The sun never sets in the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 269

Due to a lot of labor, Gu Shanhai, who was in charge of the construction, gave everyone enough to eat. In order to encourage everyone to work hard, he announced that the Huang family was going to leave [-] households here to guard, and if there were casualties, the Huang family would be responsible to the end.

Gu Shanhai told everyone that if he was killed by Jiannu while guarding Zhongmingbao, the Huang family would pay 100 taels of silver as compensation to the fallen soldiers, regardless of men, women, or children.

The Huang family is responsible for raising the child until he is 15 years old, and the Huang family takes care of the elderly.

The reputation of the Huang family is impeccable in Liaodong. Everyone who works here believes in the promise of the Huang family. They also know that the city under construction will be their home in the future, and everyone spares no effort to work hard.

The project was progressing smoothly, and the city wall was ten feet high in less than a month. With such a semi-finished product, it was no longer afraid of the Jiannu cavalry assault, and the subsequent projects would be much safer.

In order to save the construction cost, the city wall designed by Zhongmingbao is not high, only more than two feet, which is about seven meters, which is enough.

Because the strong north and south gates protrude from the city wall, like a fort, it can completely cooperate with the artillery fire of the West Fort and East Fort to hit any enemy who tries to get close.

Since the Huang family began to equip their own arsenal to produce steel artillery that was greatly reduced in weight, Huang Sheng thought it was too bulky and eliminated too many six-pound and four-pound copper-core iron cannons.

However, the garrison artillery is bulkier and harmless, but it is just a little troublesome to install.

The north and south gates of Zhongming Fort are equipped with ten cannons. Many of the people rescued by the Huang family last year were gunners and sailors. They have mixed the gunners from Juehua Island with them, and it is enough to arrange 80 people to garrison them.

The educated young artillerymen that Huang Sheng deliberately cultivated did not want them to be stationed in a certain place, because if the enemy did not come to attack the fortress they were guarding, they might never have the opportunity to experience actual combat in their entire lives.

It is planned to distribute [-] mu of fertile land to each family of the garrison gunners, and let their families live in Dongbao to guard.

Fifty acres of land can theoretically harvest more than 42 shi of wheat. The Huang family only charges [-]% of the average yield per mu as protection fees and all taxes and fees. It stands to reason that the villagers can get [-] shi of wheat, and the cost should be [-] Stone can sell military rations.

The Huang family bought the output of the Liaodong villagers at the market price, with a guaranteed base price of seven renminbi per stone. Therefore, the annual income of each household should exceed 20 taels of silver, not counting military pay.

The industrious Han people also planted many economic crops such as melons, fruits and vegetables, and raised poultry to feed pigs for sideline business, because there are soldiers and civilians living here and have purchasing power. As long as they work hard, they can fully achieve a well-off life.

Although [-]% of the tax is very high, far higher than the grain payment standard set by Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, the Huang family will not ask for grain from the farmers when a natural disaster strikes, and will repay the farmers after field inspections.

In fact, the land policy of Ming Dynasty was very sad. The imperial court couldn’t collect taxes and fees, and the tenants of Ming Dynasty couldn’t get benefits, and they all went into the pockets of those bureaucratic landlords.

After Huang Sheng collected the land tax, the peasants only had to pay [-]% of the land harvest, and they didn't need to sell it for silver to pay, and directly paid the grain. No one could add those dazzling tricks, which blocked many ways of exploitation. died.

The officials of the Ming Dynasty put all their cleverness into pitting the farmers, and the simple harvest of grain and crops was full of tricks.

Such as along accepting, branching, changing, foot money, increasing consumption, free warehouse, big bucket, big dendrobium, bucket noodles, dendrobium noodles (the part of the heap where the tax grain is higher than the bucket noodles and dendrobium noodles when paying taxes), and showing samples (in the form of Officials inspected samples of taxed goods (such as grains produced by overcharged farmers), kicking buckets, and so on.

Zhang Juzheng’s whip method in the Ming Dynasty was distorted by landlords and profiteers. Zhang Juzheng’s starting point was good. He didn’t want things, and let the people sell their products to get money to pay taxes. He naively thought that this would not only facilitate the court, but also let the people Less exploitation.

Unexpectedly, things went against their wishes, and the suffering of the common people was even more serious. Because they needed cash to pay taxes, the common people had no money but only agricultural products.

When the farmers are hungry, they may have to pay double or even several times the price they sold for the grain to buy it back.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the one-whip method was not to facilitate farmers but to entrap them. It diluted all the exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes paid by farmers to the yield per mu, and they might not get [-]% of them.

And the Huang family ensures that each household earns [-]% of the net income, which should be able to make farmers rich slowly.

In Liaodong, you can enclose some unowned land for farmers to cultivate, and make it clear that the land ownership belongs to them. In order to prevent land mergers, the regulations are dead, and you cannot buy and sell each other within 15 years, and you can only cultivate them yourself.

All the warriors of the Huang family who knew how to do farm work selected [-] mu of land to be abandoned. Not long ago, the field near the water source helped sow [-] mu of spring wheat.

In the future, it is the only way to vigorously develop horse farming in the north. This is also to make the best use of the situation. In fact, horse farming is a Chinese technology. It was first recorded in Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching". .

During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the iron smelting and foundry industry was developed, and the spread of iron farm tools was more rapid.Horse plowing and ox plowing are common in the Central Plains.Among them is the description of the horse plowing the land.

Regardless of whether China is unified or divided, the regime in every period is preparing for war, and cavalry is an indispensable sharp blade, because so many horses are used in war.

Even if farmers have horses, once the war breaks out, they will be requisitioned by the state, and the chances of cattle being requisitioned will be much less. Therefore, the use of cattle as a driving force to plow the land has continued, and horse plowing has been gradually abandoned by the overly shrewd Han people. .

Huang Sheng vigorously advocated that horse plowing not only significantly improves the efficiency of plowing fields, but also can hide horses from the people. Farmers are not afraid that the state will expropriate their horses, but they are afraid that the government will become robbers and rob them of the horses they have worked so hard to raise.

As long as the government gave enough money to buy food, there would be no problem, and the monarchs of each dynasty were relatively cheap. They could spend money and food to import horses at high prices from foreign races, but they robbed the people under their own rule.

The steel produced by Huang's family made a plow with only plowshares but no plowwall.It was jointly developed by several Liao people who were proficient in farming on Juehua Island, and Gu Shanhai and his master blacksmith.

Two horses pull steel plows with three wallless plows, and the cultivation method of deep loosening the soil without turning over the fare greatly improves the efficiency. This method is not suitable for the fine workmanship in the south, but is very suitable for the north. Extensive farming.

Horse farming is not suitable for rice cultivation in the south at all, because horses are not used to wading through the mud like cows all day long, and they will often get sick.

The advantage of promoting horse plowing in Liaodong is that when farming, soldiers and craftsmen can lead the horses and lead the horses to help plow and sow the land, and it only takes three or two days.

The field management in the later period is done by the farmers guarding the households one by one. During the autumn harvest, all the labor is concentrated again to help grab the farming time.

Huang Sheng first cultivated [-] mu of land here to test the effect. After gaining experience, he could gradually nibble away at the nearby land within [-] miles of the sea.

The latitude there is closer to the North Pole, and the climate in the Liaoxi Corridor is much warmer than that of the Great Northern Wilderness. The extreme cold of the Little Ice River will not make it impossible to harvest even a crop of wheat here.

Han farmers are very good at tending the fields. Their technology is unparalleled in this era, and it is many times better than Westerners. Everyone knows the technology of planting and fertilizing the fields, but they can't write and can only do it.

All soldiers and civilians are willing to grow food. This is the innate habit of the Han people. Every household knows that they must own land to ensure that they will not go hungry. Now that they have the land they have, they are naturally careful.

(End of this chapter)