idyllic tranquility

Under the leadership of the third prince, Xia Guo defeated the overlord of the grassland, Beimeng Kingdom. However, the soldiers and generals who returned triumphantly did not wait for the rewards of promotion and rank, but were instead condemned as traitors by the court.

It turned out that when the news of the victory of the war came back, the princes who were far away in the capital stopped being swaying and suspicious, and immediately reached an agreement to target the third prince, which would surely trap him and his forces on the way back to Beijing.

The power of the princes uniting as one is simply amazing. Almost all the power of the mother's clans in the capital has been mobilized. Even the old emperor who has played with the art of imperial power for decades has been taken advantage of due to lack of energy.

Today, the political power in the capital has been divided among the princes, and the court is in chaos.However, under the premise of having a common enemy, the forces of all parties are restraining each other, but no one has made drastic moves.

Occupying the name of orthodoxy, the imperial decree requiring local soldiers to enter Beijing to escort them was rushed to various places by eight hundred miles.

From then on, the five-year civil war kicked off.

In the beginning, the third prince and his Xia soldiers who fought against the northern fierce enemy occupied the Central Plains, while the imperial court in the capital still occupied most of the north and south and most of the east in the name of orthodoxy.

It seems that the forces in the capital have an absolute advantage, but the military strength of the two parties is very different.The third prince led the most elite troops of the Xia Kingdom, and at the beginning of the civil war, he raised the banner of "the side of the Qing emperor", crowned the title of the righteous army, and won the support of many local powerful forces.

However, the political situation in the capital where multiple regimes are separated, mutual suspicion, and forces are intricately intertwined, although a consensus was reached at the beginning, but over time, the forces of all parties gradually exposed their fangs and claws in order to compete for immediate interests.

Under the strife of many parties, the power structure in the capital has changed again and again. For hundreds of years, the great clans have been annihilated in this internal strife. The bloodthirsty families and powerful clans ushered in a thorough cleansing of the Xia Kingdom's political forces.

When they came back to their senses, they realized that their own people were already unstable and it was difficult to gather vitality, but the army of the third prince had encroached on most of the territory, and the situation of winning and losing was immediately obvious.

For the imperial clan, this civil war is a contest where the winner is the dragon and the loser is death; For the common people, this is a complete disaster.

I would rather be a peace dog than a troubled person, it is definitely not empty talk.

The moment the war started, the conscription began again and again, which also heralded the coming of famine.

He Ning once heard from the refugees who had fled to Beili Village that he had to change his son to eat, and he couldn't help being terrified.

At this moment when the cruelty of the cold weapon era was displayed in front of him, He Ning froze completely, his heart seemed to be pinched by a pair of hands called reality, and he even forgot to breathe until he woke up due to lack of oxygen his consciousness.

People who have never experienced war can't imagine how cruel the war is. However, when they really face the war, they find that just the beginning can let you see the purgatory on earth...

As the only son in the family, and also a member of the third prince's dark forces, He Ning escaped the first two conscriptions. If he wanted, with his military contribution, he could escape the third and fourth times.

However, the increasingly heavy taxation has made it difficult to store food at home.Of course, they still have savings, no matter how bad they are, they can still ask the third prince for favors, they can afford it.

But what about his relatives, friends and playmates?What about the folks in Beili Village?What about the growing number of refugees?

It is true that wars and disasters will always pass, but what price will they have to pay?

Can he afford such a price?Can his conscience be at ease?

No one could answer these questions for himself, and the sudden war and famine made He Ning confused and hesitant, until something happened in the winter of this year, a tragic and vicious incident.

In the winter of the first year when the civil war broke out, a widowed grandparent and grandson were found dead at home by the villagers in a family near the foot of the mountain at the west end of Beili Village.

According to the villagers who helped clean up the funeral, Widow Li was beaten to death by heavy objects many times. Her body was bloody and bloody, not to mention beyond recognition, and her brain was smashed into a hole.What was even worse was her eight-year-old granddaughter. When the villagers found her, she was almost naked, her whole body was bruised and swollen, her legs were deformed, and she was in a mess. Daughter to death.

The death of the grandparent and grandson was extremely tragic, and the house was even more chaotic, with no poultry and grain left, and even pots and pans were swept away.

Obviously, it was refugees who came from nowhere that caused this tragedy.

After this incident, the attitude of the villagers, who originally had a sense of moral help to the refugees, changed drastically.

Even the young and old are not spared, how can a refugee who robs and kills is considered a human being?It's not even as good as a beast!

This tragedy aroused public anger, and the villagers were not only angry with the murderer's brutality, but also feared that such a tragedy would happen to their own families.

Enraged, the villagers were enveloped in fear, and radically drove out all the refugees who had been taken in as short-term laborers.

In this way, although the dangerous elements were isolated, the conflict between the villagers and the refugees was also intensified. Few of the refugees who lost their living space left Beili Village, but more of them fled to the mountains.

These refugees have become a major safety hazard in Beili Village. He Ning, who is afraid of the tragedy happening again, can no longer sit still. On the one hand, he discussed with his father Xiang Lizheng's proposal to form a patrol team, and on the other hand, he wrote a letter Give it to Steward Li, and get in touch with the third prince through the Li family.

During the period of waiting for the reply, Uncle He and the elders of various surnames in the village discussed and formed several patrol guards in the village to patrol the village twelve hours a day.

Since the young and strong in the village have been conscripted and transferred away, most of the members of these patrol and guard teams are composed of young boys and Shuang'er, and their hard power is definitely not enough compared with the refugees.

The villagers don't expect them to help in an emergency, as long as they see a suspicious person shouting twice to arouse the vigilance of the surrounding residents.

It is a matter of life and death, even if the surrounding villagers are afraid, they will pick up their farm tools and rush out of the house. Otherwise, if you are greedy for life and afraid of dying without leaving the house, in the future if you encounter thieves in your home, I am afraid that no one will come to help you.Everyone understands this truth.

The establishment of the Patrol Guard gave He Ning a sigh of relief, and at the same time he focused more on the matter at hand.

If things go well, he will go south in a short time. During this period of time, he will try his best to sort out the methods and drawings of improving farm tools that he has thought about in the past, and leave them to his family and Wang Zhangmu's family in the town. for reference.

Among these drawings, some are those that he has already thought about and formed, but he lacks hands-on assembly; some have only a general direction for improvement; some are his "wonderful ideas", mostly for production tools such as farm tools .

For the improvement of agricultural production tools, even a little progress can save a few more people.He Ning only hated himself for not spending some energy on this before, so that now, when the reality forced him to face up to the famine, he realized how limited his knowledge was.

Day and night, rushing quickly, the day before receiving the reply, He Ning finally produced an epoch-making finished product.

After resting for two days, He Ning explained the matter at hand, and then went south with the small army sent by the third prince.

But the entire Xia Kingdom glowed with new vitality after he left, giving countless lives that should have died silently in the war and famine a chance to survive.

And all of this originates from the hand-operated spinning machine that He Ning left behind.

Wars and famines intensify social polarization, and information asymmetry deprives the rich of more wealth and the strong plunders more power; at the same time, it also makes the poor poorer and the weak oppressed more powerless.When thousands of refugees were suffering from hunger and cold, the aristocratic families who had accumulated wealth still had enough savings and food to recruit soldiers and horses to support their military and political power.These abundant savings and food and grass will not become relief materials for refugees because of conscience and morality or awe of life.

The social currency among the upper classes is interests, and the mutual benefit and reciprocity built by the circulation of interests is far more reliable than moral assistance.

The emergence of the hand-operated spinning machine has added a channel for the circulation of benefits between the upper and lower classes. Maybe it will make the upper class squeeze and exploit the lower class more excessively, but in a world where there is no food and life cannot be guaranteed. Sometimes, you still have the value of being squeezed and exploited, which means you can survive.

The hand-operated spinning machine presented by He Ning before he left was distributed by the three princes who realized its importance to the aristocratic families who supported him and vigorously promoted it.

You must know that cloth can be used as a currency in circulation in the era of backward productivity. Farmers can use cloth to offset corvee and exchange daily necessities. Giving cloth as a gift is directly equivalent to sending money.

It is conceivable that the appearance of the hand-operated spinning machine caused a great sensation among the aristocratic families.

The gifted families all regarded it as a treasure and kept it a secret. On the one hand, they quickly asked the craftsmen raised in the family to step up imitation, the more the better; on the other hand, they bought more people to train textile technology and set up textile factories.

When the hand spinning machine has not been fully promoted, seizing the opportunity means seizing the benefits. If this technology can be hidden for one more day, it can earn one more day of benefits.Therefore, it is more in line with long-term interests to buy people to train/teach than to hire textile workers.

But this kind of situation only happened in the early stage of promotion. When the production of hand spinning machines is no longer a secret, it is the time when textile factories are built on a large scale, and when there are more workers in demand.

If it was in peacetime, He Ning would be more than happy to disclose this technology.However, during the war, He Ning avoided the crime of Huaibi for fear. If he wanted to use this technology to feed more people, he had to hand it over to those in power.And those in power will inevitably use it in exchange for more benefits first, and then consider benefiting the people.

The third prince wants to use the hand-operated spinning machine in exchange for the support of more aristocratic families in the territory, but he will not ignore the fact that more and more refugees are affecting social stability.

The production of the hand spinning machine was at most a secret in the first year, and it must be circulated publicly afterwards. At that time, it was the time when the employment relationship rose and capitalism sprouted.

As for the further social impact in the future, He Ning has no energy to take care of it at the moment, and he has been exhausted after traveling for a month.It wasn't until they left the border of the Xia Kingdom and penetrated into the territory of the Nanman that he breathed a sigh of relief, slowed down, and carefully observed this strange land.

Although as a young man with a higher education in the 21st century, He Ning used to think highly of himself more or less, but after living here for a few years, he has long since smoothed out that unnecessary arrogance.He has long realized that the knowledge acquired by Hyundai is not omnipotent. Without the cooperation of a sufficiently segmented market, most of the knowledge He Ning has learned is useless.However, acquiring knowledge is not the greatest wealth of learning, but establishing a multi-angle way of thinking and standing at a certain height of thinking is.

In the face of war and famine, He Ning does not have enough power to control the development of the current situation, but he can use the technology in his hands to give the refugees in the war more possibilities of life.

But the low productivity of food is the root of the disaster. Without enough food production, even if there are more jobs, it cannot support more people.

In this era of no corn and no sweet potatoes, food crops are not only low-yield, but also fertile soil needs to be carefully cared for.A slight increase in the tax burden will greatly increase the pressure on farmers and make it difficult for them to survive.This also makes disaster always accompanied by famine.

A hundred blockages are not as good as one dredging. He Ning has no better way. It takes time to select improved varieties to increase production, but now hundreds of thousands of people may starve to death every day. method, go farther to search for improved species.

And the reason why he went south was only because He Ning vaguely remembered that sweet potatoes were brought from the Philippines to China. As for the production capacity of this American native product, it was up to his luck.

People are small, but their power is immeasurable.

As a person who has witnessed how beautiful the world can be, He Ning wants to tell these people who have been driven out of hope by wars and disasters that the future is really beautiful.