After the palace banquet was over, Zhou Jun, accompanied by Fan Jinian, did not return to the forbidden garden, but went to the spring lake south of the palace.
A small courtyard was built next to the spring lake. If you look closely at the furnishings in the courtyard, you will find that they are exactly the same as the small courtyard where Zhou Jun once lived in Bachuan Villa.
Entering the patio of the small courtyard, Zhou Jun raised his head and glanced at the bright moon hanging high in the night sky, and said, "When Kong Zhongcheng arrives, ask him to go directly to the mansion to meet me."
Fan Jinian nodded in agreement.
After entering the mansion, Zhou Junping retired from the palace maids and chamberlains, poured himself a cup of hot tea, and looked at the sparse snowflakes outside the window, feeling a little dazed.
Not long after, footsteps were heard outside the door, and Fan Jilaian reported that Kong Zhongcheng was here.
Zhou Jun: "Let him come in."
Kong You entered the cabin, bowed and saluted: "Your Majesty."
Zhou Jun: "Sit down."
Kong You sat down diagonally as he was told.
Zhou Jun: "Do you still remember that I once talked with you when we were in Bachuan Villa? The world will eventually be in chaos, and saving the people of the world will be a great achievement for a long time?"
Kong You: "Wei Chen remembers."
Zhou Jun: "Do you still remember that in the ancient temple in Boling City, I once told you that no matter how powerful the empire is, as long as there is a foolish king, the efforts of the predecessors will be completely in vain... I want to let
Is the only solution to long-term peace and stability in the country and returning power to the people?"
Kong You: "Remember."
Zhou Jun sighed lightly: "More than ten years have passed and I have worked hard to this day. What I want to do has finally taken the first step."
Kong You raised his head and saw Zhou Jun pointing at the dragon robe, and he immediately understood that the first step the latter was talking about was to ascend the throne and proclaim himself emperor.
Zhou Jun: "This first step was difficult, but I finally made it. However, if you think that the next road will be smooth, you are making a big mistake... The difficulty of moving forward will be
Each step is more difficult than the next."
Kong You: "The master of the family has a great cause, and although the humble ministers are dull, they are willing to sacrifice their lives to accompany them."
Zhou Jun: "Tomorrow is the second day of the first lunar month. The provincial capital of Zhongshu will issue the "Law of Land Retention" to the whole country. This is the second step I want to take."
Kong You: "The "Land-Restricting Law" that Your Majesty spoke of was the land that was previously surveyed and then returned to the royal family?"
Zhou Jun: "Not only that, if we sum it up, the "Shu Di Law" is land reform."
Kong You: “Land reform?”
Zhou Jun: "You will know tomorrow."
After Yuanzheng Day, in many states and counties in the Northern Tang Dynasty, some officials posted notices in the streets and alleys, which read the full text of the "Law of Shu Di".
The entire law can be summarized as follows.
1. Divide every acre into an acre and never increase taxes.
Second, the whole world is not the land of the king. The land should be inventoried nationwide, and then the unowned, allocated, and camped fields should be unified under national management.
Third, the ownership and use rights of the recovered land are separated. The ownership belongs to the royal family, and the use rights can be adopted by private individuals.
Fourth, land is classified according to its purpose. The land used by ordinary people is residential land; the land used for business is commercial land; the land used for cultivating food is farmland. Arbitrary changes in uses of land of different natures are prohibited.
.
5. Land belongs to the tiller. However, refugees, farmers, and tenants can go to the government to apply for the right to use farmland for free according to the amount of labor in the family. The right to use farmland is tied to the user. Once the user is hired or
It is a subcontracting situation, and the farmland will be automatically taken back by the government.
Sixth, as long as the private land under the name of a hundred people has a formal title deed, the government will redeem it at more than three times the market price.
The advent of the "Shu Di Law" represented the official beginning of the land reform in the Northern Tang Dynasty.
Dividing the land into acres and never increasing taxes greatly reduced the tax pressure on the people, making the people's post-war recuperation more effective and faster.
As for land inventory, land acquisition and storage, land use division and separation of two rights, they fundamentally attacked the land annexation of the feudal dynasty and made the most important part of the means of production, land, begin to be nationalized.
Land for the remaining cultivators and the redemption of private land were the start of post-war stabilization work. From another perspective, these two measures also linked the interests of the vast majority of the people at the bottom of society to the royal family of the Northern Tang Dynasty.
Together.
Of course, the "Shu Di Law", as the first land reform in the Northern Tang Dynasty, was not thorough compared with the land policies of later generations.
One is that the land was returned to the royal family, which created a certain degree of uncertainty about future changes.
The other is that the Northern Tang government only completed about 60% of the country's land acquisition and storage during the land inventory. There was still a large amount of land occupied by entities other than the government. For example, the farming and military fields under the name of feudal towns, and Buddhist temples.
And the teaching fields in the name of Taoist temples, etc.
Of course, land reform cannot be completed overnight, and these two issues can only be resolved later.
For the whole world, the Northern Tang Dynasty's "Shu Di Fa" was like a thunder on the ground, shocking everyone.
Those homeless people and poor households regard this method as a life-saving straw.
Thousands of poor people poured into the state and county governments at the end of the first month, demanding land use rights from the officials.
In accordance with the imperial order, the state and county governments not only provided land leases to these farmers, but also distributed seeds, agricultural tools and other items to them.
For those people who suffered from war, the changes in the second year of the New Year gave them hope of survival.
For the world's nobles, "Shu Di Fa" is like a flaming iron, which makes people shudder.
Zhou Jun's behavior towards the clan and clans is obvious to all the nobles in the world. Now this emperor has provided land to the common people for free.
The thinking behind this, the smart people in the family can probably come up with an answer.
After the "Shu Di Law" was introduced to Jiankang City in the Southern Tang Dynasty, at the court meeting, Emperor Li Yu threw the decree on the table in front of all the civil and military officials, and asked in a deep voice: "What is Zhou Jun's plan?"
do what?"
The civil and military officials of the Southern Tang Dynasty looked at each other. Someone took courage and stood up and said: "This is an act of banditry. Liangcheng is planning to seize land from Xianmen and then allocate it to low-income people. In this way, they can win people's hearts and consolidate their rule."
Li Yu said angrily: "Zhou Jun deposed the clan and nobles as official slaves in Chang'an, and massacred five thousand people in Liangcheng. Our great country of the Tang Dynasty was defeated at the hands of the slave Yalang who usurped power!
"
Seeing that the emperor was angry, no one dared to come forward and speak at this time.
Only Li Mi, the counselor in the front row, swept the dust and stood up and said: "Your Majesty, calm down. Although Zhou Jun's method won people's hearts, it also lost their hearts. After the famous families in the world learned about this law, they would definitely alienate Liangcheng.
, think it is a disaster, but in this way, it is beneficial to us."
When Li Yu heard Li Mi's speech, his expression became slightly better, and he stopped mentioning the matter.
At the end of the court meeting, Li Yu called Li Mi into the political hall and said to the latter worriedly: "The Northern Tang Dynasty has become stronger and stronger day by day. Even powerful enemies like An Shouzhong were easily defeated by the Northern Tang Dynasty. I am worried that the world will be afraid of this."
It fell into the hands of thieves."
Li Mi: "The first is to attack the enemy, then the second is to attack the enemy, the second is to attack the enemy, and then the third is to attack the city. Although the Northern Tang Dynasty is strong, it is surrounded by enemies on all sides, but it does not know it. Your Majesty does not need to worry too much."
Li Yu lowered his voice and asked: "The imperial court spent a lot of money to buy artillery and gunpowder from the Tubo people. I asked you and the general supervisor to try to analyze and restore it. Are there any results?"
When mentioning this matter, Li Mi frowned and said: "I hired a craftsman to make the cannon called the Crouching Tiger Cannon. However, the cannon we made is not durable and will explode after being fired a few times."
Li Yu: "What about gunpowder?"
Li Mi: "Gunpowder is also called fire elixir, and it has been in Taoist alchemy books for a long time. For example, in Volume 5 of "Zhujia Chongpin Danfa", the method of containing sulfur in the alchemy classics combines saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal.
Mix the ingredients to make a fire elixir. However, no Taoist elixir in the past has ever thought of using this substance as a weapon. Also, the ratio of these three substances is also troublesome and requires constant attempts."
Li Yu: "If the formula of gunpowder is figured out, can the Southern Tang Dynasty produce gunpowder for wartime use?"
Li Mi nodded first, then shook his head.
Li Yu: "What does this mean?"
Li Mi: "Among the three things of gunpowder, one thing is the hardest to find, which is flame saltpeter. Alchemists in the Han Dynasty began to search for flame saltpeter mines all over the country. Among them, there are mines rich in saltpeter in the Tang Dynasty.
There are two places, one is in Laizhou and the other is in Hanzhong."
(Actually, the Turpan region of Xinjiang is the largest saltpeter mine in my country, but people in the Tang Dynasty didn’t know it yet.)
Li Yu was a little dumbfounded: "There are no saltpeter mines in Jiangnan?"
Li Mi: "Most saltpeter is produced in the northwest, and saltpeter mines are rarely seen in the south of the Yangtze River. Therefore, there were only two ways to produce saltpeter in the Southern Tang Dynasty. One was to sweep saltpeter near the stables of livestock and horses, but this method was effective.
The other one is small, and only produces it in autumn. The other one is to buy saltpeter from other countries."
Li Yu: "Buy saltpeter? Who will sell us saltpeter?"
Li Mi: "To the east of Hanzhong is the land under An Qingxu's rule..."
Li Yu was stunned: "Buy saltpeter from Yan State?!"
This chapter has been completed!