"After all, the reason why we reclaimed those wastelands was not to leave them to the people to reclaim them!"

Zhu Mingzhong's words were not loud, but Luo Lun still surprised and said "ah". He even looked at the quite young Jianghuai Strategic Envoy in confusion.

"Oh? Why is this?"

When he asked back a while, Luo Lun thought about the "Contracts for Reclamation" he mentioned when he was walking with Huaibei a few days ago when he was chatting with a local magistrate. According to the "Constitution" formulated by the magistrate, "Each household gives 60 acres of land, 3 stones of seeds and grain are lent from the public to plant grain, 3 taels of silver for farm tools, 4 taels of silver for building houses, 18 taels of silver for two ends of plowing oxen, or 18 taels of silver for two fathers and sons, or brothers live together, or hiring partners, all of which are two households, and rations, salt and vegetables are given... From spring plowing, for eight months, each household is about fifty-five taels of silver for each household, and repays the government with principal and interest within ten years. It is still the same as the system of camping and land. Ten households send one village chiefs, and fifty households send one village chiefs... "

In other words, this is the trend of local governments preparing to implement large-scale settlement. Obviously, local governments have benefited from the settlement, so they plan to implement such large-scale official settlement. Although in Jiangbei, the fields belong to the government, they believe that with such preferential conditions, many refugees from other places can still be attracted. However, now, Zhu Mingzhong, the actual ruler of Jiangbei, directly told him that the fields in Jiangbei will not be handed over to the people for settlement.

Why is this?

After all, the more refugees are recruited, the stronger the local financial resources will be. How could Zhu Mingzhong do the opposite? Isn’t he afraid that refugees will go to other places and enrich other places?

"Because these lands are always limited!"

Looking at Luo Lun who seemed puzzled, Zhu Mingzhong explained with a smile.

"Now, according to the government's rule, there are currently more than 36 million mu of wasteland in Jiangbei, plus more than 16 million mu of abandoned salt fields, which are 50 million mu of land..."

There are many wastelands in Jiangbei. The former was caused by the massacre of the Qing Dynasty, and the latter was that after Lianghuai Salt Fields implemented the salt drying method, the original pastures that had been boiled with tens of millions of acres of salt were abandoned and did not need to become "stove waste". However, many of the stove wastelands were low-lying wastelands.

Despite this, these 50 million acres of wasteland are still a huge wealth in Jiangbei's hands. However, unlike local officials in other places who hope to use wasteland to recruit refugees, Zhu Mingzhong had already made up his mind to use these lands for other purposes.

"There are so many wastelands!"

Luo Lun exclaimed secretly in his heart, no wonder those local officials seemed very excited when they mentioned the settlement. The reason was undoubtedly that there were too many wastelands in Jiangbei, which also meant that Jiangbei had suffered extremely heavy massacres.

"I don't know what the strategy is going to use these lands?"

Luo Lun asked tentatively. He originally thought the other party would keep it secret, but he didn't expect Zhu Mingzhong to answer directly.

“Resettlement!”

Looking at the outsider Luo Lun, Zhu Mingzhong answered bluntly.

"There are nearly 100,000 conscripts in the Zhongyi Army. How can these people be resettled in the future? They will be discharged from the army in three years or four or five years. Of course, this is the promise given to them by the official, but they have served in the country for several years and have not received a military salary of one or two taels, and at most a monthly allowance of 600 cents."

Six hundred civic allowance!

This is the monthly allowance for the conscripts in the Zhongyi Army, 600 cents, but it is only barely enough for their usual expenses. Although some of them can be left, at most, only one or two hundred cents are left. If you are a little big, nothing will be left.

"They served in the country for many years and deserved some rewards, so..."

Zhu Mingzhong's voice was not loud and his tone seemed very dull.

"This official is planning to reward 30 mu of "medal field" for every year of service. After three years of service, you can get 100 mu of "medal field". From the fourth to sixth, you can get 40 mu of a year, and from seven to ten years, you can get 50 mu of a year. This is the reward for them."

Zhu Mingzhong only mentioned it slightly, but he did not mention that these merit fields have the power to be exempted from labor service, and merit fields are exempted from labor service. Of course, in fact, as the owners of merit fields, they enjoy more than just a simple "victory service". They also have a series of other powers.

"Distributed to retired soldiers and fields? Is the manager ready to restore the old news of Gaohuang's military camp?"

Luo Lun almost instinctively thought of the Ministry of War of this dynasty. Although he was not an official from Jiangbei, he still said.

"Does the strategy want to repeat the mistakes of military households?"

Almost immediately he thought of the old story of military households deteriorating and fully combat effectiveness recorded in history books. At that time, the military officers dressed themselves during their service in the garrison, and the food and salary did not increase due to the increase in their population. Therefore, the wife and children of the military officers were often not covered in clothes and food and food. The military households were not exempted from some corvee because of the provision of military officers, and their living conditions were not as good as those of the civilian households. Because of this, the status of the military households was very low, and even the civilian households looked down on them.

In addition to a surplus of soldiers in the garrison, each military household had to serve as a military force. During the war, the military officers were often enslaved by officials and powerful officials in various states and prefectures to be the target of hard work. In some garrisons, the military farms were occupied by the ranks of the generals and generals. The generals asked the soldiers to farm for them, and even asked the soldiers to fish and pick wood for them, and sold private goods. The soldiers became slaves in their hands.

"Of course not. In the old days, the land of military households was from the garrison, so military officers in the garrison could embezzle at will. In addition, the military farming grain was also handed over to the garrison, which naturally provided opportunities for military generals in the garrison. This military household was more similar to the current military farmer than a military farmer."

Shaking his head, Zhu Mingzhong directly denied Luo Lun's statement and restored military households?

Yes, not the same.

In the past year, he has thought more than once about China's future, especially how to build the future country's force and restore the country's martial tradition. In this era when literati dominated China for thousands of years, how to restore the nation's martial tradition is even more important than restoring force.

The reason why literati are powerful is that they rely on the imperial examination system to make millions of poor children become the backbone of the country by studying. The continuous stream of poor scholars are supporters and beneficiaries of the "literati class". The reason why the founding nobles and warriors of all dynasties cannot fight against this class is not just because they are addicted to enjoyment or are not rough about writing. The most fundamental reason is that their group is too small compared to the millions of scholars who are self-reported by scholars.

Even in the Ming Dynasty, how many nobles were there in the Ming Dynasty? How many officers were there with more than a hundred families? But there were only more than 10,000 people. Compared with the huge group of scholars - whether they were poor scholars or wealthy young men, whether they were children of children or Hanlin or scholars, they were all literati classes, and millions of so-called scholars formed the backbone of this country. In this case, "emphasizing literature over sayings" and the so-called contempt for "military men" naturally became the unanimous goals of literati.

The reason why those literati despise military men is also due to interests. In any dynasty, there are only three groups in the dynasty, one with royal relatives and founding military generals as the core, and one with civil servants promoted through imperial examinations, and the other with military officers promoted through various channels such as military elections, hereditary ones. The former has always been the target of attack by civil servants, while the latter is naturally the target of suppression by civil servants. The attack of nobles is because nobles are born to occupy a high position and are contemptuous of literary men who promise "personal efforts". The latter is because they are half of the court and pose the greatest threat to civil servants. Only by suppressing them can the civil servants be the dominant and control the power of the court.

It is precisely because of this that the status of military officers has plummeted. Only by constantly suppressing military officers and the status of military officers can the status of civil servants be guaranteed, and only by suppressing the style of martial arts can the rise of military officers be avoided.

"A good man doesn't serve in the army, and a good iron doesn't make nails!"

Behind this sentence is a thought that a huge group deliberately promotes for personal benefit. The reason why it is accepted by the people is because this group is too large. It is so huge that even the emperor can do nothing to him, unless like the Qing Dynasty, a group of slaves - Manchu officials to occupy half of the prominent positions of civil officials. For example, the Manchu people who served as the Shangshu, who was in charge of the head office, was the position above the Han Shangshu, and in the appointment of Manchu officials, there was no need to pass the scientific examination. In the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty divided and tamed Han officials through Manchu officials, and finally tamed Han officials into slaves.

This is obviously not what Zhu Mingzhong needs. He needs to re-establish a group, a civil servant group that can compete with civil servants or balance his or her own dominant situation! Therefore, he needs these soldiers and needs to establish a new group, or a new social class through retired soldiers.

"In the future, retired officers and soldiers of the Zhongyi Army will become local soldiers after retirement. They will obtain land ranging from a hundred acres to hundreds of acres. Of course, their land belongs to their own so that they will not be plundered by officials. Moreover, their land is also prohibited from being sold. A hundred acres of Yongye Land is enough to maintain a decent life for their family. When the imperial court calls them, they can be summoned to serve again at any time."

Not only are they quite decent, after having a hundred acres of land, they will become wealthy families in the countryside, and even hire a few long-term workers to live a life of food and clothing without worries.

But, can such days last?

Of course, this kind of life cannot last, because "wealth is not rich for three generations" and "wealth is not rich for three generations" is not because they gave birth to family members, but because after the three generations of separation, the 100 acres of land, after two generations of separation of several or even dozens of families, each family has only a dozen or even a few acres of land.

There are still 100 acres of land in one generation. If he had two sons, each of them would be divided into fifty acres, his life would be barely prosperous. Then to his grandson's generation, how much land would he have left to separate his family?

Wealth is not only three generations!

In this case, how can we maintain the decent life of the second and third generation "new military households" in the end, they will also fall into poverty. Even without the exploitation of the Director of the Wei Department, this cannot be changed.

It is also because of this reason that although this policy has not been implemented yet, when allocating "merit fields" to the survivors of the martyrs, Zhu Mingzhong formulated the basic principles of "merit fields that are inseparable" and "the eldest son inherited". According to the land given by the merit award as merit field, it cannot be inherited in separate families, and can only be "inherited by the eldest son". While the eldest son inherits his honor and merit field, he also inherits responsibility - he must serve as an adult. In order to protect the interests of the eldest son, the second son must leave home after adulthood. Of course, the eldest son who inherits the family business has the responsibility to provide him with one year of land income as compensation for the separation.

Now this policy is only implemented among martyrs. Although many people do not understand it, for ordinary people, they almost certainly think that this is the grace of the government. After all, this grace cannot be given to everyone, but only one eldest son is natural.

For Zhu Mingzhong, what he needed was to establish a class - a middle class in a society with a large amount of production resources and a wealthy life. They were not scribes, nor even needed the promotion channels for scribes. They were soldiers, and they joined the army for generations. In order to go to war, in return, they could enjoy a prosperous life and a higher status - the rich economic income determined their status in society.

And what are the people seeing?

They saw that it would be a military service, which was also a way to change their destiny, just like why many rural children were willing to join the army at any cost in later generations, because when studying could not change their destiny, the promotion of the troops was the only opportunity to "jump out of the farming gate". Although the opportunity was slim, they were still willing to seize that opportunity!

Benefit!

Only by driving the interests can the status of warriors be improved, and only by driving the interests can the martial spirit of the Chinese people be re-established.

However, Zhu Mingzhong did not say these words. Although this is just a rough idea now, after all, it involves some issues that need to be solved, such as whether the eldest son is suitable for service. However, in this era, doing so will at least have the opportunity to change the "customs" of this nation for thousands of years, so that a "samurai group" that disappeared from China after the Han and Jin Dynasties reappears in this country. Although it is not comparable to the scholar group that "dismounted as prime ministers and generals" in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Han and Jin Dynasties in history, it is at least an opportunity.

"This method is very good. If we can add the old system of "military households" in our dynasty, if it can be improved, it will definitely benefit millions of soldiers in the world!"

Luo Lun did not realize that Zhu Mingzhong did not explain the most critical core of this "new military household". What he saw was only that under this system, soldiers could benefit from it, thereby reducing the government's military pay expenditure. In this way, it almost instantly expressed its support position. After all, the situation of insufficient military pay has always troubled Jiangxi. One of his purposes this time came to Jiangbei was to solve this problem.
Chapter completed!