After the destruction of Dongyi, there were no foreign wars in Donglu. After the reform of the new tax law, the army was reassigned to various places to supervise the payment of taxes by merchants.
Jiang Huanchu's original purpose was to firmly control the taxation issue in his own hands. After all, if the central government was involved, the difficulty of fraud would skyrocket.
What's more, it's not easy to cut off the flesh of businessmen. For the sake of profit, businessmen will take risks and use any means. I am afraid that only the deterrence of the regular army can make them pay taxes obediently.
Jiang Huanchu's idea was generally correct, but he underestimated the businessman.
The businessmen of this era are by no means the lowest class of scholars, farmers, industrialists and merchants in later generations. On the contrary, today's businessmen are at least the leaders among the common people. They basically need the wealth of Jiang Ziya's sworn brother Song Yiren to be qualified to go to Dongping. Many even simply
It is held by the direct relatives of the princes and nobles.
They traveled thousands of miles to and from Dongping and hired many guards. Each caravan was actually equivalent to a small armed group, and several of the large convoys had the strength to compete with thousands of regular troops.
However, as one of the earliest military disciples, Jiang Wenhuan trained more elite soldiers than Xiqi. In a head-on confrontation, he was indeed not afraid of caravans at all.
After several confrontations, the caravan found that it would not gain from head-to-head confrontation, so it immediately began to change its strategy and targeted tax officials.
Slaves were uneducated, so the recording of taxes naturally had to be handed over to specialized officials, so businessmen began to use self-taught bribery techniques.
Collusion between officials and businessmen has been the case since ancient times. Similarly, the people at the bottom hate this the most, because what is harmed by the embezzlement and harm by officials and businessmen is the meager interests of the people at the bottom. Life is already hard enough, and being exploited is unbearable.
Intolerable.
The soldiers of Donglu were even more serious.
The tax issue completely detonated the conflict.
There are also smart people among the slaves. Although they are uneducated, they don't know the quantity of the goods. After watching with a cold eye, they quickly noticed the tax collector's fraud, and many people with strong temperaments stepped forward to stop it.
Official reactions fell into two categories:
The first type is angry out of shame.
Imagine that Ji Chang's methods were so clever. There were objections from officials such as San Yisheng in Xiqi. The dissatisfaction within Donglu became even more intense. However, they were afraid of the prestige of the Jiang family and his son and did not dare to speak out.
What's more, slaves became soldiers, which did no fundamental damage to the officials themselves, and the two sides had little interaction. But now they prevent officials from accepting bribes, the nature is different.
Various tax checkpoints are filled with the same angry roars from officials.
"Do you want to commit the crime?"
"Despicable slave!"
"Go to hell!"
After cursing and cursing, all the truth came out.
When the fig leaf was lifted, the soldiers discovered that their status in the hearts of the nobles had not changed at all.
Still a slave.
This deeply hurt my heart.
They were in the military camp, practicing day and night, defending their homes and country, and bravely killing the enemy. What did they get in exchange?
…
There is another type of official who makes money by being harmonious.
This kind is more tactful, knows how to adapt, and can win people's hearts.
They ate meat and let their subordinates drink soup. They distributed a small portion of the bribes among their subordinates and everyone made a fortune together.
As a result, this group of soldiers soon joined the ranks of bribe-takers, and even got worse, and their depravity was shockingly fast.
Why?
Because there is no sense of security.
These soldiers discovered that although they were no longer slaves, apart from the change in status, they were missing one most necessary thing.
money!
When they were slaves, they had no savings. Everything was handed over to the slave owners. If they kept something private, they would be beaten severely. After becoming soldiers, they had no military pay.
If you can become a free agent, you will be satisfied. What kind of military salary do you need?
But now that the income from taxation has made the soldiers suddenly realize that it is impossible to be a soldier for a lifetime, ordinary civilians, no matter how poor they are, have at least a few acres of private land at home. As long as they work hard, they can always survive. They have no land. , there is no military pay anymore, how will you survive after being discharged from the army?
If this continues, the essence of slaves has not changed, but they have changed from slaves generally engaged in labor and production to military slaves specialized in war.
Went in a circle and came back to a dead end.
As a result, the soldiers naturally stopped working. After all, only a few could receive bribes. Most of them began to ask their superiors for military pay, and some even asked for land resettlement.
The superiors did not allow it, so the soldiers' emotions became more and more intense.
In the past, the conflict was only one-sided. The aristocratic slave owners looked down on the slaves who turned into soldiers, and the slaves still tolerated it. But now when the two sides are completely opposed, they can no longer be reconciled. In just a few days, a mutiny even broke out in the army.
When the lid could no longer be closed, the Jiang family and his son were shocked to realize that something was wrong. They called civil and military officials all night to discuss remedial measures.
Although Donglu's team does not have the Four Sages and Eight Friends of Xiqi and is full of talents, it cannot be ignored.
Some ministers suggested that since the soldiers were not satisfied with the status quo, it would be better to allocate land to them and truly turn them into civilians, and at the same time bear military pay and military service.
The so-called military tax means paying nanometers and forage to the country every year as military expenses. Military service means serving as a soldier in wartime and preparing one's own weapons, food and military supplies.
This was a far-sighted arrangement. Civilians who had the right to serve as soldiers and receive education were called scholars in the Zhou Dynasty. In this way, each class had a division of labor, and the country could last long.
But that is the future, and the current situation is that the common people no longer work.
Don't forget, Donglu is just a vassal state, and there are countless fertile fields that can be cultivated. Once the fields are allocated to soldiers, the fields belonging to civilians will be redistributed and greatly reduced. They are already living very reluctantly, and then they are allocated The land was about to be reduced to the fate of slaves, which was not a big deal. Suddenly, people became excited, conflicts occurred frequently in various places, and the situation got out of hand.
Jiang Huanchu discovered with grief and indignation that when they liberated the slaves, they did not receive the gratitude of the slaves, but were "betrayed". The entire Donglu was in chaos, and the rule suffered unprecedented turmoil.
The furious Jiang father and son went to search for Jiang Ziya, only to find that the instigator had already used Earth Escape to escape to Dongping City.
In fact, the initiator was not Jiang Ziya, but Jiang Wenhuan.
In any reform, if only the military system is changed and no other changes are made, failure is inevitable. Xiqi is much better than Donglu in this regard, and Dashang is even more comprehensive.
The twelve volumes of Tianshu have long been integrated into one by Gu Cheng, and the essence of hundreds of schools of thought has been incorporated into the twelve schools, complementing each other and making progress together. Jiang Wenhuan only learned a military strategist and then went back to engage in military warfare. It would be strange not to explode.
Even so, when the urgent report from Wandering Soul Pass was placed on the desk of the Star Reaching Platform, Gu Cheng couldn't help but nod in approval of Jiang Ziya's efficiency.
His tactics are superb and he can kill without losing any blood. He is worthy of being a sage of weapons.
In comparison, Shen Gongbao was under a lot of pressure.
When he found Jiang Ziya in Dongping City, he didn't dare to go down to meet him, so he held his breath and headed for the East China Sea.