Chapter 319: Who Shares the Southland with the House of Zhu?

"Master Muzhai, Huchi, Houfu, Damu — in your view, who now shares this southeastern half of the realm with the House of Zhu?"

At this moment, the moon was bright and the stars sparse, the sky clear and windless, and the banks of the Qinhuai River were ablaze with lantern light. Within the courtyard of the Duke of Quan's residence inside Sanshan Gate, in the flower hall, Zheng Zhilong sat cross-legged on a mat in scholar's robes, and what came out of his mouth was just such a question.

Sharing the room with him at this time were Qian Qianyi, styled Muzhai; Huang Binqing, courtesy name Huchi; the former Mobile Corps Commander of the Zhejiang Shipu naval force Zhang Mingzhen, courtesy name Houfu; and Zheng Zhilong's eldest son, Zheng Sen, Zheng Damu.

Among these men, Qian Qianyi was Zheng Sen's teacher, while Huang Binqing was Zheng Zhilong's fellow Fujian native. Zhang Mingzhen, for his part, came from a Nanjing hereditary guard family; although he had not taken part in September's "eunuch-faction rebellion" in Nanjing, he had still been found fault with by a Censor of the right bench because his family had swallowed up military colony land, and had been stripped of office and become a dependent of Qian Qianyi. Though he had no worries about food and clothing, he was cut off from any official career, and his family had also lost seventy or eighty percent of its land — so of course he was full of resentment.

Zheng Zhilong's question drew a cold laugh from Zhang Mingzhen: "Who can share it with them? One man alone, that's all! Earlier, the Wu father and son thought it could be Zhu and Wu together, sharing the southeast. And then what? One round of dividing land, dividing money, dividing women, and what little strength the Wu family had was swallowed up by the Crown Prince! Who still acknowledges the old Wu family now? Only the Wu family's foolish girl can truly win the Crown Prince's favor. They say she monopolizes the bedchamber even with a big belly."

"There are still some Donglin Faction men who want to share the southeast with the House of Zhu. Just watch — once the Donglin assembly convenes, we'll all learn who is master and who is servant!"

Zheng Zhilong frowned and glanced at his old friend Huang Binqing. Huang Binqing laughed: "Huchi has a point. The Crown Prince does have methods. The boat-handling retainers I had have all gone over to the Yangtze River Navy now. At the least they draw five taels of silver in regular pay, and with miscellaneous bonuses added in, they make seventy or eighty taels a year, and they get to eat and drink well besides."

"But that only works on military men like us with little real strength. The Cliff-Flipping Kite (Gao Jie), Huang the Raider, and the Marquis of Wuchang still hold heavy troops and occupy prefectural cities, living free and easy!"

Zheng Zhilong glanced at his son. Zheng Sen smiled: "The Cliff-Flipping Kite and Huang the Raider haven't run off either. Once the Tartars attack, what little strength they have will be quickly spent, and in the future they'll just be rich old men in Jinling. But our family is different — our family's foundation is at sea. And the Thousand Years' method of controlling his officers and men is to grant them land. It's really the old route of the Sui-Tang fubing system and the hereditary military households of the early dynasty. But you can't get sailors by dividing out fields. If sailors turn into farmers and stop going to sea, what use are they?"

"True!" Zheng Zhilong nodded and laughed. "Going to sea is bitter and dangerous. It's only because the men of Min have eight parts mountain, one part water, and one part field, with no other choice, that they risk deadly peril to trade their lives for silver. If they had a hundred mu of paddy land, who would still be willing to sail ships out to sea?"

Zheng Sen continued: "Father, your son believes that the Thousand Years granting Quanzhou to our family is greatly to our advantage. The Quanzhou and Min merchants are spread throughout the Southern Seas! With Quanzhou, our family controls the roots of the Quanzhou-Min merchants, and can lead the Southern Seas." He paused. "But the opening of Shanghai as a port is a matter of mixed joy and worry."

Zheng Zhilong looked at his son.

Zheng Sen said: "When your son last went to Zhoushan, he passed through Shanghai and found that there is a deep and wide Wusong River flowing into the mouth of the Yangtze where it enters the sea. No matter how great the wind and waves at the Yangtze mouth, the Wusong River remains calm. Moreover, the land on both banks of the Wusong is open and flat, crisscrossed with waterways, and the other end of the Wusong leads to Suzhou and flows into the Grand Canal. It is truly blessed by heaven! Once the port opens, within ten years it will surpass Anping and become the greatest harbor under heaven! And if the court relies on the greatest harbor under heaven, it might well be able to build a navy that can range across the seven seas."

Zheng Zhilong nodded lightly, noncommittal. He turned his gaze to Qian Qianyi, who had been smiling without speaking, and laughed: "Grand Secretary, how much land and how many tenant households does the Thousand Years now hold?"

"The land amounts to more than fifty million mu," Qian Qianyi said with a bitter smile. "Of that, more than thirty-five million mu was confiscated from the noble and meritorious houses of Jinling. The remainder comes from the reorganization of military colony and government land in the four Huai salt commissionerates and the prefectures of Huai'an, Yangzhou, Fengyang, Yingtian, Zhenjiang, Chuzhou, Hezhou, and Taiping."

"In addition, of these fifty-odd million mu, more than eight million mu has been distributed to the officers and men of the new Overcoming-Hardship Army and the meritorious Overcoming-Hardship officials who came south. The remaining more than forty-two million mu is held by the Military Colony Guard of the Grand Marshal's Office. It is currently being reorganized. Six months will be spent clarifying tenancy relations, and a standard-form tenancy contract is being drafted. Contracts will be signed with all tenant households actually renting and cultivating the land, and tenants will be required to pay rent on time; otherwise the contract will be terminated and the tenants expelled!"

"How much rent will be collected?" Zheng Zhilong asked.

Qian Qianyi said: "Top-grade fields pay seven dou of rice, middle-grade fields five dou, and low-grade fields three dou. Averaged out, it comes to about five dou of rice."

"If all forty-two million-plus mu can be collected at this standard, then the total will come to more than twenty-one million shi of white rice. Of that, ten percent goes to the expenses of the various levels of Military Colony Guards and Military Colony Posts, ten percent to transport costs, and the rest is turned over to the Grand Marshal's Office — roughly more than sixteen million shi."

"That's not much!" Zheng Zhilong laughed. "Southeastern land yields two harvests a year. Smoothing out good years and bad years, top fields and low fields, and deducting seed grain, the average yield is surely at least one and a half shi of white rice per mu, no? Any less than that means laziness. One and a half shi, paying five dou, still leaves one shi of rice. If someone rented my family's land, paying that little rent would not do!"

"It is not much!" Qian Qianyi said. "What they originally had to pay in rent was never less than one shi per mu, yet the court received only a few catties of rice."

Southeastern fields, so long as they were not terraced or sloped, averaged two shi of rice per mu. If one rented a landlord's fields, one shi of rice in rent was absolutely the minimum. For military colony land to collect only five dou was definitely a preferential rate.

Moreover, southeastern fields were not all planted with rice; a considerable portion was planted with cotton, mulberry, tea, rapeseed, vegetables, and fruit. Cash crops earned far more than rice!

Now the Military Colony Guard, regardless of what tenants planted, uniformly collected three to seven dou of rice in rent. And there were no additional levies, taxes, corvée, or surcharges.

For commoner households and military households (now also exempted from military registration) who genuinely rented land to farm, such rent could absolutely be called boundless imperial grace.

But the problem was that in the southeast there were still many scholar-officials who "rented" military and government land and then did not hand over a single grain of rice. This so-called "encroachment" was in fact carried out under the name of renting.

How else could they seize it? Directly transfer military and government land into private names and forge title deeds? That would not work — how would it be recorded in the fish-scale registers?

Therefore, once Zhu Cilang extended the reorganization of military colony and government land to the southeastern provinces of South Zhili, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Fujian, the southeastern scholar-officials would suffer catastrophic losses!

Furthermore, the practice Zhu Cilang established of Military Colony Posts signing tenancy contracts directly with tenants had also shown the far-sighted men of the southeast an ominous sign.

The tenants on these forty-two million-plus mu of land alone number no fewer than two million households. Once the tenancy contracts are signed, these two million households will be placed under the protection of the Military Colony Posts.

Although they are not on military registers, through the Military Colony Posts Zhu Cilang can still directly recruit soldiers from among them! And the authority of the Military Colony Posts can also shield them from exploitation by other gentry and officials.

In a certain sense, these two million households are tenants dependent on Zhu Cilang. If in the future Zhu Cilang brings all military colony and government land in the entire southeast under the Military Colony Guard, then the land under his control will very likely exceed eighty million mu, the tenant households will reach four million, and the annual land rent collected will reach thirty-two million shi!

And if Zhu Cilang gains an extra thirty-two million shi, then the pockets of the southeastern scholar-officials and noble houses will lose at least forty million shi every year. Forty million shi plus four million households — to whom the southeast belongs is plain to see, is it not?

Zheng Zhilong let out a breath and said with a smile to Zheng Sen: "Tomorrow, take Chagu to pay respects. Let the Thousand Years have a look at your sister."

Zheng Sen said: "Father, do we give the one million mu of dowry land or not?"

"Give it!"

(End of Chapter)