Standalone Northern and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 326: The Law of the Land and Occupation

Yuan Shen glanced at Heba Yun. It was because of the three powerful generals, the Heba brothers, that he could feel a little relieved.

Yuan Shen immediately praised Heba Yun and said to him:

"General Heba! What a great ambition!"

Heba Yun said proudly:

"My father held out for nearly a year in the isolated city of Wuchuan. Pingcheng is strategically located, so how could it be lost?"

Everyone nodded. At that time, all the six towns had rebelled, and Heba Duba had indeed defended Wuchuan for nearly a year.

All the soldiers in the tent cheered, but only Yuan Gong, the governor of Hengzhou who had just been defeated and fled back to Pingcheng, had a hot face.

When the Six Garrisons rebelled, the court handled the situation improperly. Wuchuan and Huaishuo asked for help from Pingcheng many times, but Yuan Gong, the governor of Hengzhou at the time, did not send troops to rescue.

So after the three Heba brothers arrived in Pingcheng, they were always at odds with Yuan Gong.

Now Yuan Shen was back in power, but Yuan Gong was defeated in Lingqiu. If he were an ordinary general, he would have been sent to Luoyang in a ragged cart by Yuan Shen by now. However, Yuan Gong was still a prince after all, so Yuan Shen simply dismissed him from his military post and asked him to come to the tent to listen.

Yuan Gong lowered his head and looked at Heba Yun. He felt that the Heba brothers had deliberately said this in this situation just to provoke him. He hated Yuan Shen and the Heba brothers even more.

After a military discussion, Yuan Shen determined the future strategy.

After the imperial army arrives, we should first attack Lingqiu, seize the passage into Dingzhou, and pacify the rebels in Ding, Ying, and Ji.

The three states in Hedong were the cream of the Northern Wei dynasty. This strategy left no choice. If the three states had rebelled for several years like Guanzhong did, the nobles in Luoyang would have starved to death, and the ancestral tombs of more than half of the officials in Luoyang Gaomen would have been controlled by the rebel army.

The three Heba brothers replaced Prince Yuan Gong of Guangling, and Heba Yun was temporarily appointed to guard Pingcheng and be responsible for the defense of Hengzhou.

Yuan Gong, who was dismissed from his military post, became even more angry and began to hate the Heba brothers as well.
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In the eighth month of the second year of Xiaochang, Xiazhou.

Su Ze was wearing farmer's clothes and standing in the field with a sickle. He bent over and cut bundles of soybeans, while his guards were helping to pick up the bean pods and grains on the ground.

Su Ze had never done much farm work before he traveled through time, and after he traveled through time, he was a son of the Imperial Army and had not worked in the fields for many years due to the war.

His going to the fields to harvest was actually more of a symbolic meaning.

After working for a while, Su Ze was sweating profusely. He handed the sickle to the real cultivator of the land and said:
"Don't remove the bean roots yet. Leaving them will help fertilize the field."

This piece of land is located in the suburbs of Yongle City and is the official land of Xiazhou government.

Official fields are public fields belonging to the government.

The Xiazhou Governor's Office was in charge of this official land, and Su Ze was nominally the top military and political leader of Xiazhou, so this official land was also considered his.

The government offices of prefectures, cities and counties needed to pay salaries to their clerks and they also needed funds for their operations. Although Empress Dowager Wenming began to pay salaries to officials, she did not provide funds for the operation of these government offices.

Since the government needs to run, it naturally needs money and food. When Emperor Xiaowen was carrying out the reform, he gave local governments a power - to provide "public office capital."

The so-called public office capital is the government's usual public funds invested in business or loaned out to shops for profit, with the interest used as funds for government operations.

At the provincial level, the governor's office was responsible for managing this money.

This system seems to be very good. As long as the court injects a sum of capital into each level of government, it can earn interest through the operation of the government in the future to maintain the operation of government at all levels.

This way, there is no need for the court to support government agencies at all levels, and there is no increase in local taxation. It can be said to be a clever way to resolve the dilemma.

In fact, it is not like this at all.

The local government itself was the local ruler and possessed enormous power. However, commercial activities in the Southern and Northern Dynasties were not as developed as those in the Song and Ming Dynasties. Places like Guanxi did not even use money much, and basically had a manor economy based on barter.

You don’t even have a business, who can you lend money to?
Therefore, "public office money" became a means of collecting money by the government through forced levy, just like the "Qingmiao money" in the Song Dynasty.

Anyway, money is needed every year to maintain the operation of the government, so the government forces the people under its rule to lend money at high interest rates, requiring them to take out loans. No matter whether you use the money to do business or not, you have to pay back the principal and interest when the term expires.

Therefore, the state magistrate was also called "the money-catching magistrate" by the people. This was a low-ranking but frightening official, because the money-catching magistrate could really make people bankrupt.

Therefore, Su Cho wrote to Su Ze, saying that the "public government money" system "collects a lot of interest, and many people go bankrupt, which is already a heavy tax for civilians." After investigating with his followers, Su Ze also agreed with Su Cho's conclusion that "public government money" has degenerated into an evil law that harms the people and has become a tool for government agencies at all levels to exploit local governments. In some places, government agencies collect a large amount of high-interest public government money every year, which is directly official forced usury.

So Su Ze abolished the "public office money" in six states and two counties, but government offices at all levels needed money, so Su Ze used the "official land" method.

The "official field system" is actually not new. For example, the well-field system advocated by Confucianism divided the land of the world into a well shape. The land in the middle was cultivated by nearby people in turn as a tax submitted to the government. This can be said to be the earliest official field.

Su Ze allocated official fields to government offices at all levels. Of course, it was impossible for officials to cultivate these lands, so the official fields had to be contracted out by the clerks.

The official in charge of the Xiazhou Prefecture is called Su Shouzheng, an orange follower summoned by Su Ze [a loyal and dedicated clerk in the household department]. Su Shouzheng handed over these official fields to self-employed farmers with spare capacity to cultivate, and at the same time gave the farmers some tax-free output rewards, so the land was well managed.

Su Ze led his men under the shade of the tree and said to Su Shouzheng:
"We will plant beans this year, so we will suspend autumn ploughing this year to restore the soil fertility first, and then we can plant wheat next year."

Su Shouzheng wrote it down. Since the official fields were all newly reclaimed, Su Ze sent Su Nong (a farmer's disciple with super hands-on ability) to check them out. In the first year, the land needed to be cultivated first, so he only let them plant beans as a transition.

The root nodules of legume plants can fix nitrogen and become natural fertilizer if left in the ground. This is also the method recorded in "Qimin Yaoshu".

If there was a lot of land where even beans couldn't be grown, Su Ze would have people grow grass instead. In any case, in the first few years after the implementation of the official land system, Su Ze allocated grain from the General's Mansion to government offices at all levels.

Su Ze then said to Su Cho who followed him:
"Master Su, please add a few more articles to the Law on Official Lands."

Su Chao immediately took out the recording board, and Su Ze stood up and said:
"First, the government at all levels must not impose unpaid labor on the people to cultivate their official land, and must not draw from military dependents, poor farmers, or the landless."

Su Ze knew the nature of these grassroots officials too well. Even if they were given official land, they would find ways to make the people serve for free. By then, farming the official land would become a means of harming the people.

"The number of tenants shall be determined according to the area of ​​the official land, and the people shall not be forced to work in the name of cultivating the official land."

This is another characteristic of local governments: the endless demand for manpower. Some county governments do not have much work to do, but they still conscript many people to serve. This unpaid service consumes a lot of precious labor. In order to avoid serving, people have to bribe officials, which becomes a method that harms the people.

"Official land can only be rented, not sold. When a new local official takes office, he must first survey the number of acres of official land. Anyone who has less official land during his tenure will be severely punished!"

This is the drawback of itinerant officials. All officials who take office leave when their term expires. Few local officials make long-term considerations, and they often exhaust all resources just to meet performance assessments.

When they were given official land, they simply sold it for a short-term income. When their successor came, there was no land left, and they had to go back to the old ways of exploiting the people.

For example, the Ming Dynasty implemented the official land system in the early stage, but it was sold out by local officials in the middle stage, and finally the government returned to the old way of collecting heavy taxes.

Su Chao wrote down the three points, and after careful consideration, he felt that Su Ze had thought carefully and had plugged the obvious loopholes, and he couldn't help but admire him greatly.

The general is truly a genius!

You have to know that when it comes to administration, the so-called system is to use one's own strength to fight against all the evils of human nature.

There is no perfect system, but a system that is as perfect as possible can still prevent people from doing evil.

Su Ze’s official land law certainly has many loopholes, and there will be more and more loopholes in the future, but as long as it is useful now, it is much better than the old law.

Su Chao secretly sighed, everyone knew about General Su's military talents, but few knew that he was also such a genius in governance!
These things may seem like trivial details, but they are the basis for the operation of the entire bureaucratic system.

When letting your subordinates work, you can't just follow the example of the previous emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty and not pay them, right?

A bureaucratic system that is secure and promising can allow people to work with peace of mind and effectively integrate the resources under its jurisdiction.

There were so many forces during the Sixteen Kingdoms period that no matter how powerful their early monarchs were, without an effective administrative system, they would eventually perish suddenly.

We can't always rely on robbery to solve logistical problems, right?
The entire system can operate effectively only when generals on the front line do not need to worry about logistical supplies, and local officials do not need to worry about the salaries of their subordinates.

After inspecting his official fields, Su Ze did not go to the military camp this year, but returned to Baizhang Tower.

Princess Chenliu was already pregnant. After the hormonal disorder in the early stages of pregnancy, her temper returned to normal, so Su Ze moved back to Baizhang Tower.

Although many medical officers asked Princess Chenliu to rest, Su Ze knew that pregnant women could engage in appropriate activities after the early stages of pregnancy, which would be conducive to normal delivery. Therefore, he encouraged his wife to go out and do things instead of confining her to the backyard for the sake of the child.

Princess Chenliu was also very satisfied. These days she was busy settling the women of the aristocratic families who came from Chang'an to Xiazhou.

Entering the house, Su Ze saw a modified loom. Su Ze knew very well that his wife had no talent for weaving, so why did she change her mind today?

(End of this chapter)