The village where they are located is all within the scope of a grain chief's levy-

The wheat threshing field, located in the east of Lingyidu, close to the outer wall, is where the people gather wheat after they have beaten down the grain. The area is very large, with a radius of one or two hundred meters.

On the east side of the threshing field, a curtain had already been erected, and a curtain was torn around it to protect it from the wind, and a charcoal fire was built inside to protect it from the cold. There is a Taishi chair inside, surrounded by four warm stoves, which melts the warmth here, like a spring day. The head of the Su family, Su Yimo, the local grain chief, was sitting on the chair leisurely. Behind him was a group of housekeepers in the nursing home, and there were two little girls with clear eyebrows and luxurious clothes next to them, serving tea and pouring water.

The so-called grain chief system is also one of the systems set by Emperor Taizu Hongwu, which was established to urge the collection of grain taxes.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, when Taizu became the ancestor, the fields in various places were paid taxes in kind, and at that time, the Ming Dynasty was in full swing, the politics were clear, and the grain tax was also very much. During the Chengzu period, "the world's true color tax grain is more than 30 million stones, and silk money is more than 20 million."

The imperial court had to collect more than 30 million stone of land from house to house and transport it to Jingshi and other places where there was a shortage of grain, and the project was huge and arduous. Especially the construction of grassroots political power in the Ming Dynasty, after reaching the county level, there was no more, tens of thousands of households in a county, tens of thousands of households, relying on those dozens of officials to collect taxes? Can't get busy!

So Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born as a cattle herder, ingeniously built a "one" book and a "novel" to establish a grain chief system, and designed a set of "good people to govern the good people" method of people's collection and people's solution: the place where the land tax is paid about 10,000 stone is divided into a district, and the government appoints the large landowner with the most land, the most grain, and prestige in the area to serve as the grain chief, and is responsible for collecting and relieving the land tax for the government.

In order to encompass these grain chiefs, Emperor Hongwu stipulated many preferential treatments, such as grain chiefs could participate in the trial and adjudication of rural litigation cases; If the chief of grain breaks the law, even a capital crime, he can use money to atone for his sin, and he can continue to be a grain chief; When the grain chief transported the grain to the capital, he could not only be received and rewarded by the emperor, but some grain chiefs who were particularly favored by the emperor could also be knighted and promoted to the rank of official and could serve as a provincial political envoy at the highest level. Of course, this is also related to the fact that the civil service system was not very sound at that time, and later, he wanted to become a member of Zhu Zi even if he was not born as a Jinshi? That's a dream!

The most famous grain chief in the world is none other than Pujiang Zheng.

Since the beginning of the Jianyan period of the Southern Song Dynasty, the patriarch of Zheng Zhai has organized the clansmen to live together and eat together, and the population of the whole big family has reached more than 2,000 people at the most, which is equivalent to the scale of a large village.

Since the Song Dynasty, the imperial court has encouraged this kind of behavior, and the scale of the Zheng family's righteous residence is rare, and the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties have been repeatedly criticized. Especially in the early Ming Dynasty, the patriarch of the Zheng family served as the local grain chief, responsible for collecting and transporting grain to Nanjing, and was received and commended by Zhu Yuanzhang for completing the task well. Zhu Yuanzhang built a wooden archway to express filial piety, called it "the first in the south of the Yangtze River", and personally wrote: "filial piety home" three words to give.

The Song family is also quite strict, set up a "descendants, there are dirty ink, the birth is cut to remove the family registration, the death of the tablet is not allowed to enter the ancestral hall" of the family rules, through the Song, Yuan, Ming three generations, more than 360 years, out of 173 officials, none of them are corrupt and pervert the law, all are diligent and honest.

Of course, this is for outsiders.

At the beginning, the grain chiefs really simply exercised their three main powers: urging collection, collecting money, and relieving transportation. However, in the future, the grain chief had many more temporary tasks and incidental tasks, and the latter two were often inseparable from the former. In China, the task usually means that the grain chief has also certain rights, and thus the grain chief grows into a new surviving privileged class.

There are roughly four other powers:

First, when the farming is slack, the "elders and strong people" in the township will be gathered to explain to them that the Beijing division and the state and county have set up a community mandala and the spring and autumn sacrifices, which are nothing more than "benefit" for the people.

Second, persuade those landlords and gentry who are rich in land and property to stop "making friends with people and not making mistakes." Anyone who "relies on the poor to damage the small people, sprinkles others in the grain tax, buys the land but does not cut, takes advantage of the situation in the middle, moves the hill and changes the section, and sends it to others; It is also inconvenient to cover the famine, and it is also the hardship of the small people. Thy chief of bread shall make such a man a restoration, and he shall not harm the people. And it should be "drawn and posted".

Third, "If there is a barren land in the area that has accumulated for many years, and there is a division that cannot be removed, and its stubborn people will take advantage of this fame to cover the famine and abuse our people, and the grain chief will play from the actual performance, so as to eliminate the accumulated famine and call the people to share the seeds." Wherever there is a flood or drought. The names of the households affected by the disaster will be reported to the official from the actual situation, and the relief will be relied upon. ”

Fourth, "the grain chief did what he said, and it was the good people; Those who do not depend on it are recalcitrant people. If there are those who do not obey, they will explain their reasons." "If the grain is in the time, the people are stubborn, so they do not meet the deadline, and they are stubborn, the grain chief prepares the name of the book, goes to Beijing to play, and asks the grain chief. Instead of the grain chief trapping, it is really a recalcitrant people, and the family moved to Huawai. The grain chief pinched the words and heard it hazy, and the sin was like it."

Moreover, this power was given to them by Emperor Hongwu, who in October of the eighteenth year of Hongwu and the nineteenth year of Hongwu, Emperor Hongwu hand-ordered three books, "Great Message", "Continuation" and "Three Parts", which were successively promulgated throughout the country. It also illustrates the power of the grain chief.

Officially with the support of the emperor, in the early days, some grain chiefs could almost compete with the local officials, but this did not last.

Both the Lijia and the senior citizens were under the leadership of the grain chief to carry out the work of measurement and mapping, and the grain chief himself had to participate in it, that is, the task of collecting the grain tax and compiling the service register, that is, the power to determine the amount of tax to be collected was given to the grain chief, which was tantamount to opening the door to fraud for the grain chief.

The power of the grain chief is basically getting bigger and bigger, and the status is getting higher and higher.

For example, judicial power, for rural litigation cases, the grain chief only has the right to participate in the trial at the beginning; After that, he had the sole right to judge; Furthermore, he also interfered in local affairs and took up lawsuits. They have all the affairs of the department in advance, and if they are forced to do it, they will indulge the rich and serve the poor, if they collect money from one to take ten, if they use lawsuits to reverse right and wrong, and if they collect taxes and grain, they will collect excessively. Even the servants of the good, and the slaves of Lijia, and the traitors, and the people suffer from them.

And the power derived from the right to collect taxes - in the reign of Yingzong, even the grain chief could detain grain households and use prison privately, which is no different from setting up a private government.

The grain chief can almost be said to be the most powerful person in other areas outside the county seat, and his power is roughly equivalent to the town-level government in later generations, but it is a monopoly of power. With these many advantages, the grain chief was naturally a qualified gentry who rushed to be the chief, and later became the strongest or most famous squire landlord in the local area, so as to serve as the grain chief.

Since the development of the Su family, he has served as the grain chief here for more than 50 years.

For more than 50 years, the benefits are innumerable, although there is no one in the Su family to be an official now, but there are still some friendships in the official face, and they can complete the task well every year, even the county lord is also quite polite to them.

In this Lingyidu, the Su family is the first family to the out-and-out kind, with more than 3,000 acres of fertile land, distributed in Lingyidu, Shilipu, Liupuzhuang, Dasunzhuang, Yangjiazhuang and other places, and can collect more than 100,000 catties of rent every year. The grain in one warehouse after another is very greedy, and there are more than 100 tenants at home, and the power is huge in this radius of dozens of miles.

Many of his family's real estate were invested by the people, and more of them were directly taken into the prison by the Su family because they were late or short in paying taxes, and finally gave you a choice: be a tenant or a broken family?

That's how more land came about.

And in order to maintain its power, a certain amount of violence is inevitable, and the Su family has also raised many thugs, usually acting as a family Ding Nursing Home, once it comes to such a time, it is a violent deterrent force.

At this time, the number of people in the threshing field also increased, and the people gathered in piles according to their neighbors, relatives, and relatives.

Before the time came, they all gathered together to whisper this, or simply be silent, and from time to time their eyes glanced at Su Yimo in the shed, and their eyes were full of fear.

Su Yimo squinted his eyes slightly, holding the hand warmer in his arms, which was very comfortable, and he enjoyed this gaze very much.

He held a wooden board in his hand, about a foot in circumference, and the surface was very smooth and clean.

Directly above the wooden board, the words "Discretionary service regulations of the prefecture and county" are written, which means that what is written on this wooden board is the tax rules set by the lord of the prefecture and the lord of the county. In fact, to put it bluntly, it is the amount of the apportionment - this wooden board was sent to you, and it was written on it how much tax should be levied in your grain district.

The following date is the third month of the year of Chongzhen, which shows that this has been set a long time ago.

In the middle section, the following information is recorded:

The total number of grains and silver in the Changliang area of Lingyidu Su's grain.

There are a total of fields and beaches, two hundred and one nine acres are divided into three acres, how many fields, how much land, how many beaches, etc., are recorded very accurately.

There are a total of Ding, and there are thousands of people who are wantonly picking up Ding.

The true color of the levy, the rice, the Lu Qianjiu, the stone, the two buckets, the seven sheng, the unbridled spoon, the Lu copy, the Lu Puyi, the three Gui, the three millet grains, the two kueh, the three chaff, the tax grain, the Pingdong Ping, the thief, the horse, the strong soldier, the silver, the thousand and the hundred, the hundred, the two three money, the two three money, the two cents, the two milli Qisi, the three micro Wu Chen, the three micro, the Wu Miao, the three deserts, the three Sha Jiu Xian.

There is no decimal point in this era, but that doesn't mean it can't be exact.

In fact, the amount of this tax has been accurate to the extreme, even counting a few grains of chaff.

This is the amount to be handed over to the county, as for how to collect, how much is actually collected, who has more and who has less, that is the grain chief himself has the final say. Many people believe that in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the national strength was weak, the taxes were very small, and the peasants' ability to bear it was very poor, so that by the time of the Chongzhen period, the Ming Dynasty had increased the Liao salary several times, and by the time it reached 17 million taels, it had already reached the extent of forcing the whole country to rebel. Actually, this is not true.

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