Zhu Yuanzhang cultivated land joke

Shortly after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Yuanzhang once proudly said: I raise a million soldiers and don't consume a grain of rice for the country. How dare Zhu Yuanzhang say that? Because, under the impetus of Zhu Yuanzhang for many years, the Ming imperial government specially reclaimed 89 million mu of cultivated land to ensure military expenditure. What is the concept of this 89 million mu of cultivated land? It means 6.5438 million soldiers, equivalent to nearly 80 mu of cultivated land per soldier.

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, as long as a man was a soldier, the government gave him 80 mu of cultivated land. Moreover, it is glorious for the whole family to join the army, so there are two or three people in each soldier's family who can be relieved of other government posts like Yu Ding, because they need to help the soldiers cultivate the 80 mu of cultivated land. This is equivalent to the government's use of 80 acres of arable land in exchange for stable military service.

In other words, whoever is willing to provide the government with a able-bodied man for military service and bear all the expenses and expenses of this soldier can enjoy the right to use this 80 mu of cultivated land and collect the land rent of this 80 mu of land, thus reducing the rights of at least two officers in the family. In this sense, being a soldier in the early Ming Dynasty was not particularly disadvantageous.

Later, after the government distributed all the 89 million mu of land to military families, the Ming Empire had a special interest group-military households, which was convenient for management. In this context, the daily expenses of soldiers in the early Ming Dynasty were actually equivalent to cultivating the 80 mu of land by their own soldiers' families, or collecting the land rent of the 80 mu of land to support themselves. It is precisely because of this that Zhu Yuanzhang dared to publicly declare that he had raised a million elite soldiers and did not cost the country a grain of rice.

However, with the passage of time, this state-owned asset, Juntun, slowly began to lose. Because, in peacetime, the army is a number. In other words, almost enough, no one will really screen the qualifications of soldiers. Of course, if we embezzle military expenses and eat empty salaries, the team can still operate as usual. At least the emperor above will not find anything wrong.

In this context, everyone's resources for the military system are naturally a brick for you and a tile for me. The most common behavior is that officers collude with local officials, casually hang an empty salary, or find some old, weak and sick soldiers to replace them, and then gradually turn these lands into their own private ownership.

In this way, by the time of Chongzhen, the 89 million mu of cultivated land had all become the private property of officials, so when the war broke out again, all military regions were clamoring for no money to pay wages, and the emperor wanted to trace the relevant problems, but he could not find them. Because the source of this kind of thing has to be pushed back to 100 years ago. How can we distinguish it clearly now? And the people involved in related matters are also a sea of people. How can we pursue them?

Therefore, in the end, all the daily expenses of soldiers can only be borne by the national fiscal revenue. But the problem is, according to the number of soldiers on the roster, the relevant military expenditure is absolutely astronomical, and the fiscal revenue of the Ming Empire at that time had already been exploited by bureaucratic groups to make ends meet.

The more terrible problem is that only God knows how many soldiers there are in the registered team of100000, and only God knows how much of the relevant military expenditure will be put into the hands of soldiers. In this context, the central government of the Ming Empire was always short of money, soldiers were always owed various salaries, and officials and officers at all levels were always asking for money.