefits.

Basically, the era of foreign rule was the most comfortable era for aristocratic families or landlords.

Because as Han people they have the value of being united and able to control the lowest level Han people.

But the Han people at the bottom are the most bullied, because your direct managers will exploit you, and even the emperor who is high in the sky and far away will not care about you.

After all, foreign rule, with some thoughts in mind, the worst that can happen is that this land will be broken to the bone and the marrow sucked out, and you can just pat your butt and leave. Why do you care about the life and death of the bottom class?

On the contrary, if the rulers of their own race are overthrown by violence from the bottom, they must face a problem. They have nowhere to retreat. They have no other choice but to die. Therefore, for them, the people at the bottom have the value of uniting the front. .

As long as large-scale spring plowing begins in the north of the Yellow River, it will naturally not be hidden from the businessmen of Xingyang and Jijun or the scholars on study tours.

In fact, Liu Tai didn't want to hide it, because sometimes the truth is more attractive than lies.

Zu Ti would naturally take advantage of this opportunity and send people north to survey the surrounding terrain and make preparations for the future Northern Expedition.

Although Zu Ti also knew that Sima Rui and Director Wang would not support it, who could guarantee whether Liu Tai would give him a chance?

As long as there is a chance, Zu Ti will give it a try, even if it means going north to the dragon's pond and tiger's den.

In addition to Zu Ti sending his men north, Li Ju also sent his confidant Gou Yuan, pretending to be a businessman, to take advantage of the opportunity of trade between Xingyang and Jijun to explore the reality of Liu Tai's territory.

Because for Li Ju, as Liu Yao was captured by Liu Tai, Shi Le was killed by Liu Tai, and his tit-for-tat opponents were completely eliminated by Liu Tai, this made Li Ju feel more or less empty.

If Liu Tai took advantage of the situation to launch an attack on Xingyang and followed Li Ju to fight too many times, then Li Ju would not care about so many things.

But the problem is that Liu Tai conquered the land north of the Yellow River, so he took the initiative to come over and seek peace with Zu Ti.

Now Xingyang, where he is, has become more prosperous due to the exchanges between the two parties, which more or less made Li Ju shaken a little.

In the final analysis, although Liu Tai held high the banner of the Han Dynasty, the so-called Han Dynasty by Liu Tai was different from the Xiongnu Han Kingdom.

The aliens he hated were either killed by Jin Zhun indiscriminately during Jin Zhun's rebellion, or were wiped out when Liu Tai captured Liu Yao and killed Shi Le. This made Li Ju not treat Liu Tai as sincerely as he did the aliens. Hated.

After all, regardless of whether Liu Tai had been humbled by foreigners before, at least now Liu Tai has become one of the people most likely to be unified in the world.

The most important thing is that his surname is Liu. He started from Qingzhou, occupied Youzhou, annexed Hebei, annexed prefectures, and had the tendency to annex the world. He was simply repeating the myth of Liu Xiu.

This forced all opponents who fought against Liu Tai to consider whether they were fighting against destiny at this moment.

Of course, the reason why the aristocratic family did not take the initiative to surrender to Liu Tai now is that as Liu Tai occupied more land, things like the "Thousand Field Tax" and "Corvee Tax" naturally spread.

Liu Tai's tax system definitely makes aristocratic families feel distressed. This makes many aristocratic families, if you surrender after Liu Tai fights, you definitely don't want to welcome Liu Tai to your territory early, otherwise Isn’t it just looking for sin?
Of course, the aristocratic family must have such scruples more or less. After all, they are vested interests relying on the old rules. They are much more comfortable under the old rules than the new rules Liu Tai has formulated. Why bother to welcome Liu Tai.

But Li Ju's identity is at best that of a powerful man, not a noble family. The most important thing is that he is a refugee commander from the north, so he represents the interests of the northern refugees, not the interests of the noble family.

Compared with the aristocratic family's dislike of Liu Tai, because Liu Tai's policies were beneficial to the people at the bottom, this made Li Ju slightly deviate towards Liu Tai.

This also led Li Ju to send Gou Yuan, hoping that Gou Yuan would go to the north of Jiangnan in person to see what the north of Jiangnan was like now.

Li Ju knew very well that if Liu Tai went south, Xingyang, where he was, would be the only place Liu Tai must pass to compete with the Jin court, and he would bear the brunt.

Therefore, I need more information about Liu Tai to make more accurate decisions about the future.

After Gou Yuan and others arrived at Jijun, after the number of people reached a certain level, they made unified arrangements.

These people are either wealthy businessmen or traveling scholars. In short, they are all wealthy people.

After taking out the deposit and paying for the carriage, these people got into the special carriage and headed towards Yecheng.

They soon saw the endless fields and the people who were working hard on the fields, diligently cultivating and fertilizing the fields with green buds sprouting.

Although I can only watch from a distance at this moment, I can feel the leisurely contentment and vitality of these people from the bottom of their hearts.

This makes them feel like they have experienced the storm and see the rainbow again, making them full of hope for the future.

The route arranged by Liu Tai was naturally specially arranged to give these people some small productivity shock.

Liu Tai believed that there must be spies arranged by Zu Ti, and of course there were also wealthy businessmen and scholars who really wanted to come to Yecheng to take a look.

To be honest, Liu Tai doesn't care, because Liu Tai has experienced previous lives and clearly understands that it is instinct for anyone to pursue civilization.

It's just that after seeing civilization, some people want to shave off their skin to get in touch with civilization, while some people have seen what civilization looks like, so they want to make their hometowns civilized and dazzling.

Therefore, Liu Tai understands that in these troubled times, what moves people the most is not gold and silver treasures or achievements in fertile land. What really moves people's hearts is civilization and tranquility. As long as he can show this, these people will choose to join him sooner or later.

After all, the Jin Dynasty's court did not encourage officials to be loyal to the country. Naturally, you will not have any psychological pressure when you come to seek refuge. It is just a good bird choosing a tree to roost in.

With the end of spring plowing and the start of the Cao Yi project, Chu Hui, who was finally relieved, approached Liu Tai and said, "Your Majesty, shouldn't we big men start looking for outstanding talents now?"

When Liu Tai heard Chu Hui's words, he couldn't help but said softly, "Oh?!"

(End of this chapter)