Zheng Sen, Wang Euzhi and other scholars were busy in front of the huge sand table, mainly placing models of gun platforms and scholars along the Yellow River.
I saw that the eight counties east of Pizhou, including Suqian, Suining, Taoyuan, Qinghe, Shuyang, Andong, Haizhou, and Yancheng, as well as the location of Shanyang City, the prefecture of Huai'an, have already placed models of gun platforms and scholars.
This also means that Chongzhen has sent scholars to these eight counties and Shanyang City.
[Note: This Qinghe is Qinghe County in Huai'an Prefecture]
The scholars will then be dispatched to train the rural warriors in eight counties including Shanyang and Suqian. While training the rural warriors, they will mobilize civilians to build gun towers and consolidate city defenses.
At this point, the Huanghuai defense line envisioned by Chongzhen is about to emerge.
The core support of the entire Huanghuai Defense Line is undoubtedly the Xuzhou Defense Line. The Xuzhou Defense Line is composed of the Xia Town Defense Line, the Pizhou Defense Line and the Xuzhou Defense Line. The defense lines of these three towns are respectively borne by the Ten Towns, Eight Towns and Ten Towns Frontier Army. Among them, the Xia Town Defense Line
The ten-town frontier troops on the defense line have withstood a wave of tests and won a great victory.
The right part of the Huanghuai Defense Line is the Huai'an Defense Line.
At this stage, the Huai'an defense line only includes eight county towns, including Shanyang Fucheng and Suqian.
But after Yan Yingyuan and other foreign scholars completed the training of rural warriors in Shanyang Fucheng and eight counties, Chongzhen would send more scholars to take some of the rural warriors trained by Yan Yingyuan and others to station in the ancient cities along the Yellow River.
Cui Town, Baiyanghe Town, Yangzhai Township and other towns, all the way to Yunti Pass at the mouth of the Yellow River.
By that time, there will be hundreds of defensive strongholds on both sides of the Yellow River in Huai'an Prefecture.
Moreover, these more than one hundred strongholds are not traditional cities, but a collection of dozens or even hundreds of gun towers. Facing these defensive strongholds, small groups of slaves cannot attack them, but large groups cannot.
It takes a lot of effort and the key is that it takes a long time, which will greatly increase the difficulty of infiltration from Huai'an.
Chongzhen's eyes fell on the left side of the sand table.
The left side of the sand table is the left wing of the Huanghuai defense line.
The left wing of the Huanghuai Defense Line is the Guide Defense Line.
If possible, it will be extended to Kaifeng Prefecture.
However, so far, the Guide defense line is still blank.
Because the situation in Guide Prefecture is obviously different from that in Huai'an Prefecture.
Huai'an Prefecture has been under the rule of the Ming Dynasty from beginning to end. It has never been occupied by bandits and suffered relatively light military disasters. It has sufficient population to support it and can directly recruit rural warriors to guard the border.
But it doesn't work in Guide Prefecture, or even in Henan Province as a whole.
Because the subordinate prefectures in Henan Province were repeatedly ravaged by bandits, and the Ming army who pursued the bandits also burned, killed, and looted, there were already ten houses and nine empty houses. Even if they wanted to recruit local heroes, they still had no strong men.
According to the data from the Fish Scale Atlas of the sixth year of Wanli, the number of people in the Henan Chief Envoy Department was approximately 5.2 million.
It should be noted that this is the number of adults, which is the number of adults who need to pay the Ding tax. Women and children who do not need to pay the Ding tax are not included. In addition, wealthy families usually hide the number of Dings to evade taxes, so
The actual population must be far more than 5 million. Generally speaking, multiply by three to get the total population.
In other words, in the sixth year of Wanli, there were almost 15 million people in Henan Province.
This data is also credible, because Henan and Shandong are the only two major provinces in the Ming Dynasty with a cultivated area of more than 100 million acres. After Zhang Juzheng completed the Qing Dynasty, the total cultivated area of Henan was more than 10.46 million acres, which was only larger than that of Shandong.
(Including Liaodong) The Chief Minister's 116.66 million acres is slightly less.
It can be said that 100 million acres of cultivated land can feed 15 million people without any pressure.
Instead of saying that the yield per mu is 2 shi, if we calculate it based on the yield of 1.5 shi per mu, 100 million acres of cultivated land can produce 150 million shi of grain. If 60% of it is used to pay tenant rent, a small farmer as a tenant farmer can still have 6,000 left.
Wanshi grain.
Fifteen million people were given 60 million shi of grain, which was 4 shi per capita. It was barely enough for big mouths, but there was a surplus for small mouths.
Back to the main story, the Chief Envoy of Henan still had a population of 15 million during the Wanli period, but now, according to Chongzhen's estimate, there are only more than one million people. This is really ten houses and nine empty houses!
What's more, most of the remaining one million people are held hostage by powerful local thieves.
For example, Feng Quan, the former great scholar of the Ming Dynasty, occupied Weihui Mansion, Liu Hongqi occupied Runing Mansion, Han Jiadi occupied Xuzhou, Li Jiyu occupied Yuzhou, and Liu Xuan occupied Xiangcheng. This was all the case.
The population of just over one million has been divided up by these powerful powers.
Therefore, even if Chongzhen sent officials and scholars to Guide Prefecture and Kaifeng Prefecture to recruit local warriors, there would be no one to apply. Even if you give them the best treatment, it will be useless.
But fortunately, there is no need to rush to build the left wing and the Kaifeng defense line at this moment.
Because if Jian Nu fails to attack Xuzhou, there is a high probability that he will choose Huai'an Prefecture on the right instead of Guide Prefecture or Kaifeng Prefecture as the breakthrough point. The reason is very simple, because he cannot get the idea of Jian Nu from Guide Prefecture or Kaifeng Prefecture.
We need supplies, and Huai'an Prefecture is much richer than Guide Prefecture and Kaifeng Prefecture, at least for now.
While Chongzhen was meditating on the sand table, Wang Chengen quickly walked in.
"Long live my Lord." Wang Chengen whispered, "Du Yinxi has returned to Xuzhou."
"Du Yinxi is back?" Chongzhen walked to the living room next to him and said with a smile, "Hurry up and tell him to come in."
Du Yinxi did not come back alone. He was accompanied by Jin Xuan, a member of the Ministry of War and the temporary chief military officer. Both of them looked tired and tired, as if they had traveled a long way.
After the ceremony, Chongzhen smiled and gave up his seat to Du Yinxi and Jin Xuan.
Except for the more than 6,000 scholars in the Shizi Camp, there were not many civil and military officials in the Manchu Dynasty who could be trusted and appreciated by Chongzhen, but Du Yinxi and Jin Xuan were undoubtedly one of them.
"Qing Du, Qing Jin, have you two just returned from Kaifeng Mansion?"
"Back to Your Majesty, I have just returned from Kaifeng Mansion. It took me almost two months to finally find out the connections between the powerful gentry and thieves in Guide Mansion and Kaifeng Mansion."
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! "Thank you for your hard work, dear ladies. What is the result of the investigation?"
Du Yinxi and Jin Xuan looked at each other and said in a deep voice: "Shocking!"
Jin Xuan also said with a dark face: "We originally thought that the situation in Kaifeng Mansion would be better than Guide Mansion, but it turned out that the situation in Kaifeng Mansion was worse than Guide Mansion!"
Du Yinxi said: "At least a few Jin gentry such as the Yuan family in Guide Mansion have kept their integrity, but all the Jin gentry in Kaifeng Mansion have fallen. No one can keep their integrity!"
Chongzhen's face darkened and he said, "If that's the case, then they can't blame me."
Du Yinxi said: "Your Majesty, there is another matter. King Zhou, King Fu and King Lu all sent people to Kaifeng, saying that they wanted to take back the farms of their respective vassals in Kaifeng Mansion."
"Their noses are weird." Chongzhen said with a sneer, "But this is a delusion!"
After saying that, he stood up and Chongzhen said with a dark face: "I won't even give you a cent!"
Seeing Chongzhen's reaction, Du Yinxi and Jin Xuan couldn't help but look at each other, feeling extremely happy.
When thieves were raging in Henan, Fu Fan, Lu Fan and Zhou Fan, the sons and grandsons of Emperor Taizu and Emperor Gao, all ran faster than rabbits. Now that the situation has eased, they have come back to take over the farms. How can such a thing happen?
Good thing?
However, despite being excited, Du Yinxi was a little worried and said: "Your Majesty, if you don't give me anything, I'm afraid the imperial officials in the court will make unfavorable remarks."
"Let them talk," Chongzhen said coldly.
"When the national crisis hits, even my imperial palace is put up for sale."
"Their feudal princes' farms cannot be touched? It doesn't make sense!"
Speaking of this meal, Chongzhen said again: "You just need to tell me, Guide, how much land does Kaifeng and Kaifeng have?"
Du Yinxi replied: "While investigating the guilt of the Jin gentry in Guide and Kaifeng's two prefectures in colluding with bandits, I also cleared the cultivated land in the two prefectures. After the clearing, there were more than 600 cultivated lands in Guide Prefecture.
Ten thousand acres, Kaifeng Prefecture has a total of more than 18 million acres of cultivated land, of which about 60% are owned by Fufan, Lufan and Zhoufan, about 30% are owned by Jin gentry, and less than 10% belong to Shengdou small people. There are also,
More than 99% of the cultivated land has been abandoned."
Hearing this sentence, Chongzhen was both happy and angry. He was happy that he now had 24 million acres of cultivated land, which could be sold for more than 100 million taels of silver even at the price of 50 taels per mu. But he was angry.
The cultivated land of Guide Prefecture, Kaifeng Prefecture, Fu Fan, Lu Fan and Zhou Fan accounted for 60%. The feudal kings were so greedy, how could the Ming Dynasty not be destroyed?
Of course, Chongzhen also knew that most of these cultivated lands were only in the name of the vassal king.
But it was precisely because of this affiliation that the Ming Dynasty lost its most valuable tax source, because the vassal prince's farm did not need to pay taxes, not even regular taxes!
Lao Zhu was considerate of his descendants, but he laid the foundation for the Ming Dynasty's disaster.
In other words, the owner-cultivators in Henan have less than 10% of the cultivated land, but they have to bear 10% of the tax, and there are also three wages. Who the hell can withstand this? It is no wonder that after Li Zicheng invaded Henan, the entire people of Henan
They all rebelled, and even the Jin gentry like Li Yan also rebelled. It was really the Ming court that exploited them too hard.
This is the case in Henan, and it is similar in several provinces like Shanxi and Shandong.
In other words, there were fewer vassal kings in Nanzhi, Jiangxi and Zhejiang, so the situation was better.
After heaving a sigh of relief, Chongzhen asked the two of them again: "Are those Jin gentry making any trouble?"
"Of course there are troubles." Du Yinxi nodded and said, "Among them, the family of Hou Xun, the former Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, was the most violent. The Hou family was a large family in Guide. When I led people to clear the land for their father-in-law, the Hou family also obstructed them in every possible way. If
If it weren't for the intimidation of the cavalry from outside the Jin Dynasty, it would be very difficult to clear the father's land."
Jin Xuan said: "Your Majesty, in order to frighten the Hou family, I had no choice but to kill several of the Hou family's children. Because the road was far away, I didn't have time to ask for the order, so I asked your Majesty to punish them."
"Well done." Chongzhen waved his hand and said, "You are not guilty."
After a pause, he continued: "You don't have to show mercy to these Jin gentry who secretly collude with the thieves, let alone ask for orders. What's more, I have given you the right to specialize."
