plumnovel Chapter 34 Imperial Plans: Agriculture and War
Chapter 34 Imperial Plans: Agriculture and War
After the core problem of farmland irrigation was temporarily solved, Zhou Yuji accelerated the process of selecting and resettling displaced people outside the city.
As summer approached, there was no need to worry about keeping the refugees warm, but hygiene and disease prevention were of paramount importance. This was something Emperor Chongzhen had specifically instructed Zhou Yuji on before the army departed.
First, mobilize people to dig dugouts and build simple shelters, enough for one family to stay temporarily. Inside the dugouts, you can set up a stove for cooking and lay some dry grass to make a large communal sleeping area.
The conditions were simple, but it was at least a home, much better than the refugees who had previously lived outdoors in the wind and rain.
However, the dug-out shelters were not immediately distributed to the refugees who had brought their families.
Under the strict demands of the clerks of the Military Settlement Office, the refugees who received rations for the digging of dugouts had to have their hair cut and take a bath before they could move into the temporary resettlement site.
Regardless of age or gender, everyone had to have their filthy, lice-infested hair cut off. Anyone who disagreed would receive rations and continue sleeping in the wild, forbidden from entering the resettlement area.
Faced with a life-or-death situation, the refugees had no choice. Despite their confusion and doubts, they ultimately chose to cut their hair before entering the camp.
The bathing process after entering the camp was even more "grand," with the women even able to go into a temporary shed to cover themselves.
The men would take a small basin and line up to wash themselves naked by the river north of the camp after entering the camp.
By this point, they couldn't run away, because fully armed New Army soldiers with short spears were watching them from both sides of the line.
Anyone who tries to skip work or just wash their hands of the task superficially will be punished with a beating once discovered.
Such coercion can also be considered a form of obedience test.
In years of great disaster, the refugees fleeing famine in search of survival have long since lost their basic order.
Chaos and disorder are the natural enemies of all production activities.
The imperial court, or rather Emperor Chongzhen, wanted a population of people who were obedient to his rule and could be used for his purposes.
Those displaced people who are honest, law-abiding, and willing to obey management are naturally the first choice for subsequent civilian and military settlements.
Migrants who are past the age of enlistment but possess a skill are also a valuable human resource.
Those who were unruly and rebellious during this selection process would be assigned to the construction corps and work for at least ten years to repay Emperor Chongzhen for saving their lives.
In those days, there was little concept of human rights. Those who survived the disaster thanks to the emperor's relief efforts had no choice but to work diligently to pay off their debts; this was the best way out for them.
The 500,000 shi of grain delivered by the Prince of Fu's mansion supported two large soup kitchens in the east and west directions of the refugee camp outside Luoyang City. The entire area was open to the public, and as long as you had work points earned from working, you could get a half-full meal.
Although the refugee camps provided relief to the disaster victims, they never supported idlers or indulged the lazy. The able-bodied men and women worked diligently, and their daily meals of thin porridge, two and a half thick bowls, were never skimped on.
Although the elderly and young children are unable to do heavy physical work, they can still be gathered together to sew and wash clothes, help with cooking, clean the campsite, and maintain environmental hygiene.
In this way, they can earn two meals of porridge by working, which is enough to put the minds of the men and women who go out to work at home at ease.
After the five-day "test" work is completed, the able-bodied men among the refugees will be divided into groups and await the new round of work arrangements by the Military Settlement Administration.
Regardless of whether they were ultimately assigned to tasks such as well digging and land reclamation, water conservancy repair, road paving, or wasteland clearing.
The Military Settlement Administration would keep clear records of each person's daily working hours and the quality of their work.
While some officials were in charge of registration, another group of officials and grassroots team leaders elected by the lower-class people among the refugees checked the information to ensure fairness and impartiality as much as possible.
From now on, these young and strong men will receive their wages based on their work. The more they work, the more they will earn. As long as they don't slack off, in addition to the two meals of porridge and rice they eat at the General Headquarters every day, they can also receive their full amount of rice, noodles, and other grains, which is enough to support their families.
Many of the refugees were initially worried when they were sent away from the camp and assigned to various places to work, fearing that they had been tricked and betrayed by the imperial court and would have to work for free in the future.
But when they finished their first day of work abroad and actually received their full rations, their previously unsettled hearts immediately settled down.
No matter how many rules the imperial court establishes, nothing makes these previously starving refugees feel more secure than receiving a bag of food.
Once they lined up and walked back to camp to reunite with their families and share the joy of actually receiving their full rations, the people's hearts were won over.
In times of chaos, all the common people ask for is a full meal and a safe place to live.
In the years that followed, the government imposed heavy taxes and exploited the people at every level, while bandits plundered and burned across the land. The people toiled year-round but could not even get enough to eat. How could they not feel despair in this world?
Now that the new imperial army has arrived, instead of driving away these refugees, they have actually opened soup kitchens to provide relief, established rules, and given them a way to survive.
Thanks to the tireless daily explanations from the officials of the General Administration, they also learned that the money and food they were currently using to survive came from the Emperor's allocation.
This, of course, cannot salvage the sinister image of local officials in their minds.
But there is no doubt that the current emperor, who personally reached out and pulled them back to earth when they were in despair, is the most benevolent and compassionate god in their hearts.
The "rumor" that people could survive under the walls of Luoyang spread rapidly among the refugees.
Within the vast Luoyang Basin, tens of thousands of displaced people who had been wandering the wilderness came upon hearing the news. Lured by the food rations and relief, they registered and became residents under the jurisdiction of the Military Settlement Administration.
Under the increasingly完善的camp rules and regulations, the refugees entering the camp undergo a kind of repetitive transformation, like an assembly line.
After being selected and given simple labor training, they went to various military settlements under the Military Settlement Administration to work hard, earning work points to exchange for food rations and support their families.
As the number of available people increased, Zhou Yuji also took the opportunity to reorganize the military settlement system, dividing all the recovered state-owned land and the public and private fertile land obtained through exchange into two major areas: military settlement and civilian settlement.
The two districts are governed by separate districts, each with its own responsibilities.
All 100,000 mu of irrigated farmland originally under the name of the Prince of Fu's Mansion were designated as the core area of the military settlement.
From the 20,000 young men who followed the army south from the north, 5,000 obedient and relatively strong men were selected and organized into an army outside Luoyang City, and were given the designation of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the New Army.
Each of these new soldiers was allocated twenty mu of irrigated farmland, an ox, and some farm tools. After six months, they could bring their families to settle down here.
Although the land ownership still belongs to the imperial estate, as long as they do not violate military law, these twenty acres of paddy fields can be cultivated by them for generations, and the imperial court will never take them back.
Once they formed their army, they would begin rigorous training, just like the new army in Beizhi. They would no longer be able to do their previous work, and they would not be able to cultivate the land allocated to them.
Therefore, it was inevitable that these military fields would be temporarily rented out by the imperial estates. Military fields were all tax-exempt, so even if the imperial estates only charged 50% of the rent for these fertile fields, the soldiers of the new army who did not have to pay taxes could still make a profit.
The local Luoyang migrants were eager to request the Military Settlement Administration to grant them the opportunity to rent these military farmlands.
After all, these military farmlands are fertile lands along both banks of the river.
Before the river dried up, these fertile fields were easy to irrigate. With careful cultivation, each acre of irrigated land could yield a good harvest, producing more than two or even three shi of grain.
Even though the riverbed is now dry, irrigation wells have been dug in various places. Even if the yield is still reduced, it can still maintain the output of nearly two shi of rice and wheat per mu.
Even if they only pay half, it's still better than them toiling away in dry land and on slopes for a whole year.
The vast irrigated land with its well-developed water conservancy facilities was so attractive that the new recruits of the Third Division of the New Army, who were allocated these fertile fields, were extremely excited and were overwhelmed by this "big pie" that had hit them like a ton of bricks.
However, Emperor Chongzhen's great benefits to them were not without conditions. The monthly salary of these new soldiers, who were allocated land upon enlistment, was to be reduced from three taels to one and a half taels.
Afterwards, based on their military rank, wartime performance, and years of service, they would receive a pay raise and additional military land. However, the additional military land would be distributed upon their retirement, and they could not choose it themselves.
Of course, the newly formed Third Division's new army soldiers received land allocation benefits, as did the new army units of the First and Second Divisions.
The new soldiers who chose to be allocated land will have their monthly salary automatically reduced to two taels starting the following month. The land allocation will be completed within six months, consisting of twenty mu of paddy fields and fifty mu of dry land, which they can choose themselves.
The rest of the salary increases and additional military land policies were the same as those for the soldiers of the Third Division, without any discrimination.
After the land was distributed, the new soldiers were allowed to bring their families to settle down in the area where the land was located within six months.
Military land cannot be bought or sold privately, nor can it be exchanged privately. It is allocated wherever it is assigned. Anyone who disobeys the allocation will be disqualified from receiving land. All units of the new army must obey.
Just like the newly established Third Division of the New Army, they all came from Beizhili, but for the sake of the court's planning and defense needs, they will all settle in Luoyang in the future.
Fortunately, none of the new army units had any objections. In their view, the emperor's generous salary and living conditions were already an act of great imperial grace.
Now they are being given land to ensure their families have a worry-free life and a promising future. Anyone who is still dissatisfied is truly ungrateful and will definitely not be able to survive in the new army.
This can be considered a consensus among the commanders of the new army at all levels. They had been allocated more land and received better treatment, and were now absolutely loyal to Emperor Chongzhen.
If any troublemaker dared to express dissatisfaction in any of the units, they would probably be secretly executed by themselves before Emperor Chongzhen could even send a supervising eunuch or the Embroidered Uniform Guard to investigate.
However, key generals in the new army, such as Zhou Yuji and Huang Degong, were not allocated land for the time being.
In addition to the imperial estates and fertile lands previously bestowed upon them by Emperor Chongzhen, each of them now receives an extra several thousand acres of fertile land according to their rank.
Even the second-tier Xietai can be allocated nearly a thousand acres of high-quality irrigated land.
However, their land allocation would not take place inside the Great Wall like that of ordinary new soldiers. According to Emperor Chongzhen's plan, their land allocation would eventually be carried out outside the Great Wall.
Moreover, they would be given surplus land to establish their own manor farms on the fertile grasslands outside the pass or on the plains along the river.
Of course, Emperor Chongzhen had not yet told them about this plan. After all, the new army only had two major towns at the moment, and they had not even quelled the rebellion within the Great Wall, let alone conquer the area outside the Great Wall.
However, the officers at all levels in the new army also chose to obey orders. They were more inclined to believe that the emperor, who treated the rank-and-file soldiers so well, would never let them, his loyal and trusted ministers, suffer any loss.
The same is true for Zhou Yuji and Huang Degong. They now own a lot of fertile land in the imperial estate, and their families have moved into the estate that the emperor personally built for them.
Even if the land is no longer distributed in the future, with the emperor's trust and favor, plus the thousands of acres of fertile land on the imperial estate, they and their descendants can live a life of comfort and wealth for generations to come.
In the Ming Dynasty today, what more could a military general ask for than this?
In any case, Zhou Yuji was content, and he was equally attentive to the selection and reorganization of the standing army around Luoyang.
The quota for the Luoyang standing army was limited to 10,000 men. Priority was given to selecting able-bodied men from the original military households to form the army, and those who were insufficient were selected from local displaced people.
The standing army's reclamation areas were divided into hamlets of 100 households and districts of 1,000 households. Hamlet chiefs and district chiefs were in charge of training and defense. Agricultural affairs and civil disputes were handled by agricultural officials at all levels dispatched by the Luoyang Reclamation Administration, with management extending directly to the grassroots level.
For the past three years, the reclamation areas have been under military management, with standardized farming practices implemented and production guided and supervised by agricultural officials.
The regular army usually farmed and cultivated land to grow grain. In their spare time, they drilled military discipline and practiced battle formations. Like the regular army in northern Beijing, they drilled every five days.
They were both farmers who cultivated the land and soldiers who were stationed there. They integrated farming and warfare, were self-sufficient, and both stabilized local security and ensured the production of military food.
However, during wartime, they were mostly used as supply troops or supplementary manpower, and were generally not pushed to the front lines to be consumed before the new army units lost their combat effectiveness.
These are all points that the officials of the military settlement office would emphasize and explain when the army was being formed.
Because safety was guaranteed, it wouldn't interfere with the usual busy farming season, and there was meat to eat during training, the sons of military families from the former Luoyang area who joined the regular army were very enthusiastic.
After registration, the standing army also benefited from the policy of allocating land according to population, with each household receiving between 20 and 50 mu of land based on its quality.
However, in terms of taxes, they could not enjoy the policy of exemption from land tax like the new army.
The military farmland of the standing army was exempt from taxes and corvée labor for the first year. From the second year onwards, 40% of the grain from each mu of land was collected as public grain for military reserves.
Ten years later, the cost dropped to 30%, and this was customized. However, the government was responsible for the oxen, farming tools, and water conservancy maintenance of the military farms, so the burden on the people in the military farm areas was not too heavy.
After the lively land redistribution, the soldiers of the newly established Third Division, First Brigade of the New Army have entered a rigorous training phase.
The soldiers of the standing army and the displaced people who had rented farmland were all very enthusiastic about tending to the land they had acquired.
Not only the fertile fields along the river, but also the contiguous wasteland and dry slopes have now been thoroughly cultivated and turned over.
Although the farmers in the fields were still thin and their faces were pale from malnutrition, the numbness and despair of the past were gone from their eyes, replaced by joy and hope.
They actively dug wells and laid canals, waiting for the summer grain harvest to be completed before immediately replanting autumn crops such as millet, soybeans, and miscellaneous grains, maximizing the productivity of the land they owned.
Emperor Chongzhen's grand plan of combining agriculture and warfare allowed this ancient fertile land of the Central Plains to once again radiate vitality.