It's really hard to just farm peacefully.

This will be the fifth call-up that Dongshan Village has faced in recent years.

The first time was on August 18th of the lunar calendar in the eighth year of Jianguang. The people of Dongshan Village had just finished the autumn harvest and celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival. They wanted to relax, but then they received news that the government was recruiting craftsmen.

It is said that the imperial court has detected that the northern barbarians may go south to raid the valleys before winter, and they want to recruit people to help strengthen and build fortifications outside the northern border defense line and the Beiting Guard House.

Four young and strong carpenters and bricklayers in the village followed the team that came to collect taxes and grain.

The second time began on the fifth day of the eleventh lunar month in the eighth year of Jianguang's reign when the northern barbarians moved south. The imperial army fought for several months, blocking the northern barbarians outside the defense line, and the stalemate lasted until the northern barbarians retreated in March of the following year.

During the war, many soldiers were killed or wounded. To replenish the lost troops, the imperial court issued an order allowing the northern garrison to recruit soldiers from surrounding prefectures and counties.

The northern army was stationed on the outskirts of Beiting Hufu and at several important passes on the northern defense line. To the south was Nanqi Prefecture, to the southwest was Xiding Prefecture, and to the east was a primitive dense forest that no one dared to set foot in.

Heding Prefecture and Nanqi Prefecture are adjacent to each other in the south and are also within the range of nearby conscription.

Heding Prefecture received a significant number of quotas. If they had been distributed according to the population ratios of the prefecture's counties and townships, by the end of the war in March, only six or seven people from Dongshan Village would have gone.

However, the rich and well-connected counties and prefectures spent money to transfer the quotas to the poor and unconnected counties and prefectures, and the rich and well-connected families in the poor and unconnected counties and prefectures spent money to compensate for the quotas.

In the end, when the enlistment quotas were allocated to the poorer and more remote Dongshan Village, Xiao'an Township, Rongcheng County, the number of people had increased several times, and it was not allowed to offset them with silver or money.

Dongshan Village had seventeen households, and twenty-six able-bodied men had passed away in the space of five months. Each household had at least one, and Jiang Yan's original father was among the last wave.

The third time was on October 20th, the ninth year of Jianguang's reign. The old emperor, proud of his achievement in "greatly defeating" the barbarian army, went to Dongjun Mountain to offer sacrifices to the gods.

On the way back, he suddenly had an idea to build a more luxurious palace at the foot of Dongjun Mountain so that he could stay there when he climbed the mountain to announce his great achievements to the sun and the moon in the future.

I heard that the ministers in the court tried to stop it but to no avail.

In order to please the emperor and get promoted back to Beijing as soon as possible, the governor of Heding Prefecture specially presented a large sum of gold, silver, grain and people to the old emperor to help with the construction.

In order to make up for the deficit in the governor's private treasury, taxes in Heding Prefecture were increased by 10%, and 18 able-bodied men and seven able-bodied women from Dongshan Village were taken away to perform labor.

The fourth time was in the first month of the tenth year of Jianguang. Officials sent by Heding Prefecture brought soldiers straight into Rongcheng County and arrested able-bodied men on the streets, causing panic among the people.

Jiang Fu was taken away in the county town, and Dongshan Village was so remote that it did not receive the news in time.

On the seventh day of the first lunar month, twenty-four men, ranging in age from sixty to fifteen, were taken from every household in Dongshan Village, along with sixteen healthy women.

It was not until half a month later when Jiang Fu's wife, Aunt Yu, sent a message back that the court learned that the northern barbarians had marched south again on Laba Day. This time the court suffered a great defeat and had to retreat to Beiting Guard House.

The general originally stationed in the north opposed the old emperor's construction of palaces and criticized his extravagance. In early November, he and his close confidants were urgently summoned back to the capital for training. They were not released until December.

The angel who was temporarily acting as the general in the north had no idea what to do. He could only capture people to fill the gap and prevent the northern barbarians from breaking through the Beiting Guardhouse, and wait for the court to send generals over.

This war has continued to this day. Because Dongshan Village is underpopulated and there is nothing to be levied, it has barely calmed down in the past two years.

But the villagers who stayed behind were old and weak, with insufficient labor force, and could only barely finish cultivating the land.

In addition, the weather was bad, and after the whole village worked hard for a year and paid taxes, the remaining food was barely enough to survive the winter.

Unexpectedly, just two years later, the court lowered the conscription standards again.