It is very simple to shout verbally to equalize land and exempt from taxes, but to actually implement it, this is definitely a hell-level difficult task.
But if it can really be accomplished, the effect it can have and the energy it can inspire are extremely terrifying, and even the entire Eurasian continent may not be able to carry the expansion of this power.
Three years of exemption from taxes, this is the slogan that the Chuang army has been shouting since they entered Henan.
However, because Li Zicheng adopted mobile warfare tactics that were fluid but not soiled, he did not establish a solid place. According to you, most of the tax exemptions could only remain verbal and short-term. The food, wages and silver of the Henan army were
The equipment did not come from production and construction in the base areas, but was supplemented by confiscating the frivolous wealth of the gentry group and seizing spoils of war from the officers and soldiers.
For Henan Chuangjun, these four words "equal land and exempt from taxes" basically meant that they were still at the stage of "distributing floating wealth".
However, the Huguang army's approach was different. After Li Laiheng occupied Suizhou, he took Hehedian and Chushan Town in the north, and Yingshan County and Niuxin Village in the east. He set up fortresses in Tongbai Mountain and Dabie Mountain according to the dangers, and left banks and officials in Suizhou City.
Establish a grammar.
The prototype of a local base has been built.
As for Suizhou's external environment, the governor Ding Qirui was pursuing Zhang Xianzhong in Anhui. The governor of Huguang, Song Yihe, had limited troops and stayed in Wuchang to suppress the bandits. The only man with some mobile troops, Wang Guangen, was responsible for defending Yunyang and did not leave the flood area to Suizhou for nothing.
Loss of motivation.
Before Ding Qirui returned to Huguang from Anhui, Suizhou's external environment was quite stable, and Li Laiheng did not have many opportunities to fight with the government troops and seize the opportunity to seize spoils of war.
As for extravagant wealth, Li Laiheng has adopted the method of public trial and torture at the same time. He arrested, killed, or ransacked the homes of more than a hundred gentry in the city, and obtained more than 60,000 taels in cash. In addition, the money seized from the Suizhou treasury
The food, gold, silver and jewelry sent by Bai Wang and Bai Jiuhe were enough to sustain the Huguang army's military expenses for a year.
The Huguang Army now has about 5,000 soldiers. Among them, the Little Tiger Team led by Li Laiheng has about 3,000 soldiers after collecting some Baoding prisoners. Gao Yigong and Bai Wang's soldiers and horses, as well as Baijiu
The old camp guards brought by He He added up to more than a thousand people.
Guo Junzhen and Zhang Pili made wishes in the Dabie Mountains and recruited some village soldiers.
The total number of these troops and horses is about 5,000.
With Suizhou's current savings, even if the tax is really exempted, the gold, silver and grain on hand can support the needs of the five thousand soldiers for a year's campaign.
But that's all.
Since Li Laiheng worked so hard to go to Chu, occupy Suizhou, and establish the Huguang shogunate of the Chu army, he certainly did not want the strength at hand to be limited to these five thousand men forever.
What are the advantages of the peasant army? It is that it has better discipline than the Ming army and has more troops than the Qing army!
As soon as the time comes, Li Laiheng will definitely carry out large-scale military expansion.
Now Suizhou's savings can support the military expenditure of 5,000 men for a year, but if these 5,000 men are expanded to 10,000 or 20,000, it will be difficult. What's more, Li Laiheng's ambition is not just 10,000 or 20,000 soldiers?
According to his estimate, in order to defeat the Manchus head-on in two years (perhaps not even two years!), the Huguang Army would need at least 60,000 to 100,000 strong troops.
Therefore, what Li Laiheng is worried about now is: Suizhou's savings can indeed allow the Huguang army to be exempted from paying taxes in the controlled area, but once it is really exempted from paying taxes, it will be impossible to talk about expanding the army.
However, "Three years of exemption from taxes" and "No food will be paid when King Chuang comes", these slogans have already resounded throughout the Central Plains, becoming the biggest sign that the Chuang Army is different from other forces.
If Li Laiheng abolishes the tax exemption policy now, then Chuangjun's political credibility will be equivalent to direct bankruptcy.
If the people have no faith and do not stand up, they will be exempted from taxes. This is one of the largest sacred tablets of the Chuang Army.
This card brought them huge benefits, wherever they went, the hungry people would win food and scenery, so the Chuang army also had to bear the negative financial impact caused by this card.
"The tax exemption must be carried out. If the order is changed day and night, and the three-year tax exemption is announced so loudly and loudly in words, but in reality it is still taxed again, the political credibility of the army will be ruined."
"But... there are many ways to find out how to exempt yourself from the tax."
After Li Laiheng introduced the general background of Suizhou's tax exemption to Bai Wang, the newly appointed envoy of Suizhou Yingtian, after the general premise, he finally began to talk about the specific core implementation methods of tax exemption.
"Our promotion of tax exemption must be combined with land equalization. Once land equalization is completed, a lot of land rent that would have fallen into the pockets of the gentry can be directly collected by the invading army. We can use the method of exempting land tax and only collecting land rent.
Get the best of both worlds.”
As the name suggests, Chuangjun's tax exemption means exempting land taxes. Of course, Li Laiheng did not intend to be as shameless as Kangxi, saying that "when people thrive in prosperous times, taxes will never be added." In fact, taxes are not added, and all kinds of weird taxes are
more and more.
Li Laiheng's idea was: Originally, the common people in Suizhou were mostly tenant farmers of the gentry and landlords. Land ownership was not owned by the tenant farmers who cultivated the fields. After they farmed the fields for the gentry, their harvest must first be handed over to the gentry and landlords in the name of land rent.
Then he had to pay another sum of money to the government office in the name of land tax.
What's more, the land rent collected by the gentry in the late Ming Dynasty was much higher than the amount of land tax collected by the court. The land tax collected by the court in the late Ming Dynasty was generally around 5% to 10%. Even with the additional three rates, it was still far lower than
The land rent collected by the gentry.
The land rent ratio is not exactly the same in different regions, but it is usually several times the land tax levied by the court. In areas such as Huizhou, the land rent rate even exceeds 80%, which is appalling.
The land equalization of the Chuang Army was to directly eliminate the gentry and landlords and confiscate all their land to public ownership. Then these public lands were leased to civilians for cultivation. The civilians did not need to pay land rent and land tax.
All you need to do is to pay a share of land rent to Chuang Jun.
After the people have cultivated and paid rent on the land obtained through equalization for three years, the ownership of the land can be completely owned by the cultivators themselves.
In this way, the window period of "three years of tax exemption" can be passed, and the best of both worlds can be achieved, which can not only reduce the burden of the tenant farmers by half, but also ensure the income of the army.
The only group whose interests were harmed were the gentry and landlords. However, since Li Laiheng had already gone to the public trial and been tortured with sticks and robbers, was he still going to protect the interests of the gentry?
However, when Li Laiheng first revealed the implementation method of "equalizing land without paying taxes" to Fang Yiren, the dog-headed military advisor was still horrified and said in shock: "The ancient system of the Northern Wei Dynasty is not
It's strange. But the Northern Wei Dynasty's land equalization was a large amount of unowned land and wasteland in the north and south of the Yellow River, and equal land was granted to the people. It is unheard of that the land of generals, nobles, relatives, clan leaders, and clans were all given to the people."
"The noble relatives of the Northern Wei Dynasty are now the vassal kings. It is not a bad idea to kill the lord of the palace to seize the land and then divide it equally among the people. But the lord of the Northern Wei Dynasty is now the general of the guard, and the nobles of the Northern Wei Dynasty are now the gentry. Seizing the land of the general will make the world's warriors
The strong soldiers will all be mortal enemies of the palace lord. If we seize the land of the sage and gentry, all the gentry and celebrities in the world will regard the palace lord as Jie and Zhou."
"If the master of the palace wants to equalize the land, he only needs to seize the land of the feudal king. If it is fully expanded, the students may be afraid that the intruders will be attacked by everyone in the world!"
The intruder's torture and looting is not a class-based crackdown. It does not mean that you are a gentry or a big real estate owner. Generally, your official reputation and reputation must be considered first, and only those who are angry with the public will do so.
Severe torture and plundering is carried out, but those with good reputations generally do not torture and plunder, and only need "help with payment". You can pass the test by paying dozens or hundreds of taels.
In fact, torture is divided into two policies: one is "recovering stolen goods", which is a relatively common form of torture, using punishment to force corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry to cough up the stolen money; the other is "assisting payment"
, this level is much lighter than "recovering stolen goods". "Salary assistance" is at least nominally voluntary, and the amount of "salary assistance" is usually much lower than "recovering stolen goods".
Moreover, torture itself is not a form of death penalty. Indeed, people often are clamped to death during torture, but this is an extreme situation and not a situation stipulated in the torture system itself.
In short, although torture is a policy that can arouse resentment and hostility among the gentry, it is not equivalent to a declaration of war against the gentry: first, it is not class-based or comprehensive; second, its intensity is not destructive.
But there is room for it; thirdly, it retains the pass-through model and cooperation model such as "payment assistance".
In short, even if the Chuang army carried out torture and plunder, when the Chuang army had a military advantage, there would still be many gentry who cooperated with the Chuang army regime out of an opportunistic mentality.
Therefore, in history, after the Dashun army entered Beijing and carried out widespread torture and plunder, the officials and gentry went crazy asking for help, hoping to become officials of the Dashun court. Until the Dashun army was defeated in Shanhaiguan and lost their military advantage.
Later, these officials and gentry turned to launch rebellion.
However, to directly confiscate the land of all the gentry in Suizhou at once, regardless of their reputation, notoriety, degree or scale, is equivalent to breaking with the gentry class and declaring war on the gentry group.
No wonder Fang Yiren was so horrified after hearing Li Laiheng's thoughts.
If you are not careful, you will become an enemy of the gentry in the world and bring about your own destruction!
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ps: Li Laiheng will take actual revolutionary actions to refute the so-called claims by many readers that ambitious people disdain Laiheng!